Morien

Yep, that would be pretty much what I would be inclining to do, as well. Make the lie into the truth by telling the knight to really marry the woman, although as far as everyone knows, they are already married by the knight's public admission! Like Atgxtg already pointed out, the Church might not even be involved: if both the knight and the woman say that they are married, then they are married. All the more so if the knight is a Pagan, of course (I assume not, since annulment is mentioned). Normally the marriages are public for obvious reasons, but there have been exceptions, even at rather high level. Edward IV comes to mind; even if you don't believe Bishop Stillington (the marriage to Lady Eleanor Talbot), his marriage to Elizabeth Woodville was kept secret at first. Also, if the Saxon Lady and the knight had even be discussing about marriage 'once the war is over', this would have created a valid engagement between them, too. Anyway, my point is that there is really no reason for Kay to go digging for marriage records. The knight has stated that he is married, there is no reason to doubt his word on this. Nor do I see why Arthur would like to have it annulled in the first place: not only is annulment a royal pain in the butt to arrange, there is no reason for it. As to a more general point, lying to your liege lord is generally a very bad idea. In this particular case, the knight has several strong defenses, though. Defending women for one (Honor, due to the oath), Merciful for another. There might be an actual Amor, too. Like Atgxtg said, there would be support from Guinever in this case, definitely. It is the prerogative of the medieval queen to be the voice of Mercy; it is expected that she pleads for mercy for those deserving of it, so that the king has an excuse to be merciful without looking weak. Of course, if the knight is smart, he would ask for an audience with Arthur and Guinever in private, and confess his lie and reasoning in private. This allows Arthur to save face: it is not made public that he has been lied to his face by one of his Round Table Knights. Also, from what I understand, Arthur is not happy about killing those women and children, so he probably doesn't want to refight that argument, either, and just be happy that at least one woman was saved from death by this well-meaning lie. Now there would be more problems if the Saxon woman in question is not willing to marry the knight, or agreed to do so only under the duress of death. Then the marriage would be invalid from the onset, even if there is an agreement by both parties. I still do not see the King executing her after the fact, especially since this is after the Battle of Badon; what would be the point? But in this case, the lie is made public, and that puts Arthur in a bit of a bind. "Thou shalt not embarrass your liege lord." ought to be a commandment. If the knight has already confessed to Arthur, this helps a bit, as it does not come out of the left field as far as Arthur is concerned. But it still depends a lot on Arthur: after all, Gawaine quits the court due to Arthur's unjust exile of Ywaine, and he is not punished for it, and both of them are welcomed back to court. So Arthur is not incapable of admitting that he was at fault. So if you want Arthur really show off how different he is from Uther, you could have him state that he was wrong in executing those hostages (i.e. it was legitimate to do so, but it was morally unjust), and since the lie was made for a noble cause (to save the life of a lady), the knight will not be punished for it. Sure, it might create a bit of an unfortunate precedent as far as lying to Arthur is concerned, but I could see Arthur deciding that he can deal with any future lies as they crop up: it might be more important to him that his knights do what is right, rather than obey him in all things. Sounds more like a player issue; i.e. the players are not clear on how the medieval society works. This is something an discussion around the table would help, to bring everyone up to speed. Especially since you mention that there is at least one player who has not grasped the nuances. Anyway, the point is that the PKs can object to the hanging, on merciful or other grounds. But it would highlight the problem of having death penalty option in the hands of local lords, i.e. the main point Arthur wants to fix. Heck, you could even have the PKs report to Arthur and that is the final straw that leads Arthur into formulating this new law. It will give the players a feeling that they have influenced the way that the world works, and that is generally a good thing.

Kinda funny, since it actually works to the benefit of the higher skill character. Consider this: Skill 29 vs. Skill 30. Normal KAP gives them 50% and 55% chance of a critical, almost the same, and on a non-critical, Skill 30 has a +1 edge on the die roll (if both roll 8, Skill 30 gets 8+10 = 18 and Skill 29 gets 8+9 = 17). Under our house rule, the skills become 20 and 21. The more skilled knight still has that +1 edge, and even the 5% edge in criticals, BUT that extra 5% in criticals now means that he has double the chance of critting (10%, on 19 and 20) compared to the lesser skilled knight (modified skill 20 -> crit chance 5%). In normal KAP, the fight is over in a couple of rounds, with a critical beheading of the non-critting knight, and it is practically a coin toss which one it is. Now it is a longer fight, but skewed a bit more to the more skilled knight, as he is much likelier to get a critical in first.

Here you go. 12000 random knights, in different age and culture categories. (Original post about my knight generator is here: https://greathall.chaosium.com/Pendragon Forum Archive/index.php/t-1035.html This is the second version as you can see by the addition of some skills and so forth.) 1000_middleaged_cymric_knights_v2.txt 1000_middleaged_french_knights_v2.txt 1000_middleaged_roman_knights_v2.txt 1000_middleaged_saxon_knights_v2.txt 1000_old_cymric_knights_v2.txt 1000_old_french_knights_v2.txt 1000_old_middleaged_knights_v2.txt 1000_old_roman_knights_v2.txt 1000_old_saxon_knights_v2.txt 1000_young_cymric_knights_v2.txt 1000_young_french_knights_v2.txt 1000_young_roman_knights_v2.txt 1000_young_saxon_knights_v2.txt

Somewhat more mundane: 1) The wife has a request to make. Maybe she is soft-hearted and wants you to give something back to the peasants, especially if it is a bad harvest and you have loot from a recent battle to tide you over. Maybe she is anxious to see the glories of the big cities (mainly Camelot if it already exists, but London might work, too, especially if this is pre-Anarchy or post-Boy King), and do some shopping (or a more religious variant, a pilgrimage to a religious site, perhaps to pray for a healthy child if the marriage has been unfruitful for the first couple of years). Maybe she wants you to take her nephew as a new squire or convince one of your adventuring buddies to do so. Maybe she gets bit by this new fashion of Amor, and wants you to woo her even though you are already happily married. Get that harp out and start strumming! 2) Speaking of Amor (or just a seduction), maybe another knight is casting his gaze towards the wife. Depending on your Suspicious, maybe you spot this first, or maybe the wife comes to you with a complaint that this knight is hounding her. A good opportunity for a duel inspired by Love (Wife) and getting that other knight to leave her alone.

Yeah, I have a whole thread about them, linked here: But that particular rule is dead simple: Just reduce both skills by the same amount so that the lower skill becomes 20. So skills 30 and 28 square off. 28 -8=20, and 30-8=22, so it is resolved as 22 vs 20. If there is skill splitting/modifiers involved, it does not matter, you are only looking at the effective skills. So if in the above, 30 is on foot and 28 is on horseback, it would become 25 vs. 33, and hence 20 vs. 28.

Yes, yes you are. But if it is working for you and your players... That being said, why would anyone ever give more land to vassal knights, if they don't get anything back from it (i.e. extra knights)? The thing is that the nobleman in question is himself responsible for bringing X number of knights when the King calls. If he has spent X/2 manors to give to a few PKs, then how is he going to explain to the King when he shows up with just X/2 knights? It simply doesn't work like that. Being Filthy Rich actually removes a good part of the motivation for the economy mini game, not to mention cheapen the loots. If the money is pouring in, there is no need to really count it. My temptation would be to just ignore the economics and focus solely on the adventuring aspect of Pendragon, Traits and Passions. You know, the stuff where filthy lucre doesn't help you one jot. Quick answers: 1) BotE / BotW is very fair towards players. You have been insanely generous. (For one, the guy marrying a count's widow doesn't become the next count... even ignoring the above free lunch manors... Or the fact that they are apparently double counts or something like that...) 2) You won't gain much from Warlord, I am sorry to say, since you already have Estate and are past 518. It focuses mainly on the early part, although I guess you do get the nice castles and summaries of them at the end of the Boy King. But sure, you can use it with regional nobility, no problem. The building of a barony just works a bit differently: you just decide where the whole barony is and how big is it, rather than rolling for outliers. 3) See above. Using Warlord is much better than using Book of the Manor. 4) No problems sticking with Loyalty. 5) No, it is not new. Book of the Manor screwed up what a demesne manor meant, that is all. 6) I would talk with the players and tell honestly that you made a mistake. However, to be honest, if you already have counts and bannerets, the money has lost its meaning. You are way past the generic campaign with vassal knights with one to a few manors.

Correct. I think Leingod's brain skipped a row.

Hzark10 can speak for himself, but in my mind, Uther resented Gorlois 'usurping' his place as Aurelius' right-hand man, whereas Gorlois was quickly exasperated by the sullen, angry young prince. You may note that it takes until 470, with Uther already in his early 30s, before he is given a major independent command. Basically, Aurelius, Riothamus and Gorlois are the Three Musketeers, while Uther is benched by Aurelius with an argument that they can't risk both Aurelius and Uther dying in the same battle. No, better for Uther to stay in Brittany, safe and sound, the big brother would insist. And then having to listen to Aurelius and Gorlois telling of their heroics in battle, slapping each others' backs and laughing... Frankly, given Uther's non-appearance during the March, I would not be surprised if he spends it fuming in Brittany. Which might also explain why Uther and Ulfius are so tight. Ulfius is the companion from those days, always there for Uther. A brother by choice, not by birth. So as Uther rises, so does Ulfius.

Not much, especially since you already have GPC. There are some changes to the character generation, some minor changes to combat (such as Double Feint being dropped as a tactic), and the starting date has been moved back to 485 (480 in Book of Uther). However, the vast majority of the rules are the same. You can easily play your game with 4e. Frankly, since 5e has been rather deficient in new adventure books, most of us end up using 3e and 4e adventure books in their campaigns anyway, and it works out just fine. Salisbury in 485 (5.2) is almost carbon-copied from 531 (4e), and you can get the free supplement, The Marriage of Count Roderick, to fill in the current ruling family as you go back a generation, with Count (Earl in 4e) Robert born in 492. It is available at Chaosium website. If you are really into Uther Period, then Book of Uther is a good buy, rather than 5.2 (which again, is repeating a lot of stuff you already have in 4e). However, personally I would advise you to stick with the regional nobles as portrayed in 4e and GPC (each county has its own noble in charge of the whole county), rather than using the scattered landholdings as in Book of the Warlord and BoUther (each higher noble owns bits and pieces of land all over Logres). Regional nobles are way way easier to GM and to explain to people, and since the change postdates GPC, you save yourself some conversion headaches, too. Here is a link to my advice, including what 5e books to buy: Note that it is geared towards a person who is starting with nothing. Since you have 4e and not 5.2, you would derive more value, IMHO, from BoUther than BotWarlord, simply because BoUther helps to fill in personages and the current state of things better. GPC does decently well in that regard by itself, though; I would not consider BoUther to be mandatory, simply useful. The rest of my suggestions are pretty much valid, though, except I would add that I keep hearing people singing the praises of the Book of Feasts, so that might skip towards the top of my list of books to buy. Especially since it ought to be useful throughout the campaign, too.

Have some cruel baron string up some starving peasant family who have stolen a loaf of bread and see how quickly the PKs might come around to the idea of having a royal justice deciding death penalty cases rather than every nobleman. (Although quite a few of those new royal justices would be barons in their own right, too.)

I think BoA ignores the day of fighting at the ford, since it is not actually at the Badon Hill itself.

They are not the only ones! I think Arthur should have insisted on grown men as hostages, especially as this is a Saxon army, not a migration. Where did they get all those women and children from? Anyway... The way I read it, it is Arthur confirming that no other person has the right to execute criminals, save the King. In Uther's time, if you catch the thief in the act, you are allowed to string him up as punishment, if you are a landholding noble (Book of the Warlord, p. 27: "◆ Thief-hanging: This is the right to hang a thief caught red-handed with the goods on him.").

I would probably let the player choose, since he kinda has to declare what the success looks like for that Passion. But I could see just making an opposed roll between the passions, and the one that wins is then used for the inspiration roll. Social consequences: Depends somewhat on the situation, did he kill someone whilst maddened/melancholic? Did his desertion of his post lead to some calamity, such as the castle being lost and women and children slain/enslaved? In general, those who know him (other PKs especially but generally all the knights serving the same duke/count/baron level liege should count) ought to be relatively forgiving. They know the guy, he is not like that normally. Knights going mad and doing stupid things is known; for example, you can look at the Melancholy rules of Snap Out of It. It assumes that the PKs know all this stuff. As I suggested above, if the PKs can stack Passions, NPCs can too. Sure, the generic Saxon axeman might not have them, but at Badon they, as RTKs, should come across Saxon Kings and their bodyguards. And woe to them if they have already burned all their Passions before that round...

Note that Uther did not declare Gorlois traitor because "I want to sleep with his wife". No, his excuse was that Gorlois had broken the rules of hospitality. Now, this is obviously a pretext, but shows that Uther was aware of plausible deniability. Thus, I think it is much more likely that the badly wounded Gorlois will quietly succumb to his wounds, with Uther spreading his hands in innocence, rather than Uther chopping Gorlois down himself or ordering Gorlois' execution. It is one thing to woo a widow. It is quite another when your own hands are publicly, unambiguously, stained with the blood of her dead husband. Even the stage version of Richard III felt it necessary to lie to the widow. Oh, and as for quoting, you just write your own text underneath, not into the quote box.

Greg's answer here: https://greathall.chaosium.com/Pendragon Forum Archive/index.php/t-1672.html I think Leingod's answer is a good one, too. Depending on the situation, I might allow the PK to just flee the battle. It shouldn't be that difficult to disengage, if all you are trying to do is to flee.

This, by the way, is what Greg said about Loyalty (Group) in his old gspendragon.com website (use Wayback Machine to access it): Using This Passion It is easy to abuse Passion rolls, or allow them to be abused. In large part this will come down to adjudication by the GM. We've mentioned elsewhere how judgments have to be made about when to use Loyal (Lord) and Honor. In my current campaign I'm pretty much allowing this Passion to be used whenever one of the members of the group are in dire danger. The current group in my game are called the Candlebees. If one of them goes down, off horse in a melee, then the others in the group may (if they choose) attempt a passion roll to help him. Of course, they have to immediately charge in no matter what the odds are. If the knight is dead, or dies later, the impassioned knight will become melancholy.

Leingod is correct. The point is that if you are inspired by a Passion, you can't get inspired by another Passion for the duration. I'll try to find Greg's comment as to that effect. Something that should help you, though: Book of Battle 2nd edition, p. 85-86, talks about using passions in Battle, and is explicit that Inspiration lasts only ONE Battle Round. Famous (16+) have to get triggered as soon as the situation arises, unless they succeed in a Prudent roll. Melancholy gives you -5 for the rest of the day. Also, if the PKs can do it, the NPCs can do it. Remind them of this and ask if they really want to run into veteran Heorthgeneats (Saxon household 'knights') with Hate (Cymri) and Loyalty (Lord) and Loyalty (Brotherhood) all inspired at the same time... Finally, the Passions should not get triggered frivolously. That is your GMing choice, but in our group (and in many others) just fighting with your buddies/liege is not enough for the Loyalty to get triggered. They need to actually be in trouble: unhorsed/wounded/captured/etc. As it says in KAP 5.2, p. 91: "Remember that the Gamemaster has final word on the appropriateness of attempting to use a Passion for Inspiration."

That is a rather huge IF on Madoc, actually. It would actually be more likely that UTHER survives the Infamous Feast, since he probably would have let Madoc to lead the Army since he is sick. After all, he trusted Madoc with the bulk of his army against Gorlois, why not against the Saxons since he himself is ailing? This might actually even lead to a scene almost straight out of Excalibur, as Uther's entourage gets ambushed by knights wanting to settle some scores... The only way I can see Madoc surviving longer is if he quarrels with Uther badly enough that he is actually not present at St. Albans. Then I could see him racing back from whatever self-imposed exile he has been in, to claim the crown for himself. The issue here is that I don't think we would get FULL Anarchy until Madoc dies, whether against Cornwall, against some usurpers (who have seized castles and counties) or against the Saxons. Cerdic might very well get kicked back into the sea as soon as he lands: his claim for Kingship via Vortigern would be Threat Number One to Madoc's own claim. I think Madoc has a strong enough claim, with at least Ulfius backing him, likely many other surviving nobility, that he becomes at least a de jure King of Logres, even if he might have to reconquer half of the castles in his own kingdom to make it stick.

Uther likely wants Gorlois dead, and he can certainly have Gorlois executed as a rebel and a traitor. But this might look a bit bad, given that he is angling to marry Ygraine himself. If you want to put the campaign back on track, have Uther send his Trio of Thugs to take custody of Gorlois. They stick Gorlois in the dungeons of Terrabil, and oh noes, Gorlois 'succumbs to his wounds'. Given that Uther doesn't marry Ygraine until the following year, the timeline works out just as well. Also, it will make Uther seem even more of a bastard to the PKs, and they might actually find an ally of sorts in Madoc, grateful for saving his life and worried about this new marriage, especially with Ygraine pregnant. Madoc will die in the poisoning later, so his immediate survival is not a problem.

Fortunately, the historical records tend to be better for Eastern Roman Empire than for Britain, so you might be able to find something easily enough online. Like Atgxtg mentioned, Wikipedia's yearly entries will give you a place to start from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/400s_(decade)

Yep. With occasional patrol or individual knights or the whole procession of the Count visiting from time to time. But generally, they would not be constantly garrisoned. Most of the Household Knights and foot soldiers that those manors support are concentrated in the garrisons that matter. Raiders are less likely to penetrate deeply into the county before noticed, and certainly the damage they can do before the closest patrol/garrison can intervene is very limited. I do likewise, but the economics on that scale is not really all that important. The only difference is that the Count would have half a dozen stewards rather than a few musicians and other entertainers.

See KAP 5.2, p. 77, Table 3.1.

My answer is in the earlier thread on this topic:

I think this is a really neat idea. I would go with the ring, since even if the current PKs have not seen it, the Players might be able to make the connection.

I think it is something that Ruben said in one of the posts he made about Paladin. I will try to see if I can track down that thread for you... Found it: https://greathall.chaosium.com/Pendragon Forum Archive/index.php/t-3120.html p. 66: "The threshold value for gaining Glory and reputation from a trait or passion is 16." p. 78: "Famous passions generate Glory. Each winter, a character receives Glory for most high-value passions. Only passions with a value of 16 or more generate Glory, and several restrictions and exceptions apply." p. 88: "No Glory is gained for simply having high Traits or Passions or Skills." But as Ruben clarifies in the above thread, you are supposed to gain Glory ONCE (per level) when you achieve Trait/Passion/Skill/Stat 16+ (and for each successive step). You don't gain annual Glory, nor do you gain the Glory again if your trait falls below 16 and then increases to 16 again. So if your Strength goes from 15 to 16, you gain 16 Glory that year, but if your STR drops to 15 the following year and you raise it back to 16, you gain no Glory, but on the third year you raise it to 17, and gain 17 Glory since it is the highest you have gotten to. Or if you leave your STR to 16, it doesn't generate any extra Glory in the subsequent years, nor would any other Trait/Passion/Skill/Stat. Note also that it is harder to raise Traits and Passions above 15 in Paladin than in KAP, since the cap in Paladin is at 15, whereas in KAP it is 20. Paladin has an Attribute & Skill cap of 20, but the Aging starts 5 years earlier, which puts a stop to Attribute increases.