Morien

Do you mind if I ask why the player wants to switch to playing a household knight? The thing is, I have found that it tends to be detrimental to switch characters, let alone families, since this tends to cut the dynastic aspect short and also means that all the story threads connecting to the previous PK are somewhat for naught. Also, the Player pretty much has to start building the good will of the NPCs from scratch again. Of course, if the Player is really wanting to do that, sure, but I would be curious as to the reasons. I can understand the love angle, but surely the lady in question has already been married off, if this is like 5+ years after she was introduced in the Marriage of Count Roderick? (Although again, up to the GM on that score, obviously.) Anyway, you could steal a page out of BoSires (or family history) & the Vassal Solos, and just make up some sort of 1d20 table. Given his hatred of Saxons, he presumably would be spending more of his time raiding/defending, and you can model the raid/defense with another 1d20* roll as if it were a battle. That way, you would get some better idea of how did he do in those raids. Or you could just say that thanks to his high Hate, he tends to participate in such things every year and roll the raid separate from any other service he takes. * Actually, since he is a PK, it probably would be better to do it in a way you suggest, and use his own skills. Like roll Battle vs. enemy's Battle of 15 to see how his skirmishing goes, and then roll his weapon skills. See this thread which is for a tournament, but a similar thing could work here: With fumbles increasing the enemy's results by one, so that if he fumbles and enemy succeeds, it counts as a critical hit. Given that Saxons tend to go around with Axes doing 5d6+1d6 vs. shields, this gives him a real chance of getting a major wound or even dying on bad rolling. Of course, I would allow him getting inspired by Hate Saxons for one of the skills, but that brings with it a chance of fumbling the Hate Saxons and driving him mad. I would probably be giving him a check on his Amor for the Lady, if she is still around, since presumably he would pine.

It is an error. One possible source is that Greg did change (or at least think about changing) the Caerwent and Caercolun names around at some point when coming up with his counties, and this was then not fixed when he settled on Caercolun as the southern county and Caerwent as the northern one. In any case, it should be a War in Southern Caercolun, not Caerwent. Essex doesn't expand to Caerwent until Anarchy, and even then, they are beaten back. Caerwent falls to the Angles.

Not much to add to Hzark10's and Atgxtg's answers. As for what qualifies as a higher-ranking lord, I would look at BotW title glory, although I would probably keep bannerets and vassal knights in the same tier still. I.e. Barons outrank knights, Counts & Dukes outrank Barons and Kings outrank everyone else. Even then, I might make an additional compromise to make it just Knights - All Barons (including Counts and Dukes) - Kings. Usually, it is not a problem anyway since the default start is as vassals of Count Roderick, so only the King would outrank him.

Saxons!, p. 10-11 for general description how wergild works and p. 129 for the list of wergilds.

Wayback Machine is your friend. Trust the Machine. https://web.archive.org/web/2019*/gspendragon.com Not all of them work, but this one seems to: https://web.archive.org/web/20190531073353/http://www.gspendragon.com/ The Round Table stuff is here: https://web.archive.org/web/20170226155107/http://gspendragon.com/roundtableknights.html

Unless David has issued another statement somewhere else: "The idea is that any feast in which you break out the Feast Deck and the special rules is going to be the feast of the year for the P-Ks. Not necessarily the grandest or largest feast they attend or host, but the most memorable, and therefore the one deserving of Glory. As Morien suggested, I would limit these to one per year. So if your group wants to game the system and take turns hosting, fine. If you have a five-player group, each knight is earning an extra 100 Glory every five years. I also like the suggestion of going out of your way to make things complicated for the host--putting on a feast should be stressful!" In this thread: https://basicroleplaying.org/topic/8975-feast-question/ (Just to add quickly that the above thread has a lot of my comments on how I would use Book of Feasts, such as changing the amount of Glory and basically not using it in any tiny PK-organized feasts, unless they are at least on a baronial level and have significant quests.)

It seems a bit too harsh to my liking. It is basically a 'retire your character from the game' type of passion. Sure, I might consider granting it if a PK falls in love with a faerie maiden, but even then, surely the Amor/Love would be distracting enough by itself, if it is 16+? So in short, I have not used it in my campaigns thus far. Given how many adventures even in GPC involve dealing with the Faerie, I don't want to punish the players for playing through those adventures. Instead, I want to take advantage of the expansion of the Faerie to be able to run adventures that might not be possible 'in the real world' of KAP.

Why not just leave that up to the player? If they wish to 'keep up the family tradition', then they should use their normal skill points appropriately. What you are doing here is giving them 1-2 extra yearly trainings of skills on some vague guideline of 'known for using a lot', which tends to be the fighting skills (and I seriously hope that the usual limit of 15 at chargen applies here, since getting Sword or Lance at 20 at 21 will seriously benefit the 2nd gen characters).

Yeah, I don't think that some players have quite internalized the fact that they are the 1%, the celebrities, the sports stars of their day. One of my players is starting to notice that perhaps it is not the best idea to get a host of personal enemies, as sooner or later, they realize that they can start cooperating, too...

You are quite welcome. 3e-4e adventures are still very much usable (1e is a somewhat different story, requiring some more conversion work), although I would warn that some of the skill levels of named knights in the Grey Knight (republished in 4e) are way too low for the named Round Table Knights.

He doesn't. Merlin explicitly tells Uther not to do it, and then walks away when Uther is not convinced. Merlin is not present in the Invasion of Summerland. (This was exactly to avoid a match-up between Wizard-king Cadwy and Merlin. And to make sure that Uther 'fails' in the invasion.)

As I said in the linked thread, the King Cadwy of Somerset in GPC and Blood & Lust is a mortal, very devout King, who struggles against the two invasions from Cornwall. You can see it in the Goblin Market adventure where his household constantly invokes God. Whereas King Cadwy of Summerland in BotWarlord & BoUther is a semi-fae wizard, in cahoots with the faeries and able to confound and intimidate Uther and his armies. I would be extremely tempted to split them into two different people, simply because I like the King Cadwy the Mortal more than King Cadwy the God-King of Summerland. And just have King Cadwy the Elder (a pagan King who has a closer relationship with the Faerie, but no wizard) and maybe his son or grandson, King Cadwy the Younger (a Christian King), taking over at some point maybe during the Anarchy or after the Battle of Terrabil. However, if you want to go with the Wizard-King Cadwy, then that is enough to explain his longevity: whatever his secret is, it is obviously working for him! There are many things in GPC which were basically taken from 531 starting time and just had the year changed. Such as Galeholt ruling the Long Isles in 485 (p. 22), whereas the main text has him conquering the Long Isles in 522 (p. 191 event, map p. 221), almost 40 years later! To no one's surprise, Galeholt IS ruling the Long Isles (and Dal Riada) in 531..

Note that all these are 3rd edition publications, so they are set in 531, not 485. You can get some information out of them, and even if you are starting from 485 in Salisbury, it will probably take until Conquest before you really 'break out' to adventuring in other parts of Britain. As I implied in my answer, these regional (and adventure) books are excellent at filling in the otherwise pretty boring Romance and Tournament Periods in GPC. In ascending order of preference: Beyond the Wall covers, as the name implies, Caledonia, and adds a lot of information on Picts and making Pictish characters. However, that goes more into a variant campaign to my liking, as is recognized by the book, giving a short Pictish tribal campaign start. However, the Adventure of the Treacherous Pict is from the perspective of the Arthurian knights and it is a pretty good one. However, the short adventures are nothing to write home about, and most of the Pictish information is not that useful for the regular campaign. You get maps of Caledonia and a couple of paragraphs on Gorre, Lothian and Garloth as well, which might be useful, but limited by the fact that this is 20 years after Lot fought Arthur... Perilous Forest covers Cumbria, the Wall and the Wasteland. It is slightly weakened by the fact that a lot of the Wasteland stuff is also published in GPC, so that is a dozen or so pages that are essentially the same (although not exactly). There is just one long-form adventure, the Adventure of the Perilous Forest, but it does have a bunch of Cumbrian Wyrms and short adventures to take care of them that a GM can expand into a nice filler for the year. Not all adventures need to be multi-session, after all. Savage Mountains covers Cambria, and has one of my favorite mini-campaigns in it, Cambrian War and its subsection, Builth War. Basically, the PKs get a chance to play on the Baronial level, with their own little army to pacify the rebellious kingdom of Builth and to build a castle to secure it for Arthur. This in addition to 3 other long-form adventures, including the Best Wine of the World, which was one of Greg's favorites. However, it lacks short adventures, which is a bit of a pity. Blood & Lust covers Anglia, and it has my favorite KAP mini-campaign/extended adventure: The Heart Blade. Sure, it can be improved (it is a bit slow in the beginning), but it is a very nice example of a courtship of an heiress, and carries some real stakes with it. It also has three other long-form adventures, as well as a few short ones (most importantly Contest for the Queen's Knights). Given that the Anglian revolt is in full swing from 528 - 531 or so, this is a nice book to have even a bit before the Camille adventure from GPC. Or even afterwards, as the rebellious Angles keep bubbling. It is also a very nice departure from the usual Arthurian ethos, as you can run adventures where the PKs might be asking "Are we the bad guys here?" as they watch the hate-filled Cymric knights rule with a harsh retribution against the Angles, fueling the resentment and hate, contrasting it with Arthur's benevolent rule of former Wessex (Hantonne/Hampshire). So in summary, whilst I like all of them, Beyond the Wall is one that I use the least and it occupies the lowest rank. It is the only one of the four that I go "Yes, but..." when people ask me if I recommend them buying it (all the others are 'Yes."). Blood & Lust is my favorite, and then it is a contest between Savage Mountains and Perilous Forest. Due to the Wasteland being repeated in GPC (granted, the Peredur/Percevale story is scattered in GPC as well), I would give a narrow edge to Savage Mountains. Also because I like Cambrian War so much and it has more long-form adventures than Perilous Forest. Perilous Forest does offer more short adventure snippets to spice up some years, but that is not quite enough to tilt the balance of 1 vs. 4 long adventures.

The issue with starting in 506 is that you are actually in a hopeful phase of Anarchy, a Cymric resurgence. The feeling that things are going to crap is more like around 500. Or you can push it even further and start in the aftermath of the Battle of Netley Marsh. The issue is that I doubt you are going to get the same feeling of Dystopia that you would get from actually playing through the Anarchy. Part of what makes it work is that the Players get to influence the decisions and feel the oppression of the forces arrayed against them.

Sorry, I thought it was obvious... Yep. The text in KAP 5.1 seems identical to KAP 5.2 at a first glance. Only if the father gets to go to Heaven (whether he is canonized as a saint or not). Famous Valorous gives a bonus to the son's Valorous, but no 'cloning' of Traits wholesale. Speaking of which, personally I dislike the 'cloning' of characters, especially the whole hog cloning that KAP 5.x opens the door to as a possibility, with the Statistics being copied over as well. It is one thing to play the family. It is quite another to reboot the next, younger clone when the old character dies as if this were Paranoia. The Statistics copying makes it quite possible to abuse the heck out of this system, too, to ensure that your son starts with +10 statistic points above the standard new character. Now, I don't mind there being a bonus, like in Paladin, to some Traits and such. That is fine, and we have a similar system in place, in our campaign. But it is more fun when the son is not a carbon copy of the father, IMHO.

If you are trying to lure in new players, starting in 510 works. However, if you are most interested in just running knightly quests/adventures in the heyday of Arthurian Chivalry, feel free to skip straight to 531. Although I warn you that GPC is not all that helpful in 531 - 553, with most of the events focused on the big names (Lancelot, Tristram, Percevale). What you really want for those years are the adventure & regional books (with adventures in them). One thing I would seriously recommend if you want to get through GPC quickly... don't be afraid to 'skip' some years. Greg used to say that the intended pacing was 1 session per game year (which is about 3 times faster than my norm, but there you have it). This can allow you to put those years away rather quickly.

See "Sons as Player Characters", p. 68-69. Short answer: Skills: no inheritance. (Save for the Family Characteristic.) Traits & Passions: Identical to the Father's, or no inheritance.

Yep, part of the legend, like we know the name of Arthur's sword, etc.

If he were to have £400 in his backpocket, he would do better to offer it to Aurelius in return for getting the estate changed into a grant, than buying a £400 horse herd.

Yeah, WARLORD changed a good many things, and not only did it scatter the holdings of the Greater Nobles, but it also changed their relative ranking rather drastically! Since Greg wanted to keep Salisbury a (mainly) unitary starting location, this meant that Roderick got to keep most of Salisbury. Indeed, if you compare his holdings in Salisbury and compare it with his Army in KAP 5.2, they match up reasonably well. However, he then got additional holdings elsewhere as well! So he went from 75 knights in KAP 5.2 to 157 knights in WARLORD. By contrast, Ulfius went from the powerful Duke of Silchester (if we go by KAP 4, 300 knights vs. Salisbury's 75) to just 124 knights. So from 4:1 advantage in knights to being actually the underdog in any direct military confrontation with Salisbury. In KAP 5.2, it was easy to say that the Steward of Levcomagus had maybe 30 knights over whom he held control (not all necessarily his own vassals), which was well enough to give trouble to Salisbury, and if Salisbury actually upped the stakes to an all-out war, Silchester would step in and slap Salisbury down. Now, it becomes somewhat harder to explain. Not only that, most of Ulfius' lands are not even in Silchester, but scattered across Britain, with Silchester forming just a small part of his landholdings. Well, KAP 4 had another explanation for the feud: Levcomagus This city is part of the fief of the Duke of Silchester. Its steward holds a fierce grudge against all men of Salisbury because the old earl, father of Robert, slew all of the steward’s brothers in combat. He keeps many knights guarding the roads to Salisbury to enforce his grudge against Salisbury. You can see that not only was Levcomagus' relative importance much diminished (from a city to a manor, although I would hasten to add that 'city' didn't quite have a strict definition in KAP 4 unlike in WARLORD), but the feud was clearly backdated to 485 when Greg moved the starting date of the campaign. But this might give a hint that perhaps Blains is indeed supported by numerous knightly brothers, as well as spending coin to hire mercenaries now and again to raid Salisbury. Ulfius might very well give Blains the command of the garrison in Levcomagus, since Ulfius probably wants to keep some extra knights handy there in case Salisbury stages a counter-raid. Still, I do agree that this setup makes much less sense than it did before WARLORD changed how the landholdings and power was distributed. It is not a problem in my own campaign, since I stuck with the territorial nobility of GPC & KAP 4.

If I were a mercenary, I would be happy enough to take the upkeep costs in render during the duration of the employment. 'Room and board'. Makes for easier logistics when I don't have to worry about buying my own provisions. Anything extra, though, I would want in silver. So I would probably follow that same rule with mercenaries. (Note that in my own campaign, we do not use the 2:1 render to treasure conversion, so the issue doesn't come up.)

You could use the Squire rules in Book of the Entourage. However... Not quite. The standard character generation rules of KAP 5.2 give you 4 raises on step 3. in p. 38: "3. Heighten any four unique statistics chosen from among the following: Attribute scores, Traits, Passions, or Skills. Heightening a Skill (or Combat Skill) increases it by up to 5 points, while heightening an Attribute, Trait, or Passion increases it by 1 point. Thus, for example, a character could increase (i) his SIZ, STR, and DEX by 1 point each and his Axe Skill by up to 5 points; or (ii) his Energetic Trait and his Love (Family) Passion by 1 point each and his Horsemanship and Hunting Skills by up to 5 each. Any combination of four increases is allowed, within the restrictions given above." So in other words, you just reduce the number of those raises by 1 per year that the character is younger than 21. So a 20-year old character would get THREE choices rather than four and a 19-year old character TWO choices. So you do this reduction already in the character generation phase. Sure, the characters end a bit more powerful (at 21) due to the experience checks gained in play than a character who starts at 21, but this is not a huge difference, generally. A year here or there won't make a big difference. And most importantly, this is an extremely easy thing to do in character generation; it is simple and it works.

Sure, you can do it like that. Depending a bit on the Countess of Salisbury, she might count the Rydychan adventure as fulfilling the knights' duty to her, in which case their manors should be able to convert that £4 render that the knight is not spending at their home manors into £2 silver, to be collected when they are back. Or if this is more of a PKs' personal project, she would probably insist on that £4 render paid to her since the knight is not there to fulfill the SD.

Salisbury is not that far, just a few days away. They can certainly at least winter some of the mercenaries there -> use those resources to pay for the mercenaries. At the very very minimum, they should be able to take that £4 render that they'd normally eat themselves and turn it into £2 silver to pay to the mercenaries. On the most generous side would be to use the full income coming from the Rydychan manors to pay for the mercenaries, allowing the knight to act his own steward since he is there almost constantly. And the £1.5 footman SD could certainly be used to pay for the mercenaries, since the mercenaries will more than fulfill that criteria. So, up to you, ranging from: Just £1.5 + £1 saved from kids (harsh) Just £2.5 + £2 silver = £4.5 (strict) Full SD £5.5 for that second manor + £1 saved from kids = £6.5 (medium) Full CR £10 for that second manor (using the £1 DF from Salisbury to support the countess) (generous)

Presumably, you would like to get even more soldiers and knights. So if you have a manor back in Salisbury, that is your first manor, supporting yourself and 3 foot soldiers. When you get a second manor in Rydychan, you want to get a household knight and additional 3 foot soldiers. Not only will this allow you to fulfill your SD obligations to both Countesses, but it will also make you more powerful in fighting against the usurper brothers. So, no change.