Morien

I don't think it does. I would remember if it did appear in the Book of Knights, or any of the 3e - 5e adventure books.

In the beginning it says: "Your father (born in 724) was also a notable knight, living in the Ardennes and serving under King Pepin." So in 763, he should have been on the victorious (King Pepin's) side. Other than that, my quick interpretation matches yours.

Ah, I thought you were asking what happens when you play by LD rules. As for BotE rules, not having a wife doesn't help much since then you need a steward to do all the Stewardship stuff while the PK is out fighting and adventuring. And the steward costs the same as the wife. Not having any kids does save the £1, yes, as per the explanation in BotW p. 169 (Appendix D box about £10 manor, which also explains the steward substitution). So £2 DF for the first manor, and if you are feeling generous, you could give extra £0.5 DF from Family expense since the PK does not need to boost the wife's nor children's Standard of Living. But frankly, I would not bother.

LD is using 'Money you don't see' with £7 income - £1 for fief upkeep (for 1 POP manor) = £6 per manor. So, no.

I really dislike the idea of Teen Lot having already subdued all the fractious Northern Lords under his banner. Arthur is able to do it because everyone in Logres is tired of in-fighting and there is an actual miracle. Of course it helps that most of the major lords of Logres as well as surrounding kings bend a knee to him swiftly. That is not the case in the North. Besides, it makes Arthur less special when we have Lot the Wunderkind already doing the same song and dance a generation earlier.

He is also a King and a warleader in 484 in SIRES.

Lot is already the Hegemon of the North by 485, so I'd say that he ought to be at least in his mid-twenties by then. 1e Pendragon has his birth year as 468, but this was when the campaign would have started in 510, not 485. So he ought to be pushed back some. Lot's words about a beardless boy would ring somewhat hollow if he was a beardless boy hegemon of the North at the tender age of 17, a year YOUNGER than Arthur pulling the sword from the stone. Pushing his birth year a decade back to 458 would work for me. That would make him 32 in 490, a man in his prime, with a long reign still ahead of him. But I would be fine with him being born as late as 460, too. King Uriens would be an obvious character to include, too, whom the PKs might meet later. King Nentres gets killed off rather early, so he matters less.

Actually it could go either way (as Atgxtg said it can get very complicated), but if you have already ruled it one way in your campaign, you should keep it like that. I was still remembering the "£3 deal until her children are grown" -deal. There is also the fact that since I was going to move for the 'emancipated' model myself, my brain was already in the headspace of letting the widowed heiress keep her own land while her children are growing, or, indeed, until she dies. But that emancipated model would actually let her choose her own husband anyway, rather than need the Countess' permission.

No, he becomes the vassal knight of his wife-heiress' manor (her inheritance) + 1/3rd of the dead husband's manor (her widow's portion). Once HER eldest son becomes of age and inherits, the husband loses 2/3rds of the heiress' manor to the son, but still keeps the 1/3+1/3 = 2/3 manors which are his wife's widow's portion, until she dies. If at any point the heiress dies, then all the lands revert to their heirs (the ex-PK's eldest son and her eldest son), and if they are still underaged, then their guardian, the uncle, controls those lands. EDIT: I think you mentioned at some point that the widow had done some stupid deal with the uncle that the uncle would keep 2/3rds of her manor as well. In which case, yes, the husband would only get 2/3rds of a manor (1/3+1/3), her widow's portion. I mean, he could try and make a court case out of it, but I think he would be in a rather poor position what with getting the heiress pregnant outside of marriage and a pre-existing agreement between the uncle and the heiress (or whoever the heiress' guardian was, actually).

She is an heiress, right? So if the Countess agrees to the marriage, the household knight becomes a vassal knight until HER eldest son inherits her manor (note: NOT THE FORMER PK'S ELDEST SON). So the uncle has very little leverage if that happens. However, the uncle could offer that he will speak on behalf of the pair to the Countess, arguing for the marriage, and if the marriage happens, then the heiress will voluntarily give back her widow's portion from her husband's manor. Since it would be voluntary on her behalf, there is no problem, if she agrees to this. (Whether she would agree depends a bit on how much influence the uncle has with the Countess and how much she and the household knight have.) Whose household knight is this guy, anyway? If he is the uncle's HHK to begin with, he would need the uncle's permission, too. Which would give the uncle some leverage as well as more of a stake in this, since it cuts both ways: how was the uncle so inattentive as to allow one of his knights to seduce this poor widow into this kind of a situation? The final option is that the uncle decides that the widow is dishonored and stops the payments on that excuse. The household knight, especially if he is the new husband, ought to champion his lover/wife's rights & honor in a court of justice or in a duel, if need be. Also, the Countess might have some incentive in looking after the rights of the widows, given that she is one herself. Something the uncle would forget at his peril. If the Countess were a man herself, there would be an additional thing working in her favor which is that handing out heiresses to his own household knights is one of the liege lord's greatest carrots to his knights. And by having this affair, the heiress has, at the very least, made herself a promiscuous woman and hence lowered her desirability. Sure, many knights might still marry her for the land, but she is definitely soiled. By allowing her to marry the HHK would assuage that stigma a bit, but might also encourage others to follow in her footsteps in the future, and not just the heiresses, either. On the other hand, if you follow Atgxtg's suggestion that widows get to decide their own actions rather than be put under guardianship, then the Countess might actually have a good reason to champion the widow-heiress and approve the marriage: why should the uncle get a say in this, you go girl! Especially if she is a bit of a romantic herself and approves of the love marriage.

As people said, easy enough with a computer program. If I were to roll it with actual dice: 1d20 + (1d8-1)*20, if over 155, reroll.

Both Estate and Warlord are majorly Greg's vision & work, with the scattered holdings of the barons, hundreds, assized rent, production and all that. The math is my doing, so to speak, as well as the lion's share of the revisions of Entourage and Estate, with Greg giving the final approval. Basically, if you have the old, unrevised Estate and the new revised Estate, you can see the changes. My effort was mainly trying to make the economics as simple, consistent and scalable as I could, and make sure that the math worked out. And when I say simple, I mean that the bones of the system are simple: For each £10, you have: Army: 1 knight (first one is the PK himself) + 3 foot soldiers Standard of Living: +£1 to the standard of living (starts from £5) Discretionary Funds (i.e. the income left over that the PK can actually use): £1 That is ALL the player needs to know, and the GM doesn't need to much more than that. You don't need to get stuck on the differences between the Customary Revenue and Assized Rent and Other Income and Production. All that is in the background, and can be left there without problems. If new investments (from Estate) are built, then the PK will get to keep the income during his lifetime (i.e. it becomes part of the Discretionary Funds) and when he dies, the holding is reassessed and the investments are counted as part of the Assized Rent instead. Hence, they increase the Landholding Glory after that. As for simplifying the thing further, I generally use just £10 manors in our campaign, although I have allowed the PKs to build investments which will break this symmetry when a generational shift happens. Even then, I feel no need to follow holdings down to £0.1, of which the player just sees £0.01 = 2.4d. Rounding to full £1 is enough. In our campaign, I also use the old GPC's territorially concentrated nobility, i.e. the Count of Salisbury rules the County of Salisbury, more the continental French model of Middle Ages. This conflicts with the Warlord's scattered holdings approach (the Anglo-Norman model, introduced by William the Conqueror to make his barons less able to rebel against him, drawing from his own experiences both being rebelled against in Normandy and his own rebellions against the French King). Greg based Uther's kingdom HEAVILY to the historical Anglo-Norman England, so Warlord got the scattered holdings that are, IMHO, harder to GM. I prefer the 'mini-kingdoms' approach, that when you cross a county line, you have to deal with another Count with his own quirks and motives, rather than having a patchwork of different nobles, most of them absentee landlords. This might be what Percarde was referring to earlier, since I don't really have that much use for the hundreds: I have manors as the basic economic unit, and then I am happily dealing with just counties on the macro level. Not to mention, 20 or so counties & counts is much easier for me to keep track of than hundreds of hundreds and 50 or so Barons of the Sword: "So you arrive in Wuerensis, which, surprise surprise, is ruled by the Count of Wuerensis." It also helps the Players, IMHO, as it is much easier for them to grasp who the major players are and where their power base is. See this thread:

I have heard good things about it, provided that you don't overuse it. Especially the Glory rules need a fix, IMHO, since the PKs are only competing against one another, meaning that one of them always gets the huge amount of Glory for being Most Genial, even if they are all louts. See previous threads (such as this one https://basicroleplaying.org/topic/10767-book-of-feasts-question/ ) for some ideas and discussion on how to use the book. Personally, I have not used it yet, since I had my own feast rules, but I have been thinking about getting the thing and incorporating it to my own campaign.

I was referring to the knight's liege, as far as the ransom payments go, but yes, the same universal aid would be demanded from the peasants to ransom the landholder. Like it says in KAP 5.2, only the first ransom counts as an aid. For the second ransom, the knight would have to squeeze the peasants if he wants them to pay.

Good reason for the peasants to pray that the first child will be a feminine child. (Since the girls usually marry before they turn 21, which means that if there is first a son and then a daughter, the chances that his knighting at 21 and her marriage happens on the same year go up.)

Yes. Greg made that explicit in his posts. Also, "These four taxes give the knight the right to collect income from his holding" and the fact that the lord knight is especially singled out "When the aid is imposed by a lord knight, each of the lord’s vassals pays an amount equal to the average yearly income of his primary holding." There would be little need to specify just the lord knights separately, if only the vassals would pay. The idea that the peasants pay as well, not just the vassals, is supported by Susan Reynolds: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feudal_aid#Problems Finally, if the Vassal Knight has to pay around £20-£30 per generation (knighting of the eldest son of his liege, marriage of the eldest daughter of his liege, and ransoming the liege), and then has to do the knighting of his eldest son and dowry for his eldest daughter from his own funds, too, he would be bankrupt. Getting the latter from his peasants balances the scales a bit.

It is enough to just keep track of one value, and not even that, since you can just calculate it from age each time: Age-11 for most squires (sons of knights) and Age-12 for esquires' sons. It only becomes an issue if the squire is exceptionally talented, or learns faster than the default rules of Entourage (+1 per year until skill 15), or is over 26 years old (since 26-11 = 15, after which the improvement becomes more random).

To the PK, of course. He is their liege. Whose hall do you sleep in? Whose table do you eat at?

The Players update their wives & stewards, since we keep track of Stewardship. But as far as Squires and the rest of the entourage, we don't really bother. If we need to roll Squire skill, I pretty much assume that it is 15, or nudged upwards to 16 by the age of 20. Good enough for us.

To be honest, normally neither as the squires play such a background-only role usually. Frankly, I am happy if the Players even remember to update the squire's age. It became a bit of a running joke in our group when one of them realized that she had had the same squire for about 20 years: "Um... Edgar, how old did you say you are?" "Nineteen, Ma'am." "Really? I thought last year..." "... I would have been eighteen, Ma'am. Stands to reason when you think about it." "Right, right..." The in-game explanation was that poor Edgar didn't have the wherewithal to become a knight, so he continued being a squire. His knight finally sponsored him during the Roman War with some looted horses and armor, since there were openings (battlefield casualties) in the household knights of her liege.

The foot soldiers ought to have Loyalty (Lord), as they are part of the mesnie. And it would make perfect sense for the poor soldiers to start with a low Loyalty (Lord) (due to the lack of experience in the service) and not improve (due to the low upkeep).

Oh, I agree with that: a group of squires makes things simple since then you can tailor the adventure to fit the squires specifically. It is simply a different situation when everyone else is playing a knight and one player is playing a squire. The squire will simply have much less impact on what the knights are doing. Atgxtg's & Baba's point of making the Player-squire squire for another PK is a good one, since that way there is some Player-Player interaction and RP there, and the GM can give the squire something to do as well, especially if the adventure calls for something like sneaking around in the stables or such. But if the adventure is a Battle or slaying the Dragon, then the Player-squire is going to be much more sidelined.

Meaning they will become Average Spearmen and hence cost £0.5 in upkeep. You can't cheat the game like that. Poor Infantry is explicitly: "These soldiers are quickly-raised, green, and unarmored." Sure, if you bring 10 armored (if a bit green) footmen instead of 2 average footmen, of course the Count likes it. But it is going to cost you. I would give a discount on those armor, though. Kinda like the legionnaire arrangement: you get your kit upfront, but then pay it from your salary after the fact. It ought to be. Otherwise one can go around saying that a 14-yr squire on a rouncy is equivalent to a knight in plate armor on a destrier. After all, both of them are mounted soldiers, right? As you can see, I am not far off from that. Basically, the thing is that as long as they QUALIFY as Poor Infantry, they are cheap, but when they gain the experience and the equipment to be equivalent to the Average Infantry, they ought to get the same upkeep. Kinda like you can't just take an esquire, put him in armor and say that he now takes one of your SD knight slots while still paying him £1 upkeep. It is really the point that they also lack 4 points of armor and are green troops, meaning they will have a lower morale, too. In KV terms, they have half the KV of an average foot soldier.

Feel free to drop it, honestly. I am more than happy to handwave that as part of the Landholding Glory, too. It is just 10% of the Landholding Glory, after all. Although to be honest, I went the the other way in our campaign and now give Glory for higher upkeep, but not for just hoarding money and not spending it as a nobleman should. Passive ownership of land should not give Glory, IMHO. It is being seen to be wealthy that is worth Glory: "Did you see Sir So-and-So in his new silk cape? That must have cost him a fortune!" Since I give +£1 SoL per £10 land and 10 Glory per extra +£1 SoL spent, this actually comes down exactly to £X land = X Glory, same as before. A lot of things were not updated in 5.2. It was primarily a layout upgrade, and a lot of actual rule changes were explicitly deferred to KAP 6. Trust me, I bitched a lot about the childbirth and child survival not getting fixed... *grumble mumble* It is. Using 3x Upkeep would work much better, and even that is somewhat high given how little slack the knight has in his finances.

Because you need to feed two extra men. At some point, it stops being efficient, and you get a mob instead of an army. I am sure Book of the Castle will get more into the logistics of it all. The other thing is that it is more of a matter of someone bring in just TWO poor foots oldiers vs. two average ones. That is what really gets the Liege upset. Finally, we can debate whether poor foot soldiers would actually count as 'professionals', or at least as efficient as the the average foot soldiers. Quality ought to matter some, too. I would have no problems saying that: poor x0.5, average or squire x1, armored/veteran x2, knight x4 for the minimum manpower calculation. Which would mean that in the 1 vassal + 2 HHK + 3 squires + 6 foot soldiers (1 armored + 5 average) = 22 'average-equivalent men'. Even if the knight would just be equal to the armored veteran, this would still be 16 average-equivalent. This would also get rid of the issue of spamming poor foot soldiers.