Morien

Incorrect. During Republic, prior to the Social War (91-88 BC), the demographics of the Roman consular armies was usually 50% Roman citizens + 50% Italian Socii, reinforced by whatever local auxiliaries they deemed necessary (like Caesar later on relying on allied Gauls for cavalry). Some of these auxiliaries became more fixed features later, too, as the legions became more of a permanent garrison force rather than raised primarily for each campaign, but they were not the majority of the forces. After the Social War, the Italian Socii got a Roman citizenship, and you actually had to be a Roman citizen in order to become a legionary. Now, this wasn't always followed, Caesar for example was raising legions in Cisalpine Gaul from people living north of Po river, who did not have citizenship (I think they had Latin rights, so more akin to the Socii of earler). But by and large, the legions were made of Roman citizens. Then in 212 AD The Edict of Caracalla made all free men in the Roman Empire Roman Citizens. So after that, all the legionaries were Roman citizens. Now, I would agree that the recruitment in Italy proper was declining and the manpower was recruited elsewhere, but they were Roman citizens. You are somewhat more on a firmer ground in the 400s century Western Empire, when there were big 'barbarian' contingents fighting for the Western Empire (as foederati). Still, not all of the 'legions' were just barbarians. There were still many Roman recruits, too. Funnily enough, the top military leaders are sometime barbarians, too, like Stilicho (granted, his mother was a Roman provincial and he identified as a Roman, not a Vandal which his father was), Aspar, Ricimer, and Odoacer.

Ah, now I never said that the cultures COULDN'T modify the starting skills, too, did I? Just that I don't see much of a point adjusting each skill by a point or two, like one culture having a skill at 2, and another one at 3. You wouldn't really see a big difference in play. Instead, I would rather see something like Saxons getting a Bonus for Boating, while the Cymri might get a penalty, the Cymric knights not really being famous seafarers, but vice versa for Horsemanship. That being said, I wouldn't see a big problem if there were no cultural modifiers to skills. If you want to play a seafaring Cymric knight, go ahead. Make your own story. Don't play the stereotype. One thing that really gets my goat is the Speciality Skills introduced in BoK&L. They lock each culture to their stereotype. Romans have a big advantage over others in Courtesy and Intrigue, since they only use a single skill. This means they need only 1 yearly training or Glory point to raise both of those skills, so any Cymric knight who seeks to excel in those is by design inferior. And I don't like that. I don't like your culture defining what you are. I don't like that all players who like intrigue will be Romans, since that is the best build for Intriguing, and so forth. You say that the culture no longer matters. I say that it frees the character to be more than a cultural stereotype (with all Saxon knights using two-handed weapons, etc.) and allows much more varied RP too: "I thought all of you Saxons were uncouth barbarians!" "My dear fellow, what a horrid thing to say. Manners maketh man."

Thanks for your thoughts. Always nice to hear what other people are thinking. I'll just quickly comment on this one: The APP/DEX default scheme I am advocating is setting the starting skills. As soon as you spend points on skills (raising from the defaults), then the default for that skill won't matter. So the old man who was a famous Orator 20 in his day still has Orate 20, even though his APP has dropped from (say) 16 to 6. It is just that the handsome guy of APP 18 who has always trusted on his looks to carry the day with the ladies ('hey, how are you doing...', default Flirting 9) would instead find that his appeal has become less if someone cuts his nose off and reduces his APP to 8 (default Flirting 4). He should have upped his game while he still could and spent some points on Flirting! (Granted, Flirting is one skill where I would be happy to give bonuses and penalties for relative APP, too...) Of course, I could see an alternative to this and simply assign all the defaults at the beginning. This is what we ended up doing in the Middle-earth campaign, since it was a royal pain to track which skills had been raised and which not. In this case, your defaults would be set by your starting stats and wouldn't go up nor down with your stats in subsequent play. Which I think is a reasonable enough compromise for playability while still improving the lot of DEX and APP.

Greg used to drive me nuts with his 'Optional Skills'. I think one of his examples was Knifethrowing, and I was tearing my hair out while typing a furious response that surely the correct skill would be Dagger, or DEX, rather than coming up with Yet Another Narrowly Defined Optional Skill But then again, I am a skill minimalist to an extent, too. Oh, I can definitely understand that. I would not like to see too drastic changes either. However, replacing the nigh useless Starting Skills with something easier to remember and giving DEX & APP more of a boost appeals to me greatly. I did try it out in our Middle-earth conversion and lo and behold, the player who wanted to be a courtier type did go for high APP and got high starting courtly skills as the result, making it easier for him to continue improving them. Giving +-5, especially stacked ones, seems to me to be asking for a galore of criticals. Especially combined with the Family Characteristic (another potentially huge bonus that I dislike) and Glory/1000 bonus (ditto). The fact that the Distinctive Features are so neutral and prone to interpretation seems, to me, to be asking rules-lawyering, too. Whatever I am saying on these boards are my own opinions (and boy, do I have opinions!). I am not a Chaosium employee, although I think I get a tiny trickle of Drivethrough rpg credits from the GPC expansion standalone (Greg was kind enough to assign me a royalties slice of the pie), just to disclose that. I have volunteered to pitch in and help with various books, so sometimes I get to play 'I wrote the damn thing, I know how it is supposed to work' -card.

From personal experience: Privately: As soon as our group picked up the book about 20 years ago, players noticed that APP is not really doing anything (except Aging, but you are much more likely to die sooner from SIZ 8 in combat than APP 8 in Aging), and DEX only a little bit. So they pretty much became dump stats from the get-go. I had to introduce a houserule that APP would be rolled randomly, and they would get 50 points instead of 60 points to spread around the other 4 stats. (And yes, I do consider this a houserule, despite it using both designated and random methods, both of which appear in the rules.) Publicly: As soon as I started posting in Forums (I forget what was the one that predated the Nocturnal one?) about 10 years ago. (Actually, that was probably when I joined the Nocturnal one... I think I started posting in the previous one a couple of years before that, after we restarted the campaign in 2005 with GPC...) Actually, I am pretty sure I saw something similar posted as a houserule suggestion. It wasn't exactly the same, though. IIRC, it was giving +1 or +2 per distinctive feature to all courtly rolls. But this was some time back. I will see if I can find the link. Again, my problem isn't what someone else is doing in their games. YPWV (Your Pendragon Will Vary), as Greg was fond of saying instead of YMPV. My beef with tenchi2a was that he claimed that this would be RAW, which, to me, indicates that this is how the rules work AS WRITTEN, and most of us must have been reading the rules wrong all these years. Maybe I need a chill pill. The 'may' definitely makes it optional that you mandate negative and positive distinctive features based on APP score. The fact that the rules state that the Distinctive Features themselves do not track handsomeness but APP does is what pushes your suggestion rest of the way into houserule territory for me. Although technically, optional rules are houserules, depending a bit on your definition (see below). Houserule isn't a pejorative term to me. I use them all the time! It simply means that the ruleset that I use as the GM in our 'house' is tweaked from the vanilla RAW. Nor does a houserule mean that it has no connection to the default rules, see my earlier example of rolling APP randomly while other attributes are assigned by the player. Or for instance, I would consider it a houserule if a GM says that all characters will use the random attribute rolling from BoK&L, despite the book giving three options and saying that mix and match is fine, with GM permission. It is totally in line with the rules for a GM to mandate a random method for all characters, but you cannot say that the RAW mandates a random method for all characters and only random. You see the difference? Bad example as I am probably the leading BoB contrarian in these boards. (My battles are already complicated enough, thanks for asking; I don't need a book's worth of extra rules to memorise.)

Alas, only works on pagan (non-Christian) ladies. Also, a bit too easy. I admit that it is a cliche and as such it should be easy, but come on, even APP 10 knight can win over a Lady-in-waiting with a reasonable chance. Also, a bit of a niche use of the APP, unless one makes a career out of getting locked up by Saracens and seducing their ladies (Lord Flashheart?).

You know, I was thinking about that, but since Greg (based on Karr) said 454, that is what I went with. Late 5th century would be a bit better, but yes, like you say, it would be slightly problematic to have the Grail Quest before Badon and like 50 years before Camlann! Easier to just ditch that date, I agree.

It is in The Pendragon Campaign (not to be confused with GPC). As you say (and Jeff before you), Greg states that he shifted the dates mentioned in Malory* and Vulgate by a century, from 5th century to 6th century. * "It seemeth me said Sir Launcelot, this siege ought to be fulfilled this same day, for this is the feast of Pentecost after the four hundred and four and fifty year;" (Galahad's arrival to Camelot) However, I think 6th century works much better for Arthur. There is no King Claudas/Clovis of France in early-to-mid 5th century. And perhaps even more importantly, you don't get Vortigern and the Saxons in Anglo-Saxon Chronicle until mid-5th century, too. Which would make Lancelot's Pentecostal comment above contemporary with Vortigern... And of course, from Annales Cambriae you get the 537 date for the Battle of Camlann. Now I would have been happy to argue (intellectually) that Greg 'overshot' a bit by just adding 100 years to Lancelot's comment, and it would have, perhaps, been better to fix the date on 537 Camlann and then calculate back from that. The date for the Battle of Badon, if it ever happened, is usually given around 500. If we keep the timeline otherwise the same, this would shorten Arthur's reign from 55 years (510 - 565) to 45 years (492 - 537). A mere 10 year shift, not that bad. He'd still need to be born, so again, assuming the same age at coronation, he'd be born in 474, and Uther would die 476, two years after Arthur's birth (Le Morte: "THEN within two years King Uther fell sick of a great malady."). So you still get Anarchy while Arthur grows up. Aella's arrival would hit 477 nicely, too. This does crunch Aurelius' and Uther's reigns into rather tight spaces, but this can be good, too, since it would explain why they didn't procreate more: they simply ran out of time. In HRB, things happen quickly, one thing after another. Paschent makes his first invasion while Uther is getting the stones from Ireland, and then his new attempt with Irish help right thereafter. Not only that, but as soon as Aurelius is poisoned, Octa and Eosa renew their war in the North, and the Battle of Mount Damen happens. Gorlois' rebellion happens like a year after that. From this, we can see that we could actually keep everything the same up to 470 or so, and then have Aurelius die in 471. Mt. Damen can happen in 472, and Gorlois' rebellion in 473. Arthur is born 474. Not that I feel any urge to have BoSi and GPC rewritten! I am happy with what we have. I am just pointing out that if someone wanted to make their own chronology based on estimated Badon and 537 Camlann dates, it would still be within reason.

Thanks for asking. I'll try to explain it. It is not an error, but a design choice. The PK Cornovii stay in Cambria, until the Night of the Long Knives. Note that we make all the Cambrians Dissidents in 455, too. This ensures that they will end up in Brittany in 463, and hence return with Aurelius Ambrosius and get lands in Logres, instead. If we had allowed them to move to Cornwall, it would have caused two things: 1. We would have had yet another separate Cornwall tribe of Loyalists to track until the Night of the Long Knives, and 2. More importantly, we would have had to follow the Cornovii (Kingdom of Cornwall) side of things until 485, too. We didn't. The Cornwall in BoSi is the DUCHY of Cornwall, when we get caught up in 480 or 485. The whole idea in BoSi was that you'd end up in Logres by the end of it, and run with GPC. Kingdom of Cornwall is not in Logres, hence we didn't allow that path. (Sure, we allowed Cumbria up to 485, because... reasons. )

Yes, but I think Atgxtg's point is that SIZ, STR and CON come up pretty much always, since they are so useful in a fight, and fights happen pretty much in every session. Those Faerie castles with DEX-roll bridges probably not. Also, if you are climbing up from a cave or up a tree to collect a bird, you can pretty much roll until you succeed. Sure, you might take some damage while doing so, but the chances are good that even with a DEX 10, you would succeed soon enough. But try playing a SIZ 10 knight and you are in a world of hurt. Especially if your STR is 10, too. Compare: Knight A: SIZ 18, DEX 10, STR 18, CON 14, APP 10 Knight B: SIZ 10, DEX 18, STR 10, CON 14, APP 18 When these knights meet each other in a duel, Knight B struggles to get through Knight A's basic chainmail armor, and if A gets his shield, it is almost useless. B needs to roll his maximum damage to even trigger a knockdown check. Whereas when A hits B, the average damage results in an automatic knockdown for B, despite DEX 18. Also, note that if they are on horseback (the default for knights, usually), then Horsemanship is used, not DEX. The only skill where APP is mentioned as a modifier is Flirting and even there 'may' is used. So that is the use of those 8 extra points in APP. As for DEX, both knights have the same Movement, and while B is a better climber, I would argue that it would come up way less often, and in less dire situation, than combat. That is what the argument is about here. Since all attributes come from the same pool, it is unbalanced that some attributes are next to useless, while others are essential.

Emphasis mine. Also, rules EXPLICITLY state the opposite: "...not always a negative quality, even for a character with low APP..." It then offers an OPTION for the GM to rule otherwise. But the default is clearly that even low APP char can have 'positive' Distinctive Features, and that throws the whole argument out. In fact, if you read just before that, it seems that the main idea behind Distinctive Features is to: "allow for objective differences between characters with the same numerical value." Whereas: "A character’s APP measures his or her relative appearance, determining whether a character is handsome, beautiful, or ugly." Emphasis again mine, no mention of Distinctive Features there. Also, what happens when APP is increased through the use of Fashion (p. 102) or jewelry (from Book of the Feast)? Do you suddenly pick up new Distinctive Features? Or is the APP increase useless? Then there is handwaving going on between your 2. and 3. While I do agree that p. 114 situational modifiers are something that a GM can use to fit any which situation they want, how would you assign an APP-based modifier for a guy whose Distinctive features are Burly (Body), Curly Hair and Bushy Eyebrows? Those are all neutral features, picked from the examples in p. 37. In fact, most of those examples appear neutral, which makes sense if they are intended to just individualize people rather than measure their attractiveness. Furthermore, the only Skill that I can find on a quick look that even mentions APP-based modifiers is Flirting, and it says: "The Gamemaster may wish to impose a modifier on the Flirting Skill of any character with unusually high or low APP." Emphasis again mine. Note that it says NOTHING about Distinctive Features. This is why I am arguing that what you have is a houserule. Sure, you can impose whatever modifiers you like in the rules, but you have jumped over a couple of gaps to claim that it is actually Rules As Written while the rules themselves sometimes even contradict you. If Greg had wanted to write Distinctive Features so that they would give bonuses and minuses to different skills, he could have. He didn't. But let's imagine for a moment that he had. Let's imagine that he would have written exactly what you did. At APP 11 I get one positive DF. For 2 points more I get a second one. Then I need to spend 4 points more to get a third. In short, for 6 points I get 2 DFs. 6 points is +1d6 in damage. Do the DF apply in several skills or only one each? What about balance between the DFs themselves? Can I simply claim 'Charismatic' as my DF and then argue that it works in every social situation? Charming Accent that gives me +5 whenever I am speaking? It is charming, after all. What about the poor bastard who chose braided beard? When does that come into play? How about a facial expression? Is my face permanently fixed in a sneer even when I am trying to be friendly, if I have a low APP? It is a mess. It would be much easier and cleaner to just say you get a bonus or penalty to your social skills equal to (APP-10)/2, and leave it at that. But as I have already stated, there are good reasons why such a bonus is a bad idea, and why the DEX/APP default fixes more things than it breaks.

Since this is 'without any changes to the rules', could you quote the book and the page where the above +-5 to skill rule is stated? I am looking at KAP 5.2, p. 37, and it explicitly states also this: "A Distinctive Feature is not always a negative quality, even for a character with low APP, though you may wish to make it so." While I would agree that it would be better to mandate that low APP requires negative features, as in your table, it is explicitly contradicted in the text. Also, there is no mention of the +-5 to skills. If there would be such an official rule, then you would hear much less bitching from people like me saying that APP is useless, from rules standpoint. What you have presented is a houserule that tries to address this lack in the official rules. So it is a change as well. There has been earlier suggestions in this forum and the earlier Nocturnal one of an APP bonus to Courtly skills (effectively similar to what you are suggesting, save that it is a straight calculation from APP score rather than pushing it through the distinctive feature and requiring the GM to make a judgement call which skill it boosts and when), but the problem with such bonuses, especially when they stack with Glory bonuses, is that they make rolling a critical much too easy. Giving a higher default instead avoids this problem neatly.

If we really wanted to, we could make Cornouailles and Domnonie (pre-migration) to be "C/Mix (BC or RC)" as well. With the Dumnonii migration in late 450s, they would bring their C/BC culture and religious affiliation with them, as they establish the Kingdom of Domnonie. Not that either of those kingdoms are detailed in BoK&L.

Table 1.9 conforms with the Book of Knights & Ladies, p. 22... I am not sure about BoSi p.49... I see that sentence appearing in a draft in March 2016... Hzark10, any recollection? It is possible that it was a nice idea to try and differentiate the Brittany Britons a bit from their British counterparts, but didn't get followthrough in Table 1.9, due to us basically trying to make sure that Table 1.9 fitted BoK&L as much as possible and missing on the comment in p. 49 (oops). That being said, I would be perfectly happy to switch Vannetais to "C/Mix (BC or RC)". It would make sense to me, given the continental context, and what was said in p. 49. The other option would be taking the sentence out in p.49, but I would, in this case, rather veer off from BoK&L and make it more varied and different from standard C/BC.

It is the same system. BOE, p.36: Family: The amount spent on the lord’s family, typically 10% of Demesne Customary Revenue. Of this, £1 is spent on the children, while the rest is spent on upgrading the whole family’s Standard of Living (see below). Also, read the Unmarried Lords on the same page: "If he is also childless, he can save about 50% of the Family Expense (round up to a full librum)." Just because BOW appendix was more explicit doesn't make it a different system. How do I know? I was the one who came up with that system, applied it to BOW, wrote that appendix and then revised BOE. The New Economics works for any level of gameplay. That was the whole design purpose, so that it would scale to any situation, rather than be an ad hoc 'these numbers feel nice today' system that the earlier version of BOE was (which also contradicted earlier examples of knightly standard of living). Since it is the same system, it doesn't matter as such which book (BOE or BOW) you use. However, both books are scaled differently in details, for instance when it is talking about the effects of losing lots to raids and such. The assumption in BOW is that we are talking about Barons with £100+ lands, meaning that their standard of living is at least £15, and probably closer to £35 (£300 lands). By contrast, the assumption in BOE is that we are talking about a £50 estate, so the standard of living is £10. However, in both cases, the lot damage and its effect on the ruling family is a simplification for convenience in gameplay. Ditch BOM. It is obsolete and very much unbalanced.

Average DEX 10 guys would be screwed. Or if it is 15 or DEX, whichever is higher, then DEX 5 - 15 are all equal, and only DEX 16+ plays a role. You'd want to use something like (DEX/2)+10. This way, you'd get penalty for low DEX and bonus for high DEX, with the average at 15. And still need DEX 20 to actually get all the way to 20 quickly. This would nicely explain all those young Le Bel Inconnu types. I think this was being discussed earlier and I had some criticisms of this approach. I couldn't find the thread and my comments quickly, though... I think this might be TOO good, though. After all, you are gaining a major advance advantage very quickly in Sword, Lance and Horsemanship, even ignoring other skills, so this might be an overpowered approach compared to DEX 10. Let's take DEX 10 (cap 15) and DEX 13 (cap 17). Both start with 15 in those three skills, and we ignore experience checks for now. It takes DEX 10 six years to get those three skills to 17. DEX 13 needs only one year (and a bit), which means he gets five more years to make up for his lower stats (3 yearly trainings) and is left with two extra yearly trainings above the DEX 10 fellow. So yeah, this would be a bit too powerful, I think. EDIT: If you do consider experience checks, then chances are that DEX 10 would manage to get a +1 in those skills during the 6 years, so he probably would need a bit less, probably around 4 years. Meanwhile, DEX 13 fellow might get a +1 during that first year in one skill, hence managing to get to 17 in all three. This gives him only a 15% chance to get additional experience gains, but having three skills and three more years to do so, chances are that he would get at least one additional +1 increase, leaving one skill at 18. This would then require the DEX 10 fellow to spend additional year to catch up. So instead having a two-year advantage, the DEX 13 fellow would have a one-year advantage. However, this quick thought experiment (i.e. I didn't do careful math) considers only those three skills. If DEX influences other 'vital' or 'important' skills for the knight, DEX becomes even more powerful. Hunting would be an example of this. Dancing would help at court, although I wouldn't label it as important, let alone vital. Additional weapon skills would be much easier to raise to high values. Finally, each 2 points of DEX under this system allows you to increase those three vital skills easily by additional point each, whereas another knight would require 3 years of training. If we look at an edge case of DEX 19 (limit 20), he can spend 3 years to get all three skills to 20, something that would take DEX 10 guy probably around twelve years or so, during which it is likely that the DEX 19 fellow, apart from getting all the benefits of high DEX (mainly excellent balance) and having caught up in other stats, has also gained an experience increase or two, and hence rejoices in a skill or two at 21 instead or 20. So yeah, without running this through some example cases, my back-of-the-envelope calculation is implying that this would make DEX too powerful. The counterargument could be that he would be working with -1d6 damage in comparison most of this time, but on the other hand, having Skill 20 vs. 16 ought to balance this out somewhat.

The problem is that those two stats are given the same weight (i.e. cost) in the character generation as other three, more useful and important stats. Thus, a player who spends more of his attribute points on DEX and especially APP (which currently serves no game-mechanical role whatsoever) gets a worse character out of it, through no fault of his own. And like Atgxtg has pointed out, not only does this impact knights, but it also makes Lady characters suffer even more, since DEX and APP are where they are supposed to be better than men (also, Roman cultural bonuses). If there is no point to these stats, just set them at 10 and take 20 points off the distributed points. If they are rolled randomly, then no biggie, since you are not laming the rest of the character. As for fast tracking character growth via higher defaults from DEX & APP, this comes at a cost of lower SIZ, STR and CON. In other words, there is a cost to it. It is not a free lunch. Sure, the average default is a couple of points higher (5 instead of 3), but I don't see this as a big problem, compared to the problem that it solves (APP is useless and DEX is only of limited use for a knight, mainly the balance rolls, which in turn are rarer if you make a high SIZ char instead). While I agree with you in Gamemaster perspective, it is not so by RAW, unfortunately. Unusually high APP MAY give a bonus at GM's choice to Flirting, but the Flirting skill value is more important. And sometimes the Lustful of both parties. Glory bonus up to Glory/1000 can also swamp whatever APP bonus there might be, although this bonus can also make the skill itself unimportant, which I very much dislike. I also emphasize the 'Unusually High APP'. Is this 16+? Well, it would mean that APP 8 - 15 would be functionally identical, so why not have APP 8 since it doesn't matter unless you are really willing to commit? Having APP set the default for courtly skill and hence allowing pretty people have higher skills at lower cost means that the APP effect is already 'baked in' to the skill level. Someone who is not that pretty must be awfully witty and charming through effort to have the same skill, i.e. has spent more skill points on the skill or gotten more experience checks.

Due to my game group having been spread over three countries by now (and even prior to that between different cities), we have been playing almost exclusively online since 2005, using (nowadays) Roll20 and Teamspeak. Works quite well, although face-to-face would still be preferable. But one does what one can.

I think it is a typo. I know we used K&L as our touchstone when it came to the cultures, and only made changes as necessary to reflect the fact that we didn't have the Saxons yet (save in Berroc) in 439, or where later publications had made clear that Silchester was a Roman civitates (hence Silchester is R/RC rather than C/BC). I also know that we fixed a few of the culture/religions in final edit, and I -thought- I had gone through all of them to double-check them. But since a lot of that editing was done outside of emails, I don't have a record of those discussions. In any case, I don't see a strong reason why Cheshire should be Pagan. Granted, we have (some) pagans in Cameliard (Cornovii) and in Powys (Ordovices), but there is no particular reason why the Deceangli wouldn't have been converted before 439. There are certainly no particular events between 439 and 463 (nor up to 480, AFAIK) which would have prompted a conversion of Cheshire in particular, except perhaps one. There would have been the Hallelujah Victory by Saint Germanus that we could have used, traditionally placed in Flintshire, which would have been Deceangli territory at the time of his visit (447 in SIRES), but a naval invasion by Picts and Scots/Irish or Saxons didn't quite fit the story we were trying to weave together, so that got dropped... Easier to just say that the Deceangli converted with most of the British tribes (south of the wall) during the Roman times and leave it at that. The inhabitants of Cheshire (the Deceangli) have nothing to do with the pagan Votadini who come from the North in 455, but have lived near City of Legions and Norgales until pushed out by the Irish, and then Norgales was claimed by the Votadini. Cheshire is not natively part of Norgales, which we used to refer to the area between Cheshire and Gomeret, as shown in the map of Cambria, p. 79. Thanks to the various kingdoms conquering one another from time to time, I would not have a problem with Ryons' Kingdom of Norgales including Cheshire as well, and probably most of Gomeret, too, but Cheshire is not a subdivision of the Kingdom of Norgales nor are they of the Votadini. Also, Tintagel should get the mix specified: C/Mix (BC or P).

Yes we did and even got closer than my memory from the 2nd visit. It was a July Saturday, though, so the place was packed. The shuttle buses worked fine, but the only exit was through the gift shop and that was a nightmare. Even my wife who thrives in museum shops said that it was a bit too much. Amen to that. My wife just commented on that the other day that one can live next to a famous site their whole lives, and it is only when some friends come over that you get to see it as well, acting as their local guide.

The difference between DEX 16 and DEX 10 is 6 stat points = -1d6 in damage and -3 hitpoints, assuming +3 SIZ and +3 STR. So yeah, the DEX character squire would likely have only 4d6 and skill defaults 8, compared to someone who prioritized DMG with damage of 5d6 and skill defaults of 5. However, the primary weapon skill would likely be 10+ for both, as it would be a priority for both. Where the DEX 16 guy benefits is that he can afford to be a reasonably good at Horsemanship, Lance and Sword right from the start, whereas the DEX 10 guy would be forced to make some choices, as he wouldn't have enough skill points in the beginning to be good at all three. In fact, he would need pretty much all of his points just to reach the default level of the DEX 16 guy. But isn't that what we want? That there would be some point in making a DEX guy instead of a SIZ guy?

And here it is: the train travel worked great. Sure, we were a bit tied into a schedule and spent some transfer times sitting in the railway stations. On the other hand we didn't have to find parking nor gas stations for a rental car or finding the route with gps. So, swings and roundabouts. The arcane meaning of off-peak travel in a multi-transfer situation was a bit confusing, but it was sorted out after we asked the station attendant to check which trains we could actually use and found that we were only restricted on one leg of our four leg journey. Meaning that we could take it easy and do the first two legs in our own good time just in case. The trains were on time or only late a few minutes. Since all our transfers were basically just switching platforms, it was easy too, although had I been a bit more on the ball we could have made it to an earlier train than anticipated rather than needing to wait for the planned one 30min later. All in all it was a fine experience and we had a blast! Old Sarum was even more impressive than I had expected and I pity the fool assigned to assault it in GPC! Arundel Castle was even more impressive as it still has the Norman keep standing on top of the motte. (As does Windsor Castle but the keep there is not open for visitors.)

Not necessarily a problem. If the skill choices and picks later on are supposed to reflect the training the squires receive, then someone starting as a newly-minted squire (at 14, since I think it should be 7-14-21) could start with just the default skills, and perhaps with some skill points (the 10 skill points the new knights get at chargen?) to allow minor customization from the start. Then you could just pile on regular winter phase options (so experience checks + 7 yearly trainings) in play. This should result in squires that are roughly comparable to starting knights in 21, although with possibly some more skills and traits from experience checks. Which is, I think, a fair compensation for having paid a 'second-fiddle' character through those years.

Yep. If you are just dealing with a pool of skill points, then it is not an issue. The fixed skill levels, while quicker, do tend to mess things up when dealing with higher starting skills. Even with something like K&L. If you have a character with a skill natively at 9 (whether cultural or stat default), they are less likely to use a 10 for that skill than someone with the same skill at 2. Hence, you might end up with an 'erroneous' result that most X are better than most Y, in a skill that Y are supposedly better than X. The +10 & three at +5, points in excess of 15 added to the 10 skillpoint pool would keep it still relatively quick and easy, while giving full benefit to higher starting skills, whether from defaults or cultural starting skills. Or you might rewind like back to 4th edition and simply give people 35 skill points (which might, actually, be a bit too much especially if the higher defaults, generally 5+ instead of 2 or 3, already in play). I am not too bothered by the higher defaults, though, since skill of 5 is still something you don't want to rely on, but at least it gives the PKs some chances of success... Also, it keeps the 'default result' the same for the skills the knight chooses to focus on: 5+5 = 10 and 5+10 = 15.