Morien

I was lucky enough to visit it in early 90s. It was a big difference when I went back in late 2000s. Not that it was allowed to go to the stones even in 90s, but the tourist path was even further aback than it was. But hey-ho. It is still iconic, and it will make the missus happy, so...

Little Solsbury Hill. Alas, we won't have time for that. Stonehenge takes precedence. Besides, that is not where the Battle is in GPC.

So the missus is going on a short work trip to Cheltenham, UK (near Gloucester and Birmingham), and I am going along as plus one, a tour guide and a travel organizer. We intend to do a quick whirlwind tour of Southern England, since she has never seen Stonehenge and other such places, having only been to London & Edinburgh before. The itinerary works out as follows: Thu 18th July: Early morning flight to Gatwick, train to see Windsor Castle, then evening train to Cheltenham. Fri 19th: Missus working, I am free most of the day, thinking of going to Gloucester to see the Cathedral and tomb of Edward II, although admittedly I am pretty interested in Worcester and the tomb of King John, too. So might go either way. Sat 20th: Morning train to Bath, see the Roman Baths, then to Salisbury (Cathedral, Stonehenge and Old Sarum). Sun 21st: Continue by train to Arundel Castle, and then onwards to Gatwick. Yes, I know we are missing a lot of stuff (one would have to spend at least a summer touring around and still miss something), but this is all the time we have to spend this time around and those were the places that the missus placed on the top of the list. Anyway, despite the tight schedule, I figured I'd see and ask if there are any local Pendragon enthusiasts who might want to meet for a dinner or something on Friday (Cheltenham) or Saturday (Salisbury)? Or a lunch at Windsor (Thu) or Arundel (Sun)?

Also: I can't believe that I forgot all the fine free stuff that is around, too... The Marriage of Count Roderick: https://www.chaosium.com/content/FreePDFs/Pendragon/NM14 - Marriage of Count Roderick.pdf The Dragons of Britain #1 - #4: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/121452/The-Dragons-of-Britain-1

I do most of my gaming nowadays online, voice over IP kinda thing. This is due to the fact that the game group is distributed over three countries, so playing face to face is not an option. Otherwise I would prefer ftf play, obviously. I do know that some people use online miniatures/images, pogs or whatever those are called, but I don't really want to be messing with those either. But even when I was GMing face to face, I wasn't using miniatures. Never really did. Then again, we seldom use a hex map or a grid for combat anyway. If the situation is more complicated, a quick sketch map suffices, with arrows showing movement when necessary.

The actual core argument is that Greg wanted to have scattered lands a la Norman system. Whether from desire to stick as close to his historical touchstone of the Norman England as possible or for some other reason I don't know. You mistake my meaning. I am not saying that the Saxons need their passports stamped at a border checkpoint before they can enter Logres. What I am saying is that the lands that are right next to the Saxon Kingdoms are more likely to be raided, since it is easier for Saxons to do so: shorter distance so less chance of detection and less chance of being intercepted as they are returning with their loot, so less risk for them, and less time needed. Also, logistic considerations: you can only carry limited amount of food with you, and once you start to forage, you blow your cover. Might as well raid here and then bug out. It becomes increasingly risky for them to penetrate deeper into Logres, unless it is an actual army, as in 473. So, if we imagine two counties, one at the border (say, Berroc) and the other near the middle of the kingdom (say, Tribruit), it is clear to see that Berroc is more exposed to Saxon raids, and has a higher chance of being raided. Let's imagine that all the land in those counties are given to two barons. Geographically concentrated: one baron holds all of Berroc, the other all of Lambor. End result, Baron of Berroc needs to make do with Berroc's resources, while Baron of Lambor enjoys the easy life. Scattered holdings: Baron of Berroc holds 60% of Berroc and 40% of Lambor, while Baron of Lambor holds 60% of Lambor and 40% of Berroc. Since Lambor is much less exposed, both barons concentrate most of their knights in Berroc, let's say 50% of Lambor knights. End result, Berroc county has now its own knights AND 50% of Lambor's knights protecting it, making it that much harder target for Saxons to raid or to cross, which also makes the lands behind it more secure. Naturally, the above is a simplified example, but illustrates the principle.

Only the War of the Ring is covered in detail in the books, yes, but you do have plenty of nuggets that you can build an interesting campaign around. And, indeed, ICE has put out modules that really help to flesh out the setting even if they are not canon. Kin-strife, for example, gives plenty for the PCs to do from spy thrillers to army action. It would also be pretty fun to have the Gondorian or Rohirrim PCs interact with Thorongil, for example participating in the burning of the ships in Umbar, and have their grandchildren see the Return of the King in Aragorn. There is also the fact that there is simply so much time passing between the start of the Third Age and the end of it that a lot of the records can be lost or forgotten about. The Northern Kingdom definitely knew about hobbits, since the whole Shire was established in 1601 under the King's permission. So that would definitely not be a problem. The Rohirrim had some tales of them, so they may have met some hobbits still along Anduin before the Eorlings migrated to Rohan. And even if tales of hobbits would reach Gondor, they could easily be dismissed or simply ignored as unimportant. Individual hobbits could be curiosities or even thought to be just kids. Once you get closer to the War of the Ring, you of course need to be a bit more careful. But then again, I wouldn't be allowing Hobbit characters (nor Elves and Dwarves) if the campaign is set in Gondor, and so forth. But we are starting to veer off from the topic of the thread. Happy to continue the discussion in another thread, though.

My recommendation is that you use one OR the other. Mixing them leads to imbalances between starting characters. See this thread:

I may have said something along those line in Nocturnal Forum, back in the day. More of a complaint that there are limits what you can do in Salisbury, what with Camelot and the High King two days away (one if you push it). Of course, one is free to toss the timeline aside, and I tend to juggle the events a bit, so that they match the current twists and turns of the PKs' story arc better. After wrestling with a Middle-earth campaign where you have a couple of sentences of events every few centuries of history as your campaign skeleton, one comes to appreciate the crutch that GPC gives even to an experienced GM! Of course, if one is just playing KAP as a 1 adventure per month D&D variant, then GPC's breadth of years is less of a concern. But at the same time, one would miss out on the dynastic aspect that really sets KAP apart from games like D&D. Also, one thing I really like about KAP is that the characters are not orphaned murder-hobos that they so easily tend to be in D&D. Not to say that you can't have a very interesting and socially-connected characters in D&D, but the stereotype of a wandering adventure without a past or a future is quite valid, I think.

Thanks! The plan is to make it searchable in the future, right? It is great to have it, but it is even more useful when we can search keywords and stuff. Years worth of good discussions and comments from Greg...

And also the claim that Book of the Estate is superseded by Book of the Warlord. Nope. They now have the same system in place and are complementary.

I am lazy. I simply use Google Maps and modern names. Not only makes it easy to find the place on the map, but calculating distances and travel times between the manors becomes very easy, too. Also you can switch terrain on and get a feel for teh local topography and water features. The way I see it, not only wouldn't my players know any better*, but also my campaign isn't particularly enhanced by the knowledge that this is a location an an Anglo-Saxon village in Domesday with a certain amount of hides, just mapped back to the anachronistic 500s of King Arthur. I use standard £10 manors anyway, rather than messing around if it is £9 or £11. * If anything, my players get more of a kick out of finding their 'manor' if they are travelling in UK and finding a road sign for the village. For instance Grately.

It has generally been to the (English) King's advantage to keep the nobles' holdings as widely distributed as possible to prevent them from rebelling as easily. This was due to a deliberate policy by William the Conqueror, as he had seen the opposite happen in France, where the geographically concentrated fiefdoms were the norm. His own Duchy of Normandy was de facto independent from the weak French Capet Kings, his titular overlords, and he had fought with and against his kings from time to time. I don't recall off the top of my head such geographical rearrangements, but I think I remember cases where the King might decide against one party in an inheritance/dowry dispute and then compensate them with lands elsewhere. Thus, in theory, making both parties content and grateful to the King. It didn't always work. In Pendragon, as long as both parties are sworn to the King, and agree to the trade, I don't see a reason why it couldn't be done. And, in Pendragon context, it might even make more sense to have geographically concentrated holdings, so that the nobleman has real stake in defending that region as well as the resources at hand to do so. Although I can think of one great reason to give people holdings in both the interior of the kingdom (presumably peaceful) and at the border: they are much more likely to have more men defending their border manors, while the interior barons wouldn't necessarily contribute as much to the border defense.

GPC has an Appendix on Faerie and stats for various faerie creatures, as well as Goblin Market adventure. It is not very expansive, though,but GPC is definitely useful for any campaign you'd run anyway. Book of Magic and Miracles has a couple of adventures focusing on Faeries. There is no Book of Faeries yet, alas. As for how I GM the Faerie, it really depends. There are Seelie and Unseelie Faeries that people tend to classify as 'good' and 'evil' faeries, but that is not strictly accurate. Seelie Faerie can be nasty as well, especially if doublecrossed or insulted. But perhaps a better description would be that the Seelie faerie tend to start as neutral or even a bit pro-human, while the Unseelie tend to enjoy mischief and causing misery and pain, being more anti-human. I use Faerie when I need to introduce more magic into the campaign, or to bring an adventure someplace where it would not normally occur. Faerie can twist both time and space, so this can be important as well: in a previous campaign, an important plot point was that the eldest son (PK) was presumed dead since he and his companions (other PKs) vanished enroute from Rome on a ship, and didn't show up again until 3 years later. During which time the inheritance had gone to the second son, forcing them to deal with the issue. Earlier, I also used Faerie to speed-grow a couple of heirs to adulthood by a few years, so that they could continue on the campaign with the same families.

Check out this thread: As for the earlier books, the regional & adventure books are well-worth it, although I wouldn't bother with Ebay and just buy them as pdfs from Chaosium.

That is pretty much how it is dealt with in Book of the Estate. While it is possible for the King/Baron to decide that the five manors he has granted to a knight will henceforth become an estate, it is more common for the estate to be created all in one go by the King. But it would, technically, be possible for it to be widely scattered, even though the examples in BotE are geographically concentrated for simplicity. Note that 5 separate manors do not become an estate just by themselves. Estate is a legal entity as well, in a sense that once it has been established, it cannot be split up (except by heiresses).

Which book? ESTATE, WARLORD and UTHER use the 'descriptive' names, basically just writing out in modern English what the name of the place means, or coming up with a descriptive name for the castle. They have lists of placenames in the appendix to try and match them back to the modern names. Note though that other than the Roman names (Corinium instead of Cirencester), they are not particularly historical, they are still based on the Anglo-Saxon names, simply written out in modern English. Which leads to some clunky names at times, like, IIRC, The Bridge on River Cam for Cambridge. However, Greg decided that going forward, the city/castle names would revert back to 5th edition & GPC names, with the exception of county names that would stay the same. That is why SIRES is using 'London' instead of 'Londinium', but has 'Huntland' instead of 'Huntington', and so forth. I think Roberto collected a list of all the placenames in the above three books and posted them on the old forum. Do you still have it, Roberto? @mandrill_one

The two big things you have to be aware of in Saxons! character generation are: 1) It is '4.5 edition' from Green Knight era, which means that it starts from 15 year old youth who then acquires experience via aging until he qualifies as a theng (knight), as in 4th edition KAP, BUT... 2) ... since it is 4.5, instead of the ONE previous experience benefit as in 4th edition, he gets THREE. So if you are using vanilla 4th edition, Saxons! is much stronger. If you are using also Book of Knights, which is also 4.5 edition and gives the three benefits, then not such a big deal. Or if all of the players are Saxons, again, no worries, since they all start from the same footing. But if you are mixing books, be sure that you don't give another character 12 extra yearly trainings just because he is using a Book of Knights or Saxons! while other are using 4th edition or Land of Giants! (I haven't used LoG, but after a quick glance, it seems to conform with 4th edition chargen rules with 1 benefit per year.) Additionally, I am not fond of the Berserk rules in Saxons!, as I find them a bit too superheroic.

At the cost of removing one of the unique aspects of the game.

Welcome! Not that you need to worry about it yet, but if you end up starting your own group and are curious about the other books of the Pendragon line, here is some of the discussion we had earlier: In any case, the Forum is a very friendly and active place, so if you have any problems with the setting or the rules, feel free to ask for advice!

I did think about ruling it that way, too, but given the historical analogy of trying to herd cats in a feudal army filled with high nobles, especially when they did not have an unified command figure like ONE King, things often went almost comically wrong. Not only is it more fun to GM when the various barons are bickering about the precedence and ignoring commands because of what that bastard said about our Shawn, but I think it is historically more accurate as well.

Another Middle-earth enthusiast here. I have used KAP to run one- or two-shot con games* set either in the end of the Second Age or playing the Rohan riders in the late Third Age, ramping up to the War of the Ring. Works like a charm. (* = with a slightly reduced skill sets so that it is easier to explain to people who are new to the game) I have also GMed a campaign set in the end of the Second Age, the PCs being part of the Numenorean Faithful escaping the Downfall of Numenor with Isildur, and playing a role in the establishment of Gondor. It is currently on a hiatus, as I am digesting the feedback and the hurdles that the long lifespan and the lack of information on the early days of Gondor means for the campaign. In short, it takes a much more work for the GM when you don't have something like Book of Sires or GPC to give you the yearly framework. In Middle-earth history, your milestones tend to be hundreds of years apart, and just have a couple of lines of text. The feedback from our playthrough of the first 'book' was to de-emphasize the 'routine' and instead focus on the crisis points, like 10-20 years span around the milestones. I did post my Middle-earth hack of KAP on the older forum, consisting mainly of changing some of the Winter Phase rules to prevent the long lifespans of the Dunedain from making the older characters into perfect demigods. I did also rewrite some of the skills, ditching some and introducing others.

ESTATE, p. 18: "An oath of Fealty is sworn to other lords from whom a knight gets land, and also to lords who are temporary, such as leaders in a military campaign." ESTATE, p. 21: "If the knight is held only by fealty, then he may dissolve his own commitment. Once again, the willing support of his current lord is very helpful. A knight bound by an oath of fealty may just wait until the term of his employment has expired." I admit that I had forgotten that apparently the leaders in a military campaign do get Fealty sworn to them. I would only apply this to the mercenaries. The medieval history is RIFE with internecine bickering amongst nobility, which each baron jealous for glory and prickly about their own honor, which often resulted in very big mistakes on the battlefield. WARLORD, p. 26: "Fealty is a different, less exclusive kind of loyalty. It is sometimes (but not always) a temporary arrangement with a predetermined and agreed-to term limit, as found in mercenary contracts, for example. It is dissolved without rancor upon expiration of the time period, if it has one." WARLORD also makes clear that one-sided dissolving of Fealty is not without its costs, p. 26: "Breaking either vow is dishonorable. Breaking Homage costs the oathbreaker 10 points of Honor; breaking Fealty results in a loss of 5 Honor."

A PK may receive AN Estate, which would make HIM an estate holder, not a baron. It was clarified in the old forums that the intent was not that all 6 or so PKs would be granted an estate EACH for having a hand in taking Gorlois down. Secondly, that estate would be in rather dire straits after the events of the following year anyway. It would probably be easier for the GM and the players to have Uther hint at rich rewards but be distracted by his marriage (and other) plans for Ygraine, and then have Roderick use that 'favor chip' to get the PKs off the hook later. But yes, if the PKs get rewarded with land directly from the King, what probably ends up happening is that they get Homage (Uther) and their previous Homage (Roderick) downgrades to Fealty (Roderick), since higher noble usually trumps the lower noble and insists on Homage from his vassals. Roderick doesn't have a good reason to put himself in Uther's ire by saying no to the king, so he would release the PKs from the homage and accept their fealty instead. Love (Family) towards the Family & Kin. Fealty (Employer). Potentially Loyalty (my company or my captain), if part of an established merc group. Homage (lord) if they actually swear homage to the lord as a household knight. It is a formal oath. I was referring more to a situation where the mercenary captain had been in the service of the same lord for a couple of decades already, and clearly a trusted confidant/favorite. I don't have the books before me, so I can't check it if it has been made explicit in the publications, but I know Greg told me that the mercs had Fealty during their contract. That being said, I would be fine leaving it for Honor, though, and frequently do in our games, especially if the PKs are taking short (a couple of months) merc contracts. I don't bother rolling Fealty for those.

As Atgxtg already said, no they would not. They are not on Madoc's payroll, but fulfilling their duty to the Count of Salisbury, even if the Count is not physically there. If the Count had nothing to do about it and the PKs were acting as mercenaries, there for just the payment Madoc would give them, then they would take an oath of Fealty for the duration of the campaign (as long as they are getting paid; not getting paid is grounds for ditching the oath, as Madoc would have broken his part of the deal by not paying; although often enough the mercenary pay was in arrears). As soon as the campaign is over and the mercs are released back home, the Fealty would vanish as there is no longer an employment bond between Madoc and the PKs.