Morien

If they were part of Count of Salisbury's retinue/force, then they would not get Fealty to Uther in the first place. If they were moonlighting as mercenaries, then yes, the Fealty would apply as long as they are on Uther's payroll, and not a moment longer. (Although I would, admittedly, be willing to change a long-serving mercenary into a de facto household knight, especially if he is close to the King. Mercardier comes to mind.)

As long as your traits are in the range 5-15, and no passion is 16 or more, you can usually* stay in control of your character. That is the bargain you make for Traits/Passions 16 and over, that you lose some of that control in order to gain Annual Glory and Religious bonuses and the like. * Apart from mandatory trait/passion tests, usually in response to some magic or other supernatural source, or an instinctive reaction. As for the original Loyalty (Uther), yeah, I would not have given them that loyalty without some formal oaths. That is what makes Arthur and the Companions of King Arthur stand out so much, as they sidestep the usual liege-vassal structure and makes all companions take an oath to Arthur directly. Just to point out, my PK would be plenty pissed at Duke Gorlois for weasel-wording his way out of the gate, too. I could have lost my head thanks to him! Also, who knows what they did BEFORE they got to the gate? They could have accosted some servants who might have raised an alarm otherwise, and treasure is such a wide category that it could, in principle, include the food that they took with them. Food that technically belonged to the King! That being said, I would let those PKs who wish to relinquish the loyalty, and those who wish to keep it to keep it. I am thinking once the next year rolls around, they will all lose it anyway... Just to sidetrack to Merlin... My players tend to hate him, scheming and getting them into trouble. Many a PK has lost their lives getting involved with Merlin, or gotten into a troublesome spot thanks to the wizard's meddling. All good fun for the GM, of course.

If we take those numbers, then England had 6 years of famines during 14th century. 6/100 = 1/16.67. Which is even less than what I quoted as 1/12. Far cry from 1 in 3. For France, it looks much worse, but at the same time, you have the 100 years war going on, too. A chevauchee through a village could easily cause a localised famine. 21/100 = roughly 1 in 5. Finally, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_of_1315–1317 : "The onset of the Great Famine coincided with the end of the Medieval Warm Period." So those numbers for 14th century are more unfavorable than they'd be for earlier times. Again, this would be more akin to the hit Britain takes due to the Wasteland than the norm during Conquest - Early Tournament, which is characterized as the heyday of Arthurian peace and prosperity. As for the sizes of the harvest, taking that same wikipedia link, we find that famine harvest is like 2:1, and favorable harvest is 7:1. Since you need to save 1 for next year's seed grain, this would give surplus of 1 to 6 grains per seed grain, so a factor of 6, compared to BoM's factor of 15. Assuming that the harvest income would be directly comparable with the harvest grain surplus. Actually, you would expect that the grain prices would reflect the plenty and the scarcity of the grains, and thus even out some of the variation in income. http://faculty.econ.ucdavis.edu/faculty/gclark/papers/market99.pdf : "The price of grain moved up and down sharply from year to year. Thus the national average price between 1300 and 1349 ranged from a low of 3.61 s. per quarter to a high of 16.4s. per quarter, a range of more than four to one." Of course, it is not quite as simple as that, since some/most of the (normal) harvest goes to feeding the lord and his household and servants, rather than for the markets. So during the low harvest, they wouldn't have the surplus to sell, and indeed, buying more grain to make up for the dearth would actually cost more. But it does provide a nice buffer against the high yield bumper crops, so that they don't totally explode the knight's income. Indeed, I think it would be quite defensible to cut the grain surplus income at least in half, if not more. http://www.cropyields.ac.uk/project.php#1._The_yield_information_contained_in_medieval_manorial_accounts: indicates that the average harvest was ~3:1 (net yield 2 per seed grain) for barley in Alciston manor, with the net low about 0.75 and high up to 4. So at least for this manor and for barley, something like -50% and +100% variance of harvest would seem to work reasonably well, and if we halve the surplus prices, +-50% works. Granted, this was barley and not wheat, and focusing on 1336 onwards so after the Medieval Warm Period. If we take the earlier factor of 6, and put average on 3, we get famine x1/3 and bumper crop at x2. Halving the income again for the good harvests would give a maximum of x1.5. So yeah, I would be pretty content with +-50%.

Yes, I did misunderstand you, since I don't see a great benefit to a standalone BoM anymore. As for the core KAP... KAP 5.2, p. 77: "Your starting manor pays you an annual income of £10" KAP 5.2, p.133: "You gain 10 Glory if you hold land with an income of £10 (one manor) for a year," KAP 5.2, p. 231: "(A typical vassal knight’s manor earns £10 per year.)" However, what it doesn't do is explain that only £6 of that money goes to supporting the knight, and that there is also £1 left over to spend on other stuff. Grr. I would have been much happier if they had just added even the £10 Demesne Manor example box from BotW p. 169. Even the breakdown of the £10 Customary income part of it. I think BoM is officially obsolete, but like you can buy 1st edition Pendragon, you can also buy BoM. The problem and the risk of confusion is that BoM is still labelled as a 5th edition product, which is the current core edition... EDIT: It would help if there was a note in the product page that Book of the Manor has been superseded by the Book of the Estate. It could still be offered, but at least people would know. As it is, it is somewhat misleading advertising: "This 2nd edition of the Book of the Manor presents the revised economic system to use for knightly manors in King Arthur Pendragon." Yes, revised compared to KAP 5.0 & GPC, but not compared to Book of the Estate. It would be easy enough to update from £6 to £10 manor, and fix the harvest variation to something more reasonable (alas, I think the whole way that the harvest is rolled up is broken). Heck, BoM already talks about the Money You Never See, and a £120 total economic output. But it would still take someone to go in and make the changes... assuming that the layout files are still saved somewhere, of course. The variation in BoM is beyond silly, though: x1/6 to x2.5. In our Frankenstein variant, I have replaced every step with a +-10% instead (£1 for a single manor). That gives a nice +-30%, and if you are already living hand to mouth as a typical peasant family would, -30% would hurt. Basically, if everyone else were to eat normally, 30% of the family would starve. Also, it would be easy to handwave and say that the taxes, tolls and court fees and such would soften the harvest blow for the Knight, so the actual hit on the peasants could be closer to -50%. (Also, note that you do get +-30% also with the suggestion I made, even more often since it just requires a 1 and a fumbled Stewardship.) Mind you, I do impose Wasteland penalties on top of the 'regular' harvest, so you start seeing yearly -10%, -20%... etc creeping in, as the Wasteland expands. If you wish to have harsher harvests, you could easily have -20% per step instead. This would give you a -60% harvest on a crit weather roll vs. fumbled Stewardship. Or, have Meager/Good at -10% (no DF) / +10% (double DF) and then +-20% per extra step, which would bring you to 0.5 - 1.5. Which looks pretty nice, admittedly, and the need for crit-fumble pair to reach the +-50% would keep them quite rare. Out of curiosity, what is your source for the 1 out of 3 years being a famine? Quoting this: https://www.europenowjournal.org/2018/09/04/famine-and-dearth-in-medieval-england/ "A combination of narrative accounts of famine, and a more general mapping of harvests through yield and price data, indicates that twenty-three of the 140 years between 1210 and 1350 experienced poor harvests in one or more grains, and approximately half of these were sufficiently extreme and their consequences sufficiently severe to be counted as crisis events (Dyer 1989: 262-3; Hoyle 2017: 148)." Twenty-three out of 140 = 16.4% (~1/6) Half of those being crisis (famine) = 1/12. Also, 1210 - 1350 would be closer to the Conquest Period, in internal Pendragon Timeline, and thence to Arthur's Peace from Romance onwards to the Yellow Pestilence, which is supposed to be a Period of great plenty and fine harvests (until the aforementioned YP and the encroaching Wasteland). So we definitely would expect less famines than the maxed out Medieval England historically. Well, if you include the Green Knight 4.5 edition stuff into it, too, then you will start seeing a mess again... I think, as has been expressed many times already in these forums, that Greg liked to tinker. He had a decade and a half to tinker with 5th edition with numerous supplements, and it shows. I am with you in hoping that KAP 6 will bring consistency to the line again.

Since the only new material would be that chapter or appendix of changes, it would, IMHO, be better just combined with any 'Book of Arthur' than to republish the combined Estate & Warlord. But that is David's headache, not mine!

That is what I am trying to say. Just run the £10 manor as a £10 'estate' using the Book of the Estate. Works like a charm. Many of the missing enchantments are missing because Greg decided that they should not be offered as options, so I don't see that as a big problem, either. A lot of the Book of Manor is taken up by followers, who are dealt much better in Book of the Entourage already, too. Luck tables I am not a huge fan of, although those would be easy enough to implement. Unlike in BoM, BotE already has plenty of rules to prevent an exponential growth of the estate income, not the least being the reassessment as the place is inherited, which resets the free income. Also the Return-Of-Investment is about 1:10, rather than the 1:2 in some BoM investments. So there is less need for random investment destruction and raids to keep things from going out of control. Random harvest would be another potential tweak, but even this would be dead easy to implement. Something like this (off the top of my head, pretty similar to GPC quick system) would be more than enough, IMHO: Harvest, roll 1d6: 1 = -2 Lots, 2 = -1 Lot, 3-4 = Normal, 5=+1 Lot, 6= +2 Lots Stewardship roll: Critical = +1 Lot always, Success = remove -1 Lot, Failure = remove +1 Lot, Fumble = -1 Lot always. I do have my own more convoluted BoM hybrid, but I am not sure it is worth it. As for Raids, they are already dealt in ESTATE. I seriously doubt that there is hunger for Yet Another Landholding Book. That being said, I do agree that there is a lot of overlap between ESTATE and WARLORD on the landholding side, and WARLORD and UTHER on the Logres nobility etc side. So if we'd start it from scratch, I would very much support that ESTATE and WARLORD would be just a single book, as you proposed, covering the landholding system, and the actual world information & NPCs would be in Book of Uther. But it would not be worth it to start re-editing and re-publishing the books. If there is a new Book of Arthur or Book of Logres, to cover what the place looks like after the Saxon Wars, I would much rather have the landholding system changes just in a couple of pages of appendix rather than its own book that would repeat 95% of already published material. Another thing that I thought 4th edition got right was that it listed the armies of the nobles could call upon. This gave me, as the GM, a very nice handle on what would happen if there was an attack some place, what kind of forces would be readily available, etc. Of course, the landholdings were much more concentrated, rather than the Norman scattershot that Greg ended up adopting for WARLORD...

Yep. For GMs wanting to have PKs who are a bit more exceptional, starting them off around 15+1d3 years with full 21-year old skillset / chargen would also be an option. Let's face it, the extra few years of avoiding aging rolls is unlikely to become the sticking point of the campaign, anyway. Especially if everyone starts within 2 years of each other anyway. To truly compare with the Arthurian paragons, you'd really have to boost them a lot from that, too. Like giving extra 5 - 10 yearly trainings. Of course, someone like Gareth/Beaumains should be the really rare outlier, what with having duelled Lancelot to a draw on his first outing, if the memory serves. Of course, you could fudge this by saying that Lancelot was holding back and just wanting to test the young knight, but still.

But... That is already in Book of the Estate. The £10 manor example. Totally same mechanics work just as well for £10 Manor as for £100 Estate. That was the whole point of the scalable New Economics. Or did you mean having a variable harvest, the whole concern my commoners mechanic (bleh) and Hate Landlord and Manorial Luck (AKA how will the dice screw you over this year)?

The revised Book of the Estate is much superior to The Book of Manor, IMHO. It works from Manor scales up to Counties, even though the book itself is only up to £100. It does have breakdowns of the manorial personnel as well, something which BoM just touches upon but doesn't actually lay out in detail. There are opportunities during GPC for the PKs (at least some of them) to gain an estate. Or even starting a campaign with estate holders, although in that case, they would likely be more geographically scattered than the norm. Or simply rewrite the amount of vassal lands to something like 50% to make more vassal manors/estates available. Furthermore, Estate has much more world information than BoM, including updated Glory rewards for the titles, and the family survival tables, as well as revised fortifications and other improvements. And like Atgxtg already mentioned, BoM is pretty broken when it comes to investments, slow with the variable income, and the harvest rules are... not ideal, too. So plenty of reasons, IMHO, to prefer Book of the Estate.

Just to add that usually, heiresses and widows also have guardians/wardens (often the liege lord) who have the say who the heiress/widow will marry. So it is not always enough to simply woo the lady, but one needs to make good with the guardian, too. Heiresses are also rare (since vassal knights are also rarer now); I think I crunched the numbers in the other forum and came up with a number of roughly one full 1 manor heiress and 2 shared manor heiresses per generation for Salisbury (so roughly, per county). Naturally, that is simply an average and the GM is free to ignore it, but it should give some indication how rare marrying an heiress ought to be. All the more so since the liege has plenty of incentive to actually marry the heiresses off to deserving household knights, not just the PKs, so there is plenty of competition for them.

As Atgxtg says, it is not normal for the manors to simply 'expand'. The best way of gaining new manors is conquering some new land for the King and being heroic while doing so. This means that the King has some new land that he can use to reward loyal, heroic knights with, and here you are, the man of the hour. Killing big monsters (dragons and such) might be good for a land reward, too, even though the noble/king in question might be a bit strapped for new manors. Gift manors (for life, non-inheritable) are much more likely, at least to begin with. Especially if they are given 'at the king's pleasure' (I forget if that is the correct wording), meaning that he can revoke the gift any time he feels like it, and be on solid legal footing. There are some ways to 'expand', though. Investments bring in more income, and it is in principle possible for the PK to pour his battle loot to building investments and eventually double the original income. However, note that when he passes on, the manor will be reassessed, and if its income is £20, then the heir is expected to bring two knights instead of one to the muster. While it is not supported in BotE, I have allowed in my campaigns for the players to take advantage of an influx of new peasants fleeing Saxons (such as when Essex is established, and Anglia later). In those cases, I have allowed the players to use the village building rules from BotM. However, do note that this is a bit in contradiction to the space rules for improvements in BotE. Technically, such a new village ought to take a space, too. All the above being said, if you want to say that most of the county (Salisbury?) is underpopulated and that there is plenty of space to expand, just ignore the space restrictions (or make them like 10 spaces per £10 manor) and use the BotM population growth rules or something like that. Historically, the population in Europe was in decline during the migration era, although during the High Middle Ages that the KAP society more accurately represents there was a population boom. Even so, it took like 250 years for the population of England to double (and that is based on the most generous estimate), so even during that 'boom', the population growth per generation would be much more glacial, less than 10% per 25 years. But that could give you a reasonable-ish natural population growth, saying that the £10 manor gets +£1 village every 25 years or so, absent any demographic issues. Alas, Salisbury is likely getting raided during the Anarchy and then again during the Saxon Wars, so I could easily see the population remaining pretty flat, over the long-term. Even if it notches up during the long peace between Badon and Yellow Pestilence, the Yellow Pestilence is sure to knock it back down to Uther levels or even below.

Lots of Trolls in them thar marshes, I hear. Also... 483 would be perfect to set up some of the Saxon trouble that breaks out fully in 484. Have her kidnapped by some Saxon raiders from Nohaut or Deira, and the PK, helped by his friends one hopes, has to rescue her. Makes the Mt. Damen a bit more personal.

Nah, pin it on me all you want! Even my players are already convinced that I am out to get them, and my online GM avatar is the Eye of Sauron, so... "It is not me, it is that EvilGM Morien from the forums who is at fault..."

Happy to have been helpful!

On Hindsight, it would have been better to take the Market Town bonuses out of Assized Rent and just apply them to the Customary Revenue. Spaces, being actual physical space, shouldn't increase with market town & other trade bonuses. It doesn't matter if there is no trade or booming trade, the borders of your land grant stay the same. Thus, I would base it on the basic AR without trade boni. Note that the whole Trade bonus is more of a reflection of imported goods being cheaper, rather than an increase in production. It is just a conceit that this saving is expressed as an income bonus, like it says in BotW, p. 11: "The advantage of these centers of commerce is that local and regional trade benefits the neighboring lands by making it easier to acquire outside goods, so they are cheaper. This general and widespread savings is expressed as income." *long sigh* I was comparing £10 manor having 1 space and building 1 vaccary, vs. a £100 estate having 10 spaces and building 10 vaccaries. Former pays £15 (1.5 times its basic annual income of £10) and gets £2 income out of it (+20% boost to its basic annual income of £10). The latter pays £150 (1.5 times its basic annual income of £100) and gets £20 income out of it (+20% boost to its basic annual income of £100). Thus they both scale in building costs (x1.5) and accrued benefit (+20%) in comparison to their basic annual income (£10 or £100). Now if they already have built something else, then no, the +20% to CURRENT income is not the same as +£20. But that was so not my point. Is it clear now? You actually can do this, but the system very much doesn't like you to: "One new Improvement per £10 Assized Rent can be accommodated. Beyond that, an Improvement can only be made on arable land, reducing income by £2 per used space." I think a lot of your confusion is due to the fact that you are, if I remember our previous exchanges correctly, using an older, unrevised version of Estate? The revision was a major overhaul.

Fully agreed on both points.

So this issue came up in a Discord chat, and I figured I'd post about it here, where it is easier to find and for people to comment on. In short, I am not a fan of this table. For those who don't know it, it is basically a Skirmish resolution table, where the unit/skirmish commander rolls battle and it tells you how the NPCs did in the Skirmish. However, during the Battle resolution, it is rolled EVERY ROUND. That is where the problem lies, since even a successful Battle roll entails 10% casualties (mainly wounded). Not that bad, right? Well, the problem is that in a typical Battle, you end up rolling half a dozen times, and end up with casualty rates around 50% (10% dead-dead), and that is when you are supposed to be winning! If you fail even once, it cuts your followers in half, which would be a cause for a rout there and then. While the sources for the medieval battles are not always the greatest for numerical accuracy, we can take a look at things like Battle of Bouvines, where the losing side lost about 10% of their knights as killed, and another 10% as captured. Granted, I am sure that there were some wounded who escaped, too. Battle of Hastings is considered to be quite bloody, and it is estimated that maybe about 50% of the English side died, based on the count of named individuals (so take that with a grain of salt). But that is the losing side, not the winning side. I also dislike the fact that the Followers' Fate Battle roll is totally separate from the Unit Battle Roll at the start of the round, since surely that roll should indicate how well ordered the unit is, etc? Now it is possible to crit UBR and fumble FF, or vice versa. The final criticism is that now that the group bonus no longer exists, there is no real impact on the Followers' Fate Table. It simply never comes up if your eschille's NPKs are dead or not. I have some thoughts about that too, but I think I will save them for later. As a quick fix, though, here is what I would personally do (if I tracked Followers' Fate, which I haven't, since there has been no point): 1.) Instead of a separate Battle roll, simply use the (C.) Unit Battle Roll to determine the fate of the NPKs, too. If you fumble as a unit commander, the NPKs will pay the price. 2.) Since the roll in Battle is per round rather than simply the end result, halve all the casualties in Table 6.4B. This still gives high-ish casualty numbers, but at least they will be a bit more reasonable over the whole battle.

Lots are different from spaces. Lots are simply 1/10th fractions of the total income (BotE v1.3.2, p.44): "Every holding is divided into ten Lots, each of which represents ten percent of the holding’s full, undamaged Assized Rent." They are simply used for the damage & reconstruction calculations, basically a unit of a simplified accounting. The whole Estate is treated as a single entity. (But, if you want to use the constituent manors in your own game, feel free. Especially if they are outliers, so not the whole Estate got raided. That's what I do in our campaign, treating one £50 contiguous estate as a single entity, while the earlier £10 manor counts as a separate one. Also, note that raiding the full £50 estate would require 5 times the manpower to raid a £10 manor, too, so it does scale up appropriately.) Spaces are defined on p. 76: "These Improvements require space to build: Horse Herd, Leprosarium, Mellisarium, Orchard, Sheep Herd, Vaccary, Vineyard. One new Improvement per £10 Assized Rent can be accommodated." So your £100 estate would have £100/£10 = 10 spaces for the space-limited improvements. Each Improvement is for a SINGLE improvement. So if you build a dairy (Vaccary), it costs £15, provides £2 income and takes one space (BotE v1.3.2, p. 93). It doesn't matter if you build it on a £100 Estate or a £10 manor. What matters is that the £100 Estate has 9 spaces left, which you could, if you wanted, fill with dairies as well for a total price of £150 to build, £20 income and 10 spaces used. Also note that the building time scales with the size of the estate, too: "Each £10 of Assized Rent allows one improvement to be built per year. If more are built, then extra outside labor must be brought in. This adds fifty percent to the cost." So both the £10 manor and the £100 Estate can fill their available spaces (1 and 10, respectively) in 1 year with dairies by paying 1.5 times their annual income to build, and gaining +20% to their income out of it. It all scales, you see? It is also possible for the £100 Estate to build up a variety of space-limited investments, say 3 horse-herds, 3 vaccaries, 2 vineyards and 2 sheep herds. They do not all need to be the same investment.

Just to note that 'One Lot' is just 10% of the Estate, no matter what size. It is just a tenth, a fraction of the whole, not an absolute measurement.

Just off the top of my head... I figure the easiest way would be to make an opposed Iaijutsu contest, and assign +5/-5 to the first round of combat. Assuming that both start with swords sheathed, in a duel situation. In the case of a surprise attack, allow instant readying of the sword on a successful roll, and hence avoid the +5/-5 rearming penalty, as you are already swinging and defending yourself.

Nice Boon and Bane tables, and on a glance, the personality traits ought to work, too, although I would simply reverse the Pagan traits that are in conflict with the traditional Christian ones. I.e. if you roll Chaste for a Pagan, treat it as Lustful and vice versa. Otherwise, you will actually give Pagans 'religious vices' 33% of the time when you do the 1d6 roll, instead of virtues. As for the lack of personality in Entourage wives, I feel compelled to point out that they were follower wives, not intended to be full characters by any stretch of imagination. So, you know, hands tied by the design intent.

I have not had problems with this. Thing is, I am willing to be reasonable about it. For example, the PKs noticed that they were being shadowed by bandits in Forest Sauvage. So when the time came to go to sleep, they opted to keep their armor on. Like you would, if you expected a night-time attack. Now, if they had to do that several nights in a row, I might actually make them roll LAZY to see if they can get a good night's sleep despite being uncomfortable (hooray, finally some benefit from being lazy!). And then start giving them fatigue penalties. But riding around while wearing your armor is uncomfortable rather than tiring as such, although I could see it becoming very uncomfortable during a hot summer's day, thanks to the gambeson. Fortunately, Britain is pretty temperate. My point is, there is enough trust at the (virtual) table that I let the PKs show reasonable paranoia, and don't actively work to 'grief' them when they are out of armor. That being said, occasionally shit happens. For example, there is that night-time sortie by Gorlois. It makes sense that the PKs would be out of armor, since the guards should be raising an alarm in time, etc. It makes sense that they would be out of armor when they are attending Pentecost Feast, etc. But it also makes sense for them to wear armor when they are adventuring in a forest filled with bandits and monsters, or patrolling the border with hostileLevcomagus or Wessex during Anarchy.

I think the 'crust' applies more towards 16th century onwards: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bathing#Medieval_and_early-modern_Europe Medieval people did do regular bathing, albeit perhaps not quite as often as modern people: http://www.medievalists.net/2013/04/did-people-in-the-middle-ages-take-baths/ Also, people are people. The difference is in training. The medieval knights certainly trained in their armor and were used to the weight, and the rigorous weapon training would leave them stronger than the modern office workers. But they were not 'monstrously strong'. You put a modern man through the same training regime, and the chances are that the modern man would be bigger, healthier and stronger than the medieval knight.

Given that the game doesn't make a difference between SIZ 12 and SIZ 18 knights when it comes to horse endurance, I wouldn't bother penalizing the horses even if the knight wears armor. YPWV, though.

I think you are probably thinking of this, on p. 186: "In most cases, a knight doesn’t ride around the countryside fully armed and armored, due to the discomfort caused by weight and heat, so a packhorse is needed as well." However, it is a comfort issue, and very much depends on circumstances. If you are riding on patrol and expect to be called upon to fight on a moments notice, you sure as heck will wear your armor and just suffer the discomfort. If you are travelling in wilderness teaming with monsters and bandits, yep, you are wearing the armor. If you are travelling on King's Road from Sarum to Camelot in the middle of Romance Period, you might opt for comfort, since the risk is negligible. During Uther and Anarchy, I'd let the PKs wear armor pretty much whenever they travel outside the manors and castles of their allies and lieges.