Morien

Yeah, definitely. One of the interesting things in the whole tabletop RPing is that things change depending on the GM and the players. This keeps things fresher, I find. That being said, Uther (at least in GPC) is not supposed to be a Good King, but a Great King. He is a warrior king, seizing life with both hands and taking what he wants. And he saves Logres from the Saxons at least twice, Battle of Lincoln and Battle of St. Albans. Thrice, if you count Battle of Mt. Damen. That is not a bad record for a king. It is Arthur who is both Great and Good and ushers in the Golden Age. Uther is supposed to be flawed.

In the Nocturnal Forums, jmberry made this guess: "A minor change I just noticed is that Sir Jaradan (from the Salisbury section) has had his name changed to Sir Jarren. Given that Jaradan is supposed to be a Marshall in 531, I can understand the change to them being different characters (Jaradan would have had to be at least 67 in 531 otherwise)." Alas, given the flavor text, my personal belief is that 'Jarren' should be renamed to 'Jaradan'.

I am 99.9% convinced it is a typo, since on the south coast, we have the opposite typo: Pevensey is typoed as Devensey. I wonder if the labels were hand-written by Greg, and whoever made the labels in the map, mistook one D as P and another P as D. I mean, it all depends where the arc ends...

You are quite welcome. Besides, it is your campaign. If something later contradicts what you have established, your campaign consistency should be the key. Like Greg was fond of saying: Your Pendragon WILL Vary. Just as an example: In our first campaign, Robert was killed in the Roman War, and his son was assassinated in a tournament in early Romance, and the grandson died as a baby. This left Robert's daughter, also named Jenna, as the heiress of Salisbury. As a major heiress, her hand was pursued by such worthies as Agravaine and Mordred, and Arthur dumped the decision to the Salisbury knights: which one would they rather have as their liege lord? This led to the immortal words of one of the PKs, as a rationale why he voted for Agravaine: "If we choose Agravaine, Mordred will probably not be too pissed off about it, but if we choose Mordred, Agravaine will never forgive us." Agravaine's & Jenna's (eventually unhappy) marriage and the death of all of their three sons in the Yellow Plague were major drivers for the big plot for the rest of the storyline. Never happened in GPC, but made the campaign oh so much more interesting, as the PKs were very much mixed up in the whole De Gales - Orkney feud. Agravaine's love affair with a player-character lady was arguably the reason why the Round Table split: Jenna found out and eventually went public with it, and had Guinever's support. This made Agravaine Guinever's mortal enemy (whereas before, the Orkneys had been strong supporters of the (barren) Queen, as Gawaine was the heir), and when the opportunity came to catch Guinever herself in an adultery with Lancelot, Agravaine leapt at the chance, leading to the splitting of the Round Table. Oh, as an aside, in this campaign, Mordred was never revealed as Arthur's son, and it was debatable how much of a 'baddie' he was. A more sympathetic portrayal of Mordred, if you will.

I managed to find this after poking around for a bit: http://medievalaccommodation.com/manor/ Although as it says in the later history, most of the fireplaces and spiral stairs are from the start of the 17th century. But might do for a more expensive stone manor house in later periods? Some more examples of the larger, stone ones... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ightham_Mote https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markenfield_Hall But yeah, the Wikipedia page on Hall House ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hall_house ) that you mentioned seems like a nice resource, too.

Uther's lust for Ygraine has been a staple of the stories for a long time. Argan & Dyagenne, and Uther's duel with the former and seduction of the latter that caused the said duel, are from Prose Tristan, IIRC. Anyway, the point is that Uther as a Horndog has existed prior to KAP5.x.

Not only that. The liege has to approve the 'adoption', and he has a definite interest in not approving it unless the PK is in favor. After all, the manor might default back to the liege. Also, it is possible that there are uncles and cousins of the heiress who would also like to make a claim for the manor by the right of their blood, if the heiress dies without children of her own. I admit that I don't quite understand why the heiress would be so eager to hand over the inheritance of any of her future children, though? Even if she gets daughters, surely she would rather see her own children get the manor, become heiresses, and marry well? And yes, her daughters would inherit her manor, not those two stepsons, who have no bloodclaim whatsoever on her manor. If she adopts the stepsons, then things become much, much more convoluted. I admit that I don't know any historical medieval cases off the top of my head where this worked out... But I seem to recall that your game is actually set closer to the Roman Era, right? Then the adoption might not be a big deal; Romans did it all the time. Although it was the Pater Familias who did the adopting, and the adoptee became a member of that second family, leaving his original family... Nor were the Classical Romans feudal; the manor would count as her private property so she could just will it to whomever. It is clear this is not how landownership works in Uther's time, though. In the end, it is a big mess for you to sort out as the GM! Much easier if she gets pregnant and doesn't adopt!

Yeah, marry early and get some heirs of your own... Don't worry about heiresses yet. In fact, my advice would be to forget about marrying an heiress yourself. Instead, aim to arrange a match for your eldest son. The advantages of this approach: 1.) You have, hopefully, 20 years worth of Glory, Favors, and relationship-building with your Liege and any potential heiresses' fathers. You can cash those in. 2.) This way, your next character (eldest son) will get the heiress' manor by the right of marriage. If you'd marry the heiress yourself, then the manor would go down to HER eldest son with you, i.e., starting a cadet branch rather than increasing the stature of the main branch. (Granted, this is not necessarily a bad thing.) 3.) You can marry early and get those heirs and spares, rather than chase the heiresses yourself, delaying your dynastic aspirations for years. 4.) Arranged marriages were the norm. Also, this allows your next character to marry 'right away', once he is knighted, and start having children of his own. This way, you have a healthy dynasty to continue after you, and if you don't manage to live long enough to get the heiress for your son, then you wouldn't have lived long enough to get one for yourself, either.

Speaking of bastards... Given Uther's Lustful nature, and his habit of bedding laundresses and other pretty servant wenches, there must be at least SOME common-born bastards out there. Probably not that many noble-born bastards, save for Madoc, who is acknowledged in 480. So that might be the big difference; even though the daughter is just a granddaughter of Uther, she is still the daughter of a Prince and a former Heir Presumptive (while he was alive). And the mother is a famous knight (probably by the end of Uther Period), even if she doesn't marry Madoc. Any noble-born bastards of Uther, even if not acknowledged, could easily be used as pawns to bolster the claim of anyone seeking the throne of Logres. That being said, at least in GPC, no such candidates pop up, and the rivals for the throne try to claim it by right of conquest/might rather than by blood: Idres, Nanteleod and (to a lesser extent) Cerdic (who actually does have a blood claim via Vortigern), Ulfius and Corneus (the latter two implied in the meeting of 496). This implies that there are not any noble bastards of Uther out there, especially since (IIRC) someone (Wessex?) was trying to kidnap Morgan and Ygraine out of Amesbury Abbey in GPC to use their connection to Uther to bolster the kidnapper's claim. If there were actual known descendants of Uther running around, surely they would make for a better claim by marriage than Uther's stepdaughter or wife.

There is no such information, no. There are some indications of age in the case of some of the barons, especially Dukes and Counts, but for the vast majority of them, nothing was nailed down. Most of them are probably already married, but given how young Jenna is during Uther Period, they might be trying to fix her up with their own son. After all, Jenna's dowry is generous enough to make her very worthy of being pursued by Barons and/or Baronial heir. No one of lesser stature should even bother, unless they are like Uther's best buddy, and even then, Uther would be more likely to fix the guy up with someone else than to twist Roderick's arm over Jenna. Marrying even an 'ordinary' heiress is very, very difficult. If the father is still alive, his goal is to marry her up as high as possible, which tends to mean going after estate holders, bannerets and minor barons (and their heirs, of course). A mere normal vassal knight is not as good a deal for him: would you rather have your grandchildren being heirs to an estate holder or to a 1-manor vassal knight? If the father is dead, then it is the liege lord who controls who the heiress will marry, and he has a loooong list of deserving household knights to reward, too. People who have been with him, 24/7, for the last twenty years, through thick and thin. The PKs will need to really distinguish themselves to make up for that gap both in service time & camaraderie. And just to make sure I make my main point crystal clear: MARRYING AN HEIRESS IS NOT THE DEFAULT!

You are quite welcome. I do worry a bit that maybe the x10 is a bit too much, as you could get 70+ Glory for even a small feast and 160+ Glory for a Royal Feast. Perhaps x2, x3 and x5 would be better. Or even: Geniality < Length: x0. No Glory for you, you boor. Geniality >= Length: x1 Geniality >= 2 x Length: x2 Geniality >= 3 x Length: x5 (replaces the Most Congenial reward) I'd have to do some number crunching to see how that works, but admittedly I am thinking the x2, x3, x5 is probably the best compromise between rewarding at least some Glory and not making the Feasts too Glorious as a default. I don't mind PKs getting a couple of tens of Glory per scened Feast, it is the couple of hundred that is way too much for my taste.

I don't see this as a big issue. New players won't have characters with Traits over 20. And explaining that the minimum trait is 0, even if the other trait is over 20, is not any more complicated than saying that once the trait is past 20, it is written 20 (+excess). By the time new players get there (if ever), they are already familiar with the system. Also, this is only a problem with Traits, not with Passions nor Skills. Like I said above, I do see a small advantage in that 20 (+3) shows the die roll addition beforehand, so you don't have to calculate it. However, subtracting 20 is dead easy: for skills 21-29, you just take the 2 away. Values of 30 or over are very rare and usually only come up in very special circumstances with plenty of modifiers, in which case it is worth while taking a moment to ensure that they are correct. By contrast, +5/-5 modifiers come all the time. 23-5 = 18 is faster than 3-5 = -2 & 20 - 2 = 18.

Except I thought that it would still work the same, 17+3 = 20 = crit. Otherwise Lancelot will turn from a killing machine into a 'eh, he is good, but not that much better'. Personally, I don't see a big benefit here. A small advantage to those less mathematically gifted that the bonus is calculated beforehand, at the cost of making it even more complicated when modifiers come in and in notation (23 is easier than 20 (+3) in an excel sheet). The Glory amount is negligible.

It was "Dance of the Giants [plural]" in Histories of the Kings of Britain, by Geoffry of Monmouth, tr. by Sebastian Evans, [1904], at sacred-texts.com ( http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/eng/gem/gem09.htm ), and thus Giants' Dance. And in KAP 5.2, p. 65. Also, since the origins was dancing giants who had been turned to stone, the plural makes more sense, although I have seen the singular being used, too. Anyway, my main point is that the pre-existence of the stone circle prior to 470 Sacred Stones was based on Greg's intentions on Stonehenge, and thus is not a mistake, and whether we settle on singular or plural, it should be used throughout rather than change from year to year.

ENTOURAGE (Revised v1.3), p. 20: "All ladies (daughters of knights) have a Base Inherited Glory of (5d6+10)× 10." I don't know where you get (5d6+6)x20 from? The daughters of knight officers get x20, but the roll in parenthesis is still 5d6+10. This is where Greg's intent of Stonehenge's origins differed from HRB's. Giants' Dance already exists in Salisbury, and only SOME of the stones are transported by Merlin and ADDED to the pre-existing stone circle. (You can also see that in KAP 5.2 Family History, Stonehenge already exists in 463.) What IS a mistake is that it is being called Giant's Dance and not Giants' Dance in some pages.

I see your point, I simply disagree that a) it is just the other PKs they are competing against (as shown above, it is easy to come up with a simple roll to get the NPKs' highest number to compete against), and b) that the Glory amount needs to be that high. As said before, the exact same arguments could be made for tournaments. In my experience, the most rewarding thing in feasts is the RP itself, not the exact Glory gain (although naturally that is welcomed by the players). And based on what people have been saying, it sounds like the Book of Feasts is already successful in that by being fun. I wonder if a better mechanism would be to apply multipliers as the PKs cross certain thresholds... For example: Geniality > Length: x2 Geniality > 2 x Length: x5 Geniality > 3 x Length: x10 (replaces the Most Congenial reward) This way, the PKs would be encouraged to try to rack up as many points as possible, but it would not depend on the number of PKs nor any other PK's total. Granted, this means that the PKs are not competing against one another, but I find that generally to be a good thing. Depends on your group, obviously.

No, I wouldn't expect it to be such a big deal, either. That is why I specifically said 'Camelot'. I don't mean to be difficult here, but WHY would a most genial knight amongst a group of, say, four 21-yr old freshly knighted knights get 'retweeted' 100 Glory worth, the same as one of them soloing a Small Giant? I wouldn't have a problem with that if it was the most genial knight of ALL the knights in a royal feast, but chances are that the most genial PK would on occasion be even BELOW the average. Why would he get talked about positively? This, to me and to use Atgxtg's example, is like crowning the highest scoring PK as the champion of a whole tournament even if the highest scoring PK made a real dog's breakfast of the thing.

Does every knight go to the King's Court for that? Perhaps not every knight, but I would expect most of the landed knights, especially ones living as close as Salisbury, to make their way to Camelot for Pentecost. After all, it is the main social event of the year, and, later, likely the biggest tournament, too. If you look at the numbers of knights that attend a Royal Tournament, it is clearly a good chunk of all the knights of Britain.

I see. In that case, I'd suggest making the Most Congenial reward to be the same as Above the Salt reward I suggested in the above. And yes, this would mean that Small Feasts won't be that interesting in Glory Gain, but surely that is how it should be? Who cares that you were the most congenial knight in a family gathering in some manor in Salisbury? No one. So the Glory gain should reflect that. Yes, this is another way of saying "skip the small stuff unless important to the story" . I was referring to Spring/Pentecostal Court, with its customary feasting. These would be normal, every year stuff, and hence not worth extra glory for the rank-and-file attendees. Whereas if it is the Wedding Feast of Arthur and Guinever, then you get extra Glory for witnessing the wedding (less so about the feast itself, now that I think about it). Thanks for the explanation. I would base it for the Above the Salt numbers, so a base of (length * 2). How many Skill/Trait rolls do you have? 1 per round? Less? It is very likely that at least one knight above the salt would be succeeding in most of his rolls, and someone in the Royal Feast might even crit once or twice. So I might make it: (length*2)+rolls-modifier for the feast size+1d3 Modifier: -3 for small, -2 for medium, -1 for large, 0 for Royal. Yes, this would make it quite hard for a PK to win the Most Congenial title in a royal feast, which is how it should be, IMHO. This is equivalent to saying that you were more charming than all those Round Table Knights out there. It should be very difficult, and rely on getting good Feast Cards and acing those, too.

By the RAW he got a check, and will have to see about the trait going up. There is nothing in the RAW that says you get to ignore a check mark. Also by the RAW, you are the GM, so...  Yeah, exactly what Atgxtg said. Experience check rolls have nothing to do with normal resolution rolls. If you have a check, you roll it, and like Atgxtg said earlier, it is bound to go up since any roll is larger than 0. So it is a very bad idea to build a Coneygarth if you want to be a Valorous knight, and that was the design intent behind it: lots of income, but you are paying for it with your Valorous; Choose which one is important to you. If you don't want the Cowardly check, then don't build a Coneygarth. Easy as that.

I was referring to the design intent (the most important feast of the year) that David mentioned in his reply. I really think that the issue is more on how high the extra Glory are. 100 is heck of a lot of Glory, comparable to defeating a Small Giant in solo combat. You say that there is the most congenial bonus as well? Meaning that a single PK can easily net 200 Glory from a single feast he is hosting, which is clearly way too much. If you drop those rewards to, say: Most congenial: double the geniality glory Above the salt: +10 for small (knightly) feasts, +20 baronial feasts, +30 for comital/ducal feasts, +50 for Royal feasts. then this becomes much less of an issue. EDIT: Also, no bonus for attending normal yearly Royal Feasts. Extra Glory only when something important is happening, like the Royal Wedding or Coronation. Although I might give the most congenial knight like +50 Glory, if they win the roll below. Well, if you use the above tweak, then the congenial glory reward is unlikely to break the Glory Bank. But yes, I think you could easily enough come up with some easy roll. Assuming the 3-10 Geniality is typical, you could roll 3d6 for the highest NPK Geniality (depending how hard it is to get 10; adjust down to 2d6 if 10 should be the winner in most cases, adjust +1d6 if you are in Camelot with the charming Sir Tor). That should give you reasonable numbers rather than allow PKs to default themselves to the top.

Alas, the investments are balanced with the checks in mind. If you allow the PK to avoid getting Cowardly and Lustful checks, the Coneygarth is BY FAR the best return-for-investment out there.

Correct. I forgot to check ESTATE for that, and relied on Greg's website's info.

KAP 5.2, p.113: "The value may be lowered to 0, in which case failure is certain, or above 19, in which case success is certain." Since Coneygarth Cowardly roll needs to succeed for the Corwardly check to be gained, and he can't succeed on Cowardly 0, then he is effectively immune to the effect. I would not be too bothered by this. Even with Cowardly 1 he would only fail like once per 20 years, meaning one Cowardly check over his whole career. You are the GM, but my advice is this: Let him savor this, especially since he has spent a few years solely to boosting his Valorous. However, also notice this: KAP 5.2, p. 85: "Normally, no Trait may ever be higher than 19 or lower than 1, except through experience or by the use of increased Glory." So he needs to have used at least a Glory point to boost it to 20 (or gotten very lucky in a skill check). Also: KAP 5.2, p.85: "Such characters [Trait 20 or more] always have a value of 0 for the opposite Trait," So Cowardly remains 0 and does not become negative. Not that it has any particular effect save making Cowardly Fumbles less likely if such a roll is ever called for. (Since negative skill increases the fumble chance, -4 means you fumble on 16+. See pp. 115-116.) EDIT: Just to add, he is can still do Cowardly rolls if they are called for and hope for a fumble to get a check in the opposite trait (note that I wouldn't count fumbles in the improvement trait rolls, since it is somewhat different circumstances). Granted, I am much more partial to Valorous rolls myself, and there is a long history of penalizing Valorous when faced with long odds or monsters. So I would rather call for Valorous -5 rolls than Cowardly +5 rolls, especially since this gives the 20+ guy some benefit from having a Valorous higher than 20, even.

I was wondering if there was some kind of a limiting mechanism (as with the rule-of-thumb one adventure per session per year). Personally, I'd make the Feast the Pentecostal/Spring Court Feast, and discount any smaller ones (including any the PKs can afford to throw). I might still use the cards and such to generate events in other feasts, but I would scale the Glory gain way down. But as said, I don't own the book nor have I read it, so I try to keep away from these discussions. (I have my own little system in place which works for us.)