Morien

44 minutes ago, Oleksandr said:

I'm not sure about this. It said that in BKP "Market Towns recover their purpose. Income bonuses from both are once again applied. Arthur also franchises many new towns to be Market Towns. Around 515, he begins granting new privileges to Market Towns...

...These changes benefit the inhabitants directly, and the local population indirectly, by making goods easier to access. The general and widespread saving of the rural populace is expressed as if it was income. Each hundred that includes a Market Town now gains..."

I was a contributing editor of that book, with my responsibility being the Economic system. I know how Greg intended the Market Town bonuses to work. The bonus is +10% during Boy King, not +20%, which is how I took your question originally. However, with that being said...

AFTER the Boy King it is a different ballgame, and I think you are onto something there. We can argue that by late Boy King (i.e. after 515), some market towns might get a higher bonus, and by Conquest, the boni ought to be +20% throughout. I would not have a problem with that, as the defeat of the Saxons opens up new trade routes to the continent and the disappearance of Saxon raids and internecine warfare makes it easier to conduct trade over longer distances. It fits well with the idea that post-Badon opens up a Golden Age for Britain under Arthur. So if you want to start sprinkling +20% boni around after 515 rather than after 518, I think you would be justified in doing so. I'd keep it at first more of a bonus for specific market towns (rewards for Eager Vassals and maybe even PKs who have caught Arthur's eye, indirectly rewarding them with a bonus to their finances) and then upgrade the general bonus to +20% from Conquest onwards.

So yeah, rereading your question and the text, I think the 515 mention was Greg foreshadowing the increase of the bonus for CONQUEST. In short, sorry for being so curt earlier. Good catch.

Oh, and yes, the market town bonus would increase the income of the PKs' manors in the same hundred. The peasants would not be paying any more taxes, since those taxes (rents) are likely set by time immemorial to be what they are. However, as it explains in the text, the easier access to markets and the increase in trade results in savings, which is expressed as income. I think you could also argue that the rising urban populations mean a higher demand for food, so there might be an increase in the monetary value of render, too, in comparison to craftsmen's goods. The details are not that important, though.

1 hour ago, Oleksandr said:

From BotW (101): "Each hundred that includes a Market Town now gains a bonus of £1 per £10 (ten percent) of render. Round off decimals to the nearest tenth." 1) so, from boy king period onward market towns provide 20% income bonus? that would make total bonus (town+port+city+woods) +50%?; 2) i understand correctly that this bonuses affect everybody in area, and commoners just pay more taxes due to larger income?

No. Uther and Boy King give +10% per market town/city/port, while Anarchy is 0%. See page 11, Table 1.2.

On 11/16/2022 at 4:44 AM, 1d8+DB said:

You could also use it to to create a narrative frame-work that you could then slot your  PD/BRP 'mini-campaigns' into for a generational/supra-historical game.

Interesting. I might have to take a look at that, just out of curiosity.

3 hours ago, SaxBasilisk said:

 

One of my players has asked Arthur for permission to build a prisoner-of-war camp for Saxons. His hope is that he can recruit some of them for his own nefarious purposes.

How would you go about creating such a thing? I'm thinking 12 Libra, 2 Libra upkeep, check to Cruel, access to questionable Saxons.

Upkeep is going to be a hell of a lot more, if they are just sitting there rather than working in the fields for their food. £0.25 per Saxon, I'd say, and then you need to add the guards, £0.5 per 5 or so (no guns here). Round it to £2 per 5 Saxons to have some admin/officers as well.

Now, if you are going to march them from the prison camp to the fields to work, then the prisoners would likely do enough work to feed themselves. Probably even more, since they are presumably healthy males. So it might even become profitable. Congratulations, you have rediscovered latifundia slavery.

Of course, if this is pre-Badon, they are very likely to escape if they have the chance and make their way back home. It is not as if they are half an Empire away and their home kingdom having been conquered by the Romans.

6 minutes ago, Questbird said:

Since you can earn karma by being true to your noble warrior's path, even sacrificing yourself for the cause can be a sensible role-playing option.

What Darius and I spoke about earlier also gets this effect: Since you are effectively playing a one-shot (or a mini campaign), it doesn't matter so much if the character survives. You are going to fast-forward to the next generation anyway. So it is better to go out heroically if the opportunity presents itself, than survive as a coward. Which is the story you'd rather have told of your previous character in the next generation, after all?

I made a con-adventure that was pretty explicitly about that. Where the right choice was to embrace that sacrifice and die heroically so that others might live. Worked very well, IMHO.

Yes, what Darius said.

That was my experience when I was trying to do a generational Middle-Earth campaign stretching the whole of the Third Age. I got bogged down with trying to cover the whole lifespan of these long-lived Numenoreans. While I tried to rush things forward with decade-long sessions, it kinda was the worst option: it was too high-level to allow for much RP, while still taking up time with trying to make sure that things were happening. The campaign would have been better if I would have just focused on a couple of adventures and done bigger timeskips in between them, rather than spending sessions basically on Winter phases and solos.

I came out of that GMing experience convinced that it would have been better to focus on a single grand, pivotal adventure or a mini-campaign (of 10 years or so, like the Kin-strife) per generation, and then just fast-forward through the 'routine bits' to the next major event.

There is also this webpage, which gives you knights based on the Book of the Warlord's Warlord Generator:

http://pendragon.uplink.fi/?tab=knight&nr=1

3 hours ago, RandomNumber said:

On the offchance, did I read the scenario right that there will only be 2 combat rounds in the tournament (as they are in the Valorous Posture and there is only one Battle turn) ? So, the chances of capturing even a single knight whilst using rebated weapons are slim at best.

Correct. There is just one Battle Turn, and "In a regular Encounter, a knight with the Valorous Posture must fight for two Combat Rounds before the Encounter ends."

KAP 5.2, p. 133 (emphasis mine):
"3. Improve an Attribute, Trait, or Passion: You may raise or lower any one Attribute, Trait, or Passion value by 1 point."

It is clear from the context that RAW is that you spend your Yearly Training to lower the Passion.

However, personally I think that is too harsh on the PK's progression, since it can take a decade to lower a passion this way. At the very least, using the 1d6+1 roll instead would make more sense. I also tend to allow the lowering of a passion when the target of the passion does something that would merit it. I.e. if the liege lord rules in favor of another knight in a court case, that could be grounds for your loyalty/homage to be lowered by 1.

So while I think you are right by RAW, it would be better, IMHO, to allow the player to lower the passion without sacrificing the character's development.

2 hours ago, ArkSvid said:

Cocktail Roulette

Obviously the sign of the place is rooster's tail feathers on a wheel that spins. I don't see a problem. 🙂

I'll just say this:
Agravaine is such a pleasure to GM. He is so easy to set up as a foil to the PKs, and he can be as petty and vindictive as you want.
One of my favorite GM experiences was when the Players (via their PKs) had to debate whether they would like Agravaine or Mordred as their new liege lord (marrying to the sole Salisbury Heiress after some stuff had gone down). The winning argument was along the lines of: "Mordred seems chill, so even if we pass him over in favor of Agravaine, the probably will defer to his big brother. Whereas if we slight Agravaine by selecting his kid brother instead, he will devote the rest of his life making ours a living hell."
Opinions may vary whether or not getting Agravaine as their liege lord was worth it...

49 minutes ago, SaxBasilisk said:

Lot is better than Ryons in terms of obscurity, but not by much for a new group that hasn't read Malory recently. I feel there's another fix, but I can't figure out what it is.

Well, if the Players are playing through the GPC, they have met Ryons twice in battle (well, once pre-battle, captured), and Lot several times. They ought to be familiar with both names. I admit that Ryons makes little sense thematically, since he has nothing to do with the May Babies, while Lot would be very much involved with that theme.

The skills are way too low, Gawaine's (and the rest of the Orkneys') skills are not even match for most starting PKs (apart from DMG). And Sir Kay is a SIZ 9, 3d6 weakling, even though he is only in his mid-20s. Sir Gaheris probably shouldn't even be knighted yet, given that Gawaine was only knighted last year (technically possible, if Gaheris was knighted way early), even Agravaine is a bit debatable.

In short, I would ignore those stats for the canon characters.

There is a designer's foreword (at least in the 1e Grey Knight) saying that he was going to use King Lot as the Grey Knight, but was overruled by Greg. Make of that what you will.

I repurposed The Grey Knight as a continuation of The Tournament of Dreams, since the PKs at that time were sworn to Cornwall, and not at all friendly with Arthur. So the Grey Knight was actually a former PK who had fallen for the former Queen's wiles, acting as her champion to try and oust King Belinans. It was Sir Dodinas who took up the challenge (instead of the default version's Gawaine), and the PKs needed to get the whetstone in order to get through the enchantments woven on the Grey Knight. It worked like a treat, and the Faerie section let me play around with the timeline to add a sense of urgency.

I'd use ToMT, since it should be more correct for the later editions. I forget if it still has the suspiciously low 1e stats for npc knights. But you can certainly steal some bios and other material like that from 1e adventure. 

12 minutes ago, Grimmshade said:

I'm sorely tempted to buy the 5.2 PDF, but it feels like an impulse buy when I'm really wanting 6e.

Do you have a gaming group eager to try KAP?

In that case, you could easily run a mini-campaign with 4e and the free stuff:

The rules of 4e and 5.2 are mainly the same. Sure, there are some minor differences, such as Double Feint doesn't exist in 5.2 anymore, and the chargen is a bit different, too. But the bones of the system are very much the same, so if you learn the play the game with 4e, it is almost the same as 5.2. And what we have seen of the KAP 6e rules so far in the Quickstarter and The Great Hunt, it seems that the fundamentals (opposed rolling, stats, traits) do not change all that much, so 4e will work very well as a training set for 6e, too.

Point is, the 4e + free stuff would cost you $9.99, from the Chaosium website: https://www.chaosium.com/pendragon-classic/

That is about a single movie ticket, or half of a pizza, or a Big Mac meal.

Frankly, you are much better off buying the 4e pdf instead. 

42 minutes ago, mandrill_one said:

@Primo Cavaliere, from my experience, any knight created with the rules of editions 3-5.2 (including of course edition 5.0) is pretty much compatible with any other edition, so you shouldn't have to worry too much about this aspect. I think BoK is really a good choice for beginning playing in a short time, since it gives you fast but complete(-ish) creation rules. Then, when you receive your 5.2 rules, you can go in deeper in any rule details you would like to.

My only caveat with this would be that there are some significant differences between the core 5.x and BoK&L chargen, in particular when it comes to the Luck Tables and Regional Trait Modifiers (free 6 trait points, 3 towards the Chivalric, for Logres people). BoK&L Cymric Luck Table hands out tens of libra, magical items and animals, whereas the 5.2 Luck Table might just give you a bunch of denarii on a poor roll. Personally, BoK&L Luck Tables would be great for minor magical items as quest rewards, but a bit too much to hand out at chargen, whereas 5.2 Luck Tables have some way too cheap items, IMHO. Perhaps not surprisingly, I like the Book of Sires table the best.

The above is to say: as long as you use the same book for all characters, they should be starting from an equal playing field (theoretically, if they chose the random determination that might cause differences, but that is up to them). But using different books for different players would set some characters at a disadvantage.

On 9/3/2022 at 5:27 PM, Btchoutex said:

Ah, thank you! That makes sense. Oh, btw, I recently saw a reference to a cool "eligible ladies/wife" NPC generator you made at one time. Is that still available anywhere?

The generator lives on my hard drive, but here is a link to where I posted a bunch of ready-rolled ladies:

9 hours ago, Btchoutex said:

Ah, thank you! That makes sense. Oh, btw, I recently saw a reference to a cool "eligible ladies/wife" NPC generator you made at one time. Is that still available anywhere?

Not sure, but you might try to take a look at the Nocturnal forum archives... I thought I had posted like 1000 random ladies there. Or maybe it was the Discord channel. Anyway, I can do that when I have a moment, probably in a few days. 

39 minutes ago, Btchoutex said:

Is “difficulty factor” a 1st edition thing? Did 1e use a resistance table like older CoC or something? Or is it just referring to like a -5 modifier or similar? Me no understand.

It is a 1e thing: "Sometimes the gamemaster assigns difficulty factors, a number which must be overcome by the knight’s resolution roll."

Thus, some things had 'difficulty' associated with them, meaning that you rolled as if it was opposed, with the opponent's roll being a success equal to the difficulty. Rolling against a difficulty 5 meant that if you rolled anything from 1 to 4, it was still only a partial success. The later editions removed this and instead assigned a negative modifier to the skill roll.

Mathematically, it works pretty much the same:
Assuming skill 15 and difficulty rating 5, you have 20% chance of partial success, 5% draw, 45% success, 5% critical, 20% fail and 5% fumble.
Taking Skill 15-5=10, you get 45% success, 5% critical, 45% failure and 5% fumble.
Since you have to beat the difficulty rating, partial success or a draw = failure in what you were trying to do, so you can see that these are actually the same.

10 hours ago, Percarde said:

First edition had more skills, like language and culture, for each of the of the backgrounds which were deleted in the next editions.  3e is the oldest version I would recommend.

Agreed. 1e also has some scaling issues compared to later editions, both in Glory and in character statistic values. So it is not as easy to use other published material. 

My preferred bang for the buck edition is 4e, since it is combining 3e + Knights Adventurous for pretty much the same price fir the pdf. Also, bring set in 531, it is at the heyday of Arthurian Golden Age, time to adventure and knight errantry. 

1. Base skill is capped by Horsemanship. Bonuses and penalties (situational modifiers, passions, magic weapons) are added afterwards.
EDIT: OK, the wording could be better: "No effective Weapon Skill value may be greater than the rider’s Horsemanship Skill value, although all Combat
Modifiers still apply and may boost the limited value above the Horsemanship cap." The problem with using 'effective Weapon Skill value' here is that 'effective skill' in KAP 5.2 means the skill you roll against, AFTER modifiers (see Ambrut's fight example p. 143). I think this question has come up before, though, and it was confirmed that a passion should boost your Weapon skill even above your Horsemanship. Hence why I prefer the wording 'base skill', cap that by Horsemanship, and then add everything else.

2. Knockdown is calculated first and then damage is halved.
EDIT: [The Adventure of the Sword Tournament, p. 6] "the base damage—i.e., the damage dealt before the victim’s armor or other factors reduce it—is compared to their Knockdown value, which is the same as their SIZ Characteristic." Other factors include, IMHO, the rebated weapon damage halving.

3. Armor does not protect against falling damage.
EDIT: I don't think this is explicitly said in the Quickstart, but it is the way it has been in KAP forever. I doubt it has been so dramatically changed and not mentioned.

4. Quickstart is silent on rearming IIRC. You can certainly read rearming as a full action, in which case the opponent gets to roll an unopposed attack. Or use the 5.2 combined action rules. Or even make it a free action. Or maybe allow the knight to defend himself (Ie opposed roll) but not cause any damage if he wins. You'd normally defend with your shield anyway. 

My favorite is the White Horse. Trait rolls,  some fighting (tournament style)  and moral choices. However,  you might want to check this forum for posts about it since there are a couple of very poor design choices (or at least phrasing) in the trait tests that might take the PKs out of the story early.  My pref is to roll the opposite trait to the temptation and not only do you have to fail that, but you have to succeed in the temptation trait as well.  And finally, it only delays you one failed horsemanship roll. This keeps things tense until the end rather than take a PK out on the first roll. 

5 hours ago, Mugen said:

So, at least, we have one NPC with a skill above 20. 😄

Isn't he the old host? Plenty of time for exp checks and Glory. 

You are absolutely right about the previous experience though.  Shows what happens when posing in a hurry...