Luca Cherstich

OK, not strictly an error...but I rolled a PC's past in Acquitaine and he happened to be Roman (there are so many Roman cities there in that table).

However, once you start rolling the year events, you notice the amount of battles that Acquitanians do against the Romans.

At the end of the day I guess those tables cannot predict every bend in the story and some GM/player interpretation is required (in my case I ruled out that local Roman/Romanized are somehow obedient to the Acquitanian Kings, as their equivalent in Britannia do with Cymric kings, even in wars against other Romans).

Furthermore this book is sometimes difficult to combine with BoK&L, especially in terms of how it fits with father origin and starting wealth in BoK&L. But again, I guess that trying to make the two things working perfectly together would have been complicated and (again), some degree of GM/Player interpretation and creativity is required.

3 hours ago, Luca Cherstich said:

p.6

"435: Grandfather marries and starts gaining yealy events"

In reality he just marries on that year...yearly events starts only in 439!

I just realized that this implies the d20 glory mentioned on page 7 ("Glory gained prior to 439").
However, the "Yearly events" reference is still wrong, since you do not roll for them.

Other two things on page 6

- the character should be born on 464 (as per normal story in Core rules) not in 463 (they must be 21 on AD 485).

- the father should be born on 439, not 438 (he must be 21 on AD 460).

EDIT:

I just noticed that the book says that one turns 21 at the end of the previous year, so everything should be OK....or at least I hope to have got it!

p.6

"435: Grandfather marries and starts gaining yealy events"

In reality he just marries on that year...yearly events starts only in 439!

Another "Ethnic/Religious" oddity.

Page 49 seems to suggest that in Brittany there should be more Cymric RC than among the Cymric in Britain.

However, table 1.9 on page 13 suggest that all the Cymric are BC (while only Romans are RC).

Is it a typo?

Or maybe it should be changed with something like: "C/BC or RC"  ???

Page 11, Cambria table.

The inhabitants of Cheshire are defined as Cymric Pagan....However, this conflicts with Book of the Knights & Ladies page 22, where people from Cheshire should be British Christian.

Right or wrong?

I know "Cheshire" has roman roots in its name and the area is known for the "City of Legions".

Maybe giving Roman Christian religions or Roman ethnics is too much....but Pagan Cymrics seems to be an exageration on the other side of the spectrum!

What's the correct religion?

Old names, new names, old names again...

We really needs a Pendrgon Atlas with Gazetteer and maps....especially for those of us who are not very expert with British local geography!!

OK, it's been a while....what's the status of this book's pdf?

Does it include all the errata?

I bought it from Drivethroughrpg (before Chaosium took back Pendragon) but the file there is still updated to "5th February 2019".

I like to print my PDFs....but I also prefer to print them if they have not too many errors.

So...what's the status of the pdf there?

Is it OK to print?

OK

2 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

Yes, but most people wouldn't know what the term "mymidon" meant. They might, however vaguely recognize it as being Greek and so identify it with any sort of ancient Greek thing, if prompted. I bet if you told most people that the "Myrmidons" were soothsayers that murmured warnings into people ears in ancient Greece, they'd probably believe you.

Anybody with any knowledge of the subject matter wouldn't, but most people probably would

OK...but I guess this will be a game inspired by Greek epic literature, which means that, even if many potential buyers are ignorant about the subject, this will not justify the authors to use a very specific word in a very wrong way.

I'm not going to say that these games can give you an education on classical matters, or that only educated people should play this game ... but purposively feeding badly-used words would diminish the value of such a game to a huge chunk of other potential buyers.

And let be frank: this is not Dungeons & Dragons.

The percentage of potential buyers who also had some kind of "Homeric" knowledge (or at least some basic notions) will be much higher than in most popular Rpgs.

The same is with KAP which is a game based on medieval literature, but not all KAP players and GMs have read Mallory or Geoffrey of Monmouth....but the author did it! 

Nevertheless, using Mallory's words in a wrong way would certainly not be a good service for such an excellent game.

I know what "Romanization" is, and the whole academic problems linked with use/misuse of such a word, as well as the concepts of culture/ethnics...etc.... (I earn a living with that kind of things...)...

But KAP is not real history/archaeology and, considering what we have known of Roman Knights/Equites thus far in KAP,  it sounded so odd to me to have country knights defined as Romans since most of the Roman Equites seem to have loyalties to Cities rather than to feudal lords, and therefore I suspected that they had more urban ways of life...

But never minds!

As far this is a conscious choice and not an error!

I've noticed that we have also Roman of Caerwent who are Icenii by tribe (Sire page 9, Table 1.3).

I like complexity and variability among the KAP knights!

But to have ROMAN knights from countryside I see mechanical problem: the Loyalty (city) passion which they all should have according to BoKaL page 48.

And in particular:

• If I build a "countryside Roman" from Dorset using the BoKaL rules....why should he have a Loyalty (city) passion and not a Loyalty (lord) passion?
• Do we have any clarification about the relationship between the old Roman Loyalty-City and the new Homage passions of Estate/Warlord/Uther books? As far as I remember it was never made explicit.

This is something which is very odd for me...

But again, I have no problems for the Book of Sires to mention coutryside Roman(ized) knights: we just need a note somewhere explicitly telling what their Loyalty passion should be.

On 1/24/2019 at 1:27 PM, Scotty said:

Yes post here for now.

 

Page 11. Table 1.5.

The "Tribe: Durotriges" of "Homeland: Dorsette" are said to have the following Culture/Religion: R/RC (Roman/Roman Christian).

Isn't that wrong? 

Shouldn't that be "C/BC" (Cymric/ British Christina) like the Atrebates of Silchester (same table) who also have a Roman city in their land??

Exactly!

This is such a great book!
Just one question: in the old Nocturnal forums there was a section for reporting possible errata ... .what about this forum?

20 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

If it's the Bronze Age then Bronze Age, or Men of Bronze (which supposedly they were) or Heroic Age, or some such might work. Any idea just how far back they are going? 

I guess we need to wait until the authors say more about the content of this game.

Calling it straightly  "Bronze Age" may suggest that this game is about historical Bronze Age or at least what in the "academia" is defined as the Bronze Age of the Greeks (which mean Mycenean and Minoan), and there's so much scholarship on the matter to give material about it.

However, I got the impression (Maybe wrong???) that this game was also about the mythic heroic past (am I wrong?), which is not the real Bronze Age, but the Greek Myths = the way that Archaic, Classical and Hellenistic Greeks thought about and re-created the (lost) Bronze Age past through mythic stories which may have some Mycenean roots, but completely re-created and re-viewed to "Classical" Greek eyes.

I mean: I may be wrong, and only the authors' official comunications can cast more light of what exactly this game is supposed to replicate.

57 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

Just about any interesting, non -generic name will. Anything that invokes an image of any type, such as Hoplite, or Spartans,  will too closely identify the game with one aspect of the culture. Conversely, anything more generic, such as Ancient Greece, will seem bland and non-descriptive. So it's tough to pin down

It's not so extreme with all words, and the words you consider "generic" maybe they more specific that it seems.

I proposed "epos" since it is the very specific ancient Greek term about the genre this game should mimic (IF this game is really about the Age of Heroes / Mythic Bronze Age Greek Heroes).

Even "Before Iron" is not generic (IF the reference to the Hesiod' metallic age system is implied).

On the other hand "Spartans" or "Hoplites" is about the wrong age (From Archaic times onwards...while here we are dealing with Mythic Greek Bronze age), while Myrmidon is too specific.

13 hours ago, TrippyHippy said:

but way too bland

It's too bland only if the reference to Hesiod' age system is ignored.

I understand that maybe Hesiod never spelled the exact words "before Iron", but if you know the literary reference, it is clear that the title refers to Hesiod's idea about chronology.... or at least it was clear to me.

Maybe a better title can be found, but some reference to Hesiod (or maybe better: Homer!) would be very, very nice!

12 hours ago, TrippyHippy said:

Hoplite

Sorry to say it...but this will open another huge can of worms...

Hoplitism (at least in the form that we know in the Classical period) "should" not be a Bronze Age thing, on the other hand the stories about the "age of heroes" told during the Archaic and Classical times depict those heroes as armed as hoplites, but not behaving in warfare like them!

You know...the Homeric heroes seem sometimes armed with what may be hoplitic equipment (breastplates and helmets, spears and shields) but they do not fight in close-tight units, they rather go around the battlefield in chariots, just to descend from them and doing one-on-one duels on foot!!

It's such a mess!

Do we really want this game (which is supposedly "age of heroes" focused) really be bothered by such complications that a name like "Hoplite" would bear?

I mean: the name is the most important thing to define a product, it should not have any weakness...

"Epos" would be my suggestion.

Furthermore I must confess that I feel "Before Iron"  to be a much better option than "Myrmidon".

Myrmidon is the name of just a very few selected warriors (the the subjects of Achilles) from a very small, not very important place (Phtia).

It would be like playing Pendragon and calling the game "Orkney clan" or "De Ganis clan" or "Sir Galahad" or "Sir Kay"..... and not "Pendragon" or "King Arthur Pendragon" which is the name of the main ruler/dinasty ruling over the default characters types.

I would avoir words which do not define the extent of what you want to play.

"Before Iron" on the other hand is more interesting that it may look like at a first view, since it refers to something about the whole age.

It clearly refers to the "Metallic Ages System" mentioned by Hesiod.

I paste this quote from Hesiod's "Works and Days" (Ἔργα καὶ Ἡμέραι) from wikipedia (I know it's not the best academic authority...but it's nonetheles interesting).

"... then Zeus the father created the third generation of mortals, the age of bronze ... They were terrible and strong, and the ghastly action of Ares was theirs, and violence. ... The weapons of these men were bronze, of bronze their houses, and they worked as bronzesmiths. There was not yet any black iron."

I took this from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-age_system

Doesn't this quote describe what we want to play with this game???

On 12/17/2018 at 1:30 AM, TrippyHippy said:

I prefer the title Myrmidon, personally, as it is congruous to a series of related games: Pendragon, Paladin, Mymidon, Samurai, etc. 

I do not think it is, since while "Pendragon" tell you about the king ruling everybody and "Paladin" tell you about what kind of character you play......"Myrmidon" does not, unless the players can play ONLY warriors from Phtia...while I hope the game will allow to play mighty Homeric heroes from all over the Homeric / Ancient Greek Mythic world.

"Achaen" should be comparable, since it's the word which Homer uses to refer to the Greeks, but I do not know if the game make you play also Trojans and their allies.

However I would rather use Homer's direct words like:

"Sing, of Goddess!" (the Incipit of the Iliad) or "Tell me, o Muse!" (The incipit of the Odissey) since the GM has to invoke the Muse as Homer did!

That would be epic!

But if we need just a "1 word title"  to exemplify the genre this game is replicating I cannot think about any other word but the ones that the ancient Greeks used to define it.

The word is "EPOS".

That would be perfect, since it would include also heroic deeds which happened before the War of Troy, including the previous generation of heroes.

"Epos" is the genre that this game should mimic!