Call Me Deacon Blues

Yeah, basically Book of the Manor has been replaced by Book of the Estate, and it's got family survival tables in it too, so I do recommend it, but you can get by without it if you only have money to get 2. I really enjoy Book of Battle 2, and find it an improvement over the first one. You didn't mention if you have Book of the Entourage, if not, it's pretty good for rules on marriage, wives, squires, and some detail on servants, though a lot of the servant stuff is also presented in Book of the Estate. Books of Warlord and Uther kind of go hand in hand with Estate, there's a lot of good info in them, but unless you're wanting to run the extra 5 years that Book of Uther adds to the GPC timeline, I wouldn't think of them as priorities. Book of Sires is amazing for generating family histories, which is my jam, and possibly my favorite book out of the lot of them, aside from GPC. Book of Feasts is fun, and it's pretty cheap too, if that helps. Book of Knights and Ladies is getting an update soon, but we don't really no how long that will be; as much as I enjoy BoKaL, I'm looking forward to it. Armies has no update, it works just fine with BoB2, and while I'd like to see a revision on it at some point, I don't think it should be a high priority.

Okay, good to know, let me clarify some of my questions. First off, where does the widow physically live? Like, let's say, the knight had 1 manor, 10 Libra, he dies, therefore wife gets 3.5 (which is what Entourage says to round to, though 1/3 of a libra isn't actually that hard to break up). There is also an adult son, he would inherit the manor, but 3.5 of it is the widow's. So he does get to inherit, but he only gets access to 6.5 L of the manor's wealth, with the additional going to his mother. Does she live in the manor house with him? A separate house on the land? Somewhere else entirely? It seems odd to me for her to live in a different house than the manor, especially since she's still contributing somewhat towards the knight, because she still owes a servitium debitum on 1/3 of a knight (my understanding would be that her 1/3 and the son's 2/3 combined would contribute to the knight in question, in this case, the son himself). And if that's the case, the son would only be getting 6.5 Discretionary fund? The way I figured it worked, while the Widow's Portion was technically hers, if she died and had no father to return to, then her liege took her in, and then basically helped him self to her fund, so long as he kept her up. Maybe I have totally the wrong idea here. I already talked over this specific instance on the Discord, I believe; she was an heiress, the PK earned more lands besides, her children are all also his children so no weird stepchildren exceptions, hers and his oldest son will inherit the land and the PK will administer it until the child reaches the age of majority, in which case her lands will be inherited by their son, and he will keep his own lands until he dies, in which case they will also go to his eldest son. I know things might get weird if the eldest child dies, and when, and whether or not he had any children beforehand, but like, he's 10 right now, so that's gonna be a bit.

I have a somewhat-related question, because I'm a bit unclear on it; is the widow's portion 1/3 of the husband's landholdings at the time of marriage, or throughout the knight's life? I was under the impression it was the former, but wanted to make sure. And while living off the Widow's Portion, whoever is her warden (such as liege or whoever he assigns) or husband, would be who actually gets the income, right? Would it be normal for the widowed mother to live with her adult son, if she had no husband, effectively allowing him to keep the income? I just wanted to be very clear, because a PK's wife did die suddenly, and now we're wanting to make sure we understand how this whole situation worked. To be more on topic, there is a family survival table in Book of the Estate that has different tables you roll each year depending on their age. That's the way I deal with NPC's lifespans. It also has some allowances for other forms of death, such as plague, siege, etc.

Eh, I never had that much trouble with Family Characteristic, since you roll that last anyway, no one was particularly able to build their characters around it, except one guy who had already decided on wanting to be good at Falconry, and then got that as his Family Characteristic by coincidence. One of the characters got the one for Singing, and even though their Singing skill is pretty decent, they always fail at it lol. Now, it might be an issue by the time of their heirs, haven't gotten to that point yet.

Honestly, I do play with the cultural skills, and that's not been my experience. In my current game, only 1 Cymric character is particularly specializing in Spear Expertise. Hell, one of them IS using a Great Axe. I might be misremembering, and I'm not b7y by book, but I thought the Roman Law skill wasn't Courtesy and Intrigue, but Courtesy, Religion, and Folklore. Could be wrong there, but if not, to be a schemer they'd have to advance 2 skills, same as a Cymric knight. Either way, if you don't want to use them, you could just as easily split them into their component skills and not raise them as one, and it wouldn't change TOO much. Just be more It would only be an issue for the few cultural skills that aren't just combos of existing skills, and even then it's not insurmountable; like, For the Huns' Pony Defense skill, which is a combo of Horsemanship and the ability to defend yourself, just let them keep Pony Defense and separate out Horsemanship. Maybe a line in the new book, assuming cultural skills are still used, outright stating that you can do this, in case it's not clear.

I thought about glory, but was trying to somewhat mitigate the issue of higher glory leading to even more glory, though I know that's at least somewhat intended by the system.

I don't remember if this is an official interpretation, or just something I did to adjudicate ties, but I went with whoever is sitting in the higher position, and then if they tie, highest App, and then if THEY tie, App roll.

With mine earlier, Player 1 got Hatred (Saxons) 8, Hate (Vortigern) 18, as well as Suspicious (British Christianity) 3, Suspicious (Vortigern) 1, and Cowardly (Big Fires) 2. It's not clear who they were inherited from, though I could probably suss it out from checking the years. Player 2 currently has a Hatred (Saxons) 21, and I remember he did inherit a greater value from his father, but I don't think it was 21 to start with. I'm not sure if that's mathematically possible. It was high though.Also Hatred (Vortigern) 16, Suspicious (British Christianity) 3, and Suspicious (Vortigern) 3 Player 3 marked down who he got what from and when; got Suspicious (Roman Christianity) 6 in 447 from Grandfather, Suspicious Vortigern 2 in 455, and Hate (Saxons) 19 in 463... Somehow she also has a suspicious (Berroc Saxons) 6, and I've barely dealt with them in my campaign so I assume it must have come from this though.

Now, I wasn't completely by the book on all of my characters, because 2 of them had already established that their fathers died on the Knight of Long Knives, which by the book is impossible. I also used a variation on the Father's class tables from Book of Knights and Ladies to determine the actual class of the father and Grandfather, and a couple of them were Esquires; I'll make note of that and put in what they would have gotten had they been knighted. Player 1, Salisbury grandfather: don't have birth year written down, but was knighted in 430 so presumably 409, and he died in 439 in the Battle of Carlion. 1680 Glory Player 1, Salisbury Father: player also didn't write down his father's birth year; annoying, but he was knighted in 451, so presumably 430.. Not sure if that's technically possible according to the book, but oh well. Died gloriously in Battle of Snowdon in 468. He also failed to write his father's ending Glory, but his starting glory was 504, so presumable 5040, though when I add it myself I got 5220. So... Yeah, I should probably not have let my players record this stuff on their own. Player 2, Estregales grandfather: 409-440, died of Illness. He was an esquire, so had 490 Glory, were he a knight by the book he would have had 1490 Player 2 father, player kept super bad records of his father. He was 28 when he died, and I think he took part in the March of Aurelious Ambrosius to explain how they got to Salisbury. His Glory was 1602, though he was also an esquire, so would have had 2602 were he knighted. Player 3, Salisbury grandfather: 409-448, died of illness, 1952 Glory Player 3, Salisbury father: 440-463, died in Night of Long Knives (this was a character choice, not something that can actually be obtained in the book), had 1242 Glory, but was an Esquire so would have had 2442 otherwise.

Thanks dude. If I had time to correct some typos and maybe update some or all of it to the Sires format, would you want me to?

I'm not connected to this in any way, but I would also be super interested in getting a copy of that, if you're willing. I'm not in a place where I would want to try running this, but as someone who would be absolutely into a Book of Sires 2 (Sires Harder?), Book of Aurelius, Book of Vortigern, etc., I'd love to see what you've got; my email is REDACTED

When I do NPCs, I usually just have a running spreadsheet with a couple very quick personality traits/stats (sometimes filled out more as they go on, unless they are already statted up somewhere else), and I'll just update it whenever they have an encounter with a short line or two ("490: sat next to Sir So-and-So at a feast"). I I also use that when making Recognize rolls, if they have never actually met a person, they have -10 to Recognize (normally, someone might not allow them to roll at all, but I figure with Glory bonuses adding to that, you might be able to Recognize them by reputation alone), have only been at the same event but had no personal encounters -5, also -5 if they have not seen each other for several years, or something major happened to them physically, like losing an eye, gaining a scar, hair going white, etc. I honestly don't try that hard to develop tons of characters beyond backdrop though, generally only a few characters really end up standing out. My players almost always have a huge love of Sir Elad, though since he's also the designated babysitter that's probably understandable. I had one group get really close to Sir Madoc, but my current campaign's players kind of thought he was a jackass.

A more gender neutral term for Lineage Men would probably just be Esquires, I think, since they are nobles, who are of age, who are not knights. As for skills, female Knights will use regular Knight stats, not Lady stats; this includes the Chivalry bonus. I do occasionally allow players of female knights to have it in their backstory that they were moved onto the Knightly track later on in life (so trained as a Lady up until say, age 14 or so, then Squired instead of the Lady equivalent, I think Maiden in Waiting?), in those cases I will allow/require them to spend their skills points on certain Lady only skills. However, keep in mind that Lady skills, like Chirurgury and Industry, are kind of seen as being beneath a Knight, so they probably wouldn't make much use of them.

Because I have a tendency to make things more complicated, I came up with a way to randomly determine what happens to a squire; basically, every year starting at 21, they accumulate a score (can't remember what I called it since I'm at work right now... Squire Departure or something), which is (Squire Age - 20) + (Squire Skill - 20) + Modifiers (generally determined by their background, so say, the son of a vassal knight has like + 5 or 10, whereas a peasant squire has something like - 15), this becomes a score that the roll against every year, on a failure, they stay on, on a success, they leave. Fumble subtracts 1 from their Departure Score, crit means they will stay only if you give them an extra 1 Libra per year (not completely sold on this to be honest).