ericvulgaris

book of feasts is my favorite supplement by my table. by far.

I just wanted to come back here and say the campaign is still going strong. I've had some notable things happen in my game since my last update. We're embarking into year 491 tonight and so far here's some wild stuff: My players nearly dying in every damn combat walking away with horrendous wounds. Had a mysterious plague combined with a spurned druid leading to family drama and a nod to Robert Chamber's works Countess Ellen died mysteriously (survival rolls + book of the entourage survival/death tables The shitshow that was the battle of lindsey: Gareth fumbled a passion roll and took off dispairingly I let him play his squire as a faux-character... who also crit fumbled a basic loyalty passion test The Earl himself got crit twice Urwen is good actually? and managed to save the earl. Urwen got a manor for saving the earl AND his beloved's hand in marriage. You can follow along on my youtube channel and i play mondays on twitch at the link in the first post.

The structure of the feud (christian/roman/feudal law) on the nature of hospitality, religious values, love, and law is on firm ground. For my game, the Earl in my game is fine with a same-sex couple. They have an heir to the manor they're already raising (basically whatever the lowest form of a regent [guardian?] is) and in the meantime they're serving as the knight in regards to service. Feel free to change the details of the genders of knights so it works better for you! RE: the stupidity of Lilo -- yes. It was absolutely brazen and reckless. Being from Cornwall, they've heard the Earl is progressive and cool and would be fine with it. And rather than consult, recklessly had a letter scribed hoping to prove themselves this year. The scribe coulda been a relative of Defi, who knows, the point is serendipitously Defi finds out about this reckless maneuver and blackmails the knights. I totally admit there's a more elegant adventure somewhere in my "Feud" adventure, but that's for another GM to write up for their own group and share it in their own thread.

alas i did not use book of sires for my campaign but reading yalls experiences has been quite fun

Just finished the first half of 488 tonight! Things are going smoothly. I've slowed down the pace of the game after doing 1 year in 2.5ish hrs back to back! In preparations for this week's adventures I wrote up some small mini-adventures that can slot into one's campaigns. I hope you like them. WHEN IN ROME... While on patrol, the knights come across Praetor Syagrius and his retinue en route to the easter feast. The Knights are welcomed into the military camp to drink and cavort with the Romans where they become the butt of a Roman custom. Do they roll with the custom or do they take offense? Setting: When: Before the invasion of Frankland (488) NPCs: Praetor Syagrius and his roman followers If excalibur has been found, have Syagrius congratulate the PKs for helping Merlin take Caliburnus, a legendary sword that ostensibly predates the fall of Troy. Locations: Praetor Syagrius’ encampment. Rigid, defensive, (look up roman fortified encampments!) Problem The player knights are invited to drink roman wine and be treated with Roman Hospitality. While drinking the Romans perform the common custom of a Coin Check! The retinue of Roman soldiers loyal to Praetor Syagrius keep loyalty coins or challenge coins with the laurel crown of Roman authority! Those with coins must keep these tokens on them all the time! Any fellow soldier can call for a coin check. Failing to present a coin means you must do menial tasks -- in this case -- refill folks cups of wine. Why was this challenged called? Did the wine go to a solder’s head and forgot they had company? Was this an intentional hazing ritual of the Cymric Knights -- A flaunt of roman superiority? (Weird flex but ok) The party, being outsiders do not have a coin and automatically lose this challenge. Do your player knights take this as an offense? A deliberate attack on one’s honor? [Test Modesty] Passing this modesty check means you take the jest in good faith and refill the cups for the next round. the soldiers admire you for being a “quick learner”. Syagrius himself, when he hears of this will clamp down on future coin checks. Failing this means you take this action with ill intent. What do you do to remedy this slight? Earning such a coin would be a great feat for player knights and a great lead into another adventure involving Syagrius. -------------------------------------------------------- The Feud Syr Glesig the Pious (She, spiritual, roman christian, imber) is in a blood feud with her neighbor Syr Marjorie(she, spiritual, pagan, west lavington). Duels of honor are one thing. But blood feuds can turn an entire county upside down. The Earl needs his trusty knights to find out what’s happened in West Lavington and solve it, if possible. Otherwise report back to the Earl. Setting: When: Anytime. NPCs: Syr Glesig, Syr Marjorie, Syr Lilo, Melangell, Defi [glesig’s servant], Cawlien [Druid]. Eiddef [Glesig’s squire], Hyfaidd [Marjorie’s squire]. Locations: West Lavington Manor The hall The manor The standing stones Problem This spring, upon a visit to West Lavington, a lowborn companion to Syr Glesig named Defi, was slain at night by Syr Marjorie violating Hospitality. Syr Glesig and Eiddef accuse Syr Marjorie the next morning of murder put on by her devil-worship. Syr Marjorie admits to killing but defends herself that she did not kill without provocation, but when pushed to explain she refuses. Secrets Syr Marjorie is in a polycule w/ Melangell (steward, nb, suspicious) and Syr Lilo (merc knight, female, lustful) in accordance to Old Breton practices. These polyamorous practices are forbidden to knights whose monogamy is essential to social stability and eligibility of heirs. A learned commoner of Syr Glesig discovered the confidential arrangement and began to extort the hosts of West Lavington. This humiliation led to Syr Marjorie murdering this commoner. At this time, the killing of a commoner is bad but a simple amount of money could cover this. The principle broken that made this so bad was the violation of Hospitality. Blackmailing your host is not hospitable, but describing the reason for the blackmail is worse. This sort of activity could easily mean Marjorie's loss of West Lavington and even dismissal as a vassal knight if she refuses to give up Syr Lilo (which she absolutely would never voluntarily do.) [What Happened] Lilo drafts a letter to the Earl about her eligibility to be a vassal knight. Stupidly referring to her relationships. Defi [Glesigs’ servant] found out about the polycule relationship this winter via interception of Lilo's letter. (Purely Accidental). During a spring visit, Defi tried to blackmail Melangell about Lilo's letter. Melangell told Marjorie about Defi Marjorie and Melangel told Lilo together Marjorie kills Defi This adventure works best when the players are given most of the information and must determine what to do with it. The druid is a good source of this. He married them all.

Awesome! I met him this year at gencon. Nice fellow!

See i didn't see an age for lady ellen in the book or know about ages being set in the Uther expansion. Thanks for pointing that out. I'll go back through and correct the ages.

Whoops! Yeah it was page 86. When a character acts against a passion got construed into my head as when a character doesn't act a passion.

Advice heard! Yeah I'll be avoiding that as much as I can. I appreciate the warning. Something I noticed in the book that I'll ask for next session is, if you did not roll a passion, it degrades by 1.

We had another great session this monday. I wanna check in here and share some of my thoughts, outline, and good takeaways. I sorta hope this thread can continue to be a good resource for new GMs to Pendragon. Learn from my successes and my mistakes! After SO many experience rolls, our poor Urwen couldn't level up to save his dang soul. Something I forgot to do: So I rolled on book of the estates special starting buildings. Colin (Syr Gareth) got an extra manse in a town that costs $1 (I put it in there as part of the dowry from lady elaine along with the 4 other demense manors). Jim (Syr Urwen) got standing stones! Incidentally Jim also was having thoughts about converting to paganism after his manor ordeals. I can't make this stuff up! So that went hand in hand for me to play up this session. I told him about what is to find and made a great opening scene (imo) to kinda show this change. My Opening Poem In the fires of a fight, the loser is reduced to ash and the winner is reduced charcoal. -- poorly converted malay proverb Opening Scene -- Dream Sequence Nightmare recall of the lake sequence where they helped merlin get the sword. I skipped the Nukalevee fight the first time because I wasn't sure how to present it at the moment and timing of the session meant I needed to keep things going. I actually like this fight and this horrific creature so I presented this fight as a weird nightmare version of the Lake. Gareth literally slew the monster in a single sword blow (he rolled a yahtzee amount of 6's on a sword crit) and that was that. I made this Urwen's Dream sequence so after it was killed I described getting lost in some mists, seeing standing stones and that three eyed giant tattooed man telling Urwen to find him! -- boom. hook into his religious changes. I'm excited about using the black goat and three eyed giant as recurring spiritual guides. Winter 486 - Christmas Feast - Uther gets the sword! I generally break down feasts by notating the location, notable guests, a gossip table, and any "cut scenes" (like Uther and the gifts!) Winter 486 - Justice Events I forgot to do these last session so we did them here. Spring 487 - Solo Events Gareth Relations event! While touring his manors he's gonna be tested against his wife. (I had this very vague other than the failure results, but due to consequences of the feast, all the events and everything really nailed it. and it turned out to be his wife trying to divorce him ploy!) [I've had a great chat with Colin about how he lucked into marrying an heiress and what that means. We agreed that historically this is unknown to players, but Lady Elaine set up that commoner to kill her husband. She's on the crusader kings-game trying to get up the social chain as a non-knight. We agreed that Lady Elaine is basically Cersei Lannister and Gareth is Robert Baratheon. She basically wants to try and kill her husband, manipulate things to keep the manor and ruin Gareth's family name, and Gareth is like kinda attracted to that and trying to avoid the social traps and prove to her together they can be a powerful team! Great stuff, right? Urwen Urwen got a single gift event--- a lucky cat! I rolled on the cymric luck table for the loot and got the cat which is awesome! I left it open to Urwen who got to show off hospitality to Roderick, request tutelage in Battle skill by his marshal, and then go find those standing stones! He didn't fall asleep but he's begun to study them. I'll be expanding my plans for these stones in tonight's prep for next week. Summer 487 - Events - Choice! Lyndsey Embassy event Raid event Players chose raid which I didn't expect. Things went sideways REAL FAST as both ate crits by wealthy spearmen eating 12d6 damage. If it werent for first aid and chiurgery, they would've died then and their that night. Fall 487 - Events Manor Raids (last year I had them roll their luck rolls ahead of time and then rolled d4 what season they come!) Fantastic Beast Raid on Cholderton Dullahan! Winter 487 - Events Winter phase! Experience Aging Household Member Survival Manor Economics Manor/Childbirth Training Glory Next year notes Weather/Manor/Conflict Results Thoughts going into next year's prep: I had a good discussion with the group again about our take on the supernatural after the mythic beast event and the standing stones to get an idea of where we're at on things. I asked if we want the Dullahan to be actually one? Someone dressed as one? That kind of stuff. I want to slow down next year and spend 2 sessions/year as we dig into more local politics, intrigue, culture, travel, and law stuff of the area. We've been zooming through the years and I want to spend more time presenting the details of the setting. My players, of course, agreed. They're super down to do more mystery solving, local justice and moral quandry puzzles, etc. The last thing I wanna share is the behavior of myself when adjudicating when to check things off. My group spoke about when things should be a check and when things instantly raise/lower stats. I think it's a pedagogical guess by us GMs with a few good rules of thumb. Most notably was if this experience in play was a teach-able moment or an indesputed learned lesson. Often a GM NPC offering in a very specific event some very specific detail earned just raises a skill right there. Ideally I want my group to keep me accountable and consistent with the glory for rolls, skills increases, traits and passion bumps.

I believe its an editing/omission error. I have no backing to support this other than it makes sense that you can game and wager at the high table assuming those proper knights and ladies would be interested!

Hello pendragon fans! I'd like to present a barebones Copiable Google Sheet of the Salisbury region for any new Pendragon campaign. Copy it to your own google drive and start editing! Here's a template partially filled in w/ NPCs from the core book for tracking things like age, glory, skills, or marriage eligibility. The main sheet is the NPC tracking sheet. It has data validation (drop down selectable entries) and sorting built in. You only need to edit the year of this sheet and the other sheets will update! The other sheet included is a place to put down manors and their associated holders and coat of arms. The final sheet is the reference sheet. It's where all the drop downs are populated from. I'm using a version for my current Pendragon campaign to much success!

Thanks for the pendragon mentorship, friend! Your caution is well advised and heeded. I don't wanna change things unless there's a significant reason. I am a new GM to pendragon but not to GMing in general having played my fair share of other games and I know how much system matters. (fun aside -- I've also played the first 10ish years of pendragon in a streamed campaign and Luke Crane and I still greet eachother w/ our Pendragon character names irl at conventions!) Helping me track so much in Salisbury required a Pendragon Excel Sheet with a list of NPC knights, stewards, ages, manors, and notes. I age people up, roll survival rolls, and sometimes solo adventures off of it. It's only 48 people long so its not too bad. 😅

I do not want to lose the generational thing, for sure. I think part of it will be randomly decided or your parents or earl deciding for you. Your family is doing whats best for their child. If I limit the number of knights who possess such valuable skills, then people will compete over that mentor! I will also take what others are saying about random values to skills as well as the valuable vs not-so-valuable skills and just make a list of +5 or +10 to a specific skill and the associated knight.

Apropos of nothing, I'm thinking the next time I do Pendragon character creation I'm going to replace that family bonus with a Mentor bonus with an NPC knight. What skill did the knight you serve stress to you? (Get 2d6 in a non-combat skill as a bonus)