Knights Under Salisbury

[YwainDigsLions]

The title says it all. I know of Sirs Elad, Rufon, Nidian, Amig, Jarran, Hyfaidd, Kenian, and Hywel. Are there any others that are named?

Also, I haven't read the GPC past the 490. If Sir Hywel wants his only daughter to be trained as a knight, will that require major changes to the campaign?

[Morien]

It just takes one heiress off the board... maybe. It depends how the society takes woman knights in your campaign. If it is not a problem then it is not a problem. In our campaign women knights are rare but accepted as knights. This includes also their right to choose their spouse just as male knights would. YPMV. 

As for the campaign question, anyone below the comital family are extras. They do not by themselves influence the plot meaningfully, unless the GM wishes them to and it is always easy to come up with other NPCs if needed. In other words do whatever you want with them, you won't derail the campaign. You could jump ahead to 496 where I think a few more names are mentioned. Again, up to you how influential these NPCs will be. 

[YwainDigsLions]

Ok, thanks!

[Atgxtg]

Yeah, it's can be as much or as little a problem as the GM want's it to be. That in mind there are a couple of points the GM should consider and work out in advance with the players.

1. Reaction: Look through he section on female characters/knights especially the part about how the various lords could react to such a character., and decide how you want to implement that in the campaign, if that reaction will be universal among all liege lords, and knights, or  vary from one to the next.  Will everybody just accept a female knight, or will they just snicker and tell her to take off that ridiculous armor and get back to the kitchen.This will be where the social aspects of this mostly kick in.  This is where most of the problems will be, both in game, and between GM and player so this is something that really needs to be communicated to the player. 

2. Inheritance: Now the GM has to figure out how this will affect how land and inheritance works. This is going to raise a lot of sticky questions that the GM is going to have answer, and those answers will result in major changes in just who will be able to afford to be knight.. Here is a partial list:

Does the eldest son or eldest daughter inherent the family manor now? Or maybe either? What if the eldest daughter is first born but doesn't want to be a knight? What happens to the eldest son if he doesn't get the land? And what happens to the younger daughters now, do they get nothing? Does a new PK get 1/10 Dad's Glory or 1/10th Mom's glory, or both? And how does all this affect the "standard marriages"?How does all this affect the universal aids (Knights of the eldest son/wedding of the eldest daughter)? What happens if a female knight marries a male knight. Does the male get control of her land per normal, or does she retain it? Can she get control of his land? What if a female knight marries a non-knight? How will all these changes affect the loyalty of landed knights? How do they feel about their eldest son's not inheriting or not even being a knight? Oh and how does all this apply to higher ranking nobles?

 

It is opening a  big can of worms. The answer to these questions will be crucial for the marriage and dynastic aspects of the game. They should also have a effect on the reactions part above too, since it will affect both the chances of sons inheriting land, but also the inheritance and probably the dowries of younger daughters, so everybody is affect in some way. IMO femle knights work best as one off characters without land, or as part of a self sustaining knightly order because that can avoid most of the issues about land and inheritance. 

Now that isn't to say that a GM shouldn't allow female knights, only that the GM needs to be aware of the questions such characters can raise and work out the answers to those questions, and then communicate those answers to the players so everyone will know how it is going to work. 

[Morien]

1 hour ago, Atgxtg said:

Now that isn't to say that a GM shouldn't allow female knights, only that the GM needs to be aware of the questions such characters can raise and work out the answers to those questions, and then communicate those answers to the players so everyone will know how it is going to work. 

Exactly.

The key is communicating with the Players, finding out what they want and how things work. I have had some Female PKs in my campaigns, and yes, the inheritance issues can crop up from time to time. For our current players, this is not an issue. They are quite happy to let the manors go to the eldest son and either play the eldest or have a daughter become a knight errant. Here are some backgrounds that they have had:

1. She was the eldest of three daughters. They split the family manor, with the agreement that the Knight Sister got £4 per year and took care of the knight service, while the other two sisters got £1 per year each and made sure that the Stewardship part was taken care of, too.

2. She was the eldest of two daughters, no sons. Since we needed to actually get her from Salisbury to Cornwall to join the other PKs, we decided that her liege lord was planning to marry her off to one of his cronies before she would be knighted. So she ended up fleeing to Cornwall and offer her services there as a household knight at first, and later earned up a manor for herself.

3. She was the only surviving child of a landed knight. No inheritance problems here.

4. She started out as a younger sister of a vassal knight, retained as a household knight by the liege of the PKs. She married into a manor, and then earned another one with her own heroics.

In another campaign, one player did ask about the inheritance issues, as she was worried that since she only wanted to play female characters (fair enough), how would that impact on her ability to retain control of the family lands and such from generation to generation? My answer was that we can easily make that a special case, even if the rest of the society would follow 'normal' inheritance rules. Easy enough to come up with an excuse that one particular estate (and any future manors earned by the title holder) would go from the Mother to the eldest Daughter.

It is only a problem if you (and the player!) want it to.

[Atgxtg]

4 hours ago, Morien said:

It is only a problem if you (and the player!) want it to.

Or if you are unprepared for it. Most of the troubles are usually when something unexpected happens. Historically the way pout was that most women warriors didn't have manors to pass down but served their liege as some sort of champion in their household. That would work, except that Pendragon plays out over multiple generations, and makes family important. 

And yes, it's fairly easy to set up a manor or two as a special case with an unusual method for inheritance. That even fits in very well with the stories and places having strange customs. But the GM has to know enough to do it. 

In my current campaign I have a female player running a male knight. At present I'll allow female warriors but not female knights. Not yet. I'm running very early, and The people aren't enlightened enough for that, and will probably have to wait until the reign of King Arthur. But one day said player might run a female knight, if she wants to. Currently though her character is the only one of the group who doesn't have their own manor yet, although her character is the steward for the groups knightly order and runs their one manor. And the order might is one way  being one way I can do an end run around the whole inheritance thing, as land stays within the order, skipping the whole inheritance thing.  

[SaxBasilisk]

On 9/23/2019 at 4:06 PM, YwainDigsLions said:

The title says it all. I know of Sirs Elad, Rufon, Nidian, Amig, Jarran, Hyfaidd, Kenian, and Hywel. Are there any others that are named?

How about the household knights Lycus, Leo, and Bar, from that sidebar in GPC?