Required books?

[Klingonsylt]

Not sure how to formulate this question but i was wondering which (if any) of the "expansion books" require another expansion book to use. Can i for example use only The Book of the Entourage and The Book of Feasts without using The Book of the Estate? 

[Tizun Thane]

Yes, you can

You only need the Book of the Estate to fully understand the book of the Warlord, and Book of Armies is useless if you don't have Book of Battle.

 

[SirUkpyr]

2 hours ago, Tizun Thane said:

You only need the Book of the Estate to fully understand the book of the Warlord, and Book of Armies is useless if you don't have Book of Battle.

I would disagree.

While the Book of Armies is more useful when used with Book of Battle, even by itself it can be useful in terms of figuring out who the PKs are facing during any round of battle. It creates good flavor text for the GM to use.

[Morien]

3 hours ago, Tizun Thane said:

You only need the Book of the Estate to fully understand the book of the Warlord

I would disagree about needing Estate for the Warlord. Was there a particular section you had in mind? Like the various investments in Estate? I'd argue that the high level play works fine without them. Although I admit that Castles will be a nice addition so that you can build your own / upgrade as the Baron of Somewhere.

IMHO, each expansion book stands fine by itself. Perhaps a bit too fine: Estate - Warlord - Uther form this continuum that repeats a lot of the information already in the other expansions to make them truly standalone. But admittedly it does lead me to feeling that there is a lot of repetition and it would have been cleaner to have Book of the Landholdings or some such with all the estate & honour building info, as these differ mainly in scale and detail rather than in type. And leave the world detail for Uther. But I am sure that there are people who feel differently, too, and and these are the books that we have. 🙂

[Atgxtg]

4 hours ago, Klingonsylt said:

Not sure how to formulate this question but i was wondering which (if any) of the "expansion books" require another expansion book to use. Can i for example use only The Book of the Entourage and The Book of Feasts without using The Book of the Estate? 

None of the expansion books require another expansion book to use, although, as has been pointed out a few books are far less useful than other, and in one case a supplement is basically incompatible with a couple others.

The Book of Armies: is comprised of pages of troop composition and stats for various armies that could be fought. It is designed to be used with the Book of Battle, which comes about as close to being required to use the Book of Armies without actually being requited. The tables and stats provided would work with the existing battle rules in the core book, replacing the existing enemies table, and the stats could be used for NPCs in other combat situations. Some of the stats provided are a bit "buggy" with more than a few errors and contradictions, and there are a few "super units in it. Overall I'd say hold off on this until you get the Book of Battle.

The Book of the Warlord: has some economic information that uses the system presented in the Book of the Estate. You don't really need the Book of the Estate to use it, but you probably need it to fully understand the economics of it.

The Book of Uther: is mostly a "prequel" expansion to the Great Pendragon Campaign, and while you don't need to latter to use or understand the Book of Uther, the latter only gives you enough of a timeline for about half a dozen sessions, so you'd probably want the full campaign from the Great Pendragon Campaign to follow it up, even if you don't need it.

The Book of the Manor: was one of the earliest supplements and uses a detailed economic system that is somewhat flawed (it's possible to build an infinite number of improvements) and also incompatible with economic model used in the Book of the Estate and all the supplements after it. It should probably the one of the last supplements to pick up. 

 

[Morien]

1 hour ago, Atgxtg said:

The Book of the Manor: was one of the earliest supplements and uses a detailed economic system that is somewhat flawed (it's possible to build an infinite number of improvements) and also incompatible with economic model used in the Book of the Estate and all the supplements after it. It should probably the one of the last supplements to pick up. 

I'd argue that it is unnecessary, even without considering the flaws: The follower stuff is done better in Entourage (with some very useful Marriage tables & other rules, too), while the economic system, like you stated, is in Book of the Estate, as are the improvements.

As for Warlord, the Economic system is explained in Appendix D, although naturally the lack of space means that it needs to be more condensed than in Estate. Funny fact: Appendix D was written before Estate was revised, so it, in a sense, is the foundational document and Estate is the expansion.

[Atgxtg]

39 minutes ago, Morien said:

I'd argue that it is unnecessary, even without considering the flaws: The follower stuff is done better in Entourage (with some very useful Marriage tables & other rules, too), while the economic system, like you stated, is in Book of the Estate, as are the improvements.

None of the supplements are necessary, although the GPC probably comes close. That is one of the nice things about KAP is that a GM doesn't need the supplements to run it. But the supplements can all help to enhance game in some ways. 

The Book of the Manor has some things that I I hope could be retained, such as variable harvests, state of the land, random events, and even a few manorial improvements.So I think it still has some value, but it is definitely at the bottom of the list now.  Perhaps, someday,  Manor could be updated to the Estate ecomic model, and streamlined a little?

 

39 minutes ago, Morien said:

As for Warlord, the Economic system is explained in Appendix D, although naturally the lack of space means that it needs to be more condensed than in Estate. Funny fact: Appendix D was written before Estate was revised, so it, in a sense, is the foundational document and Estate is the expansion.

Yeah, as I mentioned, you don't really need Estate to use Warlord, but probably need it to fully understand the economics. Estate really shows you how much income a manor is really producing, and how little of it the knight actually sees.

[Username]

We actually use the Estate book as a basis with the GPC harvest system and the Manorial luck table with the improvements merged from like all of the supplements. Also, some stuff from the old Lordly Domains thrown in with heavy modifications. It works really well and is fast with the building up aspect. I'd say most years we spend maybe 5-10 minutes for 4-6 players to do their economic circumstances phase including building.

So, I guess my point is that there's good stuff even in Book of Manors. Still, I'd agree with the general statement and say it's not necessary. If you're really looking to streamline I'd just go Book of Warlords and skip Estate. Estate, I found, difficult to make sense of. Not as much as Manors, but still strange.

[Morien]

44 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

The Book of the Manor has some things that I I hope could be retained, such as variable harvests, state of the land, random events

Well, if you check my house rules thread, there is a link to the harvest system we use, which has variable harvests, random events and Hate Landlord. What do you mean by state of the land? Hate Landlord & natural population growth? We don't track the latter, but it crops up from time to time in Expanded Manorial Luck.

Anyway, my point was that if you already have Estate and Entourage, Book of the Manor doesn't add much. Although granted, there are a few things which are nice.

22 minutes ago, Username said:

Estate, I found, difficult to make sense of.

What parts, in particular? I am asking out of real interest, since obviously the hope was to make it understandable. Although to be honest, I wish I had told Greg to simplify the whole Assized Rent, Court Profits and Customary Revenue to a single number, and round that sucker off. There is no real need to keep track of fractions of Libra...

[Atgxtg]

22 minutes ago, Morien said:

Well, if you check my house rules thread, there is a link to the harvest system we use, which has variable harvests, random events and Hate Landlord.

Yes it does, but it is your house rule, not something included in Estate or other supplements, so we don't have any sort of offical variable income with the new ecomonic model.

22 minutes ago, Morien said:

What do you mean by state of the land? Hate Landlord & natural population growth?

No, I was accidentally thinknig of older land management rules from the Nobles Book/Lordly Domains where the state of the land affected the harvest. Sorry. Please disregard. 

 

 

22 minutes ago, Morien said:

We don't track the latter, but it crops up from time to time in Expanded Manorial Luck.

I take it that the expanded manorial luck table is another houserule? I'm not saying that bad, only that it's not something that is offically part of the game or something that most GMs are aware of. 

22 minutes ago, Morien said:

Anyway, my point was that if you already have Estate and Entourage, Book of the Manor doesn't add much. Although granted, there are a few things which are nice.

Oh, I agree it doesn't add much, but it does add some things. IMO it is the last KAP5+ supplement to buy as over 90% of it has been superceeded and it is somewhat incoptaible with the newer, better economic model. The rules in  BoM usually lead to filthy rich PKs. 

22 minutes ago, Morien said:

What parts, in particular? I am asking out of real interest, since obviously the hope was to make it understandable.

Well I miss the random harvest rolls, although I'd rather simply it down to one roll with factors such as weather and improvements working as modifiers. For instance something like replacing the flat +10 with a 3D6 roll with the various costs, and income of things acting as modifiers. Now I can see why estate eliminates that, for several reasons, especially after trying to handle several manors with BoM, but I'd like a random roll as an option for single manors.

I like (and ported over) the smaller jousting list for £1 as something that makes a bit more sense for a knight to have at the family manor instead of the the jousting arena (which makes more sense for an estate holder or warlord to have). There are a handful of other improvements, such as the winery, mostly those from latter Periods that aren't in Estate that I'd like to see return in some form, not that it would be hard to covert them using the other improvements that exist in both BoM and BoE as a guideline. 

I'd like to see the return on the manorial Luck table.

No doubt a few other things, but I'd have to go over BoM to remember them. 

It's not that I fond anything wrong with Estate, I would just like to keep more of the good stuff from Manor in some way. Yes I can come up with my own solutions but I think an updated Book of the Manor that was compatible with Estate and Entourage would be a nice thing and make BoM more marketable. I also think it could be fairly easy to do since most of the groundwork has already been done between Estate and Entourage. Right now, Manor is the one supplement that most of us recommend people not buy, as it causes more confusion and problems than it's worth. 

22 minutes ago, Morien said:

Although to be honest, I wish I had told Greg to simplify the whole Assized Rent, Court Profits and Customary Revenue to a single number, and round that sucker off. There is no real need to keep track of fractions of Libra...

I agree, although the nice part is that functionally we get to do so, anyway. It pretty much boils down to a £1 per year +improvements in discretionary funds, so it's not a big deal. Plus the detailed breakdown does help players who want to maintain a larger army or have a larger retinue. Plus the somewhat confusing nature of it all helps to keep the whole "I'm a knight, I can't be bothered with bookkeeping, let my wife and steward keep track of it" spirit of the setting, which I think is much better than the sort of shopping mall. theme park feel of BoM, where land management becomes a major focus of the game. 

[Morien]

2 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

I think an updated Book of the Manor that was compatible with Estate and Entourage would be a nice thing and make BoM more marketable.

Oh, I agree with that, but would it be profitable? That's the important question. Is it worth putting manpower into it, especially layout? At the moment, BoM costs Chaosium nothing and if people want to buy it and mine it for ideas, they can. 

Maybe if Estate goes through another revision, we might get an appendix added... Or if there is a Book of Arthur or some such, an appendix on how the landholding changes...

[Atgxtg]

16 hours ago, Morien said:

Oh, I agree with that, but would it be profitable? That's the important question. Is it worth putting manpower into it, especially layout? At the moment, BoM costs Chaosium nothing and if people want to buy it and mine it for ideas, they can. 

That is an interesting question, but also one that can be applied to anything in the line. Several other books have gotten updates and revisions. I think a more important question that if it would be profitable is does keeping it the way it is helpful or harmful to the line? I think the latter. Sure, Chasoium can make money by selling the PDFs but if that leads to confused and frustrated GMs and players who stop playing or buying Pendragon products because of it, Chasoium ultimately looses more than they gain. It's really bad when a company relates incompatible supplements for the same game and setting. 

I'll also add that with the various editions and revisions of Pendragon they really need to note which supplements are for which edition of the game in order to avoid confusion and loss of customers. 

16 hours ago, Morien said:

Maybe if Estate goes through another revision, we might get an appendix added... Or if there is a Book of Arthur or some such, an appendix on how the landholding changes...

Yeah, I think most of the missing improvements would fit into two or three pages and a random harvest table and manorial luck table taking another page each. So it wouldn't take much new material. And most of the retinue stuff is convered under Entrounage. 

[Username]

On 9/26/2019 at 3:54 PM, Morien said:

What parts, in particular? I am asking out of real interest, since obviously the hope was to make it understandable. Although to be honest, I wish I had told Greg to simplify the whole Assized Rent, Court Profits and Customary Revenue to a single number, and round that sucker off. There is no real need to keep track of fractions of Libra...

I can't say for sure because I'm unable to look at my pdf right now, but I remember difficulty in figuring out how the calculations went for assized rent, customary revenue, free income, vassal incomes, and discretionary funds worked. I was able to do so by looking at the numerous examples, but it was not an intuitive process especially considering the need to work those numbers if you're knights end up with more land. 

Personally, I wonder if some of the fees for entourage members and maintenance cost for some structures are too great from a later game perspective. In the conquest and later periods, the costs do not decrease, but it would seem as though the costs would get cheaper. There seems to be a general increase in wealth and material goods. Like a 50% maintenance cut across the board after 520. Costs are fine because they can be saved for, but maintenance is a killer. 

[Morien]

22 minutes ago, Username said:

I remember difficulty in figuring out how the calculations went for assized rent, customary revenue, free income, vassal incomes, and discretionary funds worked.

I have often regretted that I didn't push harder to include at least Table D.2 from BotW to BotE. I think it is most succinct and clear representation on how the different incomes (and expenses) combine. Appendix D in general is the blueprint document, which I was able to write from the ground up (with some limits from Greg as to including Assized Rent, Court Income and Customary Revenue all as separate values).

That being said, I think BotE p. 33 spells Customary Revenue out quite well:  sidebar "Customary Revenue = Assized Rent + Additional Income."  It also spells out Free Income: "New Investments built by the current holder can provide extra spending money, called Free Income. The holder does not owe servitium debitum for Free Income." However,  I would admit that we probably should have had an example of this, to show how Free Income adds to Discretionary Funds.

32 minutes ago, Username said:

In the conquest and later periods, the costs do not decrease, but it would seem as though the costs would get cheaper.

One thing that was discussed was that the trade bonus (BotE, p. 58) would go up after Badon Hill, as trade would pick up without the Saxon piracy & raiding. This would naturally increase the income in manors that benefit from trade. There was also talk of allowing the Assized Rent itself to increase a bit, too. All of which would add more money into the landholding system and hence make the landed knights richer and more able to knight their sons and maintain structures.

Another thing to keep in mind is that some of the structures are not meant for a mere landed knight to be able to maintain. Such as hospitals and such should require at least an Estate Holder, if not a Baron.

[YwainDigsLions]

I used the charts and rules at the back of KAP 5.2 for the Battle of Salisbury in 480 during our second session of the GPC, and it seemed to work just fine. Is there any reason I would want to get the Book of Battle or Book of Armies for future battles?

[creativehum]

40 minutes ago, YwainDigsLions said:

I used the charts and rules at the back of KAP 5.2 for the Battle of Salisbury in 480 during our second session of the GPC, and it seemed to work just fine. Is there any reason I would want to get the Book of Battle or Book of Armies for future battles?

I know I am posting this on the house forum for these products. I know also that popele who wrote these products, put a lot of work into them, and care about them, post on these threads.

But -- no. There is no reason if you are satisfied with KAP rules to switch to the supplements. As I've stated elsewhere, the rules of KAP work fine. (I do think 5.x edition's addition of Christian Knights gums up the math on Religious and Chivalrous bonuses a bit, but I simply cut them back out.)

Adding in the rules from the GPC and you are good to go. The rules are fine.

Some tabletop gamers are invenerate tinkerers. I say this not as a slight, but as a fact. And I've noticed that most of the people who talk about the supplements are also always talkinga about how they tweak the supplements to make them work. 

The fact is, every GM of KAP (along with the Players) needs to sort out how much effort/extra doodads they need to be happy running the game. Me? As above, I'm fine with KAP, the GPC, and that's all. It's all you need to have a great time.

I probably will add in a few details from Knights & Ladies if something adds more fun. And I'll pick up the Book of Feasts and the cards when I start the next campaign because it sounds up my alley. 

But at the baseline... if you are satisfied, stick with what is working. If and when you want more detail/options for the game you can go down that road. But it isnt needed.

[Atgxtg]

50 minutes ago, YwainDigsLions said:

I used the charts and rules at the back of KAP 5.2 for the Battle of Salisbury in 480 during our second session of the GPC, and it seemed to work just fine. Is there any reason I would want to get the Book of Battle or Book of Armies for future battles?

Becuase it gives you more options for your PKS in battle, more options for the enemy armies, and allows the PKs actions to influence the course of the battle. 

The way the Book of Battle works is that the unit commander makes battle rolls and then picks an maneuver for the group during each battle round, so you get a much better feeling of what the PKs were up to during the battle, and there are times when the PKS can try something  heroic than can turn the tide of a battle. You don't get that in the core book.  Battle is also nice for making a epic battle feel like an epic battle.  

The Book of Armies is nice because it essentially gives you many options to use for tables instead of the five Battle Enemies tables in the core book. While I'm not thrilled by some of the opponent, most of the tables are nice and give a lot more diversity to the enemy ranks.  

As with most of the changes and additions to the rules over the years the new books add and expand upon what already exists. But, as always there are trade offs.  There are times when I wish I was running KAP4 instead of 5.2. I think it did some things better. On the other hand there are a lot of nice additions in KAP5+ so it's a trade off.

As Creative hum has stated you don't need any of the supplements, but I'd say you might like to use some of them. All of the supplements have something to recommend them. How useful they are depends mostly on how you run your campaign and how much you want to focus on one aspect of the game or other. For example, the Book of the Manor and the Book of the Estate only really matter if the players want to improve their lands, build defenses and so on. If they don't care about that and just want to adventure then most of that stuff is moot. 

 

 

[Username]

In my mind, if I were to run a minimum Pendragon game, it would be the core rules, Book of Armies, and the Book of Feasts. Those are the ones that add the most fun for my group. The players enjoy the different charts of enemies and the feasting mechanic may be their favorite part of the game. The GPC is amazing and the second book I would get if I were running a campaign in the setting. Everything else is, in my opinion, a mixed improvement.

I like the Book of Sires, Book of Knights and Ladies, Book of the Entourage, and are undisturbed by my tinkering, but they slow down gameplay at points (character creation or winter phase) significantly. Book of Estates is good, but increases winter phase times, but not significantly like Book of Manors did. Finally, I do not care for Book of Battle and don't use it. I understand it could be appealing, but it's much too slow. I like to get a 4ish round battle done in less than an hour.

Book of Warlords and Book of Uther are both good products as they are and I use Book of Warlords perhaps one of the most of all supplements. But, they are very much setting/GM prep books. Currently, I use all of the books in my game as well as the old Knights Adventurous book for some hunting/falconry rules (it was that one right?)

[Atgxtg]

3 hours ago, Username said:

In my mind, if I were to run a minimum Pendragon game, it would be the core rules, Book of Armies, and the Book of Feasts. Those are the ones that add the most fun for my group. The players enjoy the different charts of enemies and the feasting mechanic may be their favorite part of the game. The GPC is amazing and the second book I would get if I were running a campaign in the setting. Everything else is, in my opinion, a mixed improvement.

I think it's all a mixed improvment. You get more neat stuff but at a price. Typically being more time spent on that neat stuff, or by losing something else you might like. For example the gPC gives you a nice solid timeline that you can use, but doing so limits some of your freedom. Of course you are free to pick and choose stuff from it too.

3 hours ago, Username said:

 I like to get a 4ish round battle done in less than an hour.

That's easily doable with Battle. I've gotten in 9 rounds in an hour at times. Once we became family with it, Battle plays almost as fast as the core battle system. It's only when the PKs decide to go into extended combat where it can slow down a little, because then you are fitting in more than one melee round into a battle round. 

 

[Username]

11 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

That's easily doable with Battle. I've gotten in 9 rounds in an hour at times. Once we became family with it, Battle plays almost as fast as the core battle system. It's only when the PKs decide to go into extended combat where it can slow down a little, because then you are fitting in more than one melee round into a battle round. 

Hmm, really? I don't think we can manage a 9 round battle in an hour even in the old system. I'm ecstatic and lucky to get a 6 round battle done that fast. We use a house ruled form that takes inspiration from the Book of Battle. The GPC battles are a little faster since the players aren't army commanders, but still I couldn't hope to get a 9 round done in an hour. How do you manage? How big is your group? We're anywhere from 4 to 8 players. Which definitely slows us down on the high end, but I would say at 4-5 players I'm still over an hour. Maybe even 2 for a 9 round battle.

[Atgxtg]

Currently we have 4 players, including one who is new to the game, and things go fairly quickly. For a quick rundown:

1. GM (me) enters in Round Number, brings over Starting Battle Intensity from Last Round (takes a couple of seconds, )

2. Players roll 3d6-10 for the random intensity adjustments and GM calculates the final Battle Intensity (takes less than a minute; it would be faster but I like letting the players roll for the random events instead of doing it myself)

3. GM Determines Unit Intensity by adding the modifiers for unit cohesion, terrain, battle zone and other factors (takes less than a minute).

4. Unit Commander rolls against Unit Intensity and then picks an allowed maneuver for the unit (typically this takes a minute or two for the Unit Commander to peruse his options and decide)

5. Enemy Unit(s) determined, PKs make opposed rolls vs. enemy (this typically takes about 4 minutes, maybe a little more if the PKs are fighting multiple enemies; also note that unless the PKs are going to go into extended melee with an enemy, there is no point in the players actually rolling damage when they win.)

6. Players make rolls for followers and squires (takes less than a minute)

7. GM determines and applies unit results, adjusts Battle Intensity (takes a few seconds).

Repeat as necessary

So that's around 7 minutes to get through a battle round. N actually in actual play it varies a bit based upon how the events play out. Sometimes it might take longer for the players to decide what maneuver to pick,  how to divide their skill, resolve opportunities, or fight an extended battle round, but usually it goes pretty quickly. 

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Edited October 1, 2019 by Atgxtg

[Username]

Only one question, isn't damage important for the opportunity for capture? In which case they have to do more than the MW threshold? I thought that was the sams case for them to get the victory glory too, but I may be mistaken. The loss of damage rolls is a big change and not having to calculate damage-armor-MW would speed it up. Otherwise, seems fast. I'll have to read through Book of Battle again and see how it looks.

[Atgxtg]

2 hours ago, Username said:

Only one question, isn't damage important for the opportunity for capture?

Yes, hence the reason why I noted that it wasn't important unless the Pks were going to go into extended melee rounds, which the need to do to capture anybody. Most of the time my PKs aren't going into extended melee. If/when they are fighting someone with ransom and they want to go after them, it 's different, and the battle round can take several combat rounds to resolve. Those tend to go by quick thought since the conditions of those round are already determined. 

2 hours ago, Username said:

In which case they have to do more than the MW threshold? I thought that was the sams case for them to get the victory glory too, but I may be mistaken. The loss of damage rolls is a big change and not having to calculate damage-armor-MW would speed it up. Otherwise, seems fast. I'll have to read through Book of Battle again and see how it looks.

No,  to get a unit victory all you have to do is win more that you lose (or at least tie). So if the PKs all beat their opponents they get a triumph, even if they don't really do any damage past armor & shield. If it were otherwise it would be very difficult for the group to get a victory, especially in the latter periods when the armor is better. 

So against footmen and other low reward opponents, it's easy to just roll to see who wins, roll damage on PKs as needed and just move on. It doesn't really matter if there is another  spearman or two bleeding to death on the battlefield or not. So that can speed up the battle rounds quite a bit. 

[Morien]

4 hours ago, Username said:

I thought that was the sams case for them to get the victory glory too, but I may be mistaken.

My understanding is that as long as you win the opposed roll, it counts as a (personal) victory for Glory purposes. See BoB2 p.70.

[Username]

@Morien

That's what I meant for personal glory not for triumph. I see I must have forgotten since I last looked that was how it was. 

@Atgxtg

I have a few other questions about your experience with the BoB, but I think we're really derailing the thread. Sorry.