Getting Back Into The Game, looking for some advice.

[Foxworthy]

So I've been playing Pendragon off and on since 1993 but I'm coming off a 4-5 year break. A few of my friends have been constantly asking to play again so I figured I'd dust off the book (figuratively in most cases as I usually use my pdf's) and start a new game.

But I'm a bit overwhelmed.

Last Time I played I used 5 or 5.1 can't 100% remember, GPC, Book of the Manor, Book of Knights and Ladies.

Now my options are them plus the book of Battle, Book of the Warlord, Book of the Estate, Book of Uther, Book of Armies, Book of Sires and probably at some point Book of Feast.

Now I want the players to have the most fun they can have, and they love the manorial type system but for some reason book of the estate seems cumbersome to me compared to manors, and harder for me to explain to them over the internet.

So I'm just looking for some advice on what I should focus on, and what books overlap and aren't as needed.

Thanks.

[Percarde]

Book of Sires is good.  Book of Warlord, I'd just use the chart for different appearances for NPCs....

 

Estate and Warlord will give you economics rules but, in my opinion, they aren't great.  I think Morien has posted something about not using hundreds.  His advice is usually worth considering as he looks at things from a player's perspective.  I think he either wrote the rules for the economy system  but from reading his posts, I get the feeling that whomever edited it, they should have left it as he wrote it.  I could be wrong but just judging from his posts.

[Morien]

10 hours ago, Percarde said:

Estate and Warlord will give you economics rules but, in my opinion, they aren't great.  I think Morien has posted something about not using hundreds.  His advice is usually worth considering as he looks at things from a player's perspective.  I think he either wrote the rules for the economy system  but from reading his posts, I get the feeling that whomever edited it, they should have left it as he wrote it.  I could be wrong but just judging from his posts.

Both Estate and Warlord are majorly Greg's vision & work, with the scattered holdings of the barons, hundreds, assized rent, production and all that. The math is my doing, so to speak, as well as the lion's share of the revisions of Entourage and Estate, with Greg giving the final approval. Basically, if you have the old, unrevised Estate and the new revised Estate, you can see the changes. My effort was mainly trying to make the economics as simple, consistent and scalable as I could, and make sure that the math worked out. And when I say simple, I mean that the bones of the system are simple:

For each £10, you have:

Army: 1 knight (first one is the PK himself) + 3 foot soldiers

Standard of Living: +£1 to the standard of living (starts from £5)

Discretionary Funds (i.e. the income left over that the PK can actually use): £1

That is ALL the player needs to know, and the GM doesn't need to much more than that. You don't need to get stuck on the differences between the Customary Revenue and Assized Rent and Other Income and Production. All that is in the background, and can be left there without problems.

If new investments (from Estate) are built, then the PK will get to keep the income during his lifetime (i.e. it becomes part of the Discretionary Funds) and when he dies, the holding is reassessed and the investments are counted as part of the Assized Rent instead. Hence, they increase the Landholding Glory after that.

As for simplifying the thing further, I generally use just £10 manors in our campaign, although I have allowed the PKs to build investments which will break this symmetry when a generational shift happens. Even then, I feel no need to follow holdings down to £0.1, of which the player just sees £0.01 = 2.4d. Rounding to full £1 is enough.

In our campaign, I also use the old GPC's territorially concentrated nobility, i.e. the Count of Salisbury rules the County of Salisbury, more the continental French model of Middle Ages. This conflicts with the Warlord's scattered holdings approach (the Anglo-Norman model, introduced by William the Conqueror to make his barons less able to rebel against him, drawing from his own experiences both being rebelled against in Normandy and his own rebellions against the French King). Greg based Uther's kingdom HEAVILY to the historical Anglo-Norman England, so Warlord got the scattered holdings that are, IMHO, harder to GM.

I prefer the 'mini-kingdoms' approach, that when you cross a county line, you have to deal with another Count with his own quirks and motives, rather than having a patchwork of different nobles, most of them absentee landlords. This might be what Percarde was referring to earlier, since I don't really have that much use for the hundreds: I have manors as the basic economic unit, and then I am happily dealing with just counties on the macro level. Not to mention, 20 or so counties & counts is much easier for me to keep track of than hundreds of hundreds and 50 or so Barons of the Sword: "So you arrive in Wuerensis, which, surprise surprise, is ruled by the Count of Wuerensis." It also helps the Players, IMHO, as it is much easier for them to grasp who the major players are and where their power base is.

11 hours ago, Foxworthy said:

So I'm just looking for some advice on what I should focus on, and what books overlap and aren't as needed.

See this thread:

 

Edited April 20, 2020 by Morien

[fulk]

Which books you use/want will depend a lot on your playing style.  Obviously the core rules and GPC are the most necessary.  If you focus primarily on the big picture of battles and adventures and don't get caught up in the details, those two a probably enough. If you want to know the hidden economics and who is in your household, you might want Estates/Warlords and Entourage.

Uther and Warlords give a lot of "fluff" background that is very cool if you like that sort of thing being detailed for you.  However, you could also just decide who owns Castle X as fits your campaign.  I would suggest that there are not really any necessary rules in either book.  I personally find that level of background a bit restrictive some times. 

As Morien noted, the primary result of Estates and Warlords is that 10L supports one knight and 3 foot soldiers and figures you 1L to spend.  I would suggest it is much simpler than Manors.  You don't do any estate management.  You just get 10L.  The hundreds thing is just a gimmick for keeping track of larger holdings.  You can easily still organize everything around manors as Morien does.  You could very easily do without Estates & Warlords, but Estates does have rules for investments, some minor fortification rules, and similar things.  Warlords has random holding generation that will scatter your Honour all over Logres...and a lot of castle defensive values for various periods. Again, what is your playing style?  Do the players care whether their manor has carved lintels or an orchard?

Entourage is really only necessary if you want to have detailed NPCs following you around.  Otherwise, you can just pay 1/2L for a foot soldier.  If your Wife is a real-ish character, the supports in BoEntourage might be the way to go, but if she's just in the background producing heirs, then you don't need it.

Like most people, I use a mix.  I got obsessed for a bit with land holding and got a hold of the Domesday Data, which Greg also used for Estates/Warlords.  I made an excel file that lets you chose individual holdings and their "value", writes up a charter, and then maps out their location use another software (R-stats) so that I can easily map player or NPC holdings as they get complex.  The excel file follows Estates and Warlords, sort of, but doesn't use either manors or hundreds but individual vills listed in Domesday. Totally unnecessary...but I enjoyed building it. In the end, 10L gets you 1 knight and 3 soldiers. At the same time, I've always been a fan of the old Nobles Book. 

 As for Battle, the BoBattle and Core Battle rules differ quite a bit.  BoBattle is much more detailed with the conroi choosing different maneuvers each round.  I personally like the core rules better as they are a bit more simple.  At least most of the time.  Sometimes BoBattle can be more fun, but again you need to like the detail.

[Hzark10]

I would talk to your prospective players and see what they are thinking of.  If they want to focus on battles and like a detailed system, the Book of Battle. If they want to play after Arthur takes the throne, then the old books for scenarios might be the way to go.  Book of Uther, Entourage, Grand Pendragon Campaign, and others dive into details that you may or may not need.  Morien has very good advice throughout this forum and is very active.

[Atgxtg]

On 4/19/2020 at 4:20 PM, Foxworthy said:

So I've been playing Pendragon off and on since 1993 but I'm coming off a 4-5 year break. A few of my friends have been constantly asking to play again so I figured I'd dust off the book (figuratively in most cases as I usually use my pdf's) and start a new game.

But I'm a bit overwhelmed.

My suggest is start small. You do not need all of the supplkments and ad-ons to start a game, or even to run a full campaign. Just start the players off as squire or even household knights and run them though a few simple adventures to get everyone more comfortable with he game. Then you can add stuff in depending upon your personal preferences and experience. Only run what you feel you can handle- you can always add stuff later if you wish, or just satick with the core rules.

 

On 4/19/2020 at 4:20 PM, Foxworthy said:

Last Time I played I used 5 or 5.1 can't 100% remember, GPC, Book of the Manor, Book of Knights and Ladies.

Now my options are them plus the book of Battle, Book of the Warlord, Book of the Estate, Book of Uther, Book of Armies, Book of Sires and probably at some point Book of Feast.

Now I want the players to have the most fun they can have, and they love the manorial type system but for some reason book of the estate seems cumbersome to me compared to manors, and harder for me to explain to them over the internet.

That's odd. In play the reverse is true. The Book of Manor is cumbsome to use and very time consuming while the Book of the Estate is simple and fast. In my last campoaign I used the Book of the Manor and we'd spend half the game session running the PKS lands, while in my current campaign we use the Book of the Estate and spend less than five minutes running the lands. 

 

On 4/19/2020 at 4:20 PM, Foxworthy said:

So I'm just looking for some advice on what I should focus on, and what books overlap and aren't as needed.

Well the first one I'd suggest would be the Great Pendragon Campaign, as it give a solid timeline to run the game.

Second would be the Book of Knights & Ladies assuming that you want more options for character generation.

Next would be  the Book of the Estate. It does overlap with the Book of Manor, but it is much simpler to use and covers more. It, along with the Book of the Warlord, help to give the economic system a bit of a facelift, and helps to show how much (or little) money is floating around and what everything (and everybody) costs.

 

IMO the above three are they key books that a GM should probably have/use. The rest are more dependent on what areas of the game the GM wishes to expand upon, and thus their importance will vary more from GM to GM. Even Estate, above could be pushed down into the lower category if the GM and players do not care to do much with the manors. That said, all of these book are good

 

 

After that, I'd suggest the Book of the Entourage, as than covers all sorts of support staff, wives, player squires and so on.

Then I'd suggest the Book of Uther, since it expands the timeline back to 480, but if you don't want another five years of campaign, you can ignore it.

The Book of Battle and Book of Armies are both mixed bags. On the plus side the BoB gives you a more detailed battle system where the players can actually influe the coruse of the battle. Also on the plus side the Book of Armies gives you a lot of pre-generated armies to use instead of the two sample armies in the core books. On the negative side the Book of Battle is a bit more complicated than it needs to be, and some of the unit stats in the Book of Armies are questionable (there are a handful of overpowered/super units in the book). 

The Book of Feasts does help to flesh out feasts, and is fun, but I'd give it a lower priority than any of the above, as it over covers feasts. If you do get it though, make sure to get the cards that go with it.

 

The Book of Sires gives an expanded system for determining family history. The book is very nice and served me well when running a "prequel" game, but it does cover the same group ans the previous history section in the core rules, and little of it will actually come up in play. So I'd give it a lower priority (sorry, it's a good supplement, but IMO not as important as the previous ones).

The Book of the Warlord would be one of the lowest priory books. It's a very good book that gives a good deal of insight into the nobles (i.e. warlords) but since the typical Pendragon campaign is centered around vassal knights, the book is a low priority. Yes, it's nice for a GM (or player) to know just how many men a given  baron or duke might have at his disposal, or how much pocket money he has to spend, but as far as standard play goes, the answer is probably going to be "more than enough".

 

 

 

At the Bottom of the list is the Book of the Manor. This book looks interesting, but it tends to take up a lot of time to play, and can be easily exploited to the point where it becomes a self-perpetuating money maker.  Almost (90-95%) of what it covers is better handled in the Book of the Estate or the Book of Entourage, and there is really no reason to use this book. Morein and I even coverted over the last few remaining investments to Book of the Estate standards and posted them on the forum. 

 

 

 

[Foxworthy]

Thank you all, I'm going to take some time and sift through all the info provide. It's all a great help!

[KungFuFenris]

Book of the Manor does something Estate doesn't.
It explains how the day to day Manor life works. And what a lot of the personal in BotE actually does.

[Atgxtg]

21 hours ago, KungFuFenris said:

Book of the Manor does something Estate doesn't.
It explains how the day to day Manor life works. And what a lot of the personal in BotE actually does.

Where?

From what I've seen it mostly just gives very short descriptions of the retinue, which is covered better in the Book of the Entourage, and then focuses mostly on manorial improvements and the harvest.