The Adventure of the Great Hunt - a Quickstart preview of Greg Stafford's "ultimate edition" for the Pendragon RPG

[Baba]

Any theories/inside knowledge about the passions "Devotion" and "Station"?

[Voord 99]

Wild speculative theories, absolutely.  Devotion looks like it might be Love (God) - the Religious Knight has 15 in it.  

Station is tricky.  Perhaps following the rules of your knightly status, possibly encompassing some things that currently fall under Honour (e.g. not doing physical labor, spending enough to maintain a lifestyle appropriate, having your reputation impugned)?   I notice that the Champion and the Courtier have it as a high Passion.  Honour would then be more narrowly personal honour, not breaking oaths and so on.   However, I find it hard to see how often you would use Station if that’s what it is, without it overlapping an awful lot with Proud.

[Atgxtg]

9 minutes ago, Baba said:

Any theories/inside knowledge about the passions "Devotion" and "Station"?

I think Deviotion is you strongly you feel about your relgion. How you might react =if someone bad mouth's it, etc.

I think Station is probably how much of a snob you are, how sacred you view the titles and ranks of the noblity, how much you buy into the whole "divine right of kings" idea, and so forth.

 

[Atgxtg]

Just now, Atgxtg said:

I think Devotion is you strongly you feel about your religion. How you might react =if someone bad mouth's it, etc.

I think Station is probably how much of a snob you are, how sacred you view the titles and ranks of the noblity, how much you buy into the whole "divine right of kings" idea, and so forth.

 

 

[Baba]

7 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

Actually the opposite. Reifnorced Mail in KAP3-5 was 12 points while Sir Ector's refirnoced mail is listed at 14 points in the adventure. Sir Servause le Breuse's Advanced Mail seems to be equivlaent to the 11 point Mail with nasal helm but protects for 12 instead of 11.

Hm, you're right, I didn't notice that.

But there is something odd here: Shouldn't a coat of plates give better protection than a reinforced mail? Maybe the rules in the npc stat block and the pk stat block use different rules drafts.

[Atgxtg]

5 minutes ago, Baba said:

Hm, you're right, I didn't notice that.

But there is something odd here: Shouldn't a coat of plates give better protection than a reinforced mail? Maybe the rules in the npc stat block and the pk stat block use different rules drafts.

It depends. "Reinforced Mail" is something of a blanket term, as is "coat of plates", and could cover several transitional armors. For instance a close knight weave (advanced mail) with shoulder pieces, knee cops, elbow cops, and such can ofteen protect as well. I'll take a close look at the armor stuff and see if I can reverse engineer it.

[sirlarkins]

1 hour ago, Morien said:

Good spot. I suspect that this is an editorial error, though, rather than a rule change, and it should read:

"Winner: Score a critical success, or a success with a higher final dice roll than the opponent’s. In combat, this means you hit your enemy."

If you look at the tie, it says:

"Tie: A success for both opponents that is exactly the same final dice roll, or both roll a critical success;"

implying that all critical successes are equal in value.

@Morien's rewording (which I bolded) is correct: critical successes still beat regular successes.

[sirlarkins]

1 hour ago, Morien said:

Good spot. I suspect that this is an editorial error, though, rather than a rule change, and it should read:

"Winner: Score a critical success, or a success with a higher final dice roll than the opponent’s. In combat, this means you hit your enemy."

If you look at the tie, it says:

"Tie: A success for both opponents that is exactly the same final dice roll, or both roll a critical success;"

implying that all critical successes are equal in value.

@Morien's rewording (which I bolded) is correct: critical successes still beat regular successes.

[Call Me Deacon Blues]

Has anyone mentioned, knows and is willing to tell, or figured out some of the new derived stat formulas? Damage seems consistent with what it was before, though by that formula, the Courtier Knight should have a damage of 4d6, not 5d6. That might be a misprint though. I'm honestly kind of at a loss for the new movement rates. I've tried a few different formulas, none of them seem to work, and that's assuming it's still based on STR and DEX in some way, which I think IS the case, but I'm not sure how.

[Baba]

After pondering the new passion rules a bit more:

One of the main thrusts of the changes to the passion rules seems to be encouraging use of the whole scale of values? 

Three things I have not been quite happy about with the 5.2 passion system:
1) Your passion value is supposed to represent the strength of your passion. But if it does, then you should probably be affected negatively by your passion MORE often if the value is high, and in 5.2 that is the other way around. Lancelot goes mad all the time, but it's hard to see how the system could help us emulate his bouts of madness - using the system he probably wouldn't go mad at all, with his skyrocketing score in Love (Guenever). (We houseruled that the passion value doesn't really rate STRENGTH as much as it rates whether the passion is mostly a positive or negative influence on your mind. So you could be EXTREMELY passionate about something with a value of 13, but it would often make you melancholic.)

2) No one in our group wanted to use a passion with a value lower than 11 - the risk was just to great. In practice they didn't exist, at least mechanically. (After a while we houseruled that most new passions start at 10+1d6.)

3) If you reach 20, the tension is gone. You just get at +10 when you invoke the passion. We found that a bit boring, and also too good. (We decided to cap passions at 19 without exceptions.)

Looking at the new rules, they seem to at least partly adress my first and second complaint. You passion affects you more negatively if you cross the 16+ threshold, and it now makes more sense to invoke low passions. Looking at the pregenerated characters, they all have some low passions.

The change from +10 to +5: I'm not sure, but I think it will be fine. I want passions to be a BIG influence, but +5 IS very good. And if it's a famous passion, you will still have a shot at the +10 with a crit.

Consequence-free failures at lower scores than 15: Cautiously positive. It will make people actually use those passions. And with the lowered bonus for a success, maybe a bit more passions tests won't be a problem. I'm a bit iffy on a result of "no consequence, nothing happens" - but I guess there is SOME consequence: You don't get the inspiration you need. There is a small dramatic beat in there, too: Your devotion to God (or whatever) wasn't strong enough, you have to make do on your own. 

Exalted Passions: Very sceptical. I would have liked to see passions capped at 19 to keep some risk, now you are instead encouraged to get them to 20+ to get those sweet exalted bonuses. But there is a note about negative modifiers there. We seldom use any modifiers on Passion tests, maybe we will be encouraged to add more negative modifiers to passion rolls in 6th?

Short madness: In 5th, I think we've had characters storming into the woods and disappearing for months maybe... five times in five years? And all of those have been great for our game and that character. I don't think 1d6+5 days would have had the same impact. But: We finish most years in one evening. I've heard of a lot of games where that isn't the case, and in those games disappearing for a year could probably be a lot more disruptive.
 

Edited October 18, 2020 by Baba

[sirlarkins]

17 minutes ago, Baba said:

 Exalted Passions: Very sceptical. I would have liked to see passions capped at 19 to keep some risk, now you are instead encouraged to get them to 20+ to get those sweet exalted bonuses.

Not to get into what's not in the Quick-Start, but I'll just mention that there's a rule in the full system that makes having too many Exalted Passions a double-edged sword...

[Baba]

4 minutes ago, sirlarkins said:

Not to get into what's not in the Quick-Start, but I'll just mention that there's a rule in the full system that makes having too many Exalted Passions a double-edged sword...

Sounds good!

[Voord 99]

An interesting detail is that Disheartened has been folded into Melancholic - in fact Melancholic is more like Disheartened than what used to be Melancholic -, and so that -5 hits you after the situation that provoked the Passion roll.  This is another thing that encourages you to roll Passions (in this case Famous ones), as a failure doesn’t affect your chances during the critical situation where you call on the Passion.  Plus, you get Glory for Melancholy, and a fairly generous award at that.

[DreadDomain]

The Quickstart looks very good and I am looking forward for the full release (even if I have on my shelves KAP 3, 4, 5, 5.1, 5.2)

A few quick comments in no particular order:

I like the logo and the cover but I am not too enthused by the general look of the QS. The borders, the colors, the faux medieval arts. Not to my taste.

I like the renamed Appeal. I wonder how Appeal will be used in this edition and I am curious to know if it will influence some skills that are closely related.

No Intelligence. To be honest, I was not expecting intelligence to make an appearance in KAP 6E... but I would have liked it. I generally like when attributes serve as a base for skills (or influence them) and many skills could have been influenced by APP or INT and a number of them by DEX and CON. Again, I am just stating a preference, not really a critique.

There is a  plethora of things that seems to have been tweaked and I generally like them:

• How Passions work
• More general Weapon Skills
• Horsemanship limitation
• Brawling and grappling and brawling damage
• Parries with weapon other than shields
• Bonuses on damage and parry based on how you use weapons (2-handed vs 1-handed)
• First aid based on healing rate
• Segmented  armor

There are also a few things that I did not care about:

• 20(+x) annotation for skills. It looks ugly on a sheet, make the game look more complex than what it is and feels unnecessary. As expressed above in this thread, players will have to deal with skills + bonus that will bring them over 20. People will naturally internalize 18+5 as 23 and they will need to know what to do with that number. It is no different than having a skill of 23 on your sheet.
• SIZ/KD and CON/MW annotations on the sheets. Again, it clutters the sheet and makes the game look more complex.

I suspect these two features might be specific to the QS but hopefully they will disappear for the full game.

 

[MOB]

With its ruling patterns and marginalia, Simeon Cogswell's beautiful layout of our new Pendragon 6th Ed Quickstart 'The Adventure of the Great Hunt' is designed to evoke a medieval manuscript. (The last image is from the Manesse Codex, an actual medieval manuscript, for comparison).

[Baba]

I like that layout and those illustrations a lot!

[beardo1976]

Love the new layout and look, I especially like all the medieval style illustrations.  I’m not so excited by the logo though, if your going for a medieval manuscript style internally, why not lean on that same theme and make the logo more in line?  

[Videopete]

The layout is pure sex appeal 👌

[Prixel]

I'm still not clear on my opinion on all the changes that are proposed for the 6th edition in the Quickstart, but I'm looking forward to testing them.

Reviewing these new rules, I have a question:

The section "Armor, shield, and Parry Protection" (page 6) reads as follows: "Armor and shields absorb damage; parries block it.

The total value of the loser’s Armor Protection is subtracted from the winner’s base damage. If the loser rolled a Partial Success, they may also apply the Shield or Parry protection value of their shield / weapon. The difference is the actual damage the loser takes "

What is the difference, if any, between "absorbing" damage by armor and / or shield and "blocking" with a parry?

Thanks and long life to Pendragon!

[Morien]

41 minutes ago, Prixel said:

What is the difference, if any, between "absorbing" damage by armor and / or shield and "blocking" with a parry?

Semantics, it would seem. Shield and Parry seem to occupy the same 'slot': giving you extra armor protection when you get a partial success.

[SDLeary]

5 hours ago, MOB said:

With its ruling patterns and marginalia, Simeon Cogswell's beautiful layout of our new Pendragon 6th Ed Quickstart 'The Adventure of the Great Hunt' is designed to evoke a medieval manuscript. (The last image is from the Manesse Codex, an actual medieval manuscript, for comparison).

I have to say, this is a beautiful layout, and it is much more readable on screen (to my eyes at least) than any of the 5-series layouts. I hope that carries over to print... choose paper wisely!

SDLeary

[DreadDomain]

5 hours ago, SDLeary said:

I have to say, this is a beautiful layout, and it is much more readable on screen (to my eyes at least) than any of the 5-series layouts. I hope that carries over to print... choose paper wisely!

SDLeary

That's interesting, I was thinking the opposite. I don't mind the layout for the QS (or a short supplement) but for the core book, I would find it way too distracting and difficult to read. I tried to unpack it a bit and besides the fact that I don't like faux medieval artwork (that's only a matter of taste) I find the garrish colors or the borders and the tables too much and the dividing lines running across the pages too distracting. I suspect removing those lines and perhaps changing the main color of the bottom border from red, blue and green to only one of them (perhaps red to match the color of the headings) would ease it on my eyes.

Like I said, I don't mind it for a short supplement and, taking a step back, the QS looks beautiful.

Edit. Sorry, don't want to nitpick on this, let's focus on the great things of the QS

Edited October 19, 2020 by DreadDomain

[SilverSeraph]

17 hours ago, MOB said:

With its ruling patterns and marginalia, Simeon Cogswell's beautiful layout of our new Pendragon 6th Ed Quickstart 'The Adventure of the Great Hunt' is designed to evoke a medieval manuscript. (The last image is from the Manesse Codex, an actual medieval manuscript, for comparison).

Love everything about the QS with the exception of 2 things:

1) The illustration of the knights on p. 19 clashes with every other interior illustration in the whole document.

2) The font used for the cover title (white) and section headings (burgundy) doesn't strike me a particularly medieval.  Would like to see something more gothic like in the actual medieval manuscript.  If I had my druthers such a font would be used throughout, but I know you have to think about readability.  Still, more a more gothic font in the section headings would go a long way to give everything that much more of a medieval look, in my opinion.

[MOB]

Our Pendragon 6th Edition Quickstart preview 'The Adventure of the Great Hunt' is now also available at the Chaosium itch.io page, along with plenty of other free downloadable Chaosium content:

https://chaosium.itch.io/the-adventure-of-the-great-hunt

[Tizun Thane]

First. I love the cover, and the interior art. The adventure itself is fun as hell.

Otherwise, there is a bit too much rule changes to my taste.

• The passion rules. I will not comment now. I have to think about them. However, madness should be in months, years, and a real drawback.
• DEX keeps a character upright or horsed. Oh yeah! The horsemanship roll was a mistake.
• Attempting First Aid on yourself is done with a –10 Skill modifier. Love it. Good compromise.
• the new weapon skills. A good idea.
• The initiative rules. Why? The actions are simultaneous.
• If damage is greater than the sum of the loser’s SIZ and their horse’s SIZ, then the horse is knocked down too! Love it.
• the loser is knocked down. They begin next round on the ground. If mounted, they suffer 1D6 damage from the fall, and drop
  their weapon and shield. The fallen character drops his shield? What?!
• First Aid may be tried just once per wound, restoring a number of Hit Points equal to the wounded character’s Healing Rate. Interesting, but powerful. I prefer more gritty games.
• Horsemanship Limitation:  The Horsemanship Skill limits the value of all Weapon Skills employed while riding. No effective
  Weapon Skill value may be greater than the rider’s Horsemanship Skill value. It's a terrible rule. Like really bad. KAP is about playing knights. A horseman. Cheval-ier (horse-man), Caballero (horseman). The rules should favor a man fighting on his horse, not the contrary.
• Fighting multiple opponents. The new rules are very gentle for the players. I prefer the old ones.
• The armor rules. They look more protective. The old armor rules were protective enough to my taste.
• Does the parry bonus of the sword add to the parry bonus of the shield? If the answer is yes, it's really powerful.
• Lions should be scary monsters, not a joke.
• The Hit points of the monsters have changed ? It's not the old Tai+Con formula, but Tai x2 ?