"Can we murder Uther...?" Players grinding against an unjust system...

[creativehum]

Here's a story an acquaintance of mine related to me yesterday:
 

Quote

I always remember when I ran Boy King back in the day the first time the PCs realized they were about to meet Lancelot (they'd already met half of the other knights of the round) and one player say:"Oh fuck. Can we not? I'd like to think there is one thing in this game that isn't utter shit."

Using that story as a springboard:

Did your players ever have a problem with the core, cultural conceits of the game? We had a good, solid talk last night, prompted by one of the players doing a heartfelt monologue about now having reading the first chunk of Le Morte, discovering “Uther is shit, what he does is horrible, horrible,” and wondering if they can murder him.

This led to be declaring:

• Yes, you could murder Uther
• But it will be hard to do, and you might not pull it off (Uther is a solid warrior, and he has many loyal men who will protect him in a fight)
• There will be social fallout that will what the game is about for a while
   

During the discussion it became clear that this player (along, perhaps, with others) missed what other RPGs have offered her in the past — what I’m now calling the “Punch the Nazi” pleasures, where the setting isn’t ideal, but you are free to go right the wrongs by being free-agents of such a type that politics, society, and culture are meaningless to you.

The fantasy is real by the way! It has its appeal! Give me show about a man or woman doing what is right despite social norms and I an IN!!!!

But as the players point out Pendragon has lots of elements right there on the character sheet that hem in the PKs against certain behaviors and encourage others.Now, the game allows you to create the character you want over time. If you behave certain ways, if you take certain actions, if you spend your Winter Phase points certain ways, you can slowly (but not easily) create something new in Mythic Britain (which is what I think the game is about in many ways).

It is an effort. Which runs counter to Punch the Nazi play.Everyone is having a good time. They tell me this, and I see it. 

But I’m curious about this larger issue, if it was a problem for play. How it played out.As I said last night, “We have…” and I counted on my fingers and finally said, “eight thousand other RPGs we could be playing. There’s no need to be playing a game that makes us uncomfortable or not what we want.”

The answer "They should accept the setting" is both obvious and dull. These are terrific players and there are in the game. But they haven't been in a game like this before. So I'm curious how others have experienced this reaction from players (if at all), how people have maybe utilized to make player better, and so on.

Edited June 7, 2022 by creativehum

[Morien]

Try to kill Uther:
Sure, go ahead and maybe you succeed. If you do it in the right place, you might get King Madoc, and Arthur is never born. Congratulations, you have changed the campaign. Let's see what happens now... If you kill him after 491, then it just means that the Anarchy comes a couple of years earlier, no biggie. Be ready for consequences, though, especially if you are discovered. (Loss of lands, knighthood, plenty of enemies...)

Side with Gorlois against Uther:
See above. Likely leads to exile at the very least, since unlike Brastias, you are fighting against your own liege lord (Roderick).

Try to avoid fighting for Uther altogether:
Definitely a valid choice as well. You might miss out on a couple of events, but that means you have more time to more personal stories, and there is always the need for garrisons and patrols when the main strength of Salisbury is away.

My players decided to side with Cornwall during the Anarchy and fought against Robert and Arthur during the Boy King. Ended up exiled in Cornwall, where now-King Mark was quite taken by their show of unwavering loyalty to his cause. Made for an interesting variant Anarchy and Boy King, let me tell you. 🙂

Also... Uther is not the worst of evils by a long-shot. The GM has Saxon raiders, bandits, robber knights, monsters, faerie and demon to throw as baddies that need punching, such as Sir Gorboduc. Anarchy in particular will be full of situations where you can fight for what is right. Whether you succeed is another matter, but you can certainly try to uphold the rights of widows and orphans, starting from Salisbury itself.

Also also, as much as the Character Sheet might hem a character in, it also can encourage heroic playstyle. High Just, Merciful, Valorous and Honor might lead you to even critique your own liege lord, if he is up to some cruel or shady stuff. And if you get punished for it... well, many of the early heroes of the Round Table did a stint as a knight errant in disfavor/exile. Just look at Sir Hervis, or Sir Ywaine and Sir Gawaine of the Triple Questers. Gawaine basically told Arthur to his face that this ain't right and walked out of Camelot.

 

 

Edited June 7, 2022 by Morien

[Hzark10]

As Greg always said, YPMV.  Sure, kill Uther the bad king.  Depending on when, things may change or not.  As Morien pointed out, perhaps you get King Madoc.  He is the acknowledged heir, and if done before the incident with Gorlois, then you might end up with Arthur not being born.  Or maybe, King Madoc is as bad as his father and he is father to Arthur via the same basic plot line.  Perhaps there is no Anarchy, either.  Lots of possibilities.  Talk to your players and see what they want.

[Voord 99]

I think creativehum is raising a more fundamental question, though, about the game not being designed to supply “Punch the Nazi”-type pleasures.  (Nice shorthand.)

I think that’s very true.  For instance, KAP makes significant efforts to be more inclusive than the sources in the area of gender, but it is fairly insistent that you should play from a non-modern (or at least, highly conservative) perspective when it comes to class and social hierarchy.

KAP  oriented towards genre emulation of medieval romance. Insofar as it’s not about genre emulation, a lot of it is about emulating the actual later Middle Ages.   KAP does a great job at those things.  But if a game does what it does well, by definition it will fight you a bit if you want a different experience.  You can twiddle the dial to some extent, but there are certain experiences where you’d be better off playing a different game entirely.  There’s nothing wrong with that.

In my group, this problem hasn’t come up, because of our idiosyncratic backgrounds and interests; we tend also to be a bit tongue-in-cheek and ironic/humorous in our approach to the game, which probably helps.

[SaxBasilisk]

My thought process is as follows:

1) I think Greg said at one point that the only characters who he thought were truly important were Arthur, Guinevere, and Lancelot. I suppose Uther is sort of necessary for  a while.

2) Uther is pretty unlikeable, unless you're running the BoU expansion, in which case he is absolutely unlikeable.

3) I interpret Uther+Anarchy as a time when flawed, unlikeable rulers stand in the path of worse rulers. The PKs know the Saxons have done some pretty horrendous things to the Britons - the Night of Long Knives, enslaving their enemies, burning churches...

4) The PKs would be aware that the last two assassinations of kings of Logres ended with all the assassins dead. Further, a Belgae (Silchester) knight was responsible* for one of these assassinations, and all of Silchester is still regarded with suspicion half a century later.

5) They would also know that attacking the king would be a serious hit to their Honor.

There's a great deal that I don't know here - where your campaign is chronologically, what exactly they dislike about Uther, whether they've thought about what happens afterward, etc. 

If this were my players, I'd at least give them the PK information in 3-5 above and see what happened next.

I'm also guessing Cerdic invades the year after Uther dies, whenever that is.

I suppose if Uther and Madoc die early, the succession goes to that prophetic eagle in the tree... He seems all right.

[merlyn]

A few thoughts (that stem more from someone with an interest in the Arthurian legend than a "Pendragon" gamer.

1. Uther's dark reputation stems from his conduct in the story of Arthur's conception, which is definitely bad - he lusts after the wife of a loyal nobleman (and in Geoffrey of Monmouth's account, the earliest version we have, he owes his kingdom to Gorlois' loyal support; without the duke's wise counsel, he'd have lost the Battle of Mount Damen to the Saxons, and all Britain might have fallen) - and one who has virtuously refused him as that (meaning that he can't seem to grasp that "No means no"), waves war on the nobleman to gain her (thereby plunging his land into civil war) and finally takes her by deception and a form of rape.  This would be enough to consider him a dark tyrant.

But I suspect that this came more from Geoffrey being eager - even desperate - to make Arthur as close to a demi-god as was possible in a Christian setting - adapting the story (told of other legendary and semi-legendary figures, such as Heracles and Alexander the Great) of a larger-than-life man who was begotten by a god in the shape of a lady's husband.  Geoffrey couldn't make Arthur's father a god and still place him on the timeline after Britain became Christian, so presumably came up with "So I'll have to make his father the king before him, who has to marry the woman afterwards so that their son can be at least semi-legitimate, and therefore kill off the husband, and the simplest way of doing that is to have them fighting over her".  (Indeed, the new setting makes the "disguise Uther as Gorlois" scheme seem a bit artificial - a much simpler means of getting at Igraine would be to break the stalemate in the siege of Gorlois' castle and slay the Duke, which doesn't appear to occur to anyone in the story.  Of course, Uther seems too overwhelmed with desire for Igraine to the point where it's affecting his health , and believes he can't wait that long.  We can also assume that Merlin's choosing this method out of the realization that a method such as this is necessary to make Arthur a larger-than-life king, and that if Uther simply married Igraine after Gorlois''s death and then begat Arthur upon her under ordinary circumstances, he'd be an ordinary king.  For that matter, these changes to make the legend fit a Christian setting raises the additional query of why the Church doesn't step in to halt Uther from his actions, such as threatening to excommunicate him if he does not leave Gorlois and Igraine alone, or at the least, deliver a Nathan-style rebuke to him afterwards.  Nor is Uther punished for his actions.  At first, his debilitating illness seems like such a punishment - but Uther then proceeds to win a major victory over the Saxons at the Battle of St. Albans, which would be unlikely if he really was under divine punishment, unless he'd been confronted with his wrong-doing and repented of it, and there is no mention of it in Geoffrey.)

In neither Geoffrey of Monmouth nor Malory is Uther reprimanded by the narrator's voice or anyone in the story - apart from Gorlois and Igraine, of course; nobody speaks up against Uther on a simple basis of right and wrong.  To both Geoffrey and Malory, the central point of the story, I believe, is not "Uther behaved like a tyrant" but "Arthur was conceived through a wondrous act of magic".  Uther's lust for Igraine, war on her husband, and deception were, to these men, just plot devices to get the story to go the way they wanted it to, that should not be examined too closely.

2. In medieval doctrine, the king was king by divine will, and if he behaved like a tyrant, it most likely meant that the people were behaving badly and the king was being used by God as a scourge to punish them, in which case, the proper response to Uther's misrule would be for the player knights to see how they might amend their own lives rather than plot to overthrow Uther - indeed, they would probably receive warning that if they did succeed, it could lead to even worse disaster (such as the Anarchy Period coming - but this time with no one to pull the Sword out of the Stone - with the Saxons ravaging the island from one end to the other).  Cf. Shakespeare's history cycle where the overthrow of Richard II, despite his being a narcissistic tyrant, results in one disaster after another for England.

3. As I mentioned above, the point behind Uther's conduct in the treatment of Gorlois and Igraine is a vehicle to give Arthur a "Hero's Conception".  Although what follows would probably be a tall order for the knights they could seek out the "powers that be" (in a long and perilous quest with many obstacles) and appeal to them to find a different way to arrange the birth of the great king to come, with a tone of "the methods you used back in the days of Heracles and Alexander are no longer lawful.  Abandon that approach and come up with something else - maybe the  'mysterious arrival as a child in a boat' like Scyld at the start of 'Beowulf'."  (Tennyson did provide something similar in The Coming of Arthur" as an alternative birth-myth for Arthur.)

Edited June 8, 2022 by merlyn

[Voord 99]

Given the extreme prominence of the Old Testament in medieval literature and thought, I think one should canvass David and Bathsheba as one of the models for Uther and Ygerna.  It would certainly be the sort of thing that would have supplied for an educated reader a great deal of the framework within which the story would have been understood.

I’d quibble about looking for explicit authorial comment as a requirement to read Geoffrey as presenting Uther negatively (in this particular incident, not overall).  There’s an interesting discussion in Siân Echard Arthurian Narrative in the Latin Tradition: she notes that Uther conforms to a recurrent pattern with British kings in Geoffrey, in which they put their personal desires above the good of their subjects.

Edited June 8, 2022 by Voord 99

[merlyn]

While I've seen many such comparisons (including one in a variant version of Geoffrey of Monmouth's work), I think the similarity has been exaggerated.  David's motive in getting Uriah killed was not out of covetous desire for Bathsheba, but to cover up his taking her - a tone of "If I can get him killed in battle and marry the widow quickly enough, I can make it look as if the child was begotten after the wedding and nobody will know the truth".  (The fact that his initial plan was to call Uriah back on the pretext of wanting a report from the front but really in the hopes that Uriah would spend enough time with his wife to make it look as if he'd gotten her with child then, foiled by Uriah's integrity, makes that clear.)  Indeed a close look at the Biblical story suggests that David's original taking of Bathsheba was driven more by boredom than by passion.

[Darius West]

On 6/7/2022 at 11:37 PM, creativehum said:

Did your players ever have a problem with the core, cultural conceits of the game? We had a good, solid talk last night, prompted by one of the players doing a heartfelt monologue about now having reading the first chunk of Le Morte, discovering “Uther is shit, what he does is horrible, horrible,” and wondering if they can murder him.
 

Hmm... IDK.  Frankly I don't think Uther is the problem here.  Not entirely at least.  After all, Merlin is the enabler for the whole sordid episode, and what happens is not so far removed from Merlin's own allegedly demonic conception.  And yet, out the other end we get Arthur.  Apparently sometimes two wrongs can make a right...  Those pagan deities have a sick sense of humor imo.

[piersb]

On 6/7/2022 at 2:37 PM, creativehum said:

But as the players point out Pendragon has lots of elements right there on the character sheet that hem in the PKs against certain behaviors and encourage others.Now, the game allows you to create the character you want over time. If you behave certain ways, if you take certain actions, if you spend your Winter Phase points certain ways, you can slowly (but not easily) create something new in Mythic Britain (which is what I think the game is about in many ways).

It is an effort. Which runs counter to Punch the Nazi play.Everyone is having a good time. They tell me this, and I see it. 

I think this is the most interesting thing about Pendragon. My players told me that it took time to get into the rhythm of the game, but enjoyed it once they'd got out of an everything-happens-today mindset.

You can't punch the Nazi today with no consequences; but your actions in the present will change the world (one way or another) for your children and your children's children.

"Remember Sir Utherkiller? Spent years in self-imposed Exile afterwards. Would appear once a year in disguise at a battle or for Adventure, and died a heroic death. Some people think that redeemed him."

Or he might get caught and killed and his family will have to decide whether to honour his name or besmirch it.

Lots of interesting things that can happen; but unlike a punch-the-nazi, the consequences do play out, and they play out over decades.

[merlyn]

3 hours ago, Darius West said:

Hmm... IDK.  Frankly I don't think Uther is the problem here.  Not entirely at least.  After all, Merlin is the enabler for the whole sordid episode, and what happens is not so far removed from Merlin's own allegedly demonic conception.  And yet, out the other end we get Arthur.  Apparently sometimes two wrongs can make a right...  Those pagan deities have a sick sense of humor imo.

By the time Merlin enters the story, Uther is already at war with Gorlois, besieging his castles and ravaging his lands, so he's not the complete enabler (unless you have him magically filling Uther with lust for Igraine - and the mad "out-of-nowhere" desire Uther displays towards Igraine would make the notion that he was bewitched seem tempting).

While the sordid business at Tintagel does produce Arthur, the Morte and the utter collapse of Britain before the Saxons afterwards may suggest that the right was short-lived.

One tempting route for player knights opposed to Uther's lust to embark on would be to not only seek to get rid of him, but seek to abolish the Kingship of Britain in favor of another form of rule in which one man won't have so much power that, if he develops a lust for the wife of one of his subjects, everyone else is powerless to stop him.  (And if that seems too modern, remember that in the legendary history of Rome according to Livy, which would be available to anyone in Britain with a good classical education, the Romans abolished the kingship for the Republic after the son of the last king of Rome raped Lucretia.  And he didn't even use royal authority to carry out the rape but just broke into her home.)

[AlHazred]

3 hours ago, merlyn said:

By the time Merlin enters the story, Uther is already at war with Gorlois, besieging his castles and ravaging his lands, so he's not the complete enabler (unless you have him magically filling Uther with lust for Igraine - and the mad "out-of-nowhere" desire Uther displays towards Igraine would make the notion that he was bewitched seem tempting).

Would this "unnatural obsession" make sense as some early plot of an evil sorceress or faerie? I'm not familiar enough to the characters of the early story to have any ideas I'd be confident enough to propose.

[merlyn]

8 minutes ago, AlHazred said:

Would this "unnatural obsession" make sense as some early plot of an evil sorceress or faerie? I'm not familiar enough to the characters of the early story to have any ideas I'd be confident enough to propose.

I can't think of any candidates myself - though as I mentioned above, it is possible that Uther is caused to desire Igraine by someone or something (Merlin, for example) who believes that this is how Arthur is to be conceived - the mother visited by someone magically disguised as her husband whose combined lust and the magic of his disguise will in some way energize Arthur to be no ordinary king (the same method used to father Heracles and Alexander the Great).  (And who then possibly manipulates the situation further to ensure that the rest of the kingdom makes no outcry against Uther's war on Gorlois, that Gorlois and Igaine are conveniently in separate castles, that Gorlois makes a sortie and gets killed in it the same night that Uther is at Tintagel, etc.)

[AlHazred]

5 minutes ago, merlyn said:

I can't think of any candidates myself - though as I mentioned above, it is possible that Uther is caused to desire Igraine by someone or something (Merlin, for example) who believes that this is how Arthur is to be conceived

I just hate to make Merlin the only magical mover/shaker in any period. Are there any potential figures from Welsh stories, I wonder? The Mabinogion? I've never gotten around to reading its stories, but I'm told they're full of wonder-workers.

[SaxBasilisk]

3 hours ago, AlHazred said:

Would this "unnatural obsession" make sense as some early plot of an evil sorceress or faerie? I'm not familiar enough to the characters of the early story to have any ideas I'd be confident enough to propose.

For my part, I'd probably shy away from plots that would take away from the relatable emotions of the story. This is a guy who fell in love with the wrong person, and had the military and magical ability to push his case past any reasonable point. Making magic responsible detracts from that aspect of the drama, IMO.

Malory jumps in immediately with Uther's love for Igraine, so we don't see how he behaves before that. I don't recall anything from the Vulgate Merlin, and I'm away from my copy. Nonetheless, major Vulgate characters having what we consider over-the-top reactions often indicate a day that ends in "y."

 

[Morien]

Just to toss this into the pot...

If you go with the GPC age for Gorlois (understanding that you do need to adjust the ages around a bit, i.e. Ygraine is too young to have two girls of marriageable age in 492), you could easily go with the idea that Ygraine is married to this older man (Gorlois' stats suck in the GPC in comparison to Uther's in KAP 5.2), and might indeed welcome advances from the more vigorous warrior king, Uther. Indeed, who is to say that she is not in love with him, that the passion is mutual? And it is jealous Gorlois who whisks his wife away from her True Love and locks her up in Tintagel under guard.

Of course, the problem would be that in Malory (IIRC), Ygraine claims to have no knowledge that the man who made love to her during the night of her husband's death was Uther, which seems rather silly from Uther, to be honest. Easily handwaved aside, I think.

Now BoSi does make Gorlois younger and present Gorlois+Ygraine pair as one of the great love stories of the age, but if you want a more sympathetic Uther, the above is one tweak you could do without too much sweat. (In the GPC, Ygraine has Love (Gorlois) 16 which does hint at a very happy, loving marriage already, admittedly, but still.)

Edited June 9, 2022 by Morien

[merlyn]

Malory's version definitely indicates that Igraine is true to her husband the Duke; in it, while they're at court, Uther tries to persuade her to become his mistress; Igraine virtuously rejects him and tells her husband about it, leading to their fleeing back to Cornwall.  Which suggests in turn that Gorlois is the loving husband trying to protect his wife from the unwanted attentions of a lustful tyrant - and who unfortunately doesn't realize that here, the story's about the conception of a larger-than-life king, which requires the lustful tyrant to win.

(Geoffrey of Monmouth *does* portray Uther and Igraine having a harmonious and loving marriage afterwards and even living as equals, though - which doesn't match the notion of Uther as just the villain.)

[jmberry1s]

9 hours ago, AlHazred said:

I just hate to make Merlin the only magical mover/shaker in any period. Are there any potential figures from Welsh stories, I wonder? The Mabinogion? I've never gotten around to reading its stories, but I'm told they're full of wonder-workers.

The only obvious magician from the Welsh sources would be Menw, who was a contemporary of Arthur's. As a result, you'd probably have to use his mentor, who according to the Triads was ... Uther Pendragon.

[Morien]

6 hours ago, merlyn said:

Malory's version definitely indicates that Igraine is true to her husband the Duke

Yes, I was not contesting that. I was simply pointing out that if one wanted to cast Uther in a better light in their campaign, it would be easy enough to change.

[SaxBasilisk]

7 hours ago, Morien said:

Yes, I was not contesting that. I was simply pointing out that if one wanted to cast Uther in a better light in their campaign, it would be easy enough to change.

I went this route myself. Setting aside the source texts to look at GPC, I think the only place where this really becomes significant in-game is when Ygraine speaks in 512, and her speech is easy enough to alter.

Uther's actions in Tintagel, as described per Geoffrey, Malory, and other sources, may not fit with a particular group's sensibilities. Others might prefer to play it out as written. I think it's a good question to consider, before your group decides, say, to kill Uther. 

[AlHazred]

8 hours ago, Morien said:

I was simply pointing out that if one wanted to cast Uther in a better light in their campaign, it would be easy enough to change.

I value these kinds of threads because I like to keep options open so that I can pivot the campaign, in case a group tends vehemently to one position or another. For instance, I have some people who, if they ever got in a game, would not be able to see Uther in a good light no matter what I did. Familiarity with some modern interpretations of the source material, and all that...

[creativehum]

First I want to thank @Voord 99 for catching on to what I was talking about and highlighting that.

Second, if folks want to somehow see Uther in a "good" light -- great!

However, if we look at the two key sources I'm working from for a King Arthur Pendragon game (Le Morte D'Arthur and the Great Pendragon Campaign) there's not much upside for Uther.

In terms of Le Morte D'Arthur the first thing that happens in the tale is Uther rapes Igraine. 

That's it. Full stop.

That's not a "modern" interpretation. That's simply what happens. Rape is a crime in Le Morte D'Arthur, and it is clear that Uther, aided by Merlin's magic, rapes Igraine.

The player I mentioned in the first post started reading Le Morte D'Arthur, realizes quite clearly what Uther does, and realized this was the lord she was supposed to be loyal to (at least through Roderick, who is loyal to Uther) and balked. There's nothing shifty or something that needs to be justified to have this reaction. It's a perfectly reasonable reaction. It isn't a "modern" reaction, and it is, in fact, completely in keeping with the text and spirit of the Great Pendragon Campaign.

We know this because the GPC goes out of its way to paint Uther as a bad king.

In the first instance we know that when Uther made his bid to become High King after his brother's funeral, many of the lords leave immediately after the funeral, robbing Uther of a chance for a vote and confirmation. This despite the fact that having a High King to help unify Britain against the Saxons might be very helpful. Yes, some of this might be chalked up to competing ambitions by these nobles, but the fact is others leave because they don't trust Uther to be the High King.

This lack of trust is supported by the text. Through the Uther Phase the text makes it clear that Uther's efforts to become High King stretch his resources when he has to deal with the Saxons. Later, he holds both the duke and duchess prisoner (in a very polite way). This despite the fact that Duke Gorlois made peace with Uther and was instrumental in defeating the Saxons at the Battle of Lindsey despite his utter lack of trust of Uther. 

Let's make a mental note her: Gorlois' distrust of both Uther and Merlin is utterly warranted as revealed by the later actions of Uther and Merlin.

By the time Uther is marching toward Cornwal to seize Ygraine, the GPC makes several things clear:

• Uther is marching off without the army assembled, telling other nobles to arrive as soon as they can. He is being reckless at this point
• Prince Madoc, Uther's own son, is telling his father that he is doing this wrong thing in his pursuit of Ygraine while new Saxon troops are landing on the souther shores and marching north
• Roderick, despite his loyalty to Uther, is only willing to bring his knights to Cornwall and leaves his foot soldiers behind because he fears incoming Saxon troops
• While Uther is off risking the lives of his men (and his son, who dies in battle) to satisfy his cock, the city of Pensevey is sacked. 
  • "While Uther was engaged in Cornwall, King Ælle of the South Saxons was reinforced by another contingent of Germans brought over from the continent by his son Cissa. Together they lay siege to the city of Pevensey, and after starving the residents for weeks they assault the walls and slay everyone. Men, women, and children are sacrificed to Wotan, the bloody Saxon war god."

Uther is responsible for those subjects of his dying. 

I know the line is often "Uther may not be a good man, but at least he protects Britain from the Saxons."

But the fact is, by the 490s Uther is not doing that. He is a bad man, ruled by his own selfish desires, distracted from his duties as king, and letting his people die so he can use his military might to rape a woman.

Full stop.

This is not an oddity within the GPC. If the PKs travel with Prince Made to Frankland they will witness Madoc betray his commitment to a Roman lord and abandon the man and his troops to his enemies. The text explicitly asks the GM to ask the players how they feel about this. It is called out as a rotten act, and the GPC wants the players (not the knights, but the players) to reflect on this. Time and time again this happens, with certain key figures being rapists, dishonorable, selfish, indifferent to their commitments, and so on. And then the text asks the players to reflect on whatever they just witnessed or heard about.

The GPC rubs the noses of the PKs and the players in the behavior of nobles that betray the ideals the game presents and asks, "Now, what do you think of that? What are you going to do? How do you want to behave?"

Again, this is all explicit. I'm not reading anything into the text. It is all right there.

And I love it. I love that the Uther Phase sets things up like this. I think its great. 

But I'm well-versed in Le Morte D'Arthur. I'm very familiar with King Arthur Pendragon and what it is doing as a game, and what the GPC is doing as a campaign. But for some players the dissonance between how they want to behave and how their leaders behavior might cause whiplash. So there is a challenge right there -- for both the players and the GM. KAP + GPC sets up a lot of thematically challenging material that runs counter to a lot of RPG expectations. And so I was curious if other people have dealt with this and if so how it played out.

And even if the players do engage with the challenge of the GPC ("Given what your nobles do, what sort of knight will you be?") there might be certain lines that some player fucking do not want to cross.

Uther is a rapist. More than one player might reasonably say, "I want to play this game, but I do not want to serve that lord." And I say "Fine!" Because the game wants you making those choices. For some players they might think they are bucking the game by thinking this way. I have had a talk with everyone and made it clear, "No, no... you're doing it right! This is what the game wants you to engage with!" But still... it can be tricky!

So I was looking for clues about how KAP and GPC are actually set up. I understand the text can be sanded down to turn Uther into something he is not in the Le Morte or GPC. But that isn't what I'm looking for here.

[merlyn]

I'd noted Uther and Madoc abandoning Syagrius as well (Madoc's conduct indicates that he shares his father's lack of honor  note, for that matter, that when he secretly tries to talk Uther out of the war with Gorlois, his reason is "priorities and proprieties", suggesting that his opposition is based, not on Uther's behavior being wrong, but on it being bad timing).  The Earl of Salisbury, clearly troubled about it, tries to defend it by arguing that keeping their alliance with Syagrius would have entangled them in Continental wars just when they've got plenty of troubles at home - without mentioning that in that case, it would have been wiser not to make an alliance with Syagrius that they couldn't afford to keep.

[creativehum]

Hi @merlyn,

I wasn't trying to ignore anything you typed, but rather make an argument that contained all my points in one post.

As for Madoc: I agree with you completely about the situation with Syagrius. I disagree with you about Madoc and Gorlois however: arguing about "proprieties" (the state or quality of conforming to conventionally accepted standards of behavior or morals) is exactly about Uther being wrong. In fact, I think Greg set up the Syagrius incident to stand in contrast to the situation with Ygraine: betraying Syagrius is something Madoc can get behind; everything Uther is doing regarding Ygraine is, for Madoc, too much.

From my reading, everything in the GPC points to the notion that Uther pursuing Ygraineis completely f***ed up from every angle you look at it.

As for whether or not it would have been wiser not to the make the alliance with Syagrius: then they would not have gotten the treasure! This was where the PKs really took a step back from Uther. Uther is clearly ready to give his word in order to break it to take advantage of someone. Again, I think it is all set up to make it clear Uther is not a fit king and the PKs would be well to consider what they think about his behavior. (Which the text of the GPC explicitly asks them to do.) So I'm a bit harsher in this than you in that I believe Uther knew what the end result would be and made the commitment anyway.

[Darius West]

On 6/9/2022 at 11:24 PM, merlyn said:

While the sordid business at Tintagel does produce Arthur, the Morte and the utter collapse of Britain before the Saxons afterwards may suggest that the right was short-lived.

No Arthur, no Enchantment of Britain, no golden age, no Pendragon Game imo.  You would be stuck in a nasty, ugly, brutal and short dark ages campaign.  Do you fancy retooling Harnmaster for Britain?

Edited June 11, 2022 by Darius West