Protecting your villains with verisimilitude?

[Ringan]

Let's say some PK(s) have put Agravaine or Mordred in their crosshairs.  Avoiding skullduggery, they want to honorably duel them to the death.  Unlike other RPGs with super-strong "bosses", the PK(s) might be strong enough that they have decent chances.  These villainous deaths could seriously mess with the story.  What kind of options might a GM take?  Starting off with a few of my thoughts:

• Roll with it: simply plan to adapt the plot without these villains--almost no one but Arthur is essential
• Forbid Round Table Knight infighting: If the PKs are also RTKs, then their vows forbid them from fighting the villainous RTKs.  However, maybe there options like being too rough at a tournament...?
• Direct Pleas or Edicts from Arthur: Maybe Arthur intervenes directly to demand the conflict is ended?
• Villain is unavailable: PK is just never able to get access to the villain to make the challenge.  We could try to leverage a Kafkaesque bureaucracy of status and etiquette in support of this.  However, what if the PK publicly calls out the villain?
• Post-combat Villainous Escape: PK defeats the villain but is unable to kill him.  See relevant TV tropes.
• Magic?: In the case of the Orkneys, maybe it's some kind of magic from Morgause/Morgan le Fay that helps them dodge the bullet.  For other villains, we could contrive analogous allied sorcerers.

Really curious to hear how other GMs have approached this.

[SaxBasilisk]

On 2/27/2023 at 11:06 AM, Ringan said:

• Roll with it: simply plan to adapt the plot without these villains--almost no one but Arthur is essential

I think this is GPC particular - Arthur, Guinevere, and Lancelot are the only "necessary" characters, I believe.

On 2/27/2023 at 11:06 AM, Ringan said:

• Forbid Round Table Knight infighting: If the PKs are also RTKs, then their vows forbid them from fighting the villainous RTKs.  However, maybe there options like being too rough at a tournament...?

Generally in the Arthurian literature I've been reading, Round Table Knights are not supposed to fight each other. In the same literature, they often rush into combat without checking with whom they're fighting, to the extent that one could well ask if it isn't intentional sometimes.

On 2/27/2023 at 11:06 AM, Ringan said:

• Direct Pleas or Edicts from Arthur: Maybe Arthur intervenes directly to demand the conflict is ended?

The family aspect to the situation is the most relevant. First, Agravaine and Mordred are (ahem) nephews (thanks Tizune) to the King. They are also brothers to some of the most renowned knights in the land, including Gawaine, who serves as regent when Arthur is absent. As portrayed in Grey Knight, Gawaine and Gaheris know that Agravaine is problematic, but they would be bound to respond if anything serious happened to him... which could by themselves trigger events that could cause the disintegration of the Round Table, depending upon whom is loyal to whom.

My group is currently walking this tightrope regarding Agravaine, and we'll see how it goes.

Edited February 28, 2023 by SaxBasilisk

[Morien]

Pretty much what SaxBasilisk said. If a Player presses for it, and plans for it, sure I let them kill their foe. But Consequences are a thing and Gawaine would be coming after them and any male Kin with a blood feud. 

Also, just how villainous Agravaine and Mordred are in public? Agravaine is aggravating, but so is Kay, too. 

[Eff]

A couple of thoughts here:

My preference is always going to be Option 1 on that list, because I think that I disagree with the idea that there is a story to be messed with in the sense you seem to be using the word- if the PKs kill Agravain or Mordred, what's happened is that you've ended up in a different branch of Arthurian possibilities... but there are a lot of those out there. It would take a lot more than that to even get close to Camelot 3000, Seven Soldiers: Shining Knight, King Arthur and the Knights of Justice, etc. 

So with that in mind, I think there are also a couple of interesting points to talk about. The first one, which has already been lightly invoked, is that murdering either of the two problematic ones among the Orkneys is going to mean that the surviving brothers will be forced to pursue some combination of justice or vengeance against the murderers, and if it's not done very carefully and stage-managed to reveal some unutterable perfidy from the victim, Arthur is also going to be forced to act against the murderers. Now, to play out some of the implications of a Malory subplot, the Orkney brothers do manage to survive their group murder of Lamorak de Gales and Gaheris's matricide, but they are also extraordinarily important political figures, and in the former case they are pursuing the apparent murderer of their mother, and in the latter case, the truth is effectively concealed. That said, player characters could try to get the protection of a major noble or petty king or round table knight first. Perhaps Mark of Cornwall. Who, in the later medieval traditions, frequently was the actual destroyer of Camelot after Mordred and Arthur kill each other. 

Which is to say, this action very straightforwardly and directly could be a proximate cause of the fall of Camelot and death of Arthur and destruction of Britain in civil strife. You maybe lose Camlann, but the Italians (in La Tavola Ritonda) had Mordred survive Camlann and end up killed by Lancelot later. You're well within the skein of tradition there. The tragic rise and fall of Arthur is still there, though the causes and the meaning are different. 

So the second point here- what's the player intent with this proposed action? Why do they want to kill Mordred, Agravain, or both? I'm not asking in a character-knowledge/out-of-character-knowledge sense, to be clear. If their intent is to protect/preserve Camelot, or to try and break Arthuriana, there's actually nothing wrong with that! But it does require having a conversation as a group about why, and what the premise of the game is meant to be, and whether Camelot's eventual destruction is a fixed aspect of that premise or not. 

And then from that conversation, everyone can have a better idea of where they want to go from there. I'm not even talking about ceding authority over backstory and setting to the other players, although that's an option. I'm just saying- talk about it, make it clear where everyone is and then move forward from there. Maybe they agree that, yeah, they want to see how long they can hold Camelot together even though it's impossible for it to last. The Last Temptation of Christ it up. Or maybe they just want to throw some bombs and make things happen, and they decide that they're going to pick a different direction to throw the bombs in. 

Third point- Agravain and Mordred are, of course, scummy villains, and part and parcel of that (being only mildly tongue in cheek) is that they might well have a cool head in the midst of battle and be able to throw down their weapons and beg mercy. (And in the Welsh Triads, Mordred is associated with calmness, clever speech, and the ability to get his way through talking, though usually positively.) This is mostly an option for players explaining that they want to whip Agravain's little ass because he's a jerk or whatever- there's a way for them to get that victory, that concession, without seriously risking Agravain becoming the Franz Ferdinand of Camelot. But it's just hanging out there- this opportunity for these two to win the sympathy of the crowd by working the refs- if you want to play the culture of Camelot that way. 

Fourth point- there's some weird parallels between Mordred and Jesus in the Post-Vulgate and then in Malory. Whether these are to be read as Mordred being divinely blessed (which is consonant with his Vulgate depiction and earlier) or as Mordred being an Antichrist figure or as a sign of Arthur's corruption under Merlin's baleful influence or as a strange rhyme with the New Testament without much meaning is mostly up to the reader, but if you have a fairly "magical" game, it's entirely possible for Mordred to be miraculously (or diabolically) resurrected after death. This can push things well into spooky apocalyptica if you let it. Caveant lusores. But I do think it might be fun. 

[Tizun Thane]

20 hours ago, SaxBasilisk said:

Agravaine and Mordred are (ahem) cousins to the King. They are also brothers to some of the most renowned knights in the land, including Gawaine, who serves as regent when Arthur is absent.

Nephews.

In my game, except a few NPC (Arthur, Guenever, Mordred, Lancelot) , everyone is fair game. The NPC can die, but the world is alive and bites back. If you kill Aggravaine (because he is a jerk?), the king will banish you, and Gawaine will kill you. 

In my campaign, king Lot was killed by a PK in 510. Morgan le Fay was killed in the 540s, and the knight was killed as well, ending the feud between them. 

[soltakss]

On 2/27/2023 at 4:06 PM, Ringan said:

Roll with it: simply plan to adapt the plot without these villains--almost no one but Arthur is essential

Even Arthur is not essential.

 

[merlyn]

I've sometimes imagined a scenario where the players succeed in disposing of Mordred and Agravaine, breaking up Lancelot and Guinevere's affair, etc. - confident that they've saved the kingdom.

Then, after the Quest of the Holy Grail (which only a few knights still successfully achieve), the kingdom enters a decline with nothing left to do.  The Adventures of Logres are over with the Grail's passing.  Arthur enters a decline and, after Guinevere's passing, falls under the spell of a scheming mistress who, once he dies in bed, pulls the rings off his fingers and flees.  (Yes, I did have Alice Perrers in mind; it seems all the more appropriate in light of Edward III modeling himself so much on King Arthur but having a different end.)  The splendors of Camelot and the Round Table are tarnished by this decay, and the player knights realize too late that the traditional Downfall was actually a merciful act, to bring the kingdom to a quick end once it had passed its climax and thus avoid such a fate.