Feasting in 6e

[Josh Neff]

I'm rereading the Pendragon design journal and in #7: The Social Game it talks about a Geniality statistic and a Feast Deck.

https://www.chaosium.com/blogpendragon-design-journal-7-the-social-game/

There ended up being nothing about Geniality and no Feast cards in the Starter Set. Is this still going to be a thing in the core book? Or a later supplement?

[mandrill_one]

Since it's in the design journal, I guess it'll also be in the final version of the 6th Edition. However, it probably'll end in the GM's Book and not in the Corebook that will be published in April, since this is mostly a GM thing.

Anyway, if you're interested in the topic, the Book of Feasts is still available on Chaosium's website (https://www.chaosium.com/book-of-feasts-pdf/). Indeed, it uses Geniality and a Feast Deck, and is probably fairly similar to the system you'll find in the 6th Ed. books... Barring a few corrections/tweaks here and there, I suppose!

[Josh Neff]

I think you're right, it will be in the GM book. I might grab the The Book of Feasts and deck to tide me over until then, since my players said it sounds fun. We're currently playing through the second adventure in the Starter Set and there's a court scene in it that would have been fun to use the Feast Deck for.

[Morien]

38 minutes ago, Josh Neff said:

I think you're right, it will be in the GM book. I might grab the The Book of Feasts and deck to tide me over until then, since my players said it sounds fun. We're currently playing through the second adventure in the Starter Set and there's a court scene in it that would have been fun to use the Feast Deck for.

No doubt it would have been, but you can throw in a Victory Feast or something in there. 🙂
Here is a thread about using Book of Feasts:
https://basicroleplaying.org/topic/10767-book-of-feasts-question/

And tl;dr version of my house-rule/fix suggestions:

1. Use Glory/1000+Finery for the seating order within your rank (i.e. if you are a Baron visiting a mere vassal knight, if you are not seated at the High Table next to the host, there will be hell to pay unless there are higher nobles present).

2. Use APP to decide how many cards you get to draw. Maybe APP/6 cards, using the normal rounding rules (4-8 = 1 card, 9-14 = 2 cards, 15-20 = 3 cards, 21-26 = 4 cards, 27-32 = 5 cards...). However, here is the twist. You draw them one at a time, and you have to decide if you play it or not (assuming you have a choice, some are mandatory like the host cards). If you are at your last card, you HAVE to play it, even if it is a bad one. If you decide to play the card, that is it, you don't draw any more. This adds some stakes to the thing, you can't just draw 3 cards that all have to be horrible for you to play them. Now in this situation, I could see giving the geniality for all drawn cards, as there is a risk that if you push your luck, you might be in trouble.

3. Especially if you are using BoF often (but I would do it in any case), reduce the Glory amounts for winning (the amount currently is way excessive), and especially just participating in a royal feast (I believe 100 in BoF, while GPC is giving like 50 for important events like Arthur's Wedding Feast...). The thread above has some suggestions.

Edited March 26 by Morien

[Josh Neff]

Rad! Thank you!

[Udy Kumra]

22 hours ago, Morien said:

3. Especially if you are using BoF often (but I would do it in any case), reduce the Glory amounts for winning (the amount currently is way excessive), and especially just participating in a royal feast (I believe 100 in BoF, while GPC is giving like 50 for important events like Arthur's Wedding Feast...). The thread above has some suggestions.

What I like doing for feast glory is the following:

(APP x Geniality) ÷ Feast Modifier

Modifiers are: 1 for a feast hosted by the High King, 2 for a feast hosted by a King or Duke, 3 for a feast hosted by a Count or Baron, 4 for a feast hosted by non-nobility. If you are the host, you get one level higher, and if you get the most geniality, you get one level higher.

So if your APP is 15 and you get 6 Geniality at a feast hosted by the King of Estregales, you get 15 x 6 ÷ 2 = 90 ÷ 2 = 45 glory. If you get the most geniality, you get 90 glory.

Once we have the 6e feast rules, I might replace the "most geniality gets one level higher" rule with the feast geniality threshold rule. I do want those rules, because right now it's always desirable to go to Arthur's Pentecostal Feast instead of some smaller feast, but if smaller feasts have easier to hit geniality thresholds, then you'll have a reason to go there instead of to Camelot. (And I generally want the rule of geniality in play outside of feasts too.)

[Josh Neff]

18 minutes ago, Udy Kumra said:

Once we have the 6e feast rules, I might replace the "most geniality gets one level higher" rule with the feast geniality threshold rule. I do want those rules, because right now it's always desirable to go to Arthur's Pentecostal Feast instead of some smaller feast, but if smaller feasts have easier to hit geniality thresholds, then you'll have a reason to go there instead of to Camelot. (And I generally want the rule of geniality in play outside of feasts too.)

"Okay, Player-knights, do you want the Glory of being a big fish in a small pond or the Glory of a small fish in a big pond?"