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Sir Heddwyn - Winter Phase Rolls 1. Perform Solo: N/A 2. Experience Checks:
4. Economic Circumstances: That depends. Verr, did I get any ransom money from taking the knight hostage? Or was he turned over for the Earl to claim ransom? Ordinary if Heddwyn doesn't get ransom. If he did, then I may have him make some improvements to his manor or buy some fancy new threads to show off. 5. Stable roll: Technically, a vassal knight doesn't need to worry about this in Pendragon 5.1 unless there's a special horse at risk. I think 4th edition was less forgiving. 6. Family rolls: Heddwyn's hoping to marry above his class, so no kept woman maintenance for him! But he enjoys a good post-bonfire Beltane liaison as much as any good Cymric pagan, so let's see how he does on the childbirth front (the results will change if I did get that extra hostage dosh, btw; this is assuming an ordinary maintenance level):
7. Family Events:
8. Training and Practice: Choosing to bump my Valorous to 16. 9. Compute Glory: He started with 185 pre-knighting and got another 1,000 there, so one Glory Bonus Point no matter what. I'll put that into Valorous again and make it 17. 1,185 (pre-scenario) + 10 (defeated Sir Trenus) + 10 (successful argument with the Thin Knight) + 10 (meeting the Great Wolf Máel-tuili and The Thin Knight) + 90 (Battle of the Brackish Bog) = 1,305 Glory
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Sep 28, 2014 02:33
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 Like lightning my sword Name: Heddwyn Homeland: Salisbury Manor: Durnford Culture: Cymric Religion: Pagan Son Number: 1 Lord: Earl Roderick Class: Vassal Knight Age: 22 Year Born: 465 Glory: 1,305 Family Characteristic: Good with words (+15 Compose) Distinctive Features: Curly hair Attributes SIZ 12 DEX 10 STR 18 CON 13 APP 10 Derived Statistics Damage 5d6 Healing Rate 3 Movement 3 Total Hit Points 25 Unconscious 6 Traits Chaste 7/Lustful 13 Energetic 13/Lazy 7 Forgiving 10/Vengeful 10 Generous 13/Selfish 7 Honest 13/Deceitful 7 Just 16/Arbitrary 4 Merciful 12/Cruel 8 Modest 7/Proud 13 Pious 10/Worldly 10 Prudent 10/Reckless 10 Temperate 10/Indulgent 10 Trusting 10/Suspicious 10 Valorous 17/Cowardly 3 Passions Loyalty (lord) 15 Love (family) 15 Hospitality 15 Honor 15 Hate (Saxons) 15 Skills Awareness 5 Boating 1 Compose 16 Courtesy 3 Dancing 2 Faerie Lore 1 Falconry 3 First Aid 10 Flirting 3 Folk Lore 2 Gaming 3 Heraldry 3 Hunting 10 Intrigue 10 Orate 3 Play [harp] 3 Read [Latin] 0 Recognize 3 Religion [pagan] 2 Romance 2 Singing 10 Stewardship 2 Swimming 2 Tourney 2 Battle 10 Horsemanship 15 Sword 15 Lance 15 Spear 6 Dagger 5 Horses 1 charger named Mwngarian 3 rouncies (they don't get names) 1 sumpter (nope, no name) Equipment Norman mail (10 points) Shield 2 spears Sword Dagger Fine clothing (worth £1) Personal gear Travel gear War gear Family Heirloom: 1d20 17 extra rouncy (included above) Army Old Knights: none Middle-Aged Knights: 3 Relation:
Relation:
Levy: 72 Family Children:
Father's Siblings: 1d6 4
Mother's Siblings: 1d6 5
Mother's Name: Tegan, died giving birth to Rhonwen Father's Name: Gwythyr Class: Vassal Knight Starting Glory: 1,115 Final Glory: 1,845 Grandfather's Name: Maldwyn Starting Glory: 1,130 Final Glory: 1,150 Great Grandfather's Name: Rhisiart Final Glory: 1,200 Family History 439-459 439: Nothing significant occurred. 440: Served garrison duty; killed by Pictish raiders. Gain 20 Glory. End history. 441-459: Father grows up. Family History 460-484 460: Father served garrison duty; saw little or no combat. 461: Records lost.  Issue a 5.1 errata page already, Stafford462: Grandfather ordered to fight against Vortigern at the Battle of Cambridge. Records apparently still spotty at Sarum. 463: “Night of Long Knives” treachery: Grandfather murdered, or rather, dug up from his grave, stabbed repeatedly, then thrown back in. Your family gains Hate (Saxons) passion 15. 464: Father marries a widow in order to procure an heir. She brings him 200 Glory. 465: Father remains in his lands, tends to his manor, and waits with his lord. Heddwyn born. 466: Father fought at the Siege of Carlion. Survived and earned 30 Glory. 467: Served garrison duty; saw little or no combat. 468: Fought at the Battle of Snowdon. Survived and earned 30 Glory. 469: Raided Saxons with Uther. Gained 25 Glory in the fighting. 470: Raided Saxons with Uther. Gained 100 Glory in the fighting. 471: Raided Saxons with Uther. Gained 100 Glory in the fighting. 472: Raided Saxons with Uther. Gained 50 Glory in the fighting. 473: Fought at the Battle of Windsor. Survived. Gain Hate (Saxons) passion 11. 474: Served garrison duty and survived. Gain 25 Glory. 475: Served garrison duty and survived. Gain 25 Glory. 476: Served garrison duty and survived. Gain 25 Glory. 477: Saxons invade, Ambrosius fails to fight them off, and records are missing as to what Father was up to this year. 478: Sailed with High King’s fleet. Gain 25 Glory. Fought at the Battle of Frisia. Survived and earned 45 Glory. 479: Served garrison duty. Fought in Saxon raids on Salisbury. Survived and earned 80 Glory. 480: Died in hunting accident. No Glory in that. 481-484: Heddwyn grows up.
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Sep 28, 2014 02:36
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Sorry about my absence, guys. I've been very busy and this part of the game required a fairly large up-front time investment for me. I'm working on a post for the actual game thread at the moment and will try to finish it later today. Perform Solo: N/A Experience Checks: Sword Experience Check: 1d20 10 Failure!  Aging: N/A (Assuming Verr agrees with DCB) Economic Circumstances: Ordinary Knight Stable Rolls: My reading of the section is the same as Ibntumart's, but I'll roll anwyay, given that Cadogan does have an extra horse. Stable Rolls: 5#1d20 17 20 10 18 20 Family Rolls: I find it very weird that we have a 50% chance of impregnating someone every year with no regard for whether we’re married or how chaste we are. I would argue that we should at least get to make a Chastity roll or something here. I’m going to refrain from rolling for now because I think this rule is pretty dumb. I’d rather roleplay a courtship/marriage for Cadogan, as mentioned before, so I’ll skip all the marriage stuff. Family Events: 1d20 11 Family Events: 1d20 14 Family Events: 1d6 6 So Cadogan’s eldest sister Branwen and her husband Sir Eirwyn have their first child, a boy named Meilyr. (I had to roll quite a few times in order to find a family member who having a child would make sense for.) Training and Practice: I don’t trust dice, so I think I’m just going to raise an Attribute. I think I’ll pick Strength, since I only have to raise it three more times to get up to 5d6 damage. Maybe raising Valorous or something instead would be smarter, but Cadogan is a bit weak compared to everyone else, mostly on account of being so drat pretty.  Compute Glory: 186 Glory to start, plus 1000 for being knighted, 140 for various other events, 100 from Chivalry, and 48 from famous attributes and traits, for a total of 1454. This assumes a few things: first, that Cadogan’s Honour is reduced by the Critical Passion Failure; second, that he does get the Chivalry bonus; and third, that he doesn’t get any glory based on how events are recounted at the feast, since Verr implied that that’s the only way we get glory for defeating individual knights. So depending on all that, I may have to amend this. I’ll use my bonus on Strength again, for the same reasons as above.
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Sep 29, 2014 01:02
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Very, very sorry for the radio silence. I just kept putting off the winter phase stuff for no reason. I'll definitely get something up tomorrow, though.
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Sep 30, 2014 06:15
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Ok, Florian's winter phase: 1. Perform Solo N/A 2. Experience Checks: Faerie Lore: 1d20 18 which beats my 1, so I get a check 3. Aging: N/A 4. Stable Rolls: N/A Family Rolls: Family Roll: 1d20 2 Death of a Family Roll: 1d20 19 Cousin. Going to train by increasing my strength by 1. Doesn't do much, because I'm not that strong as it is, but still... New sheet:  Name: Florian Title: Knight Homeland: Salisbury Culture: Cymric Religion: Roman Christian Glory: 1310 Father's Name: Florus Father's Class:Knight Son Number: 1 Liege Lord: Earl Roderick of Salisbury Current Class: Knight Manor: Tisbury Traits 13 Chaste/Lustful 7 10 *Energetic/Lazy 10 13 Forgiving/Vengeful 7 10 *Generous/Selfish 10 10 Honest/Deceitful 10 10 *Just/Arbitrary 10 13 *Merciful/Cruel 7 13 *Modest/Proud 7 10 Pious/Worldly 10 10 Prudent/Reckless 10 13 Temperate/Indulgent 7 10 Trusting/Suspicious 7 15 *Valorous/Cowardly 5 Passions Loyalty (Lord) 15 Love (Family) 15 Hospitality 15 Honor 15 Hate (Saxons) 10 Attributes SIZ: 12 DEX: 16 STR: 13 CON: 13 APP: 12 Derived Statistics Damage: 4d6 Healing Rate: 3 Movement Rate: 3 Total Hit Points: 25 Unconscious: 7 Distinctive Features: Proud face Family Characteristic: Naturally Loveable Skills Awareness 5 Boating 1 Compose 1 Courtesy 10 Dancing 7 Faerie Lore 2 Falconry 3 First Aid 10 Flirting 13 Folklore 2 Gaming 3 Heraldry 10 Hunting 10 Intrigue 8 Orate 3 Play [harp] 3 Read [Latin] 0 Recognize 3 Religion (Christianity) 2 Romance 2 Singing 2 Stewardship 2 Swimming 2 Tourney 2 Battle 10 Horsemanship 15 Sword 15 Lance 15 Spear 6 Dagger 5 Horses 1 Charger 2 Rouncys 1 Sumpter Warhorse Type: Charger Damage: 6d6 Move: 8 Armor: 5 HP: 46 SIZ: 37 CON: 12 STR: 30 DEX: 17 Equipment Normal Mail (10 pts) Shield (6 pts) 2 Spears 1 Sword 1 Dagger Fine Clothing (1 lb.) Personal Gear Travel Gear War Gear Heirloom:Extra Money 1 lb Holdings: Manor of Tisbury Army Vassals: N/A Family Knights and Lineage Men Family Knights: 1 Middle-aged, 6 Young, Myself Lineage Men: 14 Levy: 49 Middle Aged Knights: Gratian (Mother's Brother) Young Knights: Gratianus (Maternal First Cousin) Gratianulus (Maternal First Cousin) Julian (Maternal First Cousin) Simon (Illegitimate Brother) Cassius(Sister's Husband) Other Family: Coming
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Oct 1, 2014 02:10
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OK! 1. Perform Solo: N/A 2. Experience Checks: Winter Phase Exp rolls: 6#1d20 9 11 4 16 7 3 Orate 10 -> 10 First Aid 15 -> 15 Pious 10 -> 10 Cowardly 4 -> 5 Loyalty (Lord) 16 -> 16 Honor 16 -> 16 Well I literally failed every check except the bad one. 3. Aging N/A? 4. Economic Circumstances: L6 + L5 = L11 Ok, here I want to say that I want to start building up my manor, as making it recognizably mine is something I'd like to do. But as you know from my bitching, the 5.1 manor building rules are bad. So how do we want to do this? 5. Stable Rolls: 4#1d20 3 7 18 19 6. Family Rolls Childbirth: 1d20 16 Male or Female: 1d6 3 aaaaaand Amig has a daughter now. Oy vey, considering what he said to the others at the beginning, this seems a bit hypocritical! Family Events: 1d20 6 So we've got a marriage in the family Family member affected: 1d20 1 Well. Ol' dad's dead, so I get to reroll that one. Family member affected 2: 1d20 19 And one of my cousins is married. Congrats, Sir Kireg! Training and Practice Winter skill points: 1d6 2 gently caress everything. Guess I'll put those into Lance. 7. Glory 144+1000+10+10+10+10+5+110+(Some for beating Heddwyn in poetry?)+98 = 1397 Glory Putting my 1 Glory point into Valorous, bumping me back to 16.   Name: Amig Title: The Shrewd Homeland: Salisbury Culture: Cymric Religion: British Christian Glory: 1397 Father's Name: Gareth Father's Class:Knight Son Number: 1 Liege Lord: Earl Roderick of Salisbury Current Class: Squire Current Home: Pitton Traits 13 Chaste/Lustful 7 13 Energetic/Lazy 7 10 Forgiving/Vengeful 10 13 Generous/Selfish 7 10 Honest/Deceitful 10 10 Just/Arbitrary 10 10 Merciful/Cruel 10 13 Modest/Proud 7 10 Pious/Worldly 10 16 Prudent/Reckless 4 13 Temperate/Indulgent 7 10 Trusting/Suspicious 10 16 Valorous/Cowardly 4 Passions Loyalty (Lord) 16 Love (Family) 16 Hospitality 15 Honor 16 Hate (Saxons) 18 Attributes SIZ: 16 DEX: 12 STR: 14 CON: 13 APP: 10 Derived Statistics Damage: (16+14/6)=5d6 Healing Rate: 29/10=2.9 -> 3/week Movement Rate: 26/10=2.6 -> 3 Total Hit Points: 29 Unconscious: 29/4=7.25 -> 7 Distinctive Feature: Long legs Family Characteristic: Good With Words: +15 Compose Skills Awareness 10 Boating 1 Compose 16 Courtesy 10 Dancing 2 Faerie Lore 1 Falconry 3 First Aid 15 Flirting 3 Folklore 2 Gaming 3 Heraldry 3 Hunting 2 Intrigue 3 Orate 10 Play [harp] 3 Read [Latin] 0 Recognize 5 Religion (Christianity) 2 Romance 2 Singing 2 Stewardship 2 Swimming 2 Tourney 2 Battle 10 Horsemanship 15 (Step 3) Sword 15 Lance 15 Spear 6 Dagger 5 Horses 1 Charger 2 Rouncys 1 Sumpter Warhorse Type: Charger Damage: 6d6 Move: 8 Armor: 5 HP: 46 SIZ: 37 CON: 12 STR: 30 DEX: 17 Equipment Normal Mail (10 pts) Shield (6 pts) 2 Spears 1 Sword 1 Dagger Fine Clothing (1 lb.) Personal Gear Travel Gear War Gear Extra Money - Holdings: Manor of Pitton Army Vassals: N/A Family Knights: 4 Middle-aged, 4 Young, Myself Lineage Men: 10 Levy: 39 Middle Aged Knights: 4d20 30 Father's 3 Younger Brothers Mother's Brother Young Knights: 4d20 29 3 Paternal Cousins (Sirs Uwain, Iestin, Gogan) Maternal 1st Cousin (Sir Kireg(married)) Salisbury History Great-Grandfather's(Dyfan) Glory: (18*100)+1000=2800 Grandfather's(Dubric) Starting Glory: 1280+19 439: 1d20 7 439, 2: 1d20 18 1d6 2 440: 1d20 1 Grandfather cause of death: 1d20 7 FOREIGN INVADERRRSSSSSSS Grandfather's Glory: 1329 Father's starting Glory: 1133 463: 3d6+6 18 464: 1d20 3 Glory 1158 466-467: 1d20 10 466-467 2: 1d20 20 1d6 6 1158+90 468: 1d20 5 469-472: 1d20 9 1158+90+50 473: 1d20 6 474-476: 1d20 8 1158+90+50+25 478-479: 1d20 17 478-479 2: 1d20 12 1d6 2 1158+90+50+25+25+30 480: 1d20 2 481-483: 1d20 15 484: 1d20 14 484 2: 1d20 12 1d6 4 1158+90+50+25+25+30+60 Father's Final Glory: 1438 Family: Father's Siblings: Sir Heilin, Sir Henwyn, Sir Elphin, Lady Gwendolyn, Lady Dilys, Lady Mai Mother's Siblings: Sir Yestin, Lady Talaith Siblings: 4 Younger Brothers (Squires: Adda, Pennar, Urien, Hefin), 2 Younger Sisters (Bronwen, Alison) Children: Bronwen (b. 480)
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Oct 1, 2014 05:07
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Okay, so the topic came up on IRC and I'd like to get Verr's feedback on it. Basically, I really think that unmarried knights should (or should be allowed if they wish, at least) to roll a Chaste check to avoid having to roll on the Childbirth table. I understand that the implication is that knights are afforded many opportunities to sleep around and they might generally have a hard time controlling themselves, but it simply does not make sense that chastity and marital status have no bearing whatsoever on how likely they are to impregnate someone. First of all, why do a particularly chaste and particularly unchaste knight have the same probability of having a child, even if unmarried? This implies that regardless of their chastity, each one is sleeping with approximately the same number of women (and probably not a small number, either, to have a 50% chance of impregnation a year). This is obviously nonsensical, especially in a setting where the game describes the result of a Chaste 19 knight (Sir Bors, I think) failing his check as him stroking the hair of a maiden. But apparently Bors still managed to hit his quota of random women to sleep with in order to have a 50% chance of impregnation. It gets even worse when you realize that a newlywed knight doing everything in his power to produce an heir as quickly as possible still only has exactly the same chance. So the average chaste, unmarried knight has the exact same chances of having a child as someone who is sleeping with his wife near-constantly in an effort to impregnate her immediately. Or maybe the latter knight just isn't too bothered because he's already produced about a dozen kids by then. While it wouldn't suddenly cause everything to be modelled perfectly, I think a Chastity roll would do a lot to solve this problem. It adjusts the chances according to your Chastity, and also allows for the fact that married knights are generally actively trying to impregnate their wives. It seems like a pretty easy house rule to me, and I'd like to know if you'd agree to it, Verr. Edit: Welp, never mind, Epicurius discovered that there actually is an earlier passage that says you can skip the section altogether if you wish. I'm still blaming the writers for poor layout decisions, though.
Viscardus fucked around with this message at 00:42 on Oct 2, 2014 |
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Oct 2, 2014 00:33
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DivineCoffeeBinge posted:Did somebody say DCB Megapost?  DivineCoffeeBinge posted:The discussion about the Generous check above turns out to be moot; ah well, maybe someone'll be impressed by the effort and Verr will kick 10 Glory my way or something. Nice try. Skill rolls it is! DivineCoffeeBinge posted:I don't know if Verr is going with horse replacement or not, so I'll roll: Nah: random horse death is the worst. The horses are the unsung hero of every knightly adventure. They deserve a noble death! DivineCoffeeBinge posted:Next up is the Childbirth table. Personally, I would suggest that notably Chaste knights ought to be able to skip the roll if they're unwed, but that's Verr's call. Also, characters that keep lovers or mistresses can argue for a chance to roll once per potential mother, but again, GM's call A great idea. Folks, feel free to ignore the child birth rules if your knight is Chaste. ibntumart posted:Sir Heddwyn - Winter Phase Rolls Let's hold off on this. This year saw some ups and downs. You'll be working together in the future, and they've recovered well from the speed bumps, but will our heroes be comrades 3 years from now? ibntumart posted:Sir Heddwyn - Winter Phase Rolls No ransom money this year. I rolled it into the award everyone was doled out by Earl, 'cause he had dibs on it being on his lands at his command (also, maths and the weird structure of the first fight). You'll definitely have the opportunity in the near future. ibntumart posted:Sir Heddwyn - Winter Phase Rolls Dang.  Friar John posted:Well I literally failed every check except the bad one. Also dang. Friar John posted:4. Economic Circumstances: L6 + L5 = L11 I've been putting even thinking about that off. GIve me a little bit longer to come up with a system. I'm thinking a vaguely linear progression along the lines of the poverished<->rich knight strata in vanilla Pendragon. Your manor is either [Desolate][Poor][Average][Rich][Extravagant] and this nets you some minor glory and nice bonuses when folks are visiting or in a position to be impressed by your swanky gardens and majestic chapels. Congrats on the baby! Viscardus posted:It seems like a pretty easy house rule to me, and I'd like to know if you'd agree to it, Verr. Hah! I would have agreed either way. Some knights just don't have time for baby mommas.
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Oct 3, 2014 10:13
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On Manors - if you'd like, Verr, I can dig out my copy of Lordly Domains. It's a 4th edition book but I can't think of any changes from 4th to 5th that would make it unusable, and it's much more granular than the 5th edition manor rules - it's a bit fiddly and needs bookkeeping, but I recall liking it when using it in tabletop. I can do a quick readthrough and give you a better idea in a few days?
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Oct 3, 2014 11:47
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Verr posted:Also dang. As for the manor, I like the idea that different buildings affect different emotions in the knight and visitors (i.e., give you checks in different traits). As for the actual buildings, a lot of them are alright, in theme, but in their actual mechanics just fall apart (they just aren't worth building). Tweaking with the numbers should get a lot of the problems, imo.
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Oct 4, 2014 05:10
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DivineCoffeeBinge posted:On Manors - if you'd like, Verr, I can dig out my copy of Lordly Domains. It's a 4th edition book but I can't think of any changes from 4th to 5th that would make it unusable, and it's much more granular than the 5th edition manor rules - it's a bit fiddly and needs bookkeeping, but I recall liking it when using it in tabletop. I can do a quick readthrough and give you a better idea in a few days? DCB, you know I'd love a write-up of whatever you want to write.  Friar John posted:Yeah, this is why I think being generous with passions and experience checks from roleplay is a good idea. The checks get progressively harder and harder the better they get, and even these, where I should have gotten one or two more, got nothing. That is a totally fair appraisal. More cool stuff/awards = more opportunities. I'll try to ensure the content matches the rewards in the coming years. Friar John posted:As for the manor, I like the idea that different buildings affect different emotions in the knight and visitors (i.e., give you checks in different traits). As for the actual buildings, a lot of them are alright, in theme, but in their actual mechanics just fall apart (they just aren't worth building). Tweaking with the numbers should get a lot of the problems, imo. Let's check out DCB's Lordly Domain post before we make a decision. In regards to the basic formula I discussed above, I'd argue that the different emotions might be tied to your manors more along the lines of the FATE system. Oh you bought a chapel and a granary? Well you gain the [rich] category and the tags [religious] and [plentiful] which give a small bonus to both your religious and horse/child birth/etc... rolls and roles.
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Oct 4, 2014 06:05
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I'm gonna do my Lordly Domains effortpost in a sec (so it'll probably actually get finished in a few hours...), but first:Friar John posted:Yeah, this is why I think being generous with passions and experience checks from roleplay is a good idea. The checks get progressively harder and harder the better they get, and even these, where I should have gotten one or two more, got nothing. I am, as a rule, of the mindset that experience checks should be handed out like candy. This is for a couple of reasons; first is that the game itself supports this in some ways. There are examples of events given in the books where seeing something earns you a check; for example, bears were allegorically thought to give birth to a formless, eyeless mass of flesh and then spend the next three months "licking them into shape" - warming them, caressing them, and sculpting the flesh into the shape of a bear cub with her tongue (this is seriously a thing that people of the time thought happened). A PC knight who witnesses this degree of devotion gains a Love (Family) check. That's an experience check for seeing something. You don't even have to do a drat thing. The second reason is that I have always been of the opinion that PCs, by virtue of not being NPCs, should get a chance to be Big drat Heroes; some GMs will disagree for a game like Pendragon, where you want to be thematically appropriate. I have played in Pendragon games where the PCs could give Lancelot a run for his money, and where my Irish Pagan knight supplanted Yvaine as the premiere example of Pagan Knighthood in Britain by having almost 10k more Glory than he did! Mind you, this is the same game where one player killed a dragon with a single hit (it turns out that a Saxon Knight whose SIZ and STR are at their racial maximums and who has the Wotanic Religious Bonus of +1d6 damage and is using a Great Axe hits really hard on a crit) and then I had an eighteen hour duel with a Faerie Knight who was trying to usurp the religious power of the feminine-principle-Goddess of the Pagan faith by stealing the Goddess' Cauldron which it turns out was also the Holy Grail and the tale of our recovery of said Grail is what inspired Merlin to later send the Round Table Knights questing for it... so it wasn't exactly a 'small scale' sort of game! We also conquered a large chunk of France in Arthur's name at one point. I know we had a reason for doing so but I forget what it is now. Anyways, point is, we were Big drat Heroes, and our GM let the Glory and the Experience flow freely. This reason is the most idiosyncratic, I feel the need to note; some GMs aren't going to want their PCs to outclass canonical knights. I've always felt they should have the chance to, though. (this is also why I'm naturally in favor of allowing Passion rolls for people who can successfully bullshit a reasonable explanation, by the way; Passion-boosted skills are more likely to succeed and players like succeeding, or at least failing in interesting ways) And the third reason is one that Friar John illustrates perfectly - experience checks are no guarantee of improvement. When I run a game of Pendragon I've never shied away from handing out a check simply because I know that there's a good chance that said check will turn out to be meaningless; if a guy has Sword 22 or something, sure, go ahead and take a check. There's only a 5% chance it'll do anything for you anyways! What's the harm? The randomized, undependable nature of character growth in Pendragon means that it's rarely, in my experience, a bad idea to toss out as many opportunities for advancement as possible. The trick is that you don't want to engender too great a spread of power between your PCs - that is, you don't want one guy running around with high stats in everything he does while another guy is still pretty average. So you want to be stingier with the characters that are 'pulling ahead,' so to speak, if only so that nobody gets left behind. That, at least, is my opinion on the matter. So, my advice would be "be very liberal with handing out checks. If you can do so in such a way as to encourage behavior you think is Awesome - for instance, if you want your knights to be Fearless Leader types, go ahead and hand out checks to knights that jump at leadership opportunities - all the better, but by and large, don't be too stingy because no one wants to play a knight who sucks at everything for twenty years." ...and if you thought that was a wall of text, just wait'll you see what I've got incoming...
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Oct 4, 2014 15:53
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Verr posted:DCB, you know I'd love a write-up of whatever you want to write. Well, hell, no pressure or anything, huh?  I'll give a I am, it must be noted, a big fan of the system for two reasons. The first is entirely an idiosyncratic one; I played in a tabletop campaign of Pendragon which remains to this day the best game I've ever been a part of, and in that game the GM essentially handed me the Lordly Domains book and said "DCB, you're good at this sort of thing, you handle all the relevant land stuff. Deal?" And I had a surprising amount of fun with it. The second is that it's a flexible, expandable system; it's set up to handle more than just vassal knights. The system expands for dealing with PCs who have their own vassals - PCs who become Bannerets or even titled nobility - which in turn means it lays the foundation for extending the possibilities for the players; a GM doesn't have to be afraid of saying "Okay, fine, you're a Baron now" because they have rules to handle that stuff. And I'm a big fan of anything that can potentially open more avenues for the players. So! Lordly Domains.  The book has several sections, only the first of which - Noble Lands - I'll be going into in any detail. I'll probably go over some of the info in the Grand Events section, which covers things like feasts and tournaments and hunts and setting up your own kennels and mews and whatnot, at a later time if there's interest. The other sections are either not as compatible with 5.1 (Fortifications and Encounters, dealing with sieges and raids and whatnot) or largely flavor-based (Heraldry, Inside A Keep). So! Noble Lands. As mentioned, the rules can be expanded to deal with multiple holdings and even vassals, but we're going to concentrate on the holding of a single Manor for now, simply because that's the scenario before most of us. The rules are designed to account for, not just a manor or castle, but the settlements and people that surround a given holding; you're looking at the land, not just the part of it you happen to live on. First, some terminology. Lands in Lordly Domains have 'character sheets' of their own, with stats to keep track of, and some terminology that's important. So: *The generic term used to refer to a holding is a fief. As Vassal Knights, our fief (sometimes 'fiefdom') is our manor and the surrounding lands; for the Earl of Salisbury, his fief is all of Salisbury. *A demense (pronounced 'domain') is the bit of land you personally control (Crusader Kings II players will recognize the term...). For a Vassal Knight this usually means their Manor and the land surrounding it, but when you're dealing with more powerful nobles the term refers to the lands they oversee specifically. That is to say, each of us has a manor in Salisbury; the Earl of Salisbury rules those lands. However, the Earl's demense is the land he oversees personally - his castle and the surrounding lands - while the rest of his land is handed out to his vassals, like us. Our manors are within Salisbury, but they are not part of the Earl's demense. *Each holding has a population, measures in POP. A manor fief usually has between 1 and 3 POP worth of peasants; 1 POP represents roughly 480 peasants, 120 of which live in a town and the rest of which are scattered throughout a number of small villages. *A manor holding is what we all live in. It typically contains 1-3 POP of peasantry, usually clustered in a single small town and several smaller villages. There is a small chapel in the town, and many fields and pastures to be worked by the peasants, as well as the manor house. Some of (actually most of, really) these fields and pastures are divided into the lord's portion; the peasants work these fields on the lord's behalf, in exchange for his protection. Income from the lord's portion, as well as income from tolls and court fees, provide the manor's income; a manor typically earns 7 Libra a year, of which 6 goes to support the vassal knight living in the manor and one is spent maintaining the land. *When a single lord controls multiple manors they are collectively referred to as an estate; estates comprise between 3 and 6 manors and typically support 3-7 POP (though these numbers are of course flexible). Generally the lord's residence - the manor in which he lives - will support 3 POP and the rest will support 1, maybe 2, as the majority of peasants will stay closer to the lord and the outlying manors will, by virtue of being further from the lord's control, have lower populations. *Income is separated into two types - Food and Coin. In the spring, Food and Coin may be exchanged for one another at a 1 to 1 ratio, but in all other seasons, buying one Librum of Food costs two Libra of Coin, and vice versa. Some of your expenses - like feeding the peasants! - can only be paid in Food, while others can only be paid in Coin (and still others can be paid in either). *Income sources are also divided up. Food income stems from two sources: Hydes, or fields, which are farmed agriculturally, each of which generates roughly 1£ of Food, and Hyrds, which refer to pastures and the flocks of animals such as sheep who live and graze there, each of which also generates roughly 1£ of Food. Coin income stems from two main sources: Goods, which represent physical stuff your peasantry makes (pottery, weaving, spinning, smithing, whatever) and is counted as Coin for bookkeeping purposes, and Rights, which represents the cash income from tolls, mining, forestry, taxes, and so on. Traditionally the Liege demands half of the Rights income of a fief. Court Fees are another source of income but manor holdings typically aren't large enough to generate an appreciable amount of them, so we'll ignore them for the time being. Fief recordkeeping also involves tracking a number of Passions - these Passions represent, not the character of the lord, but the feelings of a land's inhabitants towards that lord. These Passion values may be randomly determined if the GM desires, or can be assigned to a desired value. Some values will change during the recordkeeping of the Winter Phase and the Harvest Rolls and whatnot; some will change through gameplay. *The peasantry have at least one passion - Peasant's Loyalty (Lord), which represents how loyal they feel towards their liege. This a loyal peasantry may be more amenable to being squeezed out of extra cash by their lord in lean years; a disloyal peasantry may refuse to work as hard at harvest time. If determined randomly, it starts at 2d6+3. Peasants can also have one of two other Passions, namely Love (Lord) or Hate (Lord), depending on how the Lord treats them. Most fiefs do not start with one of these Passions; they're earned over time, through the Lord's actions. *The Loyalty (Liege) Passion represents how well the lord's liege lord regards them; a high value here may allow a Lord to skate by with lower-than-expected payments to their Liege in lean years, while a low value could lead to the Liege demanding more than you have to spend! It is randomly determined by rolling 1d6+12. *The Loyalty (Soldiers) Passion represents the Loyalty of the footsoldiers who have been hired for protection and defense of the land (even small manors will have hired footsoldiers, though usually not more than two or three). It is randomly determined by rolling 2d6+6 Likewise, for Lords who are prosperous enough to support an Entourage of knights - the is, knights who accompany the Lord at all times, rather than Vassal Knights like us PCs - there is a Loyalty (Entourage) Passion to track, starting at 1d6+12. *Finally, the Loyalty (Church) Passion tracks how much the local clergy like you; there can be more than one of these Passions, if there are multiple churches (say, a Pagan church and a Christian one) in the area. If randomly determined, the Loyalty (Church) for the Church that the knight belongs to is 2d6-10 plus the lord's Pious trait, or 2d6-2 if of a differing faith.  Okay! So we've got some terms out of the way. Let's look at the actual meat of the rules. As I mentioned earlier, I'll be using the simplified rules set for A Single Manor rather than the full-on complex rules that can be applied to larger holdings. As mentioned earlier, a manor can support between one and three POP. Most manors support only a single POP, which should be more than sufficient for our purposes; let's operate under the assumption that our manors are 1 POP manors, since we haven't had the chance to improve the land and possibly increase our POP yet. A 1-POP Manor controls a small town of roughly 120 inhabitants, and 360 or so people living out in scattered villages (typically anywhere between ten and forty people reside in a village; some are larger, some are smaller). The Town provides us the following income: 1£ of Food, 1£ in Goods, and 2£ in Rights. In addition, the peasantry in the villages who work the Lord's Portion generate 3£ of Food for every 1£ generated by the town, for a grand total of 4£ in Food and 3£ in Coin. (a 2-POP Manor's Town generates 2£ of Food, 3£ of Goods, and 4£ from Rights, and the larger Lord's Portion generates an additional 6£ (2*3) Food, for a total of 8£ Food and 7£ Coin; you can see why I figure we should be aiming at 1 POP fiefs to start off!) It is possible - and we'll get to this under the Projects section of the Annual Harvest rules - to increase the size of the Lord's Portion by clearing more land, et cetera; this will never increase the value to more than five times the town's production. Now, the exact nature of the Food and Coin produced by the fief is up to the GM; maybe my manor contains a small tin mine, which is where the majority of my Rights income comes from, while someone else's contains an old-growth forest that's being cut down for logging, or what have you. Who knows! How much detail is desired here is pretty much up in the air; abstracting it completely works out okay too. Now, for expenses! Upkeep as an Ordinary Knight costs 3£ of Food and 3£ of Coin each year, period. Land Maintenance - repairing roads, bridges, et cetera - costs 1£ in Coin per year. Maintenance and upkeep of any soldiers - and most manors will maintain two soldiers for defense - costs 1£ of Food per five soldiers, with all fractions rounded down (so that the upkeep of the two soldiers most of us probably didn't even realize we were paying is essentially free). ...you may have noticed that we earn 4£ of Food and 3£ of Coin but we're expected to spend 3£ of Food and 4£ of Coin. If you did, congratulations; you paid more attention than the editors. As you can exchange Food for Coin at a 1-1 value during the spring, I've always operated under the assumption, in my tabletop games, that the peasantry or your steward or what have you automatically sells some stockpiled grain for you in the springtime. Just... run with it.  Now, of course there are plenty of rules for the Annual Harvest. Naturally, they involve dice rolls. This is Pendragon. My GM and I always found it convenient to assume that the PCs are home for the autumn - spring and summer is the campaigning and adventure season, but most lords returned home in the fall to oversee the harvest - so we would, as a rule, handle all this stuff at the very beginning of the Winter Phase, even before Performing a Solo (some of the Harvest events might lead to a Solo all their own!). Before I start describing the events, let me take a minute first to describe the concept of The Health of the Land. For all newly-created fiefs this value, measured between 1 and 20, starts at 12. The State of the Land can be used by a GM to determine the attitudes of the peasantry and the availability of certain goods (for instance, the chance that a peasant, when asked for directions, will provide useful information is 'state +5' - so in a relatively ordinary land with a State of 12, a peasant will provide useful directions on a roll of 17 or lower. In a poor land, where the state is valued at 4, it will take a 9 or lower). The State also affects certain Passions; the peasants of wealthy lands will be more Loyal to their Lord, and possibly grow to Love him; the peasants of impoverished lands will Hate their Lord. The first Harvest Step is to roll for Random Events. First you roll 1d6-2 to see how many Events there were, and then for each event you roll to see when it occurred; if there was an Event in Spring or Summer when the PC was away, well, suck it up and deal, you weren't around to do anything about it. A Fall Event might be something you can do something about, however! Then there's a chart to see what event you get. Roll 1d6; on a 1 you get something Bad, on a 2 or 3 your Liege visits, on a 4 you are summoned by your Liege, on a 5 something good happens, and on a 6 there's no event. Liege visits cost you some money to feed everyone - 2d per knight in the Lord's entourage. However, just having your Liege around as part of his expected Progress means your Knight will have a mini-Court experience all their own; this earns you a free check to Courtesy (and after 510, to Joust as well). If the liege is visiting during a raid or battle or whatnot, he and his entourage will pitch in and help! Liege summonses are... odd ducks, in that it makes no sense to say 'your liege summons you for the summer' when you were already off doing something this summer, so you may have to fudge it and say 'oh, he must mean next summer.' Honestly my group usually ignored Liege Summons rolls because if the GM wanted your liege to summon you he'd just say so. Some of the Bad Events are pretty dang bad (one of them costs the fief 1 POP, which, um... yeah, gently caress you, pal! I recommend saying 'but POP can't drop below 1' because otherwise ouch) and some of the Good Events are just fantastic (add 1d20 Coin? Yes please). One of the Bad Events is your lands being Raided; there are tables to figure out how many raiders there were and where they came from. Repelling a Raid makes a fun Solo! Now, finally we can get to the actual Harvest. The first step is a Stewardship roll - from the lord, his wife, or his steward if he has one. Success on this roll earns +1 to the Harvest Roll; a crit earns +3. Failure earns nothing, but a fumble means a -3 modifier. Raids or invasions will give penalties to the Harvest Roll, and the quality of the previous Harvest (assumed, for a new fief, to be average) can adjust the roll (after a bad harvest you get penalties; after a good one you get bonuses). There are penalties or bonuses depending upon the year and the place within Arthur's Reign (which start in 495, so...), and blessings or curses from faeries or holy men or what have you can also provide either a +1 or a -1 modifier. Once you've got your final modifier, you roll 1d20. This is the Harvest Roll. You want to roll a 9 or more. 1-2 represents a Famine; Food income drops to 0 and the State of the Land is lowered by 3. 3-8 is a Bad Harvest; 0£ in Food income, again, but the State drops by only 1. 9-12 is a Good Harvest, giving a x1 multiplier to your Food income; 13-19 is an Excellent Harvest, multiplying your Food income by 1.5 and increasing the State by 1, and a roll of 20 or more is a Superlative Harvest, giving you double the usual Food income and increasing the State of the Land by 3. This is also the time to talk about the Taxes you can levy. There are six types of taxation for a feudal lord in Pendragon; the first four are called the Four Universal Aids and can be levied whenever appropriate, while the other two are more 'times of need' measures. *The Knighting of the Eldest Son - a lord is entitled to knight his eldest son when he is of appropriate age, formally designating his son his heir (though it is customary for the sons of lesser Knights to ask their liege to knight their children instead). They must pay a minimum of 8£ to do so; that cost includes the equipment of an Ordinary Knight. Wealthy or powerful lords are entitled to knight their son at their own level, as an heir (that is, a Duke can knight their son at the same level of cost that a Duke is expected to maintain), which can cost more, but we don't have to worry about that. On the occasion of the eldest son's knighting, the Lord may raise an additional amount of money - equal to one year's standard income. *The Wedding of the Eldest Daughter is occasion for a fine feast; the Lord may raise a number of Libra equal to the POP of his demense to help pay for it. *Ransoming the Lord is a pretty important one; when a Lord is captured, his steward can go to the peasants and get money for the Lord's freedom (the peasants will usually pay willingly; if their Lord is imprisoned, after all, who will protect them from raiders?). The Peasant's Loyalty (Lord) is rolled for each town, modified by the State of the Land modifier of the most recent Harvest roll; success or better means the town hands over 1.5 times its usual income, failure will hand over its standard annual income, and a fumble will only earn 1/2 the standard annual income (note that this is all 'the peasants hand over what they have in storage' or what have you; the town will still produce its usual income during the year). Any vassals can be called upon as well, but we don't have vassals so let's not go into that. This tax can only be applied once per year; if the Lord gets captured a second time, tough cookies. Try the other taxes. *The final universal aid is to Support a Crusade. A lord can raise an additional year's income in the first year of a campaign, and half that in following years. Note the use of 'Crusade' rather than 'war' - while Pendragon takes place before the Holy War of a Crusade was a recognized concept, it's still important to note that this aid cannot be called for just any war. It has to be a pretty big deal. *Of the two non-aid taxes, the first is called Tallage. Tallage is a Lord asking his vassals for money. Traditionally it's used to support a military campaign, but it can be levied for any reason at all (including the Lord saying 'you know what, I wish I had more money'). A successful Intrigue roll, or one made on his behalf, will tell a Vassal why the liege is demanding Tallage. Tallage is also always accompanied by a summons by the Lord; a vassal can dodge Tallage by simply not showing up, if their Loyalty (Lord) Passion is low enough! Tallage is usually equivalent to the POP of one's holding (so if the Earl demanded Tallage of we PCs, he would expect us to bring 1£ apiece - or more if we increase the POP of our holding). *The second is the Impost. This is squeezing more cash out of a town. Each township of POP 3 or more must fail their Hate (Lord) Passion if they have one; towns of less than 3 POP are totaled up and rolled as one to save time. If the township fails its Hate Passion, they pay half again what they would normally pay their Lord (so if we imposed an Impost on a 1 POP town, instead of getting 1£ Food, 1£ Goods, and 2£ Rights we would receive 1.5£ Food, 1.5£ Goods, and 3£ Rights). The Impost will cause the Peasantry to lose 1 from their Love (Lord) Passion if they have one, or get a check against Hate (Lord) if they have one. There are also some special measures that can be used to squeeze more cash out of your lands; these can get you checks to Arbitrary and Cruel and even reduce a town's POP, so they're for desperate circumstances only! Finally, there are Special Projects to be overseen. Lordly Domains divides them into four types: clearing land, constructing towns, building fortifications, or erecting religious structures. You can set up only one project at a time (a GM may allow more than one project to be worked on simultaneously if there are sufficient laborers and funds and overseers). Time and money for projects is designated at the end of the winter phase for the upcoming year; if your lands are raided or attacked your peasants won't be able to work on the project, and the time will be lost, though the money generally won't be. Clearing land or constructing towns - improving your demense economically, essentially - are considered Mass Labor Projects. They're handled as follows: *Set aside the funds. To clear one hyde of land or one hyrd of pasture or one fishing right or what have you - to improve the Food income of the Lord's Portion by 1£, in effect - costs a flat 5£. To improve a town such that it can maintain an additional POP costs as much as the town generates in a year (so, to improve a town from 1 POP to 2 POP, it costs 4£ - as much as the town generates annually). *Next, the peasants must be inspired to work by the steward. Three rolls are made to generate modifiers to the Peasant's Loyalty (Lord). First the Steward rolls his Just; a crit gives +2 to the Loyalty roll, a failure or fumble gives -2. The Peasants roll their Love (Lord) if they have one; success adds +3 to the Loyalty roll, a crit adds +5. Then there's the Hate (Lord) roll; results are identical to the Love roll, except use a - instead of a +. *Finally the Peasants roll their Loyalty (Lord) using the above modifiers. If the roll fails, the peasants just couldn't be arsed to do the work; the project fails as though the land had been raided (keep the money, lose the time). Success means they work normally; a crit adds +5 to the Project Completion rolls in the next step. *If the peasants could be made to work, the steward makes two final rolls for Project Completion - he rolls his Stewardship and his Energetic. If both rolls fail, both the money and time were wasted; the project was an utter failure (building a castle in a swamp, essentially). If only one roll fails, the time is wasted, but the money is recovered. And if both rolls succeed, then the project was successfully worked on. Finally! (note: some projects take a long time! This process may need to be repeated until several successful years of work have passed, at the GM's discretion) Fortifications and churches, on the other hand, are Skilled Labor Projects. As long as you've got the money, they will happen; not even Light Raiding will prevent them from being built. Heavy Raiding or pitched battles or the like will prevent the work, but a successful Stewardship roll can recoup half of the project's cost. These projects don't depend on your peasants; the labor is performed by skilled free men. Fortifications are covered in a separate chapter, and I'm not sure just yet how well they mesh with the 5.1e rules, so I'll skip them; the one most likely to affect us are the rules for church-building. A town of 1-3 POP - the only kind we should have to worry about for a while yet - is expected to hold a Village Chapel. These come for free with every town, basically. A lord can exceed these expectations and pay for a grander chapel - the cheapest one that can be built is a Small Chapel, and is the most commonly built by Vassal Knights. This costs 8£ and probably takes a few years to finish construction. A demense of 1-10 POP total is expected to have a Small Chapel somewhere in its borders, but it is typically expected that one such exists when a fief is created (usually attached to the manor house). Exceeding the expected Chapel levels in your fief will earn a lord a check to both Pious and Generous, and the local Church begins a Loyalty (Lord) Passion at 1d6+2, or gets a check to it if such a Passion already exists. It earns you precisely zero Libra, but then that's hardly the point, right? Finally you determine your balance for the year, then you start making plans for next year. *You can choose to Foster Loyalty among the peasantry by collecting less income than you are entitled to from your demense (or giving back what you already collected). If you collect your demense's POP in Libra or less, then the peasants will get (your choice) a check to Loyalty (Lord) or +1 to their Love (Lord). If you collect no income, the peasants will get (your choice) a check to Loyalty (Lord) or +1 to their Love (Lord) or -1 to their Hate (Lord). *You make plans for next year. This is where you set aside the money for the Special Projects mentioned above. *You can raise soldiers at no cost; you can raise a number of soldiers equal to the demense's total Food income for a year (note that you may in the future have to pay upkeep to keep your soldiers if you have five or more). *You can plan attacks or raids on a neighbor; this costs you no money, but you are committed to it. Offensive military campaigns without the benefit of such planning will suffer a -5 to relevant Battle rolls (so you usually won't say at the end of a game session 'you know what? I want to raid that dude;' you have to plan it out). And that's that - a broad overview of the system presented. Now... what do I actually think of it? Well, I do like it, personally. You get a bit more granular with your income but it's still abstracted into Food and Coin, so the bookkeeping is still reasonably simple; the system is flexible enough to be applied to larger holdings, in case some of us earn greater estates through marriage or inheritance, or even get vassals of our own someday. There's bookkeeping involved, but honestly it's not much more complex than the existing Winter Phase bookkeeping. That being said... it is extra bookkeeping, and additional fiddly bits of records might not be up everyone's alley. It doesn't meet all the criteria we've discussed for manors, though it provides a framework within which additional house rules can be hung ('what's that, you held pagan celebrations? Well, many of your peasants are pagan so they get a check to Loyalty (Lord) but enough of them aren't that you're unable to generate a Love (Lord) Passion this year' or what have you). And it might be too detailed for Verr's taste; I will admit that there have been some games where I've seen players become so invested in building Dame Barbie's Dream Manor that they lack the requisite fire for Adventure. Still... on the whole, I've always really liked the system. It drips with adventure hooks and plot complications and I think it adds a lot more to the game than the record keeping detracts from it, but really, I might just be crazy, so tell me what you all think.
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Oct 4, 2014 18:53
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Love that new effortpost smell.  That does demystify the manor rules quite a bit. I'd be for moving forwards with those rules if, and only if, all of you guys are down for the extra bookkeeping. As DCB says, all the system would really require of me is to occasionally throw a wrench into your plans, or use the rules to reward via manor biz. Not too much effort on my part. What do we think? As to the rate of posting, clearly I'm not the best roll model in that regard. My schedule is even wacker than predicted (especially the coming week. I've got a big oral exam for my masters on Friday) so I'm going to have to renege on my promise of "A post-every-three days", and bump it up to "Probably only posting on the weekends". That being said, I do want to keep this game going, even if that means we have to sacrifice posting frequency for a few months. There's no sense in stressing out about posting frequency, but I'll do my best keep things moving if you guys continue to help out!Finally, let me know via PM or this thread if I've forgotten some big-thing for your character IC or OOC. Organization is not my strong suit, and I'd like for each of you to get yours.
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Oct 5, 2014 09:36
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Those rules seem neat. I'd be fine with playing with them as long as we don't have to put too much work into it, since I find the additional flavour interesting but the bookkeeping (well, all bookkeeping, really) a bit dull. The only big thing I would appreciate you keeping in mind for Cadogan is that I really want him to find someone cool to romance and marry, not just some noble lady whose only skill is waiting around for him at home. Some kind of female warrior would be nice (come on, Irish warrior princess!), but anyone who has interesting skills or capabilities of her own would be fine. Wealth and glory aren't important as long as she's an interesting character with her own story. Also, I'm still not clear if there's any chance of us gaining additional glory from the story being recounted at the feast, or if Amig's roll prevented that. Oh yeah, and should Cadogan's Honour be lowered by the critical failure? I seem to recall that that's how it works, but I wanted to check that that wasn't changing with the passion house rule as well. Edit: Oh yeah, and I just wanted to say that I wasn't really planning on having Cadogan do much else at the feast unless approached or something. He's pretty content just hanging out with his brother and Pellinore. I'm a little sad I didn't get Old Uncle Muerig in on the action, though. Maybe I'll think of something else to add if the scene goes on a bit longer. Viscardus fucked around with this message at 21:27 on Oct 6, 2014 |
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Oct 6, 2014 21:24
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While warrior women are few and far between in Pendragon - not to say they don't exist, but they ain't exactly common! No, not even in Ireland, although the Eachlach are a lot more common than their counterparts in Britain might be; most of the actual 'warrior women' you'll see in Pagan Shore tend to be devotees of strife goddesses, they make lousy marriage material - that doesn't mean, IMHO, that the role of even a general 'lady who waits for her lord to come home from adventure' is a boring character. I'm just saying, I think you're selling the ladies short! For one thing, courtly ladies - the kind most of us will end up marrying - tend to emphasize skills like Industry and Stewardship and Intrigue (edit: and Chirurgery, which I promise you some of us will find important someday). You might notice these as skills that most knights suck at. A courtly maiden uses these skills on her husband's behalf - after all, his success and Glory improves her station in life as well - so that he can stick to riding and stabbing and such. (incidentally, this is why your required upkeep doesn't increase when you get married, even to a peasant girl; your wife is assumed, bookkeeping-wise, to be earning her own upkeep through improving the oversight of your lands and weaving lovely tapestries and whatever else) I guess what I'm saying is that even a role that can so often become just an adjunct of a PC, like wife, can still lead to interesting and entertaining characters. The noble ladies whose skills are 'sitting around waiting at home' can, if you let them, be the most interesting parts of a game. I have the sneaking suspicion that Verr isn't the kind of GM who's going to shuffle the ladies off-screen to spit out kids and never bother the PCs again. The degree of personality I've seen from pretty much every NPC we've met seems to signal that pretty clear.  Mind you, having said that, I'm half-hoping that Ysgarran meets some exotic maiden in Faerie while working for the Thin Knight - I mean, a guy can dream, right? Nothing wrong with having ambitions! I just don't want to see anyone sell any character roles short. DivineCoffeeBinge fucked around with this message at 21:47 on Oct 6, 2014 |
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Oct 6, 2014 21:45
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Sorry, I didn't mean to offend any fictional Arthurian women. I really just meant that I'd like Cadogan to find a woman with her own story. Nothing against any of the courtly ladies we've been introduced to so far, because they certainly could be interesting characters, I just find that there's something more compelling about meeting someone in the course of an adventure of some kind.
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Oct 6, 2014 22:23
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If we're going to use that, then we need to get us some stewards, stat.
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Oct 7, 2014 00:08
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Viscardus posted:Sorry, I didn't mean to offend any fictional Arthurian women. Yeah, you know, in retrospect I have no idea why my response was as vehement as it was. Lack of sleep, maybe. Sorry about that.  Friar John posted:If we're going to use that, then we need to get us some stewards, stat. I can't find a 'standard cost' for hiring a steward anywhere, but we all have families, many of whom are probably staying in our manors for lack of anyplace better to live; I'm sure most of us could scrounge up a steward with a Stewardship score of at least 7 or 8, if not better. For a vassal knight, that ought to be sufficient; as long as we don't make a habit of failed harvests, the Earl should, in theory, be willing to cover us if we have a bad year.
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Oct 7, 2014 18:07
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Just finished up my oral exams and passed with flying colors. Heck yes. Should have more time to post in the coming weeks. I'll kick off next summer tomorrow. Alright, so no dissenters: Let's use the Lordly Domain rules. Also, if Heddwyn and Florian want to continue their shenanigans via flashback that is cool.
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Oct 13, 2014 17:00
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Flashbacked! Also, guys, feel free to kill off your Saxons quickly and help Heddwyn out. *He* has no problem with buddies ganging up on enemy targets, after all (unless he's the one being targeted!).
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Oct 23, 2014 04:43
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DCB, just looked it up: lances break when you roll an odd number for damage or on a fumble.
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Oct 23, 2014 07:24
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ibntumart posted:DCB, just looked it up: lances break when you roll an odd number for damage or on a fumble. Danke! I'll be happier when I get the collection back together; I've only got so much space on the shelves for hardcopy.
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Oct 23, 2014 08:36
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I ran out of shelf space long ago. Still can't help but prefer an actual book to an ebook, though.
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Oct 23, 2014 09:02
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I'll flashback and also kill some Saxons tonight, if that's ok.
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Oct 23, 2014 11:57
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Heck yes!
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Oct 23, 2014 22:43
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Sorry about the delays in Saxon killing and traumatic flashbacks. Between not feeling well and family obligations, I got delayed. Posted now, though.
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Oct 26, 2014 17:52
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Geez, I'm sorry, I kind of forgot about this. I'll try to post soon.
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Oct 30, 2014 23:43
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No problem! Post at your convenience. As I said, this is gonna be a slow couple of months for me as well. On the other hand, things are just getting real in the game thread! What's gonna happen!? 
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Nov 2, 2014 12:34
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And I thought Heddwyn was in trouble! Poor Sir Florian.
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Nov 2, 2014 13:03
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Don't worry! There's still the flashback. Maybe I'll be killed by Sir Ricerch before the Saxon can kill me.
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Nov 3, 2014 04:37
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Oof, poor Florian! Hope someone brought chirurgeons... Though, incidentally, since I was right on the Lance Charge bonuses does that mean Ysgarran actually did hit? Look, I can't save/avenge Florian if I'm dead too, is all I'm saying here... EDIT: Also, wait. Florian's Saxon's Great Spear is 22. He has a -5 penalty for being on the receiving end of a Lance Charge (but no penalty for being unmounted while fighting a mounted opponent). His skill shouldn't be 18; 22 - 5 = 17. So he doesn't crit, he misses, and Florian gets a hit in. Yes? DivineCoffeeBinge fucked around with this message at 04:53 on Nov 3, 2014 |
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Nov 3, 2014 04:50
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Unfortunately not. The Lance Charge bestows a +5 bonus to the lancer, but no penalty to the opponent.
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Nov 3, 2014 05:44
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Verr posted:Unfortunately not. The Lance Charge bestows a +5 bonus to the lancer, but no penalty to the opponent. Ahhh! Okay, that makes sense. So, yeah, crit on Florian. Oof. Ysgarran hits, though, yes? Florian might be boned. With 25 HP, taking 37 points in a single wound... he needs to be healed to positive HP within the hour, which means he needs 13 points of healing. Even a critical First Aid roll can heal, at most, 1d3+3 HP, and First Aid can only be applied to a wound once, so Florian would need at minimum 7 points of magical healing, and even then we're looking at a massive amount of Aging Table rolls and other assorted unpleasantness before Florian is up on his feet (in a severely reduced state) - and unless I missed someone, I think Ysgarran is the only one here with a magical healing potion, and his only heals 1d6. Having said all of that, the only real glimmer of hope I can see is this: Pendragon 5th Edition p. 94 posted:In combat, specifically, a critical success with a weapon skill indicates that the character inflicts double damage. (His player rolls the normal number of dice twice and adds the two results.) Emphasis mine. Rather than doubling that 23, you're supposed to roll 12d6, which might get a more favorable result for damage (hey, even Saxons can have lovely rolls). That's... all the hope I've got, honestly.
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Nov 3, 2014 06:04
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Still alive here folks, sorry for the break. FS, you're up.
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Nov 17, 2014 10:48
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Heddwyn is still here, too, ready to do some damage (or at least not die).
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Nov 17, 2014 12:14
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Cool! Do you want to go forward with the Lady Imane deal?
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Nov 22, 2014 01:43
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But of course. The poor rolling this battle has made me painfully aware that Heddwyn needs to get busy securing his heir!
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Nov 22, 2014 02:18
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I'm here...just dying. 
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Nov 22, 2014 20:16
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| # ? May 24, 2024 06:11 |
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My internet access is going to be spotty for a week, as I go visit my new in-laws for the holidays. I should - I hope - be around enough to continue playing, but if not, feel free to roll for me. Ysgarran will follow the orders of his Battle leader - though he'll switch to his (Passion-boosted) Sword skill happily.
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Dec 10, 2014 04:05
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