Monday, January 13, 2014

Back to Pendragon!


So I got back together with a face-to-face group and we've regularly been playing D&d for nigh 9 months now. It's great, but I find that I also long for some more dramatic happenings and intrigues. And knightly combat, fealty and thematic events, not just burning oils on monsters. 

So I convinced a rump part of the dnd group to try out Pendragon a few weeks ago (the whole group of dnd players is too big, I have like 7 players to herd like cats). They quite liked it, despite the power gamer almost dying in the second year of the campaign. 

Some things I'm going to try based on what I learned from my past pendragon sessions:

1. No rolling for traits when a character does something unless the trait is 16+ or somehow the trait is being particularly affected (seductress fey v. Lustful). Just give a check or auto increae for any notable trait actions. I hated "checking" to see if non-extraordinarily traited knights did things (and it's slow).

2. Simple holdings. I'm going to use the Book of the Estate for any holdings: extra income goes strait into investment, no need for rolling yearly harvests. Stewardship is for repairs when Saxons raid.

3. More family involvement using the excellent transom tables in the core book. More emphasis on station for wives finding acceptable. More focus on marriages as alliances, not just dowry collection. I also will probably use the random events table from the Book of the Manor cuz it's got great stuff like wyvern attacks and brownie infestations.


4. Simplified battle rules of my own creation (the Book of Battle rules are WAY over complicated): unit leader rolls battle, modified by intuitive conditions (terrain, relative army sizes, morale situation), against enemy commander or just to succeed (open charges). Roll randomly on table of enemies, knights fight, then commander rolls again with modifiers based on success of last rounds fighting. Criticals give opportunities like fighting enemy leaders bodyguard or camp. 

More to come, I'm hoping to do some play reports to keep track of the games progress. 

1 comment:

  1. Looking forward to more!

    You might want to check out Beyond the Wall--it has a really nice simplified battle system, complete with a handy half-page flowchart. It's pretty similar to your idea, but there might be some things worth stealing there.

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