10/11/2023 Pendragon Session Two - A SHIELD BORN IN BLOOD

10/11/2023 Pendragon Session Two - A SHIELD BORN IN BLOOD

(The Adventure of The Sword Tournament, 510 pt. 2)

pre-session

We gathered again for our second session of Pendragon.  In between sessions I’ve been binging on Arthuriana… and I’ve sort of got the bug?  I watched Excalibur and Knightriders.  I’ve read the first two books of Malory’s Le Morte D’Arthur.  And I purchased a pdf of the Great Pendragon Campaign.  I’ve read through the “Boy King” period which corresponds with the starter set.  My mind has been swimming with thoughts on the tellings and retellings of Arthur’s legend, and how to have fun with it.

Most of my thoughts concern ideas for years 511 and 512, mostly using stuff I’ve read and pulling from the GPC to expand upon the starter set.  I am also toying with extending our starter set with the additional boy king years… maybe up to 515?  Not sure.  The starter set doesn’t have a “satisfying ending”.  We will have to wait and see how we are feeling at the end of the starter set.  All of us are quite excited about the “tour de chaosium” project.  Finishing all three starter sets seems like something that will make us feel like we’ve earned Glory in real life!  So we are a little reluctant to delay it.

Session Summary

The actual session was action packed.  We ran through the second half of the Adventure of the Sword Tournament (year 510).  This covered the sections:

• Picts in the Dark

• The King Defends his Crown

• Journey to Carlion

• The Battle of Carlion

And the players were playing Sir Asterius, Dame Lynelle, and Sir Evrain.

We started with the knights on guard duty in St. Paul’s Cathedral.  After becoming alert to the Pict intruders, the knights began a bloody melee.  Dame Lynelle invoked her Hate (Picts) passion, and began slaying them recklessly.  The fight had ups and downs, but the players and I really learned about Reckless Attacks, Disarms, and Knockdowns in this fight.  They successfully slew the picts, recovered the sword, and were awarded by Arthur.  Dame Lynelle took this opportunity to ask to be Knighted, which seemed appropriate, so we roleplayed that scene.  The players then generated a Loyalty (Companions) passion.  They chose the name “the Shield of St. Paul” for defending St. Paul’s Cathedral, which was a suitably cool name for their deed of arms.

“The king defends his crown”, followed by “journey to carlion”, saw them feasting, boasting, and flirting quite a bit.  All of us seemed to have a great ease with the trait rolls, and passion rolls as well.  Sir Evrain even worked up the courage to flirt with the Lady Morcades, his amor, and did so successfully, while Dame Lynelle Boasted about her knighting and her prowess of arms to attendants.

At Carlion, of course, Lot brings his large army to bear, and the Battle of Carlion takes place.  This 8 turn battle took us a long time to play through, mostly because it was our first real battle.  It was a little clunky at first, but the players and I became much more fluid and showed a lot of mastery as the battle when on.

They fought valorously and prudently at first, then became more and more reckless!  In the first round against Knights of Lothian, they managed to keep their own, and unhorsed several knights.  But rather than capture them they just fought frenetically against other horsed knights.  

On the second turn they charged some Picts, and slew several of them.  On the third turn, they fought Irish Kerns, and the fourth Saxon Warriors.  They kept fighting recklessly, keeping their morale from dropping too much, and kept having good success against these low morale foes.  They eventually ran out of morale and had to sit out the remaining 4 turns of battle!  From the sidelines they observed all the events, and the big opportunities for glory that they missed.

The lesson was clear: they should ride out, fight, then go to the rear to recuperate morale, and head back out (never letting it dip too far below 8 or so).  There wasn’t as much glory in fighting the irish and the picts.  Their insistence on staying out so long cost them chances at glory, and kept them from fighting and possibly capturing enemy knights.  At the end of the battle, they hadn’t captured a single foe.

The session ended with all three accepting Arthur as their household lord, and generating Homage Passions.  Our session ran way long so we decided to run the winter phase at the start of the next session.

Notes

At first we were a little clumsy with the opposed rolls in combat, but we got the hang of it.  Two modifiers kept showing up: the reflexive height modifier, and the multiple opponents modifiers.  These often had the effect of cancelling themselves out which was interesting.  After that, knights frequently chose to fight recklessly, and were also frequently impassioned.  Which meant we had further modifiers to consider.  We all quickly got good at the math, and the decision the knights most frequently faced was “are you going to fight all three and suffer -10, or are you gonna fight one and let the other two attack unopposed?”  I think we got the hang of it.

Remembering to go through the knockdown, major wound, unconscious checks actually ended speeding all this up.  Frequently, they would charge into a group of men on foot (irish, picts, saxons) who outnumbered them.  They would down someone with the charge and then in the subsequent melee hit the next one, either knocking them down or giving a major wound (but not killing them outright as per the charge).  So this ended up giving me some quick tools to have numbers of opponents go down without having to count every single HP, something I grew to like.

I completely forgot, though, to have these people attack the horses.  Attacking the horses is something I need to look up for the future.

I had a lot of trouble figuring out the battle, though.  Mostly from a rules perspective.  I had my notes in front of me, but I ended up with lots of odd questions - I am not sure if each battle turn is a mounted charge, for example (I know the very first turn is, and then each round after would not be… but when we go to another battle turn does that mean they can charge again?).  I was also a little unsure about capturing knights.  It didn’t come up more than once but based on the posture “fight 1, 2, or 3 rounds” I couldn’t make out whether this meant on a second or third round they had to use their round to call their squire, or if any unhorsed knights were captured… or maybe its after the combat rounds are over they can make a squire check to capture a knight?  I’ll have to check the rules, seek answers on the net, or maybe just think about it.

I also struggled at first with the encounter, intensity, and battle rolls.  I realized halfway through that the GM picks the encounter and rolls intensity… if successful, then the encounter is set.  But if it fails, the PKs can roll battle to see if they can add new encounters or maybe opportunities.  Initially, I was just having them roll battle no matter what.  This is interesting because I could have used this to force them to retreat to the rear in an earlier round → picking say the knights of Lothian and then succeeding at the intensity roll would have meant that they had to retreat to the rear and regain morale.

I also need to figure out the interpretations of the battle cards.  Some indicate that when half are defeated, they disperse… does this mean the card is removed from the battle?  Or is it just that one turn of the battle?  For example, they absolutely devastated the irish kerns, indicating the unit dispersed.  Does this mean the unit isn’t available in future rounds?

Player Comments

The players had a lot of fun.  They really felt like knights → they realized their “error” in the battle.  Their station gave them arms and armor and skills to absolutely dominate the irish kerns and pictish javeliners and the saxons… but they didn’t fight their brother knights in glorious mounted combat all that much.  They also saw how their decisions on morale, passions, and so forth affected the battle, and really felt like the system was easy to understand.  One player mentioned that they had the easiest time learning this system compared to anything else.

They really like the traits and passions, and they liked the way the battle “played out”.  The structure made sense and their role in it made sense.

They, like me, are really interested in continuing to play, and we are gonna have to make a decision about what to do when the starter set is finished!

As a final note, we agreed to “name our sessions” after they’ve been played.  They suggested “A SHIELD BORN IN BLOOD” referring to their new group name, the Shield of St. Paul.  So awesome.