The knights ride out for glory on the "tournament circuit," joining like-minded fellows as they criss-cross Britain with lance in hand. How well will their season fare?
Featuring:
Dave S.
Jade
Renae
Jen
The campaign's wiki can be found here.
Wow. That's some kind of luck right there. Makes one wonder where we will next see those intrepid lancers.
ReplyDeleteOne thing you discussed was which wounds hit points are healed on. I don't think that wounds actually heal that way. Again, I'm looking at 4e Pendragon as my general reference, but I think all healing goes to your generic hit point pool, and wounds are erased as soon as they get first aid (though any unhealed damage stays, of course).
I'm wondering if the way to get the most out of the tournament circuit might not be to just mark a bunch of tournaments on the map - possibly with some notes on prizes, who is expected to show up, hotness of the local damsels, etc - and let the player knights plan out their path across Britain.
Re: healing. There's an odd disconnect, since the rules do indeed seem to imply that Healing Rate just goes towards a general "hit point" total, yet you also keep track of individual "wounds" for the purposes of First Aid.
DeleteI guess the way it's supposed to be handled is that you reduce your Hit Points in accordance with damage, but you don't worry about how much an individual "wound" is counted for, which is how I think Jade was keeping her records. I'll clarify the point next session.
As for marking things on the map, the way the Circuit scenario is set up, it would be difficult to do that in advance--you roll 3d6 for number of days til next tourney and 2d6 for days it takes to get there. I was just eyeballing my 4e fold-out map in terms of saying where the next tournament was at any given time. What we need is a hex map, as one could simply count each hex as a day of travel and then count hexes.
I think the importance of individual wound values is that you can't first aid a wound for more than its value (which I had never noticed before, but is in fact in the rules). But definitely, some types of damage specifically don't cause wounds but just deduct hit points. So I think wounds are specifically for first aid.
DeleteWhen I say map out the tournaments, the map is the less important part. I meant that I think it would be more fun if the players have to pick what tournaments to go to. Do you go to the big tournament worth more glory, or the small one that you're more likely to win? The one where the prize is a great horse, or where you can impress your amor? Do you attend lots of tournaments in Logres, or just a few far-flung ones?
The correct answer is you make Intrigue rolls so that you know where Tristram and Lancelot are and you don't get surprised at some Neighbourhood tournament when Sir Powerthirst shows up and just starts throwing everyone to the ground.
DeleteAmen.
DeleteWell, this episode was well-named. Good thing Leander missed this session or Dave may have had to go through even more characters. He should probably just have "Emergency Backup Knight" whose statistics he can just recycle every time he needs to bring in a character.
ReplyDeleteI'm really excited to finally be in a part of the story where my Arthurian knowledge is finally starting to kick in and I can start to anticipate what's happening. I mean it's nothing good, and I'm dreading the announcement that's coming in a few years, but are you really going to skip over a huge swath of time? I know this period is waiting for Percival's failure to really kick into high gear, and the stage is nearly set for Mordred's ascendency, but there must be a bunch of adventures that could be run in the meantime.
I tracked the tournament results here: http://tinyurl.com/Year544Tournament and I have a question in general. I thought that Tied Crit damage was like fatigue that automatically goes away in about an hour. With tournaments this can be important, because if you're knocked to below 0 like Dave was, wouldn't the Crit damage disappear potentially "naturally" bringing people up to positives, or negate the death potential anyway? It'll make record keeping even harder for damage tracking, but is important
Yes, good catch on tied crit damage! I'll remember that in future Circuits.
DeleteThanks for the awesome spreadsheet. I hadn't thought about tracking overall results until I wrote "How will their season fare?" And then I thought to myself, "I wonder if someone will put together a stat sheet?" :D
As for skipping years, I'm waffling. There's definitely a TON of adventures that could be run, but on the other hand I think we're all starting to get a bit itchy to move on to end-game and then on to other things, and even if I skip some years, there's still going to be a good solid 2-3 months of the GPC ahead of us.
You signed yourself up to run the "Great" Pendragon Campaign, not the "Abridged" Pendragon Campaign! Even though yes, I don't think a lot is going to happen and I'm all for not dragging out my suffering and getting to the thing that I'm upset about that's coming up, it would still be a little sad whenever there's a time skip.Though I believe that it sounds like the Grail Quest is coming up soon judging by the blighting of the various lands...
DeleteSo is that how tied crit damage works for healing? Sir Urien the Short-Lived took 32 damage in one blow, but had taken a 2/3/3 from Crit damage first. I'm not sure how many hit points he had, but assuming he had 30 does that mean he only needs to get the 3 point healing wound to survive (do-able) since the Crit Damage would heal on its own?
he, uh, started with less than thirty.
DeleteRegardless, crit damage still counts as "regular" damage for all intents and purposes--I'm just having it heal faster.
DeleteI understand that in the midst of combat it counts as regular damage, I was just wondering how it applies to post-battle healing. In those tied crit battles where someone slips it can (though obviously not in my example) make a difference when it comes to their likelihood of survival. If it'll heal on its own then they might theoretically be in no danger of dying once it goes away after that hour of rest. They're down and out of the fight, but it could make the difference between life and death.
DeleteI guess my question is just if tied crit damage needs/should be allowed a First Aid roll or not. I think if it heals on its own it doesn't, which would reduce the likelihood of dying at least in tournaments. Even if it makes record keeping a Nightmare.
I'd print out a bunch of little squares of good card-stock paper with 1, 2 or 3 on them and hand those out to people during battles to represent crit damage, and then they just go back into a pile at the end of the battle. Or if you have a bunch of d6's lying around (I have so many) actually give people the crit damage dice to hold on to so that they serve the same purpose.
I tend to bring at least two tiny cases of d6s with me to the table every session.
DeleteGood session all around. I really love the tournament system in this game. Though you did say the players would win Libra as well as Glory and they did not seem to earn any.
ReplyDeleteMan, Dave at this point I think you deserve a magical super knight with stats on par with Lancelot for all the crap you have had to put up with.
It also seems that all is not well in paradise.
I'm sure King Mark will get over his hurt feelings any day now.
DeleteI'd imagine tournaments have their own prizes rarely, but I'm wondering about how teams work. Would you actually form fighting blocks that could result in you ganging up on single opponents with a successful Battle roll or something? Right now it seems like you're a team in name only, and if you aren't tracking hit points you can accidentally murder your friends.
One thing however that I did not like about the tournament system was that if you tied crits then the named NPC won. It really takes away from the whole ordeal. As it should be the PC who wins as they are the ones the story is focused on.
DeleteI kinda think that makes sense, in the quick resolution it means you've run into an opponent as passionate as you are, and that you both exhaust yourself from tied crits.I don't think you're running into the named NPC specifically, it's just that "since none of you won, the next best knight won".
DeleteI think that if you get a clear success and no one else did like Perry in Hoplington you don't get to win.
The "professional" tournament system is very much in its infancy at this point. The emergence of proper teams will see a lot more cooperation and less intra-team competition. I made the remark about winning libra at the start of the session, when I still foolishly believed we'd be able to grind through a few years in one go--"wager" tournaments will be much more common in just a couple years.
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ReplyDeleteWhat is Daig‘s arms? Is he just using a plain shield or one with "Sui Desdichado" on it? Or something of that nature.
ReplyDelete