Well. You did it. It's the end of an era. Today of all days, when I just barely held myself together finishing the final Discworld novel and then this. On a monday no less. And I missed my bet on Cynrain by 1 year.
It's an interesting juxtaposition that for all the adventures, rivalries and relationships it just all ends so suddenly - this battle wasn't only a third as long as Badon Hill after all. That last epilogue is so important though because the characters do all live on in memory and stories passed down through the generations, even after boring non-magical history takes over. The vocal toasting at the passing of the characters also helped to make this WAY less traumatic than reading the last Discworld novel. I was stalled at the end of Chapter 4 for two days and started getting upset whenever I tried to start reading again.
Does this mean all the commentators are cast as the annoying children who are constantly peppering with interjections, questions, or pointing out plot holes?
"How did Cynrain help to kill Syagrius when he stayed behind at his manor?" "I thought you said Sigebrhyt came with Bleobaris into the Kingdom of the Circle of Gold" "Wait, what happened to Cormac?"
The end does come rather suddenly. That caught me off-guard the first time I ran the GPC, but I think it has to be that way. It was all hanging together by the loosest of threads, and didn't take much to unravel.
From this outside perspective, I thought you did a great job describing that boulder rollig back down the hill on Logres in proper Sisyphean fashion.
Also, since I missed out on commenting on Sir Leander's demise last week, let me say that I found that very satisfyingly Arthurian. You can imagine Malory spending a book detailing his fantastic adventures, then name-dropping him as one of the stupendous knights killed in these epic conflicts at the end. And perhaps we know which knights wander off to the holy land to get killed after the death of Arthur.
Do you have a scoreboard of most glorious knights? I mean, surely Cynrain's at the top (of player knights, or maybe even all knights), but then who? Wolfram? Leander? Sigebryht? Daig? I would think it's gotta be one of those guys.
Sure he wasn't a nobleman for that long, but I feel like he was around for a long time. I named those four because I was thinking that they had been around the longest (apart from Cynrain). Maybe Archade or Tathan was around longer than Daig.
He was, but Dave was a little too failure prone in critical moments to accumulate too much Glory. I believe Wulfram might be the only non-Jade knight apart from Leander to crack the 16K threshold. Tathan, Daig and Archade all did great things, but also got cut down. Dave may place second for cumulative Glory though, if for no other reason than those constant +1000 boosts he got for starting new Knights.
Jade hands down won this campaign for Glory though since she seemed really good about keeping those solo sessions up on her backup characters. I had thought Cynfan was no longer a combatant for some reason, and she apparently did Caradoc as well even though he ended up infirm.
In my mind there was a mention of the Rydycham last year when everything went to Hell, when Gawaine noted they would ordinarily be on hand to help stabilize things, but we're all out looking for Cynrain. That family was clearly a political powerhouse.
thanks for posting this campaign, I really enjoyed learning about Pendragon. This is the game I wanted ended up coming to your site for. I assume Horror on the Orient Express is next up for you?
Yes, the plan is to maintain the weekly schedule as much as possible in the face of holidays and winter weather. (I'm stalling a bit on "Horror" for a few other practical reasons as well.) Really looking forward to our round-robin winter, though! First up, Jen will be running "The Big Hoodoo" for Trail of Cthulhu, which will probably take a couple sessions. I'm hoping to run some Night Witches later in the month, too.
And with any luck (and if I'm able to read the core book before Fallout 4 releases), I'll be running Ryuutama at some point, having just received my kickstarter copy.
I forgot to actually post my congratulations as well! This has been a great ride, and it's been a lot of fun following and commenting along each week. Looking forward to the next game, and to let the stories of this long, long tale enter into legend.
If I may ask, which supplements did you use in running this game? Were the feast cards your own invention or are those available for purchase? And did you just use an ordinary spreadsheet to track glory, or some other method?
Gregg: Check out the tab at the top of this page marked "Pendragon Resources". That's my list of what I used. Just added is Miika's feast card spreadsheet, which is the latest version of the deck (which I originally snagged off the old Pendragon forums).
For Glory-tracking, do you mean for PCs or NPCs? For PCs, I had a notebook I kept open at the table. Ever year would cover two pages; the verso side was my spot for jotting down notes, the recto was for writing down Glory awards as they came up (I'd just write each character's name across the top and draw columns between them). For NPCs, I had a couple false starts of trying to put together a spreadsheet to automatically generate Glory accumulation and skill increases each year, but it just got too unwieldy and I ended up hand-waving it instead.
Ah, excellent stuff, thanks. I'm thinking of a spreadsheet with auto glory calculation for PCs, which seems workable enough in theory, but it might crash on the rocks of reality. I'm doing a test run (the evocatively-named Introductory Scenario) with my group in a couple weeks to see if they like the system well enough to play a campaign and I'll give the spreadsheet a try then. I assume something will go dreadfully wrong with it.
As you may have heard in some of the recordings, I left it up to the players to be responsible for their own annual Glory-tracking. This didn't always work--people would forget, or would let their totals get out of whack--but I had enough on my plate to worry about that!
There are Excel spreadsheet character sheets out there that auto-calc Glory tallies. If you're in the habit of holding onto everyone's sheets between sessions, you could easily input their data every week and go with that.
Re: the "Introductory Scenario"--it's a classic, but it's always extremely problematic. It was lifted straight from 4th edition (default year 530) and dumped into a 485 context. I replaced the "jousting" stuff with wrestling; you may wish to do similar modifications.
Oh, and speaking of starting things, your timing is impeccable: the Book of Uther just dropped today! It's up on Nocturnal's site and will be appearing on DriveThru/RPGnow in a couple days. HIGHLY recommended for starting a campaign in the Uther period. Plus, there's an expansion to the GPC that rolls the starting date back to 480, the year Uther was crowned; you can buy it separately if you don't want to buy the whole BoU...
Also, I noted my favorite knight, Sir Wulfram never got a picture. In his later years, I can only envision Old Man Strength as one person, and one person only.
To my knowledge, Jen never settled on a final image for Wulfram. Robert Goulet and Axl Rose were both cited early on, and now we can add Lithgow-cum-Quixote to the mix.
aw man I am going to miss this game...
ReplyDeleteI as well. For those of you playing the "Listen at Home" game, place your bets on who's going to survive! Or for how long.
DeleteDAVE
- Sir Gumerit
RENAE
- Sir Gomerit
DES/YE OLDE ADVERSARY
-Sir Jaradan
JEN
- Sir Torainus
- Sir Gondrins
- Earl Robert
JADE
- Count Cynrain
- Sir Sigebryht
- Sir Cynfan
- Sir Cynwulf
Well. You did it. It's the end of an era. Today of all days, when I just barely held myself together finishing the final Discworld novel and then this. On a monday no less. And I missed my bet on Cynrain by 1 year.
ReplyDeleteIt's an interesting juxtaposition that for all the adventures, rivalries and relationships it just all ends so suddenly - this battle wasn't only a third as long as Badon Hill after all. That last epilogue is so important though because the characters do all live on in memory and stories passed down through the generations, even after boring non-magical history takes over. The vocal toasting at the passing of the characters also helped to make this WAY less traumatic than reading the last Discworld novel. I was stalled at the end of Chapter 4 for two days and started getting upset whenever I tried to start reading again.
DeleteDoes this mean all the commentators are cast as the annoying children who are constantly peppering with interjections, questions, or pointing out plot holes?
"How did Cynrain help to kill Syagrius when he stayed behind at his manor?"
"I thought you said Sigebrhyt came with Bleobaris into the Kingdom of the Circle of Gold"
"Wait, what happened to Cormac?"
The end does come rather suddenly. That caught me off-guard the first time I ran the GPC, but I think it has to be that way. It was all hanging together by the loosest of threads, and didn't take much to unravel.
DeleteNo comment on the last question. ;)
From this outside perspective, I thought you did a great job describing that boulder rollig back down the hill on Logres in proper Sisyphean fashion.
DeleteAlso, since I missed out on commenting on Sir Leander's demise last week, let me say that I found that very satisfyingly Arthurian. You can imagine Malory spending a book detailing his fantastic adventures, then name-dropping him as one of the stupendous knights killed in these epic conflicts at the end. And perhaps we know which knights wander off to the holy land to get killed after the death of Arthur.
Do you have a scoreboard of most glorious knights? I mean, surely Cynrain's at the top (of player knights, or maybe even all knights), but then who? Wolfram? Leander? Sigebryht? Daig? I would think it's gotta be one of those guys.
Not Daig. Definitely not Daig. He was a count for like five seconds.
DeleteSure he wasn't a nobleman for that long, but I feel like he was around for a long time. I named those four because I was thinking that they had been around the longest (apart from Cynrain). Maybe Archade or Tathan was around longer than Daig.
DeleteHe was, but Dave was a little too failure prone in critical moments to accumulate too much Glory. I believe Wulfram might be the only non-Jade knight apart from Leander to crack the 16K threshold. Tathan, Daig and Archade all did great things, but also got cut down. Dave may place second for cumulative Glory though, if for no other reason than those constant +1000 boosts he got for starting new Knights.
DeleteJade hands down won this campaign for Glory though since she seemed really good about keeping those solo sessions up on her backup characters. I had thought Cynfan was no longer a combatant for some reason, and she apparently did Caradoc as well even though he ended up infirm.
In my mind there was a mention of the Rydycham last year when everything went to Hell, when Gawaine noted they would ordinarily be on hand to help stabilize things, but we're all out looking for Cynrain. That family was clearly a political powerhouse.
thanks for posting this campaign, I really enjoyed learning about Pendragon. This is the game I wanted ended up coming to your site for. I assume Horror on the Orient Express is next up for you?
ReplyDeleteWe'll be running short-form games through the winter, then picking up HotOE in the spring.
DeleteSo stay tuned for a lot of round-robin GMing.
Will it still be a weekly game (barring interruptions for the holidays)?
DeleteYes, the plan is to maintain the weekly schedule as much as possible in the face of holidays and winter weather. (I'm stalling a bit on "Horror" for a few other practical reasons as well.) Really looking forward to our round-robin winter, though! First up, Jen will be running "The Big Hoodoo" for Trail of Cthulhu, which will probably take a couple sessions. I'm hoping to run some Night Witches later in the month, too.
DeleteAnd with any luck (and if I'm able to read the core book before Fallout 4 releases), I'll be running Ryuutama at some point, having just received my kickstarter copy.
DeleteCongratulations to all for a terrific ride! It's been a blast to listen to, and I can't wait until the next adventure begins.
ReplyDeleteI forgot to actually post my congratulations as well! This has been a great ride, and it's been a lot of fun following and commenting along each week. Looking forward to the next game, and to let the stories of this long, long tale enter into legend.
ReplyDeleteHey David --
ReplyDeleteIf I may ask, which supplements did you use in running this game? Were the feast cards your own invention or are those available for purchase? And did you just use an ordinary spreadsheet to track glory, or some other method?
Gregg: Check out the tab at the top of this page marked "Pendragon Resources". That's my list of what I used. Just added is Miika's feast card spreadsheet, which is the latest version of the deck (which I originally snagged off the old Pendragon forums).
DeleteFor Glory-tracking, do you mean for PCs or NPCs? For PCs, I had a notebook I kept open at the table. Ever year would cover two pages; the verso side was my spot for jotting down notes, the recto was for writing down Glory awards as they came up (I'd just write each character's name across the top and draw columns between them). For NPCs, I had a couple false starts of trying to put together a spreadsheet to automatically generate Glory accumulation and skill increases each year, but it just got too unwieldy and I ended up hand-waving it instead.
Ah, excellent stuff, thanks. I'm thinking of a spreadsheet with auto glory calculation for PCs, which seems workable enough in theory, but it might crash on the rocks of reality. I'm doing a test run (the evocatively-named Introductory Scenario) with my group in a couple weeks to see if they like the system well enough to play a campaign and I'll give the spreadsheet a try then. I assume something will go dreadfully wrong with it.
DeleteAs you may have heard in some of the recordings, I left it up to the players to be responsible for their own annual Glory-tracking. This didn't always work--people would forget, or would let their totals get out of whack--but I had enough on my plate to worry about that!
DeleteThere are Excel spreadsheet character sheets out there that auto-calc Glory tallies. If you're in the habit of holding onto everyone's sheets between sessions, you could easily input their data every week and go with that.
Re: the "Introductory Scenario"--it's a classic, but it's always extremely problematic. It was lifted straight from 4th edition (default year 530) and dumped into a 485 context. I replaced the "jousting" stuff with wrestling; you may wish to do similar modifications.
Oh, and speaking of starting things, your timing is impeccable: the Book of Uther just dropped today! It's up on Nocturnal's site and will be appearing on DriveThru/RPGnow in a couple days. HIGHLY recommended for starting a campaign in the Uther period. Plus, there's an expansion to the GPC that rolls the starting date back to 480, the year Uther was crowned; you can buy it separately if you don't want to buy the whole BoU...
http://www.nocturnal-media.com/store/king-arthur-pendragon-book-of-uther
http://www.nocturnal-media.com/store/the-great-pendragon-campaign-king-uther-expansion
Also, I noted my favorite knight, Sir Wulfram never got a picture. In his later years, I can only envision Old Man Strength as one person, and one person only.
ReplyDeletehttps://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/7d/41/cd/7d41cddf35b6c7f0e7322248567218e7.jpg
I love that. Definitely head canon for me.
DeleteTo my knowledge, Jen never settled on a final image for Wulfram. Robert Goulet and Axl Rose were both cited early on, and now we can add Lithgow-cum-Quixote to the mix.