King Arthur Thread, Take 2: Shut Up About Ladyknights Edition

Don't talk to weeaboos. They crave attention

>Anime imageboard: yes
>The Fate series being weeaboo cancer: also yes

I fail to see your point

Such knowledge is within the one of mine own owneth.
I m'rely did indicate thy po'r gust in choice of maidens of oriental origins. I wouldst counsel thee to receiveth a bett'r one.

The third. My first real exposure to King Arthur was The Once and Future King, and then I got into Le Morte d'Arthur after that. I really like to see Arthur as being very British overall, the more his origins are removed from Rome, the better, in my opinion. It's a great setting for adventures, I love a story of Lancelot's that has him riding into town and asking a peasant what adventures and quests there are around those parts.

First for Cornish knights being assholes and liars!

Have thoust dareth calleth my waifu shite?
Let it be known in the heavens that myself shalleth smite you down witheth fury of god

Halt thy fury broth'r, f'r thou art acting in delirious f'rv'r.
Alloweth t beest known to thee, fine sir, yond thy imaginary mistress is not a fine maiden thee might bethink she is. H'r drossy demean'r is akin to the one of babylonian harlot, and h'r womb is ope to any scoundrel she encount'rs.
This maiden is not w'rth of devotion of fine chevali'r, and anyone giving his heart to such mistress is a dullard. Wherefore art thee letting yourself beest deceiv'd by this devil in the flesh, broth'r?

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My favourite interpretation of Arthur is a Cornish born of Roman stock who married a welsh princess and went to war with Morderd over inheritance.

If you had to do Camelot IN SPACE how would you go about it?

Knights on robot horses flying through space wielding flaming swords

>Sir Laserlots
>Sir Trispace
>Sir Gawarp
>Sir Hyperkay
>Sir Blastevere
>Sir Balin of the Two Plasma Swords

I want to run a game based on the myth of Arthur in Lyonesse, waiting to come back. I don't really want to run it in WW2, so what else might wake him and the rest of the gang up?

>so what else might wake him and the rest of the gang up?

Brexit.

>What are the best Arthurian games?

Pretty much Pendragon. 5.2 is IIRC the current version, but finding a non-PDF copy is a pain in the dick. Grabbing a copy of 5.1 is by far the easier way, and the differences are mainly typos.

>Do you prefer Arthur as a Roman warlord, a Celtic hero of the wilderness, or an orgulous knyghte of grete worshyp?

I like the way its seen in the great Pendragon Campaign, where life is shit in the wake of Romans leaving, there's the Rise of Arthur and there's a completely ahistorical period for ~50 years (you're seeing 16th century armor and fantastic castles), and it all comes crashing back to the life is shit state afterwards. The more you build up the Age of Arthur, the deeper the tragedy of his passing. So Arthur as a greate knyghte, I suppose, but I disagree that the height of the Arthurian period much be decadent; again, it's a deeper tragedy if he's a genuine, honest, and GOOD person.

>Is the Grail Quest the height of the Arthurian cycle or cancer?

Both.

>Brexit.

He's really only be concerned with threats to England, not pissant Scots and sheep buggerers.

Cromwell

>Brexit.
kek

I've enjoyed all 3 variations of Arthur, and I feel all 3 have been successfully done via books and film, but the classic fantasy England world with the holy grail seems to suit the story best.

My real interest in king Arthur is Excalibur, so let's talk about that. I forget the name of the book but I read a king Arthur story where he was the son of a Roman general, but the grail and lady were not present in this story. I love the idea of Excalibur being a magic sword but in this particular story Excalibur was not magic, but rather "mystic". It had been forged from the stone of a meteor that fell from "the heavens" and I thought that was really Fucking cool. I guess I prefer a setting that is super low fantasy but involves hints of mysticism, and the idea of forging weapons from space rocks is just awesome

Bumping with a *corrected* image pursuant to the OP's wishes.

Went and had a talk with my PCs and fixed some of their heraldry. Finally convinced one of them that having gules and sanguine on the *same shield* looks terrible. Corrected my own transcription error (I heard azure and wrote vert for some reason).

This is mainly a bump; I don't feel like arguing about rule of heraldry again when the game points out that you shouldn't feel beholden to the rules of heraldy since those rules weren't invented yet.

Top-left: wanted the Green&Fox blazonry because the PC is an accomplished hunter (family trait gives Hunting bonus), and because both his grandfather and father died gloriously on the field of battle, so the golden sword commemerates them.

Top-Middle: Family Northern Germanic pagans brought to Briton by the Romans and kept their identity and lineage. Player actually performed a rune drawing for what's on there, no further reason to have them aside from the player is a Dane, a Viking reenactor and HEMA person, and really like runes.

Top-Right: Hasn't given any information as to why he designed it this way.

Bottom-left: See above. Really, REALLY wanted a dog's head on a snake; found an obscure blazon where a dog-headed snake is called a Cerberus.

Bottom-middle: Family holding protects a major river crossing, hence the "bridge & stream." Wanted Purpure and Or 'cause it looks cool.

Bottom-left: My GMPC's blazon. Character exists only so the PCs can have backup in case of a short-attended session. Designed as such because I have a bunch of that design (heart over Maltese cross) in decals already, and it'll make shields easier. The sable background is because I put it up to a vote between the PCs as to which tincture or fur they liked best, and they chose sable (with the Black&gold Pean fur the 2nd choice).

>post your own favorite Arthurian heraldry

Hey, a few threads back, you had an outline for character creation that was sort of between 5e and 4e in terms of complexity. Could you repost that please?

>Salisbury knights or BoK&L?

Sure, here.

It's basically the 5e character creation process (I don't use Knights & ladies either) with a few added houserules. I wanted less complexity in character creation than in 4e, and more choice than was given in 5e, and I didn't have BoK&L available to me.

1) PCs get 15 "customization points" during the process. 1 point can be spent to modify a die result up or down by 1. 3 points may be spent to outright reroll a single die (so if you roll 4d6, you can spend 3 and reroll 1d6). This gives a *little* more control over the process; every player wanted there to be 20 points available instead, so 15 is probably just the right amount.

2) I give the option of either taking a 65-point point buy for stats, or to let people roll 4d6-low for their stats (roll in order). 65 is the average result; my group likes rolling.

3) I added two cultures: Romans and "Norse". Romans and Saxons were both available as PC cultures in 4e Pendragon. "Norse" are, as noted, really northern Germanic pagans brought to Britan by the Romans and who have kept their identity. Essentially, they're Saxons (mechanically identical), but they don't fall afoul of the Hate:Saxons Passion, which can cause interparty...issues. Unlike 4e, Culture only affects stats; while PCs may be descended from different cultures, they're all raised in Salisbury and therefore get the normal Cymric skillset.

4) I've put "father's class" back in from 4e - it was removed from the 5e book and evidently is re-introduced in the Book of Knights and Ladies. The stat bonuses from Father's Class are inspired by what was given in the 4e tables, but I removed the variable Skill Points.

5) I've given some small tweaks to the Male & Female child lineage bonuses, nothing major, and clarified that you have to roll for BOTH of them because you'll presumably eventually have female children as well. This is actually RAW, but it's explained very poorly in the 5e book.

>but I disagree that the height of the Arthurian period much be decadent
That's not what "orgulous" means. It's a Middle English word Malory uses all the time and that means "proud, splendid".

Wha - oh. So, you're probably not going to believe this, but I actually thought it said "orgylous". I was skim-reading and, well, look at the pic.

The moral of the story is that I need to clean my monitor. My computer desk doubles as my painting station, so this happens sometimes. My mistake.

>Really, REALLY wanted a dog's head on a snake; found an obscure blazon where a dog-headed snake is called a Cerberus.
Kek. I love heraldic animals. The camelopard, the tyger that looks nothing like a tiger, the sea lion that's literally a lion merman... the middle ages were a great time for crazy shit.

>look at the pic
Gold, Jerry! GOLD!

I freely admit I didn't envision that scenario. Honestly I just figured the misinterpretation of "orgulous" as being something to do with orgies was pretty obvious and easy to make. It's not like anybody's used that word for the last five hundred years, so...

If its your first time, use Salisbury Knights. The Uther Period is built around Salibury in a big way. Also, it means the character creation can be done alongside. doing a different culture for each knight can be a bitch. Also, I am ssuming you mean Cymric knights, not Salibury knights, since the knights are from Salisbury automatically, its there race you are looking at.
Regarding family, BOKAL does not have family history. And its not essential unless you are going super fluffy, and your players are somewhat aware of pre-Uther legends.

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Actually I think Saber isn't that bad as as an addition to arthurian myths. She's basically the perfect pure knight, difficult to portray straight nowdays, that also happens to be a girl, which eases the thing.

>but anyway Rin is better

Also I'm playing Pendragon with varyind degrees of success, the GM is a lazy bastard.

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that's the skystone or something by jack whyte
his horrible latin pronunciations really killed it for me

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>allude to ladyknights

What's the problem? Joan of Arc beat a male knight, Talbot, in a fight (it's in Shakespeare). That seems reason enough to allow female knights to me.

>What's the problem?
There was a shitstorm in the previous thread. Read it there, if you're interested: As for bringing this topic again >Just don't discuss them. It'll derail the thread again if you do, so just shut the fuck up.

good christ, just leave the topic be. your opinion isn't anything special and certainly doesn't mean OP's request doesn't apply to you, you self-important fuck.

hey how about girl knights tho

right?

Gawain for best knight.

But this is not Percival

Why's this guy attacking what appear to be his own footmen? Is this some specific Arthurian episode?

fite me, Gareth is the only good Orkneyman
t. Lamorak of North Galis

What was his problem?

Daddy issues

6/10 - pretty meh but passable 1/10 - pure eye cancer color scheme, vikingboo elements are poorly integrated 4/10 - not the biggest fan of that generic banana republic tricolor theme 8/10 - nice colors and interesting creature 3/10 - not a big fan of the colors chosen and bridge feels forced 7/10 nice colors and theme but I can't avoid getting crawling in my skin, these wounds thry will never heal feels from it

>7/10 nice colors and theme but I can't avoid getting crawling in my skin, these wounds thry will never heal feels from it
Kinda agree but it's just the sable background that does it, I think -- on vert, azure or even purpure it would've looked much less goffick.

Still a pretty fitting Arthurian blazon IMO, you could easily see a knight of the Round Table using the cross-and-heart motif.

Same problem as his brothers: having Whorgause for a mother.

Honestly I feel like Mordred's a bit overemphasized as some sort of nemesis of Arthur's; in Malory he's really a bit player going along with his brothers and their plot for vengeance, neither better nor worse than the rest of them. A lot of adaptations portray him as a movie-villain type nursing an unquenchable hatred of Arthur his whole life and that just ain't there IMO.

I always figured it was something similar to Julius Caesar. Just as most of the Senate conspired against and stabbed the guy, yet Brutus gets most of the "credit" in most depictions due to being the last and the one Caesar calls on it, so too does Mordred get all the bad PR because while he and his brothers all plotted, Mordred was the one who put Arthur in the ground.

>Actually I think Saber isn't that bad as as an addition to arthurian myths.

Unironically this. Remove all of the weeaboo bullshit, and the core concept of 'what if the sword in the stone chose a girl to be king?' isn't a bad one. It casts an interesting light on a lot of the internal strife in Camelot and resistance to Arthur's rule over his reign, and it adds a neat new wrinkle to the whole Lancelot/Guinever adultery and Arthur's handling of it.

What is the best reason for Morgana to sexually, emotionally, and physically abuse her kid?

We the fact that she's an unambiguously evil cunt?

So just to get the throne? Is that her only motivation?

A priest told him that his,entire life was only going to bring destruction and pain along with these reasons here

Literally, it's not even an issue. Who cares?

Anyways, I would like to run a Pendragon campaign. I've been reading a PDF of the 5th ed core after reading a lot of Once and Future KIng, which is pretty good.

Can't believe Merlyn has a case full of guns in his little fairytale cottage in the Forest Sauvage. Dude's packing heat.

I was really pissed with Gawain for the majority of The Once and Future King, until the end. He comes off better in Le Morte d'Arthur.

>nice colors and theme but I can't avoid getting crawling in my skin, these wounds thry will never heal feels from it
>it's just the sable background that does it

Like I said, I had nothing to do with any of those save this one; those are player-generated designs.

As for the cross-and-heart, I gave this to the PCs and asked which looked best and which would "pop" most (to make an easy identification) on a field of battle. A gules field, obviously, was right out. They came back with sable.

I agree with most of the other ratings; I don't mind the sanguine-on-azure, for all it breaks the tincture rules. It still "pops" easily, even on a 28mm mini from several feet away. I do agree that just slapping several runes on it was somewhat lazy (I would have put a big, argent or or rune square in the middle, since everything else is a color), but the player is a Vikingboo and with all the other randomness in character creation, I don't mind giving them full control over their own heraldry.

>bridge feels forced

This I don't get. It's a charge, same as any other. Player's demese has a bigass wooden bridge over the River Bourne, player's blazon has a bigass wooden bridge over an azure wavy. That said, purpure and or is kind of a wierd color choice, yes.

>those are player-generated designs.

Didn't you tell your players that their shields had to abide by the rules of heraldry?

As I mentioned in , the game does point out that you shouldn't feel beholden to the rules of heraldy since those rules weren't invented yet.

I did mention that they should think VERY hard about choosing to obey them, because the rules of heraldry are there to ensure that your blazon is easily -recognizable, and from some distance. But since those rules don't actually exist yet, they aren't *required* to follow them. Pendragon is not actually a historical game; it's a low fantasy game with a heavy influence from history, and, as per Word of Author, it's up to the GM how autistic to be about enforcing exactly *how* historical to make it.

All of them but the top center (and arguably the top-right; charges SOMETIMES aren't subject to the "color-on-color" or "metal-on-metal" rules, such as when they cross a division, as on the top-right shield, but some historical periods and locations held them to that anyway, and then some charges only got that exception if they were colored naturally, or "proper", or were divided in color) do technically follow the rules. The two on the far left and bottom-right are the most correct.

Bottom-center is hard to make out at a distance, and while it's legal would likely be rejected for clarity. Tenne bridge over the Or cross doesn't pop very well, but it is "proper" (representing a wooden bridge) and gets a pass by definition. Top-right has that weird thing I alluded to earlier about the charge; it's a color on top of a color, but also on top of a metal. But it also crosses a division (boundary between or and vert), so it would be good in some places and times, but not in others. The easiest fix - if it needed one - for it would be to make the Eagle "proper".

This is your king.

>it's up to the GM how autistic to be about enforcing exactly *how* historical to make it.

And since you aren't making it perfectly historical, you're a shit GM. King Arthur s legends are about bullshit ahistorical fantasy. They're about being roughly dark age warriors in a shit world abandoned by civilization and trying to bring that civilization back. Play historically accurately or don't play Pendragon.

I will right a 30000 word long smutfic of having sex with a buff lady Knight while she keeps the armor on and there is nothing you can do to stop me

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You aren't the boss of me.

>I will right
I foresee only good things coming from this

You know that Greg Stafford disagrees with you, right?

Why should I care who that is, and why are you appealing to authority? The opinion of someone not in this thread means nothing.

Actually have a GM-ing question for folks. Spoilers for the Great Pendragon Campaign follow.

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So eventually, roughly the year 496 (away from my books right now), there's a major battle in which the PCs must take part on behalf of King Uther. If they do well in the battle, basically if they don't die, they're invited to eat in the basilica with the king. The food there is poisoned, so unless a PC says specifically that there aren't eating (and why would they) AND they get a critical success on a Temperance trait check, they eat the food and die. No saves, no nothing.

So how would you handle this as a GM without literally blowing a railway whistle during game play? It's extremely clear that you are SUPPOSED to kill most, if not every one, of your current generation of Knights at this feast, but I'm unsure how to couch this happening in a way that won't make people want to quit the game. I'm concerned the players will see it as being punished for the very things they're explicitly being ordered to do by GM-controlled NPCs (ride to battle, not die, win glory, eat at the king's table).

He's the author of the game you complete wanker. His opinion is literally the only opinion that matters except for an individual GMs.

Yeah, that's not a great bit of writing. If you keep that, I think the only real solution is framing with your players from the get-go; basically try to instill in them that dramatic fates are something that may occur and they should enjoy these instead of getting asshurt, as they'll go through a number of PC knights no matter what. Basically put the players in the mindset of enjoying events like that.

I don't think there's any way to salvage it while preserving player freedom, since anything that makes it less of a railroad also makes it less fit for purpose. It's just a product of its time, the GPC is an old campaign and Stafford is literally one of the founders of the "choo choo, get on the train motherfuckers" GMing style.

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Bump in the name of chivalry

This is actually something I've churned over in my head

One answer was giant robots.

The other, more space opera answer, was that Excalibur would be an advanced ship buried in an asteroid somewhere that could only be accessed and reactivated by Arthur

>Things to wake Arthur up

WW1
WW3

Honestly, I can't think of much, historically. England has to be in immediate peril

So Muslim immigration?

He had a stronger claim to the throne being a union of the two royal lines via interbreeding

Am I the only one who thinks playing as a Lady Knight in a [semi]-realistic setting would actually be fun? Battling the understandable prejudice and lack of physical strength to fight your way to glory. Maybe a sort of Joan of Arc "I was chosen by God" sort of concept.

desu, the way Brettonia handles lady knights is the best way

>Arthur is about to wake up
>but then the people of Britain vote to save themselves
>nigeface.jpg in his sleep

What knightly tactics would let a woman fight a man? I assume you'd want reach and mobility, since you're not winning the strength contest. Sort of a "Red Viper vs the Mountain" motif except that's literally all your fights.

Her best bet would be some sort of spear or polearm. There's a reason the few real Samurai-ko used the Naginata. The reach helped make up for the severe weight, reach, and mechanics handicap.

Add being on horseback to that, because you're using a spear or polearm anyway, and more over you can substitute the horses mass for your own.

When you're hauling along at 20-30 mph on the back of a charger, it doesn't matter as much you're 6 inches shorter and weigh 2/3rds the opponent

Read the OP, you digit-obtaining cunts. Stop inviting disaster.

like, fuck you senpai, and fuck op. Women disguising themselves as knights or as men is part in parcel of the whole romantic deal going back to Shakespeare.

If you want to get even closer to the source material, the celtic gods of war were all women. Cu Chulainn was trained by a woman. Arthurian Myth is celtic and british mythology retold by a french convict.

Grants you shouldn't have women going on the battlefield and not getting blown the fuck out, but here's a slice for you-

>knightly band approaches a bridge
>they're challenged by a strangely hoarse voiced knight who refuses to show their face
>refuses to let them cross
>duel commence
>mystery knight gets unhorsed, helmet comes off
>omg it's a girl wtf
>woman explains her father has fallen deathly ill/has been cursed/whatever and she thought the knights were agents of sir badguy the robber baron come to fuck their shit
>she is his only child and refused to let her fathers lands be undefended even though she is no trained knight

Quest get, Waifu get

>If you want to get even closer to the source material, the celtic gods of war were all women.
Holy fuck, you're ignorant. Did your den mother in the Wicca coven tell you that shit?

Andraste
Morrighen
Medb
Macha
Badb

>belatucadros
>camulus
>cocidius
>rudianos
>segomo
>smetrios

Ancient celts had plenty of male war gods, m8.