It's possible for a player to be getting 300+ annual glory per year, and another player to be getting 16. Over 10 years or more, this can lead to a significant disparity between player glory levels.

This may be unfair, but it's not inherently a bad thing. The whole point about glory for, say, personality traits, is that they are the kind of characters people talk about, so it should add to glory. It gives players another incentive to spend training and glory on traits and passions, which is a good thing. Bt when it overwhelms the amount you get from adventures, maybe it isn't ideal.

In the past I've used glory limiuts based on catagories like so:
Max from Traits: 100
Max from Passions: 200
Max from Landholding: 100
And finally, Chivalry and religious allow an extra 100 each. So, the knight with max in all those categories would be getting 600/year. Which is probably a bit too extreme. (And yes, I did see a couple of characters who would have exceeded those limits!)

Chivalry and especially Religion are a bit of am problem, since they come from personality traits. The glory then for Religious bonus is actually 180, not 100.

You could do away with the glory for traits entirely and just keep chivalry and religion, but that punishes too many characters. You could drastically reduce or eliminate the glory for chivalry and religion: characters who have them are probably already getting plenty of glory from traits, and they also get the game benefit bonus for those awards (extra hit points, damage, armour, etc) so it's not like reducing their glory is going to stop players wanting them.

So, last time I played, this was the system I used:

* Total all glory using the official rules.
* Max total = 200.
That's it. Simple, and effective. Some player swill get lots of glory from land, others from passions, others from traits - but they all have the same maximum.

Optionally: if a knight doesn't adventure in a year, annual glory is halved. (I probably wouldn't use this, because I like to encourage players to rotate through characters. But if a character gets lost in the woods, is thought dead, and so on, for some years and returns, it would perhaps be appropriate.)

You could also vary your award levels by what time phase the game is taking plac during. For example, in the era of courtly romance, chivalry bonuses could be much higher than they are during the Anarchy phase and what have you.

That's a good idea. I've done that in a very rudimentary way, by simply not giving glory for Chivalry or Romance till they are introduced at court.

I dislike passion glory quite a lot, as I have seen players filling their Passion sheet with a lot of them... Loyalty (Lord), Loyalty(Pendragon), Loyalty(Group), Amor(Guinevere), Hate (X), Hate (Y), Love(Family), Love(Wife), Love(God), Honor, Hospitality. Given that many of these get whopping bonuses, it is no big strain for a PK to have 5-6 of them in the 16+ range, netting 100+ and inspiration opportunities out of those.

All the PKs in our campaign have Chivalric Bonus. It is simply too darn good with +3 Armor and +100 Glory.

One also has Christian Knight, for +6 HP and another +100 Glory (and +80 from traits like Darren points out). Ah, looks like this character is already making 400+ Glory from Yearly Glory alone. Granted, that player did push his character build to get a lot of yearly glory: the other characters are getting around 200, of which 100 is from the Chivalric bonus.

I quite agree that eliminating or reducing the Chivalric and Religious bonus Glory reward would go a long way into reducing the amount that knights get per year. I'd probably impose some limitations to Passion Glory, too, while at it. Like saying that you will only get Glory from the three highest ones. Or at the very least, only give the highest Loyalty passion, the highest Amor/Love(person) passion and the highest Hate passion, to prevent a kind of multiple dipping: 'I hate Sir X, Sir Y, Sir Z, the Saxons, Levcomagus, Malahaut, Franks, the Knights Who Say 'Ni!'...'. In a grittier Dark Ages feel, I might even go for giving just the highest Passion and the highest Trait and that's it! Sure, Sir Stronginthearm might be Energetic, but what he is really famous for is his Valorous. On the other hand, traits are quite hard to keep up and you limit your character with them, too. Whereas Chivalric and Religious are a double bonus on top of bonus.

I agree Passions can be very easy to rack up lots of points. It's hard to play passions effectively from a GMing point of view when players have half a dozen or more too.

I like the idea of using only the highest of each type (Loyalty, Amour, Hate, Love, etc). I've always thought though that Passions (each individual passion) should probablky be worth more than an individual passion - they have a much more dramatic effect on play. Then again, when they do have a dramatic effect on play, they tend to be in situations that give glory, so that may be accounted for already.

I do think that the Chivalry bonus should be left in the game. It's is, after all, supposed to be a game about knights doing (mostly) good deeds to further the reign of King Arthur. So the bonus should be hefty, to encourage players to play chivalric knights. But 100 for religious bonus? I think it's to generous. If a was running a campaign now, I would probably chop the bonus for religion, or say that a PK can get max 100 Glory/annum for Chivalry and Religious.

In the earliest edition of Pendragon, being Chivalrous gave you 100 glory/year, and nothing else.
Now it gives you +3 armour (the most powerful bonus, and one formerly enjoyed by the Christian Religious Bonus), and also gives 100 glory/year, and remains the easiest of the special benfits to qualify for.
So I wouldn't argue if people felt like removing the glory from it - it's still going to be seriously sought after.

In the earliest edition of Pendragon, being Chivalrous gave you 100 glory/year, and nothing else.
Now it gives you +3 armour (the most powerful bonus, and one formerly enjoyed by the Christian Religious Bonus), and also gives 100 glory/year, and remains the easiest of the special benfits to qualify for.
So I wouldn't argue if people felt like removing the glory from it - it's still going to be seriously sought after.


You know, I think you got me there. Food for though.

At least the British Christian, Roman Christian and Wotanic religious bonuses are also so good that any minmaxing player would gun for them even without the extra 100 Glory.

In the earliest edition of Pendragon, being Chivalrous gave you 100 glory/year, and nothing else.
Now it gives you +3 armour (the most powerful bonus, and one formerly enjoyed by the Christian Religious Bonus), and also gives 100 glory/year, and remains the easiest of the special benfits to qualify for.
So I wouldn't argue if people felt like removing the glory from it - it's still going to be seriously sought after.


Not to mention that it is pretty much the entry requirement for the Round Table, too, so I am sure even if it didn't grant any other benefit, people would still want it (although they might not sacrifice points for it, until later). Mind you, I can see the reasoning why it grants a bonus (people talk more about you if you are chivalric), but 100 Glory is quite generous given how easy it is to achieve. Of the top of my head, why not have it as (Sum of Traits) / 2? That would give a spread from 40 - 50, usually. Or if you dislike the math, just make it 50, about the same as a Romantic Knight in the first year.

I'd argue that the Christian Knight is double dipping... ;) He gets the glory for his five 16+ Traits AND additional 100 Glory and +6 HP.

This might be something for me to bring up with the group, see what they think of these two ideas. Not sure I want to deal with the complaints that will probably erupt, though... Not sure it is worth it, given that the 150 points on the chopping block is still only 1500 points in a 10-year period. It is probably easier to introduce that with the next characters.

remains the easiest of the special benefits to qualify for.


I was pretty surprised at how easy it is to get Chivalry when I reread parts for our new campaign
It is too easy, and I am testing some changes
additions

I can say no more.
-g

remains the easiest of the special benefits to qualify for.


I was pretty surprised at how easy it is to get Chivalry when I reread parts for our new campaign
It is too easy, and I am testing some changes
additions

I can say no more.
-g


The British Christian traits match up with the Chivalry traits even better than Roman Christian. Add in a free 15 valor and a well-chosen exception starting trait, and a brand new knight is most of the way there.

It's something I want to deal with before I try running the GPC again; I'll be interested in what you come up with.

The British Christian traits match up with the Chivalry traits even better than Roman Christian. Add in a free 15 valor and a well-chosen exception starting trait, and a brand new knight is most of the way there.

This is true for assigned chargen (you end up with 74 out of the required 80 as a British Xtian, more if you are from Logres), but random chargen for traits is less generous since you don't get a positive modifier for the valorous trait.

Regards
Luke

First post!

We have also had discussion on this subject in our playgroup.

Personally I think that glory perks should remain, but reaching both chivalry and your religious bonuses at the same time should be (equally) hard for each faith. This way theres incentives for roleplay, but the annual glory bonuses wont kick in too soon.

My solution to the problem would be modding the trait requirements so that the Christians benefit less for their traits coinciding with Chivalric traits and are at the same level with the Pagan, as follows:

Roman Christian: Chaste, Forgiving, Merciful Pious, Modest, Temperate.

British Christian: Chaste, Energetic Honest, Generous Pious, Modest, Temperate.

Pagan: Lustful, Energetic, Generous, Honest, Proud

With these traits at 13 and Valorous at 15 everyone starts with Chivalry score equally at 68.

For Pagan theres still a problem of having to increase Proud which makes gaining Chivalry challenge, but on the other hand this have an advantage of having extra "positive" trait to gain checks and increases for...

Be gentle... :)

This is something I have been thinking about for a while... How big a problem annual glory really is?

Let me divide my thinking to three parts:
1) Recognition: the amount of Glory compared to NPKs (especially the 'fame' categories)
2) Mechanical: the amount of glory points gained and hence the increase in the strength of the PKs
3) Relative: the amount of Glory compared to Glory from other sources (adventuring, battle, land, etc)

In all cases, I will ponder the cases of four characters: A with 400/yr (Chivalric + Christian + host of others), B with 200/yr (Chivalric + some, a typical PK in my experience), C with 100/yr (typical PK without Chivalric) and D with 50/yr ('typical npk').

I'll start with 1), since it is by far the simplest. Lets see how long it would take each character to reach each fame class just on Annual Glory:
Ordinary: immediately after knighting, lets assume 1200 starting glory and the starting age of 21.
Notable: A = 2 years, B = 4 years, C= 8 years, D = 16 years
Famous: A = 7 years, B = 14 years, C = 28 years, D = 56 years (adding the starting age of 21, we can assume that D is dead)
Extraordinary: A = 17 years, B= 34 years, C = 68 years, D = dead

So, A (a paragon of Chivalric Christian Knight) would become extraordinary in little shy of his 40th birthday, by 'doing nothing'. Although I would claim that the famous traits and such imply that he acts accordingly off-camera, and hence would be doing quite a lot while the players and the GM are not looking. B (a Chivalric Knight) would just squeeze in, in his mid-50s. I don't have a problem, per se, with that.

2) Mechanical: If we assume a playable timespan of 30 years (bit over 50th birthday), A would have garnered 12000 Glory, B 6000 Glory, C 3000 Glory and D a measly 1500 Glory. This translates to 12/6/3/1 Glory Points respectively. Which seems quite a lot in proportion (without considering other Glory sources). However, unless one is a softie GM like myself, who makes inherited traits easy for the PKs, then A has probably been using some Winter Phase training and glory points to achieve/keep his paragon status, which is not all that easy. This ought to even things up a bit.

3) Relative Glory: I admit, I prefer it when the active player knights have been able to garner significantly more glory per year that they could get by sitting on their bottoms. However, I do see how, for example Darren's, slower pace would make Annual Glory a bit of an issue. Lets say 300 adventure & event Glory per player knight per year. This means that the final glory per year would be 700 / 500 / 400 / 350 respectively. And the characters would reach Extraordinary status at the age of 31 / 35 / 38 / 41 respectively. I think I would still be fine with that.

My conclusions:
- No surprise that the main variable is the (played) lifespan of the knight. In a 10 year lifespan, annual glory doesn't cause a big problem. In a 30 year lifespan, it can do quite a lot more.
- On the other hand, if the GM is challenging the PK with the traits and Chivalric and Christian bonuses (no such thing as free lunch), the players will either have to play their characters religiously (pun intended) or spend some of those Glory points to maintain their annual glory harvesting.
- So, in the end, it is not a game breaking problem (for me), although if I were to start the campaign again, I would squash Christian Glory and reduce Chivalric to 50 points. This would bring most characters that I currently have in my campaign to about 150 - 250 glory points, which I feel is more manageable.

The more we have talked about Glory, Morien, the more I think our glory rates are not that different. The rates you have listed here are pretty much the same calculations I have been through, and I'm pretty okay with those.

I have the same asusmption that annual glory isn't "for nothing" - it represents glory-worthy stuff the knights are doing off camera, so it is worth keeping. Your target of 150-250 or so would be fine for me. It's the extremes (350-500) that make me shudder. Then again, people have suggested from time to time reducing annual glory for years the character isn't played. So here is an alternate off-the-top-of-my-head idea:

Calculate annual glory as normal.
During winter phase, when you total up the glory for your activities that year, add annual glory - up to the amount earned naturally.

Let's take a character who gets 450 annual glory. He has a relatively quiet year and gains 103 glory. So, his annual glory adds another 103. The next year he has a fantastic year, gaining 1,500 from numerous battles, and applies his full 450 annual glory.
This approach (which I'm not suggesting using as is, might need some thought, but as an idea) achieves a significant goal of allowing annual glory to remainin meaningful, maintains differences between characters, but also makes thos differences less significant. In quiet years, low annual glory characters will get less glory than higher annual glory characvters- but not by as much. In high glory years, each will get the full amount - but again, the high annual glory won't make such a massive difference, because both characters will still be getting a lot of glory.

There might be an idea worth developing there.

Well yeah, I lowballed the amount to ~300 event glory since I wanted to see how much difference the 200 annual glory would make in a 'low glory' scenario. Like mentioned elsewhere, I fear I am more generous than that to my players.

I was tempted to suggest something like needing to use the traits on camera to qualify for annual glory, but that would cause an unholy scrambling for the GM's attention and simply would not work; it would tie my hands as well as to what adventures to run.

I think the best course would be to squash/reduce those bonus annual glories from Chivalric and Religious. Lover's solo is a huge Glory-churning machine, too, but at least there you are 'earning' your glory by doing something and potentially failing.

But as long as we are talking about compromises and the suggestion to cap annual glory by adventure glory, here is one. Don't cap it all the way. Give out half, as even if the characters are not doing much that year, they'd still be getting some glory, but reduced amounts. Then give out the rest, capping the total by the adventure glory. Example: Sir A has 400 annual glory, Sir B 200. They get 200 and 100 regardless of what happens on camera. In addition, they get 250 adventure glory this year. Sir B is uncapped (since 250 > 200), and gets 200+250 = 450 Glory. Sir A is capped, so he gets 250+250 = 500 glory. But had it been an excellent year with 500 glory, Sir A would have gained his full glory as well.

Another option would be to take away or reduce the Glory Bonus as the knight gets more famous, since lots of famous knights share those boni and they are not talked about as much. For example, half (=50 each) for Famous Knights for Chivalric and Religious (bringin my examples A and B to 300 and 150 annual glory respectively), and none at all for Extraordinary Knights (so 200 and 100, very reasonable IMHO, but still glorious compared to NPKs). This would limit the amount of glory they could gather at higher levels, which ought to work nicely with your Relative Glory tweak, Darren. Personally, I like this idea. It would reward the upcoming young knight with a buzz about his potential, but then slow down the progress after extraordinary knight when he has already joined the ranks of other 'paragons'. I would be a bit more hesitant about touching the Trait and the Passion glory (other than limiting the number of similar passions that would count).

Another option would be to take away or reduce the Glory Bonus as the knight gets more famous, since lots of famous knights share those boni and they are not talked about as much.

I really really like this idea.


Personally, I like this idea. It would reward the upcoming young knight with a buzz about his potential, but then slow down the progress after extraordinary knight when he has already joined the ranks of other 'paragons'. I would be a bit more hesitant about touching the Trait and the Passion glory (other than limiting the number of similar passions that would count).


I might apply it in some way across the board, but maybe say something like, the first 100 annual glory is not affected, but everything after that, from whatever source, is.

Bear in mind I have seen knights with chivalry getting a total annual glory less than 150, and those without it gaining 200+ (the fun thing about chivalry is that you can get it without having any traits at 16+!) - so I'm wary of anything which targets *just* chivalry and religion, since it will hurt some characters more than others.

So 'm not sure of exactly how I'd implement it, yet, but it's a great concept.

Bear in mind I have seen knights with chivalry getting a total annual glory less than 150, and those without it gaining 200+ (the fun thing about chivalry is that you can get it without having any traits at 16+!) - so I'm wary of anything which targets *just* chivalry and religion, since it will hurt some characters more than others.


I am not too worried about 'discriminating' against Chivalric Bonus, given that it brings major advantages anyway. And Religious gets 80+ Glory from the Traits already. The +6 H or whatever is simply additional bonus.

Another idea that hit me right when I was falling asleep was that you could have ONE of Chivalric, Religious or Romantic. Annual Glory, I mean. Again, the idea is similar to limiting Loyalty Passions to just the highest Passion.

I am not too worried about 'discriminating' against Chivalric Bonus, given that it brings major advantages anyway. And Religious gets 80+ Glory from the Traits already. The +6 H or whatever is simply additional bonus.

True enough!


Another idea that hit me right when I was falling asleep was that you could have ONE of Chivalric, Religious or Romantic. Annual Glory, I mean. Again, the idea is similar to limiting Loyalty Passions to just the highest Passion.


I've actually used that before. It works quite well. (The romantic one is a bit tricky because of the variability - when i did it, it just applies to religion/chivalry; Roamnce is so conditional on succeeding various tasks which are often very tricky indeed, so it tends not to be as gross as it could be.)

First post!

We have also had discussion on this subject in our playgroup.

Personally I think that glory perks should remain, but reaching both chivalry and your religious bonuses at the same time should be (equally) hard for each faith. This way theres incentives for roleplay, but the annual glory bonuses wont kick in too soon.

My solution to the problem would be modding the trait requirements so that the Christians benefit less for their traits coinciding with Chivalric traits and are at the same level with the Pagan, as follows:

Roman Christian: Chaste, Forgiving, Merciful Pious, Modest, Temperate.

British Christian: Chaste, Energetic Honest, Generous Pious, Modest, Temperate.

Pagan: Lustful, Energetic, Generous, Honest, Proud

With these traits at 13 and Valorous at 15 everyone starts with Chivalry score equally at 68.

For Pagan theres still a problem of having to increase Proud which makes gaining Chivalry challenge, but on the other hand this have an advantage of having extra "positive" trait to gain checks and increases for...

Be gentle... :)


I can see where you're going with this but Pious, for us, means being spiritual but not necessarily religious. This is, in part, why I think Pious is not a requirement for any religion's bonus. Attending religious ceremeonies, IMO, does not in and of itself mean anything in terms of following a religion or being spiritual. Pious, perhaps, was not he best name for that particularly trait (opposed by Worldly) but that's really another topic so I'll cut off here.

Yes, I think Greg has officially changed "Pious" to "Otherwordly" although that hasn't made it into print yet.


Best,


T.