Firstly, I just downloaded the Book of Entourage and I am thinking right off the bat that one needs to use the Book of Mannor to use it properly - as where else would the money come from to pay for all these hangers-on? ::)

Secondly, If a GM wanted to make interesting wives for his PKs could he not just create them as NPCs right from the Pendragon 5.1 book? And if so - how would he handle the Winter Phase experience? [Told you these would be odd...]

I am trying to get the most from this game (so I have purchased all the 5th edition stuff - and will continue to purchase as long as Greg keeps producing!) so how would one recomend creating cool wives and Squires for his PKs?

Thanks
Todd

Secondly, If a GM wanted to make interesting wives for his PKs could he not just create them as NPCs right from the Pendragon 5.1 book? And if so - how would he handle the Winter Phase experience? [Told you these would be odd...]

I am trying to get the most from this game (so I have purchased all the 5th edition stuff - and will continue to purchase as long as Greg keeps producing!) so how would one recomend creating cool wives and Squires for his PKs?


You can of course get the money from loot and such, but I do own BoM and I have found it quite useful. I probably should get the BoE as well, but I am currently waiting for people to praise it a bit more, since I have gotten so far without needing it. :P

As for how to make interesting wives and squires, my favorite option is to make those lazy players responsible of creating and playing those characters for the other players. I will not be playing a dozen or so extra NPCs if I can help it. I have more than enough to do in trying to keep the movers and shakers doing their thing, and hopefully try to keep tabs with recurring villains and friends. And admittedly, our pacing is already glacial, so to focus even more on 'everyday stuff' would make it darn near geological.

But like that reply suggests, you could do them as full characters yourself if you want to, and do a normal Winter Phase with or without skill checks. I'd likely be boring and absent of any actual rolling of traits and stuff, I'd just give them 1d6+1 skill points and call it a day. In actual practice, we pretty much only track Stewardship and use the 'increase by 1 up to 15 and then roll 1d6 with a +1 on a 1' -method instroduced in BoM.

I did make a Lady Generator (in similar vein as my Knight Generator) about a decade back to help me to come up with Ladies who'd be more than a Stewardship score. It was a lot cruder than my Knight Generator, but I'd think that with some minor tweaking, I could adjust a copy of the Knight Generator into a Lady Generator Mark 2. The original version basically kept track of previous marriages and children, a skill set, a generic personality (on the scale of how likely she was to try to have her own way) and her Fertility (malus/bonus to Child Birth) and Survivability (chance to survive the death in childbirth, or to make it more likely).

As it happens, I also needed a scale for bringing squires from 15 to 21 knights, and see what their skills would be at each stage, and then do the same for ladies, as some of the new PCs were under 21.

Your first observation I must agree upon. the extra personnel needs a more elaborate way of dealing with the manor income.

As for wives and squire: It all depends upon the level of interaction you want with them. To be honest I see it as a way of making them a bit more flexible and have a bit more variety than the basic rules. But if you wish to have a lady they knights need to interact with and needs a bit more fleshing out. You can use the basic rules of creating a female characters for that if the rules from BoE are not sufficient.

Firstly, I just downloaded the Book of Entourage and I am thinking right off the bat that one needs to use the Book of Mannor to use it properly - as where else would the money come from to pay for all these hangers-on? ::)

Loot, gifts from the lord
Most knights are not landholders
They have entourages too


Secondly, If a GM wanted to make interesting wives for his PKs could he not just create them as NPCs right from the Pendragon 5.1 book?

Yep


And if so - how would he handle the Winter Phase experience? [Told you these would be odd...]

?


I am trying to get the most from this game (so I have purchased all the 5th edition stuff - and will continue to purchase as long as Greg keeps producing!) so how would one recomend creating cool wives and Squires for his PKs?

I do not allow full character wives in my campaign unless they are played by a player other than the husband
Then the players flesh them out