I'm having trouble figuring out the details regarding a basic manor PKs might inherit upon being knighted. (In your answers assume I have access to pretty much everything but don't have them memorized, so go easy.) Based on the BotEstate, as far as I can tell a freshly-knighted PK might inherit a £10 manor, which given the breakdown on p.38 of same, would suggest he has a manor income of £10, expenditures of £9, leaving £1 as discretionary income. This manor would have everything that all manors have (Dovecote, Kennel, Blacksmith, Armory, Stables, Mill, Bakery, Church, Outbuildings) but no other improvements, enhancements, or investments.

Is that it? Is that all I need to figure out? That seems awfully easy and I want to be sure I'm not missing anything important.

Book of the Estate has been designed to be as hassle-free as possible, as long as you don't mess with what is in the box.

Alas, there are also some typos in there. The £10 estate does come up to its correct value, even though the numerical values are a bit off. However, the discretionary fund (which is £0.85, not £1) does violate the 2% rule of the size of the discretionary fund mentioned in the text. So that is your first test as a GM: Do you want them to have the stated £0.85 discretionary fund or will you give them the general rule £0.2?

That is pretty much the only decision you have to make, though. All the rest is as simple as you have read. Granted, if you wish to make it more difficult, you could always roll something special for the manors, using the estate builder as a guideline.

Also, I'd call the 1-manor knight a Rich Knight when it comes to the grade of maintenance, not Superlative. Your Pendragon May Vary. (As mine does, as I don't use Book of the Estate.)

Perfect, thanks!

My personal take on BoE is that it's almost silly how easy it is if you just "take what is written" and go with it. It starts to break down a bit for me if I try and break it apart though. I haven't been able to get the math to quite line up. There appears to be several weird exceptions and one offs you just have to "hand wave" away. One day I'm going to take the time to go through it all and systematically figure it out.

The intent seems to be "keep it simple" to speed up gameplay and I think it accomplishes this really well. If you try and start adding complexity though, it starts to break down. I also think you probably need some of the other books (like Book of the Entourage) to figure out what some of the "stuff" that you get for your money. For example, I don't know the cost difference between a "Steward" and a "Wife" so I don't know if these can be exchanged or not. Right now we are still early so it's no big deal (all players just have the 10 libra manor) but I'll probably end up getting BotE once they get more manors so I can figure out the impact of swapping things around.

I'd love to just end up with a simple cheat sheet of sorts that can be used as a price list. It can't be THAT difficult to figure out, it's just that the various books don't seem to match up in every instance. If no one has done this by the time I need it for my campaign (probably a few months away), I'll certainly post what I come up with.

My personal take on BoE is that it's almost silly how easy it is if you just "take what is written" and go with it. It starts to break down a bit for me if I try and break it apart though.

For example, I don't know the cost difference between a "Steward" and a "Wife" so I don't know if these can be exchanged or not.


That has been very much my impression as well. Book of the Estate is great as long as you take it as is and are not too interested in fiddling with the estate and the personnel roster. I do have my own misgivings about the economical system involved, as well. But again, as long as you ignore the calculations and just look at the end result of the already prepared personnel rosters, it works. (I have whined about this at length in this thread:
http://nocturnal-media.com/forum/index.php?topic=2279.0 )

As for the steward vs. wife thing, it doesn't matter in Book of the Estate. The people doing the tasks to replace the wife's cost as much as the wife. I believe it says so in one of the pages.

You don't need a Steward. Your wife can do the same thing. You can invest the maintenance money for the Steward somewhere else. Those are just examples, not something set in stone.

You don't need a Steward. Your wife can do the same thing. You can invest the maintenance money for the Steward somewhere else. Those are just examples, not something set in stone.


You don't need a Steward for 1-manor estate, true. But apparently you start needing one in the £50 estate, because why else the guy is there? Sure, you need him as a knight, but you could just have one more regular unmarried household knight. I think it is clear from the examples that noblisse oblige; once you are wealthy enough, a certain level of household is expected, and if you start cutting corners, at the very least your reputation suffers if not the entirety of your finances.

The book is also very clear on the topic of unmarried knights = no savings, the money goes to people who make up for the missing wife's work.

Another minor irksome fact for me is that the £10 manor estate doesn't have footsoldiers included. Irks me quite a bit, as it is another one of those exceptions that destroy the scalability.

Lets say you have a £100 estate. Your army is supposed to be 10 knights (including yourself) and 30 footsoldiers (10 garrison, 20 field army). However, if by some quirk of fate, you decide to sub-enfeof a manor to a trusted household knight, boom, you are suddenly 3 footsoldiers short. And this is not addressed anywhere in the book, just handwaved away that it doesn't matter. But it DOES matter. I would have been happier to see those 3 footsoldiers included into the £10 manor already, since then it would scale nicely. You could easily take a bit from the lord's & the lady's standard of living, and use that income to get those 3 footsoldiers. Sure, it is still clunky what with the sergeants and the armourers and all, but at least it would be a bit closer to what it is supposed to be.

For instance, if you take that £1 from the standard of living and £0.5 from the discretionary fund, that is £1.5 = 3 footsoldiers. You can even pinch a bit more (£0.15) for the soldiers' "armor and weapon maintenance" from the discretionary fund to make it £0.35-£0.15 = £0.2, which then corresponds to the 2% rule.

The Lord & Lady of the Manor would still be spending £3+£1+£0.5+£3+£1+£1+£0.5 = £10 on their maintenance and that of their closest servants (squire, handmaiden and nurse). This is will well enough to count them as Rich, in my book. Later on, we can see that the noble ladies normally have only £2 maintenance, which matches up with the old £2 for knight & squire, £2 for the horses and £2 for wife and family. So yes, the Lady of the Manor getting £3.5 AND a Handmaiden AND a Nurse would qualify for Rich.

Internal consistency is restored and Morien quits his bitching about it. For a while, at least. :)

I agree.

Another minor irksome fact for me is that the £10 manor estate doesn't have footsoldiers included. Irks me quite a bit, as it is another one of those exceptions that destroy the scalability.


When asked, Lord Stafford specifically told me £10 manors don't get foot solders in the Early Phase — but would get them in Arthur's reign!

I'm planning an errata on ESTATE once WARLORD is delivered. Just sayin'. Everyone should post stuff they'd like to see addressed in the WARLORD Errata forum.


Best,


T.

I will gladly take you up on that. I feel the BoE is *really* close to being awesome. A post will be coming soon. ;D

When asked, Lord Stafford specifically told me £10 manors don't get foot solders in the Early Phase — but would get them in Arthur's reign!


You know, I vaguelly recall you or him mentioning that before... I'd be curious to see the reasoning, especially since the effect is the opposite of the one you'd expect: the dark ages warlord is missing those spearcarriers in his hall when he'd need them while the noble lord of the more enlightened era is living more poorly than his counterpart, since he has to support 3 spearmen, too.

I'd be more inclined to do it the other way around, if I felt the need to change it at all from one period to the next. Which I actually don't, but yeah, simple enough to do. Just free up £0.5 - £1 per manor for entourage/standard of living.

Uther's era: ill-lit halls with surly guards lounging around, holding their spears to be ready to repel an enemy raid or to march off with their lord to do a raid of their own.

Arthur's era: Lord and Lady finely dressed and feasting at the table, with just one spear armed gatekeeper to shoo the riffraff away.

I'm planning an errata on ESTATE once WARLORD is delivered. Just sayin'. Everyone should post stuff they'd like to see addressed in the WARLORD Errata forum.


I wasn't entirely sure my post was appropriate for the Warlord errata forum. I posted some questions and feedback on BotE in this thread.

http://nocturnal-media.com/forum/index.php?topic=2445.0

If appropriate, I can re-post or break it up (it's long!) in the BotE eratta thread (or in Warlords if that's better). Please let me know. I really like the BotE book, so this is more of a "how can we make this even better" sort of post than anything critical. I'd say that after the KAP 5.1 and GPC books, BotE is my favorite that you guys have published. I cannot wait for Book of the Warlords!

When asked, Lord Stafford specifically told me £10 manors don't get foot solders in the Early Phase — but would get them in Arthur's reign!

That just seems to complicates things for no good reason whatsoever.

For instance, if you take that £1 from the standard of living and £0.5 from the discretionary fund, that is £1.5 = 3 footsoldiers. You can even pinch a bit more (£0.15) for the soldiers' "armor and weapon maintenance" from the discretionary fund to make it £0.35-£0.15 = £0.2, which then corresponds to the 2% rule.

The Lord & Lady of the Manor would still be spending £3+£1+£0.5+£3+£1+£1+£0.5 = £10 on their maintenance and that of their closest servants (squire, handmaiden and nurse). This is will well enough to count them as Rich, in my book. Later on, we can see that the noble ladies normally have only £2 maintenance, which matches up with the old £2 for knight & squire, £2 for the horses and £2 for wife and family. So yes, the Lady of the Manor getting £3.5 AND a Handmaiden AND a Nurse would qualify for Rich.

Internal consistency is restored and Morien quits his bitching about it. For a while, at least. :)


Nice solution
Let's make it so