I am not sure that this is the right subforum for this but I guess it will be moved if needed. :)

Having had no time for actual play in about a year now, I have found myself just checking out other people's ideas for this and other games. What I have noticed is that many people are creating coats of arms for their characters and not really following any type of rules. I've seen tincture on tincture, metal on metal and fur on fur.

What do you do in your game? Do you follow the rules or is it whatever the player thinks looks good?

(I will admit that I had a player that deliberately did not follow the rules as he wanted to show his displeasure with King Arthur without actually becoming a rebel. I almost considered calling him La Cote Mal Taile, instead of Sir Breunor le Noyre.)

What do you do in your game? Do you follow the rules or is it whatever the player thinks looks good?


I'm pretty darn strict! This is supposed to be culture gaming, right? So lets do it by the numbers!

I'm no expert on Heraldry, but I try to encourage my PKs to follow the rules as best as I can. The "pseudo historical" aspect of KAP Pendragon is my favorite part of the system!

I'm happy to say we're introducing a random coat of arms generator in the Book of the Warlord. So, now you need only make a few rolls on a few tables and generate a coat of arms that's pretty consistent with the rules of heraldry. It's biased towards the Early Phase, so designs are fairly simple, and of course it can't produce any coat you can imagine, but it can produce more designs than any Gamemaster could ever possibly use. We may expand it some day to produce more elaborate designs, but this will get people on the right track for sure.

It's all contained on two pages, so everything you need is right there on the "spread".

I've seen a few random heraldry generators in my day and they mostly produce designs that aren't very usable, much less "legal". We're pretty excited about this one, and can't wait to share it with you!


Best,


T.

As I am not knowledgeable of all the rules and regulations concerning heraldry I usually do not enforce them on my players.

Also I wonder how much of the rules were there in the beginning.

The rules Heraldry developed over time. It took a few generations to get to the formalized "language" with all of its rules and grammar. We've actually simulated that in WARLORD by having some knights use unorthodox colors on their shields, the Brown ("Brun") family most noticeably. The coat of arms generator allows people to break the Rule of Tincture in the Early Phase.


Best,


T.

Sounds great that book of the warlord contains a generator for making coats of arms.
I actually have no idea what the rules are, one of my players asked me and i just told him to do more or less what ever he wanted, better to have a "wrong coat of arms than none at all.
but does some of the game material contain the rules for making legal heraldry?

Like Taliesin said, the Book of the Warlord will include a generator that follows the rules. It doesn't have all the flourishes that you see in the more complicated designs, but it should be more than enough for gaming purposes.

The 'big' rule is the Rule of Tincture. No colors on colors and no metals on metals (silver/white and gold/yellow). Except when it is allowed ('layering' or variations or divisions). It is explained in the book better, but the short of it is that if you have a white (=silver) shield, you shouldn't have a yellow (gold = metal) symbol on it, but blue, red, black, green or purple (= colors).

I am a herald in the SCA, and another of my players is also in the SCA.

Thus, the knights make correct medieval coats of arms which "follow the rules".

but it's a game and it doesn't matter - do what fits your style the best.