If an Estate is damaged how do you handle income? Do you just do things as normal but drop Discretionary Funds and/or lower Standards of Living? Are there no other impacts than that?
How does the "Village Church" included with all Estates differ from the Church, Large or Church, Small Enhancement? Also, all of the "included improvements" have a cost/effect listed for them except for the Dovecote. Does it use the same stats as in Book of the Manor or is it just there for show?
Table 4.4 - What the heck does "Past History Modifier" even represent? I don't get this at all. Does this just permanently change the Assized Rent?
Kennel - How does this work? It says you can add ten for up to 120 dogs, but the costs are for 12/24/36 dogs?
Advowson - How does the cost work on this? It lists the Cost as:

: To create an Advowson requires building a church, abbey or other institution. The purchase price is annual income ×20.
So do you pay for both the building as well as the income? How much of the income does the Lord gain from it?
Endowments - So when you endow land, do you reduce the Assized Rent of your property? Customary Revenue? I'm trying to make sense out of it on the Axe Estate, but the Holdings there don't add up. The Customary Revenue should be 50 L - Court Profits (1.4 L) - 3 L Endowment for Abbey, but that comes to 45.6 (which is the Customary Revenue), but the Rent is listed as 43.2, which looks like the Abbey's 3L is taken out twice? I'm just lost.


Actually, I'm gone through the book completely twice and I'm not 100% on any of it. Heck, when I look at the sample estates I can't make any sense out of them... We're gearing up for a game and I want to make sure I have a handle on this before the PK start in with their Estates, so any help would be appreciated.

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If an Estate is damaged how do you handle income? Do you just do things as normal but drop Discretionary Funds and/or lower Standards of Living? Are there no other impacts than that?


See pages 44-47. The Damage is summarized in Table 3.6, page 45. The effects of shortages are on page 47.

For example, lets assume that your Estate got Pillaged and you were unable to repair any of the damage. So you lost 5 Lots, half of the income. From page 47 we see that this means (read all the preceding effects too): you have no discretionary funds (1-2 lots damaged), your grade of maintenance/standard of living is just Ordinary instead of Rich (3 lots), and your servants (4 lots) and courtiers are Poor (5 lots).

As far as you are personally concerned, you just lost the discretionary funds and whatever bonus you might otherwise have gained from Rich.



How does the "Village Church" included with all Estates differ from the Church, Large or Church, Small Enhancement? Also, all of the "included improvements" have a cost/effect listed for them except for the Dovecote. Does it use the same stats as in Book of the Manor or is it just there for show?


The village church comes as default with the village, is smaller than the small church, and doesn't grant any checks or benefits to the lord.

Dovecote's income has already been included to the Assized Rent of the Estate, and hence doesn't give anything extra. Since it is a default construction, it no longer gives Love (Family) checks. Same goes for maintenance and income of Kennel and Armory, too. They have all been already included. Up to you if you want to give the Glory for the Kennel, or save it for especially large Kennels (i.e. anything extra the PK builds).



Table 4.4 - What the heck does "Past History Modifier" even represent? I don't get this at all. Does this just permanently change the Assized Rent?


It means exactly what it explained in the margin: past events that have reduced OR increased the estate's assized rent. It is there to make life a bit more interesting for those nominally £50 estates, making the value a bit more variable in the end. You should adjust the servitium debitum accordingly, too.



Kennel - How does this work? It says you can add ten for up to 120 dogs, but the costs are for 12/24/36 dogs?


It said "up to ten units (120)". But I see it is a bit clumsily phrased, since it doesn't explain that the extra £1 at larger kennels goes to an actual esquire master of hounds, as you can see in the £50 estate example, page 40. I'd happily upgrade him to a £2 fellow for a total of £12 maintenance of 10 dozen hound packs (each £1).



Advowson - How does the cost work on this? It lists the Cost as:

So do you pay for both the building as well as the income? How much of the income does the Lord gain from it?


Starting advowson from scratch:
- build a church/temple of your choosing
- endow it with land to keep it operating
- endow it with some extra land if you wish for it to make 'a profit'

For example, building a small church costs £25 or more, and needs £3 per year endowment to continue operating. Hence, if the lord endows it with £5, whoever holds the advowson gets to collect that extra £2.

Buying an advowson:
Hmm, I see we said only annual income, which may have been slightly erroneous, as Glory is gained for the full endowment. Well, here is what I'd do now:
20 times the endowment, so in the above case, 20 x £5 = £100. The cost is based on the FULL endowment, and the buyer will get £2 per year for the advowson. Normally, you wouldn't pay for the building itself. If you wish, you can go with the income instead, in which case the above advowson would be 20 x £2 = £40. I am thinking this is probably a bit too cheap, as you don't have to build/buy the building, and you will get yearly Glory out of it, hence the full value. After all, I'd be a lunatic to make an endowment of £4 in above, £1 income, and sell it for £20, less than what the church cost to build...



Endowments - So when you endow land, do you reduce the Assized Rent of your property? Customary Revenue? I'm trying to make sense out of it on the Axe Estate, but the Holdings there don't add up. The Customary Revenue should be 50 L - Court Profits (1.4 L) - 3 L Endowment for Abbey, but that comes to 45.6 (which is the Customary Revenue), but the Rent is listed as 43.2, which looks like the Abbey's 3L is taken out twice? I'm just lost.


You reduce the Assized Rent, but since Customary Revenue is calculated from Assized Rent (+ court profits), too, it goes down as well.

With Axe, you make the mistake of assuming that all the example estates are EXACTLY £50. They are not. If you look at the other examples, you see that they vary around £50. This is deliberate.

Axe Abbey holds £3 worth of land in the Axe Hundred, of which they give £1 Assized Rent to the Axe Estate.

Axe Estate holds £43.2 of land, but gets £1 in Assized Rent from the Axe Abbey = £44.2 assized rent altogether. The total Assized Rent of the Hundred is thus £46.2, and 3% of that is £1.4 in hundred court fees. Which leads to the Customary Revenue of £44.2 + £1.4 = £45.6.



Actually, I'm gone through the book completely twice and I'm not 100% on any of it. Heck, when I look at the sample estates I can't make any sense out of them... We're gearing up for a game and I want to make sure I have a handle on this before the PK start in with their Estates, so any help would be appreciated.

I hope the above answers are helpful. Feel free to ask if you have more questions.

I have another question... what's the difference between the Wooded improvement and Logging Chace? Should one include the other or do they come as a matched set?

I have another question... what's the difference between the Wooded improvement and Logging Chace? Should one include the other or do they come as a matched set?

Greg would be the right one to answer this, but...

I'd say that they are quite similar, but the Logging Chase has a set, safe limit that you can log, whereas the Woods has a variable logging. You COULD in principle treat the Logging Chase as a £40 Woods (safe logging £4), but I am sure this would land you in doo-doo with the king if you get caught overlogging, since you are explicitly limited to £4.

So no, you wouldn't get BOTH, unless you are granted with both by the king.

My guess would be you log the Logging Chase but the Wooded Improvement is woods used for other things. There were all sorts of fees associated with use of the forest by peasants especially things like rights to drive your pigs into the forest to forage on acorns or to collect fallen firewood...but not cut down big trees.

m2¢

Would you please give me page numbers for these?
I always work better with page references to questions
Forgive this old brain, but I am not even sure what you refer to with these

Would you please give me page numbers for these?
I always work better with page references to questions
Forgive this old brain, but I am not even sure what you refer to with these

BotE Improvements
p. 91: Chace, Income (Timber rights £4)
p. 94: Woods


My guess would be you log the Logging Chase but the Wooded Improvement is woods used for other things. There were all sorts of fees associated with use of the forest by peasants especially things like rights to drive your pigs into the forest to forage on acorns or to collect fallen firewood...but not cut down big trees.


Woods do provide timber as well as food. This is explicitly stated.

In the end, I think it is more of a rules thing, i.e. how they are handled in game:

Timber (or any other) Chace: You are allowed to take only a set amount (like that £4 in timber, but the GM can of course tweak it the way he wants). Taking more is theft from the king, and he takes a very dim view on that. Since you are limited to the set (safe) amount, there is no chance of causing a collapse.

Woods: You can harvest £X safely (like £4 in timber and food and furs and pelts of furry woodland creatures I'd imagine) per year, but if you want to risk a collapse, you can harvest much more. You are responsible for the Woods: If you trigger a collapse, that is your personal problem; the king still expects the full assessed Servitium Debitum from you based on the normal Woods income. Good thing you will be dead before the estate is reassessed, or the king might have words.

Physically, they are both forests, although a £4 timber Chace is bigger than £4 everything Woods, obviously, since it needs to have a larger amount of just timber that can be harvested safely. It is the terms of how you are allowed to exploit them that differ. But they don't stack nor do you get both when you get one.

Examples:

Greenleaves Chace: Lord X is allowed to take £4 in Timber. Lord Y is allowed to hunt the deer for £4 food yearly. Lord Z has the right to graze his pigs in Greenleaves Chace for £2 per year, while the King retains the Warren (Falconry) and other miscellaneous benefits for his county sheriff (£4 total). These benefits all come to a safe limit of £14 meaning that Greenleaves Chace is equivalent to Woods worth £140 total (£14 safe yearly income).

Wyrmwood Woods: Worth £140 total with a safe limit of £14 yearly, which Lord X is allowed to collect. Lords Y, Z and the county sheriff are supposed to keep their hands off Wyrmwood Woods! Lord X may collect up to £140, but this is almost certain to cause the collapse of the Woods and trouble for generations to come.

Couple things
Timber Chace
I was confused by the term itself. There is no such thing as a Timber Chace. It is a Chase, with various rights that may be exploited, including timber. So chace timber is more correct.


Woods and Chaces are muitualy exclusive
A chase is a private hunting ground, from which certain other resources can be exploited
Woods are a bunch of trees that provide timber

Are the other resources also available from a woods?
Yes, but they are already calculated into the income of the holding.

A chace may be privately held, or just one of its sources of income rented out to holders. A wood is the property of whoever holds that land. He may overexploit it, though its loss will have significant impact on his income, as Morien has said. A forest collapse essentially destroys all of its sources of income, turning it into waste.
The king would be very unhappy to see one of his chaces collapse, and even a private chase must be maintained as a hunting preserve. Sure, it is privately held, but only for the life of the holder and perhaps of his lineage--everything still belongs to the king--he just lends it to his barons

Back again... this time, Raid/Pillage/Plunder

Why would anyone want to do anything than a bunch of Raids?

Looking at the rules in BotEs, Raids are the most cost efficient and time efficient. Two raids gets you 1 Lot more than one pillage for only one more day's worth of time. Three raids gets you 2 more Lots than one Plunder and shaves off three days of time... Do four raids: get 3 more Lots than a ravage and save two weeks of time.

Raiding is the optimal strategy... where is the downside? Spend a season Raiding and you can make tons of cash... much more than if you spend it Plundering or the like. Someone help me understand the down-sides of just doing 30 days worth of Raiding (7 Raids, at 3 Lots of damage each, making it 21 Lots of damage taking 28 days) versus one Ravage (9 Lots of damage, taking 28 days). Sure, you don't do the 6 Lots of permanent damage, but who cares?! Even if you choose 7 nearby 10 Libra manors you're still making 21 Libra instead of 9 Libra.

Heck, take a big enough force and you could do 14 raids in a month, getting you 42 Lots of damage. Raiding fourteen 10 Libra manors would net you 42 Libra and only cost you a month of 50 footmen (10 Libra).

For clarification, this stuff is on pages 44 to 45 in Book of the Estate

Back again... this time, Raid/Pillage/Plunder

Why would anyone want to do anything than a bunch of Raids?

It is not just about the money. It depends on your goals and the politics of your situation. A couple of examples include:

(1) JUST WANT £££. Sure, you garner the most from Raiding seven different places. However, you now potentially have seven different enemies. Maybe that wasn't the best choice. You also didn't really do much damage to any of them. So, next year will be a bad one for you when they gang up on you and crush you.

(2) WANT TO REDUCE AN ENEMY TO RUIN. You may want to do lots of permanent damage. Historically, a primary reason for raiding was to reduce the resources of your enemy. If you can bottle up your enemy in his castle and Ravage his holding for 28 days...he'll have no £ next year and...and no army.

(3) LAYING SIEGE TO A CASTLE. Similar to #2, but perhaps your army needs to sit in one location for a month or two. They can't blockade the castle if they are running all over the place. Instead, the Ravage the local lands.

NT

I see the potential downside from raiding lots of people, but if you focus on Saxons (since we're in the early period), the fear of reprisals are low. Heck, during Anarchy the 3 temporary lots would be enough to reduce nearby "friendly" manors to no discretionary income, making them a riper target the next year, since they're ability to raise money for later assault/defense is damaged by even the 3 Temporary Lots. Sure, going after a big target worth lots of libra per Lot is better to use Pillage/Plunder/Ravage (somewhat), but I don't think I can support a system that would let a Knight take a spring off to gallivant around Sussex and clear 30 Libra.

Hi Cheeplives

Two things here
1. Would you please start a new thread when you have a new question?
The reason is entirely selfish--when I want to go back and reread a thread I can find it with a proper title instead of not remembering where I saw it before.
Thanks

Probably the biggest reason to not raid is simple: you can only raid a place once (or once per year?) so seven raids = 7 enemies. Say goodbye to everything you own, including tyour life probably, when those 7 guys get together next year and crush you and take everything you ever owned.

The minimaxing numbers you come up with--14 raids in a month?--would all have to be on the manor next door. Raiding only gets the most portable items, which is why you can't do it more than once per year--you already took the stuff.
Your horses have to be refreshed, you have travel time to the places to raid, supplies to get and carry, research to find out who would not be at home when you go raiding, all kinds of things that would crunch out that minimaxed time
Doe your liege approve of this? Because he is the one who is going to have to deal with those 7 angry manorial lords and their liege lords next summer. You lord lets you go wild that way, ok then! But he'll find seven or 14, or however many lords back in his face for letting this happen.
so that's the real payback: revenge
and if your GM is playing things sensibly, your characters will end pretty quickly.
Better luck with the next ones!

Probably the biggest reason to not raid is simple: you can only raid a place once (or once per year?) so seven raids = 7 enemies. Say goodbye to everything you own, including tyour life probably, when those 7 guys get together next year and crush you and take everything you ever owned.
I get that, but the 3 Temporary Lots of damage on 7 enemies can keep them off balance year after year. Losing discretionary income makes it harder to raise a Levy to counter-attack the next year. Heck, if you spend half of your profits on defense for the next year the odds of anyone getting through to you are low... even if there are seven of them.


The minimaxing numbers you come up with--14 raids in a month?--would all have to be on the manor next door. Raiding only gets the most portable items, which is why you can't do it more than once per year--you already took the stuff.
Your horses have to be refreshed, you have travel time to the places to raid, supplies to get and carry, research to find out who would not be at home when you go raiding, all kinds of things that would crunch out that minimaxed time
Doe your liege approve of this? Because he is the one who is going to have to deal with those 7 angry manorial lords and their liege lords next summer. You lord lets you go wild that way, ok then! But he'll find seven or 14, or however many lords back in his face for letting this happen.
I disagree with this... Most manors are a few hours/maybe a day from each other... ravaging across a countryside and hitting 10 or more Manors in a month could easily be done with the travel times listed in KAP page 64. Once more, I get the "use story elements to discourage it", but the system has significant issues as it is written. "Use rule zero" isn't completely satisfying. Moreover, you are assuming using neighbors as targets, but you could easily go far south to Sussex or Essex and raid there with fewer threats of repercussions since the Saxons have to get through Hantonne or Silchester to even enact reprisals to a Salisbury Knight.

Do you really think the system as presented in the book is fully functional and asking for someone to really look at it again is completely out of the question?

In the future I will start individual threads... sorry, I just figured I'd try to keep all of my BotEst questions in one spot. I apologize.

I see the potential downside from raiding lots of people, but if you focus on Saxons (since we're in the early period), the fear of reprisals are low. Heck, during Anarchy the 3 temporary lots would be enough to reduce nearby "friendly" manors to no discretionary income, making them a riper target the next year, since they're ability to raise money for later assault/defense is damaged by even the 3 Temporary Lots. Sure, going after a big target worth lots of libra per Lot is better to use Pillage/Plunder/Ravage (somewhat), but I don't think I can support a system that would let a Knight take a spring off to gallivant around Sussex and clear 30 Libra.



You are focused solely on the financial side. There are more reasons to raid than just the remunerative effects, although they are nice. In some cases, the Ravaging might just be a side effect (eg a siege or something) or you might want to severely damage some specific Saxon lands.

I do think the system works correctly. It is easy to Raid and carry off all the moveables like church items, livestock, fine clothes etc. It takes more time to do more damage. If you just want money, raiding is the way to go. However, you might want to slowly destroy the manors of a particular individual or those between you and the Saxons to create a buffer zone. Ravaging might work better in that case.

I think the key is that the Damage and Reconstruction rules just cover the economic consequences of any actions. The Gamemaster needs to be involved in the rest of the game play. There are political reasons and consequences to any actions. I'd suggest raiding through Sussex will likely gain you unwanted attention the next year. As a GM I certainly wouldn't let that go unanswered. In my game it would be highly likely that the Saxons would retaliate. That £30 isn't free.

Likewise, the Gamemaster probably shouldn't just let you get away with wandering through Sussex collecting cattle. For one, you've got to transport all that loot. Second, you'll probably be confronted at some point by a Saxon army if the entire area sees you as a threat. A raiding force weighed down with loots is an easy target.

Also, no one is defending your territory while you're off raiding...

NT

I think the key is that the Damage and Reconstruction rules just cover the economic consequences of any actions. The Gamemaster needs to be involved in the rest of the game play. There are political reasons and consequences to any actions. I'd suggest raiding through Sussex will likely gain you unwanted attention the next year. As a GM I certainly wouldn't let that go unanswered. In my game it would be highly likely that the Saxons would retaliate. That £30 isn't free.
How would Saxons retaliate in the heart of Salisbury? Sure, you might kick the hornet's nest, but what if that was your plan all along? Get the Saxon's ire up to force Uther's hand to smash them down the next year... doing so would net you a tidy profit and get what you want. Fund it on the sly and it might not be able to be easily traced back to you... depending on how you want to do it.

And looking solely on the damage/reconstruction... even if you are hitting actual neighbors (say in the Anarchy period)... 3 lots of temporary damage reduces them to two lots the next year (since they can, at best get the Stewardship repair option). That means that they'll be down their Discretionary Income for 2 years after the raids... seven 10L manors can raise up 7 Knights and 21 Foot... with 10L you can raise 50 foot to make it impossible for them to actually attack you with the rules. For 20L you can raise a counter army and raid them while they're attacking you. The system isn't balanced well. I'm not trying to be difficult, I'm just dealing with a player who is.


Likewise, the Gamemaster probably shouldn't just let you get away with wandering through Sussex collecting cattle. For one, you've got to transport all that loot. Second, you'll probably be confronted at some point by a Saxon army if the entire area sees you as a threat. A raiding force weighed down with loots is an easy target.
Nothing in the rules states anything of the sort... sure, the GM is forced to make up rules on the spot, but that's just showing that the rules maybe aren't fully sufficient to model what they're doing.



Also, no one is defending your territory while you're off raiding...
NT
I bet the Knight of Stratford upon avon feels pretty confident no one is going to raid them while they're gone...

I don't know how to shift this to a new post, so I'll just continue here.

I'm always happy to address the rules. I just don't have a problem with these as written. So, agree to disagree.

I also understand problematic players...or perhaps insane players.

I do think the "use story elements" approach is essential to all roleplaying because the the rules simply can't cover all contingencies. Raiding may give you X, but the story determines whether or not you want to raid, can raid or may regret raiding. Perhaps, the Earl or countess doesn't want you going off on a raid because of the attention it might garner. Perhaps, they want you to raid to get some £. The availability of mercenaries etc are all things the Gamemaster can control within the type of story he/she wants to tell. Who say's your targets liege doesn't come help him and utterly crush you? Who says all those mercenaries are available? Up to the GM. You could have a storyline where manpower is a limited commodity or one where mercs are readily available. At present, that isn't really specified in the rules.

Any way, I understand you problems, I just think they are easy to address via story line. If my players wanted to raid deep into Saxon territory, I'd sure make it hard for them to get back.

NT

First of all, the raiding rules on p. 44 - 45 are written primarily from DEFENDER'S point of view. Since it is the Book of the Estate, it is very much focused on the impact on the knight's holding if he gets raided (mainly by the Saxons, since they are the pre-eminent raiders in the Early Phase).

Secondly, raiding is not an automatic success. Sure, if the defender forts up, you can grab some stuff and run for the hills. Good for you. This assumes, however, that you have already avoided all the border patrols and such. Raiding often involves some fighting. It is all fun and games until someone rolls a critical, and then someone takes a major wound or dies. The rules make a reference to the Skirmish rules in the main rulebook, for instance. While the simple system omits casualty figures, someone raiding several times a month would definitely take some attrition in his raiding force.

Thirdly, consequences. You may have noticed a paragraph titled 'Help from the Liege'. The liege owes protection to his vassals. You raid someone, he complains to his liege, or, indeed, that was the baron's own manor you just raided. Expect to see couple of dozens of knights, their attending foot soldiers and a couple of hundred of peasants plundering your manor in retaliation. Not to mention complaints to your liege and the King, with demands for recompense (and your head would be nice, too). Your own liege is unlikely to be best pleased, either.

Fourthly, OK, you are raiding Saxons, so no problem, right? Wrong. Unlike the Cymri, Saxons rely more on the fyrd system. Every Saxon peasant is a part-time warrior, and not just peasant militia, either. Sure, the less well-off ones might be poor spearmen, but many would be bona fide spearmen and wealthier ones would qualify for armored spearmen if for nothing else then because Saxons are big and strong. This is why Saxons are able to throw such big armies around during the Early Phase: they are much more warlike (and egalitarian) people and able to mobilize more of their number. Instead of 1 knight and 3 foot soldiers in a Saxon village, you might be faced with something equivalent to 10 armored foot soldiers, 20 foot soldiers and 20 poor foot soldiers. And that is just that one village. Once you have whacked the hornet's nest a few times, they will retaliate, and assuming you made it your business to hit them as often as you could, they will come with an army to make sure that no one else will get that stupid again. Congratulations. You have just started a war. Your liege and your king are sure to take your greed into account when the time comes to assign blame.


In summary:
- Book of the Estate is about the estate, not about warfare and raiding to be a robber knight. Thus, it did not spell out all the consequences that being a robber knight entails.
- Sure, you can make some profits raiding, but it tends to work best when there is already a war going on (not only is it harder to single out someone for retaliation, but the defenders are likely hemmed in by the army already, too), or during the Anarchy, when there is less of an authority to punish you for breaking the king's peace. Of course, that is a double-edged sword, since it means that someone might be after you, too. Also, nothing tends to unify people as someone who is victimizing them all.
- Raiding numerous manors in a month only works if they don't do anything about it. There are things like messengers, warning bells, patrols, liege's household knights, etc. As long as there is no one to stop you, it works. As soon as they get their act together, you will be in a world of hurt. Don't think that they will wait until next year, either. They will be coming to pay you a visit right now, bringing fire with them.

How would Saxons retaliate in the heart of Salisbury? Sure, you might kick the hornet's nest, but what if that was your plan all along? Get the Saxon's ire up to force Uther's hand to smash them down the next year... doing so would net you a tidy profit and get what you want. Fund it on the sly and it might not be able to be easily traced back to you... depending on how you want to do it.


You expect that the King will thank you for messing up his grand strategy by forcing him spend the year skirmishing with the Saxons? You think that your liege, the Count of Salisbury, will thank you when eastern Salisbury is burning? You think his neighbors in Hantonne will be feeling charitable when the counter-raids of the Saxons ravage their lands?

For example, lets say your player-knight gets a bright idea to raid Sussex in 489. Well, that is when Uther would be going against Gorlois, so you'd be probably mustered in the army. But lets say you stay home and raid Saxons. Lets say that they don't even do anything that same year. Then in 490, whilst Logres is getting invaded from the north by Octa and Eosa, suddenly both Aelle of Sussex and Aesc of Kent rise up, breaking the fragile peace in the South, and start torching everything south of the Thames to start with. Aescwine of Essex joins along, raiding all the way to St. Albans. Suddenly, instead of facing ONE Saxon army which already outnumbers the Logres Army, there are two-three more Saxon armies in the south. The strategic situation just got a hell of a lot worse for Uther, and you can be sure he would be looking for someone to blame afterwards.

As for 'funding it on the sly', it is not as if you are making off with a bag of gold coins. You are driving livestock, carrying pots and pans and sacks of grain in ox carts. You are a slow caravan of loot, moving with the speed of the oxen. Not only will you be easy to catch up (even by foot soldiers), but everyone will notice your passing, too. It would be very easily traced back to you. Perhaps not by the Saxons, but definitely by whoever's land you'd be crossing.

If I were the Baron of X in Hantonne, I would be unbelievably pissed at a Salisbury knight provoking the Sussex Saxons to raid me, and complain about it to Count Salisbury and King Uther. Heck, I would be likely to stop any such caravan from even passing through my lands, unless I am cut in on the loot, at the very least, as well as finding out who these raiding knights are. I would imagine the same is true for all the other barons who live near the Saxons. They are the ones to suffer first, so why would they facilitate knights from farther away to provoke the Saxons?

There is also another point you made about travel times. Yes, manors tend to be close to one another. In Salisbury, the average distance is a couple of miles, more or less. I would expect the same to be broadly the case elsewhere, too. In Salisbury, it takes two days for the whole might of Salisbury to gather in Sarum. Two days. On the third day, Salisbury's Army would fall on any would-be raider anywhere in Salisbury, and that is assuming that they would bother to wait that long. Given that Raiding takes four days, and sure, you might be able to do it in two if you bring enough people, but the army might get there in a day if it is a local one... You see, the idea that you can just go around for a month looting without no one reacting is like playing chess without allowing the opponent to make any moves.

The above would be true for most other places, including Saxons. You could travel to Sussex (a few days' trip as a rough estimate), MAYBE have time to hit one manor/village and get out before they respond, and then travel back at half the speed to deposit your loot at your estate. That took about two weeks, and now they are in high alert, so if you'll try to repeat it, you will probably have to fight first. Unless you are travelling with an army that clears the defenders away (by forcing them to retire to the castles or defeating them in battle), it is almost impossible to raid consecutively in the same area. Not to mention the fact that you will have to get all that loot home at some point, too. If your peasants are already herding loads of livestock, they won't be very useful in raiding a yet another place.


Hopefully, some of the thoughts above will be helpful to you as the GM to deal with your problem player. :)

First of all, the raiding rules on p. 44 - 45 are written primarily from DEFENDER'S point of view. Since it is the Book of the Estate, it is very much focused on the impact on the knight's holding if he gets raided (mainly by the Saxons, since they are the pre-eminent raiders in the Early Phase).
Thank you for confirming what I realized after my last post. It's not that, as others have stated here, the rules work, it's that the rules don't apply to the situation at hand. The Book of the Estate isn't super clear on it, but now I totally see that they aren't meant to be rules that apply both ways... I don't blame the PK for posing the strategy. He saw a fellow PK suffer a raid, read the rules and saw a potential exploit. He proposed it, and I said "Nope", with my mouth agape at how such a huge hole could exist. I came here to ask what I was missing and was told I wasn't missing anything, which is patently not true. The rules in the BotEs are for the defender, not the attacker.

Once I realized that I told the PK that fact. I also told him we're not playing that sort of game. He agreed (to both) and I mocked up a little script that we could use for Raiding Saxons during solo adventure years that satisfied him, created interesting situations, and didn't unbalance the game. BUT it took me realizing something that wasn't very clear from the rules that the rules didn't apply to that situation.

When I come to these boards with issues, I'm not trying to catch you guys in some huge mistake or prove I'm the smartest guy in the room; I'm looking for honest feedback or help. I feel like the first response to any issues here is with derision, hostility, or condescension. I really enjoy KAP, and am making a huge effort to play the game RAW. My group and I aren't idiots... we've all spent at least 20 or so years each playing various RPGs. Some of us are even published game authors. We even ran a very long and successful KAP 4th game in years past. I know how to deal with mechanical twinkery with social or game impacts, but usually I just try to talk to the players and avoid the desire for twinkery in advance... We just saw a very obvious problem with a rule and brought it here for clarification. It has now been clarified for me... if errata ever happens again to the Book of the Estate, a simple line or two detailing that the rules only apply for defending one's own manors would be sufficient to really avoid such confusion in the future.

I thank everyone for their time and responses.

Thank you for confirming what I realized after my last post. It's not that, as others have stated here, the rules work, it's that the rules don't apply to the situation at hand. The Book of the Estate isn't super clear on it, but now I totally see that they aren't meant to be rules that apply both ways... I don't blame the PK for posing the strategy. He saw a fellow PK suffer a raid, read the rules and saw a potential exploit. He proposed it, and I said "Nope", with my mouth agape at how such a huge hole could exist. I came here to ask what I was missing and was told I wasn't missing anything, which is patently not true. The rules in the BotEs are for the defender, not the attacker.

Well... yes and no. The difference is that since we are looking from a defender's point of view, it is already implicit that the attacker has penetrated this far (evading/defeating the border patrol etc), since otherwise there would be no raid to do the damage. And while there is a nod towards the Liege's help & how to resolve if the raid is a successful one or not (with advice to go and check the Skirmish rules), here is not that much information on what happens afterwards to the raider: does he manage to slip away with his loot and are there any consequences?

Those five things are what make raiding much less of an open license to print money:
1) You'll have to first get there, which may entail running into a border patrol, who take a dim view on the obvious raiding party. Combat may ensue and often on less than advantageous odds.
2) Once you reach the raiding site, you often have to fight for it, and eventually, someone will get lucky.
3) The liege/king of the raided party is likely to get involved, limiting the time you have.
4) You'll need to get out with your loot (with slow moving ox carts to transport the loot), now with the alarm having been raised, the enemy liege's army on your tail and the border patrol probably somewhere along your route of retreat.
5) If you do get away with it, were you identified? What is the reaction from the victim's side? Will it become political?

But, because of the focus of the Book of the Estate was on your estate, not the damage you can do to someone else's estate, the above considerations were not explicitly included in the book. Perhaps we should have added an Appendix on Raiding or something like that. That is not my call to make, though.

You obviously have considered all the above things, and come up with your own Raiding Solo. Would you mind posting it in the house rules section? I would be interested in seeing it. :) I made my own, of course, but I may have made it a bit too difficult to raid... Although the players should take part of the blame for trying to assault fortified manors rather than just nick the livestock from the pasture and run for it.

If you're looking for a place to get inspiration, I'd suggested looking the Uther Period Adventures in the Great Pendragon Campaign... especially The Border Challenge, Riding in Enemy Lands and Ambush for the kind of things to expect when riding out on a raid.

I feel like the first response to any issues here is with derision, hostility, or condescension.

Whoa. That's a little harsh, but if that's the way you feel, that's the way you feel.

I'm looking back through the thread and don't see anything that rises to the level of those strong descriptions, IMO. Your average large RPG community is way more hostile and nasty than I've ever seen these forums get. In fact, I've always kind of marvelled at how welcoming, patient and helpful people here are. It's about as fine a community as I've seen in the hobby. No flame wars, no ad hominem attacks and everyone is generally exceptionally well-behaved — there's even very little cursing, for Pete's sake. That said, there's the occasional aberration, but, generally speaking, it's a pretty great bunch. That's been my experience, anyway, and I've been a member of the community for five years now, I guess.

Anyhoo, please accept my apologies if things got off on the wrong foot. All new members are welcome and we should perhaps make even more of an effort to make them feel so.



Best,


T.

Plese, anyone, submit a book, or even an article, on how to raid

Thank you for confirming what I realized after my last post. It's not that, as others have stated here, the rules work, it's that the rules don't apply to the situation at hand. The Book of the Estate isn't super clear on it, but now I totally see that they aren't meant to be rules that apply both ways...

More or less. However, I think the rules do work (semantics at this point really). They just cover only a specific portion of raiding. I'd call it the economics because it covers financial loss (defender) and gain (attacker). I'd agree with Morien that it is weighted towards the estate holder's point of view (effects of damage).

That's all it covers though, and as you note, the rules don't apply to any of the other parts of raiding, which are left to the Gamemaster: skirmishes, politics, counter raids etc. In part this is because the rules can't cover all contingencies, in part it is due to space limitations in publications, and in part it is a byproduct of the author's interests.

Another KAP example, is Book of Battle. If gives you rules for fighting battles, but it doesn't cover things like raising an army, feeding your army, or marches and counter marches. Those things might be important in some campaigns, but the book only covers the battle and the GM has to handle the rest within the story. Perhaps those 100 knights you want to hire with your loot just aren't available..

I would think of it a bit like D&D players walking though town in full armor bristling with weapons and attacking some nemesis. Sure the combat rules let you do it, but the DM decides whether you're allowed to go armed in town, whether the fight will get you arrested or killed by guards etc. The core rules could cover that or leave it up to the DM.




Once I realized that I told the PK that fact. I also told him we're not playing that sort of game.



This is, of course, the correct thing to do, and in my opinion, not done enough. Players often try to exploit loopholes, and why not.

The GM needs to set some parameters for the world and let the players know what they are. Let him know that the £ aren't free and that raids make enemies etc. He can still chose to raid, setting off a whole string of adventures and new story lines. You could have quite a fun adventure getting caught in Sussex with a ton of loot while trying to evade hostile Saxons and get home.

I see it as a feature, not a quirk. Tells you what you get from raiding...leaves you the freedom to fit it into your campaign.

NT