So my group is quickly turning this into a very political game. They are working on alliances, have rivals, and all manner of fun stuff. We're just in year 488 and they've already pissed of Prince Madoc and convinced Uther to deal with "the Cornwall Situation" a year early. It's been a strange time indeed.

But as we get deeper into politics, the group wants a "lay of the land" politically, so I'm frantically trying to stat up neighboring Estates, Knights, Ladies, and people to fill out the world their inhabiting.

What I've gotten into is that I really don't understand the scale of Uther-era Estates and Armies. Like, how many Knights serve under Earl Roderick? I know the book says 75, but that must be his own personal retinue and couldn't possibly be all of the Knights from all of the holdings in Salisbury. How many Knights can Uther call together from all of Logres? What should I assume an "average" Manor from the Manors in KAP 5.1 to be worth? At first I would assume 10L, but with the changes in Estate to assume 50L as a kind of "Average" I don't have a proper scale.

So, can anyone help me out? General size of the Earl's actual Army? Uther's Army? Average Manor value? General population of Logres? Salisbury?

I just need some sense of scale to continue. Any help would be appreciated!

Also if this information is covered in Warlord or Uther, plese let me know which... I haven't bought either of those yet, but they're on the list. I'm leaning towards Uther first, but if Warlord would be better from a political understanding perspective, I'll go that route.

What I've gotten into is that I really don't understand the scale of Uther-era Estates and Armies. Like, how many Knights serve under Earl Roderick? I know the book says 75, but that must be his own personal retinue and couldn't possibly be all of the Knights from all of the holdings in Salisbury.

Actually, it is all the knights of Salisbury under Count Roderick, vassals included. The whole Salisbury Basin is bigger and Roderick has additional £800 or so lands in addition to his holdings in Salisbury, but that is a bit beside the point.



How many Knights can Uther call together from all of Logres?


About 2500.



What should I assume an "average" Manor from the Manors in KAP 5.1 to be worth? At first I would assume 10L, but with the changes in Estate to assume 50L as a kind of "Average" I don't have a proper scale.


Average Manor = £10. I am pretty sure it says this at least a couple of times in BotEstate, like the £10 Manor example.

Estate is NOT A MANOR. It is an Estate. Different thing, usually 5-10 bigger than a single manorial landholding.

Hence, the typical Estate being £50 in BotEstate.



So, can anyone help me out? General size of the Earl's actual Army? Uther's Army? Average Manor value? General population of Logres? Salisbury?

I just need some sense of scale to continue. Any help would be appreciated!


Logres' population should be about 1 million, including children. There should be about 2500 knights, most of whom are household knights (1 knight per £10 Customary Revenue, although a good chunk of the king's revenue goes somewhere else than soldiers...). The actual number of vassal knights is somewhere in the 10-20% of all knights. Being a vassal knight IS A BIG DEAL.

So, in Salisbury, most of your neighbors are actually manors owned by the Count. On the other hand, it means that by being a vassal knight, you are automatically in the dozen or so knights who can claim that distinction in Salisbury, meaning you have the Count's ear.

Needless to say, if you have given each of your X players a £50 estate to play with, you have already taken a huge chunk of Salisbury... So probably there are no other vassal landholders left! On the other hand, you probably can start playing in the bigger leagues by now, what with a combined private army big enough to take on an average baron (assuming X = 4-6)...



Also if this information is covered in Warlord or Uther, plese let me know which... I haven't bought either of those yet, but they're on the list. I'm leaning towards Uther first, but if Warlord would be better from a political understanding perspective, I'll go that route.

I think it is covered in both, actually. Both have an overview of the Barons, but BotW goes into more detail on creating and running a barony (as well as lists of all castles of Logres for each Period up to end of Boy King), while BoU concentrates more on the King's Court (with loads of NPCs) and the kingdom level stuff, but also has the 480-484 campaign extension. I'd say BoU is probably better for the understanding how the kingdom works, and BotW in how the individual barony works, to give a crude idea.

However, neither one of them really details all the barons, just the few biggest ones. That is left up to the GMs, and I for one think that is a good thing. Gives the GM some scope to come up with their own feuds and such.

So all of the Manors in the map on page 62 (or on the map here (https://gspendragon.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/salisbury_manor_krijger1.jpg))are 10L manors?!? Once more, Book of the Estate completely confuses me! So, an Estate would be Deptford, Steeple Langford, Little Langford, Wylye, and Fisherton??

I have grossly misunderstood the new economy provided in Estate. I really have to do some re-thinking here.

So all of the Manors in the map on page 62 (or on the map here (https://gspendragon.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/salisbury_manor_krijger1.jpg))are 10L manors?!? Once more, Book of the Estate completely confuses me! So, an Estate would be Deptford, Steeple Langford, Little Langford, Wylye, and Fisherton??


Correct. They are manors, as said on p. 62. On KAP 5.1, p. 61, it says: "Your starting manor pays you an annual income of £6—enough to support an appropriate lifestyle."

On BotE(state) p. 2, under New Economy, it says: "Here we look at economics along with the money you do see. Thus an ordinary knight’s manor supplies at least £ 10 per year for his maintenance (for more on this topic, see the sections on Economics and Budget [pp. 33 – 43])."
p. 3 is even more clear on it: "Again, the Estate system rejects the “money you never see” concept from the King Arthur Pendragon rulebook and the Book of the Manor. In this new system, a standard manor supplies £ 10 income per year, not £ 6."

There are three 'tiers' of landholding:
Manor: Averaging around £10. This is what a normal vassal knight has, and it is the main focus of (slightly superseded) Book of the Manor.
Estate: Averaging around £50 - £100. This is what a banneret knight (from KAP 5.1) would have and the main focus of Book of the Estate, although the system has been revised to be scalable to single £10 Manor level, too.
Honour: Averaging around £300. This is what an average baron has, and is the main focus of the Book of the Warlord.

EDIT: So yes, in your example, you could join up 5 manors in Salisbury's map and claim that it is a single £50 Estate, although it gets a bit more complicated than that, since an estate is a legal entity, too, granted by the King (p. 7) and indivisible (p. 13). You can have 5 manors which are all independent of one another (and even scattered around Britain) and not be considered an estate, or you could have the same 5 manors and the King declares that they are now the Estate of Broken Bridge thanks to your heroics at the eponymous Broken Bridge against a horde of Saxon Berserkers. Such details are not really important at this point, though.

Player-knights in KAP 5.1 are supposed to start from the single £10 manor level and -maybe- manage to scrape up to estate level with dynastic marriages and legendary heroics over the course of theirs or their sons' careers. There are of course many different ways of playing the game. If someone wants to take Barons as starting characters and stage a Game of Thrones free-for-all during the Anarchy, as long as they are having fun, good for them! The 'default' KAP tends to emphasize more the Glory (p. 5: "The object of the game is to acquire Glory.") and the acclaim of your peers for becoming the best possible knight you can be and the legendary heroics you do, rather than how many manors you have and how much coinage is in your pocket. It is rather easy to get fixated on the base-building and resource hoarding with the holding management, though (been there, done that).



I have grossly misunderstood the new economy provided in Estate. I really have to do some re-thinking here.

I am sorry to hear that. If you have any more questions or need clarification on something, please feel free to ask. That is the main benefit of having a Forum like this. :)

My confusion mostly revolved around assuming the places on the maps were Estates not Manors. Thinking that BoE was meant to supersede BoM and how BoE assumes 30L as the real "floor" for an Estate, I kind of went with the idea that the places on the maps transitioned to that scale. Now I have to figure out how to deal with the fact that my group has way more Customary Revenue coming in than they should. And that most of them still serve Roderick, rather than the King directly.

Or I just accept what I've done, keep going business as usual and have a slightly more robust economy and army in the game. :D

I mean the Knights got their land after bringing Excalibur to Uther, so it's not completely out of the question that the King rewarded them greatly for helping him secure the Sword of Victory.

I would just re-adjust their income to £10 per manor. Note, they can have several manors worth £30-£50 in total and hold them from Rodderick. They aren't technically an estate but the economics are exactly the same. I think the easiest thing to do is admit a mistake and re-calibrate.

That said, if they got estates for helping Uther, then they are probably estates. Just put them on the periphery of Salisbury. In the Anarchy, the knight's old friendship with Rodderick can lead them to seek his protection (or the Countesses, since he's dead) and to ally with Salisbury. Alternatively, Uther may have arranged marriages in such a way as to allow Rodderick to keep his knights while still rewarding them. So they could still hold the lands from Rodderick.

NT

What Eothar said.

Ultimately, it is about fun. Are you and your players having fun with their own posse of knights? If you are, great! If it is a hassle you'd rather not deal with, recalibrate. The world won't break because you have multiplied their landholdings by 5.

(In our first campaign, many of the PKs have managed to accumulate 3-5 manors. It is a bit more of a hassle to look after them due to the harvest system we use, but other than that, it is not that different from our second campaign, which is currently in the Anarchy and features PKs mostly with 1-2 manors. Using BotE, both the £50 estate and £10 manor play exactly the same, but in the former case, you have more spending money, army and servants. That is pretty much it.)

Most of them don't have many household/vassal Knights. With the constant warring with Saxons, I've made bachelor Knights a hard supply to recover since there's only so many trained Knights out there. The only true Banneret in the group, who controls the Wallops (that I ruled had a combined income of 125L) has only three Knights to his name... this is mostly due to the fact that until he took over, the three Wallops had been fighting amongst one another, with the devil-spawned (or was he?) Lord of Nether Wallop constantly raiding his own villagers to supply the conflict. So he's got a bunch of rebuilding to do.

Like I said, I need to ponder how I want to approach it... I'd rather not retcon if I can avoid it.

The only true Banneret in the group, who controls the Wallops (that I ruled had a combined income of 125L) has only three Knights to his name... [snip]
Like I said, I need to ponder how I want to approach it... I'd rather not retcon if I can avoid it.

Well, since you have been running a 13 knight banneret with 3-4 knights, I'd recommend recalibrating it. Make Wallops support that 3-4 knights, and other 'estate' into single knight manors. This also sorts out a couple of other things:

1) Servitium Debitum is not only how many knights you CAN support, it is also how many you MUST show up with for the muster when called, or you have failed your part of the feudal bargain. Which means that the king/Count should strip away your lands and give them to someone else who will bring the requisite number of knights when called.
2) Also, since 40% of the Army expense goes to supporting the knights, if you don't have the knights, the estate is producing heck of a lot of surplus, which tends to make the coffers overflow even on bad times. Which is bad for the game balance.
3) Trained knights are not that rare (you have on average 3 trained squires per each knight slot in each generation, even ignoring the commoner cavalrymen who might get elevated in status if you have no other candidates left). It is outfitting those knights that is harder. However, taken point 2 above, your Wallop should be running at an insanely high surplus since they are almost 10 knights short (£40 per year), so that is a couple of new knights outfitted per year (although if it is in ruins after the internecine raiding, that is of course a different matter). Given that you have scaled the wealth of the manors up by 5 fold or so, the population should increase roughly at the same proportion, meaning there should be around 25000 trained, adult esquires around waiting for their chance to make good.

So yeah... I'd explain things to the players and recalibrate, pronto.

Well, he inherited the Wallops with 8 Permanent Lots of damage to them, so I wouldn't say he has been swimming in cash. :D

Like I said, I need to do some pondering, but I appreciate the suggestions.

Well, he inherited the Wallops with 8 Permanent Lots of damage to them, so I wouldn't say he has been swimming in cash. :D

Swimming in debt more like. He'd still be obliged to supply 13 knights... he just can't afford them.

I'm just going to go with "My Pendragon May Vary" and move on. Thanks for the clarification on the Book of Estate and general numbers of things.

I'm not playing this to be a medieval society simulator, but a game about chivalry, adventure, and romance. I'm more than happy to play the game wrong if it's fun for me and my group.

hear hear!
I think your attitude is golden
Keep having fun!

I'm more than happy to play the game wrong if it's fun for me and my group.

This is, of course, an illogical statement. If you are having fun, you are playing it correctly! Rules schmules....

Honestly, given that you said at the outset yours is a more political game, with alliances and rivalries and all, having them be greater landholders is sounds ideal to me. With large holdings, even large damaged and/or indebted holdings, they are in a position to be Important People, at least on the county level. Sounds like you've got a fun gaming going. Enjoy.

This is, of course, an illogical statement. If you are having fun, you are playing it correctly! Rules schmules....

Yep, what Eothar (& others) say. Having fun is the highest goal. If it works for you and your group, it doesn't matter that it contradicts the rules.

Our campaigns have a host of houserules and deviations from the rules as written. Consistency is a good thing to have, though For instance, I could very well see a Lord saying: "Rebuild this estate of Wallop, and as you are rebuilding it, support as many knights you can afford and bring them to the muster when I call." Sure, it is not exactly the way that Servitium Debitum is supposed to work in BotE, but it is your campaign, world and story, and an above ruling would no doubt sound fair to the Player-knight, too: he is given a ravaged estate and is expected to bring it up, but is given time to do so.

Yep, what Eothar (& others) say. Having fun is the highest goal. If it works for you and your group, it doesn't matter that it contradicts the rules.

Our campaigns have a host of houserules and deviations from the rules as written. Consistency is a good thing to have, though For instance, I could very well see a Lord saying: "Rebuild this estate of Wallop, and as you are rebuilding it, support as many knights you can afford and bring them to the muster when I call." Sure, it is not exactly the way that Servitium Debitum is supposed to work in BotE, but it is your campaign, world and story, and an above ruling would no doubt sound fair to the Player-knight, too: he is given a ravaged estate and is expected to bring it up, but is given time to do so.

And that approach falls in line with the Rydychan multi-year adventure where Arthur tasks knights with building a castle and settling things with robber knights in that area. Some financial help given, but the PKs are expected to work out the details.