Hi All,

I'm probably missing something obvious here, but is their any provision for stewards for knights just starting out in 485? I'm thinking of the stewardship rolls required in the Winter Phase, and it seems to me that the chances of knights making them themselves are pretty low, unless they put points into the skill, which is un-knightly.

Presumably, the manors had stewards when they were being run by their previous lords. I suppose it's also possible that a knight's mother might still be alive.

How do you tend to handle this? I guess a knight being awful at the job is an excellent incentive o find a wife :)

This is delved into more detail in Book of the Estate (and Book of the Entourage). But here are some quick rules:

1. The easiest way
An unmarried knight has a steward with a skill of 2d6+5. Any income normally going to the wife and family goes to paying for the steward instead. (Recommended if you are using the GPC narrative economics anyway.)

2. A bit more complicated way
An unmarried knight can hire a steward with a skill of 2d6+5. The cost is £1 per year, and if the skill is 16+, the cost increases to £2 per year. The knight normally has £1 allocated for the wife's upkeep and £1 for children, so an unmarried knight without children has £1 for the steward and £1 for another hireling (such as a mistress) in his yearly budget, in addition to the normal £1 discretionary funds.

Note that the kinsmen of the knight often angle for the position of the steward, so this might explain why the steward's skill is as poor as 7 (or even worse, see below); he is hired more because he is a cousin in need of a job rather than because he is great at what he does. You can easily make it into an event, too, with a qualified candidate (skill 1d6+9) and a cousin (skill 1d6+1) both angling for the same job. Will Love Family win? :)

Thanks for this. :) I think I'm going to stick with the narrative system for now, as I don't own the Book of the Estate. I can always grab it later.