So ok, Wierd situation. I've personally never played this or any other tabletop rpg (I intend to start with the game I'm describing later). I play a ton of Crusader Kings 2 (if you haven't check it out, it's great). One of the best mods is After the End, which converts the game from medieval Europe to post apocalyptic North America.

There's been a lot of talk on the After the End reddit about fleshing out the world for an rpg campaign. A couple of people are doing a modified Pendragon one with their meatspace game groups, but I'm hoping to get an online one going.

https://www.reddit.com/r/aftertheendckii/?count=26&before=t3_56w4gc

https://www.reddit.com/r/aftertheendRPG

The first is the subreddit for the mod, the second for the spin off rpg.

Conversion wise, we have a working list of virtues for the cool sects that populate AtE (Catholics, Americanism, the Rust Cult, and many more).

We need a GM for the game (ideally someone familiar with the setting) but also help with character creation, since there is no 'base' version for most of our fantasy cultures.

I'm not the one to pick up your ball and run with it, but I can provide some recommendations, because you've got quite a bit of work to do in defining things out.

Pendragon would be a fine system for modeling the dynastic play you want. For the cultures the best approach is going to require a lot of reading: figure out what your fantasy culture is most analogous to in the historical period Pendragon covers, and borrow some or all of trait distributions. Starting with the Book of Knights and Ladies would be good; you'll essentially need to develop your analogous material for After the End.

Best,

--Khanwulf

It's looking like the book of Knights and Ladies is what I need to start with. Is everyone who wants to play going to have to buy it themselves, or does just the GM need it? Total newb at this sort of thing.

Mostly, the entire playing group needs just a single copy of any given book, be it the handbook or a supplement. The books are then used mainly by the GM to know how to handle a given situation, how to adjudicate the results of players' actions and so on.

Thus, as a general rule (valid for almost all RPGs), the players never need to buy anything, unless they want to have the most important rules at hand: in this case, they CAN buy the handbook (KAP 5.2 is the most recent edition) and/or a supplement (Book of the Estate, Book of the Entourage and Book of the Warlord are the best choices for those players who want to handle estate management with a high degree of detail).

I, as a GM, strongly suggest that the players never buy and use the game books directly, UNLESS they want to somehow collaborate in the task of GMing. KAP has explicit rules for this and even requires it at some point, when the player-knights reach the upper levels of nobility. In my group, we buy together a single copy of each book, which is then read and used exclusively by the GM; the players receive from the GM information taken from the books on a "need to know" basis.
It is often advisable for the GM to give each player a copy of some important table or a scheme of how combat works, and so on.

Agreed with mandrill_one. You very seldom NEED more than one copy per group, unless the players want to have their own copies. (Of course, people buying more copies means more support for Greg, so that is a good thing.)

However, I will dissent slightly on the general rule of the players not using any of the books. For instance, I think there is value of the players reading (and hopefully, understanding) the main rulebook. Also, Book of the Entourage and Book of Knights & Ladies are more player-oriented in a sense that the focus is more in expanding the player's choice (in entourage members or in available backgrounds), although of course in both cases the final call needs to be the GM's if he or she wishes to incorporate those rules/backgrounds into the campaign. I'd say that the same goes with Book of the Estate: it can be useful for the player to be able to read and see how the additional buildings are supposed to work. To take this back to the starting statement, assuming a group that meets around the same table, you can easily accomplish this by loaning books to each other until the next session, though, rather than each needing a copy. I'd go as far as say that Book of Battles (2nd edition), if you are using it, it would be good for at least the eschille leader PK's player to read, too, so that he knows what maneuvers are available and what they do. (Of course you can just get a copy of Appendix C: Maneuver Summary, instead, like mandrill_one suggested with the important tables and such.)

Book of the Warlord and Book of Uther are, in my mind, more of GM world information books, even though BotW has barony building rules. It is very rare that the player character gets to this level, and if he does, like mandrill_one said, then he is probably going to retire from active play and becomes more of a "quest-giver" type of NPC, with the player potentially becoming a co-GM to run those quests. Both of these books also contain 'spoilers'. Needless to say, this spoiler aspect goes triple for the Great Pendragon Campaign: I can't see any reason why a player would ever read that book while the campaign is ongoing. And even more so, to any adventure books, since you can totally spoil the adventure if you have read it beforehand. There is no surprise and discovery left then, leading to diminishing enjoyment. At least that is my opinion.

Now, to take this back to the original question about using Pendragon to play After the End... While I am not familiar with AtE, assuming that it is a pseudo-medieval setting with elite warriors on horseback with lances and melee weapons, Pendragon should convert just fine. Book of Knights & Ladies is more of an example of how you can tweak different backgrounds, but the basic premise is very simple and understandable: What skills does the culture value? What character traits are important? So for instance, if you have a 'mongol horde' type of horse nomad people in the Great Plains, naturally Horsemanship and Bow would be important and they would likely start out with higher skill value in those than other cultures. If they think that no one else matters and it is the survival of the fittest (due to the scarcity of resources), they might be Cruel and Selfish, but they might also have bonus to Love (Family) to highlight a close-knit clan structure. Thus, their Cruelty and Selfishness would be mostly inflicted on strangers. And so forth. BoK&L has many already worked examples of backgrounds in pseudo-medieval Arthurian Europe, so you can potentially use that as a basis, but if your AtE cultures do not map easily to historical examples, you might be better off coming up with your own.

Well I went ahead and got it. While some of the After the End cultures actually map up really well (Danes for the neo-norse from the upper great lakes, Huns for the high plains horse cultures, Romans or Italians for the merchant families of Gotham, Aquitaine for genteel southern knights) most aren't a great match for any.

I know this is an odd request, but could anyone refer me to a truly Vanilla knight character sheet? One with no cultural or religious modifiers assigned yet? Is such a thing even possible?

For the curious, non-ck2 player, the AtE setting is closest to the traditional chivalric tradition in the Holy Columbian Confederacy (imagine the Holy Roman Empire with Confederate symbolism). A lot of the other cultures are less into mounted warrior elite, but not to the point of being a huge obstacle.

If I understand you correctly, you're looking for essentially just a blank character sheet? I'm sure you can find one by Googling it, there's one in the main book (which ultimately you'll probably want to get if you don't already have it, since it's got the rules for the game). I've probably got one on my computer someplace, though I do all my Pendragon gaming through Roll20 and use their Pendragon sheet (which is very good but you have to be logged in to use it. It's kind of designed specifically for Cymric Knights but it works well enough for other character types)

I know this is an odd request, but could anyone refer me to a truly Vanilla knight character sheet? One with no cultural or religious modifiers assigned yet? Is such a thing even possible?

All Traits at 10, except Valorous at 15, are the vanilla (Cymric) starting traits before religious and cultural modifiers & personal enhancements (one trait at 16).

As for possible, depends what you mean by it. Everything is possible if the GM OKs it, but all characters usually have a culture (even if it is the default one, in KAP's case Cymric) and a religion/philosophy, even atheists. So a character without a culture and a religion would be incomplete, having not finished character generation.

If I understand you correctly, you're looking for essentially just a blank character sheet? I'm sure you can find one by Googling it, there's one in the main book (which ultimately you'll probably want to get if you don't already have it, since it's got the rules for the game). I've probably got one on my computer someplace, though I do all my Pendragon gaming through Roll20 and use their Pendragon sheet (which is very good but you have to be logged in to use it. It's kind of designed specifically for Cymric Knights but it works well enough for other character types)

I have the pdf of the sheet, I was just hoping for one that I can fill out digitally instead of print it out.

We have religious values figured out, and I think we can get consensus on cultural bonuses and or skills.

I'm sure there's a form-fillable one somewhere. The official Knight record sheets are, I think, though they cost a little bit of money. Also, again, the Roll20 Pendragon sheet is pretty good, I use them even for in-person gaming, since we all have computers available. That sheet is a touch less customizable though, for instance you have to choose a religion from the pretty limited choices it gives you (though it does cover the most common religions); you can still make characters of other religions, but you'd have to keep track of the religious bonus and whatnot yourself.

There are also excel character sheets floating in the vastness of internet. We use them in our campaigns, which due to Real Life, are exclusively via internet.

Also, Adobe Acrobat Reader DC has the "Fill and sign" tool to write anywhere in PDF files. It is available for both Mac and Windows.
If you use a Mac you can write on PDF sheets using the Preview app, easily, natively and without any problem (we do it all the time).
The Good Reader app does the same on tablets.

There are also excel character sheets floating in the vastness of internet. We use them in our campaigns, which due to Real Life, are exclusively via internet.

Found an excel sheet, and we've started working up characters, woot! Still don't have a GM, or even a 100 % decision on whether we will be in the Rust Belt or the Serene Empire of California. But its already getting fun working out our relationships and backgrounds and stuff.


A few minor newb questions:

Am I right thinking that Landed Knight and Vassal Knight are the same thing? Because I rolled Landed knight for my father's class, but I haven't seen that term used again elsewhere.

Also, if your father is landed, does that mean he's your liege?

Can passions be for anything? Can a character have a passion for hunting, or for forests, or a hate of crowds, or something like that?

I'm assuming there has to be some logical connection between the situation and a passion you try to invoke, so what kind of situation would suit a Hospitality passion? The only ones I can think of is getting rid of an obnoxious guest at a feast or fighting a foe who disrespects guest right.

A few minor newb questions:

Am I right thinking that Landed Knight and Vassal Knight are the same thing? Because I rolled Landed knight for my father's class, but I haven't seen that term used again elsewhere.


Yep, they are synonyms in BoK&L. (Technically an estate holder (banneret in BoK&L) is a landed knight, too, just having more land under his rule, but in the Father's Class tables, bannerets are listed separately.)



Also, if your father is landed, does that mean he's your liege?


Nope. It means that he is a vassal to someone (baron, which encompasses also bishop, count and duke, or directly the king himself), if he is still alive, and when he dies, your character might inherit his land (usually one manor) and become a vassal to whoever the liege is. The default assumption in King Arthur Pendragon main rulebook is that the characters all start as Vassal Knights, their fathers having been Vassal Knights too, but now dead.



Can passions be for anything? Can a character have a passion for hunting, or for forests, or a hate of crowds, or something like that?


I'd say No. I might allow a passion for Hunting (or Tournaments), as this might represent someone who is apt to neglect his other duties in order to spend time hunting (King Pellinore, I am looking at YOU), but I wouldn't allow a passion for Forests or a Hate of Crowds. The latter, especially, might mean that the guy is simply unable to function in a courtly setting, or walk through a medieval town or a market. He might even go berserk if you roll a crit. So no, I wouldn't allow any passion, and would definitely be perusing the suggested passion closely. So far we have not required any passions other than the ones already in the main rulebook.



I'm assuming there has to be some logical connection between the situation and a passion you try to invoke, so what kind of situation would suit a Hospitality passion? The only ones I can think of is getting rid of an obnoxious guest at a feast or fighting a foe who disrespects guest right.

Anything having to do with Hospitality really. Being a good guest/host and helping out when someone isn't. For instance, if you are a guest at a manor when it is attacked, you could roll Hospitality to be impassioned to defend the host and his property. In our campaigns, Hospitality has been underutilized. I might have to think about situations to make it more prevalent.

Yeah, as Morien said, it's generally assumed by default that your first character's father is dead. You can certainly ignore this if you wish, I've seen a lot of campaigns that have the fathers alive for the first 5 years or so, having the players run Household Knights, and then they die in a scripted battle someplace, thus introducing more expanded economics, as well as inheritance rules. If you're more interested in the economic side of things, I would highly recommend the Book of the Estate, while it's just a touch too simple for my liking, it's super easy to mod it up a little bit to your liking (such as Harvest results increasing/decreasing income by degrees of 10%).

You can also choose to roll randomly to see whether your father is alive, which considering Pendragon is all about random rolling, is one of my preferred methods. There's a table in the core book, dunno where it is in 5.2 (or even if it is in 5.2, honestly). It has options for alive and married, alive and unmarried, dead and was married, or dead and unmarried. Those results are a tad wonky if also rolling for mother, but generally speaking it works well enough.

As for your liege, it's generally assumed that it's the Earl/Count of whatever county you're in, though not necessarily. You can roll randomly for your liege, there's a table somewhere in the Book of Knights and Ladies.

So, as for your GM, I would volunteer except I know nothing about the setting, and also I dunno if you'd prefer an in-person GM rather than one online. That being said, since you're do new, I'd be happy to run a one-shot beginners adventure over Roll20 with your group to teach you the basics of the system, and the feel of a Pendragon game. I'm relatively experienced, plus I have most of the books so I could help you figure out which ones you might want (for instance, I could run you an example battle and see if you'd be interested in picking up the Book of Battle 2)

We got a volunteer for first gm. We are all news together, and the idea is that we will rotate around. In your guys' opinions, is that a stupid idea?

Also, when players are younger squires (two of ours want to be) is it easier for them to improve their skills? Can their size change, since they aren't done growing?

We are all news together, and the idea is that we will rotate around. In your guys' opinions, is that a stupid idea?

I am old-school; There is but One GM and Her* Word is Law. (* or His, stupid English language making a gender-specific pronouns.)

My concerns would be the following:
1. As you say, you are all new at this. It means you will have a bunch of new GMs making possibly wildly inconsistent rulings and having very flimsy grasp of the rules.
2. Related to the above, instead of one cohesive story you might get a mishmash of half a dozen competing visions.
3. Also, especially since you are all new, my concern would be with GM-Player separation, too. When GM doesn't have his or her own character in the game, it helps to keep the GM neutral and impartial. Now that each of the players takes turns GMing, they have their own characters (even if the character is taking a break from adventuring like they probably should when it is the player's turn to GM) and might be inclined to run adventures benefiting those characters. Or maybe even harbor payback for what another player did last week when it was their turn to GM... Granted, I started GMing when I was 12, and I had enough trouble keeping the players from having their characters fight over what happened in the RL or in the previous campaign...

While I can imagine a situation where a group of experienced GMs taking turns to run an adventure before handing the reins to another, the only time I have experienced multiple GMs was when a boyfriend-girlfriend couple tried to run a campaign. One would have thought that they had similar tastes, but no. The campaign was split between semi-historical low fantasy in one adventure and magic-to-the-max high fantasy with the world about to end in the next. Needless to say, the campaign collapsed within dozen or so sessions.



Also, when players are younger squires (two of ours want to be) is it easier for them to improve their skills? Can their size change, since they aren't done growing?

Just to warn you, this is generally a bad idea, at least in vanilla Pendragon, in my humble opinion. Squires are not to be seen or heard in courtly settings, and they are on call to do what their knight bids them to do all the time. Your skills are low if you ever get to use them, and the knights are making all the decisions and hogging the glory. You are too young to marry and start your dynasty. In short, you are basically stuck playing a servant and watching from the sidelines while the other players do all the stuff. (Granted, if you are doing vanilla Pendragon, you are also going about 1 session per 1 game year, so you are unlikely to stay a squire for long.)

That being said, Book of the Entourage has rules for dealing with Squires as player characters, both creating them and playing them. In a nutshell, they start with -3 in SIZ and STR when they are 14, but gain those back by the time they are 21. The amount of skill points they get depends on their starting age, too, but they do get extra 5 skill points every winter phase to represent the training they get from their knight. And yes, they may use winter phase's yearly training to grow more, since they are not over 21 yet. Cultural maximum still applies, though.

Yeah, like Morien said, multiple GMs can be tricky. I've done it before, it went pretty well, but there were some hiccups (the other GM was less experienced and tended to leave out important details, and we hadn't fully agreed on what a certain character was supposed to be like when he introduced them, effectively ruining my intended characterization and usage of said character).

I would recommend at the beginning trying to play a little more close to standard - knights, probably landed, with dead fathers, from wherever the equivalent to Salisbury would be in this setting. Or at least this setting's closest to Cymri. There's enough of a learning curve without also having to pick up unusual situations like playing a squire, though the beginner's adventure in the core book does start with the characters as squires and goes through their knighting, so that's something.

I would also recommend looking at some adventures. Obviously, the context would be pretty different, but it might give you an idea of how the game is intended to be ran, plus you might be able to change things to fit the setting. The Great Pendragon Campaign is amazing, though I doubt it would translate well to the setting. Tales of Mystic Tournaments is a pretty good one, has 3 adventures in it I think, thought again, I don't know how well any of this would translate. Is magic a thing?

What Deacon Blues said.

However, especially if you are having varied backgrounds for the characters (different cultures, father's classes), then I'd strongly recommend doing what he alluded earlier: having the landed knight fathers still alive and starting everyone off as a household knight. Not only does this cut off the land management (not that it is huge part of the game unless you want it to be), but it also starts the player knights off at a same level, and ties them more tightly to the liege (AKA quest-giver). This way, you have an 'adventuring group' that is together 24/7, and whom you can send off at the liege's behest to do anything he wants. With novice players & GM(s), this allows tighter control what adventures happen, making adventure planning (and GM-switching) easier, IMHO. It also allows the PKs to 'earn' their manors along the way, so that when the landed knights' sons inherit, the others might be ready for that step, too. Assuming their players even want to.

The introductory adventure in the rulebook or some variant thereof is a good way to introduce the players to the rules. That's what it is there for (drop Pellinore and the questing beast, though). Having a couple of ready adventures in your pocket is useful, especially when the GM(s) is(are) new to the GMing or the game, too. GPC isn't that usual, I fear, since it is tied to the Arthurian landscape and politics. However, again, you can start small, with more local impact adventures, and leave the higher politics and war between the nations for later, once you are more comfortable with the game & the campaign.

I really appreciate the feedback. So far it looks like we are all playing characters within Ohio, so we can focus local for our first 'chapter' or two.

We plan on doing this online via roll20 or something similar. Right now we're using Discord.

So far we have my character, Kosar Watterson, heir apparent of the Manor of Chagrin Falls, his half-sister Tanya who is squiring for him (her mother is Norse and she's been raised in their shield maiden tradition), Bing Skolar, 7th son of a esquire in Kosar's father's service who is now a Lineman (Rust Belt equivalent of knight) of his household.

Well, feel free if you have any questions to ask. That's what we're here for.

Something did occur to me, using rotating GMs can work as long as each GM is running a different campaign. That covers problems like preferential treatment towards their own characters or inconsistency in the ongoing narrative, although it would also mean you would be playing several, completely or mostly unconnected from each other.

Also incidentally, I would quite like to see your conversion work. Mostly just because I'm curious, even though I lack context I love converting systems to work with different settings.

Shameless plug for form-fillable PDF:

http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/124293/Book-of-Records-Vol-I-Knights?term=Book+of+Knights&test_epoch=0

Yes, the cost a few buck, but they were exceedingly challenging to build.


Best,


T.

Something did occur to me, using rotating GMs can work as long as each GM is running a different campaign. That covers problems like preferential treatment towards their own characters or inconsistency in the ongoing narrative, although it would also mean you would be playing several, completely or mostly unconnected from each other.

A couple of times I have run a campaign where all the players are obliged to gamemaster
the purpose is so I can play
Basically each of the "players" does one adventure
then I do as many as there are players
though in truth, we intersperse their adventures with mine

Oh yea, the GM's character is assumed to be on Garrison duty or something, out of play

...and if the players who are GMing understand that their own character is out of play when they are running, there is less of an issue of doing that thing called favoritism.

A completely different campaign can be done, but depending on fast your are running things, each campaign slows down to a crawl and players might not see the steady progress of their character. If doing that, then I prefer finishing a year before letting someone run and then only 1 or 2 other campaigns.

A final thought, my players preferred more details on the Winter Phase stuff, so one energetic person became a GM for all rolls and events that happened then. If helped set up the following year and the players sometimes had to choose between following up on a winter phase event and what their liege wanted. For example, mother goes missing during the winter. But in the spring, the liege declares a campaign against the Saxons. The players had to choose between Loyalty (liege) and Love (family) and if either was notable, then a loss in that might occur if not chosen.

Some events allowed resolution during the winter, so the player would GM that event.

Just my experience and thoughts

I'd like to thank you guys again. We've got a loose plan where one person will gm the Rust Belt campaign, which we will alternate with a separate California campaign with different characters. That avoids the player-GM issue while letting the GM still get to play.

I've watched some youtube stuff of the GPC, and I think we can modify it for our setting, at least keeping the basic structure of the first adventure and going from there. The nature of the setting allows a lot of freedom for where the plot can go.

Since California is (in some ways) the Byzantium of AtE, can anyone suggest a first adventure for that kind of setting? Actually it's more of a Shogun situation, but we are using Byzantine and Saracen cultures for it.