I just started up a new campaign, but I'm a little confused about a few things in KAP5 and Heraldry.

KAP5 seems to indicate that every knight has a coat of arms and that Heradlry works as "normal".

The GPC sort of indicates that personal coats of arms don't seem to appear until the Boy King Period. Yet all the nobles presented in the Uther and Anarchy periods all have coats of arms.

Does this mean that knights should start with their own coat of arms?
Or is it just that the great lords have their own coat of arms and PCs start off carrying the arms of their lord, and later develop their own arms?

You can do it either way. I generally do it that only the great lords have coats of arms until the anarchy, at which point everyone starts to adopt them. But with a group new to Pendragon, I'd probably encourage them to adopt their own coat of arms from the beginning, to help foster their own family identity.

Historically speaking, Heraldry didn't really get serious until armor developed that made the wearer difficult to recognize. That didn't stop folks prior to that from painting pretty pictures on their shields. The great thing about the early days of knighthood, in both gameplay and actuality, is that you can play a bit fast and loose with the "rules" of heraldry. Want a green mermaid on a blue field? There are, as of yet, no college of heralds to tell you "no".

Having said that, I also fostered coats of arms for beginning knights to help give them a handle on their family and place.

In my game I've said that in the early years only landholders have personal heraldry. My players all started as household knights (or even non-knights for a couple of them) so they didn't pick a shield until they came into some land and were endowed as vassal knights.

Regards
Luke

My players haven't worried about this too much yet. They do have their own coat of arms, but there has been little attention placed on them. I was planning on having provided some duels, challenges, jousts, etc. once the college of heralds is established between the PK's and some NPC's that have identical coats of arms. That way the PK's realize how important they are. And, if they lose... they'll have to come up with a new coat of arms. Minor downside if a player just loved his coat and lost the duel. Upside is that they could gain a Hate (that guy) passion. And possibly lead to some confusion in identifying knights.

Thanks for the feedback gentlemen,

I have been thinking of going with only the Great Lords having their own arms at first with the PCs gradually adopting them for status prestige purposes as the campaign goes on, but wasn't sure if there was anything specific about it in the rules.

Since half my group have played Pendragon before (some as far back as the KAP1 days), they tend to jump the gun on certain things. Character creation tuned out to be full of surprises.

The way I did it before and have begun to do it again is to say that the permission to have your own coat of arms is granted by the King and is usually only given to Earls, Dukes or other powerful men. So, for example, Brastias has his own coat of arms. The other Knights carry the arms of their liege lord, so for the player Knights it will be the coat of arms of Salisbury.

Once Uther shuffles off the mortal coil then some Knights begin to take their own coats of arms, at first this was lordless and/or mercenary Knights blanking their shields.

However when reinforced chainmail, with it's closed helm, makes it's appearance then I began to have people unsure about who the Knight underneath was, so there was much lifting of helms happening.

The plan was then to make it more and more common for Knights to have their own coats of arms on their shields to solve the identity problem. However my last campaign stalled before that point due to a house move.

The conclusion would have been for Arthur to recognise a Knights right to have his own coat of arms on display, he would have really just been accepted the current situation having seen the wisdom in it, and then for the college of heralds to appear and to begin to demand uniqueness.

When characters were made I explained that the most Knights don't have their own unique coat of arms yet and that the best a heraldry skill roll would do would be to identify the few Knights who did or the land from which the shield bearer came from.

Ooh, I kind of like that. It would work really well for the Salisbury knights, too. With no King and an infant Liege Lord, the knights could start taking arms on their own during the anarchy period. Perhaps some knights are even awarded their own arms as a reward for some great service (with a Glory bonus).