I am preparing to run the GPC for a new group of players (old group slowly crapped out right before Badon) and one of the new players is female. This is not, of course, a problem except that she's reasonably adamant about playing female PCs.

At first, I was trying to limit it to an initial female knight followed by more traditional knights but she did not seem comfortable. So I took it as a challenge as to how to make a plausible female family of knights and would like some feedback. The following is just a cut and paste of the brainstorming email I sent out to my group. How would you handle such a situation in game? Not so much from a rules standpoint but just in keeping the narrative framework of a mostly real portrayal of Dark Ages social norms intact?

- in-game family will be descended from Boudica.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boudica
- The Boudica Family aren't quite Amazonian but in recognition of her
revolt against filthy Romans they were granted a special dispensation
of land in Salisbury where women could take the lead on matters of
rulership. I'm playing a bit loose with the history here but ignore
the anachronisms and fudging.
- There are some necessary restrictions on character generation,
though stats will be as a male character since female knights are
explicitly allowed as physical equals to males.
- Characters must be British Pagans in keeping with family
traditions dating back to Boudica
- Childbirth is necessarily going to be out of the question. On
character death we'll cook up some matrilineal tradition whereby head
of household falls to the eldest first cousin, who is kept unmarried
(though not virginal, note) and unpregnant.
- Characters can never gain lands by marriage. Note that this is a
standard way of advancing a character but I'm adamant about this; land
exchange is done by a) dowry by the bride's father and b) salic
primogeniture (eldest son inherits all).
- Peasants tending the manors will always be a bit restive due to
just how weird the entire situation is.
- Manors will generally be harder to govern. One of the main ways
men get about the business of killing everyone is by letting their
wives run the manor while they're away. This is represented by a stat
called Stewardship which women have a high value in. With no wife
overseeing things, stat points will end up bleeding to Stewardship a
bit. Hiring an actual steward is an option but that costs money. No
real way around this
- Social stigma. I'm not a GM who likes to be combative and RPing
overt sexism grosses me out a little but the characters will catch
some crap. The Dark Ages are maybe the most sexist time in Western
history. That alleviates somewhat in the Romance period after
Guinevere introduces courtly romance but there it's to put women up as
objects... just objects of fawning affection rather than ownership.

I think you should let the female knight get land. Since ladies do inherit manors it is only proper that a female knight would at least get the same rights. She gets land, andi t goes to her (knight) husband upon marriage.

Otherwise, she is being punished for her loyalty and service to her liege lord.



Don't forget that there are some non-knightly possibilities as well.

The first would be to play a traditional female character. If she doesn't mind not fighting , then that would work just fine. Lots of knights in the stories travel about with a lady. Typically one the rescue early in the tale.

As long as you come up with things for her to do to keep the adventures interesting for her, it should work fine. She might prove especially useful in social scenes (like at court) where she has the skills to compete.


Another possibility is a non-knightly female warrior. In a KAP4 campaign, we once had a magician character based upon the Cletic warrior-witches like Scáthach (from the story of Cú Chulainn). The character worked out very well in the campaign. She wasn't a knight, but she went to battle, could adventure, and even worked a bit of magic.

In a similar fashion, I once introduced a Saxon female warrior "Valkyrie" (not a real one, but it should provoke the right image) to a campaign. Apart from giving most her suitors a major wound in a challenge, and falling for the one PC she couldn't have (he was strong, fearless, good looking, and has over 10,000 Glory), she worked out quite well.

Note that by making the warrior women foreigners, it allowed us to circumvent some of the social difficulties of such non-traditional women. Basically, they were considered "crazy foreigners who didn't know any better".

Just to clarify, she can get land just not land through marriage. The purpose of that restriction is that she's not a man and I'm simply trying to preserve the system as it exists. As I said, my only real worry here is how to keep an entire family of female knights plausible without upsetting the traditions of the land. If she gets land through the crown, earl, conquest, etc that's a different matter than gaining it through marriage.

I guess the family aspect is really the crux of the problem. ONE female knight is easy enough to fit into the campaign; it's making it a family affair that proves difficult. That's why my idea is centering on this one parcel of land basically being what amounts to an untouchable, matriarchal pagan stronghold.

Totally appreciate your ideas on non-knights, and some of them are cool, but I'm deliberately trying to keep the game all knight.

Just to clarify, she can get land just not land through marriage. The purpose of that restriction is that she's not a man and I'm simply trying to preserve the system as it exists. As I said, my only real worry here is how to keep an entire family of female knights plausible without upsetting the traditions of the land. If she gets land through the crown, earl, conquest, etc that's a different matter than gaining it through marriage.

I guess the family aspect is really the crux of the problem. ONE female knight is easy enough to fit into the campaign; it's making it a family affair that proves difficult. That's why my idea is centering on this one parcel of land basically being what amounts to an untouchable, matriarchal pagan stronghold.

Totally appreciate your ideas on non-knights, and some of them are cool, but I'm deliberately trying to keep the game all knight.


I assume you have already discarded the idea of having her come from a foreign land. This would really take care of so many problems. I mean, there were a few instances of Nordic women fighting that you could point to and then call "a family of female knights," perhaps this is the last trace of those Amazon women the the Greeks found ~1500 years before pendragon times and they are from the Crimea (where the Amazons were supposed to have lived), or perhaps these are the foremothers of a certain future Queen of Aquitaine who will go Crusading with her 1st husband, the King of France, before divorcing him and marrying the future King of England.

I've not ruled it out, certainly, and like to have a foreign knight or two in my games. Really I'm not sure if my issue with making it fit is more the feel by way of the rules getting in the way or the rules by way of the feel getting in the way, if that makes sense. :)

Oh, no land through marriage I understand (and agree with). Not unless she marries another woman, anyway. :o

With than in mind, her liege might be a bit more generous with other types of rewards, since marriage would be much of a benefit to her.

A foreign female would certainly help, hence my examples of Irish and Saxon characters. A Pict might work (love those magical tattoos), as would nearly any character from a non feudal land. If you make the character some distant relation to one of the PCs, it could help to tie her into the campaign. She might be some haf-crazy foreigner, but she'd family.


I once ran something where a tomboyish female masqueraded as a knight in order to keep the family estate for escheating back to the leige. Her brother, the heir, went missing on an adventure, and she was covering, duing night service until he could be found. It probably wouldn't work for a PC knight, though. Not with adventuring knights having a tendency for sharing the same bed.

Just an option:

A pagan female knight -could- have children out of wedlock (which is what the one in my campaign did); if this is part of the family tradition, legitimation of bastards should be fairly routine. Or she could marry below her station to someone unqualified for knighthood (perhaps the steward she hired...). If it's a family tradition that Roderick and Uther accept, then it should have some limited legitimacy; "the old pagan warrior tradition hasn't died out here, but the women haven't failed me yet."

Another way you could do it: Maeve in my campaign was simply famously Arbitrary. She was the heiress, she was allowed to do knight service because Uther wasn't in any position to be sticky about it, she had two sons and a daughter (got them bastard off the other PCs), planned an appanage for her daughter (though we never got that far) and otherwise made her own rules.

In my now dead GPC, my wife wanted to play a female character. After some consideration, we treated her just as a male knight. Her backstory was when her father died in some battle or another, her twin brother died as well. To keep from losing the family land, she assumed her brother's identity; dressed in male clothes, had a name that worked for either gender, basically just pretended to be male in front of everyone (except her squire, who I think initially was her sister, also posing as a man).

I think early on, she confided in-character to the other PKs. She eventually told the Earl after Merlin steals Arthur; the Earl had conveyed at the trial that he would go to war with Uther over the knights and she felt she couldn't keep lying to the man any longer. By that point, she had earned a few thousand glory, so had quite a bit of renown. The Earl was a bit surprised, but accepted her- she couldn't have accumulated that much glory without being worthy of it, right? Word spread, she continued to collect glory, she had done favors for Uther so he gave his approval, and the door was opened for future female knights, including her daughter.

I like the idea of other rewards as I'm loathe to gimp characters just because of gender too much.

Really my problem with female knight pregnancy isn't so much passing down land or title as it is the physical aspects; it's tough to fight while heavily pregnant and I'm not entirely certain I would be willing to eliminate the possibility of death in childbirth for PCs.

For eliminating the risk: don't, it's the risk women take. CON should be a factor, though, but I haven't seen rules for its use other than as a simple saving throw if "die" is rolled.

"How tough it is to fight while pregnant?" Not very. If pregnancy occurs in summertime, then by the time she's pregnant enough to be a problem, the fighting's stopped.

I wouldn't be too worried about pregnacy for the female knight.

First off, if she was married, she would need to be subservient to her husband, like any other woman. So she proably won't be in a rush to do this.

Secondly, even if she gets pregnant, time goes by so fast in Pendragon, that she would only miss an occasional adventure.


As far as other rewards go. It is only natural. When the Earl chooses to reward her, he will probably pick something that would be useful to her in place of a wife. As she is a woman, she could receive some things that she can't afford to buy while serving as a Knight. The Earl can give her rewards suitable to a lady as well as rewards suitable to a knight.

- Manors will generally be harder to govern. One of the main ways
men get about the business of killing everyone is by letting their
wives run the manor while they're away. This is represented by a stat
called Stewardship which women have a high value in. With no wife
overseeing things, stat points will end up bleeding to Stewardship a
bit. Hiring an actual steward is an option but that costs money. No
real way around this


One solution is to assume that some of Boudica’s children are non-fighters who specialize in Stewardship and raising the next generation. After all, if the fighters have no kids themselves the following generations have to come from *somewhere*. You’d have a person on each manor fulfilling the roles of Steward and child-raiser with the standard manorial 2L/year for that person and kids, they just wouldn’t be normally married to the manor’s knight.

As a further twist, perhaps children can be *adopted* into the family – how prospects can prove their worthiness for such adoption can provide interesting adventures and backstories in and of themselves (“My squire hiked across two counties to reach me -- When she says she won’t let your squire up until he apologizes, I suggest you take her at her word”).


Re fighting while pregnant:
What happens if the enemy chooses to attack while the knight is in her third trimester and no longer even fits in her armor? Or during the first week after birth, when she's weak with blood loss and doesn't want to sit on a chair much less a charging horse? Even a lord who fully accepted lady knights would insist that his vassal arranged for another knight to "stand her watch" when she is unavailable.

Re fighting while pregnant:
What happens if the enemy chooses to attack while the knight is in her third trimester and no longer even fits in her armor? Or during the first week after birth, when she's weak with blood loss and doesn't want to sit on a chair much less a charging horse? Even a lord who fully accepted lady knights would insist that his vassal arranged for another knight to "stand her watch" when she is unavailable.


On the second, you're assuming a complicated pregnancy, I trust. Assuming no complications, a peasant woman can be out working in the fields within an hour after birth.

Plus, again, maternity leave can usually be arranged for wintertime; Pendragon presumes winter births, after all. Wintertime is generally not the time when you call for forty days of knight service.

- Manors will generally be harder to govern. One of the main ways
men get about the business of killing everyone is by letting their
wives run the manor while they're away. This is represented by a stat
called Stewardship which women have a high value in. With no wife
overseeing things, stat points will end up bleeding to Stewardship a
bit. Hiring an actual steward is an option but that costs money. No
real way around this


Easy way around it. A Vassal Knight's income includes some money to maintain the wife (about 2L, I think). Since the female knight doesn't have a wife to maintain, she would be able to hire a Steward (1L) to watch the land and pocket the rest.

If I were the female knight, I'd probably see if I had a sister, aunt or cousin, that I could get to watch the lands for me. Perhaps give her the "wife money" in hopes of benefiting from the Gentlewoman bonus.

And, if your female knight rolls on the Woman's family characteristic table, she might end up with the Stewardship perk.

Oh, excellent point. In my haste I forgot the 2L fee for wives.

I am more likely to have her roll on the female family trait table; it seems to make more sense if we do end up having her bear children at some point.

Oh, excellent point. In my haste I forgot the 2L fee for wives.

I am more likely to have her roll on the female family trait table; it seems to make more sense if we do end up having her bear children at some point.


One question, assuming her traits are high enough,is if she would get the chivalry bonus and/or the gentlewoman bonus. Denying one or the other is essentially denying that she is chivalrous or a gentlewoman.

Giving her both might be considered getting a double bonus, but then she is going to have a lot of problems becuase of her gender, so maybe it's fair for her to get an extra perk.

In Pendragon, SIZ does matter. (The STR, SIZ and potential religious bonus for being a saxon, makes the "Viking Maiden" concept appealing).

One question, assuming her traits are high enough,is if she would get the chivalry bonus and/or the gentlewoman bonus. Denying one or the other is essentially denying that she is chivalrous or a gentlewoman.

I would rule she could have one or the other, depending upon the social role she has chosen to focus upon. So if she's gone for the knightly career, then she's in line for a chivalry bonus.

Regards
Luke

Agree. It would be chivalry. Really the only time I want to show difference is a) when procreation and subsequent land ownership issues become an issue and b) when driving home just how bad it was for women at the time. As far as her knightly duties (fighting, physical stats, glory, chivalry, etc) she'll work under the same rules as men.

I wouldn't be too worried about pregnacy for the female knight.

First off, if she was married, she would need to be subservient to her husband, like any other woman. So she proably won't be in a rush to do this.

Secondly, even if she gets pregnant, time goes by so fast in Pendragon, that she would only miss an occasional adventure.


As far as other rewards go. It is only natural. When the Earl chooses to reward her, he will probably pick something that would be useful to her in place of a wife. As she is a woman, she could receive some things that she can't afford to buy while serving as a Knight. The Earl can give her rewards suitable to a lady as well as rewards suitable to a knight.


There are a fair number of examples of women in the Middle Ages who were not subservient to their husbands. Some paid the price and others didn't. Oh, and if she marries below her station why would she be subservient? I'm pretty sure no queen of England was subservient to her husband.

There are a fair number of examples of women in the Middle Ages who were not subservient to their husbands. Some paid the price and others didn't. Oh, and if she marries below her station why would she be subservient? I'm pretty sure no queen of England was subservient to her husband.


I'm pretty sure most Queens of England were subservient. While There was Queen Elizabeth,she had the advantage of inheriting her position due to a lack of male heirs-not through marriage, as most Queens.

A Queen who wasn't subservient would be guilty of treason as well as failure to abide by her wedding vows (Love, Honor and Obey).

As for marring below her station, that is surely possible, but does cause all sorts of havoc with the accepted order. From the less enlighten Feudal world view, it is just wrong for wife not be obey her husband. It rips apart the whole foundation of feudal society. If wives don't have to obey their husbands like the Church says, then commoners might not have to obey nobles either. Or vassals obey their liege lords.

And who would want to marry her? It would be rather difficult, to say the least, for a man in that setting to have his wife "wear the pants" (literally) in the family. A husband of greater status would avoid the problem.


This is probably why the Pendragon rules handle the subject delicately. On the one hand, you have the modern emancipated woman, who wants to have all the opportunities than men have, and feels entitled to them. On the other you have the reality of the feudal age.

Any GM trying to mix the two has to work out just how much the setting can bend to accommodate modern values., and what the effects will be.

It one reason why I prefer the "crazy foreigner" approach. From the viewpoint of the typical fedual person, she is "obviously wrong" but doesn't know any better.

The beauty of the setting is that it can bend quite a bit without breaking. But there is a limit. As a GM who has run two campaigns with female knights I can speak with some authority. One campaign worked very, very well and maintained an Arthurian feel. The other campaign went somewhat off of the tracks and entered some fairly unusual territory. But that's another story.

One thing to avoid, if I may give a bit of advice, is too much reliance on the "I don't have to put up with this from a mere woman" attitude for dramatic conflict. The players can easily weary of it, especially the female player who is being constantly questioned. On the other hand, if you ignore it all together, then you loose some varacity within the setting. Some catch, that catch 22 eh?

Good advice there.

Fortunately the monsters have a more enlightened view. They'll kill and eat anybody.

Well, except for the dragons and unicorns (sounds like an RPG, D&U).

A lot of where or not this will work, depends on the other players (if they want to go overboard with the chauvinistic attitudes, there will be problems, and there is little you can do to correct it. They are probably very much in character).

As GM you can effect it with the NPC reactions, and storylines. The Celtic stuff can help a lot, but Celtic femininity might be something that a modern woman might be uncomfortable with. It's also one reason why I'd let any female noble who qualifies keep the gentlewoman bonus.

Generally speaking, a powerful and independent woman in the Middle Ages was treated as a powerful person more than "as a woman," though there were always difficulties.

-Empress Matilda managed to lose the throne of England because she acted about as proudly as the average male king of her time, and what would have been expected from a king got her labeled as a bitch.
-Eleanor of Aquitaine went on Crusade as a feudal lord; her problems appear to have been less "her being a woman" and more "her disagreeing with an incompetent commander." Later, she was imprisoned for treason when she fought King Henry; later still, as Richard's regent she appears to have been fairly well-respected.
-Spanish women fighting the Moors appear to have been more the rule than the exception; they don't seem to have been looked down on for it.
-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Women_in_Medieval_warfare has a whole list of 'em. ^_^

So realistically, chauvinistic men are far more likely to come about in the low-Glory early part of a female knight's career. She'll have to be twice as badass as any male knight, of course, but I doubt your player objects to that. ^_^

Yes, I'm going to be very wary of the generally chauvinistic response to anything a female does.

To narrow the discussion a bit, for those talking about how a given female would be treated remember here that the issues I'm mulling deal specifically with a family line of female knights and how to portray them realistically, not a single female knight PC. The discussion has been good and I really appreciate the suggestions and tips.

To narrow the discussion a bit, for those talking about how a given female would be treated remember here that the issues I'm mulling deal specifically with a family line of female knights and how to portray them realistically, not a single female knight PC. The discussion has been good and I really appreciate the suggestions and tips.


That is going to be somewhat more problematic. What little historcial support for female knights has generally been of the "one off" variety.

Again, the best solution, IMO is a foreign character. Make her a relative of a PC, perhaps a refugee of some sort. THen it could be kind of established as a family history of warrior women.

For a female knight the character is going to really blaze her own trail. You would need to work out in play how/why this could become a family tradition.

One possibility might be if she was a knight who got her land from the Chruch rather than a Lord. Historically Knights were often vassals of the Church. It wouldn't be a huge steach to assume that in Arthurian Britain the custom could have been adopted by Pagans as well (much the way they adopting Knighthood and Chivalry).

Another possibility would be to have some important magician (Merlin, a Lady of the Lake) pop up at the Earls court and instruct/convince the Earl (or Countess) to do this. That way it wouldn't need to make sense to anybody, because Merlin doesn't explain his reasons for doing things. (Who know's maybe it part of the deal Merlin made to get Excalibur?).

I'm pretty sure most Queens of England were subservient. While There was Queen Elizabeth,she had the advantage of inheriting her position due to a lack of male heirs-not through marriage, as most Queens.

A Queen who wasn't subservient would be guilty of treason as well as failure to abide by her wedding vows (Love, Honor and Obey).

As for marring below her station, that is surely possible, but does cause all sorts of havoc with the accepted order. From the less enlighten Feudal world view, it is just wrong for wife not be obey her husband. It rips apart the whole foundation of feudal society. If wives don't have to obey their husbands like the Church says, then commoners might not have to obey nobles either. Or vassals obey their liege lords.

And who would want to marry her? It would be rather difficult, to say the least, for a man in that setting to have his wife "wear the pants" (literally) in the family. A husband of greater status would avoid the problem.


This is probably why the Pendragon rules handle the subject delicately. On the one hand, you have the modern emancipated woman, who wants to have all the opportunities than men have, and feels entitled to them. On the other you have the reality of the feudal age.

Any GM trying to mix the two has to work out just how much the setting can bend to accommodate modern values., and what the effects will be.

It one reason why I prefer the "crazy foreigner" approach. From the viewpoint of the typical fedual person, she is "obviously wrong" but doesn't know any better.



But in this instance it would be like a Queen of England in her own right. So, just like Elizabeth and Victoria, this female is not subservient.

As far as a Queen being guilty of treason, you are correct. Just ask Eleanor of Aquitaine. Of course, she ended up having the last laugh I believe.

And, since we are talking about a rather fictional world, why isn't it possible for a firstborn female to inherit? It is how the Byzantine culture handled things as often as not. It is also how the culture of the Cymri before Rome handled things. Has it changed, yes, but perhaps not everywhere.

I agree with the crazy foreigner idea too, I'm just throwing other ideas out there...

Hello All

Viator,
I think your first problem is that you are coming at this from a Christian perspective. Why would a Pagan woman be worried about losing her property or being subservient? Unless of course, she was such a moron that she married a Christian that thought that she was going to act that way.
Also, why not give her both her woman bonus and chivalry bonus. She gets enough negatives, let her have her few positives.

On a side note, since there were several historical orders of female knights, I had Arthur create small training facility for female knights. I called it the Order of the Rose. He created it at Pentecost 521 in my games in honor of Camelot and his first big tourney. I have him offer amnesty to an female knights and squires that are pretending to be men. Any squires that are ready can be knighted. Since I start in 521, so that my ambitious players will not keep Arthur from becoming king.

I have to agree with bjornheden, don't let you vision be enclosed into the romano-christian way of life, meaning that certain behaviour could be social acceptable for a romano-christian woman, but it is not so for pagans... less for Cymri and even lesser for wotanic pagans.

As it is written in the descriptions of Tacitus's Germania, the women in the germanic tribes are highly considered, they can even fight, or became oracles. So why would a female saxon warrior be worried about inheritance rights? She may take them with the strenght of her arm anyday.

And what about Cymri, which had a long tradition of fighting queens ?

The best suggestion, in the end, is that if you want to allow female knights you have to build a steady moral and social guide for every culture and religion... They will always be seen as rare specimens, but they will have some "law" to bend to, like chivalrous knights have got.

But in this instance it would be like a Queen of England in her own right. So, just like Elizabeth and Victoria, this female is not subservient.

Not at all. All knights are subservient to thier leige lords. So she isn't like a Queen in her own right.


[quote author=abnninja link=topic=530.msg4355#msg4355 date=1264981959]
And, since we are talking about a rather fictional world, why isn't it possible for a firstborn female to inherit? It is how the Byzantine culture handled things as often as not. It is also how the culture of the Cymri before Rome handled things. Has it changed, yes, but perhaps not everywhere. [/uote]

Because the fictional world is the Arthurian one, and as presented by Mallory. Just because a world is fictional, doesn't mean that no rules apply. While the rules were different before the Feudal system, the fact is the rules for a Fedual society do not allow the firstborn female to inherit.

One very big problem that would arise in such a situation is that the firstborn male characters would be slighted. Unlike women that can't just be married off. Such characters could quite rightly feel that they have been cheated out of their birthright. Even their masculinity could be called into question as the new "rule of inheritance" would imply that their sisters are considered to be better candidates for knighthood than they are.

And if the eldest daughter can usurp the eldest males privileges, then why can't the other daughters do the same take over other positions of authority in the manor, or even become priests?!!

And what happens when a man whose son is entitled to inherit marries a woman whose daughter is entitled to inherit?

One woman knight, or even a handful, is the exception to the rule. A legacy of female knights is the end of the rule.


Sure, other cultures had laws that allowed land to pass through the female line. But that is just it, they were other cultures. That's why several of us have suggest that the female be some sort of foreigner.

It's not going to change the way someone like Earl Roderick is going to do things in Salisbury. Not without causing rebellion and/or a cultural revolution. The first time a knight gets robbed of his birthright, every other man of status is going to be up in arms to make sure that it can't happen to him or his son. If they don't stop it at once, it might spread.

And since the whole "men rule" thing is part of the "Divine Right of Kings", something like this would get people questioning other things that they once believed to be true. Frankly the whole thing would either tear down the fuedal system or be stamped out as heresy.

I think the best way to make sucha legacy work over the course of a campaign is to divorce the female knight from the normal society. Either by having her come from another land or else be the result of some type of magical intervention. Even if it just that here manor is in a Faerie forest and she was raised there by faeries who had some things backwards could do it. Just something odd enough so that the situation can be dismissed as an unnatural exception to the rule, rather than a direct challenge.

Hello All

Viator,
I think your first problem is that you are coming at this from a Christian perspective.


Perhaps. But the rules for passing land around are firmly grounded in the male take all, medieval Christian way of doing things. Which perhaps is pointing to a larger issue: the game isn't modeling religious tension or different ways of doing things. Yes a family could be (and were!) pagan but intrinsic in holding land seems to be subservience to the Christian power structure. Which is totally fine but a happy family of Pagan Earth Mother worshippers who insist on matrilineal land exchange wouldn't get a lot of land once they presented their quaint customs to a rapidly Christianizing male power structure. In the game there's just a brief nod to a sort of proto-nationalism holding back the tide of religious tension. That's really the crux of the matter; but since we're not in the real world I think there are enough outs to get things sorted, as the discussion has illustrated.

That has the potential to be flamebait which really isn't my intention. I think I may be insisting on a hair too much realism or literalism which I intend to lighten up on. Really, I think saying that a manor, or few manors, are given over to the Old Ways in recognition of glorious deeds long past is probably sufficient to hold things together for an entire family of British Amazons.

I think the only major problems would be in terms of marriage and sons. Probably no knight would marry off his son to a woman, when the son can't inherit.

One soultion would be using the "British Amazon" concept as it's own solution.

In legends, the Amazons increased their numbers in two ways:

1) Capture males (who become subservient to the Amazons and provide mates)

2) "Mixing" with nearby males. Female children are kept and raised as Amazons, Male children are sent back to the father.


Option #1 would work out alright with captured foes (of low station).

Option #2 would fit in very well with Pagan customs, and could work out well in a gorup of Amazons were given land somewhere. Perhaps a Pagan religious order of female Knights?

The potential problem with this approach is how comfortable the modern female players feels about ancient Pagan customs. Some women will not feel comfortable "going into slut mode" every Beltaine.

I'm inclined to go the Vestal Virgin route: the head of the household is the eldest female in the line. She is expected not to procreate and remain virginal in the sense that she does not wed. On her passing it goes to the eldest niece (or something; flexible here). Make it so the female PC occupies an almost ritualistic place, a callback to the old ways.

Interesting. One problem would be how to determine if/when the knight has an heir. With the normal system you know when your character can roll on the childbirth table, and if (s)he has an heir. How can you determine if the sister gets married/has sex and gets to roll on the childbirth table?

The whole worry about having an heir, and being able to try and do something about should be pertinent to all characters.

I've always been loose with the need for heirs. I mean, let's say a character dies with no eldest son; what do I do in order to make the player feel the gravitas of the situation, ban him from the game and find a new player? Of course not. We either roll up a new character in a new family or pass it on to a cousin or nephew, maybe minus some land. I think that in-character pressures can make the need for an heir plenty front and center on its own terms.

You're in a tricky situation, Viator, but I'm not sure about your solution.

Having a family of Amazon knights is cool, for one family, and as long as your player is cool with the idea of being a pagan. But over the course of the campaign, it's awfully limiting. Especially if you stick to your idea of expecting the head of the family to be virginal (and a pagan...).

Other players can play characters from various regions, various religions, and maybe even foreign lands. But this one player is essentially stuck with one background. That can be crippling, when over a campaign, other players may eventually have multiple families. (In my campaigns, there have always been fallow periods for each player: when players have heirs, but they aren't old enough to be played: at these times, I get hem to make a knight from a completely different family and region, which expands the scope of the game.)

I know where you're coming from. In a pendragon game I was planning, my sense of historical purism caused me to think a lot like you do. The female player found it stifling, though she didn't complain at the time. She didn't want to rock the boat.

Another GM ran a game with a female player, and gave her no restrictions at all. She was able to make characters from any background, she was able to act exactly like a knight (which she was), including getting in romances (with other knights - she still had to do deeds to win their love), have children and track heirs - in her case, it was the daughters that she was interested in playing, so sons were ignored. The Childbirth roll was replaced with a Husband Survival roll - on a failure, the husband died somehow that year, maybe in a hunting accident, maybe killed by bandits, maybe died in bed with a smile on his face...

And you know what? It worked excellently. Pendragon already includes a host of concessions to the fact that it's a game. Allowing female knights is just one more.

If you do want to have restrictions on the female player, I would suggest not putting all your eggs in one basket, but have several options. Whenever she designs a new character, give her ALL of these options to choose from:

* A Pagan region where lineage is tracked down the female line, and noblewomen are allowed to become warriors.

* A Christian knightly order that accepts people from all regions, and where the 'marriage' roll represents getting the approval of a sponsor, and the childbirth/child survival roll represents being granted an orphan to care for and raise to be the next generation of knights.

* Be the eldest daughter in a family who has no male heirs, and by local custom, this gives her the right to be lord and protector of the land (in other words, a knight).

* Be a pretender: a woman who is pretending to be a man, possible with the goal of winning acceptance.

* A foreigner, let her pick a foreign land from the Book of Knights & ladies, and declare she comes from a region which allows women warriors.

* Ask her if she has any other ideas, and whatever it is, try to use it.

You could also just not have a FAMILY of female knights, but an ORDER of them, not unlike the lady knights of Kennilwerth(spelled wrong , no doubt!). Then you would always have a new knight and they might see themselves as a family..in fact , as they would all be unusual for the time, im sure they would be close as family. just an idea. ;)

I've always been loose with the need for heirs. I mean, let's say a character dies with no eldest son; what do I do in order to make the player feel the gravitas of the situation, ban him from the game and find a new player? Of course not. We either roll up a new character in a new family or pass it on to a cousin or nephew, maybe minus some land. I think that in-character pressures can make the need for an heir plenty front and center on its own terms.


Yes, you don't kick out the player, but I wouldn't be so easy of providing an heir. Part of the game is the concern and need to provide an heir. I think it would be a shame for the females to miss out on that aspect of the game. Ultimately, it's why the realm falls. In my games, I usually make the secondary characters landless. This give the PCs a better appreciation of what it is like to have land.


Also, I think the virginal knight doesn't fit the Pagan relgion, and is probably too restrictive, since the female knight is going to have a high lustful from her culture. It's almost a prescription for doom. She'll have a high Lustful, and a imperative to remain chaste. If you are really going with the Vestal Virgin analogue, she is quite likely to break her vows and suffer the peanalties.





You could also just not have a FAMILY of female knights, but an ORDER of them, not unlike the lady knights of Kennilwerth(spelled wrong , no doubt!). Then you would always have a new knight and they might see themselves as a family..in fact , as they would all be unusual for the time, im sure they would be close as family. just an idea.

I think that is an excellent idea. It would not only preserve the continuance of the line, but it wouldn't shake the status quo much, since it would be a religious order.

I guess virginal isn't really a good word for what I was mulling. Expectation to be unmarried and childless? Some religious proscription which has the eldest niece as heir, whereupon she follows the same guidelines?

Regardless, there are some awesome alternatives lain out for me by you guys and I thank you. At the least, it allows me to present a variety of options to my player for her to choose from rather than cobbling together something mainly from me which she may not be a huge fan of.

Regardless, there are some awesome alternatives lain out for me by you guys and I thank you. At the least, it allows me to present a variety of options to my player for her to choose from rather than cobbling together something mainly from me which she may not be a huge fan of.


I think your best course of action would be to discuss things with the player and ask what type of character(s) she would like, then use one of the options that bests suits her (and your desired campaign).

There isn't much point in the "lusty Celt", "Saxon Shieldmaiden", or "Pagan Knight" concepts if they don't appeal to the player.