I'm GMing a group through the GPC, currently in 488, and despite the wealth of information in the book, I'm a bit stuck for ideas. My group meets infrequently, but plays for a whole day each session, and as I prefer to stick to one year each time, I like to have a full days worth of play to run with. Also I like to maintain as much variety as possible, so I tend to follow a "war" year with something more personal if at all possible - eg a group adventure of some sort. And this is where I'm struggling a little. I just can't seem to find much material which I can use for a low magic Dark Ages setting.

I've turned to Harn in the past, thinking the setting was similar enough, and ran a slightly altered version of 100 Bushels of Rye - which worked very well - but there's not much more where that came from. Harn, despite its longevity, seems to have a tiny amount of published module material (and I have all that is available). I've also used some Dark Ages Cthuhlu, again suitably altered (eg no searching for Latin scrolls to dismiss starspawn), which worked pretty well, too, however, that game also has a tiny amount of published material. Lastly, I bought an adventure compendium for Warhammer Fantasy, the opening adventure of which started with a flaming skull causing the PCs carriage to crash, and my interest with it, as that's far too fantastical.

Any suggestions? Is there a game system out there that might provide something suitable? Changing things around to make them fit is no problem, I just don't always have the time to come up with something completely new. Come the Enchantment of Britain I'll be laughing, all of the published KAP modules seem to be set around then, and with ghouls, dragons, ghosts and other beasts galore roaming around I wont be stuck at all. But right now, I'm struggling a bit.

Have you tried looking Samurai themes? Loyalty, honour and duty are recurrent themes.

Can't think of anything specific now (without ronin).

You could also mine some westerns for ideas.

Big Jake and Rooster Coburn spring to mind.

Some of the 'Ars Magica' material could provide a rich source of ideas for the style of play you're talking about. Obviously you would need to tinker with it somewhat to remove the overt magic. A lot of ArsM stuff is aimed at groups of Companion characters, who act as friends to the Magi. These characters are oftentimes errant knights, so there is a link into KAP, with a little bit of work. I can recommend some specific books, if you're interested.

Cheers,

Sacha

Some suggestions:

1) Prince Valiant.

It is another Greg Stafford RPG from Chaosium, based on the Arthurian Legend. One of the neat bits was that the back of the book contained several 1-2 page generic adventure ideas. The idea was that the Storyteller (GM) could reuse these adventures several times over, and each had some options that could be customized. For example the "Troll" adventure has peasants complaining about a troll. In one option, the "troll" is actually nothing more than a large, ugly, and bad tempered commoner (perhaps a Saxon), in another variant it is a real troll!

The similarity is setting and theme makes nearly any Prince Valiant story idea adaptable to Pendragon.

2) Robin Hood.

This ICE supplement, set in England of the Middle Ages has a lot of stuff to recommended it to Pendragon GMs, including some useful maps of Medieval Sherwood Forest and the Forest of Dean. It also had a bunch of "roadside encounters". Much like the mini adventures in Prince Valiant, these were encounters that all started the same way, but each had several options that lead to different adventures.


Both products could be useful in providing "filler" adventures for your long game sessions. The only problem is getting a hold of them. Both are out of print, and you'd have to resort to ebay or such to find them.

Some suggestions:

1) Prince Valiant.

It is another Greg Stafford RPG from Chaosium, based on the Arthurian Legend. One of the neat bits was that the back of the book contained several 1-2 page generic adventure ideas. The idea was that the Storyteller (GM) could reuse these adventures several times over, and each had some options that could be customized. For example the "Troll" adventure has peasants complaining about a troll. In one option, the "troll" is actually nothing more than a large, ugly, and bad tempered commoner (perhaps a Saxon), in another variant it is a real troll!

The similarity is setting and theme makes nearly any Prince Valiant story idea adaptable to Pendragon.

2) Robin Hood.

This ICE supplement, set in England of the Middle Ages has a lot of stuff to recommended it to Pendragon GMs, including some useful maps of Medieval Sherwood Forest and the Forest of Dean. It also had a bunch of "roadside encounters". Much like the mini adventures in Prince Valiant, these were encounters that all started the same way, but each had several options that lead to different adventures.


Both products could be useful in providing "filler" adventures for your long game sessions. The only problem is getting a hold of them. Both are out of print, and you'd have to resort to ebay or such to find them.


Atgxtg - Thanks. Somehow your reply slipped past me. I picked up quite a bit of Ars Magica material and I'll keep an eye out for Sherwood Forest and Prince Valiant. They both sound very useful.

I've been getting most of my inspiration from other GMs. Since our sessions are usually about 5 hours, just getting through the main plot takes up most of our time, but I'm trying to work side plots in as well.

Jim Patching's session reports are a great resource: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/51270/item/1234337#item1234337

Atgxtg - Thanks. Somehow your reply slipped past me. I picked up quite a bit of Ars Magica material and I'll keep an eye out for Sherwood Forest and Prince Valiant. They both sound very useful.


Maybe I should use a larger font?


Both Prince Vlant and Robin Hood have some adventures that have the same "hook" but with multiple options for the GM. This means that you can run a "damosel in Distress" or "Travellering Peddlar" encounter mulitple times.

BTW, since it'S been awhile, what year are you up to now?

I've been getting most of my inspiration from other GMs. Since our sessions are usually about 5 hours, just getting through the main plot takes up most of our time, but I'm trying to work side plots in as well.

Jim Patching's session reports are a great resource: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/51270/item/1234337#item1234337


ah, thanks for the link. I've read some of Panzer Attack's write ups before and found them both interesting and highly entertaining, but as he'd not posted for a while I thought the campaign had slowed down, obviously not.




Both Prince Vlant and Robin Hood have some adventures that have the same "hook" but with multiple options for the GM. This means that you can run a "damosel in Distress" or "Travellering Peddlar" encounter mulitple times.

BTW, since it'S been awhile, what year are you up to now?


Game time is AD491 but GPC date is AD489 - I expanded some of the themes, adding two years of other events thus far, hence the discrepancy. Next time we play, the group will be attacking Cornwall - the Excalibur scene. My group only gets to play once every 6-8 weeks so it's taken us 15 months to get this far.

BTW, I emailed some of my old role playing mates, and one of them has a copy of Sherwood Forest which he says I can have. I'm looking forward to reading it. Thanks for the heads up.

I've just had a quick skim read through Robin Hood (the ICE supplement) and it's fantastic. It may be set some 500 years after KAP but there's a lot still to like here, and nab for my campaign. Good background, plenty of NPCs, legends, adventure ideas and two mini campaigns. Excellent stuff - highly recommended.

To get ideas for encounters I quite often just look at a blank character sheet, look for the skills/passions/stats that don't get used much and try to come up with ideas for how to intergrate them into an adventure.

For example, I recently ran a session where the knights had to convince three Welsh mountain chieftans to join their cause. Each one set a challenge for them to overcome to convince them of their worthiness. It would have been very easy for me to make the challenges just duels but I wanted to get the players to use less commonly used characteristics.

The first was a drinking contest. I had them make con rolls for each drink, imposing a -1 penalty for each drink they'd already downed. Those who lasted more than 5 had to make indulgent rolls just to get the urge to keep going.

The second was a hike up a crag. I set different rolls for different bits of the crag that involved them using energetic rolls, dex rolls and str rolls. At the top a short combat was called for that required the use of a missile weapon (just to get them to think about combat skills other than sword).

The third was a story telling contest. This involved orate and compose rolls but it was also fun just to hear the players recount stories from past sessions.

I always try to intergrate folk stories I know about into my sessions too. The Lambton Worm is a good story I've already used. There was a really good programme on BBC4 the other day about Beowulf and it mentioned the legend of a Black Dog called Black Shuk that I'd never heard about. At one point in the programme they went to a church in Anglia that the hound was said to have terrorised and you can see the claw marks it allegedly made on one of the doors! I'm gonna have to find some way of getting that beastie into my game!

This probably only works in the UK but the programme is on the BBC I-Player here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00kpv23/Michael_Wood_on_Beowulf/

If you're going to take on the mighty Black Shuk, make sure you're playing this in the background...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oc_9z_-6nU&feature=related