We recently had a player knight invoke a passion during the siege of a town (GPC 488.) They fumbled their passion role, went mad and fled the battle. It worked perfectly well as far as the story was concerned since he had distant kin in the area who fought for the Franks. However, I was wondering what sort of stat penalties the knight might incur from the event for when he returns from his madness. Possibilities include:

Valorous/Cowardly - He fled an active battle.
Loyalty (Lord) - His lord was literally right next to him when he invoked and fumbled his passion.
Love (Family) - This was the passion being invoked. It happened to work story-wise and the fumble is what determined it was a family member he faced in the battle. Since this passion fumbled it should definitely go down by one (or more.)
Honor - He did leave a battle in which he was commanded by his liege and Prince Madoc to fight.

Thoughts?

Also, what about losing Glory in this event?

As far as I know, you can't lose Glory.

I don't think I'd impose a cowardly check for that. Yes he fled the battle but the PK was mad - at least temporarily - and therefore not willfully acting cowardly. His resolve didn't break as such, rather his madness scrambled the normal thought process. Fumbling a passion roll is a bad enough situation as it is (I had one PK out for 2 years) so I would hesitate to impose further personal penalty. Of course, that doesn't mean to say other people witnessing the event wouldn't change their opinions of the PK. While I might not have a PK suffer a valour loss, their lord or king might well hold a grudge under such circumstances.

The passion should go down on a fail. But no loss of glory.

Yeah, I wouldn't impose any stat penalty. The guy did actually go insane. I might give the PK some social penalties-at least until he can prove himself to his lord in some other ways. Everyone is a victim to their passions once in awhile. If the knight makes a habit of it, that is something else.

Awesome! Thanks for the input. At the end of the session, when reviewing the effects of Madness with the player, the conclusion was to just do in-story effects. This thread confirms that choice.

Cheers.

I dont know. I think a point or two of honor loss could be justified. He fled the field while the majority of his fellows were still fighting. Yes he is insane, but does everyone know that when the HELMETED knight rides off in the opposite direction. A few people might be aware if they were close i guess, but when the Lord asks why u fled and you were like... I gave in to my frustrated passions and could not help it Lord... I just had to go., i just think it sounds flimsy. Thats the danger of failing a passion role. Sucks. Dont forget that if a player fails the role another player can attempt to aid him and pull him out of madness. There is a chance before he sucumbs. Its up to the Gm, but I would be a hard *ss and give a point or two... Especially if him fleeing affected the battle and cost the lord greatly! LOl i know i am a jerk :'(

He already loses a point of the Passion and has to sit out of the game; any further punishment seems excessive.

Our next session is tomorrow night. We'll see how things go....

He already loses a point of the Passion and has to sit out of the game; any further punishment seems excessive.


He only has to sit out of the game if he doesn't have a backup character handy - in pendragon, eveyrone should have a backup character.

This is a tricky conundrum.
I would never give a cowardly check, because it's not being cowardly.
I would never reduce glory, because you never lose glory.
I probably wouldn't reduce another passion, but there are situations which I would consider it. Say, our hero has been given an important mission by his lord, and during that mission he gets in a situation where he calls on his amour passion and goes mad. A few years later, he returns, and learns that the mission he was sent on was a failure, and as a result his liege suffered and everyone reminds him of this. In that situation, I might call for a loyalty roll to see if he feels he let his lord down.

Honour is a special case because of its unusually wide scope. But you have to be seen to do dishonourable things to lose honour, and I think the pendragon world is one where being madly passionate is widely accepted and made exceptions for. I think people would see being driven mad by a passion as not being dishonourable, and so not cause any penalty.

Everything above though is purely my gut feeling, and I'm often conflicted about whether honour or passions should be lost. (Definitely not traits or glory.)

There is a whole other aspect to this though that I think often GMs forget.
The rules specifically say that when someone goes mad, the GM takes away the character seet, decides what has happened to the character, and can make whatever adjustments to the character sheet that fit, before returning it.
This can be interpreted as giving the PC special new knowledge or skills, but it can also remove things (like shifting a few traits and/or stat values around).

GMs frequently don't like to do 'bad' things to players, because they naturally don't want to upset them or have to justify their actions to an irate player or whatever. But it's definitely my experience that GMs don't use periods of madness to their potential. They get glossed over, and largely forgotten, where in fact there could be some interesting events added to the campaign by having the player discover some changes on his character sheet (why do I have a new Loyalty or Fear? Why has my SIZ gone UP? Didn't I used to be more Just than this?).
Plus, if you feel the character should lose passion points in something, you don't have to tell them immediately - you can just write them on the character sheet for when you return it - by then, the sting might not be as great, after all they'll be happy at just getting the character back. Especially if you do as I do, and don't tell them when they'll be getting the character back and keep them waiting a year or three... :)

GMs frequently don't like to do 'bad' things to players, because they naturally don't want to upset them or have to justify their actions to an irate player or whatever. But it's definitely my experience that GMs don't use periods of madness to their potential. They get glossed over, and largely forgotten, where in fact there could be some interesting events added to the campaign by having the player discover some changes on his character sheet (why do I have a new Loyalty or Fear? Why has my SIZ gone UP? Didn't I used to be more Just than this?).
Plus, if you feel the character should lose passion points in something, you don't have to tell them immediately - you can just write them on the character sheet for when you return it - by then, the sting might not be as great, after all they'll be happy at just getting the character back. Especially if you do as I do, and don't tell them when they'll be getting the character back and keep them waiting a year or three... :)


Guilty as charged! But reading this post Darren has certainly woken me up to the possibilities - I love the idea of unexplained changes. That so opens up possibilities for future game sessions. Hmm, come on players, I now want a fumble... :P

As to the original question, my feeling is that on the whole, the madness and change to passion is enough of a penalty. I think that knights running off in a passion induced madness is so genre-bound that we can throw out realism on other matters!

He already loses a point of the Passion and has to sit out of the game; any further punishment seems excessive.
aw softy

So we played the follow-on session last night. The solo adventure in GPC resulted in the maddened player knight returning the next Spring. He was duly contrite and his liege assigned his eschille commander (another player knight) to assign punishment. There was also a bit of social stigma from other NPCs throughout the session that slowly wore off as the year progressed and the knight again proved worthy.

In summary, I'm quite satisfied with the passion loss, social stigma and missed glory/booty for player knight down time. It worked out well just following the rules as written. Now, let's see how nasty the eschille commander proves to the poor fellow. :)