Just a thought here, but is anyone else finding their PKs offspring struggling to make adulthood? Two of my PKs have been doing their best to secure their bloodlines, with as many children as possible, but they are dying off fairly rapidly. Although they accept the random nature of such things one of my players has raised a question about the high death rate. A child born to a knight of normal living standard has a 20% lifetime chance of surviving to adulthood and approx 46% for children born to rich knights. An 80% - for the average knight - mortality rate does seem very high.

I've not thought of tinkering with it, just curious to see if other GMs have seen many of their PKs produce viable heirs.

Perhaps Thijs or some other computer genius can clarify the probabilities for us

Pramalot is correct about the probability - each newborn son has a 20% chance of living to age 15, assuming they maintain themselves as ordinary knights throughout those years.

I thought for a long time this was too harsh, but in fact, it turns out not to be. Because most knights are able to maintain themselves as Rich or Superlative from time to time, and some can do it quite often, which makes things much kinder. Child death does occur, but there are lots of children to counter that (again, especially when living as Rich or Superlative).

So, it should be every player knight's goal to get enough money to live as rich or superlative as often as they can.

Darren - even living at Rich every single year gives a probability of death higher than 50%. However, this is just an observation not a criticism. I've not played enough years yet to know how seriously this will impact my PKs chances of successfully maintaining their bloodlines.

Here are the actual stats, as I understand them to be historically.

Half of all children died in the first year.
Half of the rest died by the age of 10.
Most of them lived after that, unless whacked by invaders.

what would that be in d20s?

Here are the actual stats, as I understand them to be historically.

Half of all children died in the first year.
Half of the rest died by the age of 10.
Most of them lived after that, unless whacked by invaders.

[---]

half of whose kids? all? then THAT should be the stats for impoverished or poor ppl, right, since most ppl were commoners?

// m

Perhaps Thijs or some other computer genius can clarify the probabilities for us


0.90^14 = 0.23
0.95^14 = 0.49

So, yes, math correct.



Half of all children died in the first year.
Half of the rest died by the age of 10.
Most of them lived after that, unless whacked by invaders.
what would that be in d20s?


After childbirth, make immediate roll D20 - 1-10: child did not reach end first year [to save people effort of writing it down]
Any child of age 1-10 must make D20 roll and die on 1. (0.95^10=60% survival, cant get it nearer 50% with D20)
[Ok, you can get nearer, on a roll of 1-2, reroll and on 1-13 child die]

However I would indeed doubt if this was for rich knights.
And as parent myself, I think child mortality is quite a heavy issue, perhaps to be towed down a bit for roleplaying purposes.
I really liked old edition where you could just live as superlative rich knight and not worry about child mortality (reason many of my players did it).

fg,
Thijs






fg,
Thijs

Half of all children died in the first year.
Half of the rest died by the age of 10.
Most of them lived after that, unless whacked by invaders.
what would that be in d20s?


After childbirth, make immediate roll D20 - 1-10: child did not reach end first year [to save people effort of writing it down]

Maybe a better way: the childbirth rolls are something like 13-20 = child born.
Change that to: "any odd result on childbirth is a child born who dies before the end of the first year" - that gets 50% of children quite nicley without needing a reroll.



Any child of age 1-10 must make D20 roll and die on 1. (0.95^10=60% survival, cant get it nearer 50% with D20)
[Ok, you can get nearer, on a roll of 1-2, reroll and on 1-13 child die]


However I would indeed doubt if this was for rich knights.
And as parent myself, I think child mortality is quite a heavy issue, perhaps to be towed down a bit for roleplaying purposes.

I really liked old edition where you could just live as superlative rich knight and not worry about child mortality (reason many of my players did it).

You still can, can't you?

My concern with fiddling with child mortality in the game, is that if you do, you'll end up with huge families, and the struggle to create and maintain a dynasty is no longer remotely a struggle. It's basically automatic.

I've run enough Pendragon campaigns over a couple of generations to see these rules in play, and for game purposes they do work. Most players do manage to build a dynasty, but it isn't assured. Also, Knights who aren't rich enough to support themselves at rich or superlative for a long time, can have concubines or lovers, so multiple opportunities for childbirth exist.

Greg points out the historical reality above which amounts to roughly 75% child mortality by age 10. The system in pendragon gives 80% child mortality by age 15 - so the curve is flattened, but the end goal is very nearly the same number of children reach adulthood.
The flattened curve, with the 1-2 roll each year, allows the roll to be influenced by individual years of affluence of poverty +1 Rich, +2 Superlative essentially negating the roll; -3 if Poor, etc), and is more dramatic.

Darren - even living at Rich every single year gives a probability of death higher than 50%. However, this is just an observation not a criticism. I've not played enough years yet to know how seriously this will impact my PKs chances of successfully maintaining their bloodlines.


Yes, but that's not the problem it appears to be. Living at rich you also get +3 to childbirth rolls, so you have 50% chance of getting a new child every year. Each of those is a new chance to reach adulthood.

I've seen several groups play Pendragon and get initially horrified by the childbirth rolls and how difficult they think it is, and then over a generation or so, realise that they did manage to build families after all, some of them very big families.

Here are the actual stats, as I understand them to be historically.

Half of all children died in the first year.
Half of the rest died by the age of 10.
Most of them lived after that, unless whacked by invaders.

[---]

half of whose kids? all? then THAT should be the stats for impoverished or poor ppl, right, since most ppl were commoners?

// m


It's true that ordinary knights would have a standard of living better than the typical commoners who heavily influence those stats. The question is, would changing the rules make the system better? I'm not sure it would.

I decided to start on an Excel sheet to crunch the numbers using the tables from KAP5.1 and record the percentages, in the meantime though, just making some rough calculations I find the results a little worrying, not just because of their harshness but because of the implications they have regarding interesting aspects of family play (rivalries between younger brothers, siblings stepping into your shoes if you die etc).

Childbirth rolls on their own are not the whole story, you have to factor in the chance of having a child - and that child being male - to get a better indication of what your family tree will become as the years progress.

Using KAP 5.1 tables; - for simple calculation omitting the "twins born" outcome (5%) and the "mother dies" outcome (10%), I'll add those into the more detailed excel run but I doubt it will change the results significantly)

01-10 No child
11-20 Child
So a 50% chance of legitimate childbirth per year, with 50% of those being male. So each year you have a 25% chance of producing a male newborn which produces the following odds of that child becoming a viable heir (reaching age 15);

Poor Knight (included just for comparison - the chance of success is minuscule)
Chance per year of viable heir= Child born (50%), Male child(50%), living to 15 (15xrolls at 25% mortality per roll=1.3%) =0.3% (50%x50%x1.3%). Or put another way, on average it would take you 300 years to produce 1 viable heir.

Average Knight
Chance per year of viable heir= Child born (50%), Male child(50%), living to 15 (15xrolls at 10% mortality per roll=20.5%) =5.1%. Or, on average 20 years to produce 1 viable heir.

Rich Knight+
Chance per year of viable heir= Child born (65%), Male child (50%), living to 15 (15xrolls at 5% mortality per roll=46%) =14.9% Or, on average 7 years to produce 1 viable heir.

Obviously these figures assume you maintain the same level of knighthood year on year.

I balk at these figures for a number of reasons aside from simple harshness. For starters, they represent the chance of obtaining just 1 heir. If you expect a family with 2 or more younger brother the results diminish further.

I'm only 6 years into my KAP campaign and only 1 knight has actually had any children so far, so the family aspect of the game has yet to really come into play. If these rough results were repeated in play though, I'd be looking at threadbare families, with certainly nothing like the sibling numbers generated at character generation.



Here are the actual stats, as I understand them to be historically.

Half of all children died in the first year.
Half of the rest died by the age of 10.
Most of them lived after that, unless whacked by invaders.


Which would equate to a 75% child mortality rate. Although accurate figures are obviously hard to come by I've only seen estimates ranging from 30% to 50% (from all causes, disease, famine, accidents etc etc) and those figures are drawn mainly from the general population, the peasantry. You would expect a knight - even a poor one - to fare somewhat better.



I really liked old edition where you could just live as superlative rich knight and not worry about child mortality (reason many of my players did it).


I disagree here, Thijs. I prefer the new ruling. Even superlative knights should have a chance of losing children. They can mitigate the effects of poverty, accidents etc and even infectious disease to a degree but no parent, no matter how rich, could fully guard against it.

I really liked old edition where you could just live as superlative rich knight and not worry about child mortality (reason many of my players did it).


I disagree here, Thijs. I prefer the new ruling. Even superlative knights should have a chance of losing children. They can mitigate the effects of poverty, accidents etc and even infectious disease to a degree but no parent, no matter how rich, could fully guard against it.


No problem, I actually agree with that from realistic viewpoint, it's just not an issue I really like in my game (then again neither is rape, but incest and religious tension are, just personal taste).

Average Knight
Chance per year of viable heir= Child born (50%), Male child(50%), living to 15 (15xrolls at 10% mortality per roll=20.5%) =5.1%. Or, on average 20 years to produce 1 viable heir.

Since your figures are based on averages, they misrepresent the true state of affairs. Probability is a tricky thing to grasp. You need to account for distortions caused by looking at a single 'average' knight, so you need a distribution looking at a sample size of, say, 4 knights, or 20 knights all trying to have children, each over a period of, say, 20 years. Then out of that, you need to find the number of knights who fail to have any male children reaching adulthood - my guess, based on play experience, is that number would be quite low.

Average Knight
Chance per year of viable heir= Child born (50%), Male child(50%), living to 15 (15xrolls at 10% mortality per roll=20.5%) =5.1%. Or, on average 20 years to produce 1 viable heir.

I'm not understanding something about your figures. For instance, if you had 100% chance of childbirth each year, and a 100% chance of child survival, it would still take 15 years to produce a viable heir at age 15 (a bit more - you need to make sure one of those children is male).

Also, I suspect since your figures are based on averages, they misrepresent the true state of affairs. Probability is a tricky thing to grasp. I think running the numbers using a binomial distribution to examine the frequencies of children-reaching-adulthood would provide a better picture.


He means it takes on average 20 years making babies and then waiting 15 years to be statistically 'certain' to have an heir that will reach adulthood..
Ofcourse if you do the math you still only have 65% of still having a healthy heir after those 20 years (statistics sucks)..
[If each year you have 5.1% chance of getting male son that will reach adulthood, then for 20 years = 1-(1-.051)^20]

So as average knight you get a childbirth roll every year for 20 years, you have 65% of obtaining an adult male heir..
As Rich knight over those 20 years (1-(1-0.149)^2 = ) 96% of obtaining an adult male heir..

Ninja'd!

You replied while I was rewriting my post :)

Darren, you're right these are just averages. An Average knight could beat the odds and produce 2 viable heirs in 20 years, but he could just as easily produce none. Once I've finished the excel sheet I can run real 100s of knights through the process to produce actual results. I would expect them to be fairly close to my estimates though.

I'm not talking just about the variation from averages, but the actual inaccuracies that are created when just using averages. Though your plan of running hundreds of knights should smooth that out :)
You won't get the best picture unless create a typical 4-5 player group of knights, run them for 20-30 years, and then do it a couple more times to account for different generations. Also, remember some knights will have concubines.

In my opinion, you'll also get closer to game-accurate results as well if you assume knights are going to be Rich a lot of the time. Players take their knights to Rich and Superlative whenever they can afford it, once they understand how childbirth/mortality works.

No problem. Once I get it done - and my excel code-ninja skills are decidedly erm non-ninja - I'll post the file and the results.

On the face of it, the results for knights at the richer end of the spectrum do not appear that awful. You could get a family of three brothers in just over 20 years (yes these are just averages again) but for sub Rich knights the results seem very harsh, and for Poor knights, implausibly so.

Darren, you're right these are just averages. An Average knight could beat the odds and produce 2 viable heirs in 20 years, but he could just as easily produce none. Once I've finished the excel sheet I can run real 100s of knights through the process to produce actual results. I would expect them to be fairly close to my estimates though.


I wrote a piece of code to do the entire winterphase for me, including birthrolls...
However for simple dice-rolls that do not influence each other you can use binomial statistics ('simple math').
So what do you want to know?

fg,
Thijs

Two things:

The personal crisis of being heirless is a key theme in the Arthurian legend. I inflict it on the player characters with deliberate intent. Do no mention it overtly to your players. Just, each visit to Camelot, point out Arthur on his throne, Guenever on hers, and the empty seat for their heir. If you are lucky, at one point a player character will see it and go "click."

Also:
as noted on the web page http://www.gspendragon.com/ladyglory.html

a full player Lady may use her Glory to get pregnant and to determine the gender of her child.
this is another of those things, like the Gentlewoman's Bonus, that is available only to a full player character, not your player-controlled faceless npc.

a full player Lady may use her Glory to get pregnant and to determine the gender of her child.
this is another of those things, like the Gentlewoman's Bonus, that is available only to a full player character, not your player-controlled faceless npc.


Hmm, let me spend this hard-won glory point on the gender of my child which only has 20% chance of reaching adulthood...
So you have 80% you threw your glory point away...
Perhaps add another one: A glory point can be spend to reroll the child mortality roll (o, great, we just turned Pendragon into Sophie's choice)

fg,
Thijs

Two things:

The personal crisis of being heirless is a key theme in the Arthurian legend. I inflict it on the player characters with deliberate intent. Do no mention it overtly to your players. Just, each visit to Camelot, point out Arthur on his throne, Guenever on hers, and the empty seat for their heir. If you are lucky, at one point a player character will see it and go "click."


A good point. But I'm not sure hardcoding such a possibility into the rules is any wiser than hardcoding the relative abundance of heirs that the Orkney clan has. I think such restrictions should be imposed through play, if that's the way you want to GM it.

With regard to PC wives, all my PCs are playing knights, we have no PC wives, so there's no bonus to be had there.

Thijs - All I've done with my excel sheet is automate the yearly childbirth rolls, from chance of conception, through to survival to age 15, including chance of male/female birth and twin birth. Then duplicated that formula 100 times to simulate the outcome of 100 families. I've not included any of the other stuff, such as horse survival for eg. I'll run it once I've got the totals working and post the results.

Here are my results rather than just probabilities. This has certainly been an interesting exercise.

To obtain these results I created 100 knights and then generated their chance of offspring, whether male or female and, if male, the chance of that child surviving to age 15 for spans of 5, 10 and 20 years. The logic also includes the chance of twin births (and again, if male records if they make it to age 15). It does not take into account death of the mother - for simplicity's sake I assume the knight marries again immediately and carries on.

I was using the basic childbirth table for these calculations as found in KAP5.1. For my own campaign I use the more sophisticated childbirth tables as found on Greg's website. These actually make things harder but I like the added vareity they bring.

The tables below show just the average % chance of each outcome from 10 separate runs of 100 knights; if you want to see the detailed breakdown of each run, just follow the link I've posted.


Knight Living at Average
[table][tr][td]Heirs 5 yrs 10 yrs 20 yrs
av. % zero heirs= 75.6 58.1 35.8
av. % 1 heir= 21.7 32.1 36
av. % 2 heirs= 2.6 8.1 19.9
av. % 3 heirs= 0.1 1.5 6.2
av. % 4+ heirs= 0 0.2 2.1

Detailed breakdown here - http://www.kap5.net/Other/Stats/14797084_LJpGS#1103580285_F9RmC-O-LB

Knight Living at Rich+
[table][tr][td]Heirs 5 yrs 10 yrs 20 yrs
av. % zero heirs= 44.7 20.7 4.1
av. % 1 heir= 37.6 33.4 12.1
av. % 2 heirs= 14.4 28.2 21.1
av. % 3 heirs= 3.1 12.2 24.8
av. % 4+ heirs= 0.2 5.5 37.9

Detailed breakdown here - http://www.kap5.net/Other/Stats/14797084_LJpGS#1103580607_Z6Svt-O-LB

Knight Living at Poor - The real world results are actually worse than this as my sheet does not accumulate the modifiers.
[table][tr][td]Heirs 5 yrs 10 yrs 20 yrs
av. % zero heirs= 97.9 95.5 92.9
av. % 1 heir= 2.1 4.5 6.9
av. % 2 heirs= 0 0 0.2
av. % 3 heirs= 0 0 0
av. % 4+ heirs= 0 0 0

Detailed breakdown here - http://www.kap5.net/Other/Stats/14797084_LJpGS#1103580532_v4RgB-O-LB

Barring bugs in my code, my thoughts on the results are that Darren's suggestion about living at Rich is really the only way to achieve an average size family. Even then living at Rich for 10 years gives a 50% chance of having 1 or no heirs. From a personal perspective, my knights have an average lifespan of less than 10 years and none of them have yet managed to live at Rich for a single year. However, I am playing during the Uther phase and I expect things to improve. I'm using the full stewarding rules from BoTM. Could it be that the game economics have evolved out of step with the childbirth rules? Maintaining a Rich standard of living for such a long period of time is not easy. Certainly not to begin with.

The Average results seem harsh and the Poor ones wildly so. The concept of "Heir, Spare and Prayer" is not something you're likely to encounter.

If you're the type of GM who prefers larger families then I suggest toning the values down, especially for poorer knights. Using the standard table you could give all children a 1 in 20 chance of dying, and only revert to the current chances if the child became sick. This would lessen the %s somewhat (not sure by how much at present) and would also give some meaning to the "Child is Sick" result.

BTW, if anyone would like a copy of my excel sheet to play around with, adding your own values and mods, it can be found here (http://www.mediafire.com/file/zdgstl58k6o5371/kids4.xls). Columns A1 to G1 and rows 1 to 27 calculate the chances for a single knight which I've just duplicated 100 times. Entering values into B2 changes the Standard of Living; any number you put here is what each survival D20 roll needs to roll above for the child to survive, while values entered into D2 boost the childbirth roll by that amount, so putting 3 will give you the bonus of a Rich knight. Each hit of the F9 key calculates the whole sheet for 1 year. Quit without saving and reload to clear the data.

-Andy

Those figures seem unsurprising to me. Though one thing you said is quite illuminating.
Anarchy is quite brutal, but I find that landed knights usually manage to have some years at rich. I am surprised that you don't have a single knight with a lifespan of 10 years, and none have maintained themselves at Rich. I think in this case, it's not so much the system is doing badly, it's just that your game is a bit more brutal and poor than the system assumes players will be able to manage. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, I'm just pointing out that the system does assume players will have opportunities to be rich and superlative every now and then.

Back to the probabilities and ways of dealing with them: If you play a knight for 5 years and he dies, it shouldn't be that great a loss if he didn't have an heir. You just create another and try again. Also note, there's a multiplicative effect as generations go on. The first knight has one or two heirs. If the eldest son is played, and dies, the second son takes his place - so you have two chances to get a single heir to carry on the line.
Say, the eldest son survived and had an heir, most players would also find out if the second son also had an heir. And since he wasn't played much, he will most likely survive long enough to do so.
So in the generation after that, you have two branches of the family producing potential heirs.
The Anarchy phase is the hardest: if you get an heir and carry on the line from here, it gets successively much easier with further generations to keep a family going. In fact, you usually end up with more children than you know what to do with, by the 530-40's.

To help players through the Anarchy phase, I always have players running two unrelated knights - but it would work just as well if you made them brothers. Here's one method I use:
When players design their character, I have them design a backup. Then, during play, as soon as their main character has a serious injury, needing chirurgery or what have you, when the players are on an adventure, I make an excuse to have the backup be there, and the player continues the adventure with that character.
Then I have them design a second backup.
Then I'll have the occasional year where I run two adventures: one for the 'main' characters, and one for the already played backups. If either character gets disabeld, I bring in the other backup. From then on, I let the players choose which knight they want to play each year, and some years I'll state that a specific character is required (by having the adventure ties to that characters background, interests, or relationships). Still allowing the unplayed characters to be brought in one the main character of that year is too ill to continue.

Now, the players have 2 or 3 knights they are growing attached to, and each of which is attempting to start a family. This at least doubles the chance of success of getting to the next generation. Still out of 4-5 players, there's usually one who really really struggles - but most manage it, and someone usually has many many viable offspring.

I also have each player have two characters. For my group, the friendship and story are more important, but they are all rule-lawyers and min-maxers. So, the number of deaths have been extremely low, mostly because they immediately starting upping their sword skill, and spear expertise (sword if only one skill is used). The Saxon guy immediately took the one reward of decent money and bought himself a solid iron great axe.

That being said, they have been lucky and only have had two child mortalities. The second thing they caught onto very early is the advantage of being rich. So, they formed a group and share funds if needed. "Why, my thanks for saving me from that saxon's blade. I owe you a favor. Let me know if I can help you in any way (including monetary)."

Bob

Those figures seem unsurprising to me. Though one thing you said is quite illuminating.
Anarchy is quite brutal, but I find that landed knights usually manage to have some years at rich. I am surprised that you don't have a single knight with a lifespan of 10 years, and none have maintained themselves at Rich. I think in this case, it's not so much the system is doing badly, it's just that your game is a bit more brutal and poor than the system assumes players will be able to manage. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, I'm just pointing out that the system does assume players will have opportunities to be rich and superlative every now and then.


I wouldn't say I'm consciously running a brutal game; I run it pretty much by the book. Other than always rolling dice in the open and abiding by the results I'm using no particularly bloody house rules. Partly the reason I've had no knights live for ten years is that we've only been playing for eight. However, in the normal cut and thrust of the last 8 years every PC in my group has lost 1 knight and one poor fellow has lost 2 - on consecutive years ( I have 6 players btw). All of those deaths came about via enemy crits of very high damage - almost one hit kills - which is hard to fully guard against. It's something I'm quite happy with as are my players.

With regard to wealth, again I'd say my group have been quite average. I'm using the full economics rules from BoTM and, for the first couple of years at least, I'd find it surprising if anyone could do that much better. All my knights started with fairly poor stewards, some of them installed themselves as steward and some persevered with what they had. I happen to have a record of one of my PK's rolls for his first 4 years to hand; Average, Good, Meagre, Meagre, with a corresponding treasury of £3.5, £4.8, £4.7, £7.1 having paid for upkeep and the building of Apiary, Moat, Rabbitry and Ceremonial Stone. During that time he lived at Average, Poor, Poor, Poor. This is fairly typical of all my knights. They have lived as poorly as possible to fund building projects to hopefully provide a decent future income. As none of them had any kids this seemed sensible. They have also at times squeezed the peasants. All my players were new to the game so they made all their choices based on preference, not utilising any game knowledge which could have helped them *work* the system.



To help players through the Anarchy phase, I always have players running two unrelated knights - but it would work just as well if you made them brothers. Here's one method I use:
When players design their character, I have them design a backup. Then, during play, as soon as their main character has a serious injury, needing chirurgery or what have you, when the players are on an adventure, I make an excuse to have the backup be there, and the player continues the adventure with that character.
Then I have them design a second backup.
Then I'll have the occasional year where I run two adventures: one for the 'main' characters, and one for the already played backups. If either character gets disabeld, I bring in the other backup. From then on, I let the players choose which knight they want to play each year, and some years I'll state that a specific character is required (by having the adventure ties to that characters background, interests, or relationships). Still allowing the unplayed characters to be brought in one the main character of that year is too ill to continue.


As to family, having created the initial family trees I think I just assumed that future generations would pan out somewhat similarly. Therefore it was a slight shock upon running the figures and seeing the results. On more specific points, I'm not running full Winter phase for family members other than PKs, so brothers, uncles etc use the normal Family Events to determine marriage, childbirth etc,. The tables I use are greatly expanded from those in the rulebook but really only follow the same theme and just add variation for colour and extra drama. Although my PKs do all have backup characters they are all from the same family, younger brothers and the like. It may be peculiar to my campaign but my players have little appetite for running multiple families; they put all their efforts into one and become exceedingly attached to them - they have their coat of arms printed on their coffee cups! To them player death is an annoyance but little more than a setback, family death is the true death they fear.

On the whole I think Rich knights probably do ok family wise if they manage to stay alive long enough. Easing the %s a little on middle income knights would just spread the probability curve a little less harshly.

I wouldn't say I'm consciously running a brutal game; I run it pretty much by the book. Other than always rolling dice in the open and abiding by the results I'm using no particularly bloody house rules. Partly the reason I've had no knights live for ten years is that we've only been playing for eight./quote]

That would explain that ;D
[qupte]During that time he lived at Average, Poor, Poor, Poor. This is fairly typical of all my knights. They have lived as poorly as possible to fund building projects to hopefully provide a decent future income. As none of them had any kids this seemed sensible.

Snipping the rest, it sounds like your players have made sensible choices (investing land when they didn't have wives or children, etc), and you haven't had time yet to see how the system works over the long haul. As their estates get better stewards, and as the money spent on those money-generating investments pays off, things will slowly turn around. It's likely they'll experience some culture shock as they first experience the child mortality rules and think they are too harsh, but once they realise how money spent on personal support significantly increases their chances, they'll slowly adapt, probably with some grumbling for a while :)

One comment: I would say that living at Poor is probably going a bit far. Culturally, especially if they have land, this is borderline dishonourable. They have a household and an image to uphold, and below Ordinary, everyone is suffering (and their clothes will be fading and torn, horses will be starving, etc.). other knights should really be looking down on these people who have misplaced priorities (which may actually be sensible from a modern point of view, but not from the feudal view).



On the whole I think Rich knights probably do ok family wise if they manage to stay alive long enough. Easing the %s a little on middle income knights would just spread the probability curve a little less harshly.

Maybe so, but as you'll see over the long term, few knights stay at ordinary or poor over their whole child-rearing years - most will have bubbles of rich or even superlative. So at risk of belabouring the point, the deadliness is often less than it seems.

I found the child mortality a bit too daunting for my campaign as well. Now I don't recall where I managed to dig it up, but I had this table somewhere with approximate numbers estimated for people making it to the next age category for different social stations and ages. I found it somewhere in the internet. In any case, I didn't have a knight in there, but I did have an upper class Roman, and I made the assumption that the knight would be about the same level of comfort/nourishment and so forth. From that, I got a number which I think was 60% of the children making it to the age 15.

I then reverse engineered it to dice rolling.
First year: 25% child mortality, 1-5 on 1d20
Second to Fifth year: 5% child mortality, 1 on 1d20
Sixth year onwards: no rolling

This got me a 0.75*0.95^4 = 61% which was close enough for me.

This means that an Average knight living 20 years is likely to have 9 children born during that time (12+ on 1d20) and perhaps see 5 of them growing (eventually) to adulthood (pretty close to that 1d6 siblings of chargen). On average, he'd have a heir and a spare at least, as well as daughters to find dowries and husbands for (always fun). I -like- the PKs having big families. Makes it all the more fun to plot with, and gives more connected spare characters if the primary kicks the bucket early on.

Despite this, the perversity of the dice ensured that two of the four PKs actually had only one male heir to carry on the family name. (Granted, in the first case that was because the original PK 'vanished' in the middle of the campaign and thus missed 8 more years of begetting, which probably would have netted a spare.)

I guess the question is, what do you want to be the default state? Greg seems to prefer 'oh noes, where can I get an heir?' whereas I am more of the 'oh noes, how on earth am I going to find husbands and dowries for the daughters and armor and horses for the sons?'. :)

And of course, this really means that the poor bugger who doesn't get a heir will be pitied all the more...

I have some side questions pertaining, more or less, to this topic.

1 - How "okay" was it considered for a married knight to have a concubine(s)? How would they fit into the inheritance scheme of things? Even if not married, is a child out of wedlock eligible for inheritance? Even if accepted, is that son always going to be viewed as "that bastard knight"?

2 - If a knight gets divorced, for whatever reason, does this affect the children that she had by that knight? Or let's say a knight just gets tired of his wife and wants a younger prettier one, is there any recourse for the original wife or is she SOL?

3 - If a honourable Lady is married to a pig of a knight, say a physically abusive knight, and this becomes common knowledge, would PC knights (or any other knight for that matter) have any right whatsoever to intervene?

I realise that the era could play a factor here. During the Anarchy period you probably don't have the luxury to worry about who gave birth to your son; just that you have one. While during the Romance period certain things would be different as social standards were more common, at least in theory.

Thanks.

jolt

I have some side questions pertaining, more or less, to this topic.

1 - How "okay" was it considered for a married knight to have a concubine(s)?


Christian Church says, "no no no, never."
Wife says, "no no no, never."
Studly bachelor knights say, "way to go man!"
Everyone else one shrugs.



How would they fit into the inheritance scheme of things?Even if not married, is a child out of wedlock eligible for inheritance?


Historically, they are entirely 100% locked OUT of getting anything at all from the father.
It was possible to have the church change that, but very expensive. (Though in game, I make it easier if necessary)


Even if accepted, is that son always going to be viewed as "that bastard knight"?

Not as a perjorative. If he is a knight, he is one of us.


2 - If a knight gets divorced, for whatever reason, does this affect the children that she had by that knight?

Divorce is very, very rare. Never count on getting a divorce from the church.
Now, anullments can happen--if you pay the right people in the church enough.


Or let's say a knight just gets tired of his wife and wants a younger prettier one, is there any recourse for the original wife or is she SOL?

Recourse for what?
First, even if she wants it'll be hard to get a divorce.
Second, if she does leave, she takes her dowry and goes home.


3 - If a honourable Lady is married to a pig of a knight, say a physically abusive knight, and this becomes common knowledge, would PC knights (or any other knight for that matter) have any right whatsoever to intervene?


No.
OTOH, if they were chivalrous and upholding their oath to serve all ladies, and if the witnessed something, then they wold probabl[i]y b[i] obliged to intervene or lose honor.

Thanks for the answers!




Or let's say a knight just gets tired of his wife and wants a younger prettier one, is there any recourse for the original wife or is she SOL?
Recourse for what?
First, even if she wants it'll be hard to get a divorce.
Second, if she does leave, she takes her dowry and goes home.


What I meant here was, let's say you have a knight who's an Irish Pagan. He's been married for ten years to a British Christian lady (a political marriage though the reasons and people involved have been out of relevance for years) and they're both 35 years of age. Along comes a 21-year old flirty Irish hottie and the knight decides to kick his wife out so his new lover can move in. The wife doesn't want to be kicked out but doesn't want the shame of a divorce either. What can she do?

Appeal to the knight's Lord? Will the Lord care enough to do anything about it?

Appeal to the Church? Will they care enough to do anything about it and would they still care if she was a Pagan, Jew or Heathen?

Could a Lady really just walk away with her dowry after 10 years especially since, technically, they're still married?

What are her options here?

jolt

Thanks for the answers!




Or let's say a knight just gets tired of his wife and wants a younger prettier one, is there any recourse for the original wife or is she SOL?
Recourse for what?
First, even if she wants it'll be hard to get a divorce.
Second, if she does leave, she takes her dowry and goes home.


What I meant here was, let's say you have a knight who's an Irish Pagan. He's been married for ten years to a British Christian lady (a political marriage though the reasons and people involved have been out of relevance for years) and they're both 35 years of age. Along comes a 21-year old flirty Irish hottie and the knight decides to kick his wife out so his new lover can move in. The wife doesn't want to be kicked out but doesn't want the shame of a divorce either. What can she do?

That's a very modern attitude. Divorce is rare in medieval society, and requires the approval of the appropriate religious authorities - who want to make sure divorce isn't abused. If the wife has been adulterous, you might get a divorce (though make sure her family is less powerful or connected than yours- you don't want to make them an enemy otherwise!). If you're a king, you might get a divorce more easily - but as history shows, even they have trouble sometimes.

In my opinion, however, you achieve a better medieval and Arthurian feel by outlawing divorce entirely. Tell the players it is not possible, the only way out of a marriage is annulment - which requires discovering you are closely related to your wife.

What I meant here was, let's say you have a knight who's an Irish Pagan. He's been married for ten years to a British Christian lady (a political marriage though the reasons and people involved have been out of relevance for years) and they're both 35 years of age. Along comes a 21-year old flirty Irish hottie and the knight decides to kick his wife out so his new lover can move in. The wife doesn't want to be kicked out but doesn't want the shame of a divorce either. What can she do?


Concrete examples work so much easier. Sort of



Appeal to the knight's Lord? Will the Lord care enough to do anything about it?


For her husband taking a concubine and having her live elsewhere?
The lord will do nothing about it, unless her family is more important than the knight's. In which case he will tell the knight to be more discreet.



Appeal to the Church? Will they care enough to do anything about it and would they still care if she was a Pagan, Jew or Heathen?


They'd probably say they can't help her since she abandoned the faith and married a pagan.
Unless there was something in it for them.
Then they can make up any old thing.



Could a Lady really just walk away with her dowry after 10 years especially since, technically, they're still married?


No.



What are her options here?


What is her objective?
She could have someone murder the lass.
Or her husband.

What is her objective?
She could have someone murder the lass.
Or her husband.


Not sure of the mindset here, would she even consider claiming the child as her own after murdering the lass?

What is her objective?
She could have someone murder the lass.
Or her husband.

Not sure of the mindset here, would she even consider claiming the child as her own after murdering the lass?


I only suggest that as a measure of how desperate her options would be.
i.e. negligible, to the point that she would have to do something like this to do anything effective

What is her objective?
She could have someone murder the lass.
Or her husband.

Not sure of the mindset here, would she even consider claiming the child as her own after murdering the lass?


I suppose if she had not been able to produce any male children while "that Irish strumpet" bangs out a son in the first year the wife could kill her and claim the son as her own (assuming she's capable of pulling such a thing off). If she already has healthy sons then she probably has little to worry about as the other child isn't eligible for inheritance; though I suppose she could kill out of spite/revenge if that's her personality (or is mistreated enough that she becomes so).

This had made me think of another question. If a wife proves to be barren, does the knight have any sort of adoption or "bringing someone into the family" option or is he just out of luck and his lord picks an heir for him?

jolt

What is her objective?
She could have someone murder the lass.
Or her husband.

Not sure of the mindset here, would she even consider claiming the child as her own after murdering the lass?


I suppose if she had not been able to produce any male children while "that Irish strumpet" bangs out a son in the first year the wife could kill her and claim the son as her own (assuming she's capable of pulling such a thing off). If she already has healthy sons then she probably has little to worry about as the other child isn't eligible for inheritance; though I suppose she could kill out of spite/revenge if that's her personality (or is mistreated enough that she becomes so).

This had made me think of another question. If a wife proves to be barren, does the knight have any sort of adoption or "bringing someone into the family" option or is he just out of luck and his lord picks an heir for him?

jolt


Well, think about Modred...

If a wife proves to be barren, does the knight have any sort of adoption or "bringing someone into the family" option or is he just out of luck and his lord picks an heir for him?


Sure it can be done.
Usually, though, he would pick a favorite nephew or cousin to groom for the spot, along with the rest of the family's agreement. That way there is no problem afterward with the kinsmen.

There would inevitably be problems from kinsmen if the knight gave it to someone outside the possible heirs.

Please start a new thread if you have more questions.