Pendragon: The Year Of Our Lord 486
Second Pendragon session went a bit better. We still played comparatively late, doing a few court scenes, a joust, two monsters fights and the winter phase - but it felt a bit better paced. I'm still going to try and run the winter phase between sessions if I can - looking at emailing sheets to the players so they can handle more of it themselves between sessions - but I think it helps to acknowledge that a Mass Battle is probably a session in itself. :-)
I'm spotting a few oddities of rules I haven't factored in correctly as we play. For example, shields only grant their armour bonus on a partial success - that is, if both you and your enemy succeed but your enemy succeeds by more. I had felt combat was a bit "tink tink BOOM" and removing the shield bonus sometimes might reduce that. (Even then, though, critical hits do notably more damage than a normal hit since the armour only counts once, and monsters with natural armour would not be affected by this.)
I may have stuck too much complexity in at the start by using Book of the Manor, with it's slightly fiddlier Winter Phase stuff than the core rules - though the players seem to have gotten into purchasing themed items for their manors. One thing that seems to be catching them is that I ask them to roll both Stewardship and Misfortune for their land - that is, both sides of an opposed roll. It may benefit them if I rolled the Misfortune myself, to make it clearer that it's The Enemy. :-)
Finally, I told Dave the wrong thing about squeezing the peasants - even though I told him it the right way on the first session! Squeezing the peasants for cash means the Hate Landlord goes up 2 and you get two checks to "bad" traits, but it doesn't net you £1 - it nets you £1d6. You can do this up to three times a year, although the third has slightly more drawbacks. Getting that Hate down again requires spending money on them (such as building bridges, wells and roads); reducing taxes voluntarily in future years; and running more of those "Justice Events" as we did last session.
I'm spotting a few oddities of rules I haven't factored in correctly as we play. For example, shields only grant their armour bonus on a partial success - that is, if both you and your enemy succeed but your enemy succeeds by more. I had felt combat was a bit "tink tink BOOM" and removing the shield bonus sometimes might reduce that. (Even then, though, critical hits do notably more damage than a normal hit since the armour only counts once, and monsters with natural armour would not be affected by this.)
I may have stuck too much complexity in at the start by using Book of the Manor, with it's slightly fiddlier Winter Phase stuff than the core rules - though the players seem to have gotten into purchasing themed items for their manors. One thing that seems to be catching them is that I ask them to roll both Stewardship and Misfortune for their land - that is, both sides of an opposed roll. It may benefit them if I rolled the Misfortune myself, to make it clearer that it's The Enemy. :-)
Finally, I told Dave the wrong thing about squeezing the peasants - even though I told him it the right way on the first session! Squeezing the peasants for cash means the Hate Landlord goes up 2 and you get two checks to "bad" traits, but it doesn't net you £1 - it nets you £1d6. You can do this up to three times a year, although the third has slightly more drawbacks. Getting that Hate down again requires spending money on them (such as building bridges, wells and roads); reducing taxes voluntarily in future years; and running more of those "Justice Events" as we did last session.