TROS in an Arthurian Mythos setting

[Sigurth]

One of my players really loves TROS. We are currently using it for our Hârn game (see sig).  He proposed that we use TROS for our very, very sporadic Pendragon (by Chaosium) game. At first I dismissed the idea, but after mulling it over in my head, I thought perhaps it could work.

Pendragon has personality traits and passions. If I wanted a more gritty Romano-Briton feel rather than a Malorian feel....

What do does the Forum think?

[Valamir]

Personally, I'd love to see Riddle of Camelot as an official supplement.  I think the game is ideal for Arthurian adventure pretty much as written.

If you wanted to do a Pendragon to TROS port, here are the areas I'd start with.

1)Change the Social Class priority system to match the idea that ALL characters will be knights.  Pull the range of Bachelor Knight / Vassal Knight / Banneret / etc.  From Pendragon and map those over to the Priority system.  "A" would indicate the character is a Pennath (minor king, essentially playing King Pellinore), while "F" would be a simple house hold bachelor knight.  Map the "kits" over accordingly.

2) TROS gives different special modifiers by nationality.  Determine if you want to do the same and map over the regional modifiers from different cultures from Pendragon.

3) Determine how tight of a Pendragon port you want.  A very loose port would leave TROS SAs to operate exactly as TROS SAs with nothing more than a listing of SAs that are common / appropriate (Loyalty: Lord, Love: Family, Hospitality, etc.)

For a tighter port you might require the mapping of any Passions held at 16+ in Pendragon terms (the level when you start gaining glory and reputation) over to an SA.  Any character with "Loyalty (lord): 16+" then must have "Loyalty (lord) as an SA.  Any Pendragon Passion below 16 can be freely felt and roleplayed but isn't strong enough to be worth counting as an SA.

I'd be tempted to not count the "standard" Pendragon Passions count against the limit of 5 SAs.  That way a player can have Hospitality, Love (family) and still be able to have personalized SAs also.  This would mean its possible to obtain even higher levels of proficiency (because you have more than the max 25 points to spend), but this is suitable to reflect the ability to become epic quality knights like Lancelot, Pellinore, or Tristram.


4) Determine how you want to handle the Virtues and Vices.  I personally would not strive to map these over in any kind of 1:1 way.  Instead I'd take the touchy feely virtues, and if they are 16+ virtues allow them to be taken as an SA.  I'd treat them as a variation of the Conscience SA...basically a specific focus like "Conscience (generous)", or "Conscience (merciful)"

I'd take the "practical" virtues (like Prudence and Valorous) and make them gifts (if of the 16+ level)

I'd take the "vices" and define them as flaws (if of the 16+ level).

This would be for Christian knights.  For Pagan Knights et.al., I'd do the same but look to the religion modifier to determine which traits to treat as virtues and which as flaws.


5)  The Chivalry and Religious bonuses are one of my favorite aspects of Pendragon.  I'd want to keep them, but I don't think they can be kept as is.  In Pendragon qualifying for these bonuses depends on the level held in the appropriate Virtue.  In Pendragon, higher scores very definitely equals "felt more strongly", which we know is not the case in TROS.

I would probably try something like this...but it would need some experimentation.  

Knight must take the corresponding bonus as a special SA (i.e. "Chivalrous", "Christian", etc).  This SA goes up when the knight demonstrates the appropriate Virtues, and down when they violate them.  The SA doesn't provide dice to die pools.  Instead as long as the SA is at a 5, the "special power" is active.  If it drops below 5 (due to being spent, or violating behaviors) the "special power" is lost.  

For a loose port, the bonus can just be scrapped entirely, but the "Armor of Chivalry" is just so very cool -- as is giving Saxons bonus Damage for being dedicated followers of Wotan, that I'd be inclined to at least try it.

[Sigurth]

No way! There's actually more than 2 Pendragon fans out there (I found one on the Cthulu Missionary boards earlier!)

Thanks for the insight Valamir. I may test these out in a Pendragon game soon.

[ZenDog]

I got my copies of TRoS and Pendragon at the same time. I think I would either try to recreate the feel of Excalibur or go for a Romano-Briton style game rather than Pendragon with TRoS mechanics.

For the Excalibur campaign I'd possibly set it during the grail quest with the possibility of the players finding the grail (after years of adventure all over Albion).

For the Romano-Briton game I'd have the players as important members of Artgwyer's Cohorts Equitana. Lots of politics, skirmishes, intertribal war (when not uniting against the Saison and Pritarni) and empire building type resource managment.

Hmm I think one of those may be my next campaign (although I have lots of ideas for Weyrth campaigns and I've only just started my first).

[Valamir]

Romano British Arthur would also be quite cool, and also easily done in TROS.  Not much more work to do there then expand the Savrexen and Picti nations and retranslate back into "historical" Earth.

I myself would probably use the Rosemary Sutcliff's The Sword at Sunset as background material.  Its my favorite attempt at "historical" Arthur.  When I first read it as a wee lad I actually thought it was non-fiction because it had been misfiled in the history section of my middle school library.

[ZenDog]

I myself would probably use the Rosemary Sutcliff's The Sword at Sunset as background material. Its my favorite attempt at "historical" Arthur. When I first read it as a wee lad I actually thought it was non-fiction because it had been misfiled in the history section of my middle school library.

I'd use Bernard Cornwell's Enemy of God series which is full of the gritty nasty combat and issue's that TRoS excells at.

[Jasper]

Jack Whyte has also been writing an excellent series covering Arthur as historical figure, with "Camolud" being a Romano-British colony -- (it's where a lot of inspiration for my own end of Rome game has come from).  I've only read the first couple, but he starts off with the colony's founding, and Arthur only comes into it much later -- this might be a cool setting for a campaign, and would give players the ability to do some really important things without stepping all over "canon" arthur -- if they care about such things.

[Edge]

its amazing how lots of people can all think of a similar thing all at once.  I went into my game store the other day (thursday i think) and was looking at the latest pendragon supplements (i have had the game for ages) thinking how cool it would be converted to TROS
On the weekend i started to go over it all (started in nearly the same way as Valamir)
and is looking pretty good at the moment :)

[Eamon]

Ahem... the TROS game I am planning to start running is a total rip on the Arthurian mythos, with tons of quality inspiration from the Pendragon system.  Thanks for the suggestions on running a TROS Pendragon game!

Great minds think alike!

[Sigurth]

I got my copies of TRoS and Pendragon at the same time. I think I would either try to recreate the feel of Excalibur or go for a Romano-Briton style game rather than Pendragon with TRoS mechanics.

Way back, I was able to help playtest Saxons!. Originally, it was also going to cover Aurelis Ambrosious and Uther's days, including all the Cymric tribes. I still have the beta, but it's all hardcopy. Don't know what happened to the disc. Since I doubt any of that info will ever see publication...I'll share info if anyone has questions.

BTW, how would one do battles?

[Mike Holmes]

1)Change the Social Class priority system to match the idea that ALL characters will be knights. Pull the range of Bachelor Knight / Vassal Knight / Banneret / etc. From Pendragon and map those over to the Priority system. "A" would indicate the character is a Pennath (minor king, essentially playing King Pellinore), while "F" would be a simple house hold bachelor knight.

Just to be pedantic, Knight Errant (no lord, wandering knight, Ronin) would be F, no?

Oh, and hasn't this been suggested before? If not, it's about time.

Mike

[Valamir]

Just to be pedantic, Knight Errant (no lord, wandering knight, Ronin) would be F, no?

Good call.  Although the appropriate Pendragon term would be Mercenary Knight...that would be below Bachelor, yes indeed.

Knight Errant is more of a volunteer thing by knights who can.