Blue Rose has always struck me as an interesting take on an Arthurian style setting, it makes complete sense to combine it with Pendragon and ACKS.
An Arthurian variant of ACKS has been in the back of my mind for a while, for that matter - all the talk around the Heroic Fantasy supplement has landed between Howard and Tolkien, and I think there’s room for another wing, espc. as it’d lend some fantastical modifications to the domain management subsystem (health of the land and health of the king is one in the same)
So, perhaps in reverse order:
- I think ACKS’ domain system would be a great fit. ACKS assumes a once-a-month adventure for domain growth; squeezing that into the summer would be fine; you may have scale XP to meet whatever would be the desired rate of growth to make up for less adventuring, unless there’d be some subsystems to grant XP in other methods - some mechanic to represent success during the spring court season, let’s say…?
The domain management XP would add some there, actually - if you’re looking at a dynastic sort of thing, then “stronghold level” becomes less important as you’ve inherited one - gather the year’s worth of domain management XP during the 6 months of fall and winter, perhaps? That, I guess, would be the boost for lower level characters - they’d be nowhere near their GP threshold for a well-established domain - I don’t think you’d necessarily need to start at Conqueror level.
I could see the non-knight PCs if any doing mercantile operations during the spring, rather than spending time in court - perhaps any system that awards XP at court should be tightly bound to how mercantile operations work, actually - perhaps the ebb and flow of reputation and favor magically match that of market availability…hm…I can’t tell if that’s a dumb idea or an ingeniously dumb idea - do trading favors work like trading sheep? Ask a politician?
- Yes, this would work out. To make it smooth all you’d really have to do is convert all the monthly domain rolls to seasonal domain rolls, as well as the money flow.
I like the descendants. ACKS already has the support system in the domain rules for a low level character owning a domain; and I think putting something like family dynasty rules into the game would really be a good boost to the domain rules - the character becomes an extension of the domain, rather than the other way around - and the player is managing the character as a domain resource.
- The same complaints levelled against Blue Rose probably apply to a Camelot sort of setting, the weight of an established rule-by-divine-right sort of system does have a bit of an oppressive-to-players lean. As we know, strange women in ponds distributing swords and golden deer tapping folks with antlers are poor bases for a system of government.
It also somewhat belies the “Conqueror” part of ACK, and there’d be a rough transition from A to K, but I’m pretty sure a set of players ganging up to take out Camelot or Aldea would be pretty awesome.
If I were to want to start looking at Pendragon to see how they worked it, where would you recommend I start? Any specific edition better than any other? Expansion books?
I always thought True20 should have gotten more attention than it did.
/I think my idea on an Arthurian ACKS is from just wanting an excuse to play O Fortuna during a Domains At War battle.