Honour by day 0.2

Honour by day 0.2 Sheets

Firstly, balancing Honour and Realism at 5 each is a bad plan. Their use in both games is pretty much identical so this will also apply to tournaments.

Skirmishes: The wording on the bonuses it gives is ambiguous and comparing statistics to fixed numbers isn’t great, instead I’m going to make it so that for each tactic there is one dominant player.

Engagements: There is not enough incentive to withhold your support from the current general. Instead I’m going to apply a penalty to Elite Cohort for each knight who doesn’t support you and they get to rest, healing 1 damage.

Ties: I’ve been struggling with how to deal with ties. We’ve come to the conclusion that for events you compare the statistics you didn’t use (i.e. if you use Loyalty + Arms in an engagement and their is a tie, compare Loyalty + Backing), if there is still a tie then the player closest to the host (starting with the host and working clockwise) wins.

In the case of tied Trophy points the player with the most total points wins (this should support creating a clear winner, which is good).

I may also look more closely at which statistics are used for each event/action and see if I can re-balance them.

Honour by day – Playtest #2

I’ll post the results up tomorrow.

With this in mind I will keep the basic structure – earning points for Trophies, preassigned events of various types during which time the players pick form a list of actions. The difference comes from what the events/actions are and how they grant trophy points.

Events: War Council, Skirmish, Battle

Actions: Plot, Tactics, Heroics

Trophies: Grand Marshal (title for the overall winner, like Princess’s Hand), Soldier’s Hero (like People’s Champion), True Knight (identical to the tournament version), Personal Army (represents the losses to your own troops) and ???????.

As a twist there is a running total of how well the battle is going. If you end up winning overall the character with the highest in Grand Marshal and ?????? get the trophies, otherwise it’s the characters with the lowest score. Unscrupulous types use failed battles to get ahead, showing up those most to blame.

Unfortunately I’m drawing a bit of a blank on the last trophy, all I know that to have the desired effect it must be like Grand Marshal – the scores get reversed if you loose. It could be I’ll only have 4 (not a great plan) or maybe I’ll decide a new way of winning.

Victory

There are two values that determine sucess or failure… Victory Points and the Tide of War.

Skirmishes and War Councils will add bonuses to the Tide of War score (which starts negative and decreases each day). Then at each battle event adds the current Tide of War to the knight’s Victory Points (which starts at 0).

At the end a positive sore means you win and 0 or less means a loss. These scores are universal (not per knight) but it’s possible some knights may want to sabotage them so they can get ahead.

One set of character creation rules, two (or more) games.

So for the 30 days deadline I’m going to try for a second set of rules for taking your knights onto the battlefield, where you can compete for glory and honour while battling for your country.

There will be similarities in the mechanics but hopefully a whole new set of tactics and opportunities for scenes. If that works I’ll look into other situations that the knights can get into for the 1 year deadline.

I’ll post more details next week.

Honour by day – Character Sheet

Here is the current state of the game after the playtest, with some historical details about the period it is set in. More playtesting will be needed to get a balanced game but it is perfectly playable as is.

Honour by day – Playtest #1

With four players we created the following knights (apologies for the quality of the pictures) -

Sir Cyril of Mossetowne: A young and impetuous knight.

Sir Digby Caeser: A true maverick and popular with the ladies.

Sir Lucane d’Amand, Marshal of the North: An old and cynical veteran (this was my knight).

Sir Hector, Earl of West Mercia: Likes to be the centre of attention and put on a good show.

The Tournament: (I should have taken notes, then I could have a more interesting report).

For the first Joust Sir Digby woke to find his drink the previous evening had been spiked while Lucane’s best weapons had been nicked. In the Joust, Digby won, his maverick style winning the favour of the crowd.

The first melee Sir Digby and Sir Cyril lined up against Sir Lucane and Sir Hector. Despite the vicious rumours spread to try and cause disharmony between Digby and Cyril they triumphed over the other team. Some underhand tactics employed when Lucane tried to get his weapons sorted out at the blacksmiths probably helped.

In the evening Sir Lucane and Hector started moving in on the title that was up for grabs… Hector uncovering some disloyal nobles and Lucane foiling an assassination attempt. Predictable Sir Digby was the man of the evening, stealing the peasant’s affections with his charm and wit.

<The second day was similar to the first and we didn’t have time to do the third day, how ever do attached the Royal Celebration to the end so we could calculate winners.>

Of all the knights Sir Digby was the Peasant’s Champion. Sir Lucane gained the King’s Ear, after some sucessful politics at the Noble Celebration but was just beaten being the Rising Star by Sir Hector. The Princesses Hand went to the overall winner – Sir Digby – who had also retained enough of his honour to be known as the True Knight. Poor Sir Cyril went home with nothing but bruises.

Mechanics: The game went remarkably smoothly. A number of balance issues were identified. It was actually surprising which stats seemed the most useful.

• We added a formal introduction phase at the start of the tournament since we found we didn’t really know the other knights.
• Each knight needs a cheat sheet to tell them what they roll and when.
• Swap Arms and Loyalty in Melee (loyalty needed a boost, arms was a bit good, being used in 6 scenes and capable of winning a lot of Trophy points)
• Noble Celebration: Swap Fame for Loyalty, since Fame got a bit good and loyalty still needed more of a boost.
• After each day you heal 3 boxes of your choosing (healing couldn’t keep up with damage).
• Plots: Can’t use maverick (which needed some serious nerfing) and successes are on a 9+ to slow down damage.
• Trophies: We had a couple of ties at the end which isn’t great, need to double existing point gians and add some minor, more frequent, gains.

Honour by day – Mechanics

In slightly unrelated news I’ve decided to make the tournement specific, giving it a name, host and the like, fleshing it out so the player’s don’t need to. Names are easy enough to change once a group tire of the default setting after all.

First is a tentative name “Honour by day…”, although I’d be keen to find a better one.

Secondly, I have the first draft of my character generation done:

Honour by day – Character Generation

It even has a character sheet on the last page

Hopefully I can start piecing together some scene generation and resolution mechanics now.

You play knights at a tournament, but instead of focusing on the games, you focus on knights vying for power and influence. Character generation is through the creation of heraldry. Knights have to balance maintaining their honour with getting ahead.

That covers ‘Intrigue’ and ‘Fleur-de-Lis’. I can’t crowbar ‘Seabird’ or ‘Dividers’ in easily but ‘Star’ could be used to mean either fate or ‘star of the show’. Maybe, just like in GC this year, you get medals for achieving certain things…

• Star of the Tourney (win the most matches without cheating)
• Landlord (gain the most land)
• King’s Ear (gain the king’s trust)
• Princess’s Hand (win the most matches)
• True Knight (having the most honour)

So while I said the games aren’t the focus I mean, the blow-by-blow action isn’t the focus, instead you can cheat or spend resources to improve your chances of winning. Each bout would then be described by the fighter with the highest current honour(?) in about a paragraph worth of dialog.

To have a GM or not? If the players spend all their time fighting amongst themselves then I don’t need one. If I want external adversary then it’d probably be a good idea. Have to see how it goes.

John,