So, Lion & Dragon keeps selling very well.  The sales for the first month were exemplary, and this month, in spite of having spent three days in limbo thanks to RPGnow's error (you can read about that in past blog entries), we managed to crawl back up the bestseller list to #11.  Please feel free to keep sharing the link in your social media to see if we can crack back into the top-10!


So now, instead of just asking you to help spread the news, I figure that even though there's already some reviews out there (particularly a magnificent video review where you can get a good glimpse inside the book), I'd answer some more questions that have come up.



So, here goes:









Q: just skimming through L&D pdf.  It is beautiful.  Quick question about class hit points, since the formatting and description vary for Clerics and Fighters versus Magisters ,Thieves, Cymri, Scotsmen etc.  Should there be a "+" for Clerics and Fighters?

Clerics Hit-Points: 1d8 (modified by CON) at level 1, +1 each level thereafter (not modified).

Fighters Hit-Points: 1d10 (modified by CON) at level 1, +2 per level thereafter (not modified).

Magisters Hit-Points: +1d4 hit points, modified by CON. +1 hit point per level thereafter (not modified).

Thieves Hit-Points: +1d4 hit points, modified by CON, at 1st level. +1 hit point per level thereafter (not modified).



A: Yes. Sorry, that was clearly a typo. In all cases, all basic classes add their level 1 hp to their level 0 hp. So there should be a "+" in front of all the hit point categories.








Q: Am I reading it correctly, that if a player chooses his advancement each level rather than getting two random rolls, a 7th level fighter can end up doing 7 attacks per round?


For a long time now I've been a big fan of having the option of random tables for advancements at leveling, rather than fixed bonuses each level. So in L&D (like Arrows of Indra before it) when you level you have a table of bonuses, which you can either roll on twice, or freely choose once.

But on account of that, the actual odds of having 7 attacks via random rolls is ridiculously small, and to take it as an intentional choice is just dumb so I don't think anyone would do it. Because you'd get seven attacks, but no added bonus to hit, no bonus to damage, no bonus to parrying, no bonus to saves, and no bonus hit points.  You'd be playing a very weak guy who could swing a lot (though not necessarily actually hit a lot).

I can tell you, from years of actual play, that from everything I've seen having multiple attacks at all is not a great advantage at lower levels. At those lower levels, having more hit points is probably a better option, and being better at hitting second. Having a second or third attack at mid or high levels is definitely a good benefit, once you're also better at hitting. This is supposing you're a front-line armored warrior.

If you're playing a ranged-fighter, multiple attacks comes out a bit better, but in most groups (unless you have lots of fighters in the group) it's not really all that viable to have a fighter who's mainly skilled at ranged combat.






Q: How much does it support sandboxing / aimless wandering through such things as random wilderness/settlement creation, encounter tables, procedurally created missions/adventure hooks, random NPCs etc.?

 A:  L&D has an appendix that has a bunch of random tables for traveling in the wilderland/frontier regions.
If that's not enough, there's also Cults of Chaos which is a whole 90-page supplement for creating NPC groups, specifically of heretics, witches, cultists, dark magicians, criminals, etc.

Note that the game is also supported by supplements in the RPGPundit Presents series, which also includes adventure scenarios explicitly in sandbox style. The first of these is already out, The Child-Eaters. The second, The Secret Order of the Red Lady, probably comes out tomorrow.



Q: Are there rules for invoking saints? If not, how difficult would they be to implement?

A: There are not specific rules for invoking saints but that's a fantastic idea!  It would probably be very easy to houserule, using a variant of the Divine Intervention power Clerics have in Lion & Dragon.
But now I HAVE to write a supplement about that.




Anyways, if you guys have any questions for Lion & Dragon, please feel free to share them with me, I'll be glad to answer them! And keep spreading the word about this game! Thanks.


RPGPundit

Currently Smoking: Neerup Poker + C&D's Pirate Kake

Q: So when leveling you get to choose one advancement option or randomly roll for two.  How many advancement options total are there for a level? Three, Four, Five?

Quote from: CRKrueger;1018447Q: So when leveling you get to choose one advancement option or randomly roll for two.  How many advancement options total are there for a level? Three, Four, Five?

The options are set up in tables by class. So at each level you roll on the same table. This might be hard to read, but here's an image featuring a couple of tables:



The number of options for each class vary. There are 7 entries for Clerics, 9 for fighters, 6 for magisters, 11 for thieves, 8 for Cymri, and 8 for Scots Men.

But it's a bit more complicated than that, because in some of the entries the Player still gets to choose between two or more options.

For example, if you're a Cleric and you roll a 4-5, you can EITHER choose to get a new miraculous power, or a +1 to the prayer check for an existing power.  A magister has one option where they can either get a new lore, or a +1 to an existing lore. A thief who rolls a 5 can choose between +2 in Urban Lore OR Wilderness Lore OR Court Lore OR learn a new language. Thieves have a couple of such options, and Cymri (who are jacks-of-all-trades) have several of these types of options, etc.

Read it over the weekend.  I really liked it.  Especially the advancement part you are talking about above.

I guess if I had any questions it would be about social status and moving up or down the ladder.  Is it even possible?  Can/should status be a reward?  How do adventurer types fit into the grand scheme?  

Sure you can have a noble that goes off with his knights to fell a griffon or something, but if he is constantly doing "lesser" things instead of tending to more proper duties according to his station in life what sort of effect will that have.  What about the small group of villains who keep going around helping out the peasants with their problems?  Do they get noticed by those higher up and can they be rewarded with a better status of some sort, or does the nobility look down on that because their knights should be the ones handling it and the villains are stepping out of line?

I mean, these could be poor examples, but I think I got the basic gist of the question across.

Quote from: rgalex;1019611Read it over the weekend.  I really liked it.  Especially the advancement part you are talking about above.

I guess if I had any questions it would be about social status and moving up or down the ladder.  Is it even possible?  Can/should status be a reward?  How do adventurer types fit into the grand scheme?  

Sure you can have a noble that goes off with his knights to fell a griffon or something, but if he is constantly doing "lesser" things instead of tending to more proper duties according to his station in life what sort of effect will that have.  What about the small group of villains who keep going around helping out the peasants with their problems?  Do they get noticed by those higher up and can they be rewarded with a better status of some sort, or does the nobility look down on that because their knights should be the ones handling it and the villains are stepping out of line?

I mean, these could be poor examples, but I think I got the basic gist of the question across.

Great question.  In terms of Medieval-Authenticity, the reality is that if you want to be authentic, it should be relatively easy to move up the lower social classes, but very difficult into the upper social classes. Very, very difficult, though not completely impossible.

Being a serf or slave is a legal status, but in the time of the late medieval period, in Western Europe at least, this is becoming increasingly rare. Peasants can by this period become villains just by moving; of course, in this time, very few people did move from the country into the city, but any PC who did so would have been born a peasant (and likely still have "peasant ways" about him) but would in terms of social quality now be a city-dweller.  It wouldn't really be any different than someone from the depths of Arkansas moving to New York City; their 'status' as a country-bumpkin would largely depend on how quickly they could drop the things that identified them as the former, and learn the cosmopolitan trappings that would let them identify as the latter.

But as for becoming a knight, or a noble, these things are incredibly difficult if you do not already come from a certain stock.  Someone who is born into a high-end villain family or some very wealthy peasant family (because remember, wealth and status are two totally different things, you might find some common peasant that has more money than some Earls) MIGHT, by great personal effort to distinguish themselves in service to a lord or the crown, end up being able to achieve knighthood. But this is not very common at all.  
If you look at history, what is much more frequent is for some commoner to become either rich or famous or both, to gain influence with the power-elite, build up a great reputation, and then for HIS SON to become a knight, and then maybe his grandson (or great-grandson) might end up getting some minor title of landed nobility.  


What you can more commonly see as 'rewards' for lower-status characters would be things like offices.
So, for example, if you have a PC who's from a knightly family, or a cleric, and they do some great deeds that get the attention of the Crown, they might be rewarded with a knighthood.

A fighter or a magister that is from villain background, they might get rewarded with some kind of a rank or an office. The interesting thing is these ranks or offices (say, Sergeant of Fotheringhay Castle, or Personal Tutor to the Son of the Duke of Somerset) would come with room, board, and an annual wage.  Whereas things like knigthoods or the types of offices granted to nobles ("Warden of the Cinque Ports", etc) did not actually come with any money, because it would be beneath the dignity of an aristocrat to accept monetary reward.  

One thing to remember in Lion & Dragon vs. D&D is that a big bag of gold coins is literally the least honorable reward you could be given.

So if you had a Scots Man, or a peasant fighter or thief, etc., they might get a bag full of shillings as their reward, and that would be saying "here, this is what will make you happy and it's all you care about, and it's a sign from us that we think you did a good job, so you might as well go spend it on the stupid things savages and peasants are likely to blow their money on".

If you give a big bag of shillings (instead of an office with a salary, or a special personal gift, etc) to the aforementioned Fighter or Magister of villain background, you're putting them in that same category, you're saying: "we're thankful for what you did, but we also don't think you'll ever amount to anything better than this, so we're treating you like we treat our inferiors".

If you give a big bag of shillings to someone of Knightly or Noble background you're saying to them "We think you're a mercenary and a cad, so we're insulting you by treating you like a fucking peasant who needs and wants money".



In short, you need to put a bit of thought in how parties get potentially rewarded by patrons, and not everyone in the party should get the same reward. And getting a reward that directly changes their status (like a knighthood), should be VERY VERY RARE. It might be something done for someone who say, already received increasingly important offices.
In my very long Dark Albion campaign, there was one character who ended up working his way up the scales this way: it took him 35 years of game-time (6 years of real-life gaming). He was, by the end, one of the most famous people in the kingdom, who was an invaluable personal servant of the royal family. At first, he was given little rewards of money or token gifts, then he was given minor paid offices and later more significant personal gifts that made everyone know he had the great favor of his lords (over the course of the campaign he had served the Earl of Warwick, King Edward of York, and then Prince (later King) Richard Crookback), then major offices (that did not come with a salary), and then finally knighthood.At the very end of the campaign he received a minor lordship. And this was a truly, stunningly exceptional character.

There was another character who BOUGHT a knighthood. This could happen sometimes, if you had enough money and there was a sufficiently powerful noble that desperately needed money. But after that he was treated as absolute dirt by almost everyone, because everyone felt like his title was illegitimate.

So in short, you really shouldn't be thinking of knighthoods as a basic reward for even great deeds. You should work through that scale of rewards and a knighthood should be something very difficult to get, and any kind of greater title almost impossible if you don't already come from the nobility.  In the real life period of the war of the roses, from what I researched, there were hardly any commoners who were knighted, and no commoners who received titles of nobility at all.

With regards to the second part of your question, as to whether Noble or Knightly characters who do not act according to their status should lose their status:

A knight or noble who acts poorly, who do not fulfill their duties, who neglect their land, or don't come to court, or hang out with peasants or criminals or gypsies, or get drunk in free-houses or whatever other status-inappropriate misbehavior you can imagine do NOT automatically lose their social status.
With the lower classes, a villain who loses everything and goes to live in a hut to work someone else's land has de-facto become a Peasant. Their status is based on their lifestyle and surroundings.  But with higher social classes, it's a bit different.
Knightly families are somewhat in between. If you have a knight who fails to ever act like a knight, becomes a poor farmer, etc, he will still personally be a knight. But his sons, in spite of being from a 'knightly family' will be unlikely to ever become knights themselves, and will likely get treated very poorly. And his grandsons will just be assumed to be peasants.
Nobles are more different. Their nobility is a matter of BLOOD. It is hereditary. So you could be an utter disaster in terms of behavior as a noble, and you're still a noble. You'd be an awful noble, who would be seen very badly by your peers, you would likely be suffering some serious social consequences for your activities. But you wouldn't 'lose' your social status itself.
There's only one thing that could make you lose your social status if you are a noble: a Bill of Attainder. That is an act of the Crown that strips from your whole family their noble title and all lands. Typically, this was done for very high crimes like treason, though sometimes it was used as a tool against political enemies. It became a frequent event during the War of the Roses, for example, as when one faction or another got control of the crown they would end up passing many Bills of Attainder against their worst opponents in the other faction.  The Attainder is judged as a "corruption of blood", which is why it applies to the family as a whole, not just an individual. So it is the ultimate punishment: a noble who has committed sufficient felony or treason to be attaindered not only loses their own title, and lands, but the title itself is stripped away from their children and heirs!

Obviously, this is something relatively rare. For example, even in the War of the Roses there was a great effort, when one rose or the other took the throne, to only attainder the most rabid allies of the other side, every other noble that sided with their opposition would be given the option to swear loyalty to the new (or restored) King in exchange for amnesty. Otherwise, you'd eventually run out of nobles altogether. Also, it was not uncommon for a noble to get attaindered and then later, many years later, for one of their sons to get their title restored, IF they prove themselves utterly loyal and dedicated to the crown. Thus, attaindering was used as a tool to 'reform' a family, by giving the now-disinherited sons of a traitor or felon the chance to restore their family fortune by not repeating the grave errors of their fathers.