How it begins

Perceval:

He marveled and said:

By my soul, my lady mother spoke true

When she told me that devils are

More frightening than anything in the world.

She instructed me to make

The sign of the cross to ward them off,

But I never cross myself

This teaching I disdain.

Your grandfather died by the hand of the tyrant and traitor king Vortigernus

Your sire left Nova Troya in exile, to join the exiled Aurelianus and Uther in the Europa Constellation.

With the kings of all the free peoples of the Constellation and beyond, they halted Attila, the comet who wandered and brought doom to all.

Victorious, they claimed the Dragon Banner, and liberated Nova Troya from the Tyrant, and his treacherous masters Hengest and Horsa.

Now you, a new generation of super-mutant gene-freaks known as knights, must take on the spadone and don the astro-suit; and mount your chevaliers, and defend Nova Troya against the many who would do her, and your clan, great harm.

Here we ask not if you succeed; we ask not how you battle knight and reaver alike. We ask: what manner of knight are you? Where your loyalties lie? Can love bloom on the battlefield? What is the lot of they who thrive in war, in times of peace? Those by your side: friends, or foes?

The times of your forefathers were dire, yours are direr still. Who shall live past the Age of Uther?

As things usually do... this begins with a wayward princeling...

The Game

Ooh! King Arthur Pendragon but with space mechas in the spirit of Five Star Stories! I'm excited about this. For those that don't know, KAP is the Arthurian knight simulator par excellence in the trpg spheres. You play a knight backed by such mechanics that, if you were to read an old book of chivalry, you could pinpoint when the rules come into play. I used to run KAP a long time ago, to inconclusive successes. I had a good time. It's a game that mechanizes aspects of personality, for instance, you not only roll to see if you fight with swords good enough but how strong you feel about this and that. Some players have complained that it takes agency away from them, which is true, but that's the fun of it. It asks the player to improvise, to be surprised by their own creation.

I'm a different man, now. My disagreements with the system are doctrinal in nature. I value the skill of the player, to read the situation and plan clever strategies. KAP rejects this; it is not the knight's place to plan, but to bravely charge. It is mainly a game of divining the actions of imaginary knights by the roll of the dice and the Traits and Passions mechanics. Simply put, I cannot run it the same way I used to. I'm a different man.

But I'll give it a try again. RAR. Rules as Remembered. A friend, K...t, showed me the 6th edition starter set, of which I plundered the Passion rules. The rest I'll run as per my half-remembered wits.

For instance, combat is intolerable to me without this old forum post. I think I'll back that up here, somewhere.

The game simulates a progression of technology. I'll just wing this one. Suits will be light armor, perhaps gothic can be full-bodied exosuits and whatnot...

In the end, I am pondering a new way to go on about these things without using KAP. Character creaetion feels very cumbersome, despite it being on the light side. This is how different I am. I'm thinking Vain the Sword 2e.

The First

First player is M...a, playing Elfreda Brand; a slightly cowardly squire but her heart's in the right place. In her first year as a squire, she has fought Lavaine, the Sword of Silchester, had an interesting interaction with a pizza-delivery to awe her friends into following her to her secretive quest delivered by the spymaster, saw her cousin Mahan Brand cruelly defeated by a foreign, Frankish squire and her master knight; became so impassioned that she fought both squire and knight, finding that the knight (Nibel Goderices) used to love her mother Doanna Brand, and now hates her clan.