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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Gorgon Zee" data-source="post: 9630075" data-attributes="member: 75787">I should have been more precise. In Pendragon it's technically called 'amor' and is a bit different from our modern take. In game terms, you get a passion of Amor (Gwen) and it has a level, much like Hywel's Cruel Trait can influence how you behave.You can easily be a little bit in love with Guinevere and it not have much impact unless someone impugns her honor, or there's a conflict of interests involving her. So two of my player knights fell a little in love with her; they joined her guard and generally prefer her and will fight anyone who says bad things about her. As will about half of the court of Camelot. But unless they invoke their passion for her, it will not grow over time.One of my knights -- Hywel the Cruel, actually -- managed to critically fall in love and ended up famously in love with her. He invoked the passion all the time, jousting tournaments in her honor, riding into battle crying "For queen and country" as opposed to the more usual "king and country" and so became even more devoted to her.So, when Lancelot came along and was making eyes at the queen, I required Hywel to test his passion for her, and his passion won out, so he decided to challenge the knight to a joust. Lancelot was still just starting out, so Hywel managed (with good rolls!) to knock him to the ground. Since Hywel is also famously cruel I got him to test that also, and again the passion won out. So he murdered Lancelot, pretending a splinter from the lance had pierced his throat.This is the game we wanted to play -- one where knights are passionate and driven sometimes by desires and needs that the player might never have thought of. The cleverness of the Pendragon system is that it requires a co-operation between player and GM to make the story turn in a given direction. Hywel's player might have not invoked his passion for her so often, used XP to buy down the passion each session and treated it as a young lad's fancy.But I think you need these mechanisms and options. The GM or dice can start a passion going and it may be powerful for a few sessions, but there are several ways for the player to modify it -- and so it doesn't feel as arbitrary as the canonical bad D&D GM's "you failed your save and so are in love with her and so must protect her at all costs".Even Arthur, who loved Guinever with immense passion, agreed that she should be burned to death as a traitor and agreed on a kingdom-destroying war to subject her to justice -- because he had an opposing passion for justice that won out.</blockquote>

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