Running a Knighthood Campaign

[HoboGod]

Do they go lawful good or lawful evil? Do they support a tyrant who is legally lord of the land by right of birth? Or do they deam the tyrant has violated their mandate from heaven to rule the people with a fair and even hand and see it as their duty to depose them and fine a worthy heir?

I'm not putting so much emphasis upon the king, yet. Their alignment is up to them to decide as they choose the path they follow. The king will ask things of them and they choose whether or not to act as tyrants enforcing the will of their king or peacemakers who work with the people for the greater good. My worlds always start neutral unless I'm DMing an Evil campaign.

 

[Endur]

In addition to Pendragon, there is also Chivalry and Sorcery, and the Knights of Bretonnia from Warhammer.

You could also involve the Fey.

 

[Celebrim]

I'm in a bit of a pinch, here. My fiance wants to play a knight campaign. My first thought: "No problem, you're alignment will start at Lawful Neutral (normally I start everyone at pure neutral) and I'll help you scratch up a Mounted Charger." But now that the campaign has gotten running, I notice that it's essentially me railroad DMing the entire thing. My PCs go to the king, ask what service they can do of his Majesty, and promptly do it. That's the life of a knight. I've added some political intrigue to keep my players excited for the prospect of uncertainty, but I'm not sure how far I can go with the scandalous king and treacherous adviser plotlines.

So, does anyone have ideas for a DM in a knightly campaign? What ways can I encourage a sandbox style of adventuring into a Camelot setting? Are there any RPG books or essays I should be reading on this topic? Does anyone want to share their experiences with this kind of campaign?

Yes, first of all, read Squire and Lady Knight (Protector of the Small series) by Tamora Peirce.

Second of all consider that the definition of a Knight is both narrow and broad. A Knight can be little more than a bandit, or a wandering mercenary. A Knight can be little more than a soldier, or a knight can be a noble with a high degree of autonomy in a fuedal system. A knight can be under specific orders to defend a caste or perform some other beaucratic duty, or they can be simply told, "Go out right wrongs, establish Justice, protect the weak, and give evil cause to fear the sword." So choose to have your knights put in a situation where they have that autonomy and freedom.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Hmmmm, yes. It is an interesting but challenging sort of game to run. We've been experimenting here. I note a few things that have been challenging, and a few tentative conclusions:

1) Disparate character types in a medieval setting. How do they relate to each other? Do you make all the PCs knights, or are some of them other types of character? Medieval society is quite stratified and classist. How does a merchant or some other non-knightly character fit in with the concept. Clearly the easiest solution is to make all PCs knights. The other solution is to play a game with more political intrigue or other elements and downplay the 'knightly adventure' part.

2) Arthurian type tales are very abstract. I read a bunch of medieval literature to get an idea of the sort of elements that these romantic tales contain. What you immediately find when you start building a setting and playing is that they are very abstract 'high fantasy' kind of stories. Rarely does practical reality intervene into the stories. You really need to avoid 'grittiness' if you're going to be true to the stories. While now and then practical considerations pop up in some of the literature they are at best plot devices.

3) The action is highly individualistic. While there are times when several characters act together in these stories most of the time a single main character is acting alone. The scope for a party of PCs acting together is limited, and when it does exist most of the characters are likely to have bit parts. This kind of thing could be handled by making the campaign rather abstract, so you let the players describe what they do for long periods of time in general terms and develop out a plot where each PC does 'knightly stuff' that isn't handled in detail while the plot develops to a point where it is logical to have them come together (the DM will of course help engineer this) and then they have an adventure. Afterwards the PCs will once again go their separate ways until the next time.

Alternately you can simply create a 'party', but it is a rather artificial construct within this genre.

It turns out to be quite a challenging type of game to run. Not much like your more typical D&D-esque FRPG setup with parties of adventurers.

I think mostly I'd highly structure the campaign around some sort of story arc that demands a lot of derring-do and concerted action by the PCs and gives them a good reason to form a logical faction. Center it on knights and keep it fairly abstract. Railroading in this type of game I'd think could often be fluffed as being the machinations of fate/gods/whatever. Yes, it is odd how the PCs constantly find themselves together at the right time and place for interesting things to happen, but that's the way the fates work! hehe.

Anyway, we're still experimenting heavily. I'd love to hear more ideas too.

 

[kallisti23]

I will begin by saying this is a great thread with a lot of really good ideas and insight.

Firstly, I think that a 'sandbox'-style campaign would be a good approach for a questing knight campaign. That way, there would be several quests worthy of knights laying in wait for the PCs to happen upon, as well as several plots and miniplots in place to draw the PCs in, and rampaging monsters for brave knights to defend helpless peasants from. The sandbox style of campaign design accommodates PC initiative, and it is knightly to take initiative! Several of the ideas and suggestions given already in this thread could be patched together into a sandbox-style campaign.

Also, there is the issue of Party composition... it occurs to me that, given all the family and business and military connections between nobles (including knights), there is boundless potential for non-knight PCs in a knight-oriented campaign. A couple of warrior-type PCs might be knights, but a cleric or monk PC might be a younger brother of a noble who went into the church, a bard or wizard might be an advisor, a rogue might be a courtier, and so forth.

And finally, I highly recommend checking out the Birthright setting from AD&D 2nd edition. Birthright was more about the PCs being landed nobles than it was about knights, but nevertheless I believe a lot of focus of Birthright is relevant to a knight-oriented campaign, and likely useful and inspirational.

 

[GreyLord]

Assassinate the king. Have two other leaders in a power struggle. If they choose one, have that side promptly start losing and everyone aligned with it declared outlaws. A child of the leader they supported is with them, they have to flee and find where to hide and what to do to locate the leader, help the child, regain the throne, and restore the knighthood.