A couple of questions re Hawkmoon

[tarkhan bey]

Hawkmoon is great, but I have a few questions regarding some of the content.
There appear to be a couple of flaws on the armour table.There is no Chainmail skirt and no apparent difference between Heavy leather hauberk and leather hauberk except for the price. Am I right to assume that the correct armour points for the lighter leather hauberk should be 1ap and that there should be a higher Enc and Skill penalty for the Heavy hauberk?
What are the stats for the mail skirt?
In the combat chapter it states that a character has as many combat reactions as he has combat actions in a round. Is this an either/or situation or can a character with Dex15 make three parries as well as having three attacks?
The last question is one of geography. On the map at the rear of the book the city of Bothnia seems to be in the middle of the Kalmar Union. Am I right in assuming that this is an error and that Bothnia should be placed roughly in the region of Finland and possibly the Baltic states?

 

[Mongoose Gar]

Chain Skirt - AP5, Enc 2, Protects legs, 800 SP, -10%.
The lighter hawberk should be -2% skill penalty, not -4% skill.
Your right - it's three parries + three attacks.
Yep - Bothnia should be in Finland. And for that matter, Vitall is in Londra, not the middle of Eire.

 

[Loz]

Chain Skirt - AP5, Enc 2, Protects legs, 800 SP, -10%.
The lighter hawberk should be -2% skill penalty, not -4% skill.
Your right - it's three parries + three attacks.
Yep - Bothnia should be in Finland. And for that matter, Vitall is in Londra, not the middle of Eire.

The old Chaosium map placed Kroiden somewhere near Bristol...

 

[Lord High Munchkin]

Dear All,

Mind you Kanbery on the Mongoose map is no where near Kent either....

Regards

 

[Mongoose Gar]

Eh. Just give the map to your players and tell 'em it's accurate. They can complain when they're lost and being chased by zombies or something.

 

[Mage]

I like it. All part of Granbrettanian deception and trickery...
Plus if they complain it is not accurate, you can penalise them for using player knowledge.

 

[atgxtg]

When the players get to Granbetran with their map. Be sure to take down all the road signs for reasons of national defense.

 

[Mage]

Well, obviously the signs would get taken down if any party got into granbretan, it would be a proble, and means something has gone awfuly astray for the Dark Empire.

 

[Lord High Munchkin]

Dear All,

Yes that all works - unless the PCs are Granbrettanian, then the map just brcomes silly.

Regards

 

[duncan_disorderly]

Dear All,

Yes that all works - unless the PCs are Granbrettanian, then the map just brcomes silly.

Regards

Just recall the regular press stories about how a frightning number of school leavers (both in the UK and the US)* are unable to identify their own country on a map! If the PC's come from the misplaced cities then yes, you do have a problem, (or at least have to come up with an explanation why they are not where they thought they were), but otherwise, well they just got confused (Southport, Southend, Southsea - aren't tehy all in roughly the same place?)




*and probably other countries too, but we don't care about them - they're full of foreigners...

 

[Loz]

And Grand Constables are so notoriously arrogant they might well have had their seat of title deliberately relocated either because they could, or because they had to...

 

[Lord High Munchkin]

Dear All,

Well, I could understand if PCs were from some minor European court - but we're talking about Granbetran, the centre of the world, the only civilised nation on the planet, the cradle of all that which Aral Vilsn deems worthy!!!

I imagine that nearly all Granbetranians have an excellent knowledge of geography - sadly one that falls apart approximately 2 kilometres beyond Karlye... well, everything else is just waste inhabited by untermenschen and of little interest except for what can be taken from it.

Regards

 

[atgxtg]

I don't have the Hawkmoon RPG so I'm not sure about the differences in character generation, but isn't there some sort of Lore, Culture or Geography skill that Granbretan PCs could use to know their way around?


Something like, Knowledge (Homeland)?

 

[Sabbak]

I imagine that nearly all Granbetranians have an excellent knowledge of geography

False.
All Granbretanians have excellent knowledge of:
1) battle
2) war discipline
3) how to torture undermen

Learning geography (or history, or litterature, or...), even for one's own country, is simply not worth the trouble. It's a waste of time.
You have some specialized ordrers (let's say "Rabbits") who know those things.

Plus, imagine that most of the Grabretanian soldiers (quite 90% of this twisted society) are educated in special catacombs and tunnels by the Sorority sisters (or at least, that was part of the background of the old french edition... A very cool vision in my opinion!).

Finally, there can be MANY reasons for a name to be displaced. How many years has past since today in Hawkmoons world? Two... five centuries? One.. two millenia? Things changes...

 

[tarkhan bey]

Do you think that the percentage of beastmask's is really as high as 90%? I would probably go for a smaller percentage in the new Mongoose vision given that it seems that there are now guild masks etc. I would probably go with between 50 and 60% in actual Beastmask orders.
Does anybody have any idea of roughly how many Beastmask soldiers there might actually be? Adaz Promp offers Meliadus the services of half a million Hounds at the battle of Londra. To me, that suggests that the numbers must be vast.
In comparison, what sort of populations might the other nations of Europe have?

 

[Lord High Munchkin]

Dear All,

All Granbretanians have excellent knowledge of:
1) battle
2) war discipline
3) how to torture undermen

Not exactly....

Remember that the Beast Orders are only a small part of the Granbretan nation (although the only section that other Europeans will likely come into contact with). Most Granbretanians are members of the Freemen, Labourers and Guildsmen classes. These masses will have none of those skills, but will probably have excellent knowledge of local Granbretanian conditions and the skills required for their occupations. Never leaving the country they would be pretty au fait with Granbretanian geography but hopeless on anything "foreign".

As to the Sorority, I believe it has been dropped as an idea in Mongoose 'Hawkmoon' in favour of dedicated beast schools (or at least I couldn't find any reference to the Sorority still existing). I do agree with you however that something along the lines of "Huon's Cubs" or "Huon Youth" would be a splendid addition, training all in good upright Granbretanian values and selecting out those suitable candidates for the various beast schools.

Regards

p.s. This does allow, as an adventure seed, the idea of some non-Granbretanian PCs discovering after slaughtering some Beasts somewhere in Europe, a wagon full of Granbretanian guildsmen and their equipment who have naturally no idea of where they are. Do the PCs kill them, or even take them home? The guildsmen would, of course as Granbretanians, be arrogant and condescending.

 

[Lord High Munchkin]

Dear All,

In the first French version, 'L'Empire Tenebreux' has Londra listed as having a population of 12 million Grabretanians, 20 million slaves and 100,000 mutants.

Those were the only statistics for the populated regions of Grabretan - so that seems a little bit too low in my opinion.

I can't find the population statistics off-hand in the 'Hawkmoon Nouvelle Edition' Grabretanian book 'Fils de Grabretanne'. However, it might be the same.

Mongoose 'Hawkmoon' has changed the geography of Grabretan radically so those figures are probably out the window now in any case.

Regards

 

[atgxtg]

p.s. This does allow, as an adventure seed, the idea of some non-Granbretanian PCs discovering after slaughtering some Beasts somewhere in Europe, a wagon full of Granbretanian guildsmen and their equipment who have naturally no idea of where they are. Do the PCs kill them, or even take them home? The guildsmen would, of course as Granbretanians, be arrogant and condescending.

Maybe not so arrogant after all. Since Granbretan is a warrior-elite based culture, it is possible that the lower class citizens would probably be more servile. Think of pre-20th Century Britain, with it's social caste system.

"Ello Guv'nor! Need your armor polished?"

In some ways, that would make the Runestaff sage more believable, since Hawkmoon and allies would only need to defeat/rehabilitate the beast orders, rather than the entire population.

 

[Lord High Munchkin]

Dear All,

Mind you even pre-20th century Britons of all classes knew instinctively that they were the greatest nation on the face of the earth.

I'm sure the Granbretanians of the late 53rd century, after all their years of programming, would be still even more arrogant!

The fact that the Beasts are only a minority does make the novels more understandable, in that even after all the defeats, Granbretan still functions.

Regards

 

[atgxtg]

Dear All,

Mind you even pre-20th century Britons of all classes knew instinctively that they were the greatest nation on the face of the earth.

Unfortunately that seems to be true of the peoples of most nations on the Earth in any century. The norm is for people to think that their nation/culture is the best, and everyone else is inferior. A good deal of the world problems today stem from just that sort of mindset.

That said, in most class-based cultures, people of the lower classes are brought up to be polite to those of higher station, even if they are foreigners.

It might be that 53rd century guildmen and other commoners might still be servile to nobles, like say, Duke Dorian. OF course that wouldn't apply to the European Common folk. Could lead to situations like:

"Yes M'lord. I'll fix the road just as soon as I can get some work out of these bloody wogs. Probably been digging with pointed sticks instead of shovels, the savages."

Lots of role-play potential there.