I have not used the Book of Feasts myself, since I had an older homebrew system in place that has worked fine so far. The more I hear about it and read it, the more I am thinking of switching or at least trying it out. Due to the previous, I tend to put Book of Entourage before Feasts in my recommendation order, but I could see it going the other way for most people. People are using Feasts a lot! I would do a couple of tweaks, though: 1) I'd switch the roles of APP and Glory around: Glory is where you sit, and APP is how many cards you get to draw. This makes more sense to me; your place is determined by your status (i.e. Glory), while your ability to interact is determined by how charming you are. 2) Rather than drawing all the cards at once, you draw them one by one and have to decide whether to play or discard it before drawing the next one. Once you are down to your last card, you HAVE TO play it. This way, even high APP characters can have some embarrassments. 3) I'd change the Glory so that it better reflects the size of the feast, especially the highest geniality reward. No one cares if you were light of the party in a small gathering of a few knights. The Highest Geniality should have a target number to beat, in order to model the NPKs, not just other PKs. Also, no free 100 Glory per pop just for attending a royal feasts, which are almost always at least one per year. Those are the main ones, I think.
Another really good review! Can you do more Pendragon reviews please.
I've got a bunch more Pendragon books, I'm trying to decide which one to cover next.
I have not used the Book of Feasts myself, since I had an older homebrew system in place that has worked fine so far. The more I hear about it and read it, the more I am thinking of switching or at least trying it out. Due to the previous, I tend to put Book of Entourage before Feasts in my recommendation order, but I could see it going the other way for most people. People are using Feasts a lot!
I would do a couple of tweaks, though:
1) I'd switch the roles of APP and Glory around: Glory is where you sit, and APP is how many cards you get to draw. This makes more sense to me; your place is determined by your status (i.e. Glory), while your ability to interact is determined by how charming you are.
2) Rather than drawing all the cards at once, you draw them one by one and have to decide whether to play or discard it before drawing the next one. Once you are down to your last card, you HAVE TO play it. This way, even high APP characters can have some embarrassments.
3) I'd change the Glory so that it better reflects the size of the feast, especially the highest geniality reward. No one cares if you were light of the party in a small gathering of a few knights. The Highest Geniality should have a target number to beat, in order to model the NPKs, not just other PKs. Also, no free 100 Glory per pop just for attending a royal feasts, which are almost always at least one per year.
Those are the main ones, I think.
Love the Book of Feasts. Great review!
Does the book have a random table that has these cards or do you have to buy the cards?
I told my GM that if we did nothing but feasts, I wouldn't be unhappy.