Well, the Saxons did historically interact quite a bit with the Roman Empire; the first undisputed mention of Saxons actually comes from a speech from a Roman emperor who names them as allies of his rival emperor in Gaul, and the Romans later built a military district called Litus Saxonicum (the Saxon Coast) on both sides of the English Channel to defend Britannia from their frequent raids. So while improbable, the idea of a tribe or even tribal confederation/kingdom of Saxons who adopted Roman ways isnāt at all impossible.
Iād say itās rather very improbable but then again thereās magic in the game. Painstaking historical accuracy is not the point.
Well since one version has Excaliber being forged by Weyland the Smith, perhaps Guen can find one of its sibling swords.
Celtic myth actually reminds me of wuxia actually, what with people killing three hundred people with one blow or traveling by jumping on and off spear heads. When I playtested gurps faeries I tried to get them to include the chi magic rules so one could have a matrix style game replacing the machines with faeries, but it was a no go, sadly.@thesunfloweramazon Itās been so long since I actually read TOAFK that I either forgot or missed that noteā¦ how sort-of progressive and yet backward at the same time ā but I guess thatās T.H. White in a lot of ways. I looked up a few more discussions of Lancelotās sexuality online. I havenāt read much about what other people have done with it (because I already know exactly how Iām going to handle it in the game)ā¦ Iām surprised at how rarely Galehaut gets mentioned in the discussions Iāve read. It seems like a lot of people arenāt even aware of that story, or they miss the subtext or something.
@Leingod and @Golgot My understanding is that in the third through fifth centuries, there was quite a lot of intermingling between Romans and Germanic groups in general, if not necessarily the Saxons in particular, to the point that lots of people of Germanic ancestry were Roman citizens and senators by the time of the late empire. But to the best of my knowledge, we donāt have any records of Romans and Saxons specifically joining forces in the way I describe. Itās made-up, and supposed to be blatantly so, as a signal to anyone who might be playing the game in hopes of strict historical authenticity ā if thatās what a given reader is looking for, there are other games theyāll probably enjoy more than this one. I tend to revel in anachronism. 
@stsword Oh, I used to have such a crush on Weyland when I was younger, and Iād kind of forgotten about that! I even named one of my computers after him (I name all of my computers). Surely I can work a Weyland reference into the game somewhere. And I had never thought about that Celtic feats - wuxia connection, but it makes a lot of sense to me. The Celtic stuff Iāve read is also not incomparable to, say, Journey to the West.
Poor Galehaut! Heās always ignored, poor bby. And yeah itās a bit surprising that itās always looked over in discussions about that, itās pretty explicit in Lancelot-Grail. I learned about him from Arthur, King of Time and Space, I think?
No idea about who is Galehaut, but in Spanish tradition, there are lots of jokes about the masculinity of Lancelot presenting him as a Barbie basically. Part of tradition is him as a sinner womanizer half is him as a sinner for love arthur too much. But he is clearly portrait as bad.
@poison_mara Really? Huh, so essentially heās what a man is not supposed to be? Am I getting that right?
In old Spain with inquisition said a man is too feminineā¦ It was a subtle form to suggest sodomy that was punible with San Benito public shame exposure tortures and frequently hanging or burned alive.
Oh my.
You could die in old Spain for donāt eat bacon on Sundays,
for having a black cat or my favorite just for going to much too church a girl was accused for try pervert clerics :((
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Jeesh, walkinā a thin line! Sounds like back in the Dark Ages when everything and anything could get you in trouble, assuming someone -though- you were doing something or other.
@the sunfloweramazon Honestly I canāt believe how blatant the Galehaut stuff is (buried in the same grave?! come on, people) and how rarely it gets talked about. Needless to say Galehaut will be appearing in the game (part 3).
@poison_mara @FoxalypticWorld Old Spain sounds like a scary scary place. Like basically if people donāt like you they will find a way to condemn you for something? Going to church too much, seriously? Itās depressing, how far people have gone over the centuries to terrify young women into submission.
Spanish old said āBesides the cross is where demon standsā also many clerics poets ironically at less two of them become saints were jailed or persecuted by inquisition. But the funny thing is many books have been conserved thanks inquisition censorship archives, lewd poems science articles, etc. So freedom of thinking won at the end.
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@jeantown @Golgot
The geographical area the Romans called Gaul, which they of course split into several regions when they conquered much of it, encompasses modern-day France and the lands of Germany east of the Rhone. The Gauls were a Celtic people (well, lots of peoples, but you know how those Romans are) who eventually adopted much of Roman culture and created a Romano-Gallic culture, and indeed many of them counted among the senators and emperors of later Rome (there was even a few emperors who came from Britannia). Parts of those lands in modern-day Germany west of the Rhone were inhabited by the same people who inhabited the lands the Romans called Germania, the Germani. It is these to whom people usually refer to when they speak of Germanic peoples who were part of the Roman Empire; the lands east of the Rhone and north of the Danube made up Germania and stayed free of the Empire, but they did in fact frequently come into conflict with the Romans as did basically everyone at Romeās borders. The Saxons actually come from lands called āOld Saxonyā in what is now the north of modern-day Germany; specifically, the earliest area of Saxon settlement is in modern Holstein. The Saxons are sometimes mentioned by name in Roman accounts, usually as enemy raiders but at least once as the allies (mercenaries) of a would-be emperor during the one of the frequent civil wars that occurred in the Empire at the time.
No real point to that, I guess, Iām just a history nerd (and major).
My first statement in the above post was in error: the land of Gaul started WEST of the Rhone, not east.
@poison_mara Here in the USA we sometimes say that the anti-gay conservative groups spend more time thinking about gay sex than actual gay people having actual sex. Sounds like a similar phenomenon.
@Leingod History nerdery is certainly welcome here (as long as people donāt mind that my game is only very loosely inspired by history, and is also deliberately anachronistic ā but that doesnāt mean I donāt like history). I always wish we had more documentation from non-Roman, non-Christian Europeans in the early Middle Ages. Since the Romans (and eventually the Christians) did most of the writing, it seems like everything we know is from their point of view. Iām always suspicious when people start lecturing me about what early paganism was āreallyā like, since most of what little we know is filtered through Latin-writing Christians. Anyway, it sounds from your description like I was wrong and it was more Gaulish than Germanic people who integrated with the later Roman Empire (though Iāve been led to believe that a lot of scholarship is still being done on that period, and unlike the so-called Classical period, which has been researched to death, thereās still a lot we havenāt figured out about Late Antiquity).
Hey everybody, just thought Iād throw in a little progress update, since I donāt want anyone to think Iāve stopped working!
Iām still struggling with scene 9, but pushing through bit by bit. I had thought I might skip ahead and start another scene, but my brain just wonāt let me do thatā¦ Iām too much of a sequential thinker, I guess. Scene 9 is turning out to be tough for a number of reasons, one of which is that itās not really very Arthurian, compared to the rest of part 2, so I keep asking myself why I thought it would be a good idea to go totally off the Arthurian mapā¦ but scenes 10 and 11 should feel much more like they belong, I think, and Iām really really looking forward to writing the end.
I also wrote the fast-forward tool youāll be able to use to skip to part 2. (It will appear when part 2 does.) Itās still kind of buggy, but at least the basic framework is there.
Iām also planning to make a few little āencyclopediaā entries about the world and background accessible through the stats screen. Theyāre not in the game yet, but you can read them on my blog:
light and dark magic
religion
marriage, sexuality, and children
geography and nationality
historical (in)accuracy and anachronism
Some of this is stuff Iāve already talked about here or on the blog, but I think it will be helpful to include it in the game.