Then they both set out and went straight to Carlion where King Arthur was holding court – and a most intimate affair it was, with a mere three thousand knights of high repute!
Chrétien of Troyes, Perceval
I want Camelot to be present but not too present and one dial we have to turn on that is: “How big is the Round Table?”1 and who is in it?
This varies across the different legends - from as small as 13 to as large as the thousands. There’s a lot in the 60’s to low-hundreds range, I feel.
I like 13 (or 12 + the king)2 - which puts it as a pretty high bar.
- There’s a clear metaphor to the 12 Disciples which is sometimes called out in the texts3.
- We’re emphasizing time passing it makes sense to have knights enter and leave the table4 and we have more time to cycle through knights and thus still get a lot of characters in the Round Table sequentially.
- Even then, it’s a high bar. I think that makes it feel all the better if someone can make it, while making it feel like it’s something to aspire to without being something people have to aspire to.
- Over a similarly small number like 25, 13 I think is easy to remember and to display - I have a spot for it on the map - which makes it less of a faceless blob of knights to players.5
I will cheat on this with lesser tables - the Queen’s Knights, the Table of Errant Companions6 - to credential canon characters who normally would be in the Round Table in other stories7, and to be a step to the more prestigious one; but even this I think should be < 60 knights and rare company to be in.
Footnotes
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Which, of course, for the purposes of this game is asking the question Can I get into the Round Table? and If I can, how big of a deal is it? ↩
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And, really, 11. Because of the Siege Perilous. That’s a much higher bar of entry. ↩
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Even ones which have larger sets (sometimes because they’re multiples of 12, sometimes because of less obviously numerically useful ones). ↩
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Probably mostly by deaths, though could be interesting to see some other ways to be rejected from it. ↩
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And this gives players a small set of knights who everyone probably knows, who can be references for anything (need your character to declare they had a role model? Quick, do any of these knights look good?), and who usually are interesting and important in the story anyway. ↩
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Unrelated to these is also another group of knights - the Grail Knights (which I’d fashion as a short name for something more flowery like Knights of St Joseph of Arimathea and the Grail Temple). My current mental model for these is not nearly as restricted. Grail Knights I feel fits as a pretty broad tent driven by a shared vocation - at some times feeling a bit like a fad, at others a more genuine brotherhood of purpose. ↩
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Especially ones who aren’t kings and don’t have an obvious role in the king’s household, who have plenty of other excuses to be remembered as important. ↩