Hi Mordredd:
As you said, a team may work wonderfully, but if it doesn't line up with any fluff, then it can never be official. Agreed.
But consider:
>Because they're meant to be like Arthurian style knights, not like real life medieval
>ones. They should be more about serving the people than the people serving them.
You say they are meant to be Arthurian. I disagree.
a) As we all know, BB fluff and warhammer fluff are related, but not identical.
b) The BB universe is often dirtier than the "appeal to 10-year-olds warhammer universe".
b) As Fen pointed out, new WFRP fluff paints a much more ambiguous picture of the Brets.
c) From the Warhammer (not Roleplay) website description of Man-At-Arms:
"The inductee is given an extravagant bounty for joining, though this all too often vanishes as the new recruits are expected to pay for their new uniform, equipment, and even make a contribution to the temples of Shallya. They are given room (a rough straw mattress in a barn) and board (thin gruel and stew) and earn a wage for their faithful service. On paper, their wage is quite generous, far exceeding anything a peasant could otherwise legally earn, but what the militiamen actually receive is but a mere fraction of this total – if indeed they receive anything at all. Every conceivable expense is deducted from this salary, from their food and accommodation through to each and every equipment loss and breakage – some miserly lords will even levy a charge for any funeral expenses incurred!"
If that is Arthurian, then it is Arthurian with a pronounced disdain for the conditions of your underlings. So, my team lines up perfectly with this feudal and gritty description fluff, even if it doesn't meet your personal perception.
>Because a BB team is more like an individual regiment than an army so mixing nobs and peons
>together is like mixing Mounted Squires (and mounted Peasants) into your Grail Knights unit.
Nonsense.
Skaven regiments with gutter runners and rat ogres. No sir.
Zombie regiments with ghouls, mummies and wights....?
>Because Bretonnian society is very elitist and there is no obvious reason why they would find
>it difficult to fill all 16 available roster spots on a team with elite players. Nor is
>there, IMO, a good reason why they wouldn't want to.
Well, BB has at it's team design core some rather illogical combinations. Care to explain why an undead team would ever use skeletons, when they could have wights? Why would a Human team ever use linemen? Seems like there are plenty of blitzers out there. Heck, I've had a human team with enough cash to go all-blitzers if I wanted.
But the game doesn't work that way.
Lousy peons, like skeletons and zombies, for some reason make their way into BB.
If anything, The Brettonian team has a decent excuse.
There just aren't that many nobles with time for Blood Bowl.
If they aren't at war, some prefer jousting, and others traditional questing.
So once you've got a few knights together and their personal squires, what to do?
Knights use their "conscripting powers" (Website: "all commoners can be called upon by a knight to serve him in battle.") to force the best peasants from the all-peasant BB clubs, to play as cannon fodder on the nobles' team.
But, as stated. A reason isn't even needed.
Finally, you've stated in the past that the team ought to reflect that players can develop into other types of players, by playing BB.
To this I say that playing BB will not advance your rank in the feudal society.
You can not win enough games to become duke or even king.
These players play BB like what they are, be it squire or nobleman.
And if they changed, for outside reasons, they'd play differently.
So, except for the rare exception, a (say) lineman is a lineman for the length of his BB career.
And it simply isn't within the scope of the game to explain players that happen to make a transition between position types.
Similarly, a Dwarf (blocker) could in theory do something shamefull, (like missing a key tackle), and as a result choose to become a slayer. That doesn't mean that the logic of the game, or even JJ, is required to explain where that ex-blockers tackle skill went.
So, the fluff demands have been met.
Which gets me back to playtest feedback, which has been very positive.
Cheers
Martin
