There was a genuine knight in our Border Princes WFRP2e game - a Brettonian exile who was a right bastard. Several nobles in the place itself who might qualify as knights if it were rich and developed enough - but again nasty pieces of work almost to a man. This is the place where the favoured method of political assassination is by poison.

If the setting calls for it, I'll almost always have a few NPC's that exemplify it. And I'll have a LOT of NPC's striving to meet that bar, but most NPC's will not understand the concepts of chivalry and honor (though they might think they do) enough to live up to it.

So most of the time it ends up looking very GoT.

I see a lot of people who have 'Knights' in name, but very few who are the romantic ideal of chivalrous...

Which is pretty much historically accurate.

Quote from: David Johansen;862335Which is pretty much historically accurate.

But not what the title of the post was asking.

Often. But rarely straight.

Usually as figures of self parody and quixotic comedy relief. A favorite recurring NPC was a dude named Sir Bruts Sans Pitie, who had the stereotypical, outrageous french accent. Simple, but the players loved him, and he was a decent if foolhardy fighter, so he stuck around.

Now I have plenty of non-chivalrous knights, because knights are a common enough elite martial/social class and chivalry is a particular code of cultural behavior that does not apply to most of them. There's a wide range of types as one could imagine.

You know, I've never had a player who wanted to play a romantic-style knight.

Quote from: saskganesh;862339A favorite recurring NPC was a dude named Sir Bruts Sans Pitie, who had the stereotypical, outrageous french accent.

I approve of this name.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;862416I approve of this name.

And his accent.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;862416I approve of this name.

Total rip from Tom Mallory. Except there, he was a bad guy.

For most campaigns I've played or DMed, a knight was just another guy bearing arms: the outcome of the encounter depended on who did what to whom, and PCs wouldn't hesitate to attack a knight who tried to coerce them, for example. That changed quite a bit when the Cavalier class was introduced, along with intrigue among the upper classes. Suddenly, "If he's being a dick I'll kill him and take his stuff!" wasn't the preferred option.

Dark Albion is not a chivalrous world, not anymore certainly (if it ever was); on the contrary it is a world where the ideals of knighthood are profoundly tried by civil war and corruption.  But there's ample room for player characters to play Knights who still hold to the theoretical ideals of a pious and/or chivalrous knight.

In the two original campaigns of Dark Albion there were at least a couple of characters who tried to do this.  One ended up dead, the other became at least somewhat compromised by his family's scheming.  It was fascinating.

Of course, the Dark Albion book itself makes mention of Mallory, who was a knight during the Rose War, and the circumstances of who he served, and how he died, and how all of that directly influenced his Morte D'Arthur. I really think it was in some way a commentary on the horrors of the time in which he lived.

Literal knights in shining armour, I have those when the setting calls for it:).
People that try to live up to some sort of knightly ideals, pretty often. Some of them succeed, some fail, and some succeed in a way that's more disturbing than the failures, but there tend to be people you'd like to be friends with in pretty much every campaign;).