I think this would be an interesting game to run. There are a lot of little, self contained systems that add up to be a somewhat interesting toolkit. It could be fun to lean into the procedural aspects and just see what happens. This would oddly be a good starting point to recommend to someone who wants to experiment with something OSR.
That said, I do find it a little flat or over the plate. It is an oldschool style game that does what you imagine it does. I haven't been particularly inspire by anything in it. There are many tables, but none really take any swings on anything. They are filled with exactly what you'd expect. If you are interested in playing a fairly grounded, medieval inspired low fantasy setting, this gives you to framework to generate it.
It is an unfortunate fact that my brain functions in terms of ordered lists, yet I am uncompelled by them. A list of one thousand terms will never be as evocative to me as a single paragraph. The implications of an interesting concept in a list is far less interesting than that concept existing an a context. I am not excited to create a world with Knave. I may feel differently if options on this list were interesting.
I've been writing bits of this as I go. Now nearing the end, I think I've stumbled upon one of the issues I have with the game. There's been this thing nagging at me the entire read: this game feels like a simulacra of a tabletop game. Or perhaps, more fully the experience of interacting with a tabletop game. The aesthetic is vaguely nostalgic, while not attempting to be in any way authentic. The layout is perfectly reasonable and legible, but provides little friction (in this way it is a mirror to something like Mork Borg, which is more artbook than practical reference book). Contained within, there is something resembling a perfectly generic fantasy setting that could have been invented at any point since the turn of the 20th century, yet lacking in the hard edges, or at the risk of repeating myself: friction.
And I understand that the intention is that I and my table would be filling in the gap. At the same time, bricks are still bricks, no matter how skillfully I may arrange them. I don't need things to be gonzo all the time, but I would like them to be inspired. I can of course, make the world that I want to, but at that point, why bother with this game? That's harsh and a little disingenuous. I see the issues with this line of thought. I just can't shake it with this game.
I don't want that to sound overly negative. Really, I find it entirely inoffensive. I'm just not getting much out of it. I feel like this and WWN should have maybe swapped spots in my reading list and I may have felt differently. The two seem oddly aligned while still being almost entirely unrelated in form. It's interesting that there isn't a system for generating a dungeon itself. That' may just be left up to the gm
The game's efficient introduction of systems is good. The divine magic and relic stuff is good. That is one part that sticks out to me as being a much more interesting use of rules text to build out the world. Encounter rules and dungeon hazard charts have some good ideas. I really like the "Shift" and "Sign" outcomes. Those are somethings that I will be taking forward. This game wears its heart on its sleeve.
What can we learn from this?
Maneuvers are a simple way to call out creative actions in combat.
Use systems to carve out space for modes of play and types of world interaction. Divine magic here.
Make alchemy interesting or don't use it. Crafting doesn't need to exist in a game. Same with building and such, if that isn't a main focus of the game's loop or fantasy, maybe you can just skip it. Not a major sin, but don't feel like it's needed.
Random systems can be used to interesting ends, but the specific potentials influence how compelling or useful I find them.
the way game text conveys the playing of the game is important.
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thinking about what a perfect (for me) fantasy ttrpg system would look like.
a great base system to hack onto would be sword and wizardry complete revised along with the book of options. the classes in that have to me the perfect balance between being simple and easy to pick up while still being clearly distinct from each other. though i would probably substitute in the d6 thief skills from carcass crawler #1.
one thing i do not like however, as sacred as it is in osr games, is the 3d6 down the line attribute generation. or the distinction between attribute score and bonus in general. i much prefer having attribute scores be directly the bonuses and having full control over them. so i would add in something like the the attribute generation in knave 2e, where you start with 3 points to distribute as you choose and then get further points on level ups. though of course that means i have to redo some stuff in the s&wcr classes. i can live with just scrapping prime requisite xp boni completely, but for example what about the monk abilities that only activate at 15 DEX/WIS? i guess they can just activate at +2 but the whole thing would probably need some rebalancing.
i'm also partial to attacks auto-hitting like in mark of the odd games. though of course that has huge ramifications for everything else. obviously it affects how armor works and all AC values have to be redone. but also, what would the to-hit improvements of e.g. the fighter translate into? maybe something like shock damage from worlds without number?
for inventory management, i really like slot-based inventory systems. something like in mausritter is just really pleasing to me.
do any of you have suggestions for how one could fit all this together? anything awesome i missed that should be in there?
Hiya! I took a lil break this month from developing my next Zinequest crowd funder to throw my gay hat in this ring. I did all the illustrations and most of the writing/design. My good friend Wayne of Kismet Games did layouts and came up with the tiny gods fiasco for one of the adventure scenarios. I'm really happy with how our entry turned out and am glad to contribute to Knave's rich gaming tapestry!
Knave 2e for characters & core mechanics. Some light houseruling for things like initiative & reactions using community ideas I've read online, in Knock!, and some of my own homebrewings.
jodthecod's Knave 2 character sheet
OSE Referee's tome for monster stats and magic items.
The Monster Overhaul to flesh out NPCs and monsters. Maybe use the statblock if I prefer it over OSE.
To make dungeons, I use the six room dungeon generator. I populate it with traps I've garnered from random tables around the net, most notably 34 good traps. Lots of random tables in Knave to help with dressing & themes, npc motivations, etc.
OSE GM screen has the best art. I use the 2 knave end leaf spreads and some of my own houseruling notes blutacked on the inside.
A5 Binder for rearrangeable campaign notes, tracking dungeon turns, monster HP etc.
I keep all the books and notes I can in a a5 card box from Muji.
Meeples as miniatures when combat gets too tricky for theatre of the mind. Pictured: fighting peryton (donkeys) on a fishing sloop with mercs (white) and sailors (green).
A pint. Makes me dumber. Might be the one part of the setup I should do without maybe.
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Knave 2e is a classless game with no skills or abilities. Everything is diegetic - if one of your two careers was that you were a sailor, it's safe to assume you're good at sea stuff, ropes, etc.
I like to distance myself from the 5e playstyle, but I gotta admit, feats and classes are a guilty pleasure. It's not great when your entire character sheet is full of abilities you need to navigate (and it's good to avoid the pitfall of if you DON'T have the lockpick feat, you CAN'T attempt lockpicking). But just a little something you can pop off is fun. I imagined these like commander abilities in wargaming, which are always limited. When to use it as a limited resource is a tactical decision, which is what games are all about.
So this is my attempt to make the Knave-iest feats I could. I tied them to tools, because I wanted the focus to stay on inventory management and the idea that you have practiced with a particular tool. It's also quite interesting if something threatens to take away the item you need to use your tool tactic. I have a player that's specialising in the Rations tool tactic and he's just become a total glutton, he bought a whole cartful of rations to start on this next quest. The quest of which the first stage is travelling through a swamp.
These would also be an elegant way to introduce races into Knave. Dwarves might pick a weapons tactic (especially axes), elves an esoteric one, halflings a tools one.
Oh, and there's a THIRD feature these are replacing: weapon qualities. I'm kinda fascinated by how different medieval weapons have different uses in (and out of) warfare, and this is my way to bring some of that to the table without going all Gygax on this (i.e. making this game a simulation with rules for absolutely everything).
Oh and a FOURTH thing these are a stand-in for: BX utility spells that don't have a parallel in Knave. Wizards need to do things like identify magic items, resist elements, or have a reliable attacks. This brings some of those back. These require the use of a wand, which I rule as this:
Wands
1 item slot. Includes staves, crystal orbs, etc. A wand allows magic users to:
Identify magical items that want to be identified.
With spoken incantation and wand-waving, cast from a spellbook on their person without getting it out.
Make a little shower of harmless sparks.
Cast wand Tool Tactics. The use of wands requires some magical ability, so your number of wand Tool Tactics can’t exceed your INT.
Custom Tool Tactics
Working with the GM, you can create a custom Tool Tactic if you wish. The GM writes the final draft of the Tool Tactic, and has licence to tweak it between sessions if it’s too strong or weak.
Guidelines for writing a good tool tactic:
Require an item.
Always gives a positive benefit when used. No chance of total failure.
Not be something that can be naturally attempted, e.g. blinding someone with pocket sand. A good Tool Tactic allows you to break the rules of the game system in some way.
Create, not eliminate, opportunities for creative problem solving.
You might decide to tweak an existing Tool Tactic. (e.g., Fire is Alive could work for poison damage instead)
d20 Tool Tactics
At character creation, choose one Tool Tactic that you can use once per day, if you have the tool. Add the tool to your inventory if you don’t have it.
Gain a new Tool Tactic when you Level Up. Take the same Tool Tactic again to get more uses per day.
Weapon
1. Axes are Tools. Quickly smash open a wooden door, treasure chest, or intricate mechanism with an axe. Decrease damage suffered from the immediate consequences by 5.
2. Blunt Trauma Knockout. When you or an ally kills a nearby foe, use this tactic to rush in with a club or staff to render them safely unconscious for d6×10 minutes, instead of dead.
3. Bows are for Hunting. After rolling a ranged weapon attack*, hit or miss: add +5 to hit and +d6 damage. (*bows, crossbows, slings)
4. Flails Swing Back. After rolling a chain weapon attack*, hit or miss: add +5 to hit and +d6 damage. (*flails, whips, nunchucks)
5. Maces Crack Armour. When your mace or warhammer hits a foe protected by rigid plating* reduce their AC by d6, to a minimum of 12. (*knights, robots, giant crabs)
6. Polearms Hold the Line. After hitting an enemy with a polearm, use this tactic to keep that enemy at bay. On its next turn it has -5 to hit with all melee attacks.
7. Shield Wall. Use your shield to reduce the damage of an attack you take by d6. Doesn't work against area affects (splashes, explosions, dragon breath).
8. Swords are Heroic. Make 2 bonus attacks with a sword, targeting two different enemies.
Tools
9. Backpacks are Spacious. Flashback to a memory of the last time you went shopping. You can buy one item from d100 Tools (Knave p. 39), adding it to your inventory as if you are just now remembering your purchase.
10. Boots Fare Well. During overland travel, scout ahead in sturdy footwear, returning in 4 hours with news of the hex ahead and d6 rations.
11. Breakfast is Vital. Eat a ration for breakfast to give yourself +d6 HP for the day.
12. Cloaks Break your Shape. Whilst sitting still wrapped in a cape of a colour matching your environment, fool d6 pairs of eyes into mistaking you for inanimate scenery.
13. Herbs Ease the Pain. Use a healing kit stocked with bandages, splints, and medicinal herbs to heal someone for d6 HP and restore consciousness.
14. Knives are for Sneakin'. Produce a knife you've had hidden upon your person this whole time. Its first attack roll has +d6 to hit.
15. Music Soothes. d6 HD worth of creatures listening to you play a musical instrument have their strongest emotions dulled for 10 minutes.
16. Ropes Hold Fast. If you take damage from falling a dangerous height, use a rope to somehow reduce the damage to just d6, even if there are spikes at the bottom.
Wands
17. Counterspell. With a reactionary flick of a wand, nullify an unfriendly spell. You must declare this before the spell’s effects begin. If the spell’s level is equal or exceeds your INT, win an INT contest against the caster to nullify.
18. Magic Missile. Range 120', auto-hit, d6 damage.
19. Resist Fire. Gain resistance to fire for 10 minutes.
Mundane fire: 0 damage.
Magical fire: -5 damage.
20. Reveal Magic. Identify magical items, recognise enchantments, reveal hidden curses, or see the invisible for 10 minutes.
End of last session, I gave my players *A Quest*. Whole nine yards, given to them by Baron Blacktow himself at their first meeting. High stakes, potential for action and diplomacy. Yes, very fantasy template, but I'm not writing alternative fiction here, I'm rolling dice with some blokes in a pub after work. Basic-bitch tropes save time and get everyone on the same level straight away. Anyway.
Here's the situation:
A dragon has started hostilities against the borderlands territory of Blacktow.
Baron Blacktow, an experienced monster slayer, needs dwarf-made flameproof armour.
Make contact with the lost dwarf civilisation of this country. Commission the creation of this armour as the start of the trade agreement.
Here's the map of the Blacktow Barony, in the borderlands of Nurea:
I've ran overland travel in Knave 2e before, when the players travelled between Ill Cave and the 'frogmen' dungeon and Fief Sudley. Hexes are 6 miles across, 4 hours (or a 'watch') to cross. So that's three a day.
I was not enjoying it, honestly. First watch: Roll, nothing happens. Second watch: Roll, nothing happens. Third: Roll, encounter! Its a yeti. It hasn't spotted you. Oh, you guys wanna hide? Uh, you're in the wilderness so you can climb a tree and get away easy enough.
So in the end, quite often, nothing happens.
Conversely, in the dungeon, procedures add tension and introduce danger, but threats in the wilderness are just feel more like an unnecessary obstacle. I think this is because of these reasons:
In the Dungeon, you're in a limited space with the threat. It's immediate.
In the Dungeon, this room also has a function, trap, treasure, or some kind of dressing to make it more interesting and set the context of any random encounters that crop up.
In the Dungeon, you can't rest unless you find somewhere that's explicitly safe. In the wilderness, you can camp anywhere. This means you have to push forward into a new room, or backtrack, which can be skipped through.
I frikkin love dungeons. It just distils everything you could possibly want from a RPG game into it's purest form. It's easy to write as a GM, and every moment is gameable. When I'm not in a dungeon, I find I'm letting sentences hang, or asking, "what do you want to do?" a lot more. Killing time. In a dungeon, it's a much more natural feedback loop of situation > player reaction > new situation > player reaction. So good.
So I think the solution here is to try recontextualising the hex map as a dungeon. Each hex is a room, and it takes 4 hours to travel from one room to the next.
That means I need to populate each hex. I can't stand by and let the encounter table (or even the overloaded encounter die, sorry Ben) do the heavy lifting. It gets stale, repetitive. I can't always cobble together great encounter ideas on the fly. And rolling dice several times in a row waiting for something to happen kills me as a GM. I think in a rpg procedure that involves die rolling, maybe a good policy would be to disallow consecutive die rolls. Each roll should be punctuated with some kind of new information or decision required from the players. And no, "nothing happens" is not new information.
My number one way to populate dungeons with this blog post. Here's the short version: you can average out the procedural generation rules in D&D B/X (1981) to construct the average 6-room (or multiple of 6 room) dungeon that has basically the perfect balance of peril, intrigue, and reward. This is a great tool for automating this by the way. It's so much fun using this, and takes out a lot of the headache and paralysis when you're looking at a blank map. Running the generator, we have:
Treasure, trapped.
Empty.
Monster.
Interactive, Entrance.
Empty, Entrance.
Monster & treasure.
What does "entrance" equate to in this context, I wonder? Dungeon entrance? Monster lair? Maybe a secret that isn't easily found. Let's log this as something that can be found with a 4 hour "search" action but isn't apparent when you walk through it. You gotta have some secrets after all. Bonus points if the obvious element gives a clue that the element can be found in this hex. Now we're gaming!
Okay, let's execute this. Rockhome is East of the Blacktow Barony. Let's flesh out Eastwood! I've no idea what's there yet, let's pick the closest 6 hexes and fill them as if they were rooms.
Woodland treasure? Uh, it's near Fief Sudley. How about an upturned cart with some treasure in there? But how much?
An method I've considered adopting for 18 or 24 room dungeons (multiples of 6, so just run the generator 3-4 times and connect them) is that you should calculate how much gold is required for all members of your party to level up, and fill out the rooms with that. Half that treasure goes to the main hoard or is kept by the dungeon boss. The rest is divvied out in varied amounts.
But if the wilderness was overflowing with treasure, why would anyone enter a dungeon? No good. Let's be sparing with the treasure in those results that come up.
An upturned woodcutter's cart. 50c worth of fine Eastwood lumber (superficially treasure), rations (immediately useful "treasure") Signs of a struggle.
Hey, awesome! And now there's someone in Fief Sudley who lost a relative and is torn up about it. And a monster in one of the hexes we're about to populate has blood on their hands. Don't you love when fleshing out one thing adds a whole new dimension to another?
2. Empty.
When this comes up, I usually pick a room function like "torture chamber" or "kitchen" to make it something. Since we're in the wilderness, let's roll some results from some of the great d100 tables in Knave 2e. eggs, spring, shadowy. A shadowy spring with some eggs. Let's make them harmless animals, since we're not in monster territory yet.
2. Dense tree cover shadows over a natural spring. The air over the spring is thick with flycatchers skimming flies from the surface of the spring. Many can be seen nesting in the trees.
Extra rations, anyone?
3. Monster.
Yikes! Since this is rooted in one location, it's almost certainly a lair. Let's roll an OSE monster from the forest encounter table.
3. A devastated clearing a mile wide is in the centre of this forest hex, trees shorn down to the roots. Not a scrap of green or leaf litter remains. In the epicentre of this desolation is a large earthen burrow. 2d4 Driver Ants patrol around, 4d6 in the burrows feed anything they can find underneath to a ravenous fungus.
Monsters we roll lairs for will definitely appear on our encounter table, when we make it.
4. Interactive, entrance.
There's a good set of landmarks in the Sandbox Generator, let's pick one out. Riddle bridge. Fuck yes. But a bridge over what? Let's roll this into the 'entrance', which suggests something hidden: how about a massive fissure in the ground? Goes down, down, down. I've had a few of these bottomless pits appear before in dungeons, so they must be connected somehow. All I know right now is that flail snails crawl out of them. Anyway:
4. A massive fissure in the earth blocks the path from west to east. A makeshift bridge has been constructed by a fairy being. Entertain him with a game of riddles and he'll allow you to pass. Rappel down the fissure reveals a flail snail egg clutch, from which tame flail snails can be hatched and raised.
The best fairy statblock and description I've ever found has been in The Monster Overhaul by skerples. I won't spoil it, but I'll be using it for this. The Sphynx riddles in the same book will be good riddle fodder, but I don't know if a fey would think so... linearly. We'll see if I can think of anything better in the coming days.
5. Empty, entrance.
Again, Knave tables are my friend. Middens, desolate, overgrown. What can be found? A warehouse. I imagine that hidden rum cache from Pirates of the Caribbean.
5. A midden, piles of refuse. Deer carcasses, broken tools, broken glass and pottery, torn clothing. The artefacts are hand made, no machinery or advanced forging required. (GM note: a dumping ground for the Nurean rangers. There is a hidden cache of ancient Nurean weaponry in this hex, a watch of searching will reveal it. 100 swords, 100 shields, 200 spears, 200 unstrung shortbows, 100 gambesons, 100 helmets. This is the war cache of the Nurean rangers. The midden is here because twice a year they have a training festival).
6. Monster and treasure.
Since this seems like a bit of a boss monster, as it has a big hoard, let's reroll encounters until I get a big one. It's a catoblepas, which I'll flesh out with The Monster Overhaul.
6. Catoblepas pond. Ox/warthog with a long bristled neck, oily fur, reeks of noxious sludge. It has an expensive sword lodged in its back that it doesn't seem to care about. An unfortunate Foloressan knight is floating face-down in the pond, above a sack containing 1,800 coins.
Fantastic! I'll keep going and fleshing out Eastwood as a dungeon, but that's good enough for now. But the whole of Eastwood needs an encounter table. I'll populate it informed by the hexes I've just described, and a few OSE random forest encounters. As I add hexes to Eastwood, the encounter table may grow. I might be tempted to reduce the encounter chances from 1 in 6 to 1 in 8, as each watch has an encounter chance and it's easier to avoid notice in the forest.
The stinking catoblepas is truffling for mushrooms. Ox/warthog with a long bristled neck, oily fur, reeks of noxious sludge. It has a expensive sword lodged in its back that it doesn't seem to care about.
Nurean Rangers. They're on patrol, and will observe from a distance for several days until they can ascertain your intent/allegiance. 1 in 6 chance per day of them blowing their cover.
Fairies.
Driver ants, cutting down all in their path.
A Foloressan Knight, hunting the Questing Beast.
The Questing Beast. It will lead you to your doom.
Brigands.
Ogre.
Okay! Now I need to do that several more times for the biomes in the easterly direction from Blacktow, as that's the direction they'll be travelling in.
