knave is a such a funny ttrpg system cuz what do you mean this is a valid party comp

anyway i needed to doodle while listening to a scene play out i love my goblin goober

Here are the full notes for Knave 2e. I wish I came away with more from it. I’ll post the final thoughts separately.

Knave 2e Notes

• Starts with a quick reference. It’s odd to me when games are formatted like this. Just put it at the end.

Introduction

• Evokes the names of it’s origins immediately.
• Says the game is compatible with old school game system.
• This may be the first OSR/NSR borderline case. We’ll see who much it diverges in elements.
• I guess Cairn could be considered the same, but it’s sooooooo stripped down that I think it constitutes notable divergence.
• gameplay is open ended.
• Goal is to create believable secondary worlds that players explore.
• limited by the world’s internal logic and the GM’s ruling
• Holds pretty closely to the roots of the genre in terms of game structure and range of possible gameplay. Leave safety to seek fortune in dangerous ruins.

“Nothing in these rules is sacrosanct. The rules at your table will evolve over the course of the campaign, as you and your players tailor the to fit the way you like to play. This is a good thing. Altering the rules and writing your own is a time-honored part of the hobby and a critical part of becoming a great Game Master (and, in time, a game designer).”
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’ve 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.

Me Brain Hurts

Pre-weekend tree prayer beneath midnight blue.

Eerie sirens break the cold with shrieks to nowhere.

Above, the clouds hide war machines, same as the observers who’ve pushed us to this brink.

Yes, there’s multiple brinks.

Bass-rattled trunks will give way to the thunderous destructions at city’s edge.

A rumble at first, followed by the erasure of everything we’ve ever known.

But for now, the…

Me Brain Hurts

emiel the fool

im sure guys who wouldn’t go for a big lady are around but ive never actually heard this sentiment from any of them, presumably because they can sense i shan’t stand for such nonsense; that if they ever said they don’t want large ladies around me i would call them weak and cowardly and a leech upon the earth (rightfully)

wanted a doodle of something that happened in my knave game. not a fan of the coloring but hey ho have it anyway. Armor is really hard :(

Aaron Miller. Ruthless Knave.

Eh….

I’ve lost interest in this campaign for rn, but I’ll probably start a whole new one to get back into the swing of things. We’ll see

Sry abt the delay

I haven’t been able to get back into the swing of things, not least of all bc, until 2day, I had no idea what few hits I’d been getting were from this blog and was convinced nobody cared. But I’ll get back on it once my motivation returns

Also, while I didn’t say so, the plan was to switch to my own system once that got to a playable state, but frankly, using Knave has already given this its own mouthfeel I couldn’t properly replicate in my own system w/o just copying the system I’m already using. Plus I like Knave, and game design is a pain in the ass

Forever tumbling down rabbit holes even in what should be fun, simple hobbies. Have an idea for an RPG campaign - inspired by the latest TAZ, want to run a 64 NPC “Deathmatch Island” game.

Try to figure out what system to use, spend a few hours reskimming the various OSR games that I have physical copies of. Decide on Knave 2e, start making a template for NPCs and defining the process so that I can randomly roll 64 blorbos before putting them into the situation.

You know what they say, “If you want to make a biscuit from scratch, you have to first invent the universe.”

Can’t have a Deathmatch Island without a proper island map, so I use Hexgen to throw me something together. Decide that I want to put a hexgrid on it. Found an easy-looking GIMP tutorial (I’ve never used GIMP before), so install that and fire it up.

Next thing I’m going to learn - how to install and use some brushes to add some features to the map - little abandoned towns, plantations, ancient ruins, military forts, etc.

.

“🎵Gotta market yourself everybody, so everyone can see!🎵” /lyr

time to play “guess what song got stuck in K’s head this time”

Sat, July 19th

8am

Party begins travelling to the Dungeon, and also finds,signs

 of all things, glue

Noon

They enter the dungeon, and head right this time

12:10pm

The party encounters an underground brook- evidently the passage thru to the next level. They turn left, and the path from there leads into a salt marsh, and hear sounds of battle in the distance

12:20pm

They continue straight on, finding an abandoned pasture, and further straight and to the left they entered a small canyon, and decide to take a break

12:40pm

The path continues down a pass, the party turns left thru some Highlands on the other side, and on thru a Savannah, finding fallen trees

12:50pm

The party makes another left, entering into a Bamboo forest that appears to be on the edge of the abandoned Pasture from earlier, and make a right on into a sea of dunes that led on into another dungeon. 3rd level. And here they heard a neaby gravel flow

1pm

In the 1st room of level 3, they find a shaft leading back up to level 1. The party backtracks at full walking pace thru the dungeon, heading back up to the 1st level

1:10pm

They find the secret entrance to the shaft from the 1st floor and get to work setting up a rope so they can travel quicker between levels, using Eldon’s rope (50’ft/10 spaces)

1:20pm

They exit the dungeon for now

5:20pm

On their way home, a light rain starts, and they encounter a group of travelling traders making their way out of town

5:30pm

Eldon finishes the day by buying another 50’ rope for 10c

Theravan Reach

I made this for a ttrpg adventure with Knave2e :)

Hello..my child.