Skip to main content

Knaves, fancypants

I've prepared a new layout document of Ben Milton's Knaves.

Knaves is a great, light rules set that has an extremely elegant core mechanic while retaining total compatibility with OSR material. It's pretty much the rpg of my dreams.

This document contains the complete rules, plus a bunch of useful hacks from the community, plus a few of my invention, plus some useful resources from Ben Milton's previous effort, Maze Rats.


EDIT: I've updated the layout to fix errata and make a few tweaks. Further, I've made 3 variations:

KNAVES TABLET LAYOUT
The Tablet Layout is meant for scrolling on screens, and contains hyperlinks.

KNAVES SPREAD LAYOUT
The Spread Layout is set up to print on Letter-sized paper.

KNAVES A4 LAYOUT
The A4 Layout is set up to print on A4 paper, and is probably the most elegant of the three versions.


This is presented with generous permission from Ben Milton, and should in no way be an excuse for not purchasing a copy of Knave from Drive-Thru RPG. It's inexpensive, and deserves your support. Also, Ben's layout is 100% more efficient to print out for reference at the table.

Let me know if you see any mistakes or areas for improvement!

Knave at Drive-Thru RPG
Ben Milton's Blog

Comments

  1. This is great. The only room for improvement I can think of adding would be a longer bestiary (with random encounter tables) and a treasure table using the copper standard. I don't know what else I would need that's not already in this book. Thanks for sharing!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I really like this layout. I am a big believer in taking RPG material and making it your own—both content-wise and layout. Layout is so important for how a game plays at the table.

    I have also made a one-page hack of Knave and Maze Rats which can be found on my blog below

    https://lapidaryossuary.blogspot.com/2020/07/knave-rats-my-one-page-hack-of-ben.html

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Linden, thanks for the link! I like your one-pager!

      Delete
  3. May I ask how you did the layout for this? I really really like the format of the design commentary as a sidebar, and the examples having pictures for the dice size.
    Not sure why I missed this work of yours...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks! I laid this out in InDesign. I made the dice in Illustrator. The big advance in my rudimentary layout skills for this document was making use of a baseline grid, which really helped the body text and the sidebars look cohesive.

      Delete
  4. awesome document. Although can hardly read most of the text especially the side bars. Any chance you can make a pdf that has bolder text? cheers.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. My thinking was that people could zoom in on the pdfs, but as my aging eyes are sympathetic to the desire for larger text. Maybe I'll get a chance to make a for-the-olds version this summer.

      Delete
  5. You've done a wonderful thing here. Thank you :)

    ReplyDelete
  6. Hey, I love the layout you did for Knave and I'm really interested in using this at the table, however it's a nightmare to print in booklet format...

    It looks great in the PDFs and I haven't tried full A4 size (too big to have multiple copies at the table), but when trying to print in a booklet format on a laser printer, the sidebar text becomes basically unreadable and the main text is very hard to make out. I've tried bumping it to 1200dpi but no luck.

    Have you successfully printed it in booklet format?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks for the comment, and apologies for the printing issues! I've only used it as a pdf, myself.

      Delete
  7. Really like these optional rules. When can we get larger text or A5 booklet version?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Almost can't read those small sidebar kind frustrating

      Delete
    2. Yeah, other commenters have mentioned their frustration with the sidebar text. Given that Ben Milton is currently kickstarting the second edition of Knave, I don't expect to revisit this project, but I'm curious to see if he has integrated any of these optional rules (many of which come from his own products) into the new version.

      https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/questingbeast/knave-rpg-second-edition?ref=user_menu

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Maze Rats by Post

In my previous post , I reviewed a bunch of my favorite rulesets for optimization for Play-by-Post. It occurred to me almost immediately that I hadn't really thought about Maze Rats enough. In fact, I'd mis-remembered and mischaracterized it. Upon reflection, one of the mechanics I took issue with is actually a big strength. Re-reading the rules, it seems like just a few very simple hacks could make it a highly-optimized PbP game. As follows: Danger Rolls are rolled by the GM. Danger rolls usually fail, so it is in the player’s interest to describe their actions plausibly and mitigate as many risks as they can, in the hopes that they don’t trigger a danger roll. 2d6 + ability bonus ≥ 10 If you have taken enough precautions to have a distinct advantage in an action, but not enough to have eliminated the distinct possibility of danger, the GM will give you a roll with advantage. 3d6 keep 2 + ability bonus ≥ 10 Because each character only has 3 ability scores (S

Reviewing Rules for Play-by-Post Optimization

I’ve played a lot of PbP games: all your favorite flavors of OD&D, AD&D, and their retroclones, Call of Cthulhu, Marvel Superheroes, Traveller, Dungeon World, etc. ad nauseam. In almost every instance, I forgot what ruleset we were using at some point. Which is a good thing. Once chargen is over, you spend a lot more time describing your characters actions and poring over the GM’s descriptions than you spend interacting with rules. When you do roll, it’s usually a combat to-hit roll, which you’ve probably programmed into the online dice-roller as a macro. Pretty much any game will work for PbP. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t points of possible optimization. Point 1: Resolution. Anything that can keep the action moving is a boon to PbP. A game that requires a back-and-forth exchange of information to resolve an action is going to progress very slowly. A good rule of thumb is that it’ll take 2 or 3 days to get a response from any given player. At that pace, an exch