Skip to main content

Minor Charms & Knackbardies


Knacks (knakkespelle, kitchen magic, pocket charms, cradle airs, etc.) are the pettiest of petty magic—very minor utility charms, often passed down in families.

Mole, Mole, come out your hole
Or else I'll beat you black as coal!
Mole, Mole, put out your head
Or else I kill you till you are dead!
—To drive vermin from fruit still on the tree, recite this poem while burning moss from the tree's trunk and limbs.

 One, two, three, four, five,
See, I caught a hare alive.
Six, seven, eight, nine, ten,
Then I let her go again.
— To address complaints of the liver, catch a hare, pluck a small amount of fur from its belly, and then release it.

Knacks have no game mechanics. They do not have a definitive effect on the world. They increase the odds of succeeding at mundane tasks by an undetermined amount. Knacks are valuable to their possessors; a farmer who can recite a rhyme that increases the likelihood of picking fertilized chicken eggs has a distinct advantage over their neighbors. And in a small, rural village, you might make your reputation, or even your living off a good knack.

Knackbardy: one who makes their trade off a collection of knacks. Knackbardies are slightly disreputable, as many are charlatans. Furthermore, knacks are considered private family secrets, and suspicion is cast on how a knackbardy acquired their menu.

The intention with knacks is to add folkloric flavor to a campaign. They create a sense of background magic, while also making real spellcasters seem more dramatically powerful in comparison. If the villagers are impressed with the local seamstress whose knack keeps her from missing a stitch, what will they think of the PC with a mending cantrip? The slightest act of prestidigitation is undeniably more efficacious, adaptable, and impressive than a dozen of these little charms.

  A Sampling of Knacks

  1. To call weevils out of cheese
  2. To clarify rendered fat
  3. To diminish a wen, wart, or blemish
  4. To ease insomnia
  5. To find a lost ewe
  6. To find edible mushrooms
  7. To freshen spoiled meat
  8. To give hair an extra luster
  9. To increase docility of bees in their hive
  10. To keep socks and stockings dry
  11. To lessen a headache
  12. To make a child’s teeth grow in straight
  13. To make a rival nauseous
  14. To raise high loaves of bread
  15. To shave without nicks
  16. To smooth the lumps out of oatmeal
  17. To sort out pebbles from grain
  18. To steady a flame in high wind
  19. To take the sourness out of cheap ale
  20. To untangle knotted strings
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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 Knav
14 comments
Read more

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
Post a Comment
Read more

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
1 comment
Read more