This has been a long and tiring week (I just finished grading exams and papers) but I'll leave you for now with just a few more thoughts about the Knave 2e Kickstarter preview document. I don't have too much more to say, so I'll list some bullets with brief thoughts and then point you to a source for even more information if you're still keen on all this.
+ TRAVELING and WEATHER - the travel rules rely on what is essentially an Overloaded Encounter Die. That's a popular and good system. I like the way information and secrecy are handled -- in general. However, I think that mixing 6-mile hexes with 4-hour watches, and allowing a party to "search" a hex in a single watch, is wildly unrealistic. This is a common issue in similar games. What I might prefer is to say that for every 4-hour watch spent searching inside a 6-mile hex, the GM reveals ONE area of interest within the hex - rather than all of them.
The weather system looks fun and will add plentiful texture to overland travels. The level of mechanical heft given to different kinds of inclement weather is a bit uneven, but some good ol' "rulings not rules" should work here.
+ ENCOUNTERS - there is a really fun d100 chart here with activities the monsters are engaged in when the party meets them. This is kind of like a universal d100 version of the similar charts that the d4 Caltrops blog has been making thematically tuned for different encounter types. This is nice to have handy.
+ DIVINE MAGIC, ALCHEMY, MONSTERS...these look fun.
I'm sorry I haven't got much brain-goo left for in-depth comments beyond that, folks - at least for now!
Thanks for checking out my impressions of Ben's new Knave 2e. As I go, let me signal that "Professor Dungeon Master" on YouTube has got a Knave 2e preview video of his own - but he got access to a much more complete preview document! If you check out his video, you can already see a number of additional sections of the rulebook that I didn't comment on in this little series.
Thanks for reading, and happy gaming. Have a great weekend, folks...
I think my main question about K2e is, "How is this not just another rule-lite heatbreaker?" I guess the answer to that is: OSR compatibility, if that in fact is the case.
ReplyDeleteYes, I think that's right. Frankly, the same can be asked (and answered) for Knave's first edition. The game doesn't stand out, per se, as a landmark design in its own right as much as an effective, easy toolkit for running whatever cool content you have got your hands on. In many ways, Knave 1e feels a bit bland to me, but I think that's the point: season to taste with the stuff you like. 2e, from what we've seen so far, makes the core rules a bit more interesting, without sacrificing that cross-OSR (and beyond) compatibility.
DeleteBy the way, forgot to say, this is a very interesting write up series. I think what I really want to know is: grab any OSE / B/X module-- can you run it with no modifications?
ReplyDeleteThanks!
DeleteYeah, pretty much. Once you have carefully read Knave's short rules a few times and understand it's approach, you can grab and run pretty much anything that provides hit dice or levels, armor class, and (optionally) stats. You might have to re-interpret things on the fly occasionally: for example, if a module tells you to have a PC make a "Saving Throw vs. Magic Wands" then you won't find that explicitly in Knave, but you can call for a CON check (or INT/WIS if for some reason you think that's relevant instead).
In melee, you're rolling the hit dice of monsters +1d20 in lieu of the STR score +1d20 (which is what a PC would roll), *unless* the module provides its own STR score for the monster, or an attack bonus # that differs from its hit dice, etc. So, again, you might have to make judgment calls about how to handle a given module, but once you've taken 10 seconds to make that call, you basically have no conversions to do.
To illustrate: I've used Knave to run parts of a DCC Advanced Adventures module, as well as Evils of Illmire and The Black Wyrm of Brandonsford.
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