Knave 2e is an exploration-driven fantasy RPG and worldbuilding toolkit, inspired by the best elements of the Old-School DnD movement.
This edition expands on the intuitive core of the original game, featuring elegant, modular subsystems for hexcrawling, dungeon delving, potion making and downtime activities, all in a 80-page digest-sized hardcover lavishly illustrated by Peter Mullen.
- A world-class GM's toolkit. Roll and combine results from over 75 d100 tables to rapidly generate dungeons, overworld regions, cities, monsters, items, spells, NPCs and factions, or just scan the pages for inspiration. These are especially useful for people who enjoy playing RPGs solo.
- Intuitive, unified d20 mechanics that allow new players to make characters and start playing in minutes. Ability scores, armor, and difficulty ratings are placed on a 0-10 scale, yet remain compatible with the adventures and monsters from the last 50 years of fantasy roleplaying. The rules can also effortlessly switch between player-facing and GM-facing rolls.
- A slot-based inventory system that makes tracking what you carry both easy and mechanically meaningful. If you take enough damage, wounds can begin filling items slots, forcing you to drop gear, treasure, or weapons.
- Classless character generation that lets PCs draw from multiple archetypes at once. Any PCs can cast spells, call down miracles and use any weapon or armor. Their effectiveness is only restricted by what abilities they choose to improve and how they fill their limited item slots.
- A d6 Hazard Die system that condenses tracking encounters, clues, weather changes, fatigue, torch burn, and resource depletion into the roll of a single die.
- A utility-focused magic system that empowers PCs to alter the world in creative ways with 100 level-less spells. Also, a huge spell generator for groups who want chaotic, randomized magic.
- A relationship-driven divine magic system in which PCs make bargains with patrons for their blessings. What will you offer in exchange for divine intervention? Generate new deities including their domains and symbols.
- A monster-hunting alchemy system where PCs can hunt down magical creatures for their special abilities and then refine them into potions.
- Downtime activities where PCs carouse, gamble, recruit hirelings, and build bases.
- A tactical warfare system that resolves mass battles in minutes.
- Straightforward GM and player principles for getting started running an old-school style game.
- Designer commentary that explains the reasoning behind the rules to aid in hacking the game.
- Sewn binding, ensuring that the book lies flat and book lasts for generations.
- Easy-to-use "control panel" layout. Page flipping is reduced by keeping most topics confined to single pages or spreads.
10 Reviews Hide Reviews Show Reviews
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Knave 2nd Edition
Book is well make and high quality. I like the system and love all the tables!
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Knave!
Amazingly laid out and fits easily in a purse for play on the go. The quick references in the front/back are SO handy; exactly the stuff I usually keep on my dm screen, which has freed up more space for PC- and adventure-specific notes on the screen. The tables are, of course, excellent.
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Nice addition
This is a nice addition to my solitaire TTRPG collection. I find the system to be very streamlined and easy to table.
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The perfect little package
Knave has been a great, lightweight game to engage with old school adventures. I love the classless system and how dynamic players and player characters can be with items and equipment to adapt to situations on the fly. Easy to pick up, easy to play, enough depth and generative content to enjoy for quite some time. It's only gotten better in the second edition!
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Knave is great!!!
I have love using this book! Definitely recommend!!!
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A Great Update
It's Knave, but more! And better! More better Knave!
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Knave is a perfect rules light system, and if it isn't, you can make it so.
I used to host weekly for years, and when covid hit, my group fell apart. Since then I have done barely any ttrpg, and it's been something I still thought about, something I still prepped for, bought systems for, wrote for. And Knave 2r was the perfect system for me to come back in to the hobby My friends are mostly new roleplayers, and it makes me so ecstatic to see them playing with clever planning,making smart choices, getting into their character carees. The game lays out how it wants you to play it and it makes it easy to play in that spirit. Great great game. Ben Milton's Questing Beast channel on YouTube is also excellent, and I gotta give him the credit for my return to a longtime passion of mine. Thank Ben!
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A Love-letter to the Magic of Old School Gaming
Knave 2e is a book that wears many hats. Clocking in at about 77 pages, a huge part of this book and part of it's draw is the plethora of random tables that provide the basis for creating adventures and worlds to surprise GMs and players alike. Knave also provides rules for a solid rules-lite OSR-style RPG that is easy to pick up and start playing, with procedures provided for traveling, dungeon-crawling, downtime, encounters and combat. Equipment management is slot-based, and spellcasting either comes from a list of 100 spells or can even be randomly generated via "chaos" spellbooks. I appreciate the smart design and layout of the book, the reference pages in the front and back covers are excellent, with easy page reference. Also, the glossy KNAVE title overtop Peter Mullen's timeless artwork is a great touch. This book is incredibly useful! Its not just for somebody looking to play an updated version of Knave. The d100 tables provide a seriously comprehensive toolkit for creating a hex based map of an overworld, and populating it with interesting sites, towns, dungeons and then further fleshing out those sites and locations. Some of the tables combine in incredibly interesting ways as well, where you can combine results from other tables in the book for more diverse combinations. The game is a great tool as well for solo-roleplay and GM-less Cooperative play with minor adjustments (essentially what amounts to just adding in an oracle system). Get this book if you are looking for: -An amazing GM Toolkit for world creation and encounter ideas -A lighter OSR-style rules system with a focus on discovery -OSR-style Solo/GM-less roleplaying Lastly, it can be inferred through reading that the designer and author Ben Milton is incredibly passionate about the OSR and Old School Gaming in general.
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My new favorite system
This book is a perfect example of a clean, simple layout that gets right to the point with a system that is simple and effective.
