What is Knave? It is a classless game system that Ben Milton has created after Maze Rats.

If you know my oldest posts you know that I have played Maze Rats quite a lot, and due to my play-by-poll campaign I was so emotionally invested in Maze Rats back then that I was not very excited about Knave. I did not hate on it, I just ignored it. However, now I was invited to an online game of Knave, and made a character to join in.

Character Building

My character was a Knight/Scribe, “Geoffrey de Guyé”, with pretty good stats.

Stats are a bit different in Knave, they can advance with levels; a solution to the common complaint of D&D-players that levelling does not translate into better skills. It does in Knave. I got to start with lots of +3s and +4s all over the place. But I had abysmal hit points: One single HP.

For equipment, I got a couple of good ones that were very small so they did not really take up a lot of slots, a decent armor and a strong weapon. Good for a Knight, even with low HP.

On the day of the game I was tied up in another game that ran a bit over, so I logged into the server with about a full hour delay, if not a few minutes more. I had no idea what I may have missed so far, and the GM designed the situation to make that a reality in the game: My character just happened to open a door in a dungeon and encountered the rest of the party.

Quick Thinking

What did I see: A bunch of dead hairy things, a bunch of wounded humans, and two zombies going to town on the survivors. What to do?
I remembered my Knight’s honor: there was hardly any question what to do when carrying a Longsword and facing Zombies. I attacked. I went for the head. And missed.

On his turn, the Zombie did not miss. He took me down.

Shortest possible character life span.

Well… time to roll up a new one.

Woodling

I rolled a special character race, “woodling”, which is something like a small, weak Ent. I called the guy “Rustling Creaky”, got lower stats, but 5 HP.

By the time my new character was done, the survivors of the party had killed off the zombies, including Geoffrey when he stirred and started to rise from the dead with a pallid complexion and a muffled moan to communicate his hunger for brains.

I, as Rustling, picked up my own dead charakter’s signet ring, and we went on to loot the place and return home. We managed to get a good amount of loot home, and the signet ring itself was also relatively valuable and boosted XP all around when we pandered it off.

And that was that!

Fast and Easy

We see, Knave is a pretty quick game, and easy to learn. That’s for Knave 1: years have passed, and now there is also a Knave 2e, which is a bit longer and more complex — but we had met here to play Knave 1 plus a few house rules and borrowed character backgrounds from Knave 2.

I suspect that Knave 2 is also pretty easy, but I’ll have to look into that to be sure.

Knave takes complexity out behind the shed, a bit like Shadowdark, only even more so.

Most importantly: characters are defined by what they carry, the same as in ItO. Nobody is a wizard; everyone can use a spell book. Nobody is a warrior or a priest, everyone can swing a sword or pray… the important thing is to have the stuff and to have the encumbrance slots to lug them around.

Well, that’s it: short and sweet. I came, I died, and my next guy profited off my first guy’s stuff.
PC’s life: nasty, brutish and short.