A List of Tables that Appear in Knave 2nd Edition

 

I am a big fan of rules-lite Old School / New School Renaissance / Revival (OSR/NSR) games like Yochai Gal's Cairn RPG, Chris McDowall's Into The Odd, and Ben Milton's Knave and Knave 2nd Edition.

Lately, I've been spending more time with the Knave 2nd Edition rules as I'm running games of it for my family and friends and some colleagues at work. The 2e book fits a lot of nice things into its compact, eighty page (or so), digest-sized format (which I prefer). Most of those nice things are the long list of tables that can be used for everything from naming a character, to designing traps, to figuring out what rations and potion items can be harvested from the monsters the PCs encounter.

It's neat stuff. My only quibble is that it is not necessarily easy to find. There is no real index in the book (something I don't generally like). Nor is there a comprehensive list, all in one place, of the tables that appear throughout the book.

At eighty or so pages, you'd think this would be easy, but I can't always remember which tables are in the book (and sometimes I mix them up with tables that appear in other books) or in what sections those lists might be appear.

Since there wasn't a list, I created one. I originally created this list in an ENworld forum for someone who was looking for the same thing that I wanted. I dressed it up and re-posted it to this blog in the hopes that it will be useful for even more people looking for the same thing.

This list of Knave 2e tables is presented in the order that they appear in the core rule book. In the future, I'll probably make another version or two that break out the tables by the section that the appear in and one in alphabetic order. 

One side benefit of compiling the list is that it gave me ideas for tables that I wish were part of the book that I can create for my own games. A few years ago, I made a fun table of honorifics for a game of Pugmire that I was running for my family a few years back. All the cats had formal names that were lots of fun to add to characters. I would also like physical trait and reputation tables similar to the ones in Cairn, but expanded with a lot more options. I'm putting them on my list of future posts.

For now, I hope you can use this list...

List of Tables in Knave 2nd Edition:

Goblins and Dire Wolves, Oh My.

I recently acquired a copy of Ben Milton's excellent Old School Role Playing Game, Knave second edition (Knave 2e). I have many good things, and a few critiques, to share about it and will probably make a post specifically reviewing the game in the future. I will go into more of those details in that future post. 

For now, I want to get Knave 2e to the table and spend some time playing the game with friends and family in order to really exercise its systems. To do that, I need to run adventures. And to do that, I need monsters.

Knave 2e provides eight d100 tables (Animals, Organs, Monster Traits, Powers, Scents, Sounds, Tactics, and Weaknesses) to help generate unique monsters during game prep or on-the-fly. There's also a d100 table of classic fantasy role playing game monsters, but only thirty four of that list of one hundred monsters have stat blocks on one two-page spread within the book. I'm not great at doing these types of conversions on-the-fly and generally like a few more notes to help me when I'm in the middle of a game.

Ben encourages the use of old school monsters from other sources which should fit the bill for addressing the blanks in Knave 2e's d100 Monsters table and for the denizens populating any published adventures that I plan to run. After a little searching, Chris Gonnerman's Basic Fantasy Role Playing Game (BFRPG) monster stats seem to fit the bill with very little modification. From there, it's just a short hop to adding in my own descriptions, Knave 2e specific mechanics, and general preferences in order to create conversions that should work for the adventures that I'll be running and will ultimately be assembling into this collection that I will be calling the Promptuary of Pernicious Perils.

To that end, the first entries in the Promptuary are related to my Knave conversion of Michael Prescott's Trilemma Adventure, The Sky-Blind Spire. The Sky-Blind Spire has a group of goblins and their goblin shaman from the Ricalu Tribe who has performed a ritual casting that has enabled the other goblins to loot the spire with very little risk. Since I needed goblins and their shaman, I went ahead and converted all the specific goblins mentioned in the BFRPG stat block as well as converting the stat block for the dire wolves that they often use as mounts.

I wanted my goblins to have more options for weapons. I don't like the idea that they all might be armed in the same way. Including the different weapons and their damage die leaves less for me to have to look up. The height detail is a useful detail and a reminder to include for players who might not be familiar with fantasy role playing game tropes. I like reaction tables and plan to use the Knave 2e's NPC Reaction and Activities in my games, but I still like to have a general flavor of the possible personalities and motivations for those monsters that might have them. Both Knave 2e and BFRPG's description of goblins didn't match my general perceptions and experience of running goblins in games. Sometimes, they are vile bastards or cunning adversaries and other times they are comically inept. I want to leave room for all of those interpretations.

I still have more to do to fully convert the Sky-Blind Spire's occupants to Knave 2e. I'll also need to convert magical or mundane items and a account for any spells or scrolls that are present. But all of that is for future posts. For now, I hope these are helpful to others who are looking for monsters and other denizens to fill out their Knave 2e games.

Jim Jones

Promptuary of Pernicious Perils

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GOBLIN: AC 13, HP 4, LVL 1, ATK weapon [dagger or short sword (d6), short bow (d6), spear (d8)], MOV 20’, MRL 7, NA 2d4 (6d10). Warbands composed of some combination of malevolent, cunning, unpredictable, mischievous, or comical individuals. That some goblins ride dire wolves says everything that needs to be known. Gain a +5 advantage on mounted attacks.

GOBLIN CHIEFTAIN: AC 14, HP 20, LVL 5, ATK weapon+1 [dagger or short sword (d6), short bow (d6), spear (d8)], MOV 10’, MRL 7, NA 1 per 15 goblins. Dark vision. Mad with the limited power and tenuous control they wield. Make morale checks at -1 for their warbands. Chieftains use their dire wolves to maintain a semblance of order. Gain +5 advantage on mounted attacks.

GOBLIN KING: AC 15, HP 28, LVL 7, ATK weapon+1 [dagger or short sword (d6), short bow (d6), spear (d8)], MOV 10’, MRL 7, NA 1 per 30+ goblins. Dark vision. Capricious power used unsparingly. Make morale checks at -2 for their hordes. Goblin kings  use d3+1 dire wolves to exert sovereign power. Gain +5 advantage on mounted attacks.

GOBLIN SHAMAN: AC 13, HP 13, LVL 3, ATK dagger (d6), MOV 20’, MRL 7, NA 1-2 on d6 if chieftain is present, 1-3 on d6 if king is present. Dark vision. Driven slightly unhinged by the magic they wield. Owns d3+1 random spellbooks.

WOLF, DIRE: AC 13, HP 16, LVL 4, ATK bite (2d4), MOV 50’, MRL 9, NA d4 (2d4). Think charging rhino. With fur. And Fangs. Hunting in packs. Sometimes tamed by humanoids of sufficiently malignant temperament for various barbarous pursuits.

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License Notices

All textual materials related to monster stat blocks derived from materials in Chris Gonnerman's Basic Fantasy Role Playing Game are distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. The Basic Fantasy Role Playing Game can be found at https://www.basicfantasy.org/. The full text of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License can be found at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/.

Specific mechanics from Knave 2e have been included in monster stat blocks of the Promptuary of Pernicious Perils (as these conversions will be identified herein) to provide compatibility with Knave 2e. The Promptuary of Pernicious Perils is an independent production of The Apprenticeship of A Monster Wrangler blog and is not affiliated with Questing Beast LLC. 

Illustration: The goblins fell back a little when he began, and made horrible grimaces all through the rhyme, by Jessie Wilcox Smith. Illustration for the book, The Princess and the Goblin by George MacDonald, 1920. Provided by Project Gutenberg, public domain, https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/34339

 

The Promptuary of Pernicious Perils is created by Jim Jones as part of The Apprenticeship of a Monster Wrangler blog and is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. The Apprenticeship of a Monster Wrangler blog can be found at https://monsterwrangler.blogspot.com. The full text of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License can be found at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/.

Embarking on this journey...

Will-o-Wisp by Jim Jones

I have had this blog set up and stored away for a few years. My idea was to use it as a space to share monster designs as I came up with them, but I never really got it off the ground. At the time I was reading a number of the first edition Pathfinder Role Playing Game (now in its second edition) books and thought that I could design some creatures and denizens for its adventures and dungeons, but I was honestly having a hard time wrapping my mind around the system. It was pretty convoluted getting all the math and rules to fit what I had in my head (my understanding is that second edition is easier and more fluid). So I just shelved it.

In the following years, I started hanging out on Google+ and reading a bunch (and playing a few) smaller press RPGs. I really fell in love with games like The Warren, Monster of the Week, and Dungeon World; all games using the Powered by the Apocalypse (PbtA) role playing engine. Coming up with monsters, scenarios, and items for PbtA games just fit my brain. I shared a couple that I had come up with in various spaces on Google+ and received a pretty good response. 

Flash forward to now and Google+ is gone, though I have saved a lot of what I created there. I am also playing in a regular online Dungeons and Dragons 5e game with my wife and my cousins that we play over Roll20 and I'm starting a regular home game of Dungeon World Pugmire (Edit in March of 2021: it ended up taking a few more months to get there and it turned into a different game) with my wife and kids, and planning an online West Marches-ish Dungeon World Pugmire and Ironsworn and Monster of the Week and Band of Blades (and probably other systems... ) game for a rotating cast of friends who really want to play. 

The Coronavirus Pandemic plays a big part in this, I am sure. My youngest daughter is medically vulnerable and I am extremely lucky to be able to work from home (so far) for my job. All of my kids are taking virtual schooling options and my wife is teaching online. We rarely go out. We order our groceries online and pick them up curbside without interacting with the wonderful workers who make this precaution possible. As of this writing, we have been in very few buildings other than our own home in over one hundred and fifty days. That leaves a lot of time to be in my own head. Games have been an escape. I am hoping writing and monster design will help me in similar ways.

I hope that sharing some of my monsters, artifacts, scenarios, and other tools that I come up with for Dungeon World and Monster of the Week (and any other system that I may get into) will be helpful to you as well. Maybe that will inspire a good night of escapist fun for you and your family or friends. I hope that they can help lead to some great moments and memories. 

If you do end up using them in your games, let me know. I would love to hear about them.

Take care. Be well. Be safe.

Jim Jones

* Edited March 2021 to reflect new reality.