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/.
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