Wanderers of Farhold - A Knave 2e Project...maybe

For the last few months and especially the last few weeks, my mind has been on Knave 2e by Ben Milton (along with Cairn 2e by Yochai Gal and Mythic Bastionland by Chris McDowall). It's occupied my brain so much that from it sprang the seed of an idea: Wanderers of Farhold.

        Art by Carlos Castilho

I have a conflicted history with Knave and other "rules light" games created in the same vein. I think they're brilliant...but not quite done. They're 50-80% there, but then lack more needed guidance. I definitely like them a lot (otherwise I wouldn't waste so much brain space on them), but they all leave me wanting more. I understand that is counter to many of their stated intentions of being "rule light" but many flirt with the line of being "rules incomplete" far too often. I have described many of these games as easy to grasp mechanically for players and thus very beginner friendly. But they are for the experienced GM only. The GM has to do a lot of heavy lifting. Not in terms of knowing far too many rules, like in Pathfinder, but rather in making things up...a lot. Knave 2e, frustratingly for me, is no exception to this perception. 

I can feel it in my bones that there is an amazing game right there, but it's just beyond reach at times. Knave 2e has so many great random tables, but painfully little guidance on how to use them. They are also thematically jarring at times that can create a massive mental obstacle for a GM. We get a taste for what monsters look like, but not enough guidance yet again. You basically need to buy a different monster book for a different game and then convert it...why? And one of the coolest aspects of the game, relics, is so barebones that it renders it near useless. 

I do get it though, Ben Milton wrote Knave 2e as a toolbox for running OSR modules and campaigns, probably in already published materials. That being the case, he couldn't very well tie it into any specific world themes. That is the bigger short-coming of Knave 2e for me. True old-school play is world-facing more than character-facing. It is the world that defines many of these parameters.

All of this has then led me down the path of Wanderers of Farhold. It is what I have started to build out from the foundations of Knave 2e, but felt it was lacking: the world that defines the system. I spent the last few months diving into various online discussions on Knave 2e (some prompted by me and many by others) to get a sense of what's missing. I came to find out that it's many of the issues I've been having. So one evening, I cranked out the first 1,000 words of notes on what I would want and do with this great game to really make it shine for my tastes. The result of this brainstorming sessions (aided with good Bourbon) is a Knave 2e "hack" (or world with rules modifications) that I feel delivers a more robust system for GMs. But...it does add more rules and some dedicated "rules light" fans might bristle at that notion. That's ok. I wrote this down to satisfy my issues with the game and not everyone else's (which is impossible to attempt anyway).

Here are the abridged notes that were some of my takeaways.

• Expand downtime into three categories: weekly, monthly, seasonal.
• Weekly downtime: turn carousing into a "bender", add repairing gear, expand brewing and healing, add lore research and level training & costs.
• Monthly downtime: detail/expand common career training, add common spell research (more on this below).
• Seasonal downtime (3 months): detail/expand uncommon career training, domain management, add spell crafting (more on this below).
• Expand equipment lists again.
• Add legendary weapon forging.
• Fully develop a religion and associated relics.
• Add loot tables.
• Alter Nat 20/Nat 1 combat rules
• Add Nat 20 weapon triggers
• Add dual wield and double gripping weapon rules
• Add fatigue rules (similar to Cairn)
• Add non-human options in rolled backgrounds
• Pair down backgrounds/careers and expand with weapons & armor
• Add water travel rules
• Expand mass combat rules (with some inspiration from Mythic Bastionland)
• Add a full bestiary with random encounter tables keyed to environments
• Modify hazard die system

That's definitely a lot to add and expands the game a bit beyond "rules light" in scope, but it's really not overwhelming since much foundational work has been done by Ben Milton already.

I approached many of these topics from an in-game analytical lens. Following is an example of my notes around the topic of spellbooks in Knave 2e, as well as answering the "why be an adventurer question" I often ask when I look at TTRPGs.

Spellbooks as described in Knave 2e book

“…cannot be created or copied by PCs and must be found while exploring dungeons or stolen from other magic users.”

WHY?

Game loop reason: to facilitate exploration and “problem solving” i.e., trickery.

I find this unsatisfactory and gives no in-world reasoning other than “it is thus” which doesn’t expand the scope of the game beyond thievery.

SOLUTION

Give in-world reasons for original statement.

Offer new spell research and spell crafting mechanics. 

Lore: Spells and magic left the world in the lost past. Wizards retreated and disappeared from the land. Why? Not yet known. With them, all traces and knowledge of magic disappeared as well.

Deep Lore: The wizards crafted dimension gates as portals to their obscured and deeply strange refuges. Why? To conduct experiments, craft new spells, create strange beings and more. The wizards retreated through the gates and sealed them with command worlds only (believed) to be known by them. Many gates were chained to each other via wizarding circle links.

Recent(ish) Events: Far away in the land of Imborion, a delver discovered a cache of lost spell books in a strange dungeon with a cracked entrance, following an earthquake. This event not only brought spell lore back into the world, but unbeknownst to any, it severed the seals to linked gates and magic has spread back across the lands. This chain of events has released strange beasts and constructs, as well as opened lost, forgotten, or unknown strange locales. It has also brought forth renewed miracles of the saints and curses of the fiends with it.

Mechanics Tasks: 

Add spell research of “known common” spell books (the 100 listed in Knave 2e pp. 22-25) as a downtime option treated like common career training. Requirements per spell: 1 month time + quiet research “facility” of some type + 1,000 coins.

Add spell crafting of new spell books treated like uncommon career training. Requirements per spell: 3 months’ time + quiet research “facility” of some type + 1,000 coins per spell component. Spell components: pieces of lore found on adventures, corresponding to the “qualities, effects, elements, and forms” found in Knave 2e pp. 28, 29. Example: finding pieces of lore “bizarre” (quality) + “pollen” (element) + “blast” (form) would cost 3,000 coins to craft a new spell from. The exact effects are down to the conversation between the player and the GM, as laid out in Knave 2e.

Why go on Adventure?

A new class of people have sprung forth from these recent events as well: adventurers. As the legends of the mythical past seem to have been true, these hardy, foolish, daring, and dangerous people are spreading throughout the world in search of lost treasures, magic, holy (and unholy) relics, fame, power, fortune, and to be recorded in the legends.

The old rock formations, pillars, ruins, and barrows are now being seen as more than discarded remnants of the forgotten mythical past.

So where does this all leave me? I'm not sure. At worst, this was a fun exercise in design theory and what could be done with a game to address some "open areas" of common complaint. At best, enough people show interest in this to push me forward in actually writing the thing and putting it out into the world, fully formed. It's this last point that gives me the most pause and I spent some time analyzing.

I do not have endless amounts of time. I run my own business and have a family. Neither of these aspects can ever be neglected. Therefore, I do not wish to "waste my time" (or money) on publishing a product with little return on it. That sounds overly pragmatic and calculating and flies in the face of what many see as the "creative path", but if I publish something like this for others and not just for my own table then it has to be good and worthwhile. Looking at the Kickstarter numbers for Knave 2e (and Cairn 2e and Mythic Bastionland due to customer overlap), it had 11,000 backers (myself included). That's a solid base of people at least interested in the game. It's now been 2 years since Knave 2e was delivered. Is there still momentum behind it? That's a more difficult question to answer, since there haven't been much of any "official" supplements published for it by Questing Beast and the "community building" is almost non-existent when compared with Cairn or games like OSE (aside from the Patreon paywall Questing Beast Discord channel).

As such, I'd be curious to see people's thoughts and feedback on a more "robust" and detailed Knave 2e hack/setting.