Daniel (@dungeondive) reviews Knave 2nd Edition by Ben Milton (Questing Beast; art by Peter Mullen), and debuts his new “solo score” — a spectrum, not a grade, from 1 (never for solo) to 10 (solo-only). Knave gets a 5 out of the box, 7 with an oracle (he recommends Random Realities or Gustavo Tertoulino’s Little GM Emulator), and an 8 as a tool for generating content for other games — its 50-plus pages of tables are, he says, worth the price alone.
Character creation is delightfully simple and classless: six ability scores (0–10) each tied to an archetype, three points to assign or roll, careers (d100) for backstory and gear, hit points backed by item slots that double as wounds, and gold-as-XP levelling. Checks are a clean d20-plus-modifier against a base-11 target. He highlights the standout generative magic system (build spells from formula tables), plus tables for travel watches, delving, encounters, monsters, NPCs and warfare, and praises Ben’s designer commentary on why content matters more than mechanics.
His one reservation for soloists: it’s light on quest/plot generation, so getting started needs an oracle’s help — but once going, the book is a generator goldmine.
Where would Knave 2e land on your own “solo score” — and do you value an RPG more as a rules set or a table-stuffed generator?