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| A sufficiently badass paperback cover of a W. H. H. classic |
Does Energy Drain Suck? by Gabor Lux
Perhaps it's my neo-trad roots informing my sensibilities, but yes, I think it does. I'm not one to shy away from straight-up killing PCs if the situation calls for it, but there is something really sinister about taking away hard-fought progress and significantly desynchronizing the party's capabilities for future expeditions. Many players would rather have characters die with the potential of resurrection than see their precious good noodle points erased.
Modifying the rules so that energy is drained from attributes instead is a great idea simply because it takes away the butthurt factor while retaining the lethality of encounters with the undead. Personally, I think it also makes more sense in the fiction and for PC metrics management. No one wants to have to reroll max HP or recalculate ability percentages in the negative direction.
Wizard Weaknesses by Daniel Sell
Wizards are weirdos. Anything that reinforces this idea is essential in my book. Some of the entries on this table may be hard to communicate or discover without environmental context clues or deeply embedded NPCs, but I think the strongest aspect of the table isn't necessarily the weaknesses themselves so much as how they inform the image and roleplaying of the weirdo they are tied to. "Direct sunlight causes the warlock’s crystallised plasmic crown to evaporate. It is otherwise invulnerable and irremovable." This goober is a pale, dark-dwelling creep with delusions of royal grandeur. "The wizard is careful to surround himself with mirrors at all times. While in the presence of a reflective surface he maintains his elevated state." The second coming of Narcissus, he's easy on the eyes but hopelessly aloof. There's immediate fodder in each of these in terms of tropes and characterization that paint a picture of who this person is.
My least favorite of these is table entries is "The wizard has an agreement with a dark(er) lord to boost his powers." Sorry Daniel, but that's kind of lame. I feel like most of them basically do that already. My personal replacement for this entry would be "The sorcerer is actually identical twins that share their pact-made magical power remotely on the condition that they remain unseen to one another. Never in the same place at the same time, if they are brought together their power diminishes significantly."
Get your gear! by Nobboc
A table for randomized starting gear. I think these entries are fun, but it seems like it may only work for classes that can suffer a wide variety of armor and weapons like fighters and (sometimes) clerics. Not to be a drag, but I would not be excited to roll on this table as a spellcaster class. This table feels Knave-coded in that it wants to get you up and dungeoneering without a lot of fuss, irrespective of your intended party role. I personally would use this to equip new PCs in a classless system or spur-of-the-moment companions with the chops for combat.
Consider the following as an additional entry: vibrant gambeson (2-in-6 mistaken for nobility), plumed cap, flamberge rapier, decoy coin pouch (any pebbles placed inside appear as coins), a provisioned charcuterie board.
The village's local retired adventurer... by Daniel Sell
A Daniel double-feature day. In lieu of an alternative entry or pithy remark, I'll leave you with a poignant, abbreviated quote from an underappreciated Appendix N contemporary:
"Yet that, after such age, if a youth desired greatly to make the adventure, he should receive… a strict account of the mutilatings and horrid deeds done to those who had so adventured.”
William Hope Hodgson — The Night Land
Dungeon Checklist by Arnold K.
A certified GLOG banger: a shortlist of things to include in your dungeon-to-be to maximize playability and cover your design variety bases. What interests me the most about this list is that it serves as the old-school foil to the lauded (and loathed) 5 room dungeon of the contemporary dragon game and friends. Rather than structuring a dungeon around premeditated narrative beats, the checklist insists on design elements to be included without a presumption of where and when. This sandbox approach provides the necessary constraints to defeat blank canvas syndrome while opening the door to jaquaysing the layout. Player choice and interactivity are central to OSR gameplay, and each part of this list is critical for providing a manifestation of this in a dungeon.
Pairing this list with a more structured layout creator (such as Sersa Victory's cyclic dungeon generation) basically does all of the work for you in terms of prep, leaving a GM the opportunity to flavor the dungeon however they want. My personal pick for tying together the theme of the dungeon is Map Crow's wedding aphorism approach since it has practically no overlap with the mechanical application of the items prescribed by Arnold, focusing instead on set dressing.
It's probably worth investigating the dungeon design course by Rise Up Comus to see how well the advice laid out here is integrated/endorsed by the now editor-in-chief of KNOCK!
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