Reskinning Knave

The designer's notes preserved throughout Rules/ are the original hacking guide: each explains why its rule is shaped the way it is, which tells you what you are trading away when you change it. Some well-worn paths, from lightest touch to heaviest:

House rules first, edits second

Try a variant before you enshrine it. The campaign file's house-rules field is the sandbox — the sample campaign already carries the designer's own optional rules (rerolling low starting HP, shopping for starting gear, random advancement, XP-for-coin) as table toggles rather than edits. When a variant earns permanence, promote it: edit the rule text and its paired GM instruction together, then retire the house-rule line.

Re-skinning magic

Spellbooks are one effect field away from being runestones, clay tablets, or potions — rename, re-describe, done. For a scarcer, more dangerous setting, the designer's own suggestion is single-use magic: scrolls or philters destroyed on casting. Here that is a one-line change to the casting instruction — remove the book from the character instead of flagging castToday — plus the matching edit in @Missing file.

Building a setting on top

The system is setting-agnostic on purpose; setting lives in Lore/ and points down into the mechanics. @Missing file is the model — a place built in three moves: what everyone knows, rumors to roll when knaves ask around, and a GM-secrets section that turns local color into adventure hooks — then tied to a playable character who grew up there. Build outward one district, faction, or barrow at a time, each lore file naming the next, with monsters and NPCs pointing back at home. Set the project's art direction once, in the project settings, so every image generated for the setting lands in the same world.

Swapping content wholesale

Replace every item, spell, and monster and it is still Knave — if you keep the constants from chapter 1: d20 + bonus over 15 or a defense, defenses at bonus + 10, d8 hit dice, copper at medieval scale, slots equal to Constitution defense. Those constants are also the game's compatibility promise with forty years of OSR material. Every one you bend trades away a shelf of ready-made adventures, so bend them on purpose and write the change down.

Shipping it

Before you publish a derived project: keep the attribution file, updated with an honest list of your changes; credit Ben Milton; don't trade on the Knave name or the original art (chapter 1 has the license's exact edges); and make your own cover. Then let people knock your version over and steal from it — which is, verbatim, what the license and the game are both for.