Player's Handbook · Chapter 1

The Knave's Life

You are a knave: a tomb-raiding, adventure-seeking ne'er-do-well with no class, no calling, and no better options. Nobody trained you for this. Nothing was promised to you. What you have is what you carry — a blade, a coil of rope, maybe a spellbook lifted from a dead wizard — and what you carry is exactly who you are.

Knave has no character classes. Fill your pack with spellbooks and you are the party's wizard, at least until the books run dry. Trade them for a mace and a shield and you are the front line. Your role at the table is a decision you re-make every time you pack your bag.

How a session runs

The referee describes where you are, plainly and honestly. You ask questions. You say what your knave does. Most of the time that is the whole game — no dice at all. Dice come out only when the outcome is uncertain and failure has consequences, and every d20 roll in the game works the same way: d20 plus one of six ability bonuses.

Danger is telegraphed, never sprung. If the referee mentions that the floor ahead is suspiciously clean, believe them. A clever plan that avoids rolling entirely is not cheating — it is the best move available, and this referee rewards it.

What to expect

It is lethal. You start with 1d8 hit points. At −1 you are dead, and the remedy is rolling a fresh level 1 knave and rejoining the party as soon as possible. Caution, hirelings, and a good ten-foot pole will keep you alive longer than any character build ever could.
Everything ticks down. Torches burn out, rations run out, each spellbook works once a day, and even your armor grinds away under critical hits. Managing that slow decay is the game.
The world runs on copper. Every price is in copper pennies, at roughly honest medieval rates: a torch costs 1, a reading book costs 600, and a suit of full plate costs a small fortune. Treasure is the point of the expedition.

Where things live

The complete rules — including the designer's own notes on why each rule works the way it does — sit in the Rules folder, starting with @Missing file. During play, keep the @Missing file at your elbow: it is the entire game across five tabs. Character creation takes about five minutes, and it is next.

Manual updated Jul 29, 2026.

Knave (1st edition)

The Iron Tides

The Iron Tides — Knave 1e on the black water. Four knaves, a stolen sloop, and a map fragment pointing at the Isle of Whispers. Flintlocks, hull damage, strict powder and water, no fair fights. (Knave 1e rules text used under CC BY 4.0; see Attribution.)

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Rules Toolkit

Flintlocks, salt, and debt — Knave on the black water.

The Shattered Archipelago runs on powder, and you owe someone for every charge you carry.

The Iron Tides is Knave 1e rebuilt for boarding actions and bad weather. Every knave starts with a flintlock pistol, a bandolier of charges, and a debt to an arms dealer. Your ship is stolen. Your map is burned at the edges. Your water will run out in days.

What play looks like: load and fire under fire, count powder and shot, keep the hull intact, watch the fog for sails that should not be there. Fights are short and loud. The clever crew avoids a fair volley — bribe the factor, run the reef at low tide, trade water for a wreck bearing, put the wind between you and the broadside.

Start on the deck of the Rusty Keel under the guns of Blackwater Keep, with a brawl behind you and a storm ahead. Four knaves ready. No classes, no heroes, just slots, copper, and what you do next.

Glimpses

Author's note

ATTRIBUTION — This project contains the complete rules text of Knave (1st edition) by Ben Milton, published by Questing Beast Games (https://questingbeast.itch.io/knave). The original work's license statement, verbatim: "Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License: You are free to share and adapt this material for any purpose, including commercially, as long as you give attribution." License deed: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. Changes made: the rules text was reorganized into Craft file types (rules pages, rolling tables, equipment records, spellbooks, and a character sheet with derived values); no rules were altered. The license covers the rules text only — not the Knave name as a product identifier, nor the original artwork, which is why this project ships no art. Independent adaptation; not affiliated with or endorsed by Ben Milton or Questing Beast Games. Full details in the project's Attribution file.

Inside the World

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