Campaigning

For the past few months I have been running an open table hexcrawl using Knave with a cast of seven or so players who have rotated in and out and twice as many characters over the same period of time. It has been such a breath of fresh air to return to a rules light system that urges player skill over character skill, especially after running two lengthy miserable 5e campaigns (both ending unfinished) back to back.

Kevin Gnutzmans

More than I can tolerate, I find myself being drawn into running 5e games over the past few years as a result of the hype building from podcasts that popularize 5e as their system of choice. Personally, I can stomach running maybe 2-3 sessions before I get tired of coping with the rules as written and player expectations built upon exposure to media portraying the game in a certain style. The extensive corpus of material available to help run games in 5e is certainly impressive, but the styles they portray and the thematic baggage of the implied settings get in the way of running a game that is gels with my DM style. Hence, Knave.

Enough whinging about 5e though, Knave is sick. It's a slick little system with rules easily intelligible by those with experience in rpgs and very friendly to those completely new. For my campaign we've had a good mix of both at the table which brings a fun mix of prior knowledge of games and open exposure to them. 

I have used this campaign as an opportunity to tinker heavily with the ruleset and try out new ideas, sometimes to great success and sometimes not. It has been messy, overwritten, contentious at times, but a hell of a lot of fun. Some highlights that I have learned from running the game so far: 

• Death & Dismemberment tables sound and look cool in theory, but in practice they often as not serve to remove a player from the game for long periods of time. Nixed using a table in favor of a single death save + current level when at zero HP. 
  
• Item slots are intuitive and provide a real logistical challenge for the players when they're planning their next moves. Most sessions open up with a shopping sessions to ensure everyone has enough rations, torches, lantern oil, etc. Things really hurt when you forget about your donkey loaded with rations and bedrolls and then have to scrounge to survive your way back to town. 
• If you stock a hexcrawl well, you don't need anything more than about a 10x10 to keep sessions fresh for more than a dozen sessions. 
• The Tenfootpolemic Bonus Exp doc is chaotic and delightful to implement at a table, especially when using gold = xp as your base means of character advancement. Likewise for incentivizing party roles (mapper, chronicler, etc.) with exp gains.