A downloadable optional rule.
(this is the same text as my comment on the game page)
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Overall I like this rules module. Could someone write it themself for
free? Sure, especially since the text of Troika and Knave are freely
available. But hopefully this review/comment gives you an idea of
whether $2 is worth the inspiration and labour saved.
First, some
notes about format. 3 (landscape-oriented) pages, 650 words, simple
two-column layout double line spaced. Easy to read, but a bit wasteful
to print. Copy-pastes to a text editor without any text flow errors, so
screen readers should be fine with it.
It's impossible to write a
concise system that can effortlessly plug into *every* OSR game, but
this gives enough ideas that a playgroup can decide how to interpret or
tweak various things.
Some noteworthy things:
- Item
slots equals your Str score. For games with only a *modifier* (e.g.
World of Dungeons) I'd say slots = 10 + Str mod. Note that unlike Knave,
where the minimum score is 11, B/X or any 3d6-in-order system can
produce characters who are very limited in carry capacity.
- You
*can* carry more stuff than your item slots, with escalating penalties
to all rolls. Penalty to rolls obviously has different effects depending
on what players roll for -- it's worse in The Black Hack or WoDu than
for, say, a B/X magic-user.
- It borrows Troika's (and
Torchbearer, I think?) mechanic of having to roll whenever you want to
retrieve items. The order of item slots matters.
- Armour takes up
1 slot per bonus it gives. This is probably a bit much for "armour
reduces to-hit" systems, I'd make it take 1 slot per +2 bonus to Armour
Class. For "armour as damage reduction" (Into the Odd) or "armour as
ablative HP" (The Black Hack 1e) you might need to tweak this ratio.
- There's
good guidelines for deciding how many slots a non-armour item takes.
Knave partly leaves it up to the GM, so it's nice to have some more
concrete advice here.
- Damage takes up item slots! 1 hp per slot
feels very inappropriate for B/X, to be fair the author points this out
and offers solutions. But it could work with Jared's The Vanilla Game,
other games with Vitality/Wounds, games with less granular HP, or with
HP that never scales.
- There are items (magic backpacks, bandoliers) that either adjust your carry capacity or your roll to retrieve things.
