Roleplaying Games Design

Yeah. A hack is usually a little more than just a modification, but there's no strict definition or anything.

I basically like the way Knave is, but there's a few things that I found didn't work well at my table.

• Item choice paralysis. Do you buy/carry a hammer? Nails? Chalk? Ink? An hourglass? ... There's like 36 odds and ends in the game (100 in 2e.)
• One use per day spell books. Knave 2e solves this with Int uses of spell books but I mixed it with:
• Ability to lose items. A character built around a concept should retain the ability to use that.

So I changed some things.

• We use item kits. These are quantum bags of items related to a purpose. Say a climbing kit or an alchemy kit.
• Item kits can be tracked with item slots as they are, but most kits will be like 2-3 slots so it makes more sense to cut the number in half and stop varying size of items.
• Having cut the number of things to track in half, Art slots are added back in. These represent proficiencies/abilities that can't be lost. Most of them literally are just kits but they can't be taken away. So a Climbing Art does what a climbing kit can do (save for things like pass an item around since this is a personal ability).
• I use a standardized art point system so all arts consume these points to activate.

There's some knock on effects too. So I have different ability scores for instance.