Knave

Knave is a rules toolkit created by Ben Milton for running old-school fantasy RPGs without classes. Every PC is a Knave: a tomb-raiding, adventure-seeking ne’er-do-well whose role in the party comes from what they carry, not a character class. It is fast to teach, highly compatible with existing OSR bestiaries and adventures, and includes designer commentary throughout explaining why each rule works the way it does, to make the game easy to hack and reskin.

Abilities are central: all six abilities (Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, Charisma) use a unified bonus/defense system that also governs armor, so combat, saves, and opposed rolls all resolve the same way. Encumbrance is tracked with simple item slots, equal to a PC’s Constitution defense. Currency runs on a copper-penny standard, priced to approximate real medieval costs. Spellcasting is concrete: a PC can only cast as many spells as they can physically carry, one per spell book, and a spell book can only be used once per day.

Licence: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). Attribution: Knave is created by Ben Milton and licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Source: archive.org/details/knave-1.0-en.

Rules

Character Creation — rolling abilities, item slots, hit points, starting gear, and the eleven random trait tables
Playing the Game — abilities in play, saving throws, reactions, combat, stunts, advantage, critical hits and item quality, morale, healing, converting OSR monsters, and advancement
Equipment & Prices — the full copper-penny price list: tools, light sources, armor, weapons, clothing, food, animals, lodging, ships, transport, wages, and buildings
Magic — how spell books work, and the 100 classless spells
Character Sheet — Blank character sheet (printable) with interactive generator

Structured Tables

Machine-readable JSON for the game’s random tables:

traits.json — Physique, Face, Skin, Hair, Clothing, Virtue, Vice, Speech, Background, Misfortune, Alignment
starting-gear.json — Armor, Helmets and Shields, Dungeoneering Gear, General Gear 1, General Gear 2
spells.json — the 100 Classless Spells

See the tables index for how to use them.