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Tag: Maze Knights

The Maze Knights Potion and Spell Generator

December 18, 2019 / / 1 Comment

The current plan is for magic in Maze Knights to focus around potions. Drink a potion, get a spell. Like in Knave, this makes spells very concrete and forces players to think about their inventory slots, as each potion takes up a slot. There probably will be recipes you can collect as the game goes on, but if you want to get crazy you can always whip up a random potion and hope you get something good.

Like in Maze Rats, I’ve created a magic generator that generates weird spell names. Unlike Maze Rats, it’s 24 tables long instead of 6, and includes tables for generating things like the potion’s consistency, smell, taste, bottle shape, etc. 20,342,016 possible spells! 2,176,782,336 bottles!

It’s probably going to get revised and tightened up as Maze Knights continues to develop, but it’s definitely solid enough to use right now in any fantasy RPG, especially Maze Rats. Click “Generate” to take it for a test drive! Sometimes tweaking a word (like making it plural) helps the spell make more sense.

The generator is free to download below. To randomly generate a potion, roll on the following table to find the name format. If you are using this with Maze Rats, "Effects" are now called "Qualities."

  1. [Quality] [Element]
  2. [Quality] [Form]
  3. [Element] [Form]
  4. [Quality] [Element] [Form]
  5. [Form] of [Element]
  6. [Form] of [Quality] [Element]

Each bolded word has 6 tables associated with it. Roll a die to find the correct table, and then roll on the corresponding 6x6 table to get the final word. (For example, to find a Quality you roll 3d6, getting 4, 3, 6. This means look at the 4th Quality table, 3rd group within that table, and the 6th item within that group.) The referee has final say over the potion’s effects.

Maze-Knights-0.0.10-Magic-GeneratorDownload

If you want the rest of the Maze Knights magic rules and the latest draft of the game, click here to help support Questing Beast on Patreon.

The Maze Knights Aesthetic

November 2, 2019 / / 3 Comments

Maze Knights continues to evolve as a system, but today we’ll be looking at the look and feel of the game. It doesn’t have any art right now, but it does have a pinterest board if you want to see what it looks like in my head. Building this board has been very important to the game’s development, as I find it hard to work on a projects before I lock down the aesthetics. It gives me a more complete sense of the world, and ends up guiding a lot of my other decisions. As Skerples pointed out, making a good game is not so much making all the right decisions as it is making consistent decisions in the same direction. Aesthetics is the first decision I make. It also helps me narrow down artists I might be contacting in the future to do illustration work.

As I’ve been collecting images for Maze Knights, I’ve started seeing a pattern in the images I like.

Architecture and environments

  • Verticality: Whether it’s a city, a building, a dungeon, or a wilderness scene, adding that extra dimension adds visual interest as well as tactical options and held energy. Balconies, staircases, trees houses, catwalks, elevators, ziplines, whatever. The Y axis is often exaggerated: roofs are too steep, buildings stack up and up impossibly, etc.
  • Worn but Functional: Everything has a makeshift, ramshackle feel without feeling grim or apocalyptic. Architecture has a humanity and warmth to it. This is sometimes represented by things being slightly droopy or rounded, as if slowly succumbing to gravity. Lots of fine detail brings out the personality of the structures and adds interactivity.
  • Isometric: Art where you can see most of the structure at a glance is great, especially when you can see paths and connections that let you visualize how you would move in, on and, around and between structures. Looking at the picture should inspire plans for escapes, break-ins, sieges, and ambushes. An isometric view also conveys way more information per square inch than a 2d map.
  • Color: Maze Knights doesn’t have the survival horror or grimdark palette common in OSR games. It has more in common with Break!! in that regard. It’s going for excitement, engagement, brightness, and clarity.

characters

  • Strong silhouettes: Strong, distinctive silhouettes give it a videogamey feel. I like characters in Maze Knights to feel very tool-like, and clear, vivid design communicates their functions quickly.
  • Variety: In most OSR games I play humans, and I wanted to break away from that here. The world of Maze Knights is a melting pot of thousands of stranded species from across the planes, so the gonzo is turned up to 11. I want to avoid typical demihumans like elves and dwarves, though. Your species should open up concrete gameable abilties; “lives a long time” or “sees in the dark” are too weak.
  • Equipment: In true JRPG fashion, I like my characters laden down with potions, weapons, spellbooks, piecemeal armor, monster parts, and random junk. Not only does it reflect the item slot system, it communicates how important gear is in the game when it comes to problem solving.

The biggest single influence was probably Final Fantasy IX. It’s a game I’ve only started playing recently, but I had a copy of the Art of Final Fantasy IX as a young teen and the look of it stuck with me every since.

If you want to follow along with the development of Maze Knights and get regular rules packets, consider supporting Questing Beast on Patreon.

Skeleton King – A Maze Knights Class

August 28, 2019 / / 2 Comments

Art by Vance Kelly

Art by Vance Kelly

I’ve been playing with short, flavorful classes for Maze Knights, inspired by Daniel Sell’s work on Troika! Here’s one I just typed up:

skeleton king

You awoke suddenly and clawed your way out from your crypt, life suddenly surging through your brittle bones from the final incantation placed upon you at the moment of your death. You now find yourself in a world you do not understand, surrounded by lowborn fools and barbaric customs. Your monuments lie in ruins, your deeds forgotten, your servants gone to dust. But your time is not over. Among the endless dead there must yet lie those who remember your glory, ready to rise at your summons and bring the world once more under your heel.

STARTING LIFE: 4

STARTING MANA: 6

SKILLS: Roll six times on the following table and add the results to your character sheet. If you roll the same skill more than once, add the bonuses. If a roll would raise a skill above +3, reroll.

  1. Outdated Etiquette +1
  2. Ancient History +1
  3. Dead Languages +1
  4. Obscure Philosophy +1
  5. Willpower +1
  6. Ceremonial weapon of your choice +1

EQUIPMENT

  • Crown
  • Ceremonial weapon of your choice
  • As many gold coins as you can carry (200 coins fill an item slot).

ABILITIES

  • You can speak the language of the undead and the secret language of all royalty.
  • You can spend 1 mana and take 10 minutes to reanimate a skeleton. Upon reanimation, roll on the reaction table to find its disposition. Hostile skeletons were enemies of your empire in life, while helpful skeletons are utterly loyal to you. Those in the middle may have to be incentivized.
  • You are undead and are immune to hunger, thirst, exhaustion, poison, disease, etc.

I’m working on more of these as part of the slow but steady development of Maze Knights, the expansion/revision of Maze Rats. You can join the Patreon if you want to get regular draft documents.

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