Discover the Black Knights micro RPG

Black Knights is a micro RPG (1 page) that you can pay as little, or as much, as you want for it.

If you pay $3 or more than you get the Weapons ‘N’ Dahmer Expansion.

The game comes from the GORM podcast team. That’s a podcast about micro comedy RPGs. Good niche!

In Black Knights, you have health tracks for your arms, legs, torso and head. You’re only dead when your head hits zero. I’m reminded of a Monty Python encounter.

I’ve already pretty much told you the rules to Black Knights. Characters have a knightly name, health tracks and no other stats. GMs hand out injuries when Black Knights do something foolish.

Skill checks are made by assigning a difficulty number to a task, and a part of the body best able to help with the task. The player then rolls as dice determined by a lookup table and the damage track for the body part being used. If the total exceeds the difficulty number when the task is a success.

It is, after all, an RPG on one page. Nearly half the game is a scenario generation table. There’s a 1d6 for the setup, a 1d6 for the quest and a 1d6 for the “but”.

Here’s what I got;

The knights are writing chivalric poetry when they are given a quest to escort the King to his mistress’ abode. However, There is a wizard around who is pranking everyone.

Black Knights: Weapons ‘N’ Dahmer

Here’s an expansion that doubles the size of the core rules.

There are rules for weapons (which bring bonuses to checks) and armour as well as magical artifacts.

The expansion also takes the already surreal game off down darker and even more surreal paths. You know; cannibalism to regain health, donating body parts to fellow knights and decomposition rules.

Weapons ‘N’ Dahmer offers up more scenarios. I had so much fun generating my first that I tried another.

The knights are extorting the sweet shop owner when they are given a quest to survive old age. However, the dwarves keep undermining them. Literally.

I bought a gimmick of an RPG, and I have no regrets.