Specifically, the utility of Knave’s background + 3 mundane items at the roll of a d100 was a huge streamline for getting everyone up and running. As it happened, the combos of backgrounds and their thematic items ended up doubling as role playing seeds—for the brand-new-to-RPGs players in particular. And the unusual items on the list ended up being the most used/useful during play: a player used their canary to distract a pair of skeletal hounds; another player kept picking off pieces of a foraged fungus, leaving them behind as poisonous breadcrumbs; another player tangled a Minotaur in their pit-fighting net (subsequently, their character was fatally body slammed by said Minotaur, but the time that the net bought them saved another character’s life).
Of course, all of this is hugely dependent on how the game is being refereed but it worked really well for our group.
I ran an 8-room dungeon crawl with this last night (as its own system, no FMC) and everybody had a blast! Combat was smooth and deadly; converting 0e monsters was breezy as well. Ditching ability scores was a breath of fresh air for me and the players. We ended up supplementing the starting items table with the d100 Former Professions table from the Knave 2e draft and it added a lot to character creation. Thanks for the excellent pamphlet!
