Knight is a French RPG 18 years in the making
Creators Coline and Simon explain this flashy, violent and dark setting where you play as the last beacons of hope for humanity.
NOTE: The Knight RPG can be found on Backerkit here!
1. Hi, can you introduce yourself and tell us about your background in tabletop RPGs?
Coline: Hi, my name's Coline, I've been a role-player for 25 years, and I've played in many different role-playing worlds, including D&D, World of Darkness, Orpheus and Kult! I'm particularly fond of contemporary occult and secret games. An editor by training, I founded Antre Monde in 2018 to publish games I'd like to play! I'm also an author on Knight: An Avalon RPG. Having this dual role of author and editor is important to me because it allows me to have a global view of projects, from a creative and obviously editorial point of view.
Simon: Hi, I'm Simon, publisher at Antre Monde and author of numerous board games and role-playing games in France. I've been a role-player for 25 years too, and have pretty much always been a GM. I love creating worlds, improvising stories with my players, and I've created the world of Knight: An Avalon RPG from many references and inspirations, but also from more personal things. Like Coline, I'm an author and editor on the Knight range, which gives me almost total control over what's created within the game.
2. What is Knight?
Coline: Knight is a game we like to call epic horror. In other words, the characters evolve in an atrocious universe, close to that of films, books and horror stories, but they can be heroes and change things. It's a universe that, at first glance, seems Manichean, about the struggle of light against darkness, waged in 2038 by shining, glorious knights. However, the universe is much deeper than that. Avalon is an organization with terrible secrets, supported by a continuous propaganda of tyrannical billionaires called immortals. Likewise, the darkness is not there by chance, and its presence has a cause in Knight's lore, far from what we might imagine. What we like about Knight is that players gradually discover that nothing is really good or bad, and that in the end, only they, the true heroes, can change things.
Simon: It is indeed a character game. In it, players create the legend of their knight and experience adventures, take a lot of hits, carry out missions that sometimes lead to agony, and then ask themselves questions as they gain power and climb the ranks within Avalon. The more they progress, the more they discover the secrets of the game universe, and the more they ask questions and uncover plots buried for millennia. At a certain level of play, it even takes on aspects of an occult investigation game rather than an action game. Otherwise, it is also a game about despair and hope. About fighting against the urge to stop everything. Darkness, for example, does not represent evil, but an invader with its own goals that provokes despair. Light, on the other hand, leads to hope, but also to a form of aggression that can be likened to bloodthirsty anger. Today, having a game that speaks of hope, where players embody heroes who can change the world, seems to feel good!
3. What are some of the inspirations and media touchstones for Knight?
Simon: Knight was born out of our meeting with Coline. We've been working on the universe since we met 18 years ago, and the game has evolved a lot, especially the lore. We started with a Mad Max-style post-apocalyptic game, then moved on to a contemporary occult game and finally a sci-fi/anticipation game with supernatural elements.
Coline: The game's lore was inspired by many things. Too many to mention. First of all, there's Saint Seiya, with its heroes who fall and always get back up again, but also Hellgate London for the atmosphere, Blame! for the architectural vertigo of the arks, Berserk for its desperate atmosphere, Iron Man for the meta-armor, Halo for the relationship between Arthur and his AI named Guinevere, but above all the Arthurian legend and our own mythology common to all the games in the Knight universe, namely the infinite struggle of light against darkness. But these forces are neither good nor evil. They're just fundamental forces, which have existed since the creation of the universe.
4. In the setting of the game, what is the origin of the technology that is used for the different suits of meta-armor? It’s nothing like society has ever seen before, right?
Coline: The origin of the colossal technological bonanza within the game comes from a South African scientist, James Niakaté, now known as Merlin. He created, for example, immortality (a project he wished to destroy, without success), but above all a technology of nano-generating machines, capable of creating many things, from buildings to objects, and even curing the most serious illnesses. Added to this is a new technology, called Alpha Energy. This almost infinite energy is used to power the knights' meta-armor, as well as the colossal arks dotted around the world, where around 30% of the population is protected from the darkness. These arks are home to lifeholds, residential megastructures where citizens live in near-anonymity, graded according to their usefulness to society. Add to this a layer of cyberpunk, with cybernetic implants, constant access to a new form of Internet and, of course, battle armor with physics-defying aptitudes!
5. The world is besieged by threats around the globe which each have their own distinct nature to them: in the Near East, there is a tangible darkness that no one can escape. From Korea to Malaysia, people have been replaced by plant-like entities. This is all the result of the mysterious Anathema. How much of the game is about uncovering the truth of Anathema as opposed to just fighting it?
Simon: SPOILER WARNING! Discovering the secrets of darkness is a major element of the game. While in one part of Asia, you'll have to face a form of monstrosity linked to human flesh (everything has been covered in human flesh and mutated to give it a body horror feel), other places are linked to beasts or even machines. Each of these territories is under the yoke of a Dark Lord, who represents a concept and has his own goals. Yes, the Darknesses are also at war with each other, and the Lords don't necessarily seem to follow the same goals. Over the course of the game, and in particular the End of Time Gesture campaign, the heroes will discover the truth about the presence of darkness, and the involvement of numerous human factions in the arrival of the Anathema. This story seems to have been playing out for centuries!
6. The human population has really taken a beating in the setting. There are just 24 arks, or fortified enclaves, around the globe, and the population of “dregs” outside of those arks only numbers in the millions. Would you consider Knight to be a post-apocalypse setting?
Coline: Even worse, Knight is an apocalyptic game! The apocalypse is still underway, and the darkness is still present, sowing despair, horror and, of course, creatures that haunt certain areas of the world. Players are in the midst of the end of the world, and are even trying to prevent it by finding the Grail: light for all peoples! The people who live outside the arks live in a world that's worse than post-apocalyptic. They experience horror on a daily basis, struggling, hiding and trying to survive as the darkness spreads. The few knights they meet are seen as heroes, or sometimes as instruments of the immortals who control the arks.
Simon: In short, in Knight the world hasn't fallen yet, and you can save it!
7. There’s so much despair and gloomstain all over the globe at this point. How do the knight PCs ever really hope to combat and clean up all of it?
Simon: Hope (and art) is a very important notion in Knight: An Avalon RPG. Carried along by the propaganda of the immortals, they will see that they may be serving masters from whom they will seek to emancipate themselves and find a real reason to fight. The notion of hope is even used in the game in the form of points. It doesn't represent mental health, but the knights' fighting spirit, i.e. their ability not to give up and to draw on their resources to continue the fight. To regain hope points, player characters must be heroic and win victories; conversely, they lose hope points when they harm humans, fail or are touched by darkness. They all have a personal goal, a kind of quest, called a major motivation, which allows them to gain a lot of hope at once. But their real goal is to find the Grail. They know they can, they believe (at least at first) in Arthur, and Avalon promises that the Grail will be found!
8. In the core rulebook there is lore stretching back to the beginning of the universe. Can you give us a brief summary of the history of the universe in this setting?
Coline: Of course, but this is a huge spoiler! So SPOILER WARNING: This story, which goes back to the beginning of the universe, is called the Legend and tells of the age-old war between the Falcon and the Serpent, two primordial entities (which can be found in many mythologies) that have always been in conflict. The first, called the Falcon, represents light, anger, violence and art, while the second, called the Serpent, symbolizes darkness, peace, manipulation and science. In the game, one of the two primordial entities won... I'll say no more!
9. How much of this lore should the players have read in order to really get and enjoy the game?
Simon: Everything, but not at the beginning of the game. At first, players are innocent knights who believe in immortals and Avalon. Then, as the missions progress, they become aware of everything that's hidden, whether intentionally or not. This is the tip of our role-playing iceberg, and there are many others. Over the course of the game, the GM will gradually reveal these secrets and, of course, the Legend! For me, this is the game's main interest: creating your own knightly legend and discovering the secrets of the world of Knight: An Avalon RPG.
10. What are the Overlords, where do they come from and what do they want?
Coline: BEWARE OF THE SPOILER! The Lords are beings from another reality called the Abyss, home to the primordial being known as the Serpent. In this place, a gigantic city has been built, organized in concentric circles, called Rebirth. There are nine circles, one for each Overlord. Rather than representing thinking entities in their own right, these Lords actually represent facets of the Serpent, as if they were fragments of its spirit or essence. Thus, the Beast represents the predatory side of the Serpent, the Machine its calculating aspect and the Mask, for example, represents its ability to conceal its designs, while the Arbiter represents its will to justice. But each Overlord has its own particularity. In addition to being a concept, he is also capable of incarnating himself in the form of powerful avatars, more or less independent, often thinking, and with diverse and varied wills. Some of these incarnations wish to evolve, others to become human, and still others simply to spread despair. But their ultimate goal is to escape the Abyss, this other reality, and settle permanently on Earth. But why? There's a reason, but it's too big a spoiler!
11. How and where do Overlords show up in a game?
Simon: Overlords appear in the game through their domains, of which there are currently four identified by Avalon: the Flesh, the Beast, the Machine and the Lady. One Overlord seems to have no domain on Earth, but manifests himself as a free electron: the Mask. Each domain has its own particularities: the Beast's domain in Europe resembles a colossal, haunted forest where bestial monstrosities live, while the Machine's domain on the East Coast of the USA is a labyrinth where buildings move and machines come to life... Each domain is unique and has its own hundreds of varied dangers. One, however, remains unidentified: the Middle East, which belongs to who knows what Lord.
In these domains, incarnations of the Lord come to life. Some are purely hostile, while others try to negotiate with the Knights or even change humanity. What's interesting is that no two lords seem to have the same goal, and each has its own objectives in addition to the incarnations, which themselves have their own personal wills.
12. PCs are members of an organization called the Knight, which is composed of about 1,000 armored hero combatants and 15,000 support personnel. Can you describe some of the other factions in the setting?
Coline: Yes, Avalon is important, and there are many other factions in this secret game where politics are important. We have, for example, the Nodachi, Avalon's Japanese rival, which follows the precepts of Bushido and is seen by Westerners as a ruthless organization (whereas the darkness créatures the Nodachi faces is among the most horrible); U-Sigma which is a military corporation located in the heart of the united African nations and which protects free territories with an army of combat robots; the Nine, a mysterious organization whose members seem to know everything about what's going on on Earth; the Monna-Molelo, the secret service of the United African Nations, which seems to have a lot of knowledge about darkness; the Black Cell, a very ancient organization that has been fighting against the influence of darkness (and light) for thousands of years? In short, there's so much more, but that's saying too much!
13. The lore is incredibly rich and unique, fertile grounds for storytelling in other forms of media. What are your thoughts on Knight as an animated series or graphic novel?
Coline: Thank you very much! We already have a novel, Morningstar: Origins, which tells the story of a young woman who lives through the arrival of the Anathema until she becomes a Knight of Avalon. But we'd really like to turn Knight; An Avalon RPG into a graphic novel, an animated series or, better still, a video game! We hope the game will find its audience, and we have lots of ideas for stories we could adapt.
14. Can you explain how Knight is a horror game, despite the fact that you’re in power armor doing cool power armor things?
Simon: It's a horror game in terms of context and atmosphere. Anxious in many ways (inhuman arch society, gory horror, pure anguish...), it confronts the heroes with situations that are sometimes very harsh, and that only they seem able to save or change. The horror is often present until the knights act and save the situation. But sometimes, despite their meta-armor, they themselves fall victim to Horror. An enemy known and loved by GMs is called the Nightmare, and it gradually gets into the knights' minds, playing with their fear and doubts... Even well-armed, knights retain many weaknesses that the GM can exploit. As long as it remains cinematic and interesting to play.
15. When you perform an action in the game, the GM chooses one of five base characteristics, and then the player chooses one of three sub-characteristics. The ratings in those two tell the player how many dice they can roll. How did the designers arrive at this hybrid approach to choosing what to roll with?
Simon: Coline and I created this system so that players would feel involved in the narrative. When a player chooses a characteristic in combo with the one proposed by the GM, they have to describe their action and get involved. This adds a little narrative flavor to the game. With this simple little system, we allow players to shine, to perform brilliant actions and to describe what they're doing... under the GM's supervision, of course. The GM can accept or reject a combo, or even increase the difficulty. And conversely, if he finds the combo interesting or cool, he can lower the difficulty of the roll!
16. Your character has hit points (HP) and armor points (AP), which is pretty intuitive. But can you explain what violence, or violence points, are?
Simon: In Knight: An Avalon RPG, knights are so powerful that most of their weapons can inflict violence. Violence represents the effect a weapon can have on an opponent's morale, cohesion and ability to inflict damage over a wide area. A flamethrower, for example, will have a very high level of violence. Violence, however, only works against what are known as gangs, a type of enemy that on its own might not bother a knight, but in a group can become threatening. Gangs include poorly armed militia groups, small creatures of darkness or swarms of drones, for example. When a knight fights this type of enemy, he must use the violence of his weapon. The GM or player then describes the effect (often cinematic) that violence has on the targeted band. Militiamen, for example, may flee screaming under the effect of a flamethrower, while small creatures of darkness may explode under the effect of heat, generating a cascade of events in the scene. In short, violence is used to inflict damage on large groups of small enemies!
17. What are the main kinds of activities that players end up doing in any given session as a result of the way the mechanics are designed?
Coline: The game is very varied in the way players approach it. We've got everything: investigation, epic battles, romance, life in Camelot, the occult, pure roleplay. As each mission is very different from the others, there are plenty of ways to play Knight: An Avalon RPG. Some groups will focus on optimization and combat, while others will seek to unravel the mysteries of darkness. But it's the fun of it all, and the fact that every player gets to shine during a mission, that's what keeps coming back.
18. What kind of different armor can your character wear, and do they enable different playstyles?
Simon: There are 17 in the entire Knight range, some of which are hidden from players. Each meta-armor has its own unique abilities, and thanks to them, any hero can shine in his or her field. There's no deliberate balancing between meta-armors, but rather the quest for maximum fun in what the meta-armor offers. Want to play discreetly? Choose meta-armors like the invisible Rogue, the shape-shifting Bard or the Psion, which controls creatures of darkness. Want to focus on epic combat? Choose the Barbarian, who can grow several meters tall, the Paladin, who can generate a dome of force and anchor herself to the ground to fire multiple shots, or the Warmaster, who can boost her allies in battle. Want a more balanced team? Take the Ranger, who can fire a weapon specially designed for her and who can see things normally invisible (like the past, thoughts...), the Priest, who can create objects using nanomachines, or the Druid, who can call on drones to help her in her actions or protect her. There's something for everyone, for every approach and every style of play! That's the hallmark of our game: every player can find his or her own style and have fun!
19. There are lots of standard fighting and defensive abilities and modules, but what are some of the most unusual abilities that a PC can have in the game?
Coline: Some of the modules' advanced capabilities are really intended for high-ranking knights. For example, there's the teleportation module, which lets you teleport over short distances, the ranged attack module, which lets you generate mini-portals in reality to strike through with a melee weapon, and even a flight module! But the most astonishing abilities are those found in the 2038 book, which are linked to prestige modules. These abilities grant knights phenomenal power, often close to becoming Knights of the Round Table. There's a module that can resist a kill, one that can add an extra characteristic to a combo, and another that can generate a powerful beam of light. At this stage, the knights are true superheroes, but obviously, the threats they face are at their level!
20. Do you think there is room to expand the lore as well as the character options for Knight?
Simon: Yes! In France, for example, we have the End of Days gesture, a major game campaign that completes the story of Knight: An Avalon RPG. In other words, once the campaign is over, players have changed the world so much that it's no longer playable as it was originally! Similarly, we still have lots of ideas for developing the lore and getting players to play something other than knights! For example, we've got a spin-off on the Nodachi, one coming out soon about outcasts living outside the arks, and even another set three centuries before Knight: An Avalon RPG! There's no shortage of ideas, and Knight is an extended universe for which we still have a lot to say.
Coline: In terms of character options, we still have a lot of ideas for modules, weapons and fighting styles that we'll no doubt make available one day!
Please do a review for this game! I backed it on Backerkit.
What happened to your Discord server?
I played the first version of the game.
The amount of work is huge and both the lore and the system are dense.
I didn't play it a lot because it's really ambitious and you'll need to be focused on it to play an interesting campaign. Too lazy for that !