CRACK! – Common Rules for Adventure Campaigns by Knock! V1.0b

CRACK! is a complete game. It is meant to support your own creations so that fans of the original game and of its clones can use them. Meant as a lingua franca for the adventure gaming communities, these rules are incomplete by design. Ignore, change, and make up whatever you need, taking inspiration from whatever other system you like. The golden rule should always be: when in doubt, do it the way you usually do it.

We’re not trying to build a new brand or anything here, just humbly adding our two quirky coppers to the party’s loot. We hope you will help develop this game so it can become a reference (among others) for those of us who want to keep the old game undead and well, and to build on its legacy. 

CRACK! uses all the concepts we know since, say, 1981. And all the mechanics have similar or close to similar effects. You will have no trouble adapting the material proposed for CRACK! to any clone of the original game, and vice versa. Our goal: Any adventure, setting, random magic hats table, tentacley creature, or character typewritten in the language of CRACK! can be understood by any of us.

The full text of the rules is released under CC-BY-4.0. You can steal it in its entirety for any use, commercial or not. (Have a look inside the book for some precisions.)

And more than just the game! We’ve reached out to some of the KNOCK! contributors, asking if they had some free stuff to give us (or the time to make some) and the result is CRACK+, a series of mini supplements containing more character options, creatures, adventures, and random tables. The first 10 issues of CRACK+ are available now!

DOWNLOAD everything from our Resources page

Author: Eric Nieudan & the Laminak Crew
Art: Keny Widjaja
We’d like to thank Erin ‘taichara’ Bisson, Evlyn Moreau, Frank Reding, Harbowoputra &Renata Sumadinata, James Maliszewski, John Grümph, Nicolas Dessaux, Rosie Grey, Stuart Robertson, and Vagabundork for answering the call of community and producing cool stuff with a few days’ notice. Go buy their games, they’re worth every penny.