Cairn vs Old-School Essentials
Compare Cairn and Old-School Essentials side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, and more.
| Cairn | Old-School Essentials | |
|---|---|---|
| Genre | Fantasy | Fantasy |
| Tags | Rules-Light, Classless, Deadly, Dungeon Crawl, Exploration, Inventory Management, Fiction-First, Random Character Creation, Random Tables, Strong GM Support | Dungeon Crawl, Exploration, Hexcrawl, Deadly, Sandbox, Resource Management, Inventory Management, Random Tables, Vancian Casting, Strong GM Support |
| Core Mechanic | To avoid a risky outcome, roll d20 equal to or below STR, DEX, or WIL; a 1 succeeds and a 20 fails. Only the participant most at risk rolls an opposed save. Attacks deal damage automatically, reduced by armor and then Hit Protection (HP). Damage beyond HP reduces STR and requires a save against the reduced STR to avoid critical damage. | Attacks roll d20 against an attack matrix or an optional ascending Armour Class target. Saving throws meet a category target on d20. Ability checks roll at or below an ability score on d20. |
| Dice | d20 | d20 |
| Complexity | Low | Low |
| Availability | Free core rules | Free core rules |
| Runnability | 5 of 5 book tools | 5 of 5 book tools |
| License | CC BY-SA 4.0 | OGL 1.0a |
| Third-Party Publishing | Commercial publishing allowed — Creative Commons text reuse | Commercial publishing allowed — Open license |
| Summary only, not legal advice. Check current terms before publishing. | ||
| Publisher | Cairn Press | Necrotic Gnome |
| Year | 2024 | 2019 |
| Languages | English, Finnish, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish | English, Italian, Spanish, French, Czech, Portuguese, Chinese, Korean |
| Best For | Groups who want dangerous woodland expeditions where equipment and preparation matter more than optimized character builds. Suits campaigns shaped by exploration and the consequences of encounters. | Groups who want treasure-driven dungeon expeditions and open wilderness campaigns with fragile starting characters. |
| Highlights | Fatigue occupies the same ten inventory slots as equipment, making spellcasting and hardship compete with useful gear. Dungeon turns and wilderness watches tie exploration choices to events and resource costs. Training and significant encounters can change abilities without an experience-point track. | Treasure recovered from adventures provides most experience points, rewarding successful exploration over fighting alone. Reaction and optional morale rolls let encounters lead to negotiation or flight instead of automatic combat. Stronghold construction and taxation let accumulated wealth support a growing domain. |
| Considerations | Automatic attack damage makes direct confrontation dangerous even when characters wear armor. The Warden decides when fictional advantages remove the need for a save instead of using graded difficulty targets. Advancement depends on experiences and negotiated training rather than a predictable level progression. | Characters die at zero hit points, and failed poison saves are usually fatal. Demihuman characters combine ancestry with class and have lower level limits than human classes. Declared spells are lost if the caster is hit or fails a saving throw before acting. |