Knave vs Cairn: which TTRPG fits your group?

Knave and Cairn side by side: dice, rules weight, prep, playstyle and what each game is about. Still split? Put both to a group vote.

Knave

Cairn

	Knave	Cairn
Publisher	Questing Beast Games	Yochai Gal
Dice	d20 roll-over	d20 + d6/d8
Players	3–6	2–5
Complexity
Prep	~15 min	~5 min
Foundry VTT	Community	Official
Free version	No	Yes
Playstyle	Exploration Combat Sandbox	Exploration Horror Survival
Setting	Fantasy	Fantasy

Still split? Let the group decide

Send both games to your players as one vote: everyone votes from their own phone, no signup.

Vote: Knave or Cairn →

What Knave is

An ultra-light, classless OSR toolkit

Knave is Ben Milton's (Questing Beast) ultra-light OSR game. Characters are classless — defined by their attributes and the items in their inventory slots. Its 80 pages are mostly generators (NPCs, monsters, spells, dungeons, hexes) that turn prep into rolling a couple of tables. The perfect hackable frame for your own campaign.

Pick it if

you want a classless OSR game where your gear is your class
the GM wants tables that generate NPCs, dungeons and hexes on the fly
you plan to hack it or mix it into other old-school games

Skip it if

you want character classes and a defined setting out of the box
your group dislikes counting inventory slots
you want a rule for every situation instead of GM rulings

Key mechanics

Classless via inventory
Roll-over d20
Generators for everything
Light & hackable

Full page →

What Cairn is

ultralight folk-horror OSR

A free, open, ultra-light system for dark folkloric fantasy. Built on Into the Odd and Knave. Rules — 20 pages. No classes, no levels. A character is their gear and their choices. Cairn 2e added travel procedures, slot-based inventory, and expanded wilderness exploration rules.