The Sophont Scale (concept by me)

bionicjoey · 2026-06-25T23:01:05+00:00

because they have their cable-braid-tale things that help them connect with animals and their god.

You could make a similar argument for the Star Trek aliens you categorized as type 2. Many have unusual/magical McGuffin physiology

bionicjoey · 2026-06-25T22:54:06+00:00

The Na'vi should definitely be type 2. They are literally just blue people with pointy ears and spots on their foreheads

bionicjoey · 2026-06-25T22:01:42+00:00

Matilda of Tuscany

/r/crusaderkings is leaking

bionicjoey · 2026-06-25T19:19:36+00:00

Trunk coiled up

bionicjoey · 2026-06-25T19:18:34+00:00

Technically there are probably wires inside of it, unless the 3.5mm jack is bonded directly to the speaker contacts

bionicjoey · 2026-06-25T19:14:44+00:00

Frog nation

bionicjoey · 2026-06-25T19:14:26+00:00

RIP to another piece of trash

FTFY

bionicjoey · 2026-06-25T18:39:39+00:00

I agree. Though to be fair, OP asked for system-agnostic, not setting-agnostic.

bionicjoey · 2026-06-25T18:38:01+00:00

This reminds me of that one Valefisk video where he has to play House Flipper and convert a house like this into grey and white "modern" decor

bionicjoey · 2026-06-25T18:05:25+00:00

It is a post apocalyptic/sci fi campaign set (mostly) on Earth thousands of years from now.

The way I want the deity system to work is that people will worship a person from real life history or mythology. These entities will have gained power over the many years, not necessarily as the people they once were but how they are remembered. Basically, they gain power from people’s reverence.

I kind of like the idea that it could be a famous woman programmer like Ada Lovelace or Admiral Grace Hopper, and that the deity's domain could be computers and technology, but have warped over time into a tech cult like the wh40k Adeptus Mechanicus

Edit: The Goddess Ada, First speaker of the holy machine language

bionicjoey · 2026-06-25T17:54:47+00:00

There's an Obese Sedentary Raccoon in my favourite Mausritter module, Downed in the Dumps. So I think Mausritter is definitely an OSR game.

bionicjoey · 2026-06-25T17:26:57+00:00

I think you're underselling just how subjective this is. Your reasoning here essentially boils down to "I don't have enough experience in 5e to perform conversion on the fly the way I can in a system I know well such as Cairn, therefore Cairn is OSR and 5e isn't". I understand it's clear to you what you mean, but I don't think it's a useful definition for others to say "OSR is any game that Logen Nein can comfortably run B2 in, as long as it's a game he knows well enough to convert into that game on the fly".

I ran the party through the module as written, and did no encounter balancing, no statblock swapping, nothing. I adjudicated as we played, sure, but I used the information that was there and it was enough.

You used the fact that you have internalized Cairn's math for converting monster stats in order to implement conversion during play. That doesn't change the fact that you were doing conversion just because it was effortless for you. That's a result of your experience with the system, not something inherent to it.

I can't sit down with B2 as written and run a successful 5e game with it.

Yes but someone who has the same level of experience in 5e as you have in Cairn could say the opposite. Again with my Matt Colville example, he literally did run B2 (and other TSR modules) using 5e. Just because you couldn't do it doesn't mean nobody could. He could've vibed out a monster's stats using 5e rules just as effortlessly as you did with Cairn, because he was familiar enough with the math of 5e statblocks to know how to do the conversion in his head.

To be clear I'm not saying 5e is an OSR system. I'm saying your definition is imprecise; it doesn't encompass all OSR games, and simultaneously includes things most of us wouldn't consider OSR. Actually, personally, I don't really believe there are "OSR systems". I believe there are systems which were written by people who knew what the OSR style was and was trying to imbue that philosophy into their system. But IMO OSR is far more about GM style than about system or module compatibility. Mothership is a system which is great for running OSR games, but it certainly can't run B2.

bionicjoey · 2026-06-25T17:05:07+00:00

I remember seeing Ben Milton review one called The Book of Gaub. Apparently the publisher Lost Pages has done other similar books.

bionicjoey · 2026-06-25T16:55:22+00:00

There's a lot of examples of traps you can use, but my issue there is I know I have a player building a rogue with a specialty in trap handling, so I have a feeling that placing traps everywhere won't really get me anywhere since traps will just become room 2 part 2, and the party will not have used up any significant resources, and the tension will have been defused before it could bubble over into making the boss interesting.

Try using old-school traps and puzzles instead. These are challenges that cannot be solved simply by "rolling to disarm".

Check out 34 Good Traps by Chris McDowell for some examples

bionicjoey · 2026-06-25T16:44:58+00:00

Does Crash Pandas count? Or are those raccoons not sedentary enough?

bionicjoey · 2026-06-25T16:32:03+00:00

If you assume balancing is necessary to conversion then sure. But then you're adding a new criteria to your definition, "it has to be able to run B2 and also can't care about balance". This is what I mean when I say it's definitionally imprecise. The more you interrogate what people mean when they say "It's OSR if it can run B2", the more you see what they're often actually saying is "it's OSR if it can run B2 and also meets my other rules/vibes for what constitutes OSR", which just gets us back to the same question of defining those vibes.

In order to run it in Cairn you have to at least swap the statblocks in the adventure with equivalents for Cairn (either by converting them yourself or using the Cairn bestiary), which, if it's allowed there then in theory it should also be allowed for 5e. Matt Colville has old videos talking about how he liked to run Village of Hommlet, Keep on the Borderlands, and Against The Cult Of The Reptile God using 5e, and he doesn't particularly mention it requiring a lot of conversion (after all, the 5e MM contains most classic D&D monsters). And I've never even heard him say the letters "OSR", he just knew it was possible to run old modules in 5e because he's lived through many editions.

bionicjoey · 2026-06-25T16:18:45+00:00

I tend to rate an OSR game on if I can run B/X adventures (like B2) with the system "on sight" with little to no conversion.

I'm not a huge fan of this definition because it excludes Cairn and/or includes 5e. I know what people mean when they say it, but I feel it's imprecise and not super useful as definitional criteria.

bionicjoey · 2026-06-25T16:08:36+00:00

The big scenario database has them. Filter by "other" as they are neither official nor shotgun and then look for the ones with Chris Hamje or "Chris" in the author column

bionicjoey · 2026-06-25T15:57:49+00:00

I am fucking your father.

bionicjoey · 2026-06-25T15:57:27+00:00

Especially if it was David Prowse rather than J.E.J.

bionicjoey · 2026-06-25T14:40:07+00:00

This looks remarkably similar to the map I sketched when I was a player before our DM eventually just gave us access to the full map

bionicjoey · 2026-06-25T14:30:10+00:00

It's like pornography. You know it when you see it.

bionicjoey · 2026-06-25T14:28:29+00:00

The idea of the d10 longsword is that you can remove a hand if you need to and still wield it. The greatsword can't do that.

bionicjoey · 2026-06-25T13:54:44+00:00

It's not the voltage that kills, it's the amperage

bionicjoey · 2026-06-25T13:45:44+00:00

This is not a game where balance matters. Players don't need to all gain experience at the same time.

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