Fridays with Cairn: Session 8

We left off from our last session with the party trying to decide on their next steps. Having made a positive contact with Breylor, they obtained a key to the church and the name of an insider at Aces & Tails called Sanmoor, along with a bottle of poison to be used for either target. 


After much deliberation the party decided to try and conduct an assassination on Graves Tailsman. They did not seem excited about poisoning a member of the church, despite his possible corruption. Unfortunately, they did not know where Graves' current whereabouts were, so they decided to split up and complete some reconnaissance. 

Aces & Tails Stakeout

Gruid, Boroth, Ysln, Can and Arjune decided to stakeout Aces & Tails to try and observe the people coming and going, and to try and find their contact Sanmoor. Gruid and Boroth went to the back of the building to see if there was access to the kitchens or any staff. 

They observed on the back of the building a locked door along with two open windows approximately fifteen feet off the ground that could be accessed by climbing the drain pipes. Next to the locked door was a large trash pile. 

Arjune positioned herself at the front of the building and began to preach loudly, accosting the various patrons as they entered or left the building. She wanted to keep an eye out to see if Graves would enter through the front door. 

Ysln and Can both went inside and got themselves a place at one of the common room gambling tables to see if they could garner any additional information. Ylsn was moderately successful while gambling.

Tailing some henchmen

Cwingeld took a different approach to the information gathering endeavor and designed to try and seek out any henchmen in the market district to observe them while they were collecting their weekly "taxes" on the merchants. He was able to observe the henchmen accost a shop owner and he ultimately followed them to a warehouse on the edge of town. Upon looking into the warehouse he found that there were seven henchmen in the building but there was no sign of Graves. Inside the building the henchmen were counting the week's money and Cwingeld clearly observed a large desk awaiting an occupant. Cwingeld overheard one of the henchmen state that Graves would be along later this evening, but they did not know when. 

Aces & Tails Stakeout (Cont.)

Happening simultaneously, the party members back at Aces & Tails did gain their own information. Gruid and Boroth were able to befriend a young kitchen boy named Kyrin as he was taking out the trash from the kitchen. Gruid paid the boy three gold coins to keep the backdoor unlocked.

Inside Can and Ysln tried to gain information from the waitstaff on when Graves might be in residence. The waitstaff did not have knowledge of his arrival, but did indicate that he typically came in the evenings to a private room upstairs to receive his supper. Ysln attempted to gain access to the second floor by indicating she was interested in the sexual services provided by establishment. She was brought upstairs and shown to a private room, but was quickly ushered back down to the main floor when she indicated that she could not afford any of the services offered (ranging from 5-15 gold). 

The information finally broke when the doorman to Aces & Tails confronted Arjune. The doorman asked Arjune to please leave the area because he was disturbing the guests. Boroth rounding the corner from the back of the establishment asked the man if his name was Sanmoor. It was and they found their man inside. Sanmoor indicated that he would not move on Graves himself, but he knew Graves' schedule this evening and could provide chefs clothes if the party needed them. 

Graves was currently on his way to Aces & Tails and was expected to arrive around 10:00 pm, wherein he would take his supper. After supper he would leave and head over to the warehouse district to complete a final tally of the week's earnings, after which he would finally retire to his private residence around 3:00 am.

The party did not yet know where Graves' residence was, but they now had his schedule and knew two of the locations where he would be. Both locations would likely be heavily guarded. Access inside Aces & Tails was fairly easy, at least to the public areas, but the downside is that any action taken in this location would be seen by a lot of people. A full on confrontation would likely not be the best course of action and the party did not know how to get to the second floor. 

The warehouse on the other hand would have very little visibility to the public, but the party did not have much information on the location. They did have time if they wanted to gather more information though.

The Assassination

After much deliberation the party elected to attempt their assassination at Aces & Tails. Can and Ysln remained inside on the ground floor to monitor the situation from the inside. Graves was observed arriving through the front door of the building right on time, and immediately headed up to his private room on the second floor. 

Gruid entered the kitchen area through the backdoor, wearing the newly acquired chef's clothes and was able to succeed a Dex saving throw to act as a sous chef. He then slipped the poison into the drink on the silver platter for Graves and quickly left the building and heading right back to the inn the party was staying at. 

The tray of food was brought up to the second floor and the party now waited. Time went on with seemingly nothing happening until Mr. Stillman eventually came down the stairs. He quietly talked to two henchmen who locked the front door to the establishment and blocked the exit from the gambling room. Can and Ylsn observed Mr. Stillman head to the kitchen, lock the door. Moments later screams poured from the kitchen all Stillman was killing all the chef staff. 

Panic arose in the gambling hall, but the two henchmen prevented anyone from leaving, trapping Can and Ylsn inside. Can and Ylsn had to make a decision. Do they attack the henchmen to try and get out? Do they rally the scared gamblers in the hall or do they wait it out? Thankfully, it did not come down to violence. 

Arjune had a spellbook of "Knock" on her possession and used it on the front door from the outside to open it. The loud noise distracted the henchmen and a rush of people burst out of the gambling room and onto the street. 

Graves Tailsman was dead and the party made their way back to their inn to regroup. Later that evening Mr. Stillman visited the inn. Mr. Stillman knew the party committed the assassination since Gruid returned to the inn with the chef's clothes still on. It was established in an earlier session that the inn was being watched by henchmen of Mr. Tailsman. 

Mr. Stillman appluaded the party's gumption, but warned them not to interfere again as he now presumably took Tailsman's place inside the crime syndicate. 

And that is where we ended Session 8. 

Fridays with Carin: Session 7

We completed out latest session of Cairn this past Friday, and it was perhaps the most interesting session we have played to date. There were no dice rolls at all during this session. It was all role-play. Some players definitely enjoyed this, but I could tell that some others did not care for the session as much. 

As I reported in my previous blog post, our players have retreated from the Olde Island Fortress and from Morgansfort . They made their way north to the town of Firston (a town I made up) to sell some of their treasure, and to bring in the two new party members whom they lost.

Our session consisted of the group splitting up to follow up on the three rumors and interests they initiated last session. I'll admit that I did zero planning for this session, so I am actually quite proud of myself for developing these quest lines on the fly.

Aces and Tails

The first visit in the evening was the return to the Aces and Tails gambling house and to visit with Graves Tailsman. Boroth, Gruid and Can met Mr. Tailsman, the "big time" gangster in town. His request of the party was straight forward. He wanted the party to "off" Breylor Shunderman, the famous big game hunter who lives outside of town, and he wanted it done in three days.

His reward was "a favor".

Since the night was young our party very eagerly took this contract. What they didn't know is that this simple hit job was going to become a bit more complicated.

The Church of Tah

Arjune, Ysln, Cwingwald, and Canon visited the Church of Tah to get more information from Brother Oldeman on the relic that the party was to acquire. The church presented a very detailed and lengthy contract indicating that "any and all items identified as possible relics or magical items would become the property of the church". My players impressed me and were able to catch on that this contract would have identified items such as "stamped gold coins" as relics.

They turned the table by changing the date of commencement so they had time to complete their "hit" before heading out of the town to find the relic.

The Two Headed Bear

Now here is where the story gets a bit interesting. The next morning the party went out of town to visit Breylor Shunderman, the famous hunter. They discussed that previous evening that they would try to convince Mr. Shunderman to leave Firston, with the hope that they did not have to kill him. When they arrived at The Shunderman manor, they did not find what they were expecting.

Mr. Shunderman proved himself to be an excellent marksman, shooting a plum out of Ysln's hand from 100 meters away after she picked the fruit from his orchard. Breylor Shunderman is a large man, very well build and muscular. Now in his sixties, he is retired from the big game hunt due to a leg injury which now has him walking with a cane.

Breylor invited the party into his very large manor, which featured taxidermied animals from around the world, including a Mammoth in the front hall.

Breylor informed the party that he setup this manor outside the town of Firston with the intent of hunting the rumored two headed bear. Unfortunately, he is unable to complete that hunt due to his leg. He is extending the offer to Gruid to hunt and kill the two headed bear and as a reward he would offer a silvered break-loading pistol of his own design as a reward. The pistol would come with six bullets totaling 12 + 1d6 damage per round.

The party also noticed some paperwork on Breylor's table which mentioned the name of Brother Oldeman and they were able to convince him to give some more details on this paperwork.

Breylor explained to the party that the Church of Tah was working with Graves Tailsman to control the trade and market inside Firston. Tailsman was using his muscle to influence goods and services and Brother Oldeman was using the church to launder the money.

This information drastically changed the party's approach and Breylor informed the party that he could utilize his influence in the town to get information or access to various locations.

The party now has a decision to make on their next steps.

Fridays with Cairn: Session 4-6

It's been a few weeks since I have posted an update to our Friday's with Cairn report. Our group has actually played I think three sessions since my last posting and there has been some interesting developments along the way. Let's take a look at how that has been going. 

Room 12 & 13

After leaving the Kobold lair and successfully gaining information on the location of the goblins in the Old Island Fortress, our group continued north making their way into in a meeting or war room. The room was damp and featured significant decay to a large table in the center of the room. Cybil stumbled across a pit trip on the inside of this room adjacent to the wet door, which lead back out to the main entrance hallway. She luckily succeeded on her Dex saving throw and was able to avoid damage. 

While exploring the room the party observed that there were doors at all four compass points. All of them were of the same construction and opened into this room except the eastern door, which appear to be made of much better construction and with a different iron hinge. That opened into another room to the east (Room 13) which was a storage room for various treasures. This storage room did not have the water damage that the war room had, and in fact had a significant layer of very fine dust, so much so that it kicked up into the air just from the motion of the door opening. 

Cwingwald suggested that the party close the door behind them when entering this room, but the rest of the party disagreed. Thankful that they did, because once the party stepped into the room with their torch, they kicked up dust that lit into a significant fireball. Several members failed their saves and took fire damage, while a few other were able to dive back out into the War Room. They quickly closed the door behind them and unfortunately the treasures inside were burned in the resulting fire. 

Room 10 &11

After briefly recovering the party continued north to a long an angled hall filled with columns. In the center of this room was a large statute decorated similar to a Greek solider with a shield and spear pointed down towards a large iron chest on the floor. The face of the statute was damaged and broken on the floor. 

Canhoreal had a lock pick set and attempted to pick the lock on the chest. Upon his attempt the spear of the soldier shot down and gave him piercing damage. The party approached the chest from the sides and were able to rotate it 90 degrees to get it out of the line of the spear and upon opening it found several precious stones in addition to some gold. 

Rooms 9, 7, 6

Continuing through the dungeon the party finally came across the goblins in question. They laid a bear trap in the hallway and enticed the goblins into the hallway and an ambush. They were successful in doing so, but the battle was hard won. During the melee, both Canhoreal and Beatrice went down after failing a Str save, but having Str remaining. Once the goblins were successfully dispatched the party had to make some decisions. They quickly decided that they needed to get out of the fort if they were to have any chance of saving either Canhoreal's or Beatrice's life. They broke off a couple of rotting boards from the table in the war room to use a stretchers and four party members quickly carried the two injured parties out to try and get back to the farmer's place as quickly as possible. The remaining party members took stock of their remaining provisions and followed behind a few moments later. 

They thankfully passed their encounters check, but I required both Canhoreal and Beatrice to continue to roll strength saves, once per hour by reducing their remaining Str by 1d4 per hour. Should they reach 0 Str they would be dead. 

The party moved as quickly as they could, each making Dex saves again when crossing the river in the canoe, but in the end Beatrice unfortunately did not make it. Canhoreal was able to survive taking a Sundering wound as a result of the combat as well. 

Moving on from the Olde Island Fortress

The party decided to take stock of their endeavors to date, twice having to escape from the fortress with their lives barely in tact, but without the sword which they were originally striving to obtain. They acquired a decent sum of money and several treasure items that they did have the opportunity to sell. 

Running low on provisions they made the decision to retire to Morgansfort and re-assess. They held a brief water funeral for Beatrice and then divided up her possessions amongst the group before making their way back. 

Once back at Morgansfort the party decided to part ways with Wenlan and 2Can and pursue other interests. They were informed that there was a town north of Morgansfort called Firston, which would be a place that they could sell their treasures and possibly find other employment. Morgansfort itself was happy to purchase the weapons and armor from Beatrice, but did not have the means to purchase the treasure items. 

Before their departure Wenlan sent off the party with a warm farewell and informed them that he was going to attempt the Olde Fort once again. Should the party want to look him up in the future, he was going to venture west of Firston into the wilderness, and he extended himself as a positive friend and relation to the party in the future. 


On the Road to Firston

Heading out on the road back to Firston the party was traveling on a relatively path, however, no road is truly safe on the wilderness edge of the Urd Empire. The first half of their journey was without incident, but light rain persisted throughout the day. Late in the afternoon the party came across their first obstacle, which was a Wood Troll feeding on a deer it caught along the road. The road at this location was fairly clear on either side with approximately 1/4 mile of grassland on either side and the ocean to the east and the woods to the west. The party elected to avoid the Troll entirely and spent an additional couple of hours moving through the grassland off the road to avoid the troll. The party rolled a "Group" Dex save to see if they could get past the Troll without notice and every member of the party succeeded. 

That evening while setting up camp, most of the party members chose to sleep in their backpacks to avoid the wet ground and the consequences of that action. Their treasures were therefore piled under one of their wagons. The treasure attracted the attention of a Boggart who wanted to get its hands on some of their "shiny and glittery". Cybil deftly negotiated with the Boggart and even caught it in a foot race due to some excellent manipulation by tossing a silver coin at the creature. Upon capture she made the Boggart promise to not bother them the remainder of that night and they received its word. 


Arriving at Firston

The next morning the party arrived at Firston and quickly decided to sell their treasure items and dive up the treasure amongst themselves. Cybil decided she was to retire from adventuring, making just over 100 gold total and the party had an opportunity to meet their two new companions. 

Gruid came to replace Cybil and is a local of Firston. Known as a loafer, he is a "has been" ranger who now mostly spends his time as a local beggar, well past his best days. He quickly tried to approach the party, seeing they enter Firston from the Morgransfort road, which is an unusual occurrence. 

Boroth is also a Firston native and a known gambler who is habitually down on their luck. 

The party decided to split up for the day to take care of individual business. 


Rumors and Interests

The Church of Tah

Ysln, Arjune and Chere went to the local church. Ysln if a cleric of the church and wanted to sell a scroll of "Raise Spirit", which the church happily paid for. The local cleric, known as Brother Oldeman was impressed with the acquisition of the scroll and gave a very ornate business card to Ysln, informing her that the church would have other business for her if she was interested. The Church of Tah is a corrupt and opulent church of the empire, known for stealing relics and other ancient artifacts. 

Arjune and Chere are both members of the Church of Tah Reformed, and were not pleased with Ysln's interactions with the Brother of the church. 

The Two Headed Bear

Gruid was able to ingratiate himself with the party by informing them of a local retired ranger and wealthy individual who is looking for some one to hunt down a two headed bear. Gruid is one of the few people who has ever seen the bear and survived informed the party they could meet the mysterious Breglelor Shunderman tomorrow. 

Aces & Tails

Canhoreal decided to visit a local gambling house known as Aces and Tails. Upon entering during the day, he found a very upscale establishment with numerous gambling and gaming tables on the ground floor and a restaurant. The second floor of the building featured a smoking and reading room frequented by "Gentlemen" of the city and was well known for its opulent glass atrium style ceiling. 

Canhoreal entered the establishment with his full adventuring gear still on, marking a distinct contract to the high society and well dressed patrons in the rest of the building. He was approached by a Mr. Stillman, the operator of Aces & Tails and local underboss enforced who noted Canhoreal's dress. 

He informed Canhoreal that his boss and owner of the establishment had the need of an outside party to take care of a problem should they be interested. He informed Canhoreal and his companions to return later that evening if they were interested. Boroth, who frequents the establishment was able to inform Canhoreal to be care of the proposal, but noted that there was potentially a lot of be gained. The Aces & Tails was run by the Brindlewood family and they were well known as the head of the local crime syndicate. 


And that is where we left our last session. The party will reconvene later in the evening to share their propositions and explore what options they have before them. 


Fridays with Cairn: Session 3

Room 8

We left off our last session with our party opening a secret door only to find themselves confront with five orcs in a lit room. The interaction devolved into combat and resulted in two of the Orcs going down and the remaining three running out of the room into the hallway to the ast. Our party, who took a decent amount of damage decided to backoff and re-group. 

They piled the two dead bodies in front of the east door to provided a bit of a barricade and they then took a quick ten-minute rest. After considering their options our party decided to head back down the secret entrance and they investigated the previously unexplored tunnel to the west towards.


Room 16

This Brough them to Room 16, which exhibited a new exit from the dungeon that is partially collapsed and veered with dirt. They once again found themselves face with a potential wolf den to get past to get to the entrance. The party decided to chop off the arm from one of the dead Orc bodies and threw that to the wolves as a distraction. The wolves ended up fighting over the arm and the party was able to exit the first level of the dungeon. 

They took this opportunity to head back to the farmer's house to spend a night and rest since Cybil was in very poor shape. With an additional piece of gold the farmer allowed Cybil to sleep in his bed and she was able to regain here Strength, while the rest of the party slept outside. 

There was consideration if the group should take the half day journey back to the Morgansfort and restock, but the fact that some of the old fort is now cleared out and people from the fort know that the were headed there, it became apparent that other treasure seekers may try to take advantage of our party's hard work and they instead decided to dive back in. 


Room 1

The next morning our party once again headed back to the dungeon main entrance and this time decided to head south (whereas they previously headed west). They found a pit trap in this southern hallway and discovered a switch on the far side of the trap. They disabled it with a crack crossbow shot and continued their exploration to the south. 

It was at this same time that the party decided to wonder whether they should've offloaded some of their treasure either with the farmer or back at the cave entrance. They decided to continue on. 


Room 15

As the group continued they came across another room filled with the sound of buzzing. They discovered a nest of giant bees in this room. While the bees were clearly aggressive the party decided to sprint past this room and continue further down the hallway and found that the bees did not pursue them past 60'.


Room 14

Continuing on our party discovered the Kobold Lair. Because of their positive interaction earlier with the Kobold patrol earlier they were met with a generally positive attitude. They were able to continue to convince the Kobolds that they were here to hunt Goblins and were given a scroll of "knock" and informed that the Goblin lair was located in the northwest area of the current dungeon level.  

And that is where we ended session 3. 


Fridays with Cairn: Session 2

Our Friday group completed our second session of playing Cairn and we had an opportunity to finally get into some dungeon delving and some combat.

Observations and Changes to the Morgransfort Module

  • Since Morgansfort was designed for the Basic Fantasy RPG, I had to make a few changes on the fly to the gold and treasure settings. In general I reduced the amount of gold found by a factor of ten and also completely disregarded silver and copper pieces. So for example, if the module stated that the characters found 126 GP, I reduced that down to 12. I quickly observed in just the first few rooms of the dungeon that the amount of gold being dished out was a lot and I wanted a part of this campaign to reflect that gold and treasure really do matter a lot. 
  • Word of note regarding scale in the map. The dungeon map on page 31 of the module does not make it clear that the grid is a 10' scale, so the first few rooms I ran assuming 5' squares. This would've changed the encounter with the first floor trap in the west hallway, so something to keep in mind. 
  • A fascinating observation was pointed out to me from my play group while dealing with combat when it was our party vs.1 enemy, which was outlined in a couple of instances in the dungeon in smaller rooms thus far. Since Cairn's "Multiple Attacker's rule has all of the PC's roll and just the single highest dice being taken, my PC's observed they were able to "game" the system a bit if they had at least one PC fail the initiative, since they would be able to act/attack separately after the enemy, giving the PC's essentially "two opportunities to hit" in a single round instead of just one if they all succeeded or failed. Not a huge deal, but just an interesting observation that they immediately latched onto. Perhaps this isn't the intent of the combat system. 
  • Overall combat though went really smoothly and fast and I really liked how it didn't grind the rest of the game to a halt as D&D 5e does. We encountered combat, accomplished it for a few minutes and then were immediately able to move on. Most of the combat in this session was done via theatre of the mind, which is not my group's favorite way to play, but it worked out well for these quick encounters in various dungeon rooms. 
  • I also really enjoy the formatting of the monster stat blocks in the Morgransfort module. The stat blocks are very tightly organized with the monsters in place and with small check boxes to track their HP. Converting on the fly was painless and tracking the combat encounters with the initiative system was also extremely fast and effortless. Screenshot example below.

  • My players had some fun playing with character names a bit. Since the surname table in the handbook is so small we had a few duplicate names. Wenlan Candlewick, whom I outlined in the previous post, shares a surname with our PC Ysln Candlewick. We are playing out the situation where Wenlan is eyeing Ysln, thinking he knows her from somewhere, but he is not quite sure from where. 
    • We also had a hireling roll up with the name of Canhoreal, which is the same as one of the players. That turned into Can2, and then finally resulted in the party calling the hireling Twocan.
    • Finally, and this is my favorite, the young acolyte who joined the group at the end of Session 1 was given a name by the group. Cybil kept calling him "Cannon Fodder", which someone put into an english to french translator on Google which resulted in his name becoming Chair à Canon.
  • For the module I am trying to run the exploration in 10 minute dungeon movements and I have assigned each of my players different roles to track such as overland travel, dungeon cartographer, dungeon turn tracker, banker/quartermaster, etc. It is working out OK so far and my players are getting used to having to track this information themselves, but it is really nice to get off my plate. I think it is something I'll try to incorporate into other RPG systems. I've adapted a few of the sheets from OSE and made some of my own to handout to my players, so I'll try and share those in another blogpost. 

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Fridays with Cairn: Session 1 (and 0.5)

Our group had our session 1 this past Friday, or I should say perhaps session 0.5 since it appears that half of my table didn't fully fill out their character sheets or somehow forgot a stat or two. So after about 45 minutes of doing that again we finally got started in Morgansfort. 

Here are the names of the players we rolled up.

  1. Ysln Candlewick (Female)
  2. Cwingeld (Male)
  3. Arjune (Male)
  4. Cybil Burle (Female)
  5. Beatrice (Female)
  6. Canhoreal Studerman (Male)

Morgansfort Primer

For those that might be interested in running the module, it essentially is a fort placed on the edge of the “Western Lands” which are part of the former Urd Empire. The fort is placed right near the edge of civilization which allows for plenty of opportunity to engage in the wilderness. It features three dungeons to explore along with general wilderness areas. The module has a nice bit of information (2-3 pages) that provides enough background information for GMs to give their players a sense of place, but not so much that one can’t easily modify or adapt it to their own setting or needs. A nice summary is provided right on page 1 of the three dungeons and the fort.

There is also a really detailed bit of information of the world’s religions and the fort itself, including details on all of the buildings and numerous NPC’s within the fort. 

Our group had two characters randomly roll up clerics as backgrounds so they took an interest in the religion information in the Morgansfort module. I won't write it all out here, but here is a brief summary. 

The Hundred Gods: Basically the old world religion. Hundreds of gods from the existing inhabitants of this region. I positioned this that most of the denizens outside of the fort, and under its protection followed this religion. 

The Church of Tah (aka the Bethite Church): The official religion of the empire. Known for its corruption and opulence. 

The Church of Tah Reformed: The opposite with members sworn to celibacy and poverty.

Arjune from our play group took to the Church of Tah reformed and had in their background “Discredited”. They played to that nicely, indicating that they had to escape to the wilderness to avoid that discredit to their name. 


Arrival at Morgransfort

When our players arrived at the fort, I directed them to “The Toothless Dragon Tavern” and to the “Iron Helm Inn” for their rumors. Per the module direction they immediately began a conversation with “Bat” who I made as a toothless old koot of a farmer, who gave them the initial rumor for the first dungeon, which was an abandoned ancient fort. 

Cybil was the one who took some initiative to try and find out about other rumors or to find a hireling to go with the party. I used the random character generator on the Cairn website and came up with a ridiculously good character who had stats well above our players and a background to boot named Wenlan. Stats below:

Wenlan Candlewick, formerly a ranger. You have a lanky physique, weathered skin, oily hair, and a rat-like face. You speak in a gravelly manner and wear rancid clothing. You are rude yet serene, and are generally regarded as an entertainer.

You have had the misfortune of being defrauded. You are 35 years old.

Attributes

HP: 4

Armor: 2

STR: 12

DEX: 13

WIL: 17

Equipment

Armor: Brigandine (1 Armor, bulky), a Helmet (+1 Armor)

Weapon: Crossbow (bulky)

Gear, tools & trinkets: Nails (stacks), Cart (+4 slots, bulky), and Bottle

Bonus item: Longbow (bulky)

Starting supplies: 8 gold, a Torch, and three days' Rations

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Fridays with Cairn: Session 0

With the running controversy this past winter over WOTC's changes to the Open Gaming License, I took that opportunity to explore some other RPG systems since I was getting a bit burned out on D&D. I have documented some of my thoughts on this items at the following threads. 


With all of that out of the way, I finally found a break in my Friday group to run some Cairn. I was originally going to try and adapt the "Lost Citadel" place setting for this group, but decided to take a different turn and run a pre-published adventure because I honestly wasn't sure if my Friday group would take to playing Cairn. I didn't want to put in the time for all of the custom world building if we only played 5 sessions. 

After a lot of advice and solicitation both on the Cairn Discord and on the OSR subreddit, I settled on running Morgansfort (https://basicfantasy.org/downloads.html), which is a free adventure module from the Basic Fantasy RPG game system. It looks to have a nice balance of dungeon crawling, overland adventure, etc wrapped into a single package. 

About a week ago we held our session zero. Went over general rules and I tried to give my players a general overview of OSR/NSR gameplay. This will be a first time for both myself and my players in this style of game, however we have played a bit of 0E Mothership. I put together a summary page utilizing Craft to hopefully help my players digest some of the info.  

Even with quite a bit of prep and giving everyone paper copies of the rulebook, there was some confusion on the character creation process. Quite a bit of "what do you mean I randomly roll up my character?" sort of questions. Literally all five of my players filled their inventory to max before I had to back them off of that and explain the encumbrance rules and conditions. In two weeks we'll have our first game session where they all arrive at Morgansfort.

Cairn RPG

Following up on my blog post from a couple of weeks ago, I have been doing some research into various RPG systems that I would like to play. Some of those purchases and inquiries are starting to come to fruition and there has been one system that has really caught my eye. 

Cairn is a New School Revival system, which if I am being honest, I don't know exactly what that means. The term is used online often in conjunction with the Old School Revival (OSR) terminology, which references the D&D methods and designs from the early eighties. I'll talk about that more in another post, but I wanted to highlight a bit of what has caught my eye with Cairn. I'll be summarizing a bit on my interpretation, so this may not entirely be the designer's intent with the system design. 

"Cairn is an adventure game about exploring a dark & mysterious wood filled with strange folk, hidden treasure, and unspeakable monstrosities. Character generation is quick and random, classless, and relies on fictional advancement rather than level mechanics. 

It is based on Knave by Ben Milton and Into The Odd by Chris McDowall. The game was written by Yochai Gal."

The entire rules set is about 24 pages and can be downloaded over at cairnrpg.com. There is some very nice design aesthetic as well around the character sheet and pamphlet. 

One of the key things I would like to try and do with Cairn is to explore some of the tropes and mechanics that D&D 5e either falls short on or that our play group has not explored. For the purposes of my planning, I have solidified around three main concepts that I would like to explore with Cairn. 

  1. Make wilderness survival matter. When characters  venture out into the wilderness the management of their resources and the risk/reward to exploring should be tied into the system. The further they explore, the greater the treasure reward could be, but also the higher the risk. Getting back to a safe haven after your adventure should be considered in their resource management
  2. Make money matter. D&D 5e hands out a lot of money and after a few levels, characters have more than they can possibly spend. Additionally, living expenses become a chore and a waste of time when they have hundreds of gold burning in their pockets. Cairn's limited inventory system may not only help the player spend their money, but also manage all of the items they have and make considerations as to what is most useful for the adventure they are entering into.  
  3. Explore character advancement outside of the traditional “leveling up” system. There is a concept known as “Foreground Growth” where the characters can grow and advance through in the world and their adventures, not from resting overnight. I love the idea of exploring the concept your direct encounters and experiences lead to specific growth. Perhaps you had a close encounter with a Hag in the wilderness and as a result you learned about their critical weakness.  

This would be my first time running a system like this, so I am hoping to build the campaign around an adaptation of "The Lost Citadel" by Green Ronin Publishing. I am hoping that the concept of a single, last human city will help to facilitate this campaign style since the adventurers will have to head out into the wilderness and try to make their way back. Adventuring further from the city can result in increased risk and increased reward. 

Cairn has a lot of nice hacks built by the community to further some of the dungeon and hex crawl mechanics. I think that would be really fun to dig into an explore as a core component of the campaign.