Most art by the one and only Władysław Podkowiński. Additional art by Ferdinand Bauer and Harald Sohlberg. The background is a 1800s wallpaper by an unknown author.

Nothing written for this one, but I feel it comes with some implicit visual storytelling! Think of the big 4-tile multi-hex as 4 individual areas. Is it a large swathe of corrupted land, or just a forest engulfed in darkness? Or maybe something else entirely?

Hi! I made another adventure/dungeon for Cairn, this one a bit larger in scope than my previous single sheet ones.

It's free, "pay what you want" model. Inspired by The Stygian Library, but I explain that further in the zine itself.

Here's the link: https://maratae.itch.io/library-rats

Enjoy and let me know what you think!

Just sharing a method I use to generate NPC stats on the fly when I have nothing and need something quick.

Roll all 7 polyhedral dice re-roll 1’s

HP: d4+ number of re-rolled 1’s

STR:  d6 + d12

DEX: d8 + d10

WIL: (Single digit d20 + d4), (double digit - d4)

For backgrounds use either the d00+d10 or d20 and use the d6 score and 1/2x d12 score rounded up for backgrounds choices, depending on what ruleset you’re using.

a bit swingier than 3d6 but the spread falls between 4 and 18 with most still grouped around the 8-12 range.

I make system-neutral GM tools, and one thing I wanted to tackle was bases.

I like when a party ends up caring about some ruined tower, old manor, cave, whatever, and eventually starts treating it like their place. But I also don't like when managing that place turns into a second game full of bookkeeping.

So I made Stronghold. It's a small toolkit for building rooms that give the party useful benefits. There's also a simple upkeep system for repairing damage and improving the base over time, which puts a little pressure on the choices the players make.

I think it fits pretty naturally next to Cairn because Cairn already keeps downtime pretty light. You can research things, work on longer projects, train, build relationships, all that stuff without turning downtime into its own giant subsystem.

Stronghold doesn't replace any of that. It just gives the party's home base a little more structure when they decide that place actually matters to them.

Cairn can keep doing the adventuring. Stronghold really only comes out when the party is building, repairing, or improving their home.

Here's a simple example.

Say the party cleared out an old watchtower a few sessions ago and decided to keep it.

They've already built an Armory there.

Stronghold normally has the Armory handle basic ammunition and routine equipment maintenance. Cairn doesn't really care much about tracking ammunition in the first place, so I wouldn't make that part a big deal. I'd mostly treat the Armory as the party having a proper stocked and maintained place for their gear.

Now they want to build an Archive.

Stronghold normally uses the Archive for common local lore, routine identification, common monster types, and regional history.

For Cairn, I'd probably treat that more like giving the party a reliable source for downtime research. Instead of having to go find a sage, library, or other source first, they've built one into their own base.

So both rooms give them something useful, but the exact way that benefit shows up can fit the game you're already running.

While they've been away adventuring, though, the Armory has a problem.

It was already sitting at 1 Decay, and when they return to the watchtower, the Attrition Phase hits it again.

Now it's at 2 Decay.

At 3, the room would go offline, and they'd lose its benefits until they fully repair it.

The party has four Base Shifts to work with during downtime.

One Base Shift can either remove a point of Decay or add one construction tick to something they're building. A basic room takes three ticks to finish.

So they need to make a choice.

Repair the Armory first

Spend 2 shifts clearing both points of Decay, then put the other 2 into the Archive.

Armory: fully repaired

Archive: 2/3 finished

Or:

Get the Archive online now

Spend 1 shift patching the Armory, then put the remaining 3 into the Archive.

Armory: still carrying 1 Decay

Archive: finished

Let's say they go with the second option.

The Armory is still damaged, but usable. Maybe they patch the leaking roof instead of properly fixing the whole thing.

But now the Archive is online before the next expedition. If they come back needing to research something about the region, an old ruin, or a creature they've run into, they've actually built somewhere they can go looking for answers.

Neither choice is really "correct."

Maybe keeping the Armory completely functional matters more to one group.

Maybe another group knows they're heading into some old ruins next and really wants that Archive finished now, so they're willing to live with the risk.

That's basically the kind of decision I wanted Stronghold to create.

Enough mechanics that the place matters, but not so much that everybody suddenly becomes an accountant.

Most of the time, dealing with the base only takes about 5 to 10 minutes at the table unless the group actually wants to slow down and make more of a scene out of it.

And I don't really treat any of my toolkits as all-or-nothing systems.

If you like the construction system but don't want Attrition, don't use Attrition. If Decay is happening too often for the kind of Cairn game you're running, dial it back. If you only want a couple of the rooms, use those.

I'd much rather a GM tear the toolkit apart and use half of it than feel like they have to follow every rule exactly because I wrote it down.

If anyone wants to look at the full thing, it's:

Stronghold: A System-Neutral Base-Building Toolkit

I'm also happy to answer questions about how any of it works.

I am running a custom cairn campaign that will feature a fair amount of shifty and untrustworthy characters. I know that the general OSR advice for social interactions is to play them out without rolls and get the party to decide whether a person is lying based on their body language/ inconsistencies in their speech, but my group is used to social checks on DND and may have some difficulty adjusting at first. Cairn's rules have a good write up for visual perception, but has anyone had any experience with social interactions in particular? Did you run into any pitfalls with your players you'd avoid if you could go back? How have you implemented variable difficulty for players' backgrounds? Thanks in advance!

Edit: I'm getting a lot of really good advice in this thread. Thanks for all of the help! 🙂

I made another wintry map, and while it doesn't exactly fit the game I usually make maps for (Mythic Bastionland), it seems like a decent fit for Cairn! As usual with these, no setting attached -- let the map inspire your worldbuilding.

Please share what you think below and feel free to check my other maps (itch linked in my profile), most are Cairn-compatible and all can be downloaded for free. I haven't published this one on itch yet, since I want to get some feedback first, but it's perfectly usable in its current state... if you can live with how reddit compresses images :)

I hand-drew a condensed map of The Hounds of Hendenburgh (by Liam Pádraig Ó Cuilleanáin) for an upcoming Halloween one-shot. It’s one of my all-time favorite modules, so translating it into a single-session layout was a lot of fun.

I’ve also shared a breakdown of how I'm going to run this on my blog for anyone prepping a similar spooky session.

Now I have to go draw it again on my chessex vinyl mat...

Cairn Press is proud to announce announce our latest adventure: A Sliver of Evidence by Karly Andersen! This adventure adds 40 pages to the original adventure, and was designed from the ground-up with heavy developmental and editorial support from Yochai Gal, the designer of Cairn. 

A Sliver of Evidence is an old-school, dark folk-horror module that seamlessly weaves shifting wilderness exploration, a trap-laden dungeon delve, dynamic faction play, and investigative horror.

This adventure is 100% ready to send to the printers, with layout, illustrations and copyediting already complete. In addition, we are offering risograph posters of both the original and new covers of the adventure!

Back it today!

I just finished reading this book and overall I think it's great. But it is a little opaque I wonder if anyone here has read and used it and can offer a view on whether I am being too pedantic with my issues. I wrote a quick review over on drive-thru rpg which I'll reproduce here.

This is a really impressive system and there is a lot to love here. While I fully appreciate the book's push for the player to be creative and interpretative with the Tarot system, the architecture of the threat and deck systems would benefit from neater articulation, and overall the book needs a proofread and edit.

For example, page 4 sets out the two decks you'll be constructing. The Roots deck is an all-purpose full tarot deck that is used for inspiration and sparks - but there are no procedures or tables (as far as I can tell) that explicitly map to the results of this deck. This is likely deliberate, but is the idea that the player just intuits their prompt? If so, that's fine, and the tables on pages 32 and 33 give some guidance, but this is the Branches section, not the Roots. Page 4 separates the Branches deck into Fate and Quest, but then page 36 tells you to draw from the Fate deck to get a quest?

The Threat system is also detailed and rich, but opaque. I think the 'general threat "level" table' referred to on p.18 is missing? The play example p.73 refers to a d4 roll resulting in a 4 - a "terminal threat". But the instructions on page 18 say Threat Triggers only occur on results of 1 or 2? Also, no threat table anywhere uses the term "terminal" for a result of 4?

These are largely quibbles and I would still recommend the book, but the sense that I am not quite getting the system does, personally, take me out of the rich interpretative world Man Alone has built here.

I would welcome advice or views, especially if I've just flat out missed something.

I'm going to be running Rise of the Blood Olms at a gaming convention next month. I've run and played a lot of Cairn but never this module.

Do you have any advice for running it?

Two weeks ago I made a module for the Mystic Wood Jam using OSE/retroclone stats.

Since I was asked if the adventure would be still good to play with Cairn, I added a Cairn version for it.

The adventure is a pointcrawl of a forest and its mirror fae version, with plenty of places to explore, creatures to meet, treasure to find and random tables of curses, magic items, etc. Plus, contains my own (amateur) art and cartography and a really creepy monster (I hope).

This is not my first module, and certainly not the first with Cairn stats, but I feel there is still I have to learn so I took some inspiration from The Black Wyrm of Brandonsford (and some other good OSR stuff). The main goal was to have a fairy forest with weird travel between sites and to write it in no more than 12 pages in A5 format.

Hope you like it!

Hi everyone!

I’m Riccardo Scaringi, and for the last several months I’ve been working on Uchronies & Treasures, a full tabletop RPG built on Cairn.

The premise is time-crime horror in Las Vegas, 2080.

Fifty-five years after an experiment called Project Oculus fractured the city across incompatible histories, players are underpaid agents of the Temporal Division. They enter unstable temporal zones to recover people, evidence, and impossible objects — then have to decide what to report, what to conceal, who gets custody of what they found, and how much of themselves they are willing to lose in order to come back.

The game still uses the Cairn foundation: STR, DEX and WIL, roll-under saves, automatic attacks, Hit Protection, inventory pressure, dangerous combat, reaction and morale procedures, and fiction-first adjudication.

But I’ve pushed the framework much further into campaign play.

The main additions are:

• procedural exploration using 10-minute turns, visible clocks and changing sites;
• Temporal Contamination, which damages WIL and can permanently alter characters;
• Temporal Quirks, lasting changes caused by exposure to unstable time;
• relics that break very specific rules of reality rather than functioning like conventional magic items;
• an economic system built around Cash, Debt and weekly settlement;
• three separate faction-pressure systems: Loyalty, Corruption and Exposure;
• diegetic advancement rather than XP;
• persistent adventure sites that remember what the players changed;
• campaign procedures built around consequences, factions, evidence and player-chosen objectives rather than a predetermined plot.

One of the main design goals has been to preserve what I personally value most in Cairn: information before danger, meaningful player choice, fictional positioning, dangerous but legible consequences, and a Warden who presents situations rather than solutions.

For example, the rules explicitly avoid rolling just because something is difficult. If the characters have the right tools, enough time and the appropriate experience, an action may simply succeed. Saves enter play when the action is possible, uncertain, dangerous and consequential.

Likewise, I’ve tried very hard not to turn the added campaign systems into hidden GM pressure. Debt, faction leverage, evidence, contamination and clocks are meant to remain visible enough that players can actually make informed decisions about them.

The current document is a substantial editorial proof rather than a tiny hack, so I’m not expecting anyone to read the whole thing just to reply to this post.

What I would really value from experienced Cairn players and Wardens is feedback on three questions:

1. Does this still feel like Cairn?

Not simply “does it use Cairn mechanics?”, but does its actual play philosophy still feel compatible with Cairn?

2. Which additions feel like natural extensions of Cairn, and which ones feel like unnecessary machinery?

The biggest things I’m watching are the economy, faction trackers, contamination system and longer-term campaign procedures.

3. Is there anything that makes you think: “This is where the game stops behaving like Cairn”?

That is probably the most useful criticism I could receive at this stage.

I’m not looking for people to tell me that everything works. I’d much rather identify the places where I’ve overdesigned something, contradicted Cairn’s principles, or added procedures that don’t justify their weight.

If anyone wants to look at it, here is the current version:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WnRvAkQtXmhPVnar6_9WIgsVmjJnCfW-/

And if reading a 300-page document sounds insane — completely fair. Even reactions based on the premise, contents, or a single chapter would be genuinely useful.

Thanks in advance to anyone willing to take a look.

— Riccardo

Asked general OSR but since I was using Cairn's rule set mostly would love to hear this community's feedback.

Ciao a tutti, ho intenzione di fare una piccola campagna usando cairn però aggiungendo qualche meccanica di mythic. Trovo molto interessanti i feats ( che però aggiungo solo come talenti che si possono imparare) e i gambit. Inoltre ho un dubbio per quanto riguarda quale sistema del danno critico sia meglio. Quello di mythic sembra che renda i personaggi più resistenti però non saprei proprio.

Cosa ne pensate a riguardo ? La differenza sarebbe tanta?

Grazie!

Hello there!

I made yet another thing. I've been enjoying the four-page-one-sheet kind of format a lot.

This is a cleaned up and tweaked version of a dungeon I wrote for my table. I hope you enjoy it!

Feedback is welcome.

I still love Cairn 1e: 18 small format pages of rules and, best part, “principles” for warden and players. It’s what got me back into RPGs after a 35 year break.

How about you? Still enjoy/play “1e”? Picture shows a beautiful black print edition from LF.OSR

Not sure if I'll use it in the actual PDF as the game is meant to be a fantasy dungeon crawl on an spaceship, so this image of a continent size ship might give the impression that it's more sci fi than it actually is.

I'm running a Vampire Hunter D inspired post-apocalyptic gothic sci-fantasy Cairn campaign soon! It'll be full of mutants, monsters, and magitech. Any good horror and/or sci-fi adventures that would fit the vibe?

For those unfamiliar Vampire Hunter D takes place 10,000 years after a nuclear apocalypse that allowed vampires to establish themselves as the dominant rulers of Earth. Their golden age is long over however and humanity lives a wild west like frontier existence without much oversight.

Hi guys! I just published a Cairn adventure for the Mystic Wood OSR Adventure Jam! I created a roguelite mechanic where exploration is based on playing cards, making every expedition different.

Since it was made for a game jam, I didn't have time to balance the mechanics; so, if you play it, please send me some feedback so I can make adjustments.

Check it out! WHERE THE TRAILS ROT [Cairn] by Caval!

My submission to the Mystic Wood Jam

https://itch.io/jam/a-mystic-wood-osr-adventure-jam/rate/4972395