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I really want to talk about Cairn.
Cairns, as in the stone structures, are pretty cool on their own if you ask me. But Cairn is also a table top role playing game(TTRPG). I had read the first edition text[0] with a lot of interest, as I am currently drawn toward systems that are less intricate, so that I can spin more one-shots to relay the Dungeon Master(DM) of the table I am playing at. I've later learned that many of these systems fall under the Old School Renaissance(OSR) umbrella. EDIT: or is it New School Revolution(NSR)? The classification is confusing to me, but I like the system a lot as it's lightweight yet sharp.
Since then, the second edition of Cairn[1] came out along with something that I found very pedagogical. The Warden Guide (Wardens are Cairn DMs) describes in detail the entire procedure to create a little region of the world for the player characters to experience. It is extremely well made and everything is freely available given that it's CC-BY-SA 4.0 licensed. The Standard Reference Document(SRD)[2] has all you need to get started today if you chose to. I do recommend the printed versions of the Player and Warden guides, they are:
Regardless, I found the realm creation guide[3] really neat as it gets the creative energy flowing. It keeps things simple, as it is meant, as written eloquently[4], to "develop situations, not stories or plots". The goal is to have an "emergent situation of play", which I understand as creating something more flexible than say, some modules for Dungeons&Dragons, which are more of a branching situation structure that you connect.
When I run such a module, I don't know exactly what will happen, but I do have a general idea of the more probable outcomes and I prepare for them in mind. It is still fun and players do always find a way to surprise, but it's a different kind of sport. It requires to prepare for specific scenes and to loosely guide the players from one to the other. I find that it constrains the player choices and demands more preparation work from the Dungeon Master(DM). It does not mean that it's the best or only style to DM more rule-involved games, but given that I've learned to DM by running modules, it's what I learned first.
Due to that, my earlier attempts at DMing without modules led me to create a brittle, confusing world where I felt that geography, cosmogony, politics all had to make sense before I could bring players in. It was not as pleasant an experience for me as it could have been. It felt stressful to try to keep everything coherent. And given the higher preparation work, it left less time for actually playing, which impacts the players too.
Cairn works differently. There is a loose setting, Vald[5], which is relatively low fantasy. It has mysterious Woods that are a world of their own and undergrounds called the Roots where magical artefacts are said to be. It has distant great Cities that have little impact on the players as the game is played far from there. The adventuring is done in more modest regions. Such a setting is very flexible as it works by being more evocative than specific. You can add to it easily if you want to, but you don't have to for it to work. I like that a lot.
Which brings us back to the realm creation guide, or "setting seeds" as the SRD calls it. The entire procedure is extremely pragmatic. Take a sheet of paper, throw dice, see where they land, roll inside tables to find out what landmarks and terrain it should be, etc... It's pretty fun, easy to do and a nice analogue experience.
The only issue minor is that I do enjoy text files very much when I'm preparing things. I would like to see if I could translate this realm creation procedure to something fully textual with a Dwarf Fortress style ASCII map feel. It would be much easier to link my preparation notes to and frankly just sounds like something fun for me to do.
My brain directly went in complication mode:
Which is too much too quickly. If experience has taught me anything, it's that it's best to start humbly. So the next steps is to go through this creation process but with the written digital text as medium. Then see how practical it is and whether this idea is pleasant to develop or if it's better to shelve it.
So see you next time, if you so choose. May your day be pleasant, dear visitor of my small corner of the net.
[0] the first edition text
[1] the second edition of Cairn
[2] Cairn SRD
[3] Realm creation guide
[4] Cairn Overview and Principles
[5] Vald, the Cairn setting
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