Cairn RPG: Beyond First Impressions (IS IT STILL GOOD?)
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 11 сен 2024
- After many hours of playing this system with my boys, I share our experiences and thoughts on this system. My first impressions of the system were great, very positive! How has my opinion changed on the system after many hours playing it? What cool adventures did we have? I go over it all in this video.
Also let me know your thoughts and experiences, would love to hear them!
I've never understood people saying "you can't run a campaign with simple rules"... It makes me wonder if they can run a campaign using more complex rules. Usually people like that spend a lot of time spinning their wheels on stuff that doesn't matter and ultimately just burn themselves out like 4 sessions into a game.
Videogame brain. People can't see the game for anything beyond a collection of mechanics and are obsessed with "progression".
Telling my players that it's not that kinda game, that we're here to tell stories not challenge our min-maxing abilities has been helpful
Are you implying I have to actually roleplay!? @@redd_Jack
You're going to love Mausritter.
First, the rules are basically the same, with slight adjustments. Like, maybe you wanna do the card-based inventory, so your kids can cut things out or sketch up items, but you don't have to. They even have a very light level-up system that rewards players for collecting gold (called pips).
Second, the adventures available are really neat little sandboxes the provide just enough cool inspiration without clearly laying out how you should address the problems within.
Run some Mausritter and make a video!
Regarding Scars, it should be "the amount of damage caused" - which is always after Armor comes into effect. For example, if a PC has 3 HP left, then takes 5 damage, but their Armor absorbs 2, the Warden would look at the the "3" on the Scars table, then the player would do what it says.
The gang-up rule (multiple attackers) is a point of confusion for lots of folks! Folks definitely struggle with it, but remember, it goes both ways: if a group of monsters are surrounding a PC, they won't survive the first round (which is boring). But to your point, the best thing about this is that your players found ways to work around doing direct damage.
Let thinking be your armor.
Thanks for the clarification on the Scars rule! My sons had some mixed feelings on the multi-attack rule when it first came up, but they definitely started to like it when they were outnumbered lol
I think you are still not right with scars. The rule says "when reduced to exactly 0." That makes scars much less common. Since you then take the total damage taken, that means with max 3 armor and one HP, you would only receive a scar if you took 4 damage. You then go to 4 on the scars table.
This means that you won't be taking advantage of the higher numbers with their better benefits until you've upped your HPs.
Unless I'm totally reading this wrong.
@@SoloBattles Yes, Yochai is saying the number you use on the scars table is the amount of HP damage. In your example, that would be 1.
Why this matters in the game design is that the higher numbers yield more powerful benefits, and in a level-less system, this is a way to pace players characters as they are advancing.
@@tomgartin Yes, exactly!
I've been watching all the intro to Cairn vids and they always say you roll a d12, which is not what the rules say. I assume this is just the common mistake that is made when folks have skimmed the rules for the intro, or first impression video. I was waiting for someone to point out the actual rule, as written.
If you like cosmic horror investigations (a la HP Lovecraft, Cthulhu, etc.) - "Liminal Horror" is a modern era cosmic horror hack of Cairn. It's wonderful.
1:32 Switch to Dark Mode: my eyes 👀 thank you, good sir 👍
Literally your son: "I didn't ask how big the house was. I said I cast Thicket."
i'll be running this system with my D&D group this weekend. It'll be my first time DMing, and I feel like this ruleset is perfect to get started.
I'd love to see more cairn content, hear more stories about your games, and understand how you prepare and run a session with it.
I also have mausritter very high on my list. Just reading through it, it feels like its the perfect balance keeping a game simple while providing enough complexity to make it interesting. And its all so well flavored, that it gets me excited about it even as an adult. Im sure kids would love that game
How did it go? Did you enjoy dming?
@@rapecel Went great. And yes I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would. With the Cairn Ruleset, I was able to just focus on the story aspect and not worry about rules too much.
I certainly tasted some blood, and now I want more :)
@@DrugZy123 That's awesome. Interesting you said you focused on your campaign's story, my players usually always want to focus on dungeon crawling or combat encounters. Best of luck to you in your future sessions.
Dude. Dude! I’m upset I found this so late.
Cairn is interesting to me but likely not something I’d use, despite loving old-school and rules-lite.
What got me was the fun you had with your lil ones!
(I’m a father as well.)
Every time you mentioned rolling up the characters, and all the nutty and fun stuff they did…..here’s 49 year old me: “My guys! Yes!” Hahaha!
And…THAT is what matters in gaming!
Cheers!
Love and light to you and yours, brother! 🙂 ⚔️
I am running Cairn this weekend and I wanted to find some videos that did a little deeper of a dive than most of the other videos. This was great!
It has a healing spell that restores all losses from one stat. I think a surly healer npc would be fun. One price for when you get back to town, a totally different price if you want them to go with you.
Way to raise your kids right!
To be fair, much of what ya love is, and has always been true with old-school D&D (not AD&D heheh) and clones, and other such…Tunnels &Trolls, the original Fighting Fantasy Introductory Roleplaying Game (wonderfully cloned by way of Spellzard!, which you may really dig), or the super, super lite version of MERP(Middle Earth Role Playing), called the Lord of the Rings RPG…also now cloned by way of Legends & Tales.
Honestly, also….using RISUS. It works so very well in a serious context!
Delve deep and enjoy, man!
Cheers, again!
Thanks for clarifying the scars mechanic. I'm a novice at TTRPG stuff trying to prepare for my first campaign as a GM and I would have run it how you were running it before if you hadn't clarified.
You have a new subscriber.
Definitely check out the Temple of the Moon Priests one page dungeon conversion and also any of the Trilemma Adventure one page dungeon conversions (there are a number that are pretty cool). I also highly recommend the physical copy of Cairn that I got from Lulu. It is a really nice edition with a cover that has a slightly satiny feel. I went ahead and got a copy of the Cairn Bestiary at the same time so I could have something that I could take on the go and use when I couldn't pull the SRD up easily.
Did you get the "new" version of the bestiary (with the white cover) or the older one?
@@yochaigal I have misplaced both my saddle stapled Cairn from Lulu and my Cairn Bestiary (I can find my coil bound copy), but I think from looking at the current cover on Lulu, it is definitely the old one.
@@jimjones7980 ah! The new one has a bunch of cleaned up monsters. Not 100% of them though.
There is also a coilbound Cairn on Lulu as well!
@@yochaigal That's where I got my coil bound copy. It's great. I wish I could find my other books. I can't find them anywhere. Huh. Anyway, I really like the Lulu print quality. These were the first books that I ordered from them and I really like them.
Such a great adventure! I ran that one five years ago and still think about how to work the Knucklebones into another adventure.
Why did the kid use a drill on the golem?
To cast Augery
Please make more Cairn content lol I really want to know what you think about running Cairn as a long epic campaign? What's your take?
I think it's totally doable to run a long term campaign with Cairn. The Scars system provides a means of progression as well as acquiring cool powerful relics. I've lots of ideas for a long campaign and maybe I might make a quick video delving into that. Thanks for watching and commenting!
@@axewizard Thanks for the response! I'm really starting to itch for more OSR content on YT. :)
I love all the games in this universe. I feel Cairn is much better with the GLOG magic mechanic. Also, Lilliputian is a great game that is very well put together and takes the best out of all these games. I was impressed by it!
Cool video, seems like a pretty fun rpg
One thing about a roll under system is that when you try to sneak past The Watchful Eye Of God or a drunk guard it has the same difficulty. Probably the only thing Im gonna homebrew out.
Well a couple things. You could simply allow players to just sneak past a drunk guard, no roll, because it's not risky enough to really require a roll. And/or you could make it impossible to sneak past "The Watchful Eye Of God" cause it's the watchful eye of GOD, so probably not possible.
It's basically the same statistically. A character with high Dex in DnD is going to be good at sneaking, and a character with low will be bad, just like in Carin, so why not simplify it.
damn caren RPG sounds great!
Is the player party considered a detachment? If its not would they only deal 1d4 damage(impaired) to the dragon and the dragon would always deal d12(enhanced) damage back? Maybe I'm looking at this wrong.
I'm not sure honestly, I don't believe the player party counts as a detachment, but I have no idea. Detachments was a concept I'm a bit fuzzy on.
A detachment is like a warband (mythic bastionland which shares similar rules explained it well).
So like one or two dozen at least of people.
What’s a great module to play for beginners pls