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Cairn Review

2026-08-11

Last week I finally got the chance to play my favorite TTRPG, and after the session I got to experience, definitely the TTRPG I hope to continue playing for years to come. I have to evangelize the work of Yochai Gal, Cairn. Looking to adapt Into the odd (an Original DnD hack by Chris McDowall) to be able to be played in Dolmenwood (a fairy forest setting by Gavin Norman), with additional hacks and rules inpsired by Dungeon World and Knave, Yochai Gal made, Cairn. An adventure game, that is in my opinion, the best distillation of what makes TTRPGs so fun.

The principles of play are straight forward. Cairn is:

Character growth is diagetic through the Scars system, player inventory, and in-world advancement as determined between the players and Warden (Referee).

There are only three Attributes: Strength, Dexterity, and Willpower. Saves are roll under. Instead of Hit points, you have Hit Protection, or a characters ability to avoid damage in combat. Armor reduces incoming damage, and there are no attack rolls. All attacks automatically land, you only roll damage. Spells work like they do in Knave. Each individual spell uses up a single inventory slot. You can freely cast but each attempt adds Fatigue to your inventory. With only 10 inventory slots, a magic-user character has an in-game reason for only carrying their spell books, no armor and weapons, to be able to maximize their spells per day.

The rule book for the 1st edition of Cairn was only 20 pages. You can get all the information necessary to play Cairn for free on the website, but a printing of the game is less than $10 USD.

The game is rules light, easy to pick up, and has everything you need in an elf game.

As mentioned earlier, I got to run multiple Cairn sessions. Here is my report on those games:

Demon Driven to the Maw

Written by Brad Kerr, Demon Driven to the Maw is a classic Party-crawl adventure module for Cairn.

Set in a castle during a wild party, the players are thrown into a pretty chaotic, weird, and downright creepy situation.

I played this as the Warden. There were 6 other players at the table. They managed to have a lot of fun over the course of about 2 hours after character creation (which in Cairn is rather quick).

If you are looking for a quick one-shot, and have a more mature (some elements are rather adult, in both a sexual and violent nature, so certainly not appropriate for a younger crowd) group, this fits the bill.

Spoilers here on out

Before the adventure started I rolled the 4d4+1 and got a result of 8. So after roughly 8 “turns” I had the NIGHTMARE PHASE start. The hook is that players were searching for the famous thief Jougal, who recently robbed the king.

Players arrived and immediately sussed out that the women hosting the party were off. Figuring out through a feat of strength contest (random event) that the women have hooves for feet. This caused them to switch from “party mode” to “rescue Jougal mode”. Additionally, one player had a read minds spell and read the mind of the host of the party, Helel (literally Satan) and I told them they just saw visions of Hell, torture, screams, etc. These two facts tipped them off to the weirdness of the party and so they split up.

One of the random encounters was a young man attempting to jump out a window. I did not know that Jougal was imprisoned in the basement (Note to self: Read modules more thoroughly before running them!), and they kept thinking this was Jougal, so I let it be Jougal. This actually turned out to be brilliant later, but I digress.

I only managed to roll up 1 Redcap. If more Redcaps then players are in a room, the Redcaps attack. Since this was not the case, this 1 Redcap just ran around just out of sight causing a little mischief. One player chased after this Redcap, using one of their spells to turn into slime and ooze after them. I had them use this to be able to ooze into locked bedrooms. A very clever way for the player to get around that I thought was cool.

The players end up finding Anne, rescuing her. Teaming up with the Giantess, and then suddenly, the Nightmare phase started. The smoke was pretty deadly and the players, without much time, could only escape it in the basement.

Here is where the fake Jougal turned out to be awesome, because I had him be one of the Baobhan Sith when they got to the chapel to find the real Jougal. The players managed to win the fight, rescue Jougal and escape with their lives.

The rest of the building burned and none of the other villagers survived. But the players all had a blast. They used the treasure and spells to unique effects and Cairn was simple and essentially got out of the way, which facilitated a lot of fun.

I didn’t utilize the module fully. I could have used the random guests, the Baobhan Sith table, the small talk and more. There is a lot of replayibilty here, in the time to the Nightmare Phase, players “solving” more, and of course, players choosing to go into Hell.

Of the 6 players, 3 were experienced TTRPG players and 3 this was their first time, or they had very limited experience. None of us had ever played Cairn before this and so this was a big success in my opinion.

Winter’s Daughter

Later, by popular request, some of the players and I from the first session, plus a new player, all played a second round of Cairn. This time, one of my favorite modules that I have run more than once, Winter’s Daughter by Gavin Norman.

Set in Dolmenwood, the players have to explore a tomb, travel to Fairy, and reunite star crossed lovers (if they are not evil that is).

This adventure is more appropriate for younger players or a general audience.

Spoilers here on out