Characters in dungeon crawls tend to be on the light side. This happens for a variety of reasons, whether you’re talking about developing storylines through or because characters tend to be disposable and easily replaced. There’s a fine line walked by this style of game in thrilling players by surviving challenges through luck and skill and just quietly naming your next character “paladin IV”. Cairn Second Edition, from designer Yochai Gal, offers a dungeon crawling experience that breaks away from the typical old school experience in a few ways. Space Penguin Ink sent me a copy of the boxed set to check out. How does Cairn set itself apart? Let’s play to find out.
The Cairn Second Edition boxed set contains everything you might expect from a game like this. It’s a neat little digest sized package with the books you need to play a GM screen and a pad of character sheets. The only thing missing is a set of dice. This tends to be something that annoys me with complete boxed sets but Space Penguin Ink makes up for it by stuffing the box with a lot of useful books. There’s the Warden’s Guide, three copies of the Player’s Guide, an introductory adventure and an anthology with three more highlighting the strange flavor of the game.
Characters are represented by three stats and a background. The backgrounds are the closest that Cairn comes to classes. 20 sounds like a lot to manage but the backgrounds don’t have the usual trappings of classes like level progression or special abilities. Instead they tend to give players a specialized bit of kit that helps them stand out in play. There’s usually a special consumable like an alchemical acid or special herbs that give the character a leg up plus a magic item that offers a bit of backstory. Why does your kettlewright have a wanted poster with their face on it? Why did your Marchguard run away from their noble family taking only a fancy blanket with them? These bits and pieces offer in game benefits but also give the Warden some threads to tie in backstories to the game.
Combat makes some bold assumptions. Every turn is a hit and the process of battle is more about grinding out hit protection to 0. Making moves to gain tactical advantage means upgrading your damage dice or downgrading your opponent.Once hit protection is gone, the next hit goes directly into the strength attribute and death occurs if it zeroes out. Players can try to fight through the pain at the risk of losing their character. I like the concept on how to maintain the dangerous lethality of this game style without making characters run around with very low hit points. It feels like the video game concept of shields that go up and down easily but a secondary health bar that recovers much more slowly.
Character progression also takes a more narrative turn. Improvement is a discussion between Warden and player usually about a storyline that can get the player what they want. Does your martial character want to dabble in magic? Let’s talk about what spellbook we can put in the next dungeon. Did you enjoy flirting with that noble? Let’s give you a fancier weapon as a token of their affection. I like story baked advancements such as these but I know some tables want strict charts and xp to be handed out. The Warden’s Guide offers a lot of solid examples of what advancement looks like to the designer on the mechanical side and the narrative side.
The book also provides all the spark tables and dice drop map creation common in this type of game. One area that stood out to me was how it led with faction generation. Most games like this focus on map creation and dungeon building. While this game has that, it also encourages players to think about the people in the world outside of the characters and how they can shape a hexcrawl storyline. I enjoyed rolling on the random name tables and figuring out how my players might see The Circle of the Apple as allies or rivals.
Though there is some world building, Cairn Second Edition does offer a bit of a background to use in the Vald. It’s not much more than a handful of pages scattered across both books but it goes a long way to inspire players and Wardens. This is meant to be a weird wood with strange fey creatures lurking around every corner and chicken legged huts as likely dungeons. Even though there’s a lot of leeway for groups to make this space their own, the setting bits are flavorful and distinctive.
While I looked at the physical boxed set, it should be noted that the Cairn 2nd Edition Player’s Guide and Cairn 2nd Edition Warden’s Guide are both available as free PDFs. I think the boxed set is worth it for the fresh takes on old school ideas inside and the value of ll the included books, but if you’re still on the fence, it’s very easy to pick up the books and give them a look to see if going into these woods sounds like fun.
Bottom Line: Cairn Second Edition challenges the old way of doing things while still providing a classic fantasy experience.
