There's some good worldbuilding & DMing advice here!

But what I was really excited to see in the subject list of Cairn Warden's Guide was the author's approach to diegetic growth - ten pages about it! It's a popular subject in the last few years and one I'd like to make more use of in my games. But reading pages 124-133 leave me no more ready to implement Cairn growth than I was before - maybe somehow less ready? I don't synthesize anything from those examples. I get more insight on how to approach the subject the discussion of non-treasure rewards in the WotC 5e DMG, which is not a book I expected to praise. Looking over logs of our playthrough of Twin Lakes it's not at all apparent where growth might have happened to the characters. (My PC's nasty bond was resolved, but that felt like an extremely arbitrary spur-of-the moment choice by the DM that didn't emerge out of the worldbuilding or the scenario...)

But then, Cairn probably isn't for me. "It is more important for a character to become more interesting than to become more skilled or capable." says this is not the genre of Adventure Game I want to play in or DM in - characters are so fragile and so incompetent that they come up short in agency.

I found this really quite disappointing in play. It may be hard to separate the rules from the adventure from the DM, but did not work at our table with a experienced-player-as-novice-DM. Was it that our DM didn't know how to put the Cairn Principles into action? Or that the adventure was so arbitrary, whimsical, uncued that we were left confused, without agency or understanding, just lawn-mowering through the space until we were anti-climactically "done with the adventure". Oh, that was an evil lich-queen? We couldn't tell. The other witch had a world-ending plot that we accidentally foiled? We couldn't tell. Messing with that thing released a deadly monster? We couldn't tell. That magic artifact saved a life? Total surprise. There was a deadline clock ticking? Not a single hint of that was ever conveyed to us. And, simultaneously, the opposite: oh, somebody left a sign on the arcane mechanism that we could completely read to explain how to use it - who was the sign for? The aliens left murals so we would know the history of the dungeon, even though there felt like continuity / point-of-view issues there.

I found this really quite disappointing in play. It may be hard to separate the rules from the adventure from the DM, but did not work at our table with a experienced-player-as-novice-DM. I was pretty confident it would not fit my expectations for a game I want to run, but I don't think I need to play in it again, either.

There is, at the moment, one five-star review that reads "very original own mechanics." Most of the mechanics aren't original, but are seen in Into the Odd / Electric Bastionland, Knave, Mausritter, etc - it feels more like a bricolage of some NSR mechanics that the author thinks fit together, and if I recall correctly explicitly credits?

This is the best rpg system for narrative focused fantasy gaming with OSR sensibilities. I prefer the 1e over the 2e only because I like the random character generator over the backgrounds in 2e. But it’s a minor thing, and both editions are excellent. I have played it with many different types of players, both new to the hobby and experienced. With my young children and adults. They learn it quick and are always anxious to get back to the game. It’s also free with great support from the community and creator. There is no reason to ignore this title.

Great title. Full of mystery, inner magic and very original own mechanics.

You'll spend so much time figuring out how to rule certain mechanics & writing down your rulings to remember later that you won't really get to play the game itself. The game itself that consists of almost exclusively rolling tables, minimal options, & the flavor of a stale biscuit dipped in milk that's off by about 2 days.

There are other games that take the system Cairn is based on much better. Play those.

Great and simple game, perfect for beginners or if you want to jump into the game quickly

It just doesn't work really well at the table, in my experience.

An insane amount of worldbuilding and simplified processes to give away for free. Could be sold for 10 bucks and still be a steal.

Great product. Bare bones and straight to the point, makes for a fast start to a game.

Ótimas ferramentas para criação e desenvolvimento de regiões, masmorras e exploração através de point crawl!

Very well thought out and presented. Four our of five stars only because there is nothing on the intended setting, which would have been very nice.

Attack rolls are absent; instead, there are only damage rolls. Dodge and Block abilities have been combined into an "Armor" mechanism that directly reduces damage. PCs possess ten item slots, with injuries deducting these slots. When they run out of either HP or slots, they die. Only three abilities (STR/DEX/WIL) are present, solely used for checks (save), with no impact on HP or attack capabilities, among other abilities.

The rules are very light, which also means they are highly compatible. The game principles' intro is one of the finest OSR concept introductions I've found. Additionally, conversion materials are abundant for OSR adventures available on the official website.

The game rules are quite concise, so my praise will also be brief, but its merits extend far beyond that.

Attack rolls are absent; instead, there are only damage rolls. Dodge and Block abilities have been combined into an "Armor" mechanism that directly reduces damage. PCs possess ten item slots, with injuries deducting these slots. When they run out of either HP or slots, they die. Only three abilities (STR/DEX/WIL) are present, solely used for checks (save), with no impact on HP or attack capabilities, among other abilities.

The rules are very light, which also means they are highly compatible. The game principles' intro is one of the finest OSR concept introductions I've found. Additionally, conversion materials are abundant for OSR adventures available on the official website.

The game rules are quite concise, so my praise will also be brief, but its merits extend far beyond that.

Cairn is my go-to for a beginner-friendly D&D-like fantasy experience. It lends itself to solo, collaborative, or GM-driven gameplay. The core rules fit on just a few pages, and I found that players with a little bit of D&D knowledge picked it up no problem. It's easy to adapt scenarios for other systems to use Cairn.

It's very playable as is, with very little preparation, but it's also extremely adaptable as well.

I feel like it would also work well with a hex crawl adventure or a West Marches-style campaign with little effort, although I tend to run more focused scenarios.

If you like Cairn, you may like some of its descendants and relatives:

• Grave (a dark fantasy OSR with some Souls-like mechanics such as bonfires, an interesting alternative to permadeath while keeping a dark tone)
• Knave is very similar to Cairn but is classless, and is streamlined in someways and crunchier in others
• Monolith is, imo, the best science fiction OSR-like game out there. I am running the Gradient Descent campaign currently using Monolith, and my players are having a blast.