Let Thinking Be Your Armor
I play a lot of games. I also teach a lot of games to people, in the pursuit of playing more games with more people. As a result I've come to some fairly obvious conclusions that I nevertheless want to write about here. The following is a set of principles and rules for teaching (almost) any game. There are perhaps more rules here than some games have! Principles for Teaching Rules Know the rules.…
Cairn Press is proud to announce its first Adventure Double Feature with The Drops of St. Jerome and What Haunts the Harwood. Both of these adventures have been designed from the ground-up with heavy developmental and editorial support from Yochai Gal, the designer of Cairn . That's me! Both books are 100% complete and ready for print. This campaign exists to fund that print run, and to allow us…
Writing adventures for Cairn is very similar to writing for other OSR systems, with a few additional tweaks. Before reading further, see my previous post for a decent foundation on OSR module design. I’ve also written a guide on building a forestcrawl that applies many of these same principles. I'll probably update this post going forward, so be sure to check back in! Turns and the Dungeon…
Writing dungeon locations is hard . I'm not referring to the creating a dungeon (that presents its own sort of challenge) but rather the actual act of writing it down . You have to include as much relevant detail as possible without fatiguing the reader, all while making the text easy to reference at the table. The following is my model for writing dungeon locations, but should apply to any sort…
I play a lot of games with my son. Sometimes we don't have dice, cards, or other tools for resolving narrative situations. Initially I toyed with a resolution system that relied purely on chance, where both participants put their hands behind their backs and then reveal them at the same time. The total of both finger sums determines the winner, with odd or even assigned to each participant. I was…
Nerds love taxonomy; it gives order to the world, and provides a meaningful sense of control. Of course, it's all an illusion. At best taxonomy is a useful tool, and at worst it makes things too concrete, too immutable. It's a flashlight, not a prison! Still, I wanted to dip a toe into RPG theory for a moment. I promise I’ll pay the Joesky Tax at the end! Inspired by posts like this one by…
Every year I try and write a little post about what folks should expect from me in the coming year. I suppose a small part of me feels that once I've announced my plans, it keeps me accountable. Or perhaps I simply enjoy having my goals laid out for all to see? Anyways, here's what I've got in the cooker for the next year: Cairn Press This is the big one. In early 2026 I'm going to become a…
Edit: I've published this adventure! Get it for free here ! In the coming months I plan to publish a few more adventures in the Cairn Adventure Series . I thought it might be interesting for folks to see my process. The following is a "Designer Commentary" for my next forest crawl adventure, "The Feast of Tegny Wood." My tools: Cairn 2e Warden's Guide (I prefer the coilbound version) 16 d6 dice 2…
Two years ago, I ran a West Marches campaign using the tools from the Cairn Second Edition Warden's Guide . It was a lovely campaign. Games were almost never canceled, as new players would fill any open slot, and we were able to build a steady party of at least three players who would always show up. Each session, the PCs would uncover more and more of the campaign world, solving mysteries and…
A Call to Forums Let's bring back forums! Or rather, let's bring OSR discussions back to forums. Indeed, there are already OSR and RPG-related discussions happening on places like enworld , rpg.net , odd74 , rpgpub , the cauldron , and so on. However, the majority of discussions within the OSR community (.e.g. between creators, players, etc) are not happening on forums. 1 They are happening on…