Strotherhine, West Marches or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Cairn 2e

The town of Strotherhine 

Introduction

I have been running a West Marches campaign using the Cairn 2e Playtest since September. There are currently 8 players and 1 warden and we have played a total of 8 game sessions. The entire campaign is organized on a discord server which is also what I have been using to run the games. We use a bot for dice rolling. There is a joint Inkarnate account that is used for mapping the world (the image is the current map the players have created) and we use a discord whiteboard "activity" as a place to make quick drawings for clarification (this activity has recently added the ability to save work so it has become very helpful). When I am running the game I also occasionally use screen share and a lot of screen snips that I post in the discord chat. My players really only need discord open + character information and notes during the game. I really look forward to character keeper, because right now I am hopping between a lot of Google docs in order to access everyone's character information. 

We don't use any hacks and have been staying pretty close to the rules as written in the 2e playtest, with the exception being that I modified the wilderness exploration rules to fit with our hexcrawl. I set each terrain type on my hex map to a number of watches to cross and a chance in 6 to get lost, which I based on one of three difficulties (easy, tough, perilous). Those numbers get modified by the narrative, weather, the existence of roads or trails, equipment, etc. I have been ignoring "path distance" since all the hexes are equal distance. 

This has worked really well for me, and it's been easy to make some modifications to each region, beyond the three difficulties, in order to reflect the specifics of each region (some places are hard to travel though but may be easier to navigate). It took some time for the players to get used to three watches in a day, for some unknown reason many folks seemed to think that there should be four, but once I started calling them morning, afternoon, and night I think it helped to frame things mentally for everyone. 

Despite those adjustments we still use the other wilderness exploration rules, like the Wilderness Exploration Cycle, which so far have actually made up the majority of gameplay. 

Players, Characters, & Character Creation

Players range in age from early 30s to mid 40s and have a wide range of experience with TTRPG. For some, this is their first experience playing any TTRPG, and for others this is one of countless systems they have experienced (D&D, various White Wolf games, Shadowrun, Call of Cthulhu, Starfinder, etc.). The majority have a fair bit of experience with D&D, specifically from 3.5-5th edition and a couple used to play Advanced Dungeon and Dragons. For most players this is their first experience with an OSR game and with the exception of a home brewed game I ran some 20+ years ago this is most of the players first experience with an open table campaign, and everyone's first experience with a West Marches campaign. 

When I started planning this campaign and introduced the system to a few players I got a bit of push back and I started worrying that the system would not have enough "crunch" to satisfy a few of the players who tend to be power gamers and enjoy min-maxing. Initially I had started looking into hacks that would add more "crunch" but after encouragement from Yochai Gal & the community I decided we would start by playing without any hacks and I have to say that I am incredibly glad we did. Starting out I had players read the Overview, Principales for Players, and the Old School Principles for Players from the Principia Apocrypha. 

Immediately I was blown away by the response from the players, not only did it get everyone more excited about playing, but everyone really embraced the style of play and the randomness of character creation, even choosing to use random tables for things I was going to allow players to choose on their own. Character Creation was quick and smooth with little issue, the only hiccup I ran into is that most of the players felt they had rolled incredibly bad attributes and hit protection, but I think they were just adjusting to a system that uses smaller numbers, and not thinking about what the average rolls would look like. For example, I had players who rolled 12s for two of their starting stats concerned if their character would be too "weak." All of this was also resolved after they got a couple of sessions under their belts and got a better sense of how the game plays. 

Barnaby - Bonekeeper

Feordor - Bonekeeper 

Gossamer - Foundling 

Gregor - Scrivener 

Koga - Rill Runner 

Lief - Fungal Forager 

Stram - Marchguard 

Reike - Rill Runner 

Reflection

Running this game has been the most satisfying project I have worked on as a judge/DM/warden/storyteller/etc. I have been a forever DM for decades and it has had its ups and downs. Cairn has really allowed me to focus on my favorite elements of TTRPGs: player creativity, collective storytelling, and exploration. Additionally 2e has been a great fit for my friends and allowed me to introduce a cherished hobby to some folks who had been intimidated by D&D in the past. Meanwhile was also able to get those folks at the same table as more seasoned veterans.

The player's guide was easy to read and digest quickly. The Principles for Players helped to set the right tone and get the game moving in the right direction. As a group I have seen players really lean into using their backgrounds, both the items they were granted but also character knowledge and experience. It has been refreshing to see folks think less in terms of what they can do because of numbers on their sheet and think more in terms of what they are capable of doing as someone with that background or bond. The backgrounds/bonds also provide enough to be flavorful and get folks' minds going, but leave enough to allow for creative interpretation. Which is a good allegory for the whole playtest, enough meat on the bone to spark creativity but also enough open space to make it your own.    

Our table has also really enjoyed both the Dungeon Exploration rules as well as the Wilderness Exploration rules. At first we had some issues if we ended up getting the same results too many times in a row, but I quickly learned to embrace the narrative, sometimes bending the meaning of the results to make them make sense, or ignoring them altogether if it just doesn’t work for that moment.

The major lesson for me has been to stop worrying about so many elements that my players seemed so attached to. Once they rolled their characters and got their feet wet everyone was on board and I have seen more engagement from the campaign than any other. 

Weirdly enough no one really got tripped up by how scars work, the thing that my players stumbled on, and still seem to stumble on is “rations (3 uses).” I don’t know why it has been so challenging, it wasn’t an issue with “torch (3 uses)” but every time they make camp there is always some discussion to remind everyone that they just need one “use” of a ration and not to eat the whole thing. I think this is likely more an issue for my group than a need for more clarification in the rules.

A big thank you is owed to everyone on the Cairn Discord Server, and Yocahi Gal specifically, for helping me to get my game up and running and addressing my random questions and thoughts.