Characters in dungeon crawls are usually on the sunshine aspect. This occurs for quite a lot of causes, whether or not you’re speaking about growing storylines by way of or as a result of characters are usually disposable and simply changed. There’s a high-quality line walked by this model of sport in thrilling gamers by surviving challenges by way of luck and ability and simply quietly naming your subsequent character “paladin IV”. Cairn Second Version, from designer Yochai Gal, presents a dungeon crawling expertise that breaks away from the standard old skool expertise in a number of methods. Area Penguin Ink despatched me a duplicate of the boxed set to take a look at. How does Cairn set itself aside? Let’s play to search out out.
The Cairn Second Version boxed set incorporates every part you may anticipate from a sport like this. It’s a neat little digest sized bundle with the books you should play a GM display and a pad of character sheets. The one factor lacking is a set of cube. This tends to be one thing that annoys me with full boxed units however Area Penguin Ink makes up for it by stuffing the field with a variety of helpful books. There’s the Warden’s Information, three copies of the Participant’s Information, an introductory journey and an anthology with three extra highlighting the unusual taste of the sport.
Characters are represented by three stats and a background. The backgrounds are the closest that Cairn involves lessons. 20 seems like rather a lot to handle however the backgrounds don’t have the same old trappings of lessons like stage development or particular talents. As a substitute they have an inclination to provide gamers a specialised little bit of equipment that helps them stand out in play. There’s often a particular consumable like an alchemical acid or particular herbs that give the character a leg up plus a magic merchandise that gives a little bit of backstory. Why does your kettlewright have a wished poster with their face on it? Why did your Marchguard run away from their noble household taking solely a elaborate blanket with them? These bits and items supply in sport advantages but additionally give the Warden some threads to tie in backstories to the sport.
Fight makes some daring assumptions. Each flip is a success and the method of battle is extra about grinding out hit safety to 0. Making strikes to achieve tactical benefit means upgrading your injury cube or downgrading your opponent.As soon as hit safety is gone, the following hit goes straight into the energy attribute and demise happens if it zeroes out. Gamers can attempt to battle by way of the ache on the threat of shedding their character. I just like the idea on easy methods to preserve the damaging lethality of this sport model with out making characters run round with very low hit factors. It feels just like the online game idea of shields that go up and down simply however a secondary well being bar that recovers way more slowly.
Character development additionally takes a extra narrative flip. Enchancment is a dialogue between Warden and participant often a few storyline that may get the participant what they need. Does your martial character wish to dabble in magic? Let’s discuss what spellbook we will put within the subsequent dungeon. Did you take pleasure in flirting with that noble? Let’s provide you with a fancier weapon as a token of their affection. I like story baked developments akin to these however I do know some tables need strict charts and xp to be handed out. The Warden’s Information presents a variety of strong examples of what development appears to be like prefer to the designer on the mechanical aspect and the narrative aspect.
The e-book additionally offers all of the spark tables and cube drop map creation frequent in the sort of sport. One space that stood out to me was the way it led with faction technology. Most video games like this give attention to map creation and dungeon constructing. Whereas this sport has that, it additionally encourages gamers to consider the folks on the earth outdoors of the characters and the way they’ll form a hexcrawl storyline. I loved rolling on the random identify tables and determining how my gamers may see The Circle of the Apple as allies or rivals.
Although there may be some world constructing, Cairn Second Version does supply a little bit of a background to make use of within the Vald. It’s not way more than a handful of pages scattered throughout each books however it goes an extended solution to encourage gamers and Wardens. That is meant to be a bizarre wooden with unusual fey creatures lurking round each nook and hen legged huts as possible dungeons. Regardless that there’s a variety of leeway for teams to make this house their very own, the setting bits are flavorful and distinctive.
Whereas I seemed on the bodily boxed set, it ought to be famous that the Cairn 2nd Version Participant’s Information and Cairn 2nd Version Warden’s Information are each obtainable as free PDFs. I believe the boxed set is price it for the contemporary takes on old skool concepts inside and the worth of ll the included books, however when you’re nonetheless on the fence, it’s very simple to choose up the books and provides them a glance to see if going into these woods seems like enjoyable.
Backside Line: Cairn Second Version challenges the previous manner of doing issues whereas nonetheless offering a basic fantasy expertise.
