Have you used Cairn as your system for a megadungeon crawl? I want to hear from you. How did it go? Did you "finish" or did things flame out? How did you navigate the gold-for-XP dungeon loop? Would you do it again?
Are mega-dungeons misguided? Does Cairn offer another method of achieving the same feeling evoked by a megadungeon?
I'm gearing up for a short campaign using Cairn Barebones where the characters are going to be normal humans from the 1980s who end up getting sucked into a crazy adventure.
I wanted to see if anyone had some ideas to throw into a bucket with me for d(arbitrary amount) of 80s careers as Cairn backgrounds. This also obviously edges into Electric Bastionland territory as I think the careers make a lot of sense as "failed careers".
I'm trying to at least get career -> gear (3 things, 1 weapon) -> question 1 -> question 2. I'll flesh out the d6 answers later.
So far I have:
By which I mean stuff like hunting dragons, storming the fortresses of giants, expeditions into hellish underworlds/planes of existence, generally the kind of stuff I understand goes on in D&D modules young and old with high level numbers printed on the front. Obviously both "experienced" and "high level" are ultimately subjective to your individual experience.
I ask because I get the vibe, from some of the advice and the emphasis on non-mechanical growth that's perhaps more about becoming stranger rather than stronger, that Cairn might be more of a "perpetual level-one scoundrels" type of game. Which is fine if that's what it is but might feel a tiny bit limiting to me if I'd be fighting the game if I wanted to use more over-the-top ideas eventually. I know there's a "Leveling Up" rules add-on on the website but I don't know if that's the kind of thing that people want to add merely for the D&D aesthetics or if it's really necessary/a good idea for running a certain kind of game in this system.
Wondering if anyone has run Turn it Off for Knave in Cairn before and if so how much did they have to change?
Great group of players that has historically played OSE. Nice to see some further Cairn 2e exposure!
I've been doing way more solo role playing lately with the current stage of life I'm in. One of the supplements that I've wanted to really dig into is perilous wilds for dungeon world. I also love Cairn second edition and the rules light, classless, fast deadly combat.
If a game were to take a hybrid approach, unless one already exists, what would you need to see remain unchanged in order for Cairn to feel like itself even with the addition of moves?
My initial thought is you have a move for how the enemies respond after making a hit. A lot of your relics and magic items could have custom moves instead of just pure narrative text.
The desire for doing pbta is just to add another narrative element or engine into solo play