Play Report - Trouble in Twin Lakes
We rolled a party of four characters in 10 minutes tops. Brand new players, though not new to RPGs, they were new to Cairn. Party members included an Aurifex, a Kettlewright, a Greenwise, and a Beast Master.
Right off the bat the question came up, "Not a lot of mechanics for these characters." "No, but if you think your character could try something related to their background or traits, let me know, I'll probably let you get away with it." "Cool."
The Trouble Begins
Caution, spoilers below.
Trouble in Twin Lakes grabbed my attention due the cover—people being swallowed by the earth is pretty interesting stuff! And (as it was free and I had promised my siblings a game) I picked it up. I picked up Cairn as well. I'm a physical-edition guy, but the website is pretty functional.
After rolling up characters, we talked about the missing taxman and immediately jumped into the adventure.
It was about 30 minutes of running around, talking with folk, discussing whether squatting laws applied to the horse the inn-boy was taking care of, buying toad secretions, and traveling up the road again to an old mill before we had any cause to roll dice. We were investing ourselves in the mystery of the game.
My brother, playing Dr. Lancet the Barber-Surgeon, asks, "Hey, we're in a marshy area, can I find another leech?" I rolled a die of fate, landing on a 5, "Sure, it just takes a little time."
A few moments later, we watch a man die due to quick sand. Then he walks out of the shed again and is again consumed by quick sand. And again. Finally, they manage to get a rope to him before he can be consumed, but—for whatever reason—they don't see fit to investigate the mill. Here's the tax man we were looking for!
So they bring him back to town.
A poor woman is trying to get her cart unstuck from the mud. Being the valiant heroes they are, the party jumps in to help and promptly gets ambushed by the bandits waiting in the crates.
One seed-bomb later, and the bandits had surrendered, but not before impaling my brother-in-law's character, the Greenwise. The scars table rolled "infection" which made good sense for a wound in a bog.
We marched the bandits home, only to discover the Reeve was nowhere to be found, and his documents failed to line up with the tithingman's. CONSPIRACY!
A note bore the name of Fasha, and so the party headed out to find the conspirator, only to encounter him on the way, dragging a body to the east. CHASE SCENE!
Fasha led them on a merry romp through the swamps, through the traps until someone chucked a rock perfectly, knocking him into the stream, where they were able to catch up to him.
One thing led to another, there was a slightly hasty dungeon crawl as we were running out of time, and my brother-in-law's greenwise experienced a second wound at the hands of some large lizardfolk.
All in all, we found the tithingman, the missing coin, and prevented the resurrection of a lich-queen ("Are you sure we shouldn't give her the third heart?" my BIL asks. "NO!").
We returned to town, and then to the cities, where they claimed their reward and pursued some downtime activities. Then they heard about an explosion at the mill, and monsters pouring forth from the earth.
"Oh... we forgot about that time loop, didn't we?"
Reflections
Adventure: ★★★★★
Twin Lakes was a very solid adventure. In the future, I would probably run this as a 2-3 shot. The characters were very fun, the sense of mounting pressure as more folks disappear was excellent, especially when the Reeve himself went missing.
There was a little confusion about the two different scenarios happening at once, but I think that's actually a feature of the adventure, rather than a bug. It kept the players guessing at the full mystery. Some conclusions were good and useful, some were less so, but all pushed them deeper into the mystery, building that narrative investment.
System: ★★★★★
I'm falling in love with Cairn.
I've written a lot of systems.
I've lost count.
I think I've been reaching for, essentially, what Cairn is.
This is a system that stays the hell out of the way, emphasizes exploration, keeps combat fun and risky but never "optimizable," and produces interesting, unique characters.
I loved the starting-point from the beginning. Maybe, I'd do magic a little differently. Maybe, I wanted slightly tougher characters. Oh well, we'll see how it goes first.
The only thing I was really unsure of at first was the "advancement" method. No levels? How do we invest in these characters over time?
Then we got to the end of the session, and I asked what the characters would like to do in their down time.
"I want to be stronger."
"I want to gamble."
"I want to brew some of these weird things I have into a useful potion."
"I want someone to teach me how to pick locks."
"OK," I said, "Tell me a source for each of those things. Who, where, or how?"
Players drove their own growth, and that character growth tied them deeper into the world, building it around them through play. No planning "build routes" no HP bloat. It stayed in the narrative of the game, and the characters—and the world—grew.
I'll always have some tinkering tendencies, but Cairn has captured my imagination.