Cairn 2e and Nightmare over Ragged Hollow: Reflections on Play-by-Post

31 Dec, 2024

NoRHshot

Why am I doing this

I’m more of a sci-fi guy than a fantasy guy. I came to my nerdery by way of the Star Wars Expanded Universe novels, Doom, Alien(s), Predator, Terminator, The Matrix. These are my touchstones and the source of my nostalgia. I didn’t come to appreciate fantasy until I was in college and the Lord of the Rings movies pulled me into a Middle-Earth deep dive. It was about this time too, that I played my first game of “The World’s Most Popular Roleplaying Game.” It was 3e because that was the new hotness and the world was exploding with d20 supplements. Including d20 Star Wars, and d20 Modern that scratched my itch for lasering and machinegunning monsters and robots.

Fast forward 20 years and Mothership RPG happens. It’s my perfect drug. A simple system that is tuned to run my favorite sci-fi fever dreams. I want to play this forever…except…

I still like fantasy quite a bit, though I did get a bit bored with the amalgamated mishmash of regular D&D. The OSR has lots of that, but also lots of super weird settings that do excite me. Some are less weird, but still unfamiliar to me personally. An example of this is Dolmenwood and its kind of fae, folktale thing. The implied setting for Cairn 2e falls in here too. Again not weird, but not mainstream fantasy. This is different and intriguing.

I’ve been having a blast running Mothership in a live game over discord for my friends, Matt, Jack, and Jason. However, I started to get the bug to run one of these indy/DIY/OSR/NSR adventures that listening to the Between Two Cairns podcast had convinced me to buy. I did not however want to shift from the Mothership game which is just now taking off into a really enjoyable sandbox campaign. So, in November with the holidays looming (and with it all manner of real-life commitments) I started floating the idea to my players to start a parallel play-by-post game. Everyone was enthusiastic, so I needed to put something together.

I went to the shelf of “sad adventures waiting to be run,” and pulled down, Fever Swamp (Luke Gearing), Tomb Robbers of the Crystal Frontier (Gus L.) and Nightmare over Ragged Hollow (Joseph R. Lewis). I’d been wanting to really try Cairn 2e, for which the Players Guide is now available in physical form. I had read that roll-under systems are good for play-by-post (minimize GM-Player engagements), and I already knew that’s how I wanted to go. I put the three adventures to a poll for my players and everyone wanted to check out NoRH – so it began…

How I am doing this

As this is my first play-by-post game I found the techniques outlined by Yochai Gal ‘on-air’ in a few Between Two Cairns episodes extremely valuable. Especially useful is the method to set up a discord server for play and to keep information sorted and accessible. He has since provided this in a blog post that you should check out if you are considering play-by-post.

I have started using Miro for all my virtual tabletop and image sharing so I set up a board there with the main maps and posted that for use by my players. As an aside I really love Miro, as I can smash together just about anything I need to communicate space and images to my players without dinking around with a more bespoke system like Foundry. It’s very versatile and since I like to leave things a bit more abstract (descriptive without being definitive) it suits me. Also, it easily transitions between up on a screen for in-person live play, or shared for on-line play. I’ve found it really helpful for the times I’ve had to run hybrid games when a player couldn’t make the drive. Basically, if I prep in Miro I am ready for any type of game, which I love.

NoRHMap Miro Map Board

Another benefit of using Cairn is the excellent, and 100% free, Kettlewright web app. My players all generated characters quickly and the party invite function let me pull them together and easily transfer items into shared storage. Another advantage of the party inventory is I can make a container for a location, and they can leave items there. It takes care of lot of the bookkeeping easily and everyone can look and see what was stashed at “Olias’s Hut” or whatever. My players have been great about creating the items and moving them around, so I really don’t have to worry about auditing inventory at all – Kettlewright takes care of it for me.

I am also using the Nightmare over Ragged Hollow conversion notes on the Cairn RPG website (conversion by Darren Campbell aka Bread Wizard) which has been super helpful, though I tend to tweak the conversions a bit. All three of the adventures I was considering have conversions on the Cairn webpage, which is a great resource.

Server, map board, and characters set, we dove in. In short it has been wonderful. Cairn and Nightmare over Ragged Hollow really work well together. I rarely run a system “RAW” but I have had little reason to tinker with Cairn. I did initially set out to use the GLoG magic hack, since I like the additional flavor it adds, but as magic has been pretty low key in the game, I decided to just use the published magic system. Of note, all the spell books are in the Warden’s Guide, which is not yet available in print. Otherwise, I have found Cairn versatile enough to handle just about anything the game has thrown at us with no modifications. If a save or attack roll doesn’t answer the question, the “Die of Fate,” d6 oracle does. Gameplay has been easily, and in my mind, fairly adjudicated in every case.

Nightmare over Ragged Hollow has so far been excellent as well. Its close enough in tone to vanilla D&D that its familiar, but it has a strong fairy/folktale vibe that is really refreshing. Goblins are mischievous and, as I play them, just a little grumpy, not evil little monsters. Most situations have fun ways to navigate them without fighting and all the NPCs are engaging and, in many cases, flip expectations.

In a month of play so far the clock has only advanced three days and the party has visited Beatrix the “witch,” and dealt with a mutant rat problem in the town, meeting two very fun goblin characters in the process. Some gold in hand, they set on their first real adventure into the Bleak Mountains and the old dwarf tomb that the evil gripping Ragged Hollow might have originated in.

On the way they met the crazy trapper, Olias, and this encounter ended up interacting with one of the PC’s “Bonds” from character creation. They had a locket with a portrait of their lost love, who ended up (by a casting of the die of fate) being one of Olia’s “guests.” It was a really powerful moment that even I had not anticipated, at all…

If the town and Gloam Wood had a very folktale feel I am getting definite Middle-Earth vibes from the Bleak Mountains. This has got me thinking about using Cairn for a Lord of the Rings or Middle-Earth game. I think it’s perfect for a gritty low magic setting similar to The One Ring, but I’ll probably write something about that in a later post – maybe mashing up the two games and see how that feels.

So far there have been three brief combats. The first was the spider-rats in the tailor’s basement (classic scenario that was great for getting the feel for combat in Cairn), then when it was discovered that Olias was much more of a threat than anticipated – he was killed with a single blow due to good tactics (enhanced attack) and a failed critical damage roll, and most recently the “dolorous ichor” in the dwarf tomb. In all cases the fights were frantic, consequential, and fun. I had been worried that ItO/Cairn combat might be less satisfying, but its really exciting as any hit can take a character down. However, due to how critical and ability damage work, death is held off long enough for players to make decisions about how to proceed. A PC going down presents an interesting dilemma that contributes to the fun rather than spoiling it.

The biggest adjustment for me was the full change from checks and saves, to just saves. It’s a bit of a perspective shift – especially as I am also running a Mothership game parallel to this one. The basic thing I do in Cairn, is simply ask “Can the character accomplish this due to background, positioning, tools available, etc?” If the answer is yes, then I ask “do they place themselves at risk, if so what exactly is the risk, and how might they avoid it (STR, DEX, WIL)?” Communicate the risk (and consequence) to the player and let them decide to proceed or to change their approach. Works great, feels fair, and gets everyone thinking.

Some final thoughts on the game…

From a position of running the game I find it really easy to run the module with the play-by-post format. I can’t decide if it requires no prep, or actually constant prep, but you have the ability to take your time, reference the module and the rules, before you set up a turn (cycle) or respond to player actions and questions. It still requires improvisation, but it can be more thoughtful and it’s easier to tie an improvisation back into the established “canon” of the adventure.

One of the most common observations about play-by-post is that allows you to “play all the time.” This is true, and it can be addictive. One player observed that this can be a bit of a drawback if you’re not aware, as sometimes play picks up when you can’t respond, so you can feel a little guilty that you’re holding everyone up. We started with an expectation of a post a day, equaling about a turn/cycle. However, the module is pretty “talky” so the combat/dungeon/wilderness procedures don’t always serve as a good governor on play pace. It was brought up and I as the GM/Warden am trying to be more cognizant of how much the players may be available and slow things down if I don’t see a post in either the out of character or play channels.

Other plusses from the players, originally stated by Jason, but echoed by Matt and Jack:

I really like being able to take time to reflect on a situation before just reacting like in a face-to-face game.
Play-by-post seems to encourage social interactions over combat and allows for more of a story to be told.
Play-by-post feels like micro roleplaying. It’s nice to be able to get in a little bit of RP time in during the day.
Overall, it’s been a great experience. This particular module seems to be perfect for this style of game so far. The play has been great.
The goblins are hilarious!

To close it out I highly recommend you give Cairn 2e a try if you fancy the old-school playstyle. It supports it really well; the rules are tight and the procedures well defined and flexible. Nightmare over Ragged Hollow is absolutely phenomenal, well deserving of the amount of hype it gets. Joseph R. Lewis has recently released Cairn compatible versions of several of his Dungeon Age adventures on DTRPG and I grabbed them all. It helps that they are amazingly affordable for POD and PDF. Finally, play-by-post lives up to being a great way to get in some gaming consistently, every-single-day, but offers other benefits, principally just how easy it is to GM a game in this format. I hope you’ll consider all three as part of your hobby.

Continue to Part 2