Armor and Tones

I’ve been getting back into table-top RPG stuff lately. It started when I got my box set from the Cairn 2e Kickstarter. The package itself is incredibly nice and quite loaded after adding in all of the stretch goal rewards. Three player’s guides, one DM guide, one adventure module in zine form, three additional modules compiled into a small book, a pad of character sheets, and a DM screen come in the box for 50 bucks. It’s honestly one of the nicest Kickstarter projects I’ve seen and on top of all of that - all of the game materials are free via .pdf so folks who can’t afford the physical goods can still play the game.

Cairn 2e is what is known as an OSR style role-playing game, with OSR standing for Old School Renaissance. I’m new to all of this so I may get some things wrong, but these types of TTRPGs tend to focus on a rules-light style of gameplay that grants larger amounts of player agency and creativity during the session. This is necessary because characters in OSR games tend to be quite squishy - death is not inevitable, but it is far more common than in modern games. Players need to use their heads to avoid battle or wrap it up quickly to prevent getting overwhelmed. These games are meant to be quick to set up. Cairn’s Warden’s Guide (The DM Manual) gives tons of tables for quick generation of characters, land, dungeons, factions, objectives, and more. A person familiar with running a game of Cairn could have material ready for a couple of sessions with no more than an hour of prep. It’s all very interesting to me. I’ve always enjoyed reading RPG rulesets just about as much as playing them. This has caused me to pull a few more I own off of the shelf, including Electric Bastionland which heavily influenced Cairn.

In addition to that and playing too much Monster Hunter Wilds (I broke Hunter Rank 160 last night) I’ve been messing around with music production again. I never take it too seriously, but it’s a fun way to wind down at the end of the night. My go-to set up right now is a Novation Circuit Tracks coupled with an Arturia MicroFreak. It’s been a great combination for ambient pads and textures and it doesn’t have a huge footprint. The sequencer on Circuit Tracks allows for probability per note and independent step lengths per part which adds up to a lot of fun, relaxing generative ambient music. I’m learning new things every time I pick up a synth and I’m genuinely making time to learn them all and practice like I’ve done with my DJing over the past decade. I’m finally seeing the reward of patience. 

-Ian