Cairn
You are a treasure-hunter in a dark and mysterious wood — no class, no levels, just three abilities, a handful of inventory slots, and your wits. Cairn is a rules-light adventure game about exploration, danger, and the choices that keep you alive. Combat is fast and genuinely deadly; you grow not by grinding XP but through the scars you carry out of the dark.
It's one of the best on-ramps in the hobby — players run it for people who have never touched a tabletop RPG and have a great first night. The Barebones Edition is the stripped-down "start here" version.
Where to get it
Designer Yochai Gal sells Cairn cheap and gives the rules away free — and stays active in the community. Start at the source:
- Official site — cairnrpg.com — the free rules, the SRD, the Barebones Edition, and current buy links.
- itch.io — yochaigal.itch.io — the digital editions (the free PDF is the complete game, not a teaser).
- Print restocks follow Kickstarter cycles; between runs, print-on-demand and community resellers fill the gap — the official site has the current options.
The free PDF is legit. Cairn is Creative Commons BY-SA — the cleanest license of the systems we cover. Download it, hack it, build tools on it; you're only ever asked to give credit. (This page and our character tools are built on that openness.)
Starting resources
- Barebones Edition — the minimal "play tonight" on-ramp.
- The SRD (on cairnrpg.com) — everything you need to run or build on Cairn.
- Cairn Press — the community newsletter curated by Yochai Gal, a steady feed of adventures, hacks, and tools (the ecosystem is the most active of its peers — setting hacks, monster conversions, crossovers).
Roll some tables
Cairn leans on its tables — backgrounds, omens, the wilderness itself. Roll on Cairn's tables (and hundreds more) for free, no account needed, at the RPGsecrets tables app.
Build your character
There's no character creator anywhere in the Cairn community — the sheet is so minimal (STR / DEX / WIL, HP, inventory slots) that everyone uses paper or fillable PDFs. So we made one. Roll your abilities and background, pack your slots, and keep a character that's ready for a deadly wood.