Dark fantasy survival, ready to play at your virtual table.
Cairn is a rules-light tabletop RPG by Yochai Gal about adventurers exploring a dangerous, mysterious forest. Characters are fragile, gear matters, and every choice counts. This system brings Cairn Second Edition to Foundry VTT, and it handles the bookkeeping so your table can focus on the story.
Pick one of the 20 backgrounds, such as Aurifex, Bonekeeper or Fungal Forager, or let the dice pick one. The creator walks you through it step by step: a name from the background's own list, attributes, starting gear, personality traits, a Bond and an Omen. Anything you leave blank is rolled for you. Already built your character on Kettlewright? Import it with one click.
Ten inventory slots, where heavy (bulky) items take two and Fatigue fills them up. Click STR, DEX or WIL to make a save. Rest, Restore and the Die of Fate are one button each. Armor adds itself up from what you wear. When a character is overloaded or panicking, the sheet shows it.
Roll damage and apply it to the targeted token. Armor soaks what it can, HP goes first, the rest spills into STR, and the sheet asks for the critical-damage save when it's due. Scars, Panic, impaired and enhanced attacks, blast, Morale and Reactions are all handled. The combat tracker follows Cairn's rules: sides take turns, with no initiative roll.
- One-click generators for NPCs, hirelings, monsters and whole factions, all built from the rulebook's own tables.
- Journeys: a shared travel window where the party votes on each watch's action. It rolls weather, getting lost and wilderness events, and an encounter can drop its creatures straight onto the map.
- Stores: stock a market by dragging items onto its shelves and open it on every player's screen. Players fill a cart, and the store checks both their gold and their free slots before anything changes hands.
- Factions that play: agents in rank order, an agenda to tick off, and buttons for faction actions and opposed saves.
- A party sheet that shows everyone's HP, attributes and load at a glance, plus the followers travelling with them.
- Live rules in your notes: write
[[/save WIL]]in a journal and it becomes a clickable save. When a character dies, you can promote a hireling to a player character.
All the game content you need is already inside:
| Backgrounds | all 20, with their name lists, starting gear and tables |
| Equipment | the full Marketplace (gear, weapons, armor), plus carts, horses, mules and wagons |
| Magic | 100 spellbooks, 100 scrolls and 46 relics |
| Bestiary | 84 ready-to-drop monsters, plus 13 hirelings |
| Tables | traits, Bonds, Omens, Scars, Reactions, the Die of Fate and the Warden's generator tables |
| Macros | Die of Fate, Rest, Restore Abilities, Roll Morale, Roll Reaction, and STR / DEX / WIL saves |
| Homebrew | More Gear, More Spellbooks and More Scrolls: extra content by the maintainer, kept in its own folder |
The ink-on-paper design uses Lora, the typeface the Cairn books are set in. A new world opens on a welcome scene with its own music. With Dice So Nice installed, you roll a custom 3D Cairn d20.
In Foundry's setup screen, go to Game Systems → Install System, paste this into Manifest URL, and click Install:
https://github.com/brunocalado/cairn2e/releases/latest/download/system.json
Then create a world with the Cairn 2e system. If you want players to build their own characters, open Configure Settings → Permissions and allow Create Actor for players.
Recommended modules (optional):
- Dice So Nice rolls the 3D Cairn d20.
- Light Sources lights torches, lanterns and candles from the token HUD and spends their uses.
The user guide covers everything in detail: the character creator, the sheet, rolling in play, every Warden tool, containers, and the API for macro and module authors.
Found a bug or have an idea? Open an issue. Changes in each version are listed in the changelog.