The Old Ways -- A Town, A Forest, A Dungeon Jam for Cairn RPG

My friend Crab Dominion informed me of the A Town, A Forest, A Dungeon Jam for the Cairn RPG over on Itch.io a while back and I meant to do something for it, but I wasn't really inspired until today. I was a little afraid that the Jam was just for the month of June, but no! As of today, the last day of June, there are still four days left in the jam! Just enough for me to crank out a completely unedited, unplaytested and unrevised bit of my own rpg chicanery. 

I've been thinking about how I'd want to write the thing I'm (as of this afternoon) writing for it, and much of what I want to do feels based on work I've already done for this or that campaign over the years. Specifically, much of the lore of what I'm writing is based on the two-year campaign I ran for coworkers during the pandemic. I'm leaning a little harder on the Slavic (well, Polish) folklore that inspired that campaign and writing around some of the prefab material that had initially populated that campaign. 

The result is In The Witching Wood, and if everything goes according to plan, it'll be on my Itch page before the 4th of July. I've written most of the background, so from here on in, it's hexmap, key, some new procedures, dungeon, key, then village, key. Spend like two minutes laying it out and then I'll put the fucker up on Itch.io. Here's a little taste of the module so far:

The Old Ways

If we cannot say when the War began, neither can we begin to fathom when the Old Ways did. When the first humans, dwarves and halflings fled the War into the Hinterlands, the Old Ways were already here. The Old Ways are the laws and strictures set down at the Dawn Times, sacrosanct to the barbarian elves, held dear by races older than Man, and foundation of the superstitions that haunt the Hinterlands. The Old Ways are not — and cannot be — codified; they change from time to time through unpredictable happenstance and whim of powers beyond the ken of mere mortals.

At the outset of this adventure, the game runner shall ask the adventurers to complete the following superstitions:

Before crossing a bridge, one must…

Upon meeting a witch, it is proper to…

When invited into a home, a gracious visitor should…

When meeting a stranger, protect yourself from curses and fairy tricks by…

To show thanks to the gods, it is right to…

At the Vernal Equinox, proffer … as a sacrifice lest …