Review: Barrow of the Elf King (Cairn)
This is a short little dungeon by Highland Paranormal Society that we used to fill a session where some players dropped from our regular game. It was the first time playing Cairn for the players, so we spent a little time going over the rules and rolling characters. I used the conversion notes provided on the Cairn Website for appropriate treasure and stat conversions. In terms of layout and design I liked the evocative selection of public domain art and the indulgent use of space with a single room per page with huge font size. This works really well if you print the dungeon as booklet and you staple bind it, which I generally prefer to tiny font one-page dungeons as it allows you to add your own scribbles in the margins. We started right outside the dungeon and dropped any pretence that this would be anything but a simple dungeon crawl. In terms of content the dungeon presents you with pretty standard DnD fare: Skeletons and an assortment of creepy crawlers, some light puzzling and opportunities for jovial role-play. This might sound boring at first, but was extremely well executed and made for a very pleasant experience. The setup of the dungeon also manages the sequence of encounters extremely well, never does anything feel repetitive and there is plenty opportunity for characters to express their agency. Treasure had a nice elvish flavour but could have been a bit more creative mechanically, however, this could also have been lost in translation between systems. I would highly recommend this, especially to GMs that are new to more old-school inspired DnD adventures. It is easily completed within a single session. 8/10