To Care Is To Cairn

Our town is changing. 

We are left with artifacts that hold us to the past. They seem to betray history by breaking, altering, and growing beyond a generation. This is not a betrayal. We do not expect the past to hold such power over the present, and we forget that the present accounts for history just the same. Rubbish will always forge itself into a monument, and we will always be a part of that.

To Care is to Cairn 

is a worldbuilding tabletop roleplaying game that carries players through a civilization of their making, from a bird's eye view of once everyday objects. Artifacts will become part of a tapestry to a community's developing history, using real world archaeological influence. This 40 page game can be played as its own one-off session, or as a tool to add complexity to approaching / established campaigns.

The Toolkit

» One deck of playing cards, shuffled  ♠ ♥ ♣ ♦

» One large blank paper (e.g., poster paper, taped together normal paper,  whiteboard, a virtual whiteboard website, etc ... )

» Ten index cards per player, with surplus available if possible

» One pencil per player, colored pencils are optional

» One note taking device per player (paper, phone, etc ... )

» One to Five players, more are possible but not recommended

» Several snacks brought by players who are not hosting

Touchstones

The Quiet Year by Buried Without Ceremony,  Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel, Trey the Explainer, Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett, The Bumper within the Q*Bert Arcade Machine by Gottlieb. It combines well with games such as The Quiet Year and DELVE, while also creating threads for D&D campaigns! 

Featured in the New Zealand Archeological Association Conference (2024)

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Playthroughs