The Train Must Go Through

This game is written with Cairn 2e in mind but is compatible with your favorite OSR/NSR ruleset. Use these materials to flavor your adventures and immerse yourself in a world of sacred waters, forgotten histories, and industrial ambition.

Set in a world where layered histories collide with the engines of industrial progress, The Train Must Go Through explores the perilous balance between uncovering the past and forging the future. Sacred wells sustain life and ward off danger, but the railway demands a relentless path through ruins, woods, and mysteries best left undisturbed.

Players are employed by a Company, one of many industrial juggernauts racing to claim the land and its wealth. They ride the rails for free, are equipped with maps, tools, and promises of fortune, and keep whatever treasures they unearth. For them, this is no mere labor. Yet the risks are great. Each spike driven into the ground awakens the past, and every decision carries consequences, shaping the course of industry and the fate of communities.

The implied setting is an anachronistic collage of human history: bowler hats and top hats alongside coifs and capuchons; medieval castles casting shadows over industrial shanty towns; Neolithic burial sites lying beneath Iron Age ruins, overrun by the hum of steam engines. Feudal lords, parliamentarians, and proto-industrialists vie for control, while isolated farming communities, pagan rituals, and ancient myths persist in the shadow of progress. The railway brings these disparate worlds together, for better or worse.

The train must go through, but at what cost, and to what end?

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In honor of Prismatic Wasteland’s Put Out a Beta Edition of Something You’re Working On Challenge, I released this Beta Edition of The Train Must Go Through. It is also a submission for the opportune Tabletop Train Jam hosted by Maggie Mahoney. Both of these open calls gave me the push I needed to gather up my very messy bundle of notes and turn it into something that could, at the bare minimum, be played. If you'd like to read a long rambling post about how this idea came about, you can find that here.

If you play this, let me know how it goes. If you come back here in a little bit, hopefully, it will have changed.