The Train Must Go Through

This game is written for Cairn 2e but is compatible with your favorite OSR 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?_______________________________________________________________________________________

This is a game that's been gestating for months. I was excited to find the Tabletop Train Jam just as these ideas were coalescing. But of course, the extended deadline was here and I wasn't ready. However, I was lucky to have just read Prismatic Wasteland's recent blog post that challenges you to share your beta edition and I realized I would have to bite the bullet and just post something. So here it is, unfinished, but, I think, still playable. If you play this, let me know how it goes. If you come back here in a little bit, hopefully, it will have changed.