pretty interactive sheets and trackers for the ttrpg CAIN

why I like CAIN

Skip to sheets and trackers for the interactive sheets and tools. :)

I really love the table-top-RPG CAIN, by Tom Bloom, and I encourage you to buy and play it.

Game systems like D&D get popular because they’re quite general: D&D is half-decent at a large variety of tones and settings, and learning a new multi-hundred-page game system is a big ask for a whole roomful of people.

But general-purpose game systems create massive ludonarrative dissonance. If a campaign is meant to feel grim and realistic, why can I heal my injuries (up to and including death) instantly and with no downsides? If a campaign is meant to feel open-ended and exploratory and fantastical, encouraging clever solutions to problems, why are all the game mechanics built around combat-to-the-death? Personally, I can’t enjoy general-purpose systems - they always feel like a compromise.

CAIN isn’t like that. There’s a tone, and the mechanics are in service to the tone. You will fight psychic ghosts as an ill-equipped and disposable tool of a faceless, morally grey, bureaucratic organization. You’ll have to choose between life-saving equipment and the dignity of shoes that fit, and you will like it.

My favorite feature is the “agendas”. Like many modern games, you get in-game rewards (experience points, XP) for roleplaying your character’s personality. Unlike those games, CAIN rewards you for playing to your character’s personality, but it also rewards you for breaking those expectations. Characters with the TEMPERANCE agenda get abilities related to care and healing, and players whose characters have that agenda get XP for “putting people before the mission”. But they also get XP for “harming someone intentionally”. A clever, resourceful character grants XP for “solving problems creatively”, but also for “taking the simple solution”. A LONER character gets XP for “demonstrating your superior skill”, but also for “letting the mask slip”.

YES!!!! If you want to create a game whose tone is morally grey, fighting against corruption while becoming corrupted yourselves, fighting but not knowing why, this is how you do it! And the roleplay effects are great - finding when and how a character subverts their normal behavior is what gives those actions narrative weight.

sheets and trackers

First is an interactive form of the game’s player sheet.

AI-written description: A screenshot of the interactive CAIN exorcist sheet in a browser, with Export, Import, Print and Clear buttons along the top. On the left, a grey registered-exorcist ID card is filled in: a drawn portrait of a woman with long black hair and bangs, name J, XID X067, agenda Beast, blasphemy Ardence, height and weight, and a black circle with a CAT rating of 4 over a halftone brain. Below it, an Execution track shows two red slashes. On the right, a rounded Registered Skills panel lists ten skills, from Force to Connection, each with three circles, some of them filled in black.

Second, a talisman tracking board for ADMINs to present to the table.

AI-written description: A short screen recording of the talisman board: two tall paper talismans, labelled creeping horrors and centipede poison, on a dark red backdrop with a halftone image of a winged hand. Clicks carve red slashes across them, and their counters climb to 3 of 3 and 3 of 4. The finished creeping horrors talisman is ticked off and burns away from the bottom in a shower of embers, then centipede poison is deleted and shreds into falling strips, leaving the board empty.

GitHub repo: https://github.com/corashallit/cain

enjoy 😊