Play Report - Gumdrop Dreamers #0: Prep & Session Zero

 

Howdy, Farmhands!

    During the last couple months of 2025, Prismatic Wasteland's Discord Server, the Prismatic Waystation, hosted an event wherein the authors and bloggers present participated in creating single hexes of a fantastical North Pole themed around the classic claymation Christmas specials from Rankin and Bass. The final product had 60 total hexes containing monsters, dungeons, NPCs, and references to judeo-christian mythology. 

    I participated with my own hex, which was then pieced together by the project operators to create a cohesive map. Seeing the final product and knowing there was not enough time left in the Christmas season for 2025 for me to properly run it, I promised myself that I would run it for my friends the following year. As of this writing, It is officially the Christmas season - (Fuck, you. November counts. I'm tired of saying it doesn't.) - and I have assembled five of my bravest Warriors to play through it, using Cairn. We will be playing every Tuesday for three to four hours from the first week of November until the Tuesday before Christmas Eve. The pitch I gave them was as follows - they would be playing normal folk from the modern day who had found themselves mysteriously isekai'd into the North Pole, and above anything else, their goal was to find a way back home.

    This blog post will cover the events of the Session Zero, held November 3rd,  as well as  write-up the conversion process that I performed in taking these disparate hexes and turning them into notes that I could use to actually run the thing. I won't be offended if you jump to the relevant section and ignore the other. I'm not your mom. 

Section 1: Prep 

As my players do not regularly read blogs, Nor do they have significant experience in a hex crawl. This will be an interesting experience for everyone involved. 

    I have run hex crawls before. They've been of the "Move into a blank hex and Generate what's there" variety, so playing with a pre-written hex map is a novelty to me. On the other side of the table, two of my five players were in those previous hex-crawls, a third has played in a hexcrawl, but not for some years, and the remaining two have played a Dungeon and Dragon once or twice, but never something like this. None of them regularly read blogs except for when I link mine with a silly enough picture as the thumbnail (which is my excuse for the thumbnails, thank you very much.) Because of this difference in experience, and the general disorganization in the project's writing process, I have needed to do some, shall we say, editorial work before we start play.

    The problem with getting 30 to 40 bloggers to work on a project with the direction being "Make it like the Rankin bass Christmas specials" is the distinct lack of cohesion in both tone and organization. Some hexes contain sub-hexes, making them their own hex crawls within a single point on the original map. Others wrote Adventure sites without the additional details needed for me to run each hex identically, such as encounter or weather tables. A few were textually meant to be read as jokes, more "blog shaped objects" than actual gameable content. Some hexes I have had to rewrite entirely as they are too dark or contain content that my players have requested we not touch upon. As much as I wish I could say I ran this as written, the project was a bunch of friends slapping together a bunch of ideas and then combining them all into a single map without a second pass.

    Wayspell wrote his hex for His Majesty the Worm, for pete's sake.  Who does that? 

   My job in preparing the map for this game is to allow the hexes to exist more or less as they were intended while expanding them to increase cohesion and replacing content that would make my players uncomfortable and ruin their fun.  Should be simple, right? Right?

    Step 1:  Read every hex. Read them again. A third time. There's 47 hexes with content in them, and while I can't memorize all of them, I need to be able to have a vague understanding of the big tentpole experiences within them.  When one hex makes a big declaration about the setting, I should note it down and think of how that truth will change the content in another hex.  

    One hex introduces a roaming encounter, which requires a roll each day to determine the location of. I COULD have waited until they players reached that hex to start caring, OR I could make it a daily procedure. Another hex introduces a magical train with stops in specific hexes. Those hexes were written without knowing this train would have a station in them. I marked those stops on a map for me to add that point of interest to the notes of that hex. Red-heads in one hex are explicitly werefoxes. Now every Red-head has a secret. Coal is declared to be a social taboo as it relates to sin and "naughtiness." Suddenly, any reference to coal takes on deeper meaning. These inferences alter a lot of other content, deepening their meaning without me having to re-write a thing.

    Step 2: Fill in Gaps.  This is primarily an organizational issue, as some hexes are missing encounter tables, structured lists of NPCs, or other things I would need to run the game smoothly. This isn't a fault of the author; these hexes were written mostly in isolation and stitched together after the fact. (Some actually have TOO MUCH information that i've had to trim down.) The format I've landed on is as follows-

1. Entering this Hex: Immediate location descriptions, sights, sounds, smells. Line of sight data for what's noticable in surrounding hexes.
2. Point of Interest summary. The title of upcoming sub-paragraphs, with a one line description to quickly refresh myself before we start play in the hex proper.
3. Tables or Mechanics unique to the Hex: I have a basic weather table to use in every hex that doesn't include a bespoke one- this is where I'll place that so I can immediately adjust my procedure to make use of it. One hex has a unique travel mechanic that needs to be known before I even start resolving moving into said hex. Displaying this prominently is important.
4. The POI sub-headings. Usually organized in order of how immediate players were engage with them, Hidden points are lower on the list. If the Points are isolated or meant to be run as seperate from the larger hex, I will put specific NPC's statblocks within the sub-headings instead of a seperate NPC section.
5. That Seperate NPC Section. I've organized them to include physical data and names first, a paragraph of their story and aims, followed by three bullet points summarizing their Wants, Fears, and Mannerisms in as few words as possible for proper quick skimming.
6. And finally, Encounter Tables. It might feel like this should go somewhere closer to the start of the pages, but while I will require this table often, it isn't an IMMEDIATE need to resolve things. When an encounter is triggered, I can flip to it, roll, and resolve it in the moment. The data at the start of the section is more important to consistently have in mind while the party is in the hex, I can erase the encounter table from my memory until I need it again. Cognitive load is an important consideration.

    Taking the words as written and fitting them into this format without losing anything is a lot of copy-pasting. I feel bad for piecemealing the authors work in this manner, but if I tried to run each hex exactly as written, it would take forever to get my bearings and my players would suffer as a result. 

    This is also where I take the inferences from step 1 and complete them. For example, there's 5 seperate winter wizards based on the same character from the Rankin Bass Films, half of which are sealed away in some manner. Great news- they are now members of a previous ruling class defeated by Santa and his friends, and preventing the return of them is a key concern for basically every faction. The multiple references to a Lord or King in red isn't just santa anymore, but the members of Santa's party from that grand adventure to save the North Pole from the Wizards in Blue. And because each instance of a Lord in Red was a different flavor of despot, seperating them into 3 or 4 underlings, scheming beneath Santa's nose allows me to clarify Santa's character without juggling six different kinds of atrocity he's supposed to be doing. 

    Basically in the act of melding all of these confident declarations of truth, I have to iron out something in one hex, while sprinkling it's content across other hexes so it's more cohesive. The end result will only MOSTLY play as written, and some authors are recieving more disrespect than others. (Sorry folks, it's nothing personal)

    Step 3: Make it Pretty. I'm printing these pages out to hold in a physical binder, despite the game being held digitally. This is something I like to do with all of my big campaigns; having the actual paper to manipulate makes it easier for me to quickly find data when I need it, make notes, or slide in extra pages as the game goes on. It also doubles as a record of games I've run, and lets me reuse prep between different tables. For this game, I want each hex to sit as a two page spread (or two spreads of 4 pages if the hex is particularly large and involved). Editing the text to fit in that space while still being readable means I have to get funky with the formatting. Sometimes I have to cut an entire paragraph down to a single sentence so the data is accessible without ballooning the page count.

    For comparison, here is the original hex for 0703 Sleeping Slope, and below is a screenshot of a draft of my notes for it. The core is still there, but a lot has been shifted or removed to fit within my constraints. The final print moved the table to the end and added some detail back in, since I had the space for a few more sentences.

     Optional Step: Make it into a Dungeon. Somehow, most of these hexes don't include any actual Dungeons. Adventure sites abound, to be sure, but there's only a handful of square by square, room by room, actual-factual CRAWLING to be had. In and around the above 3 steps, I have found myself stopping, reading a section, and thinking to myself, "Oh this needs a map." Watabou's generator has been a godsend for this, though I'll probably end up hand drawing some stuff during play when I find something that my players want to treat as tactical space puzzle. Unlike the hexes, I'm placing the dungeon maps at the back of the book, in the same general order as the hexes they appear in. Dungeon crawling usually is a solitary affair, and I shouldn't need to refer back to their original hex until they LEAVE said location.

    And that's It. "What, no Monsters or Treasures?" I hear you ask, but I'm a Just Use Bears kind of dm. Critical damage effects I'll figure out if and when I roll a certain monster, and Relics... well... 

    I've kind of been wanting to run a Christmas game for A While. Years, to be honest. I've also occasionaly been bit with the Data Entry Autism Fixation. Collecting lists from Reddit and various 5e homebrewed Magic items, I've produced (Players in my game, don't click on this) an automated method to generate loot, treasure, redwall-worthy meal descriptions of holiday feasts and so on. I'll be making use of this for anything I don't otherwise have prepared. Maybe I'll need to make an analog printable for future sessions after perchance succumbs to it's ai fueled craze, but for now, this works for me. 

Section 2: Session Zero

    

     For private games, I like to record the sessions. It gives me a copy of the event to refer to in between sessions for things I inevitably forget, while also doubling as my own personal podcast for later. I do like to hear myself talk, after all. These are not designed to be content, so the recordings are private and not distributed to anyone who wasn't a player in said game. But I'm also an extra little fuck, so I had to make the setup pretty, with an animated background and the discord chat displayed and animated discord avatars to show who's talking, etc etc.

   

    This session was to get everyone up to speed, open the floor for questions, and introduce each other to the characters they'd be playing for the next 7 sessions. We opened with an overview of the game, a brief discussion on the player and game master principles, and some of the assumptions of the Cairn system. A concept that people introduced to Odd-likes seem to stumble over frequently is how stats do not directly correlate to physical ability. I had to pipe in and clarify that one could have a super buff character with a low STR score, they simply would suffer bad luck in performing feats of strength in moments of danger. In my experience, a few instances of letting them make a good plan and not requesting a roll will solve the issue. They'll learn.

 

    Character introduction was the fun part, as I knew it would be. Everyone had made their character in the space between the original pitch and now, though two individuals had to re-roll their stats; they'd misread the SRD and only rolled 3d6... 1d6 per stat. I did assure them that they could play with a character with incredibly low stats, but that they should probably reroll, which they did. Instead of buying starting equipment, we made use of Fantasy Loadouts, with the understanding that the name of the "Class" was to be the theme of their special isekai costume instead of prescriptive of their character's physical being.  

  

    Our players are:

 

    Boomer (he/him), playing Weinan Abernathy the Minstrel Jester (she/her, 30) STR 16 DEX 12 WIL 11 HP 6. Her starting kit contains a Sling (d4), Poignard (d6), Hurdy-Gurdy, Set of Juggling Balls, Colorful Cape, and Soap. An entertainer, Weinan has the professional experience needed to fit the Jester role. Gregarious but blunt, she's fully capable of being giving and loving, but can read you to filth with a smile. Her skill with face makeup is on point, the example given being "Perfect eyeliner wings every time." Boomer even went out of his way to commission artwork of the character- despite me reminding him that there's a chance they won't survive the campaign. I've been assured that such an end is acceptable, should it happen. 

    Neb (they/them), playing Gringle Glass "Grin" the Grimalkin (he/him, 22) STR 13 DEX 16 WIL 13 HP 3. His starting kit will contain a Curved Knife (d6), Hex Stone, Pouch of Catnip, Spangle, Blackberry Pie, and Baubles. Grin is an instagrammer, urban explorer, thrifter, and ebay flipper, taking advantage of a gap year in their education to do all of the above stuff while donating most of their income to cats. When asked if Grin was intended to be transmogrified into a cat person or was just a human wearing a cat themed fit, Neb laughed and said they were human, but in a red and white striped Kigurumi, which is perfectly fine but for the record, I would have let them be a furry if they wanted. I would be hypocritical not to. He's also very short, apparently.

 

    Sheela (she/her), playing Katerina Petrova Katsalapov "Kat-Kat"/"Kit-Kat"/"Kitty Kat"/"Koshka" the Friar Sugar Plum Fairy (she/her 25) STR 4 DEX 12 WIL 15 HP 1. Her starting kit contains a Scepter (d6), Deceptive Robes (1 AMR), Censer & Holy Water, Jug of Honey Wine, Folk Songbook, and a Cart (+4 slots, bulky). On request, the robes are being reflavored to be a stage costume reminiscent of the "Sugar Plum Fairy", complete with Tutu. The jug of honey wine will actually contain Kvass. A Russian popstar who's 'aging out' of her career, she's been tasked by her manager to work on a Christmas Album, something she does not want to do. She's a bit of a prima donna, used to roadies handling the grunt work, and utterly pissed to be in sequins and a tutu. Sheela is planning on doing a heavy accent for this character, which elevates the performance significantly.

 

    Sono (they/them), playing Griya Weaver the Dwarf (she/her, 39) STR 15 DEX 16 WIL 12 HP 3. Her starting kit contains a Mace (d8), Platemail (3 AMR, Bulky), Harp, Hammer & Tongs, Large Sack, and Bellows. The primary inspiration Sono mentioned was Molly Grue from Peter S. Beagle's "The Last Unicorn." A failed fantasy novelist, Griya is now a manager at the Barnes and Noble she's worked at for the last 20 years. Jaded and bitter by decades of retail, she wants to reconnect with the Christmas spirit, but feels it's too late to put in the work to do so. Her catchphrase is "Reindeer can't fucking fly", which is why her dour and stocky outfit includes a pair of short antlers on her head. Love me some Irony. 

 

    Tegan (she/her), playing Elgile "Elle" Tolman the Beastmaster (she/her, 11) STR 10 DEX 17 WIL 12 HP 4. Her starting kit contains a Spear (D8), Big Knight (d6), Furs (1 AMR), Whistle, Animal Charm, and a Wolf, which Tegan has requested we reflavor into a Christmas Puppy (2 HP, 12 WIL, Bite (d6)). Elle is a sad little orphan who, on a trip to the mall with her group home caretakers, asked the mall santa for a family for christmas. As far as she's concerned, the party IS that family, delivered as promised. She's unsure who's dog this is, but she'll ask whoever she meets until she finds it's human. The dog ALSO asked Santa for a family this christmas, and is pretty sure this small human is his. Tegan has been tasked with coming up with a name for this puppy between this session and the next. The costume inspiration Tegan came up with when rolling Elle was "The Little Match Girl," a choice that was met with the entire groupchat wincing. She is intended to be a pitiful little meow-meow, wearing mismatched and fraying rags underneath the fur pelts. She doesn't care, as she's with her new family in the north pole and firmly still believes in the magic of christmas.

 

    After introducing our blorbos, we had to go back to less fun bookkeeping; discussing trigger warnings! There's so many to go through, gang. I posted a short list in the group chat while I was on my third read of the hexcrawl, but tonight was when we seriously went through the potential content to accept or reject certain hexes. The challenge for me was to 1. be thorough without spoiling the content of the actual hexes, and 2. come up with replacement content for things the players veto.

 

    The list included:

•  Fascist Local Governments (Only if it's not a parody of the current American government and if the party can kill them)
•  Non-consensual Body Horror and Gore (Implication preferred, No Eye Stuff, No Dental Stuff, No description of viscera or exposed musclature, effects on the PCs should be reversible if they are not killed outright)
• Cloning a Slave Race, and the depersonhood thereof (Only if it's not a reference to a real world culture and, again, if the party can kill the slaver)
• Giant Spiders (No, please no.) Ok, but giant insects in general? (Only if they're googly-eyed cartoon characters) I can do that, no problem.
•  Cult Stuff/Real World Religions treated as Fictional/Canonically White Jesus and he's Real in this setting (Jesus is fine if he's not blonde haired and blue eyed, The Christian God is fine as part of a larger pantheon even though that's blasphemous, the Evangelical folks who want to convert you are ok as long as the party can kill them if they step out of line) Aight.
• Hivemind Goo that Melts you ("That would fix me" - Sono 2026)
• Government Conspiracies/Experimenting on People (As long as it's not on Children specifically) 
•  Trench Warfare (Gadda, I thought this hexcrawl was about Christmas) Answer the damn question (Fine I guess?) Ok thank you.

    The only request for unlisted content to be removed was "Drowning/Trapped under Ice", which isn't explicitly present in any hex, but was fantastic to learn about before we started playing. I never would have assumed that was an issue before two of my players brought it up. We spoke for a time about how communication is key to making sure everyone is comfortable, and established very thoroughly that I would rather be interrupted 20 times in a row than allowed to continue describing someone's squick for a second longer. The challenge of an OSR game should be in overcoming the obstacle place in front of the players, not muscling through content that makes them personally uncomfortable. If the challenge is a monster that bothers someone in an unfun way, I can just as easily replace that monster with something that doesn't have those elements without removing the challenge entirely. With this in mind, we agreed to use a "Stoplight" system for handling content- Red means we stop, Yellow means we pause and discuss, and Green, of course, means continue. It was established that the moment anyone posts one of these colors, someone is to verbally call it out so it isn't missed by my ADHD ass. 

 

    What some people don't know is that trigger warnings is for the GM too! I listed off some things that -I- would rather not happen during a session, and the players were accepting of them. One of the things I mentioned specifically was more of a play culture thing than an actual trigger - I've experienced players from more "trad" backgrounds will attempt to scheme and plan while keeping the DM in the dark, then describe their actions in an order and manner that makes it hard for the DM to understand the scale of it until the punchline. In an antagonistic game where the DM is opposed to the players, this can lead to very fun moments as the horror of what the PC has set up dawns on the Dungeon Master. This is not one of those games. I promised that, if planning for shenanigans were to happen out loud and above table, that I would never force the musings or mutterings of the players to "become canon" before they were sure of what exactly they wanted to do. Everyone was receptive to this. Thank God. 

 

    We ended the session by looping back around to Systems/Mechanics discussion. The unfamiliar players assured me that the base resolution made sense to them, and that more specific rules around combat would be grokked better once they experienced it. The players who had played in previous Odd-likes with me were warned that base Cairn may not have all the extra edge-rules I added to season those games to taste. Everyone was warned that because I've read so many of these fucking hacks, there WILL be a rule I misremember as being in Cairn 1e when it isn't, and that they have permission to argue with me if they make a tactical decision assuming a rule reads one way while I claim it's different. In those instances, we will refer and default to what's written in the Cairn SRD, unless the new rule was previously agreed upon in a session. 

 

    Tegan asked "How many slots does a Person take up?" and there was a beat of silence as I registered what the fuck she was asking. She was wondering if you could rest a character in a cart during travel, as her character is an 11 year old child and Koshka has a +4 slot cart. Not in a "trying to rules lawyer the result they want" way, more in a "wondering how the rules interact" way, which was very funny. The answer is no, btw; resting is intended to be seperate from Travel. 

 

     The end result: Everyone feels content with the planned content, excited to play, and fans of each other's blorbos. Probably the best possible scenario to start playing from.

Section 3: What's Next 

     Jeez what a post, huh. Lots of words up there. Going forward these should be CONSIDERABLY shorter and contain actual stories to tell, not just me yapping about the lists I've written. Next session is November 10th, and will introduce our PCs to the fantastical world that is the North Pole, as well as each other. I've completed converting the hexes surrounding their starting point and heading out towards Santa's castle, which I assume they'll want to head straight towards once they know where it is, in character. I've also pulled out my collection of Rankin Bass dvds to do a rewatch- "The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus" can barely be considered a movie so much as a collection of scenes, though "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" holds up better than I remembered. I've already demolished two boxes of Little Debbie's Christmas Tree Cake Snacks, and have been scouring grocery store aisles for any sign of Cranberry Ginger ale. I'll just have to keep listening to christmas carols through my bluetooth headphones in the employee breakroom and hope nobody finds out and, justly, tries to kill me with rocks.

 

    Until Next Time,

        Farmer Gadda