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The original was posted on /r/osr by /u/i_toast_toast on 2025-06-22 04:04:17+00:00.

I’ve been reading the novel City of Last Chances by Adrian Tchaikovsky. In it, there’s this concept of the Reproach - a magical exclusion-zone type forest containing twisted beasts and the chaotic minstrel-esque Indwellers. Outsiders - called Ruin Divers, enter the Reproach in search of magical artifacts. As an added risk, simply being in the Reproach risks madness, so Ruin Divers purchase various charms, totems, or occult magical items that hold off the areas influence. This adds an extra layer of risk - weak charms, quack magicians, or losing/breaking/spending these totems could spell madness.

In short - Stalker meets Annihilation meets the upside-down from stranger things meets creepy carnival.

This has me thinking about running a similar exclusion zone one-shot but I’m having trouble deciding on a system. An ideal system would contain ways to handle the following types of mechanics:

• madness/sanity, in addition to normal mortal wounds
• durability (for charms, totems, and so on) - both “you take a fall and your charm might break” but also a clock of “you only have 12 hours to get in/out”
• risky/fickle magic or artifacts
• preferably , d20 or similar (players like rolling those funny prisms)

I’m not against kitbashing a bunch of stuff together, but truthfully feel like I’d just be overloading a game with a bunch of mismatched stuff.

Here’s what I’m considering from the research thus far.

• Cairn: pretty much the frontrunner. Basically an identical setting and limited inventory solves a lot of the tradeoff concerns. However, it is lacking some of the subsystems I was looking to explore
• shadowdark: look, I’ve just been looking for an excuse to run it. But some things like the torch mechanic could be easily adapted to a charm/totem protection.
• into the odd: obvious choice, I don’t own it so i cant speak to it in detail?
• into the wyrd and wild: in brief reading seemed more focused on wasteland exploration than a constrained zone.
• S.T.A.L.K.E.R or equivalent: a little too sci fi in tone - not really looking for magical radiation, but more about an uncanny unease
• white hack: apparently has a corruption mechanic (need to look into this)

So - what am I missing? What would you do? Anyone run a similar one and have tips?