Reality Check: Songbirds 3e

 

It is said that no plan survives contact with reality, and I find that the same is often true of RPG rulesets. Of course, one can make a concerted effort to follow the rules as written, but in many cases, you will end up with your own table's version of the game, having discarded some bits of rules that did not click with you, and added some house rules of your own. I have been running Songbirds 3e by snow roughly weekly for most of the year, and in this post, I will try to sum up my experiences with playing it, rather than just what's in the book.

Songbirds is, in its bones, a very simple system, relying to a large extent on vibes as its selling point. Fortunately, the vibes are impeccable, and absolutely managed to sell me on the game.

At its core are four attributes, each with its associated skills tracked with 5e style proficiency. Checks are standard d20+modifier vs DC rolls, though unlike 5e attributes only have a single value acting as their modifier. Combat is done using only player facing rolls, similar to Mörk Borg, with players rolling to hit or to dodge, and all weapons do some amount of d10s damage. In fact, nearly everything in the game uses only d20s and d10s (and d100s).

The real juice lies in the specifics of the implied setting, the classes (here termed bessings/curses) in particular. Each one provides a short bit of evocative flavour text, serving to root the character in the world, as well as a handful of interesting narrative/mechanical abilities. One class can learn new abilities by studying the insides of something they have killed, while another can take animal form and communicate with animals. All is contained in just a few bullet points for ease of use and remembrance.

There is no built-in class-specific advancement system, instead the game relies on its Massive Damage table, giving a small chance of mechanical advancement when a pc reaches near death, similarly to e.g. the scars mechanic in cairn, as well as Dream Journeys. The latter is one I have not engaged with as written. By the book, the player characters go on Dream Journeys after successful quests or sessions, to be resolved individually between the player and GM between the sessions, which if successful can yield increased max HP or other effects. I think this is a very interesting system, but this type of engagement with the game between sessions does not fit my current playgroup. I have therefore been resolving any such Dream Journeys with normal at-the-table roleplay.

In general, Songbirds is written with the assumption that one session is one adventure, with the PCs returning to The City in between to rest and recover, and time passing in real time between sessions with e.g. 1 HP recovered per day and penalties for ending the session while in a dungeon. This has also been incompatible with the style of game I wished to play, with a large focus on exploring a randomly generated hexcrawl (courtesy of the Hexcrawl Toolbox), rather than continually returning to The City. I would love to play in a game with the intended between-session engagement with the game, but again, this does not fit my current playgroup.

Where the game is strongest is, as already mentioned, when it builds up its setting. The later sections of the book, describing the various types of magic, the selection of "special sodas" (read: potions),  and trinkets offer a wealth of characterful options, that are a mix of surprising and fun, and melancholy. The back half of the book contains a wealth of tables, which are great for the hexcrawl style of game I am currently playing, though after playing for almost a year now, I am starting to feel like I should expand the encounter tables and the list of creatures. Fortunately, what is there is an ample collection to start with, and provides great information for making more.

One quibble I had, is with the deadliness of the system. When player characters, the titular Songbirds, start with 1d10+PHY (the game's strength/constitution stat, valued a t 1-5) hit points, and all weapons do 1d10 damage, it becomes very easy for the characters to die. This is of course very OSR and is an issue I have discussed before. However, the character generation of Songbirds leads to characters that are much more sympathetic than the average grubby little OSR PC. You grow more attached to them, and while death should be on the table, I'd rather have it slightly further from the door. This is combined with the specifics of the combat, which has DCs of 12 and 15 to hit with melee or ranged attacks, respectively, but a DC of 18 to dodge an attack (though these numbers would of course be easy to tweak). I was loath to put my players' characters into combat, for fear they would be annihilated (exacerbated by the fact that at least one had rolled very poor HP). Of course, this was not all bad, as it encouraged a lot of other role-playing opportunities, but I eventually settled for an encounter that led to the PCs' having their maximum HP increased, as well as revamping the death and massive damage systems, to be a bit less deadly. The fact that I had this issue with the deadliness of the system, is likely due to just how good the character generation is at generating PCs you care about. My players especially loved the table to roll for connections to the other PCs, which has led to some very gameable results. The downtime tables also have to receive an honorable mention, absolutely fantastic array of options (the Orgy table in particular is always a winner).

I recently decided to throw in an existing OSR adventure for the first time, having listened to too many Between Two Cairns episodes recently, I had a hankering to run a module, and found that Songbirds worked excellently for running Where the Wheat Grows Tall, its slightly sad spirit shenanigans meshing well with the general Songbirds vibe.

My current Songbirds campaign has been my longest running game in recent times, and the game is absolutely a winner, provided you are up for a bit of DIY when running it, but that's often part of the appeal anyway. Even if you are not looking for another OSR/NSR-ish system to run, the pdf is available on itch for the generous price of free, and is a great read for inspiration, so I would strongly recommend giving it a look. What's the worst that could happen, another game on your to-play list?

Some might quibble with the choice of releasing both a Red and a Blue version with only slightly different content, similar to the Pokemon games, but I think the fact that the blue pdf is free should negate any of this criticism.

If you have a deeper interest in the specifics of the game, I have collected a lot of my prepared GM notes as a supplement of places and encounters, which is available on itch. You can also read a play report from a session early in my current campaign.