Songbirds 3e is one designer's attempt to make their ideal dungeon adventure game, an impulse so common that it has a name: a fantasy heartbreaker. unlike many of these spirited-but-doomed attempts, i think Songbirds 3e genuinely lands on something magical - so i stopped myself early in, and decided to share the whole book as i experience the rest of it. i hope you enjoy tagging along!
Songbirds 3e is a tabletop roleplaying game about undeath, supernatural powers, and the blue dreams of the moon. In the game, you create a strange survivor of the world who was chosen (or cursed) by Death. Spirits aren't able to pass on to the afterlife and grow monstrous with each passing day. You know the songs to send them on. You have the abilities that help you find them. You are the canary in the coal mine. [...] It's everything that I want in a dungeon crawler and what I use to run my home games with.
(cw for drawn gore beneath the readmore)
the above wound up just being coverage of Chapter 1: Creating a Songbird, so today it's time to get back to the book with a read-through of Chapter 2: Adventuring Equipment! i'm very curious to see what kind of gear these undead heroes get to haul around...
onto Chapter 3: Magic now, and i'm terribly excited - a bit of peeking ahead has shown me that there are five different magic systems in store for us here...
Chapter 4: Time wears many hats - an in-setting calendar, a guide to the phases and shape of play, and a truly wonderful array Downtime activities. clocks, healing, orgies - let's dig in!
after a brief delay for some truly irritating illness, i'm back today to work through Chapter 5: Travel! i confess that the usual hexploration in many games does just about nothing for me, so i'm eager to see where and how Songbirds 3e breaks the mold <3
i've been a little afraid of Chapter 6: Dungeons, but this isn't your typical grubby crawler... let's check it out!
we are immediately not fucking around, with a description and placement of dungeons that i have to adore:
time within dungeons is tracked in dungeon rounds, roughly the amount of time necessary to search a room or interact with whatever's within it. roll a random encounter every dungeon turn (there's an example d10 table) - no fuss here. i like it!
Chapter 4 introduced a concept Songbirds 3e calls the silver rule, where it's assumed characters retreat to the nearest settlement between play sessions while real-time passes; the silver rule does not apply within dungeons, time not passing for songbirds within their confines while the setting outside moves on. this disruption can inflict a sickness called "blues" on those who experience it.
i'm obsessed with a 'dungeon adventure' game sneaking a simple time dilation mechanic into itself. Snow clearly likes a palette as wild and unconcerned with genre boundaries as i do, and i'm feasting because of it.
a d20 list of dungeon rooms has everything from "beneath the graveyard" and "behind a waterfall" to "inside a snowglobe." a d100 table offers inspiration for individual rooms ("aviary," "talking gargoyles," "portal to hell"), while traps and hazards each get a d20. players are sure to remember the 'chapel for worshiping Love' that had a 'storm ceiling' and inverted gravity! traps even get mechanics for three increasing levels of lethality.
this treasure trove of tables ends with two paired d20 lists for what are simply called Tricks, objects one might find in a dungeon and strange properties they might display. they're a fun bit of strangeness, and i know they're bait for a very particular type of player who will love them.
the next two pages are black, a jarring break from this book's beloved white and blue, as we are introduced to darkness. this is not about range bands, to-hit penalties, and managing an inventory of consumable torches, but rather something more primal:
the dark is terrifying. human civilization practically exists to beat back the animal fear of the night. in an age where D&D's darkvision is ubiquitous and many other games simply don't gave a shit, Songbirds 3e presents a lack of light as something hostile and terrifying... and it totally works for me.
but there are rewards for those who brave such horrors - fat loot!!!
coins are noted to come in a motley mix, including some from extinct cultures, and that spirits hoard them within dungeons to feast on financial stress as a form of energy. d10 types of coin are described: dockworkers mint the Bronze Scales that pirates trade in, while Phoenix Tips once purchased passage to the moon. the thought of making even a heap of coins into loot with an evocative identity is a really inspired move!
gems are valuable, said to be the children of the moon stolen away into dungeons. these also get d10 subtypes with lore (mermaids trade sapphires with various sea life, clenzens contain blue oozes) and individual prices. art is created by dungeons, rather than any human hand, and has a value of d1000; on a repeating roll (4444), the painting is a portal to a pocket dimension.
there's 12 each of Minor and Major Magic Items. the Minor list is a bunch of handy little tricks...
...while the Majors get an understandable step up in power and weirdness. i like how irreverent these are, that the "magic items" are where so much of a more recognizable world are creeping through into this fantasy.
rounding out the rewards are 9 Artifacts, "objects of terrible power and unmitigated horror." difficult to destroy, these are a mix of very deeply odd magic items and what you might interpret as being outright cursed. you get the sense that any songbird carrying one of these is not so nice... especially as the first three in the list are the pieces of the spear that killed Love.
closing out Chapter 6 is a remarkably-compact look at combat - it fits in two pages! when the action zooms in enough to measure time in individual rounds of conflict, everyone gets to move, do something minor (interacting with something, like a closed door or stowed item), and take an action from the list:
initiative, melee and ranged attacks, and dodging are all given flat DCs (respectively: 10, 12, 15, 18), which i assume most groups will memorize by their third session. there's a few cute little critical success/fail things that might happen on an attack or dodge, like being disarmed or getting a free opportunity attack. this stuff all does its job and gets out of the way.
that takes us to the end of Chapter 6: Dungeons, and leaves us with only Chapter 7: Spirits and the Appendices to look forward to next time... i can't wait! Songbirds 3e has completely stolen my heart; thank you for tagging along with me in loving it <3
see you soon!
