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)
i have to open this with a confession: i was basically unaware of Snow as a designer before last week - "she did .dungeon, the MMO fantasy game, right?" was the extent of what i could've told you, not from any active avoidance but just because this hobby is really big and busy. i'm a relative outsider to anything adjacent to the OSR sphere, only recently creeping over via a very 'New-School' route of works like Mothership and 2400, but the mechanical minimalism many of those works enjoy has really enchanted me in the last year of so. i got into TTRPGs in 2007, and fled from d20 fantasy games about killing things about as quickly as i could; my nostalgia is firmly elsewhere, and that's kept me away for a long time.
all this to say: i certainly did not expect to open this book and feel confident calling it my GOTY. it's beautiful. it's elegant. i would call it art. it's charmed the pants off me, enough so that i'm forcing myself to learn how to format a Cohost post (do we still call it Chosting? i'm new here) to share it with y'all.
Songbirds 3e, i would find out, is the latest game in a years-long design lineage; not only the earlier editions implied by the title, but other works like Vultures and Blackbirds (both well worth checking out in their own right). a retrospective from Snow is a delightful read and a useful peek into her intentions. elements from past works recur in it re- or even de-contextualized, but all assembled into a deeply evocative palette that offers one person's perfect fantasy.
the book opens with this brief tone-setting legend, about fox-gods of Love and Death whose mythic quarrel has left the spirits of the departed adrift. our player characters are the titular Songbirds, dead souls that came back different who to try and help right some of this balance. we're on page 7 of the book, and already quite far from mercenaries dying to pit traps in pursuit of gold coins.
the core resolution mechanic is simple and familiar: d20 + stat, trying to beat a target number that increases based on the difficulty of the task. advantage and disadvantage are here, as are critical successes (20) and fumbles (1). ongoing negative effects are resolved with an end-of-turn save, rolling a d20 against a flat goal of 10. odds are pretty good you've played something that works like this before.
a starting Songbird has five points to spread between the four base stats: Physique, Reflex, Lore, Charisma. these are pretty straightforward other than a charming note about Lore-granted Languages, like "french" and "communist."
HP is dead easy, ranging between 5-10 for a regular starting character but with a riskier/more variance option; this kind of informal alternative-offering really feels like a "sure, you can try that" thing a GM might offer at the table. three checked Death Boxes kills you, while Massive Damage offers some gloriously gruesome d100 options...
...but for the lucky few who roll a 96-100, things get even more fun. incidentally, this where about where i started to realize Songbirds 3e was a special game. i've long been a fan of games where dying and getting hurt are cool, and this passes with flying colors. i once had a boss when i worked at [american chain videogame retailer] who would buy any game that had a usable grappling hook in it; i feel similarly about TTRPGs that let you be a weirdo psychic.
skills grant a +2 if you're proficient and a +4 if you have expertise. each of the four stats has five skills; a starting Songbird is trained in three. there's a couple surprises here i really like: Physique has Vibes, a skill for gut instincts and reading people; Mischief is a great name for a stealth/thievery/etc skill; i'm always a fan of Dungeons as something you can be a scholar of.
a tip of the hat is paid to one of D&D 4e's best innovations...
...while a D&D 5e non-mechanic is made interesting with remarkably few words:
every Songbird is given a Burden/Curse, rolled from a d10 list. each is a bundle of flavorful bits (both clearly mechanical and not), a way that a Songbird came back changed from their brush with the other side. none of these are boring, or feel like box-checking of fantasy archetypes; i'm of the opinion that every single one is compelling, and it's hard to resist sharing all of them with you here... because oh my god they're cool.
following these is a section titled Otherworldly Pacts, six fragmentary descriptions of god-like entities. this is the one i haven't stopped thinking about:
after that is the aptly-named 'Last Bits', covering post-resurrection names, birthdays, and gangs of Songbirds who adventure together. five potential player roles are given (note-taker, map-drawer, the one who communicates plans to the GM, etc), but the real treat is this d20 table of backstory relationship hooks - this could just as easily be titled "how do these queer women know each other?", which is presumably the entire point.
with an acknowledgment that the game has asked you to take in over the process of character creation, it suggests leaping straight into play with one of these d20 starting situations. don't worry about the grand history of the world or wider context - what's exciting, right now?
that's followed by d10 tables for each of Random Quests (#8: hunt a dangerous monster destabilizing the food web), Special Events (#5: arrival of an airship), and World Changing Events (#1: a Jordan-level star rises to prominence) for further impulsive inspiration.
Chapter One: Creating a Songbird closes with a note on Dream Journeys, undertaken individually by Songbirds after a successful endeavor. they dream of hunting for their dead goddess, the fox named Love, with rewards for those who carry a prize to her in their dreaming jaws. it's one hell of a way to do an advancement mechanic.
i'll pick this back up with Chapter Two if folks enjoyed - please, let me know! getting used to this interface is a bit of a challenge, but i'll gladly keep at it if this is fun for anyone else <3
