Character Creation: Songbirds

THE SECOND GAME OF XMAS, TWENTY-TWENTY-FOUR
IS SONGBIRDS,
AND THEN BARD THE RPG!

The Game: Songbirds 3e
The Publisher: snow
Degree of Familiarity: None
Books Required: Just the one

Songbirds is a hack of Into the Odd, which I'd forgotten when I started reading it but which became pretty obvious very quickly. Like that game, it's really a series of charts hung around a basic system, though Songbirds shares some DNA with Blades in the Dark, too. The "setting," such as it is, is:

This is Songbirds' "blue" edition. The red edition is much the same, except it posits that the love-fox won. I'm not gonna make two characters, since it's functionally the same game (I do have the red edition in PDF, however, since I backed the recent Kickstarter). 

I've read Into the Odd a few times now, and it's a game that really makes me wish I could still go to cons because I would love to play it once to see how it works at the table (yes, I could watch an AP, but I get so bored doing that). Same with Songbirds. It's just dripping with style, but it really does seem to be 89% style over 11% substance, and I don't know if it's one of those games that you try to play and it falls back on telling the GM "dowhatchayalike." It's OSR influenced, another vibe I don't really get into. And yet. 

And yet, I read these games and I find them intriguing. I really need to actually run one sometime; the closest I've gotten has been the Gila RPGs (Slayers, NOVA) and that's not really the same thing.

Anyway, for now, let's make a songbirds. TWEET TWEET.

Well, first thing we do is assign points across stats. Zeroes are OK, there are four stats, so I could be really good at something or kinda OK at everything. I dunno, given that interesting things can happen when you die in this game, I think I'll leave Physique at zero, put one point into Reflexes, and two each into Lore and Charisma. 

The next step says "write down your Save (10)", but there's no slot on the character sheet for Save, so it must not be that important.

Mark starting HP. Although the list up there says d10 + Phys, in the book it actually says I can have 5 or a d10 roll if I feel lucky. I...do not, so I will take 5. 

I get to be proficient in 3 Skills. I will take...Mischief, Dungeon, and Drama. 

Now, the next thing on the list is rolling for gift/curse. The next thing in the book is ideal/bond/flaw, and there are slots for those, so I guess they're important, but not important enough to put on the chargen list. (See, this shit is just sloppy. This is the 3rd edition of the game and no one has ever made a character using the quickstart chart and said "hey, this doesn't match the sequence in the book?" Or is the quickstart supposed to skip steps so that you can hit the ground running, in which case, great, but shouldn't the book say that at some point?)

Anyway, I'll come back to ideal/bond/flaw. I'll roll a d10 for my gift/curse. These things...well, I'll show you. I rolled a one, and these things aren't numbered, but I can count so I'll take the first one (which is Berserker).

There are pictures of constellations above these write-ups. Are they therefore the signs under which we're born? Do I get all of the bullet-pointed powers? Do I pick one? Contextually I get horns on my head, sure. Following the gift/curse spreads there are similar ones called Otherworldly Pacts. What are they for? We don't know. The word "pact" is not mentioned any other place in the book. Just flavor? Maybe, but then WHY IS IT SMACK DAB IN THE MIDDLE OF CHARGEN? There are no pregens and no example of play, so it's impossible to know what the author meant for us to do. Just vibe with it, man, I guess. Fuck Gary Gygax! Wibbley-woo!

Look, I don't mean to be hypercritical. This Kickstarter brought in $33K, which is nothing to sneeze at, and the game clearly has a following. But like...if the way to play it is just "use this shit as inspiration and just figure it out as you go," then like, what am I paying you for?

Rant over. Moving on. If I were running this game, and we assume that you only get one of the bullet-pointed powers, I think I'll pick smelling emotions. I don't see this character as being too overtly beastly, at least combat-wise. (And actually smelling emotions is a really cool way for an empath-like power to manifest, so I may yoink that at some point.)

Roll for 2 trinkets! At least, explicit instruction. Roll a d100 for trinkets, I roll 04 and 30 (good Chill rolls, anyway), and that means I get...a dead butterfly (aw) and a bag of sleeping powder. I also record gear; I get clothes, a weapon, 3 foods, and 10 coins. For the weapon, I think I want a baton, like an escrima stick. 

So other than that, I need a nom de guerre and a birthday. Oh, and the ideal/bond/curse thing. Guess I should think about personality. I think my guy is a rabble-rouser, shit stirrer, maybe leaning harder into it now that he's dead. A rakshasa, maybe. So his Ideal is Conflict is the spice of life. Actually, since he can smell emotions, that makes a lot of sense. 

His bond is I'll never rile up my brother. It's not that he's afraid or anything, it's just that his brother has been through enough. (And he's the dead one, so if he's saying that it must be pretty bad.) 

And flaw is something I'm good at that's bad for me. I'll say that everyone wants to kiss me. Don't leave my guy alone with your girlfriend (or boyfriend, or whatever). Pants have a tendency to fall. 

Right, so now I roll for my birthday. Again, no slot for it on the sheet, can't be too important, but I'll do it anyway. I was born in the Year of (roll d12) Full Soul, when the Death Song reaches its climax. Ooh, that's sexy. I was born in the Month of (d8) Lunus on Middo, the fourth day of the week. That...doesn't tell me a thing because these aren't really contextualized, but it sounds cool, which is basically the whole thesis of this game. 

Well, just need a nom de guerre. Let's call him Hornet. I like the idea of him being small but sting-y. I think he's good at getting things and people riled up, either in a horny way or an angry way, and I think he'll probably wind up dead because of it. But y'know. Death isn't always so big a problem. 

That'll do it, I suppose. There's so much really beautiful imagery in this game, I just wish there were a little more attention to usability.