I've got a lot of cool stuff for you <3
Songbirds Green, 1 week warning on kickstarter, and stuff I loved this week.
It’s been a weird week, everyone. Been very busy. Y’know, after wrapping Songbirds 3e text and layout, I hit a bit of a slow patch. Mostly did fulfillment for .dungeon//remastered and waited for the energy to return to me, so it feels really good to go to bed exhausted after working again. And I’ve been cooking up something special for you all and all the backers of the Songbirds Kickstarter.
I’m calling it Songbirds Green, just to be a bit cheeky and carry on with the color-scheme. If you click on that little header image there you’ll be taken to a google doc where you can read the nearly 15k words of alternate rules, ideas, and fixes that I wrote for Songbirds since the Kickstarter launched.
The purpose of the document is to inch closer to a perfect system for solo play (which I’m calling Macro-play), and to cover some of the potholes of Blue & Red (such as level-0 play, life-path char-gen, and creating your own Gift/Curse) with a malleable document. A Work In Progress.
Because that’s what it is. This is incomplete and made available to you for free because it’s not even to the editing stage. Eventually this document will be fleshed out fully, edited, and laid out and sold at a price to be determined. It’s going to be nearly as big as Red & Blue. So go check it out while it’s free and back the Kickstarter to help pay for stuff like this!
Speaking of the Kickstarter! We have 7 days left <3 and we’re inching towards 25k right now. That’s wild and I’m so exciting for this book to be out and in your hands. Red is pulling ahead more and more which isn’t surprising to me, simply because you can get the blue pdf for free right now. But hey, I think buying both is the best option anyways :P
In other news…
There’s other great project funding on Kickstarter right now that I want to share with you!
Your Friend in Witchcraft is a 2-player, letter-writing game (one of my favs) from Kay Marlow Allen. My favorite thing about this campaign is that Kay is offering a curated collection of stamps, stationary, pens, and stickers as a reward tier. So you could get one for you and your friend and write some beautiful, witchy letters to each other <3
This is pitched as “an endless dive into a Mega-Dungeon” for DCC characters, level 1-6. What I know about it? Sean Richer is one of the most magnetic and dastardly creators I’ve ever considered a friend and colleague, and this is his Dungeon23 project (if y’all remember that from last year). Sean is one of the few people to complete it. So this is very much a brain-child of a man with artistic super powers and the year of 2023. Go check it out.
Nova, or Idle Cartulary on twitter, is someone doing the work of reviewing adventures (and sometimes games). I mean, her output is astounding simply from a writing standpoint, let alone the time to read the books and formulate thoughts beyond “book good” or “book bad.” It’s a powerful skill and one I’m glad she’s using in TTRPGs. BEYOND THAT, she’s got an adventure of her own on Kickstarter right now. In it, your characters “will breach the unbreachable door into the cursed Renwall Tower, in a grove cloaked in perpetual storm, and learn what happened in that cursed place centuries ago.” Sounds fucking rad.
Favorite Things of the Week
Big Hog Games is the press I’ve published .dungeon//remastered and Songbirds 3e under. It’s Charlotte and I’s secret club. Go join the newsletter.
The way ThorHighHeels uses words in his video essays is poetic to a degree I can only dream of reaching. The rhythm and vibe of what he’s saying often outweighs the words themselves, allowing him to bend language to do what he wants it to do. This is one of the best videos on youtube.
Feathers by Thursday Garreau is a powerful Belonging Outside Belonging game for 2-3 players. It’s been in a ton of bundles so you probably have it already, but this is me telling you to go read it. It really hit me.
Briar has released the Final Major Update for Armour Astir, their amazing and gorgeous mecha game. Go check it out! It’s one of my favorite mecha games out there.
In this massive video, Demenza’s Gate shows a level of craft not usually seen in projects of the size, from channels of the size. The videography, graphic design, and vibes are off-the-charts. And while it gets melodramatic in some points and could maybe use an editor (hit me up!) this is a powerhouse of a video and it made me a subscriber.
That’s all…
Thanks for checking out the newsletter. I hope to see you on the Songbirds Green doc, critiquing me to hell and back. I’m making weekly newsletters like this the norm moving forward, so please send me things you think I should check out. I’ll be putting some of my favorite stuff in them each week.
Have a great weekend,
Snow