I played a TTRPG called Bird Trek, which is part of an indie RPG anthology from 2020 called Level 1. I played it with my boyfriend. It took us a while to read all the rules and understand how to play the game, but once we understood how to play, the game proceeded pretty quickly. Overall, I enjoyed the tone and the theming of the game, but I wish that there were more complex mechanics, more structured narrative-building, and more details about the characters.
The game is themed around bird-like raptors called gray thieves who migrate through space between two hospitable planets, Caldera and Frigia, at different times of the year to avoid harsh climates. There are four moons in between the planets that the birds must stop on to rest on their journey. At each stop, the players roll a 6-sided die to determine how the flock’s hunger and exhaustion changes throughout the journey. If hunger or exhaustion gets too high, a member of the flock dies, and the flock must leave them behind to continue their journey. If every member of the flock dies before they make it to one of the hospitable planets, the gray thieves go extinct. I assumed there were ways to increase flock size, but it was not clear in the rules what conditions should be met to gain more gray thieves.
The game puts an emphasis on narrative and storytelling because players work collaboratively to construct a story about the hardships of the journey and how it might feel to leave behind a dying flock member or to worry about your species going extinct. However, I wish that the gameplay provided stronger support and inspiration for a narrative or had a mechanism to reward enthusiastic storytelling. The game says that the players’ flock starts at 2 members, but it does not provide any details about these members or instruct players to come up with names or backstories for them. My boyfriend and I came up with a few flock members and gave them names, a few traits, and a little drawing to give us something to get attached to. I think it would have been really cool if the game included a table of traits that players could roll for to give their starting flock some personality as well as to establish the mood of the game and the culture of the flock. My boyfriend and I came up with some silly names and backstories because they were easier to feel attached to and to roleplay, and we weren’t sure what an example of a serious character for this game would look like. It would have been helpful to have some more details about the flock from the start.
Similarly, the dice that we rolled when we stopped at each of the moons felt a little inconsequential because there was no narrative tied to the number. The game provides short descriptions of each of the planets and the hazards the flock might encounter on them, but it is up to the players to decide how to narrate the result of the die roll. I like that this invites a lot of creativity into interpreting the die roll, but I think it would be more compelling to provide a bit more structure to the scenario that players are supposed to narrate, especially because there is no in-game incentive to roleplay enthusiastically.
Additionally, I did not like that the fate of my flock was entirely up to chance. There was no way for me to influence the dice rolls, so it felt like I was just rolling dice to get inspiration to write a story instead of playing a game with a goal. I felt more like an interpreter than a player. I think that this style of game is valuable for a group of players who are used to roleplaying seriously with each other and who value the story more than the gameplay, but it would have been more engaging for me if there was some way for me to make decisions in-game or influence the fate of my flock. Part of the randomness of the flock’s fate could come from the game’s real life inspiration of how bird migration is affected by pollution and habitat destruction. To a bird trying to fly through a place that used to be a forest but is now a factory, their survival probably does feel like a matter of luck. If this strategy is what the game designers were going for, I think a better way to go about it could have been making the players embody a specific member of the flock so that they are more connected to the personality of the flock and more personally affected when a member of the flock dies by chance. I was also confused about how to add more birds to my flock, and I was not sure if it was impossible or if I got to decide without guidance how much my flock increased on a hospitable planet. Either way, it was not clear to me how my flock could grow and flourish, so I was not invested in helping them do so.
I really liked the theming, the inspiration from real-life bird migration, and the emphasis on collaborative storytelling in Bird Trek, but I wish that the gameplay supported the narrative more and that the gameplay was more engaging. For my tabletop project, I wanted to put a similar emphasis on collaborative storytelling, but I wanted to include rules that would reward enthusiastic roleplaying. I also wanted to provide more concrete details about characters and settings so that players would have a stronger base to build their narrative from.
The featured image is a map that I drew while playing the game. My boyfriend and I made little drawings and backstories for the members of our flock, and we made notes about significant things that we decided happened during the flock’s journey. I think an easy way to get players to be more invested in the game could be to provide maps or character sheets like this for players to write things about the flock and their journey.
-Sara Hoggatt
