Live Gameplay (Unedited)

A Mini-Review of “Be Like a Crow”

Be Like a Crow is exactly what it sounds like. It is a game where you play as a crow. Well, more specifically, you get to play as a corvid. You have the option between six different birds with slightly different skills, specializations, and progressions. You can then drop your bird into one of the included stock settings (which have corresponding maps on the publisher’s website), each coming with several objectives, objects, characters, and locations.

Character creation takes about 10 minutes if that. Be Like a Crow utilizes cards as the oracle, so anytime you don’t want to think of anything narratively from scratch, they have a table for that. You draw a card for what you’re looking for and check the corresponding card’s entry. Skill checks are pretty intuitive. The first card is what you need to beat. The second card is essentially your “roll” and you can add your bird’s skill to see if you beat.

I played for about 40 minutes before all the look up became tiresome, and maybe that’s a function of working with a physical book or maybe that’s a function of multiplicative objectives. In order to “level up” from a fledgling to a juvenile, you need to complete two objectives. In order to level up from juvenile to adult you need four, and objectives can have several objects, characters, and locations in play such that it can become cumbersome to keep track of bookkeeping.

Turns in a solo RPG is also an interesting thing, as you have to take turns to travel to the next hex, possibly rolling an encounter. There’s no internal clock counter (at least I don’t think there’s one), so the abstraction of time is weird, and I’m not particularly found of having a random event just to move a couple units of time. Maybe I could have just streamlined it. Unsure.

I didn’t end up doing a combat scenario based on how I interpreted the situation narratively, but the combat rules are simple enough.

The system is solid. The ideas of the story that can come out of this are really cool, but I also think in trying to be comprehensive, it’s end up slowing down the story beats to a crawl and the scaling is just a smidge off. I think if I were to revise it, I’d probably try to reduce the number of tables you had to look at once. I think it’s reasonable every so often, but especially at the onset of the new level, it got pretty overwhelming pretty quick. But all in all I recommend it, especially if you’re looking for a potentially fun writing prompt.

Ani’s Tale

Raw Record of Game Session here.

The Philippines, 1875

Elder Emmanuel tells me on the other side of the world, crows are considered “Tigmamanukan,” omen birds. The omen birds here do look like us, blue feathers that blend against the day sky. We crows, streaks of shadow. I believe Elder Emmanuel when he says we still have a role to play in all of this though. We have flown together over several islands trying to chase down our kin, my fledgling friend Sirok, taken by a human priest for some devilish purpose. We had tracked him to a church, but Elder Emmanuel grew gravely ill as we approached the graveyard (apt).

As we scoured around, we saw evidence that the human priest had traveled further west, to some place called the Dead Zoo, surely a foreboding place. Elder Emmanuel asked me to come close and entrusted me with a message, a cipher scartched on a lead, somehow pristine.

“You must take this to Ito. He’s not far from here.”

At first, I look my advisor with confusion. Why would he send me to my jilted groom? I wanted nothing to do with him, and yet, I could not deny my dying mentor his wish.

The winds were rough at first. My charge flew from my grip and I had to find it amongst the leaves of the graveyard before continuing onward. During my search, I did find a golden thread that I sensed would help with my return home if I succeeded in my task.

The trip was uneventful. Made conversations with some locals before carrying a tailwind straight to my destination. I delivered the message to Ito without so much a word, but when I saw his expression, I knew something was off.

“What?”

A feigned kindness, the most I could offer the selfish bastard.

Ito looked back meekly, first at me, then the message, then me once more. Weak words attempted to form and fizzled just as quickly.

“I said what.”

Curt. Cutting. Crisp.

“The Balbal… they have destroyed the Grove.”

He broke down weeping and I departed. This was a war for our kind was it not? I would weep for my home lost, but my kin needed me and that would be the matter I attend to.

I saw a shipwreck south of the waterfall and quickly made haste. I found purchase near the top, a suitable alcove, a base of operations. My first attempts to infilitrate it with scavenge drew my blood. My second attempts were more successful. I was nursing my wound when it came in.

“Bird friend come into my home.”

Emerging from a vertical shaft I never would have considered a possible entrance, a vampire bat surveiled me from the ceiling. It spoke in a simple diction, but in its snappy syntax came an underscore of knowing, an ethereal hum of arcana.

“Bird friend wants to hunt humans.”

“Indeed.”

“I see bird friend bleeding… if bird friend give blood, perhaps bat friend can help.”

Elder Emmanuel warned me of the vampires. But Elder Emmanuel was no more, and the corrupt human priest was still stealing fledglings and he was likely not the only one, and I, disrespected too many times over bird, wanted to fight back…

What cost is blood that has already left the body?

“Drink bat friend. I accept your assistance.”