Birds of a feather

We are pigeons. We are everywhere. The vast majority are as you expect. A few of us have been blessed by the Grey Lady, given the dedication to carry out her work. We seek out the Bag People, take their instruction, and help the dead rejoin the Earth.

Even those of us who have purpose, who can see the souls of the dead, are still pigeons. We are vain, myopic, argumentative, impulsive. But for some souls, we’re all they have.

I’ve been working on a little game, on and off, over the past couple of months. It’s called Birds of a Feather, and it’s about pigeons who also have to escort the souls of the dead to their final resting places. It’s designed to be a bit ludicrous, a bit melancholy, and a bit serious.

Some notes

I have not really designed a game before. Unless you count those unwieldy grand strategies we used to run at University, where the rules hung together by a thread and everyone’s tacit agreement not to try bending things too much. And that one time I wrote a Larp and everyone was pulling bits of index card out of their pockets for weeks¹. So this is a bit of a stretch for me.

This has not been playtested. This is quite literally a first draft. I’m mainly sharing it at this stage as a way of saying “look what I’ve done!”, and also because I feel the blog has been quiet recently.

This is designed to be quick to run. Quick to print, quick to prep, quick to learn. The rulebook is one page, and the character sheet is built into it.

If you play it, let me know! I’m hoping to get this to table at some point, but I’d love to have feedback from anyone who picks it up.

Download the game

For reading on your iPad or screen: a one-page-per-page copy:

For printing and folding: