Review of Songs and Sagas
It was only on Saturday that I got together with Thore and took a look at the 6-page role-playing game Songs and Sagas. It comes from René-Pier Deshaies-Gélinas, who has also published Firelights, Breathless and other games under Fari RPGs. Fari RPGs may be familiar to some due to a very successful Stoneburner Kickstarter, but otherwise publishes small, often free or small-budget role-playing games that usually have an open license to hack the games. Fari RPGs also supports this with game jams for newly released games, where numerous other works can be found on Itch for Breathless, Firelights or Songs and Sagas.
Why should I care about Songs and Sagas?
If you’re happy with Dungeons and Dragons, Call of Cthulhu, Shadowrun, Vampire or your role-playing system of choice, you probably don’t care. However, if you want to think outside the box and are interested in how other games make role-playing possible, then Songs and Sagas is worth a look.
As with games like Push and The Wretched, Songs and Sagas joins the ranks of indie games that are small, straightforward, but try to break new ground. in the case of Songs and Sagas, it’s primarily the resolution mechanic.
What’s it about?
Songs and Sagas comes with a basic setting. Think Viking fantasy and you’re done. Each character has a name, pronouns, vanori (a kind of animal spirit), the four attributes strength, dexterity, willpower and heart, a value for resilience, armor and experience points.
A short introductory text brings us into the setting. Guided by spirits and gods, our ancestors passed through radiant gates in the middle of the vast sea and landed in the unknown. They settled, but it is up to us to explore the still unknown lands.
The Rules
We have four pages and two more for a hex card, notes and oracles on the back for the solo rules of the game. The game can be played guided, solo or in co-op. So you can’t expect much depth in the setting due to its brevity. The game modes may look familiar from another PbtA game called Ironsworn. But let’s delve a little into the rules.
Trial and Fate Roll
The core of the whole game are the trial rolls. Fate rolls are the same but leave out 1-2 steps and are for situations where there might be no and negligible consequences. Fate rolls, however, are meant to drive the story forward and therefore not a justification for people rolling dice.
And here’s an exciting design decision right off the bat. We play with a d20 and a standard deck of playing cards. For a trial roll, we describe the action, choose a suitable attribute and roll our d20 against a target value. Usual target values are 9 for easy challenges, 12 for normal challenges and 15 for difficult challenges. An important difference is that we have to exceed the target value. A tie is a failure.
But that’s not all. Each region has a risk rating of 1-3, which is randomly determined when the region is discovered. Cards are drawn from the deck in accordance with the risk rating. For each black card, the target value increases by +2, making the test more difficult. Red cards are neutral.
If you succeed, the player tells you what happens. The right to tell does not lie with the GM. Afterwards, if no card was used for the test, the person draws one of the cards on display into their hand. Red has to be preferred. This also means that the deck retains more black cards, making the tests more difficult and increasing the drama. If the test fails, the PC suffers a setback and one experience point. The GM takes over the narration of the result and introduces a consequence (e.g. narrative type, loss of resilience, damaged equipment, a new condition, etc.). As in Mausritter, conditions occupy one of 6 inventory slots.
The Game of Cards
In the course of the game, we collect cards in our hand. Similar to Ironsworn, this is also intended to represent the momentum in the narrative. Cards may be discarded on rolls to ask the gods for help (+2 to the roll), help an ally (+2 to that person’s roll), turn the tide (a setback becomes a success, but a consequence is introduced), or you are prepared and have an item that you have not previously specified. Items can be usefully utilized in fiction to argue why you have an advantage (easing the difficulty) on a test.
Another way to use the cards is to activate one of the Vanori abilities. Each character has a Vanori, an animal spirit that determines attributes during character creation. As the bear’s companion, a card can be played from your hand, for example to increase your own armor by a further d4 when you are attacked. This is our character’s special ability, so to speak.
The discard pile is shuffled back when a scene ends or the deck is empty. Cards in your hand remain there and are not shuffled.
Conditions and Rests
Our character has 6 inventory slots and conditions take up one slot each. These statuses set restrictions such as “Wounded”. There is no explanation of which conditions can be used in order to be as flexible as possible in the game. If conditions are impeding situations, this increases the difficulty of a test. They are healed if it makes sense in the narrative that you have had a sufficiently long rest (e.g. a full week’s rest).
There are three types of rests in Songs and Sagas. Short, long and full rests. In the case of full rests, our character is in safety for a week and licks his wounds. In return, they regain all their resilience points and can heal a condition.
Short rests take half an hour and we draw a card for them. Depending on the card, the character heals 5, 3, 2 or 1 point of resilience. The amount depends on the card color. In the case of a club, you heal 2 points and a danger is on the way and in the case of a spade it is even immediate and the healing is only 1 point. Long rests work in a similar way, but take a few hours and heal twice the number of resilience points. You can also repair your own equipment during this time.
Combat
Even in the game’s concise form, Songs and Sagas has reaction rolls, morale rules and a small combat system. When you encounter NPCs, the character’s attitude towards them is determined by drawing a card. If enemies feel outnumbered or see their leader go down or flee, there is a good chance that they will give up. One card decides how they react.
The initiative in combat is determined, drum roll, by drawing a card. Red cards allow the PC to strike first, black cards the enemy. In combat, an action can be taken to reduce the difficulty of future actions, damage the enemy’s armor/weapon or otherwise intervene in the fiction. A check must be made for this. Otherwise you can attack.
Attacks can be made with a weapon or other alternatives (using the player’s ideas). Enemies have three stats: Resilience, armor and weapons. This means that OSR creatures can be converted quickly. An attack roll is a trial roll. If successful, you roll the weapon’s damage die (starts at d6, can be d4 – d12). On a roll of 20, the damage die increases by one level. If the check fails, the damage die drops by one level or, in the case of a roll of 1, by two levels. Alternatively, the GM may introduce a consequence. In either case, after the damage has been determined, the enemy will roll his armor die (no die, d4 or d6) and reduce the damage by the value rolled. The remainder is deducted from the enemy’s resilience.
If it is the enemy’s turn, the character must defend himself. This requires a trial roll. If it succeeds, the attack goes nowhere. On a setback, the enemy rolls their damage die and the player must roll the armor die themselves and reduce the damage to the character.
Experience and Advancing
The character gains experience points for every setback in a test. At 6 points, the character advances one level. Then cards are drawn for all attributes and, depending on the color, the attributes are increased by 2 or 1, remain the same or the character sees an ominous omen. Another card increases the resilience or shows a vision by the animal spirit.
Conclusion
Songs and Sagas is a clearly laid out game, which in my opinion provides a nice basis for other games. The resolution mechanic is very exciting in contrast to usual games, as in the course of the game the deck contains more black cards due to the inclusion of preferably red cards in the hand. Black cards in the game design have negative connotations. Trials become more difficult, enemies have the initiative, attribute increases do not happen, resting is less effective, NPCs are hostile or cautious, enemies remain in combat or become more invested.
However, these cards can be used strategically. They can be used to help allies, increase your chances in trials, turn failures into successes or provide you with the items you need. The Vanori as animal spirits are an easy way to add some variety to the game, and here too the cards are the trigger for the special abilities.
However, returning cards also changes the deck again and perhaps frees up red cards that make the game less challenging.
The hex card comes with several oracles for terrain, interesting locations, adjectives for the locations, themes and actions, visions and omens, names, personality traits, weather, loot, quests and threats. This supports the game in solo or co-op mode.
The setting and genre is quite cool, but fortunately also quickly adaptable. The author himself also released Wastewalkers as another example during the Songs and Sagas game jam, which allows for a post-apocalyptic game in the style of Wastelands, Fallout, Borderlands and Mad Max. All in all, I like Songs and Sagas very much and the game with the cards in particular was refreshing and built up tension.
