Solitaire: A Fistful of Feathers

Be Like a Crow: A Solo RPG is a journaling game which enables the player to take to the skies as a corvidae—crow, magpie, jackdaw, or rook—over multiple landscapes and differing genres, achieving objectives, exploring, and growing as they learn and grow old. Published by Critical Kit, a publisher better known for its scenarios for Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition. The roleplaying game combines the simple mechanics and use of a deck of playing cards typical of a journaling game with five genres—‘Urban Crow’, ‘Cyber-Crow’, ‘Gothic Crow’, ‘Fantasy Crow’, ‘Clockwork Crow’, and ‘Ravens of the Tower’. Each of these presents a different place and time for the bird to fly over, land on, encounter the denizens, and more, whilst Crowthulhu: A Cosmic Horror Setting For Be Like A Crow is a supplement that took the game in an entirely different direction, to the edge of Lovecraft Country. Now, A Fistful of Feathers – a Wild West Setting for Be Like a Crow takes the player all the way to American frontier. As in Be Like a Crow: A Solo RPG, the player’s crow will take to the air, but here fluttering and feathering over the Rooklands, perhaps as representative of the law deputised by the local sheriff or a bounty hunter, or even an outlaw on the run. Protect towns from predating gangs, take part in a sharpshooting contests (with a tiny gun), discover a nugget of gold and trade it in for cash, and more. From the Dread Canyon and Prospector’s Peril in the north to Storm Creek and the Howling Mines in the south, the Rooklands are a frontier for your crow to explore and make her own.

Mechanically, Be Like a Crow: A Solo RPG, and thus A Fistful of Feathers – a Wild West Setting for Be Like a Crow is simple. It uses a standard deck of playing cards and when a player wants his bird to undertake an action, he draws a card from the deck. This sets the difficulty number of the task. To see whether the bird succeeds, he draws another card and adds the value of a skill to the number of the card if appropriate. If it is equal or greater than the difficulty number, the bird succeeds. If an action is made with Authority, whether due to circumstances or a skill, the player draws two cards and uses the highest one, whereas if made at a Penalty, two cards are drawn and the lowest value one used. When drawn, a Joker can be used or saved for later. If the latter, it can be used to automatically succeed at a combat or skill check, to heal injuries, or to discard a card and draw again. Combat is a matter of drawing a card for each opponent, adding a skill if appropriate, and comparing the totals of the cards and the skills. The highest total wins each round and inflicts an injury. Eventually, when the deck is exhausted, the discard pile is reshuffled and becomes the new deck.

The play and thus the journaling of Be Like a Crow is driven by objectives as achieving these will enable a player’s crow to advance through his lifecycle. An objective for the ‘A Fistful of Feathers’ setting, might be for example, “A wealthy merchant is convinced her husband was murdered by [character] using [object] in [location]. Try to find the evidence and bring the culprit to justice. ($3 reward)”. The player will also need to draw cards to identify the character, the object, and the location, and then as his bird flies from hex to hex across the map, draw cards for events in flight, and then for events when he lands. The player is free to, and advised to, ignore prompts if they do not fit the story, and this may be necessary if a prompt is drawn again, but ideally, the player should be using the prompts as drawn to tell a story and build the life of his crow.

A Fistful of Feathers – a Wild West Setting for Be Like a Crow requires the core rules of Be Like a Crow, as well as a standard deck of playing cards. As well as providing the rules, it provides the prompts for events in flight and on land that are standard to each of the roleplaying game’s settings, but what A Fistful of Feathers – a Wild West Setting for Be Like a Crow provides is its own set of tables its objectives, objects, characters, and locations. Two sets of objectives are provided, one for the red suits and one for the black suits, the same again for characters or NPCs, and again for objects and locations for A Fistful of Feathers. Thus locations can be a hotel on main street or a broken stagecoach, an object might be a single Morgan silver dollar or the skull of a vulture, and a character a snake-oil seller whose product actually does what it claims or a town sheriff who will turn a blind eye to most things if they are bribed with the right object.

Most, if not all of the entries have a Wild West theme, whether that is having to rush to a town where a character is due to be hanged for crime that he did not commit with evidence that will exonerate the condemned or a debt-ridden gambler (human or otherwise), desperate and dangerous. In addition to the core play of Be Like a Crow, what A Fistful of Feathers – a Wild West Setting for Be Like a Crow does is extend the play to ‘suited, booted, and looted’. A player’s crow can earn dollars for achieving objectives and purchase objects with the money. He also has an archetype which grants a particular bonus. The Sharpshooter can inflict extra damage if the player draws a high enough card in combat. The Law Master can attempt to befriend or scare a character, and if successful, the character will give the player’s crow the information or an object in his possession. The Bounty Hunter can generate an objective to bring in a character when he lands as a bounty and if completed, will collect an object or $2. The Outlaw is hardy and resilient, suffering fewer injuries, has better navigate and search checks, and heals quicker.

In terms of locations, A Fistful of Feathers – a Wild West Setting for Be Like a Crow includes its own setting, the Rooklands, a Wild West frontier of rocks, semi-desert, mesas, canyons, mines, and more. This is a classic Wild West setting as depicted on screen.

Physically, A Fistful of Feathers – a Wild West Setting for Be Like a Crow is a slim affair. It is lightly illustrated with images appropriate to the genre and the map is nicely done, but it does need a slight edit. As a supplement to Be Like a Crow, there is a dusty, hot wind quality to A Fistful of Feathers – a Wild West Setting for Be Like a Crow. Between the vultures overhead and the varmints on the ground, A Fistful of Feathers – a Wild West Setting for Be Like a Crow is a new way to explore a crow’s life in a classic genre from a bird’s-eye view.