smallbird games

Role-Playing Games

The Thousand Cousins

109X Terra
A lightweight roleplaying game system for playing games in the setting of Arknights. Requires one gamerunner (referred to here as GM), minimum 2 players, at least 2 sets of polyhedral dice, and a few hours. Make your very own terminally ill catgirl war criminals and see if they save a little slice of the world or die trying.

Folie à Deux (pdf - singles) (pdf - booklet) (itch.io mirror)
A GM-less two-player game about the codependent relationship between the Knight and the Bride, and struggling against how the oppressive forces of the Prince and the World want to bring them to heel.

Blood Apart (pdf) (itch.io mirror)
GMless vampiric intrigue and personal horror as characters scrabble for survival while trying not to drift too far from their humanity. A Belonging Outside Belonging game for 3-6 players.

As We Know It (download) (itch.io mirror)
A tumbling block tower LARP about angels stuck in the back offices of heaven when the end of the world is happening, and how they eventually face this end.

Game Poems

at the end of an era i break into an abandoned data center to find the last fragments of something precious. (read) (pdf - singles) (pdf - booklet) (itch.io mirror)

This is a story about the future. This is a story about the present. This is a story about the past. This is a story about you and me.
This is a story about goodbyes.

A series of small "games" documenting a near-future attempt to unearth something that might be lost forever.

Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine

The Voronina (A Shrine Family)
A reclusive new Shrine Family for use in Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine, who live in Old Molder and have a curious affinity for poison.

Quests (Miscellaneous)

Quests (Midwestern Gothic)

General Tools and Mods

Hold Together (pdf) (itch.io mirror)
An optional system and partial group world-building exercise for giving more weight to violence in role-playing games.

Posthumous (pdf) (itch.io)
Brochure-style set of group exercises for creating characters that have already died but continue to affect events.

NPC 4 ME (itch.io mirror)
Solo or GMless gaming NPC interaction oracle.

Past Longform LARPs

Ask Again Later (official website)
Midwestern gothic game set in the small, dying town of Oshtigwanegon, Winnemac, where nothing is as it seems and everyone knows everyone both way too well and not at all. Runs on a bespoke modification of the Storyteller System.

Solace (official website)
Game of three allied families of monster hunters on the run from a supernatural threat that wants them all dead. Runs on the Storyteller System; used a homemade progressive web app dashboard for both players and storytellers.