About

The gods failed us. The powerful betrayed us. Rise to meet your fate.

BLACKBIRDS is a dark fantasy tabletop roleplaying game set in a gothic fantasy world where a cabal of power-hungry Oligarchs has stolen godhood. Their horrific act tore the fabric of reality, allowing unfettered magic to undermine the world's natural order. And, soon, the Oligarchs themselves will return to the mortal plane and remake it as they desire.

Twelve years of war have ravaged the kingdoms of Erebos, where the great battle that would decide the fate of all has been waged and lost. Now, the lights of civilization are going out. Swells of refugees have taken to the roads, desperate to escape the suffering. New constellations twinkle in the vault of the night, only to disappear if scrutinized for too long. Creatures of long-forgotten folklore once again stalk the countryside. It is a time of ill omens and unlikely heroes.

Grounded in history, interwoven with magic, and driven by fate, BLACKBIRDS provides the tools and know-how to craft and experience unforgettable tales of adventure in a cursed era fraught with violence, intrigue, and emotion.

Fate & Fortune

The fates are dead. The maiden, mother, and crone, who are present at all births and all deaths, have been slain by the oligarchs. Now, fate's mysterious influence runs amok. The ebb and flow of fortune and misfortune constantly struggle to influence the events of the world and upend the destinies of its inhabitants, which are very real forces in BLACKBIRDS, both within the game world and at the gaming table. And so it is that the fate-touched blackbirds find themselves tangled in the tattered web of what the fates had intended or perhaps a future they could not see. Knowingly or unknowingly, each blackbird can push their luck in strange and intriguing ways, such as to reattempt missed dice rolls, move their position in the initiative, or improve the action economy of their turn.

Fortune and misfortune are very real forces in BLACKBIRDS, both within the game world and at the gaming table.

Players spend fortune coins to make situations more beneficial for the blackbirds, from rerolling failed tests to temporarily enchanting a weapon, whereas the Fateweaver spends misfortune coins to complicate the blackbirds' lives, including altering the flow of combat to fueling an enemy's diabolical misfortune-fueled traits.

Fate is one of the most powerful forces in the game. Spending fate trumps nearly everything else, and you either have it, or you don’t—one may not stockpile one’s fate.

Players can use their fate only to react or respond to a situation that is happening in the present of which they are aware. It alters reality to make it so that whatever outcome the fate amulet is being spent on to prevent never occurred, and instead, the thing that was agreed upon by the Fateweaver and the player takes place.

Talents & Techniques

In BLACKBIRDS, your character, regardless of their chosen path, has a significant amount of flexibility that stems from their hand of talent and technique cards. A warrior may know a bit of wortcunning to ward off evil spirits, a theurge may well be a trained arbalist, and a courtier may have risen to their high position from the lower classes and know their way around the seedier side of town.

A talent is a refinement of natural aptitudes and capabilities that amplifies a skill and allows a character to employ it in ways to change or “break” the standard rules of BLACKBIRDS.

Techniques offer three distinct powers, including extinguish abilities—a representation of a blackbird's mastery over a discipline and a power so potent that it doesn't require a die roll to determine its outcome.

Both talents and techniques are reflected by cards slotted onto your character by physically placing the active talent or technique card onto your character sheet. Players may choose to switch up their character builds in the moment based on what they think will be most beneficial.

As characters progress through acts, they unlock an increasing number of slots and can purchase more talent and technique cards to put into their slots. Players are encouraged to experiment with combining different talents and techniques.

A Vibrant Bestiary

From fallen gods to the emerging Oligarchs and their treacherous followers, whose humanity lies in bloody tatters on the floor, to back-alley cutpurses, scheming nobility, and everything in between, the BLACKBIRDS bestiary is overflowing with boldly reimagined adversaries from history and folklore.

Discover more than eighty different antagonists within the pages of BLACKBIRDS. Each bespoke entity comes with attributes, characteristics, and traits, including dreaded misfortune traits—powers fueled by the Fateweaver's misfortune pool that can turn an arguably superficial encounter into a deadly one.

  • Striga Noble

    Artist: Mike Franchina

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The One Spell

The Pythonic Liturgy, often called "the introduction," is the grand and singular ritual used to summon outsiders with whom to negotiate and form communions and pacts. It is not a straightforward ritual but a series of complicated practices, pieces of knowledge, and intuitions. It is the centerpiece of the theurge's art. Once a magician flings open the doors to the od, there's no shutting them.

Instead of managing spells and grimoires, a theurge must manage their coterie of outsiders, of which some will inevitably hail from courts that do not enjoy each other's presence, forcing the theurge to charm, lie, and, more often than not, beg for their spiteful assistance.

FAQs

  • While contemplating the style of Blackbirds, I was fixated on the tropes of dark fantasy. One such image was the gallows tree, each branch littered with bodies hanging like macabre ornaments clattering in the breeze. Another iconic vista of grim tales is the gore-strewn battlefield, choking the silence from some unnamed field with the lamentations of the dying. The deafening stillness of abandoned villages and ruined castles coiled through my mind until it struck me—these images, without mentioning, include blackbirds. The mind knows they're there even when left off the page. There is no symbol more unifying and demonstrative of the dark fantasy genre than the blackbird; thus, our game found its name.

  • Blackbirds will appear as a crunchy system to both the uninitiated and veteran tabletop enthusiasts. This observation is, in part, an illusion of moving parts rather than the byproduct of unknowable complexity. Most roles are made similarly, such as skill checks, combat actions, and performing magic, and use a d100, commonly known as a percentile check. E.g., if your blackbird wants to jump across a section of a ruined wall, the player will be called to make a percentile check to see if that act occurs safely. A non-player character attempting to lie to a flock of blackbirds might require the Fatweaver (game master) to make a guile test on its behalf. Understanding how to roll and read a d100 means you already know more than half of the system.

  • We designed Blackbirds to reflect the tone and themes of The War of Empty Thrones and the Oligarchs' deicide. As one might expect, this game's systems manufacture an atmosphere of darkness resonant with the struggles of those mired in a bloody civil war, which had its impetus in a maddening conspiracy born of human avarice and designed to overthrow the forces of heaven.

    If the game you wish to create deals with similar themes, our system will better suit your homebrew than others.

  • Like many worlds, Blackbirds started as a homebrew, painfully using rules better suited for lighter fare. Fate would have it that Daniel Fox was following my socials, and we started corresponding about games, cinema, and what have you. During those conversations, I pitched him the idea of letting me build a world for Zweihänder. That idea snowballed into bigger plans with his publisher, who quickly became our publisher, and we got to work.

    During the development of Blackbirds, it became apparent that our system was drifting away from Zweihänder's and transforming into something else.

    A few months after Blackbirds launched, our shared publisher chose to stop supporting tabletop roleplaying games. Blackbirds and Zweihänder were untethered and set adrift.

    Today, Blackbirds, now firmly in the control of BLACK TRIANGLE, marches onward—specifically towards our next Kickstarter. We hope you’ll join us.

  • BLACK TRIANGLE is a small creative studio composed of a diverse team of developers, game designers, and writers from film, games, and television. We're some of the people behind your favorites, such as Exalted, Vampire the Masquerade, Wraith the Oblivion, League of Legends, to name a few.

  • A Blackbirds 1.3 character sheet is available for use on Roll20. We hope to expand our virtual tabletop support during our next Kickstarter campaign.