What Is It Like to Play a Bird?
I enjoy bird-watching as much as I enjoy playing RPGs.
When I first learned about Mausritter, where you play as mice in "a huge and dangerous world," it wasn't long before I began toying with the idea of introducing small birds as playing characters into the game.
I hope you'll agree that if the creature you're facing has feathered wings instead of hands, it's a good tell-tale sign that you are dealing with a bird.
And yet, many games featuring bird-like characters either swap their wings with arms, or if they keep the wings, give them feather fingers or even a third pair of limbs.
All this is fine, but I can't help thinking this veers closer to playing as people pretending to be birds, rather than the other way around, which is what I want to try.
So here's the first version of a Mausritter bird character sheet I came up with.
First draft of a bird character sheet for Mausritter - CC BY-SA 4.0 Oozejar (download PDF)
Original Mausritter character sheet CC BY 4.0 Isaac Williams/Losing Games
This is an attempt at having key aspects of the morphology and biology of birds drawing them apart from mice (and humans) impact the game-play.
- Birds fly.
Flies at ×3 ground speed at will
With the corollary:
Items in Pack cannot be retrieved when flying
- Birds have a second balance-sensing organ within their pelvis, allowing them to effortlessly balance themselves, even on a single leg, even when asleep.
Always balances, even on one foot
- Both mice and small birds have high metabolisms, but it seems small birds need to eat roughly twice as much (in percentage of body weight per day) as mice do.
Requires double rations per day
- Bird wings anatomically can't be used like hands, and birds mainly use their beak to manipulate objects.
Beak inventory slot
- Birds can also use their feet to grasp things.
Two Foot inventory slots
And their limitations:
Cannot walk when equipped
Can use with both feet only when flying
- Wings need to deploy and move extensively.
A single Body inventory slot
Balanced encounters is not something the OSR really cares about. But I feel that pitched against Mausritter's mice characters, the birds' need for more rations and their slightly restricted Carried and Worn inventories help offset the advantage of flight.
I'll base myself on the small birds living in my local park, where they form exploring parties to hunt for food (another cool reason to play birds, if you ask me), to work on a starting set of backgrounds next.
Untill then, I'd love to hear what you think. 