Hi, I'm Fin,

and this is my campaign for my little table top RPG Desert Birds! It's a small encounter, exploration and crafting based post apocalyptic TTRPG with slight cosmic horror elements. The main focus is community, exploration and crafting, not combat or threats.

This game is meant to be played with children, especially as I create it specifically to play this with a few kids in my circle of friends. They are nice and they love slightly scary stories, but would they love cosmic horror too? I decided to find it out by toning it down a lot to make it not too frightening for these little heroes, but still somewhat scary.

Truth is, I also love scary stories. That's why I can see myself pretty well in there. And I LOVE Mystery, Sci-Fi and Sci-Fantasy settings. Growing up with Stargate, The X-Files and Star Trek, my child mind always wondered about the world and it's limits. So I wanted to become a Sci-Fantasy author with slight horror elements mixed into it from time to time. Thanks to this, I wrote many short stories and concepts, though I have yet to release most of it.

My artistic endeavors are for now just a very big, and horribly expensive hobby. The music I do costs a lot in producing, and I don't even get half of it back with selling it. That's what I get doing (Harsh) Noise, I guess. But I love doing this stuff, and now I want to create games with the same passion. There are a lot of different ideas floating around in my head, and Desert Birds is the first that comes to life. There will be a lot to this, as I have big plans of making this game a project that will make me proud even far into the future.

But first... What is Desert Birds?

You play as a group of children, teens and/or young adults, all named after birds, who live in a mysterious village. When the world died some decades ago, a small girl was found in the ruins. She never grows older, and she never wakes up from her sleep, though the people who live close to her can communicate with her in their dreams. More even: despite always sleeping, she reacts to her surroundings just like a normal girl would do. That's why a small village formed around her to care for her. You grew up in this village and the elders now made a great suggestion: it's time for the younger people to take command of the village to make it more attractive to young people, and therefore also to the girl, who they call Eni.

You can explore the surrounding desert, even the remaining forests far away, and, but thats just between you and me: even space. Get some treasures and some valuable materials to build and expand your village - or live a life as a nomadic tribe and get ready to explore the world fully with everyone always around.

And who knows, maybe you can uncover the truth about Eni, about the apocalypse that turned most of the world into a desert, and also why the people living in space do nothing to help people down here on planet Earth.

~*~*~

The game is based on "Powered by the apocalypse" kind of games and uses many mechanics that are inspired by it. Technically speaking, it probably is a game powered by the apocalypse in itself, if you so want. However: Many core mechanics had to be reworked, as the game has a focus on community, crafting and exploration instead of combat and threats, but you can still fight evil and beasts if you wish. Most of the time, your players will either build and expand the village, or they go out on exploration and scavenging to get more materials, read journal and diary entries from before the apocalypse or loot valuable treasures to trade them for other usefull stuff. Thirteen different character archetypes, all nicknamed after birds, make it incredibly easy to have a diverse player experience and to offer something for everyone. The game itself, but also the nature of the "Powered by the Apocalypse" system, makes it incredibly easy to implement your own in basically no time to expand on it even further.

One more thing though: The game is not only meant to be played with children, but you can also totally play a child as a character. That's why all explicit stuff of the "Powered by the Apocalypse" frame and system was replaced by friendship and bonding mechanics. No need to do adult stuff if you can play games together instead, right?

The game was created when I wanted to organize a ttrpg campaign for the children in my circle of friends. When I couldn't find one suitable for them, I put all my creative work on hiatus and started creating a game specifically geared towards them and to my other friends too (including the parents of these kids). And now I think it would be quite a nice entrance into a creative carreer for table top gaming too and so I want to share it with everyone else.

The first step was finding a setting the game could take place in. And I had just the perfect one in mind right from the start. There was a short story that I wrote years ago that I am pretty happy with. The story was about to be turned into a bigger thing already, but I wasn't so sure exactly into what. Maybe a novel, maybe a comic, maybe even a video game. So why not a TTRPG then? It had lots of potential, and the setting has enough content to expand this into a game with complete player freedom. Maybe, one game won't even cover the whole setting. There are absolutely one or two ways I could see how the setting and game could be expanded into the future. Maybe even a whole thing on it's own.

But there are some problems...

When I want to use this setting, I would need more than just some words on paper. Currently, about 90% of all concepts and quirks of this game are written down either on actual paper or in my digital document for writing down the game. And about 30-40% of the first draft is already finished. But if I truly want to create this, If I truly want to make this whole project happen, I need your help!

See, writing it down is only the beginning. For starters, I need both art equipment to draw and design the game and usable maps, but I also need an artist who can help me out doing the more important illustrations. One such example is that I want to compliment the game with short comics, to make the lore easier to understand for children who want to play. The backgrounds I could draw with the proper equipment by myself, but everything else would be the work of a professional artist. That would still be a lot of money. A proofreader would be very helpfull too, as english isn't my first language and I don't want the game's book riddled with spelling errors.

But that's not where I want to stop. When I truly want to use this setting to expand on this game in the future, I need to register some IPs and I most probably also need a proper working space to work on it without any interruptions. So if after getting art equipment, an artist and a proofreader there is still more money left, I will have possibilities to use the funds to even further develop the game and setting and invest it into more content of Desert Birds. If that happens, I'll keep you all up to date!

With your help, I can make this little game and it's setting come to life!

There are 3 Tiers you can contribute with:

1. Tier 1 (min 5€) will get you the standard edition once it's ready to be delivered
2. Tier 2 (min 15€) will get you the extended edition once it's ready to be delivered
3. Tier 3 (min 50€) is limited and will get you all PDF editions once they're finished and also a chance to write your own pre-apocalyptic diary entry that will be canon in game (Though, some rules apply)

As a small thank you, every backer will be thanked by name at the end of the book. Tier 3 Backers will get noted in a special part above the rest of the backers.

If you like the idea of the game, it would also be really amazing if you share this campaign on social media or with your friends!

Many thanks, and have a nice day~!

Fin