Songs and Sagas
A downloadable game
CLASSIC OSR, REIMAGINED
ACTION PACKED • ACCESSIBLE • PLAYER DRIVEN • SOLO-FRIENDLY
—
The end was near, our time nearly up. But before the spill of blood, luminous doorways emerged amidst the vast sea. Guided by gods and spirits, our ancestors sailed through these radiant gates, into the unknown. Many perished, but some managed to survive and settle. Time passed. Now some of us are called to venture forth, to map these strange new lands. And one day, all shall hear the echoes of our destinies fulfilled as they ring out in songs and sagas.
—
CARVE YOUR LEGEND
Songs and Sagas is a condensed OSR inspired tabletop role-playing game of axes, runes, spirits and legends. In this game, all players work together to unveil the story of fierce warriors striving to forge a new life in the midst of an unforgiving alien wilderness.
► Read the press kit
► Read the free creator kit and SRD
► Join the game jam
FEATURES
This game offers:
Familiar rules, with a new twist. The mechanics are easy to grasp, feel familiar, and can be expanded upon in the blink of an eye.
Condensed and accessible format. Available in a print-at-home pamphlet format, simply prepare one copy per player and you'll have everything you need to explore the treacherous northern lands and honor the gods.
Solo-friendly rules. While sailing through ice and rocks, you are never truly alone, for a Vanori watches over you. Using the included solo mechanics, you can experience all that Songs and Sagas has to offer even if you are the only player at the table.
High compatibility with OSR. Use the bestiary you're used to and easily convert creatures and monsters, giving them a new meaning.
Based on games you love. This game takes inspiration from games such as Mork Borg, Mausritter, Into the Odd, Knave, Charge, Firelights and Breathless to create a new and unique system that is ready for battle and glory.
Fully open licensed. You are free to use any content from Songs and Sagas to create your own game, "Carried in Songs and Sagas", as long as you respect the scriptures and will of the spirits.
OPEN LICENSED
Songs and Sagas was designed to be accessible, and easily hackable. As such, its text is licensed under the ORC license allowing you to design and publish your own games "Carried in Songs and Sagas".
► Read the Creator Kit
To celebrate the release of Songs and Sagas, we are also launching the Songs and Sagas Game Jam, inviting all game designers to create something using the Songs and Sagas system or design a supplement for the original game.
► Join the game jam
Creator: René-Pier Deshaies of Fari RPGs
Illustrator: Galen Pejeau of Nightjar Games
Editor: Eric Lazure
Additional Editing: Lynn Jones
Design Consultants: Ryan Lucas, Lynn Jones, Andrew
Boyd, Matteo Sciutteri
Font Attribution: Dice font
from Dicier, by Speak the Sky, licensed under CC BY 4.0
Purchase
In order to download this game you must purchase it at or above the minimum price of $3 USD. You will get access to the following files:
Community Copies
Support this game at or above a special price point to receive something exclusive.
Grab a Community Copy
If you can't justify spending money on the game right now for whatever reason, feel free to claim a community copy.
If you do so, please leave a comment on the page to help spread the word !
Enjoy!
Development log
- v1.3 Update - Typos5 days ago
- v1.2 Update - Typos25 days ago
- v1.1 Update - Typo26 days ago
Comments
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Haven't had a chance to play yet but I grabbed a community copy so I'm excited to delve into it! (Loved Stoneburner so I'm sure this will be great too!)
Thank you for sharing community copies! I'm excited to play :)
Looks like great stuff. I can't wait to check it out.
Thanks for the community copy!
Once again Fari RPGs have produced another gold standard in gaming. Straight forward rules which open the door to a plethora of options to build on. Such a wonderful system with some inspired mechanics
I love how streamlined and easy to understand everything is in both the rules and the presentation of them - Fari RPGs make systems I can easily recommend to people wanting to get into indie TTRPG (or simply need a game to pick up on game night that is literally plug and play). This is a beautiful OSR type with really great thematics. Amazing work!
I'm so looking forward to putting this system to the test on my next camping trip!
I finished Scavenger Reigns a couple of weeks ago, let's see how my vikings do against a hostile planet!
Thanks for the community copy!
Thank you so much!
Very interested by this creation and by the fact that, once again, the SRD is released under a free (as in speech and beer) license. Although, I’m not a lawyer, but if the ORC license works like the OGL, I think that the author has to specify which parts of the work are “Open” (Licensed Material) and which ones are not covered by the open license (Reserved Material).
Do you think it could be possible to indicate somewhere in the Creator Kit which parts are concerned by the ORC License?
Hey Bruno!
By default, all mechanics are open-licensed when using ORC. I've specifically added the settings and rolling tables (so basically, the entire game) as part of the license as well.
All of this information is laid out on the creator kit website here.
excellent! thank you very much for this quick response!
My interest with FariRPG started with Breathless, then Stoneburner, both of which had a refreshing and solidly built mechanic. Now, it continues with Songs and Sagas. This time it goes back to a more "traditional" type of gameplay with a OSR based gameplay but still with an interesting twist with the card game allowing to a smart way of playing with tension.
Plus, there is viking and a strange world to explore, so yes, let's play Songs and Sagas.
Songs and Sagas is a tight OSR/NSR leaning TTRPG that gives you just enough setting and lore before getting out of the way of your player's own ideas. The shape-shifter forms and interesting play with collecting/spending cards to give you an advantage, familiar "quantum" inventory, and some very Banner Saga reminiscent focus on destroying enemy armor all go along way to preventing the game from falling into the blandness that some lean OSR style games suffer from. Giving you the option to focus on the hex map and eroding the threat rating of various hexes is a welcome riff on hexcrawl expectations - I'm a sucker for territory control and it is a simple way to approach it that makes that style of play robust.
It's a great RPG system that's concise and flexible enough to step well outside the bounds of what Songs & Sagas in particular is interested in offering (Good news, since you get a creator kit with it!)
Pubic text version of my review
This looks great! I love your style of RPG's so this was an easy decision to purchase. I Kickstarted Stoneburner and love how it plays. I'll leave a fleshed out review and rate it once I've had a read and played a game or two.
That's amazing!! Stoneburner was so much fun to work with and I'm happy to hear you're excited about S&S as well! Cant' wait to hear your thoughts about this new game! ^^
Just as an Idea, maybe make a video of how the Dice/Card system works so that potential players can learn how to play the game ultra-fast. :) I am buying this either way to try it out, just speaking for players who have never played and want to start a short video with dice rolls would explain a lot :)
I do plan on making a video read through soon, so stay tuned for this!
une version Fr à venir ?!
Peut-être !!! Je dois juste trouver le temps ! 😄
¿Hay posibilidad de que lo saques en español?
Gracias
¡Estamos trabajando en ello!
This is a super fun game that sits right in the intersection between story gamey tropes and OSR sensiblities. I played a 6 session mini campaign in this and it handled everything really well what I threw at it. From dungeon crawls to exploration and collaborative world building
Thanks again for having helped us play test this game. Your feedback was invaluable and reading those beautiful compliments right now is the best feeling in the world.