RPG Review: Lady Blackbird

Lady Blackbird, at this point, has become such an institution in the world of RPGs, that it hardly needs a review, and yet I still come across players very regularly who have never heard of Lady Blackbird, so… here we are.

Lady Blackbird, a free 2009 roleplaying game by John Harper, is a standalone RPG designed to be played in one or two sessions, with premade characters. The complete rules to the game can be found on each character sheet. Here’s the synopsis:

Lady Blackbird is on the run from an arranged marriage to Count Carlowe. She hired a smuggler skyship, The Owl, to take her from her palace on the Imperial world of Ilysium to the far reaches of the Remnants, so she could be with her once secret lover, the pirate king Uriah Flint. However—Just before reaching the halfway point of Haven, The Owl was pursued and captured by the Imperial cruiser Hand of Sorrow, under charges of flying a false flag. Even now Lady Blackbird, her bodyguard, and the crew of The Owl are detained in the brig, while the commander of the cruiser, Captain Hollas, runs the smuggler ship’s registry over the wireless. It’s only a matter of time before they discover the outstanding warrants and learn that The Owl is owned by none other than the infamous outcast Cyrus Vance.

That’s the basic plot run down. The character sheets each feature the character’s name, the traits each character has, and the tags, which are kind of subcategories for each trait. Each character has Keys, which are triggers for your character. When one of those keys happen, you gain XP.

When you take an action, you roll one die, plus you choose a trait to gain one more die, then a die for each tag that applies. You also begin the game with seven extra dice you can use any time, but if you succeed on your roll, those dice are lost. Failing a roll allows you to keep your character’s dice, and also gain new dice.

That’s pretty much it for the rules. As your character advances, they can gain new traits, unlock new tags, and reveal secrets, which are larger abilities your character can gain.

Each character has all kinds of intrigue and ties to other characters. The book also contains new Keys, Secrets, Traits, and Tags for your characters to evolve and change. Not only that, but new characters can be made very easily as well.

You’ll notice that a lot of these ideas are one found in a lot of current games: Marvel Heroic, Fate, Apocalypse World, and others. Lady Blackbird’s legacy is the tags, loose mechanics, and little to no set attributes, which can now be found in a ton of smaller-press RPGs. A lot of elements are shared between Lady Blackbird and my favorite system, Burning Wheel.

If you’ve got an evening where not everyone is able to make it, or the regular GM needs a break for a week, you can do a lot worse than with Lady Blackbird.

You can pick up Lady Blackbird’s PDF here for free.