Both rules-lite RPGs and anthro-pomorphic animal adventures are ten a penny these days, whether you want to explore the world as a mighty mouse, fearless frog or rascally raccoon there’s plenty of options to choose from. Few games though will be quite as rules-lite as Côme Martin’s Feathered Adventures or indeed as charmingly anarchic.

Much like the recent, wonderful Dukk Borg, Feathered Adventures takes its cues from Saturday morning cartoons like Duck Tales with the players a brood of avian adventurers getting into all sorts of pulp inspired mischief. Where Dukk Borg made the most of the wild juxtaposition between its web footed cartoon inspiration and its bloody roots as a Mörk Borg hack though, Feathered Adventures firmly puts the PG in RPG, as the game’s introduction exhorts here there shall be no (non-comical) violence, sex, or general bad times.

Depending on your point of view this will be either tyrannically dictatorial or a refreshing change, but if you can get past your strange need to see waterfowl beaten to a bloody pulp then what we have here is simply a rather lovely storytelling engine. If you want to ease the young or young at heart around you into RPGs, or you just fancy taking a break from grittier games, and frankly who could blame you right now, then this could be just the ticket.

And when we said this game was rules-lite we meant it. Rather than classes or anything like that players pick from a selection of broad archetypes, such as Bad Tempered but Selfless or Lazy but Lucky, there’s no stats to worry about and no dice to roll. The GM, or Cartoonist as the game has it, narrates a scene, players tell them what they want to do and they decide if it works or not. Unless players are leaning into their character’s defining traits, the Cartoonist is advised to lean into partial successes, especially when that might introduce an element of slapstick.

Adventures are lightly sketched out and progression is marked via a series of check boxes that you simply tick off when certain things happen, this might just be each player getting to have their moment in the spotlight or someone describing something fantastic. Once enough boxes have been ticked the game moves onto the next scene or its conclusion. 

Finally the role of Cartoonist doesn’t need to be fixed either and players can take turns as the game progresses. All in all I’m tempted to describe this as Free Quackspiel Roleplaying, in fact I just have done.

If that’s the rules pretty much dealt with the remaining 130 or so pages are filled with a vast amount of pre-generated material to get you going, from fleshed out fowl such as the Stingy But Good Hearted Jane Van der Quack to a selection of 24 different adventures that range from treasure hunts to birthday parties.  

One last thing, Feathered Adventures is as charming to flick through as it is to play. Filled with gorgeous art, the book’s graphic designer, Nicolas Folliot, has done a great job of capturing the game’s energy and the whole thing feels like the kind of giant sized comic, filled with games and puzzles, you’d pick up on the first day of a long summer holiday. Lovely stuff.

Writing: Côme Martin
Art: momatoes, Alain Gruetter, Helkarava, François Maumont, Clément de Ruyter
Available from Itch.io

This feature originally appeared in Wyrd Science Vol.1, Issue 5 (Dec '23)

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