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There is not a GM, and all you need is two or more players! Personally I've played it with as many as 8!

I LOVE this!!!

Thank you so much! Jonathan did a PHENOMENAL job, and we tried to offer a wide spread of styles, and arrangements!

Yes! That mode of play will be part of the Claw Atlas expansion releasing soon!

Possibly! If finances are ever an issue for someone, though, I'd always prefer they reach out to me directly so we can work something out!

There are enough community roles that you could play 10 with no repeats, and folks can always invent their own factions too—it's more just a matter of how long you want to play! Like, with a standard deck of 52 cards, 10 players could take 5 turns each without having to fetch a new deck, but 50 turns could take a long time depending on how detailed people want to be in their descriptions. 

It's plenty fun with low player counts, but I most often play in the 3-6 range! That way you can get a full rotation in, clock how long it takes, and then play as many full rounds as you have time/energy for without worrying about running out of cards or any one round being TOO long. Especially since the math works best if everyone plays an equal number of turns.

Hope this helps!

This is so unbelievably kind! Your comments really are everything I was going for—from game design to visual design—and it's so great to hear the intent is coming through. Thanks so much, and glad you're enjoying it!

I come from a theatre and improv background myself! I didn't want to just include conventional theaters in the list, so I included a number of improv troupes as well. They're ALL real, and I LOVE it whenever someone recognizes one. Earlier this month someone from Woolly Mammoth saw their company in the list and brought the game in to show coworkers, haha.

Those are EXACTLY the kinds of moments I'd hoped for, and I'm so glad you all enjoyed yourselves! Bravo on pulling off both the heist and your play in the end, and thank you so much for your support!

I love Woolly! I trained under John Baker for a hot second while he was still there, and I LOVED your productions of The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity and Botticelli in the Fire! It's been a minute, but keep up the great work!

That’s fantastic!! Which one? I was a professional dramaturg for about a decade before starting my career in games!

Niiiiiiiice. You're playing it exactly right! It's hard to break the Dots & Boxes habit of making lot of small rooms, but in reality even just a few big room REALLY rack up the points! Small rooms work much better as a way to BLOCK folks from making larger shapes. It's been fun watching the game teach people how to take advantage of the scoring system in real time, and it almost always leads to dungeons that start as a lot of small passages before opening up into larger rooms deeper in (which makes sense from a layout perspective!)

I'm glad you dig it! If you haven't yet, check out Beak, Feather, & Bone! It's also a (lightly) competitive worldbuilder, and there are a number of community hacks and supplements you can use to make it more so!

Thank you Aunt Sherry! Hopefully we'll all be able to celebrate together again soon!

I'm so glad! Please report back if you do—I'd love to hear more about it!

I'm so glad you're enjoying it, and I hope it's been a relaxing & creatively satisfying part of your routine!

Thank you so much for the kind words! I'm so glad you gave it a shot, and I hope you take those characters on some adventures soon!

Thank you so much!! I'm SO glad you're enjoying it, and I'd love to hear about the fun powers/worlds you've created sometime!

Shoot me a message at possibleworldsgames.com and we'll work something out!

As far as I'm concerned that's the highest praise a designer can receive! I'm SO glad it's got your own designer wheels turning, and I can't wait to see how you and others take the ideas here and run with them!

It's fairly easy to run in Roll20! Upload your map image to the session and then under the "Collection" settings click "Show, Playing Cards, 54." This will add a deck you can deal from directly to your playspace. Then, as long as you give all the players drawing privileges and assign them a unique color, they can draw shapes over the map to claim buildings! Coloring in the buildings is definitely more satisfying, but drawing a circle or square in your player color works just as well. I hope this helps!

Yes, there will be the option to add a copy of BFB to your order when we fulfilled physical pledges via BackerKit! You'd just need to wait until December-ish when the boxed set is delivered to get BFB too.

Oh! And High Magic Lowlives by Gem Room Games is another GREAT fit!

I'm a big fan of Into the Odd, BUTCHERY, and the White Hack as far as rules-lite fantasy campaigns go! If you're looking for something that's purely community-focused, though, I'd check out "Belonging Outside Belonging" games on itch! It's a roleplaying game engine designed to tell stories about what happens when marginalized groups establish their own communities, just outside or hidden within the boundaries of a dominant culture.

Hi all! Thank you SO MUCH for being the first wave of creators to hack, expand, and remix Beak, Feather, & Bone! I was blown away by the quality and creativity of each of these entries and am so humbled that my little game inspired them. Well done, and pat yourself on the back for getting everything in within the time-frame (even if you plan on expanding them later)!

As thanks and to let the original BFB backers know about this wealth of new content, I went ahead a posted a public update to the original Beak, Feather, & Bone kickstarter summarizing and linking to each of your entries. Hopefully it leads to even more attention and players for them! In the meantime, though, I'd encourage you to check out, rate, and review each other's work! There's a LOT of talent here.

Lastly, as mentioned in the KS update, I have a new Kickstarter! Possible Worlds is my pitch for a sustainable way to keep writing and releasing games like Beak, Feather, & Bone. Backing gets you 6 new micro-RPGs in 6 genres over 6 months and creates a roadmap for me to develop the kinds of short, versatile RPGs I enjoy full-time. If you'd like to see me release more games in the future, backing this Kickstarter is the best way to ensure I'm able to do so!

Keep up the great work, everyone!

Tyler

It is indeed! I'll be sure to plug it on twitter today and post pictures of my cards when they arrive too. So flattered, and the fact that BFB inspired such creativity on your part is the highest praise I could ask for!

This is AMAZING! Really excellent artwork—front and back—and SUCH a great tool for dealing/randomizing community roles among players! I'm so excited to order prints of my own.

Just one small catch—it looks like the Unlabeled Traveler cards have a roman numeral 12 (XII) instead of the Labeled set's 11 (XI)—both in the preview and in the .zip folders. Far from the end of the world since that role is optional, but it's such an excellent design I wanted to make sure you were aware!

Thanks so much for participating, and looking forward to following more of your work in the future!

As promised, the #BFBJAM is now LIVE and so is an SRD for the game! If interested, I'd love to see you flesh out your Seat of Power and Rival modifications and submit them as a rules supplement! https://itch.io/jam/bfb-jam

As promised, the #BFBJAM is now LIVE as is an SRD for the game! If interested, I'd strongly encourage you to type up your rules modification and submit it as a rules supplement for folks to use! https://itch.io/jam/bfb-jam

Thanks so much for the kind words! I LOVE the Joker idea and hope to include it in one of my own games soon. We'll be running a game jam for BFB modifications and expansions soon, so I'd strongly urge you to consider typing it up when the time comes! And while I'm thrilled that you've enjoyed playing the game, the fact that it's sparking bits of game design in your own mind is the highest praise possible!

This is a fantastic idea! The Seat of Power definitely adds more of a spin/flavor for the city's narrative than actual competition as is (and I like how a rival can essentially negate a draw's points by opposing that building's purpose too) but I love your idea of roping rivals into affecting other people's numbers! I'm planning on holding a BFB game jam for community hacks and expansions in early 2021 and would strongly encourage you to bring this idea (and more!) to the table when I do!

It's what I'm alluding to in #2 under the Multiple Roles section!

• Give each player the same number of turns, but they must decide which community they’d like to assign each draw’s value and description to. Keep Seat of Power sums separate and total them by role, not player. For less competitive play, put all chosen roles in a single pool and allow players to pick and choose from any in play.

So instead of each player choosing "their" community, have as many communities as you'd like in play and decide who you want to assign buildings & points on a draw-by-draw basis. One community will still need to be given the Seat of Power at the end of the game—so it's important to track points—but it'll just be a community that's established as having the most influence in the town's story, not a player winning. Assigning draws allows you to pursue emerging storylines as a group rather than feeling locked in to "a Social building for the Miners" on your turn as well. Under these rules, if you're more interested in the Mages' social lives and building off what another player established the turn before, go ahead and assign your building and points to the Mages too! Just be aware that focusing on some communities more than others will be inherently be reflected in their influence over the town.

Jayyyyyy! As an admirer of your work, this means the world. Thank you on behalf of Austin, Jonathan, & myself, and I'm so glad the emphasis on the art/artists as integral to the game as opposed to just flavor came through. 

Yup! The zine PDF and map images come with every purchase. Buying at the $13 (US) or $20 (INT) price points just get you a physical copy as well. Thank you for your interest!