Solo Tabletop RPG Review – Be Like a Crow

Be Like a Crow (Critical Kit)
Designed & Written by Tim Roberts

You can purchase this game here.

This was the first tabletop rpg I have been approached to review by the company that publishes it. That made me feel quite good, and I hope I do justice for every game I review here. If you’re a regular reader of these solo TTRPG reviews, you know I was a newcomer to these games circa 2011. After being very enthused by the gaming scene for a few years, I fell out of love with it due to the reasons many hobbies go sour for people these days. However, this year’s discovery of the plethora of solo games and gaming tools has reinvigorated my joy. One thing to note is that my preference as I perused the ttrpgs back during my first round with them was that I just really wasn’t an Old School Renaissance guy and, in fact, preferred what was sometimes referred to as “story games,” i.e., games that are fiction first rather than crunchy with stats or heavily dependent on mapping and measurement. As a result, I wasn’t exposed to certain kinds of games, and I especially have never played a hex crawl before.

I wanted to talk about my unfamiliarity with hex crawls at the start because that influenced the fun I had with this game. Be Like a Crow depends on a hex map, and I didn’t know what playing with this element should look like. There is an implied understanding of these within the game’s text that it does not explain explicitly, or at least I had trouble getting it. I wasn’t sure how much I should record on the map about what I encountered there or what a map should look like after a play session. My guess is that the author has a long history in the games scene and assumed everyone knows how to handle a hex crawl. Most people who will chance upon this and pick it up probably know more than me, so don’t let any perceived dissatisfaction influence your view too much.

Be Like a Crow is a game whose title says it all. You will play as a crow or, more specifically, one of the corvid family. You can choose Carrion Crow, Magpie, Rook, Raven, or Jackdaw. The game’s leveling system adheres to the life cycles of a corvid (fledgling, juvenile, adult, and ol’ crow), so each class has notes about what changes as you age. Additionally, the setting you choose influences how your character grows & changes. The game comes with the settings Urban, Cyber, Gothic, Fantasy, Steampunk, and Ravens of the Tower. The latter takes place during the 1800s in London. The settings add different components to how your character will change as you play. Each set also comes with its own map, part of the hex crawl component, and essential for play.

To play, you mark any hex on the map with a token of your choice to be the crow’s nest. Using a standard deck of 52 playing cards (Jokers included), players will draw to create an objective if they don’t already have something in mind. Be Like a Crow uses a plethora of oracles to guide the player in generating everything from Locations, Events, Characters, and Objects. The cards also serve as the game’s resolution system. Prompts from the oracles often tell players to make skill checks. A card is drawn as the Target. The player then draws an additional card and adds it to the relevant stat. If this beats the target, it is a success; if it doesn’t, you have a failure. So it is a straightforward mechanic that won’t require heavy math or crunchy stats. If the player’s stat has been highlighted to check with authority, they can draw two cards and pick the higher. If a check with a penalty is active, the player can draw two cards but must choose the lower of the two.

Your crow has the expected skills you would associate with these birds, like Fly, Peck, Sing, etc, but also skills related to socializing and using tools. Combat in Be Like a Crow is slightly more complex than a skill check. The player chooses their attack (divebomb, claw, peck, or flee) and draws a card. They add the card’s value to the attack they have chosen. Another card is drawn for the opponent’s attack and added to their attack/evade score. The highest number wins. Then the next round of combat is reversed, with the opponent going on the offensive and the player’s crow using their evade skill. Combat in tabletop RPGs has always been the place where I struggle. The back-and-forth turned-based style combat can be fun, but more often than not, I find it bogs me down. I’m still learning how to navigate it in solo play, but sometimes it can feel like watching a tennis match, back and forth. I appreciate that this system is smoother than most, and I never felt like combat went on for an interminable amount of time. If the deck of cards is ever depleted, shuffle the discard pile and start again.

I decided to play from fledgling to juvenile for my play session and see if I wanted to continue. The book recommends completing two objectives before aging up, so I went with that. I had to think it over but decided on playing as a raven in the Fantasy setting. Critical Kit sells two additional playset expansions, A Fistful of Feathers (Western-themed) and Crowthulu (Lovecraft Mythos). If I had either of those two, I might have picked one of them, but the ones that come with the book are pretty comprehensive and capture the flavor of the respected genres very well. 

My raven was named Kallanach and lived in a nest nestled into the gnarled branches of a tree growing up out of a murky swamp in the north. There aren’t many other trees nearby, so Kallnach could have a good view of things as he grew, becoming ready for flight. My first objective, using the oracles, was that a necromancer had captured a deity and intended to sacrifice them at the next full moon. I would need to travel to a dragon’s lair to rescue this imprisoned god, where I must defeat the necromancer through a dance ritual that involves me holding an elven arrowhead.

Taking this objective and fleshing it out, the necromancer is a hateful old figure named Risten who decided the best way to embolden himself and become even more potent in controlling the dead was to end the creation of new life entirely. He opened a gateway between the mortal world and the celestials, and through deep dark magicks, he kidnapped Matos, the fertility goddess. As a result, the land is dying because as life ends for all living things, there is no renewal to replace what is lost. In fact, Kallanach was the last raven born before Matos was taken, and he represents the final thing that could come into existence. 

Through passersby, Kallanach has heard of the enchanted elven arrowhead hidden in the nearby woods. Stories claim this arrowhead slayed the great dragon eons ago and was made from a powerful stone that fell from the sky. This old magic would be able to overpower Risten and allow Matos to resume her place among the pantheon.

Kallanach set off across the swamp, headed east towards the great forest. Along the way, he encounters a hostile gull who has become paranoid about protecting her nest despite having no eggs. A tremendous storm has also been happening a lot as the land cries out in pain without new life. Kallanach eventually finds his way to the ruined Elvish village in the forest and searches for the arrowhead unsuccessfully. Risten has also sent his agents here, one of them being a jackdaw spy who tries to stop Kallanach once he realizes they are searching for the same object. Eventually, our young raven finds the arrowhead and begins the long journey into the Dragon’s Teeth, the mountain range where Risten resides.

A friendly rook assassin helps Kallanach on his way, but eventually, the young bird gets tired and searches for food. During his investigation, he encounters a lone troll queen, her kingdom hollowed out long ago. She is throwing a tantrum, and Kallanach can barely hide himself from her rage. Another raven joins Kallanach in flight and tells him about what’s happening in the south. It seems a tavern owner stole Fjaðrhamr, the cloak of feathers, from a Dwarven merchant who didn’t quite know what he had on his hands. The tavern owner flees town and hides out on his family’s farm, trying to determine how to unlock the cloak’s magic. Kallanach believes this cloak will be helpful to him in the future but continues on into the dense mountains. 

While landing to rest for the night, Kallanach discovers a strange message laid out in sticks on the ground. It tells him of a town stricken with blindness for angering the gods. The cure resides with a jackdaw cleric who lives in a crumbling wizard’s tower. Once again, our growing raven notes it but keeps struggling to save Matos. Eventually, he finds the dragon’s lair, and Matos is there, chained with iron forged in the heart of an ancient sun. Using the arrowhead and his instincts, Kallanach channels the great ravens of Odin, whose specters appear and join him in the dance. Matos is freed, and Restin is turned to ash as life begins again in this kingdom.

Now Kallanach turns his attention to Fjaðrhamr and the thieving tavern owner. This odyssey sees the raven spending time with a jackdaw traveling companion, trading with a wise old swan, and escaping a horde of ravenous zombies. The zombies were an effect of Risten’s necromancy; without anyone to control them, they wander the land aching with hunger. The jackdaw spy from the forest turns out to have been following him this whole time and attacks one night. Kallanach manages to fight and kills his pursuer. 

Kallanach spends some time with an old retired gladiator from the grand city. He’s tried farming but found he could be better at it. Instead, he spends his days reminiscing about his former glory. He’s relieved to know Risten is defeated because that means, in due time, he can finally pass from this life into whatever comes next, hoping for a return to those days as a champion, but this time in Elysium. Stormy weather keeps the raven from taking flight, but the gladiator puts him safely in a satchel and carries him further. The two-part ways and Kallanach is gifted by the great ravens of Odin when a leaf from Yggdrasil, the world tree, floats down from the sky right toward him.

A hungry cat stalks Kallanach when he rests at a small farm, but the raven is too clever for the feline. A confused sorcerer stumbles across the raven’s path, telling him all he knows is that the Pearl of Memories is being held in the wreck of an old pirate ship off the coast. It’s the only way he’ll remember how he ended up in this confused state. The raven wants to help and promises he will find him if the sorcerer stays put. However, Kallanach is worried the man will forget their conversation. 

A friendly flock of swallows guides him the rest of the way, and our raven finds the tavern owner holed up in the family farmhouse. He’s gone down a rabbit hole of occult magic, hoping to unlock Fjaðrhamr’s power. Kallanch feigns being a representative of the gods, even holding up the leaf from Yggdrasil as “proof” that he is a messenger of the divine. The raven discovers that the cloak of feathers has been drained of all magic long ago, and this man has ruined his reputation over some old mangy bird feathers. Now, Kallanach takes flight, hoping to find the poor confused sorcerer and help him restore his memories, worried the man has wandered off and forgotten the promise.

And this is where my story ended with Kallanach, the now-juvenile raven. I had fun playing, but most of the flavor came from myself while playing. The game’s oracles give you a baseline, but the interpretation of what things mean is primarily yours to shape. This is standard with most solo games, which is why I see a lot of people’s posts online about having difficulty getting into them. If you are used to a DM who lays out the world and story for you, then realizing that responsibility is entirely on the player’s shoulders can be daunting. For those needing some assistance, pairing this with the Mythic GM emulator’s descriptive oracles or something similar would help provide material to work with in addition to what Be Like a Crow provides.

While Be Like a Crow is not a game I would have probably picked up on my own, I did have fun playing it. It was an entirely different style of play from previous games, and it has made me more interested in exploring the potential of hex crawls in a solo context. Tim Roberts has created a spiritual sequel to this game, Be Like a Cat, which apparently includes a two-player option on top of the default solo method. There are still openings for late pledges if that game strikes you fancy. I am interested to see what changes are made to the mechanics and oracles in this next game. I’d love to know what Roberts learned from making Be Like a Crow and how that influenced the follow-up.