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About

Credits

Concept, Rules and Layout: René-Pier Deshaies-Gélinas

Illustrations: Galen Pejeau

Heroes: Andrew Boyd, Lynn Jones, Matteo Sciutteri, Xavier Tétreault, Gabriel Lemire, Louis-Philippe Déragon, Dominic Tremblay, Emmanuel Beauregard.

Support Nightsong

Commission Original Illustrations

Nightsong is free and always will be. But if you'd like to support the project, donations go directly toward commissioning original artwork from Galen Pejeau for the rulebook.

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Miscellaneous

• Heading text font: Skema Pro Display
• Body text font: Candara
• Table entry font: Roboto Condensed

Inspirations

While designing Nightsong, we drew inspiration from many games, books, films, and other media, including:

Games

• MÖRK BORG, by Pelle Nilsson and Johan Nohr
• Into the Odd, by Chris McDowall
• The Black Hack, by David Black
• Mausritter, by Isaac Williams
• Shadowdark, by Kelsey Dionne
• Cairn, by Yochai Gal

Video Games

• Ori and the Blind Forest, Moon Studios
• Child of Light, Ubisoft Montreal
• Hollow Knight, Team Cherry
• Guild Wars, ArenaNet

Films & Series

• Avatar: The Last Airbender, Nickelodeon
• Wolfwalkers, Cartoon Saloon
• Princess Mononoke, Studio Ghibli
• Onward, Pixar

License

Nightsong is released under an open license. You are free to use it to create your own game built on its rules or to develop compatible third-party material.

Attribution Text

If you use our Licensed Material in your own published work, please credit us in your product as follows:

This product is based on Nightsong, published by Fari RPGs (https://farirpgs.com/), developed and authored by René-Pier Deshaies-Gélinas, and is licensed for use under the Open RPG Creative License. This product is licensed under the ORC License held in the Library of Congress at TX 9-307-067 and available online at various locations including www.azoralaw.com/orclicense and others. All warranties are disclaimed as set forth therein.

Overview

Finally, You’re Awake

“Good, very good. I’ve been waiting quite a while for you now.

At first glance, I thought your cocoon was an empty shell as I opened the hatch to the room. Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy, just a bit surprised!

These carvings are quite damaged so I’m not sure for how long you’ve been wrapped here. It’s alright, it doesn’t matter. You can call me Quercus.

Let me get you up to speed. To be quite honest, your eyes open at this land’s final moment. A tale told in twilight, if you’ll pardon my poetic soul.

The land of Penumbra is a rotting corpse, but most don’t realize it yet. Or maybe they simply close their eyes to the blatant facts.

Two of the six Beacons that guide the dead through the Veil have been extinguished by beast knows what. Countless soulless Hollowed shells wander and screech in utter despair.

To make things worse, all the Firelight cocoons have withered and decayed, so there is just no hope of relighting the Beacons at all. No hope for the dead, no hope for us. Alveari, the stronghold beehive city of the Dominion, is crumbling and filled with simmering tension in the wake of the Queen’s recent passing.

To top it all, the Beast-Gods don’t sing in the dream of dreams no more. Let me tell you and believe me when I say that without their chants, flying through the Voidways is one nasty business.

So yeah, things aren’t great.

My boss spent a lot of amber chips on this expedition, but they sure as dusk didn’t expect I’d find one of you still buzzing after all this time, so you’re free to go.

I won’t tell anyone about you. Your secret is safe with me.

C’h Alwodina, friend.

Oh, before I forget, what is your chord in Nightsong?”

What Is This

Nightsong is a fantasy adventure game of heroism, friendship, and mystery set in Penumbra, a beautiful and crumbling world of rootmasses, fungal sprawl, crystal spires, drifting leaf isles, and sky-spanning Voidways filled with sentient bug-folk of countless kinds.

The characters are freeblades, wanderers bound to no hive or guild, who have woken from a long slumber into a land of wonders and dangers.

Penumbra is filled with dangers. Two of the six Beacons guiding the dead through the Veil are gone, and as such many Hollowed shells wander in despair. The Beast-Gods no longer sing their protective verses over the Oros. The Firelight cocoons have withered, so relighting the Beacons is impossible, and shadowy entities called Curses spread chaos, corruption, and fear. But, what remains is still beautiful, and radiant. It just may not last for very long.

This game is made of two parts.

First, it is a game meant to be played through a set of rules, systems, and procedures made for playing either as a solo game, as a duet with one other player, or as a group.

Second, it is a breathing, living world. Penumbra existed before you started playing and will continue to do so long after you are done with it.

The setting can be used as-is, modified, or set aside entirely in favor of a world of your own making. The mechanics and procedures will support your story regardless.

A Game of Nightsong

Traveling the land of Penumbra, the characters will:

• Wake into a dying age. The world is not safe. The dead lose their way, Beacons fail, and entire regions strain under slow collapse.
• Travel between bright places. Hive-cities, undergrowth tunnels, drifting isles, and ramshackle outposts still cling to life across a vast and beautiful land.
• Follow wonder and ruin together. Penumbra is full of ancient mysteries, and small fragile communities worth protecting.
• Choose their own allegiances. Freeblades answer to no one but themselves. What matters, and who matters, is up to them.
• Leave a mark on the world. Every decision, friendship, risk, and loss becomes part of the song that outlasts them.

At the table, players will:

hidden name

How To Play

The goal of a game of Nightsong is to explore a fictional world, watch an emergent story take shape over time, and have fun while doing it.

Every player except one controls a player character and chooses what that character thinks, feels, says, and does. The world then reacts and evolves based on those actions.

The remaining player is the Referee, the neutral voice of the world. The Referee describes the places the characters visit and portrays the non-player characters (NPCs) they encounter. The Referee is also responsible for presenting problems and opportunities to the player characters, making the world react to their actions, and deciding when the rules come into play and how they should be interpreted. It is the Referee’s job to challenge the characters and put obstacles in their path, forcing them to show what they are made of. That being said, it is not the Referee’s job to decide how the story ends; that is what play is for! We play to find out what happens.

When playing solo, a single player fills both roles, leaning on the Referee’s tools and oracle tables to answer questions the Referee would normally arbitrate. In a duet game, one player can serve as the Referee while the other controls a single character, or both players can share the two roles, trading off as the fiction demands.

At its core, this game is a conversation. The Referee sets a scene, players ask questions and declare their character’s actions, the outcomes of those actions are resolved through fiction directly or handled via mechanics. The world then shifts in response, the conversation picks back up, and the cycle continues.

This game is rather light on rules, but new games or rules can still be intimidating. Players and the Referee do not need to memorize every rule before the first session. A cheat sheet is included with this game covering the essentials. If a rule is forgotten, ignore it or invent one on the spot, then look it up later. This will not ruin the game. What matters is that the story keeps moving and everyone at the table is having a good time.

• Read the Cheatsheet

Dice

This game uses polyhedral dice. They are written as D followed by a number indicating which die to roll. D4 is a four-sided die, D6 is a six-sided die, and so on. A number before the D means roll multiple dice and add the results together. 2D6 means roll two six-sided dice and sum them.

Each die type has a distinct role in the game:

• D20: This die is used for Ability Checks, testing a character’s prowess against difficult challenges.
• D4 to D12: These dice are used for Damage or Armor rolls during combat encounters. They are also used as “Step Dice”, a rule used to track anything that can be used up, wear out, run down, or draw near. For example, things like dwindling resources, consumables and faction goals.
• D%: This die is used as a Die of Fate, a rule that acts as an oracle for answering questions about the fiction when the player characters are not directly involved in the outcome. Note that in this case, we are talking about individual percentile die (labeled 10, 20, 30, … 90, 00, where 00 represents 100), not the combined D10 + D% roll you may have seen or used in other games.
• D66: These dice are used to draw results from the various rolling tables and generators in the game. To roll a D66, you roll a D6 twice. The first roll is the tens digit, the second is the ones digit. Results range from 11 to 66, for a total of 36 possible outcomes.

Play Materials

When playing in person, each player needs a printed copy of the character sheet, a set of polyhedral dice, and a pencil with an eraser. The Referee needs the same, along with a printed copy of the game’s cheat sheet.

When playing online, digital and interactive versions of the character sheet, cheat sheet, dice roller, and more are available on the resources page at https://farirpgs.com/nightsong/resources/.

Rulings

The rules in this game are very hackable, but will not cover every situation you may encounter. Bend them, break them, rebuild them to suit your table. This game is yours, so consider this our full permission to make it your own.

You are also encouraged to publish your own material, whether compatible (“Designed for use with Nightsong”) or derived from it (“Powered by Nightsong”). For more on this topic, visit https://farirpgs.com/nightsong/license.

High-resolution Nightsong branding assets are also available at https://farirpgs.com/nightsong/logos.

The Nightsong Rulebook

The complete rulebook contains everything needed to play in Penumbra or a world of your own making. It is organized into the following chapters.

• Introduction. The game’s core premise, play structure, and table roles.
• Setting. The major truths that define Penumbra and life within it.
• Character Creation. The full process for creating a freeblade and preparing for play.
• Rules. The mechanics that resolve uncertainty, conflict, and consequence.
• Procedures. The gameplay loops that structure moment-to-moment adventuring.
• Bestiary. The threats, foes, and entities that shape the game’s dangers.
• Guidelines. Practical direction for running the game and adapting outside material.

Now, let’s get started, shall we?