← All games
A schematic of the Song of Avenir board: the hundred-space Song Track runs around the edge, with a moon on each corner for midnight and the Demon King's crown waiting at the top right; inside it lie the four wilds, one for each day, the Highlands, the Wastes, the Forest and the Outlands; and in the middle is the walled town, the Castle at its north gate, sixteen locations along two crossing high streets, and the dungeon's gatehouse where the streets meet
Placeholder art A schematic of the board, drawn for this page.

Flight FBG-004 · Board game

Song of Avenir

Four days. One frontier town. Then the Demon King.

You died, and woke up in silk: reborn as a noble heir in Avenir, a lawless frontier town built on top of a sealed dungeon. Hire adventurers, put them to work, and fight off whatever comes out of the wilds, while the Demon King marches on the walls. He arrives at midnight on the fourth day, and how the town meets him decides how the song remembers you.

  • 1 to 6 players
  • Semi-cooperative
  • Worker placement
  • Tactical combat
  • Est. $60–90
  • Brennan Pope
  • Art in the works

Vote for Song of Avenir to go to Kickstarter first. One vote each, and you can move it any time.

All art here is placeholder art. Every image on this page is a stand-in from the game's prototype, or a diagram drawn for this page. It will be updated for the Kickstarter campaign.

The premise

Bad news: you just died.

Bad news: You just died. Good news: You have been reborn into a new world of magic and monsters! Even better news: You awoke in silk.

Avenir is a lawless frontier town built over the sealed ruins of a First Age dungeon, and the Demon King is marching on it to reclaim the crown locked away below. You and your siblings are the town's noble heirs. Your job isn't to rule it. It's to be remembered: to carve your name so deep into the town's last four days that you become the subject of its greatest myth, the Song of Avenir.

How it plays

Hire, work, fight, endure.

  1. 01

    Hire

    Recruit adventurers at the Guild. Each one has a name, a class and a magical voice. Your party can take one of each class, and only two of any class can work the town at once.

  2. 02

    Work

    Send your party to the town's workstations. Every task takes hours, counted down on the worker's own board, and the worker keeps the seat until the job is done. Find every seat taken and you'll have to work somewhere else.

  3. 03

    Fight

    Monsters roam the wilds, bounties go up at the Guild, and Wave Bosses march on the walls. When a fight breaks out the clock stops, and both sides strike at once, round after round, until one side falls or flees.

  4. 04

    Endure

    At midnight on the fourth day the Demon King reaches the gates. The Climax decides how the world ends, and the ending decides whose legacy counts for the most.

Combat

HP is a puzzle, not a number.

Every monster prints its HP as a row of squares. Each square names a type and a value, and one die fills one square, in any order. A Slash square wants a blade; a Blue square wants ice. Your dice can't stand in for each other: bring the right type, or a technique that makes it.

The Clan Chieftain's HP as five squares: Slash 8, Blue 4 or more, Strike 5 or more, and two squares that take any die showing 4 or more. Two Black Slash dice, a 5 and a 3, are stacked in the Slash 8; a Blue die showing 4 fills the Blue square; a Black 6 fills one of the any-die squares. The Strike square and the other any-die square are still open
Placeholder art The Clan Chieftain's HP, three squares filled. A square above 6 takes two dice of its own type stacked together, so his Slash 8 needs two Black Slash dice: here, a 5 and a 3.

  • Both sides strike at once

    Every round, everyone plans, rolls and places dice at the same time. There's no initiative and no waiting for your turn to come round.

  • Wounds stay where they land

    A placed die stays put, round to round and fight to fight, until it's healed. Armor is a row of squares too, broken before the HP, and so is every weapon's wear: fill it and the weapon breaks.

  • Two dice, never three

    Stack a second die to push a roll higher, but never a third. A high square isn't a lucky roll; it's holding two of the right color when it counts.

  • Brutal on purpose

    The early game is meant to be deadly. A fight you walk into unprepared is a fight you can lose, and a fallen hero doesn't always get back up.

Five colors

Every body sings one voice.

Magic in Avenir comes in four colors of dice, and every monster and adventurer sings exactly one of them, or none at all. Each color leaves its own mark where it wounds, and each has an opposite it can't stand: fire against ice, storm against nature.

  • Red Ember

    Sets its target aflame.

  • Yellow Spark

    Stuns.

  • Green Leaf

    Poisons.

  • Blue Tear

    Freezes.

  • Black The Force

    No magic at all: steel, muscle and will.

And every body can raise its own voice when it has to. A character draws a die of its own color from the bag and strikes with it, then pays for the note with a wound of the opposite color on its own body. It can sing on its last square of HP, and die on the note.

The Adventurer's Guild

Thirty adventurers. One for every class and voice.

Six classes, five voices, and exactly one adventurer for each pair. You hire the person, not the class: each card prints its own name, class and voice. Since your party takes one of each class, the question is which voice you seat in each.

Red Yellow Green Blue Black
Barbarian Ignis Brokk Torva Bram Alaric
Bard Isolde Darian Lucian Nerissa Tobin
Knight Garrick Roderick Kaelia Kaelen Gideon
Mage Jareth Elara Theron Vela Orik
Ranger Mira Halia Eira Finn Nyx
Rogue Faye Cassian Jax Cora Vex

Placeholder art The class and color marks from the prototype cards.

The Royal Heirs

Six souls, reborn.

You play one of six heirs: a soul from our world in a new body. They're the only characters in the game who sing two voices, one for the body and one for the soul.

  • Yellowand Blue

    The Chivalric Soul

    Lord Valerius

    Last life: Marcus Vance, stuck in gray cubicles in a world without honor. This life: he slipped out to the Castle garrison for the Vanguard's discipline, and the bond between knight and steed.

  • Greenand Red

    The Untamed Soul

    Lady Sylas

    Last life: Maya Lin, choking on the exhaust of a sprawling city. This life: over the balcony and into the Whispering Woods, running barefoot through the mud beside the alpha of a pack.

  • Redand Yellow

    The Unbound Soul

    Lord Kaelen

    Last life: Ethan Wright, trapped in a body that failed him. This life: a perfectly healthy one, taken up to the Northern Highlands to wrestle the Barbarian clans' fiercest beasts.

  • Yellowand Green

    The Seeking Soul

    Lord Aldous

    Last life: Dr. Elias Thorne, who died with his life's work unfinished. This life: breaking into the Academy's restricted archives at night, with a very clever familiar.

  • Blueand Red

    The Forgotten Soul

    Lord Darian

    Last life: Jax Miller, crushed by debt. This life: robbing his own family's vaults to fund the Shadows, guided through the sewers by the whiskered king of the slums.

  • Greenand Blue

    The Voiceless Soul

    Lady Seraphina

    Last life: Clara Reed, an artist drowned out by the noise of the world. This life: busking in the streets in disguise, with a stray alley cat, to make a hard frontier town feel something.

Why it works

A siege you can't survive alone, and a song only one of you can own.

  • A fragile alliance

    The town has to survive for anyone to win the usual way, so you'll work together. But darker victories open up if it falls, and a sibling sliding toward corruption may be counting on it.

  • Your plaque on the wall

    Build a wall or a tower and your plaque goes on it, worth Reputation if it survives the end. Upgrade a rival's wall, and your plaque replaces theirs.

  • A town that grows

    Every location opens as a tent. Build it up to wood, then to stone, and it opens new workstations for everyone who comes after.

  • Every weapon is an invention

    Every weapon starts the game face down. Spend the town's Inspiration to invent one, and the guild pays you a prize for it.

  • Your morality decides if you come back

    A saintly heir who falls is brought back for free. A damned one doesn't come back at all.

  • A dungeon under the town

    Beneath the town square lies a dungeon three floors deep, with the Demon Crown sealed at the bottom. Its treasures are real, and most of them are heavy.

The Climax

Four endings. One new world order.

When the Demon King reaches the gates, the game ends in one of four ways. The ending sets the new world order on the Morality Track, and every player scores by how close their own morality sits to it. A spotless hero can come away with nothing if the Demon King wins, and whoever did the most legendary deeds takes a large bonus.

  • The Demon King is slain.
  • The Crown is shattered.
  • The Demon King reunites with his Crown.
  • A player claims the Crown as the Usurper.

What's in the box

Everything a four-day siege needs.

  • 1 game board, 20 by 20 inches: the walled town and its sixteen locations, 72 zones of wilderness, and the 100-space Song Track around the edge
  • 180 dice in five colors, drawn from a cloth bag
  • 18 character boards, two layers deep: 6 for the heirs and 12 for hired adventurers, two for each class
  • The Close Combat Book, spiral-bound: nineteen battlegrounds, each with its rules on the left page and its map on the right
  • Standees for every heir, adventurer, day laborer and monster, up to the Demon King
  • Hundreds of cards: 30 adventurers, 55 quests, 245 techniques, 47 relics and scrolls, 36 secrets, and the Overland and Dungeon decks
  • Resource chips for iron, timber, leather, food, water and more, and two-sided status tokens

Prototype contents, still in design. Counts will change before the Kickstarter.

Where it stands

In active design.

Song of Avenir is being designed and playtested now. Its rulebook runs to fourteen chapters, with appendices for its cards. Its rules are tried out in hand-played test games, and its combat is checked in a computer simulation that fights out thousands of battles. We expect it to sell for about $60 to $90; the final price is set at launch.

About the art

Placeholder for now.

Every image on this page is placeholder art: the flat marks from the prototype's cards, and diagrams drawn for this page. All of it will be updated for the Kickstarter campaign. Want to see it there first? Give it your vote.