Crows Officially Annnounced by MCDM

MCDM Productions has officially announced Crows, a new dungeon-crawling RPG. The new RPG is being led by James Introcaso, with Nick De Spain directing the art. The game is described as a game about staring death in the face and grabbing as much loot from dungeons before your luck runs out. The game is played using D6s and D10s, with a health system similar to Knave in which inventory slots doubles as a health tracker.

In a Patreon post released today, Introcaso described Crows and its differences from Draw Steel. For one, experience points is determined by calculating the value of loot taken from a dungeon. Crows retains the power roll from Draw Steel but with some differences as to the result of the roll. Unlike Draw Steel, where the power roll always results in some kind of benefit for the player, the power roll in Crows has negative results for low rolls. However, players have no limit to the number of circumstantial bonuses they have in Crows, which can result in higher results with good planning.

Other nuances mentioned in the post include that all players can use any equipment they might find (spellbooks were given as an example), but some character classes will be more attuned to certain kinds of equipment. There's also a base building component to Crows, in which players build up the town they're headquartered in. There will also be a default campaign setting for Crows, described as a world in which Archmages were eventually corrupted by the magic they wielded and became Necromancers who waged war on each other until they all disappeared.

No release date was announced for Crows, but MCDM plans to provide updates on the development of Crows via its various social media platforms.

 

[mamba]

They released a free patreon post with some details

https://www.patreon.com/posts/introducing-149392033

 

[Tigris]

I do think its clever that a character is only/mainly determined through its items.


This also works well in some boardgames like Arcadia Quest (where also some characters have advantages using specific kind of equipment).

Thats why I ask myself (not only in this game but also others I saw).


Why is XP and levels even needed? Sounds like just a legacy thing / unnecessarily added complexity.


Especially when inventory is equal to health then buying nee bigger backpack for more space is similar to a levelup. (Gaining more health and potential more space for items to use like grimoires).

 

[zakael19]

Especially when inventory is equal to health then buying nee bigger backpack for more space is similar to a levelup. (Gaining more health and potential more space for items to use like grimoires).

Sounds like Backpack -= Wounds, but I'm assuming levels = some other stuff like Stamina and such? Inherent modifiers, skills, etc.

Struck me as "what if we took Trophy but made it actually crunchy" quite a bit reading through the Patreon post. The backpack usage die seems interesting though!

 

[Tigris]

Sounds like Backpack -= Wounds, but I'm assuming levels = some other stuff like Stamina and such? Inherent modifiers, skills, etc.

Sure levels will have some othet stuffs I am sure, I am asking more why not do the othet stuff also over equipment, since hp (or wounds) are one thing ehich most often comes with levels and even this can be made with equipment so maybe everything could?


Like in Beacon where your character is mostly base class features + equipment where higher class levels just unlocks other equipment but thats not necessarily needed.

 

[GMMichael]

The game is described as a game about staring death in the face and grabbing as much loot from dungeons before your luck runs out.

Sounds like the game I'm working on here:

Post in thread 'Test Adventure. Brave souls wanted.'

Today at 5:13 PM

First wrinkles:
I can nest child (subordinated) pages for better navigation on the Navigation pane.
Pages with child pages will need their child-pages-panes hidden.
NPC and item pages should probably have a hidden navigation pane too.
The Look action should probably be a spoiler window.
I can make actions look much better/cleaner by including the BB code for URLs in the source document (prior to pasting in browser).

• GMMichael

Send me a message if you need something to keep you busy until (no release date).

 

[TheAlkaizer]

The other games that I know that use a wound system with your encumbrance all don't allow to increase your carrying capacity. It's often modeled after your STR or something similar. Accumulating wounds often force you to either get rid of some items, or make them "unusable" depending on the system. It's very trendy in the OSR right now.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I read through the details, and it looks like there are lot of good ideas, but I'll be interested to see how many of them survive actual playtesting.

Personally I would say they are making some minor but correctable mistakes. Like, they want this to be survival horror, right? That's a headline feature/theme they keep talking about - they mention Resident Evil and Silent Hill.

Now, one of the major reasons survival horror works in video games is that there is never, ever any major RNG in it. The moment RNG gets seriously involved with survival horror, it stops becoming horror, and it becomes a numbers game, a game about mitigating RNG, not about survival horror. Survival horror relies on you suffering because of surprises, mistakes, overreaches, and so on, not because you got screwed by the dice.

And as such, side-based initiative, in which they explicitly say you can end up with monsters taking multiple turns in a row without the PCs being able to respond, is an incredibly bad fit. It's a dreadful fit even. What it means, in practice, is that you can be playing it full survival horror, playing it smart, playing careful, and still quite likely get absolutely TPK'd because, essentially, of a single dice roll (arguably two). There are ways to mitigate this, but they didn't mention a single one of them. In fact they only seemed to mention factors which might make it worse. I guarantee you that absolutely any trait, item, or class that gives the PCs better initiative rolls is going to be basically required as a result, certainly by the second time you play it.

I'd also add that their whole approach to "usage dice" and random encounters is going to have a similar effect, albeit a far less pronounced one. They won't get the focus on survival they want, because the whole game will likely become about mitigation of RNG, and players will just become increasing cautious, because unlike in most survival horror, the PCs can and probably should simply retreat once they've got enough loot to justify their expedition. There's no apparent requirement or real benefit to "getting to the end", whereas survival horror relies on that to keep you pressing forward.

I think what they're actually accidentally designing isn't a "survival horror" RPG, it's more like an "extraction shooter" RPG, which is a very different thing. There's overlap in that both are like high-stress, high engagement deals, but they're tonally different and require different mechanics.

 

[zakael19]

I read through the details, and it looks like there are lot of good ideas, but I'll be interested to see how many of them survive actual playtesting.

Personally I would say they are making some minor but correctable mistakes. Like, they want this to be survival horror, right? That's a headline feature/theme they keep talking about - they mention Resident Evil and Silent Hill.

Now, one of the major reasons survival horror works in video games is that there is never, ever any major RNG in it. The moment RNG gets seriously involved with survival horror, it stops becoming horror, and it becomes a numbers game, a game about mitigating RNG, not about survival horror. Survival horror relies on you suffering because of surprises, mistakes, overreaches, and so on, not because you got screwed by the dice.

And as such, side-based initiative, in which they explicitly say you can end up with monsters taking multiple turns in a row without the PCs being able to respond, is an incredibly bad fit. It's a dreadful fit even. What it means, in practice, is that you can be playing it full survival horror, playing it smart, playing careful, and still quite likely get absolutely TPK'd because, essentially, of a single dice roll (arguably two). There are ways to mitigate this, but they didn't mention a single one of them. In fact they only seemed to mention factors which might make it worse. I guarantee you that absolutely any trait, item, or class that gives the PCs better initiative rolls is going to be basically required as a result, certainly by the second time you play it.

I'd also add that their whole approach to "usage dice" and random encounters is going to have a similar effect, albeit a far less pronounced one. They won't get the focus on survival they want, because the whole game will likely become about mitigation of RNG, and players will just become increasing cautious, because unlike in most survival horror, the PCs can and probably should simply retreat once they've got enough loot to justify their expedition. There's no apparent requirement or real benefit to "getting to the end", whereas survival horror relies on that to keep you pressing forward.

I think what they're actually accidentally designing isn't a "survival horror" RPG, it's more like an "extraction shooter" RPG, which is a very different thing. There's overlap in that both are like high-stress, high engagement deals, but they're tonally different and require different mechanics.

I think they're going to wind up with "survival horror" as the like wrapping or vibe for creatures / world, but what you said WRT classic "extraction looter" mechanics.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I think they're going to wind up with "survival horror" as the like wrapping or vibe for creatures / world, but what you said WRT classic "extraction looter" mechanics.

Yeah I think they're going to end up in basically a medieval fantasy PvE version of The Hunt: Showdown 1896, which is pretty much exactly "survival horror monsters, extraction shooter mechanics".

(Totally irrelevant to this but extremely funny to see The Hunt doing a collab with Post Malone of all people - I know what I think of when I think of edgy 1896-set horror-themed extraction shooter is "bad trailer trash-themed rapper known for looking like MrBeast but with bad tats and worse grilles". A man with a true "face that never knew the time before ipads")