Crows Officially Announced 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.

 

[Not a Decepticon]

Except the idea of 'gaining victories' lends to a wholly different tone. Crows is more of a survival horror tone - that is undermined if characters get more POWERFUL as the adventure progresses; survival horror IS about dwindling power and the approach of the death spiral; as opposed to the building towards a heroic climax.

Except when you look at Resident Evil's standard game lopp, repeated in all survival horror that takes from it, and the longer you survive, the more resources and ways to deal with enemies you unlock and more tricks to avoid or bypass or one-shot them you learn. Hell, RE games themselves give you a ROCKET LAUNCHER for the final boss.

 

[Mannahnin]

Yeah, I think some of this is just conceptual mismatches.

Are we emphasizing the SURVIVAL, or the HORROR? If it's a true horror story we certainly don't expect the whole party to survive, but in an ongoing RPG (as opposed to a one-shot) we're certainly going to need that to happen pretty often.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Except when you look at Resident Evil's standard game lopp, repeated in all survival horror that takes from it, and the longer you survive, the more resources and ways to deal with enemies you unlock and more tricks to avoid or bypass or one-shot them you learn. Hell, RE games themselves give you a ROCKET LAUNCHER for the final boss.

That feels like a level design thing, rather than a character gaining inherent power thing, though.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

If it's a true horror story we certainly don't expect the whole party to survive, but in an ongoing RPG (as opposed to a one-shot) we're certainly going to need that to happen pretty often.

Or make it really easy to roll up new characters, as in Mothership and most OSR games.

 

[Mannahnin]

Or make it really easy to roll up new characters, as in Mothership and most OSR games.

Even in most OSR games, if there are deaths in the majority of sessions character continuity will suffer (although you can substitute group continuity) and character advancement stall, and it frustrates players.

 

[aramis erak]

Yeah, the OSR scene is generally more about OD&D through B/X and 1E.

2E began the shift (with an optional rule that I suspect may have been the norm at most tables) of focusing on getting XP for overcoming challenges rather than making it back to town with treasure. That change to the gameplay loop changes what a fantasy RPG is about pretty dramatically.

That shift predates 2E by YEARS... just look at the Palladium XP gains tables from 1981's The Mechanoids.

Experience Points Table
25 - Kill a minor menace (killing a couple of
75 - Kill a major menace (like a couple of Brutes or Runners)
100 - Kill a great menace (especially single handed)
75 Avoid unnecessary violence
50 Daring (clever or not)
25 Clever but futile idea
50 Clever, useful idea or action
75 Quick thinking or action
200 - A critical plan or action that saves the character or a few comrades.
400 - A critical plan or action that saves the entire group or several people
400 - Self sacrifice (or potential self sacrifice)
50 - Playing in character bonus

Note that, while I own a dead tree of the original version, and have checked it against the reprint, I actually copied from the reprint, knowing, error included, its accurate to the original 1981.
Or, at least, to the printing I have, which, by now, is probably red text on red paper...
Siembieda was reacting to the 1970's D&D (not sure even if he'd seen AD&D yet) when he wrote his mechanics.
In his rant which precedes the list, he completely overlooks the XP for gold retrieved/acquired in play... when asked about it in the past he's mentioned that his friend group ignored that rule by 1978... I don't consider KS a reliable narrator, but his rants in rules are a fixed point, and what he chose to emphasize in his "not quite D&D" rulesystem, and what he chose to rant about around it, spotlights what he saw.

Tunnels and Trolls
§1.9 Adventure Points...
Daring: 100 per level of dungeon
Saving Rolls: Level of save × actual roll on the dice (counting open ending).
GM call for doing "something unusual, even foolhardy."
Combat: MR or sum of attributes for defeat. GM call if shared or if awarded full to all.
Casting Magic: 1 per ST spent.
Treasure and Magic Items:
"Once upon a time experience points were
given for treasure and magical items found and
carried off, but no longer! Properly speaking, cash
is its own reward , and there is no reason why a
character who stumbles across a diamond worth
10,000 GP, picks it up and walks off, should get
10,000 ex perience points."

So, by 1979, several game designers were ranting against the use of XP for treasure in RPGs.

Meanwhile, others, like Stephan Michael Sechi and Vernie Taylor, authors of The Arcanum (which I have 2nd of, 1985) were still doing monster and treasure XP... but had an extensive list of other things, such as religious conversions, non-magical successful influence of NPCs, rescuing NPCs...

And then there was Rolemaster... the 1982 version with XP for distance, XP for every roll, XP for every hit taken or inflicted, oen for ever SP spent casting for adventure effects, XP for every critical taken... there's a fracking worksheet for it. And it firmly puts the onus on the player to track it.
The GM gets to give bonus XP...

So D&D was merely catching up with the Joneses with AD&D's move to adding non-combat non-treaure XP... but still allowed treasure XP, even as many GMs houseruled it away, and many other games marginalized treasure XP.

Makes me wonder what the XP award table looks like.

 

[dbm]

Loot cards would also be a good way to make generating reams of loot, Diablo-style, something fun and easy to do, rather than dragging the game to a halt.

If one went all-in on that concept the wave of ‘card crafting’ games that have started to come out could have an interesting trick to steal. Games like Unstoppable where a card can be built up from a base card and up to two enhancements.

That could be used to quickly generate an almost infinite number of magical doo-dads to acquire. And the cards could be tiered so you can see a clear progression in effect as you delve deeper. Just pull a base and random enhancement(s) to get an instant loot drop.