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.

 

[THEMNGMNT]

On the other hand, I suspect that players will tend to pigeonhole their characters into certain class-like archetypes anyway. Once you start investing in, say, melee attributes, you start thinking of yourself as a "fighter" and you continue to invest in those attributes/skills/equipment. So class becomes self-defining.

Reading on...


But isn't that true regardless of whether or not there are classes? At least, I've never seen players in a class-based game say, "Yeah, you know what...it's not worth the risk. What if the only treasure I find is a wand, which I can't use? Better to just sit in the tavern where it's safe."

So, again, I like the flavor, and I like class-less games, but I'm not following the logic of how the game design drives the expected behavior.

Have you checked out Knave? It's an inspiration for Crows. Knave has no classes. No skills. No feats. Not even species. Nothing but attributes. Attributes and gear. So all character growth is through gear. That creates a motivation to go adventuring that's heightened even more than the default for D&D.

The particular genius of Knave is that when you get seriously wounded, wounds take up inventory slots. The same inventory slots that hold your gear. There's an intrinsic tension built into the game -- you need to adventure to get gear and gain power, but adventuring can cause you to lose gear and lose power. Brilliant stuff.

I first read Knave a couple months ago. My first thought was to fuse it with Shadowdark to have at least a little bit of additional character customization. I looked around but couldn't find an existing game which did that, so I started writing up my own. A few weeks later, Crows was announced. I guess something is in the air.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Have you checked out Knave? It's an inspiration for Crows. Knave has no classes. No skills. No feats. Not even species. Nothing but attributes. Attributes and gear. So all character growth is through gear. That creates a motivation to go adventuring that's heightened even more than the default for D&D.

The particular genius of Knave is that when you get seriously wounded, wounds take up inventory slots. The same inventory slots that hold your gear. There's an intrinsic tension built into the game -- you need to adventure to get gear and gain power, but adventuring can cause you to lose gear and lose power. Brilliant stuff.

I first read Knave a couple months ago. My first thought was to fuse it with Shadowdark to have at least a little bit of additional character customization. I looked around but couldn't find an existing game which did that, so I started writing up my own. A few weeks later, Crows was announced. I guess something is in the air.

I haven't looked at Knave. Maybe if I did then I would understand the connection better.

Maybe it's like XP: it's always tempting to see if one more door will get you just a little more XP. So in a gear-based game maybe it's similar?

At the same time, I have a hard time disassociating "gear-based" from video games like WoW and Diablo. I hope that is a misapprehension...

 

[zakael19]

At the same time, I have a hard time disassociating "gear-based" from video games like WoW and Diablo. I hope that is a misapprehension...

In those examples, your gear tweaks your class build and gives bonuses to certain things - but your class and talents determine your skills and such. If you wanted a MMO like to draw a parallel to for some reason, I think Guild Wars 2 would make more sense - the weapons you equip there entirely determine your available skills (but still by class so not a perfect analogy). Equip a spell book to cast spells, equip a 1her to have a shield and hit things.

 

[TheAlkaizer]

I don't think anyone shared this yet (unless there's another thread about the game). I'm intrigued.

 

[tetrasodium]

It doesn't seem like anyone has posted about it since the teaster got posted to patreon a few days back so I figured I'd channel The Necromancers from Crows & revive this. MMCDM put out an 18 page preview/teaser packet for crows recently & James Introcaso along with DeficientMaster were in a pretty good Questing Beast interview about old school & modern campaigns. The rules very much carry old school gameplay vibes in good ways while being viscerally different from what is typically seen in OSR games.

Spoiler: video here

link

I'm including the video because he talks a little about Crows.
The teaser packet is heavy on lore and contains parts of a many interesting subsystems related to skills player driven problem solving & so on. The filename mentions"Rules Preview" & you can kinda piece together a lot by reading through it , but in isolation I think that the world lore conveys a lot more of stuff not telegraphed in the interview so I'll quote some of that instead of misleading anyone with isolated rules snippets.

Spoiler: fortune or Death

Fortune or Death!
Crows is unfair. It doesn’t care about your
character’s level. Charge at a behemoth without
a good plan to take it down, and you’re probably
going to end up as a puddle of gore. This game’s
math hasn’t been balanced to ensure players win
most of the time.
But the unfairness goes both ways. Come with
a clever plan to defeat that behemoth, like
dropping the cave ceiling on their head while
they slumber, and you can win the day without a
fight. A good plan or clever thinking won’t just
save your life, it’ll get you paid—and that’s the
whole point. Your life will be easier and you’ll
still get the gold and the XP if you can just sneak
by that behemoth with your pockets full of coins.
In Crows, the players create adventurers in a
desolate world who dive into horror-infested
ruins for gold, gems, and other treasures.
Sure, these adventurers occasionally perform
courageous, selfless acts and might be moral
people, but they aren’t heroes. It’s greed, thrill-
seeking, or lack of other ways to make a living
that drives them into the dark where gold and
ravenous eyes gleam in the torchlight. It’s a risky
job—surviving a dungeon takes strength, smarts,
and reflexes. Coming out a little richer than you
were going in also takes luck.
The rules of Crows are inspired by some
incredible games that are also worth your time
and money. Check out Apocalypse World, The
Black Hack, Cairn, Knave, Mausritter, Shadowdark,
and Troika!
Cornath Optional
The rules refer to the land of Cornath, the
campaign setting where the dungeons included
with Crows are set. The Ref can use just the rules
of this game to creatre their own monsters,
dungeons, items, traits, backgrounds, and
campaign setting and ignore the lore of Cornath.

Spoiler: Welcome to Cornath

Welcome to Cornath
Cornath wasn’t always this way. Marigolds
bloomed in the fall, snow fell gently in the
winter, the songbirds twittered through the
spring, and summers passed hot and pleasant.
The Archmages ruled together, using magic to
ensure their people would prosper. These same
leaders tore Cornath asunder.
For all their research and books, the Archmages
didn’t know that magic, their tool and the stuff
of chaos, was sentient. Tired of being bent by the
will of the Archmages, magic retaliated, causing
deep tragedy for each leader. In trying to reverse
these catastrophes, the Archmages reached too
far, using magic to correct errors until chaos
poisoned their souls and made them wicked.
As greed and suspicion grew in their shrinking
hearts, the Archmages raised armies of the dead,
summoned monsters from other worlds, and
twisted animals amd plants to create horrifying,
hungry amalgamations. Their forces warred,
uncaring for the innocent people the Archmages
once protected caught in a tide of blood. The
powerful spells of the Archmages suffused the
land with a toxic fog called the Miasma that turns
good folk cruel. The people gave their once-great
leaders a new name—Necromancers.
The survivors of the War of Necromancers dug
into the ruins of their once-great kingdoms and
huddled together to keep the monsters at bay.
Fifty years ago the war began. Ten years ago,
the Necromancers disappeared, but their beasts
remain, living in the bones of Cornath. The small
villages of survivors started to venture out into
the Miasma to find each other. In this harsh,
cruel world, humanity began to reconnect, and
with it came renewed trade. The roads were
overgrown and perilous, but the chance to make
coin had merchants traveling and gave rise to
the crows—scavengers brave or foolish enough
to pick over the bones of the dead in monster-
infested holes. The crows hope that each new
ruin they enter holds wealth waiting to be
unveiled by torchlight. Many find only death.

There are a bunch of Necromancers described & all of them start out with a powerful mage who tried to do something good but through their own failures & corruption brought down a civilization in the process of creating the dungeons players delve for riches. Here's one

Spoiler: Amaryll

The Necromancers
Once the benevolent and wise Archmages, each
Necromancers has an associated magic discipline
and monster type.
Amaryll
Amaryll the Generous, virtuoso with elemental
magic, created spells that helped control the
weather and grow farms. To help feed an
expanding populace, she cast a spell to make the
sun shine with greater nourishment. The magic
unexpectedly enhanced the sun’s heat and length
of days, scorching crops. To make up for the
shortage she created a new breed of supernatural
plants ... that turned out to be more interested
in eating humans than providing food for them.
Amaryll didn’t see their creation as a blunder,
but rather as an improvement over humans.
Her plant monsters were evolved creature who
deserved to inherit the earth from humans. She
deserved the power of the other Necromancers.

The Necromancers all have a really interesting linked goal & disaster with some of them getting their start by reacting to other Necromancers.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Definitely in the spirit of OSR, based on those snippets. Only a fool fights fair.

 

[zakael19]

I saw somebody posting a looking for group on r/lfgmisc to trial the very early alpha rules that they've pushed to Patreons apparently.

 

[ffanxii4ever]

Yeah, some people seem borderline rabid for it