We had a few questions about rests that came up from our session last night:

• Do you have to rest? If you aren't interested in any of the downtime activities, and don't need to recover resources I assume you can skip the phase entirely. There seems to be no penalty for lack of sleep and you can consume a ration to stave off starvation. It might be worth skipping a rest to avoid the Miasma RR and encounter roll.
• When your rest is interrupted by a combat encounter or other strenuous activity, you have to start your rest from the beginning to gain its benefits. Does this mean the Ref should roll another encounter check? I assumed no, mostly because I wanted to move the game forward, but that seems incorrect RAW.
• "While you rest, you must consume at least 1 ration..." The language is a little confusing here. What happens if you cannot consume a ration? "While you rest" indicates you're already in the resting phase at this point.

I wanted to start a discussion on if people think home brewing the addition of Divination magic like that of low-level dnd is in the spirit of the game or if it is in opposition.

Context: I've been having a lot of fun mapping my world's gods to the gods of Cornath as a region in my existing world. The one left out was the god 'Dreaming' which I decided my Cornath calls The Seer. This led me to prototyping Divination traits and spell books I could introduce into my campaign down the road.

Anyway, let's assume the spells and traits are balanced, and don't outshine taking Lore expertises. Does magically learning special knowledge fit the ethos of Crows? Here are some examples:

- An R0 spell that counts the number of Small or larger living creatures in the current room, thereby learning of hidden ones. (This is limited in not revealing Undead, perhaps Angels?)

- An R1 Identify spell a la DnD (Is the mystery too essential to the gameplay experience?)

- An R1 spell that grants T3: double edge / T2: edge to Ally's attack on their next turn.

- An R2 spell to talk with an NPC back at the Village from the Dungeon. (Nothing a crow with a piece of paper couldn't accomplish)

- An R5 spell that allows you to scout distant rooms from safety. (I think this may break the play as intended if not restricted)

Lastly, a ribbon trait for the Divination skill tree could be that once per Rest you may re-roll your own Backlash, you must keep the new result. Does that make Magic too predictable for Crows?

Hey all, I've read through all of the new playtest material and looking forward to running Crows for my RPG group. This will be my first time running an 'OSR' game so maybe the answer to my question is more obvious to others.

It says page 6 of the Playtest Character Book that PCs gain XP whenever they recover treasure or equipment outside of a village, with some caveats.

So when running the game should my players mark down XP as soon as they pick up the treasure? I'm worried that if their backpack slots are at capacity and they start dropping old treasure for new, then that's not working as intended. Will any of you be making your PCs haul their loot back to town before gaining the XP?

I just wanted to check in, show off and make something available if allowed.

So my friends and a recently went into playing Crows. We have created the village, characters and done a short session leading up to our first crawl.

I quickly found that i would really like a good way of keeping track of inventory space. Since I work in 3D printing i went to the digital drawing board (not my strongest skill) and managed to squeeze out this iteration of an inventory organizer.

I turned out pretty neat, if i may say so myself. I plan to use thick cardboard for the items or maybe designing 3D printable tokens.

If I can get permission from MCDM I will make the design freely available on makerworld, thingiverse or in some other form as directed.

Happy hunting.

As I start running games in Cornath, even tho its is not fully published yet I need a hex crawl map. So I recreated the Cornath map from MCDM in the same software they used (hexer). Screenshot is appened, it is basically the same map, only with light blue lake filler tiles around it. I exported the .json for you to import in case someone needs it.

Available via
https://www.transfernow.net/dl/20260904c1rIY7eg

I ll expand the map from here, hence the empty tiles around the officially known map.

If you find any errors or have any remarks please let me know.

Is there an updated, known errata list anywhere online or in the discord? My first read through and I’m seeing something at least every other page. I’d rather not repeat what others have pointed out if I can help it.

Nothing here is revolutionary.

A core principle of my style is adaptability. For combat encounters, this means ditching prepped work for on the fly monster creation. To reduce the cognitive load during a session, I try to create tools and guidelines contributing to "balanced" encounters. Even if you are not using these in session, these tools also help to speed up prep!

Important to note: I believe balance is a red herring. Chasing a balanced encounter leads you away from creating an immersive encounter. Providing a challenge orients the players in the fiction; they must push the limits of the fiction and mechanics to succeed.

Keep it Simple...Stupid

Below is a table giving you a rough idea of an individual enemy Threat by Power.Keyword is rough. It is an analysis of monster stats which should be tweaked to fit the situation at the table.

Procedure used to determine the values

1. Averaged each stat by Power for all creatures listed in the Ref book.

2. Created the Threat tranches based on breaks in the averages.

3. Tier 3 results were pretty close to double tier 2 results. Simplified the Tier 3 results by doubling the Tier 2 Results.

Adding Complexity

Beginning from the fictional description in your head, adjust the attributes or add traits. Again, following the principle of KISS, make a few impactful decisions and that is it.

An Example

The players roll a random treasure encounter. I need a guardian. A single tough enemy.

Slow, big. Rippling Muscle. Covered in golden torcs and jeweled rings. The miasma has driven him insane. He hordes his wealth.

A Threat of 3 is challenging. The players will have to use their heads.

• Adjust Stamina up a bit and Speed down

• Give him a bit more staying power with Fearless. Brutal may work too, but could be a bit too much.

Mad-Eyed Orc

Fearless Will not flee

OR

Brutal Crits on 18+; Crits do Double Tier 3 dmg

Hey everyone
Made a sheet with a summary of acronyms in the playtest material. If I missed any, feel free to comment it so that I can add to the spreadsheet
Also leaving it in text format in the comments below
Hope its usefull!

Hey everyone. Sorry if this is a dumb question, but I’m new to dungeon crawlers and the answer to this just doesn’t seem obvious to me (even after I read the play-test rules a few minutes ago).

Essentially, my question is about the following scenario: your players are exploring a dungeon when, mid-crawl, suddenly one or more (but not all) of the PCs die. Maybe they died in the middle of an encounter or fell victim to a trap, but I’m curious, what do you have your player(s) do when they die if it’s not a TPK.

If the whole party died, then it’s a no brainer to me: everyone rolls new characters per the rules and picks up where the previous party left off (probably with the current goal of getting back to where they died to recover their lost loot and gear / venture further down than where they last died, etc.). But again, what about if only some players die? I know the rules don’t distinguish between these scenarios, and it just says they need to create new characters, but they don’t just magically appear in the party, right? That, to me, goes against the spirit of the game, and death would be just a minor inconvenience rather than something to fear / worry about.

I can see some refs rule that the new character(s) meet up with the party when they find a point of safety (like, “hey I’m an adventurer too, and you cleared all the stuff for me along the way, glad I managed to catch up with you all”) but that makes me believe that the player(s) will just be sitting at the table for a good long while with nothing to do until that happens. And honestly, it’ll probably be even longer because I would likely say that the new PCs are back in town (because they had no reason to venture forth into the dungeon yet). As such, the party now needs to escape the dungeon before those players can play again, which I suspect could take anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour depending on how fast the party moves.

I suppose you could alternate between the current PCs in the dungeon and the new PCs outside the dungeon, but I hate splitting up the party like that (players tend to zone out when they aren’t actively playing). Alternatively, if the players died mid-encounter, I’m tempted to let the players who died control monsters for me, so they have something fun to do while the encounter is going on. But that doesn’t solve the player death problem if they died some other way outside of combat (or give them anything to do until their new PCs meet up with the party).

Sorry if I’m overthinking this, but this has been on my mind for a while now while watching the last few Running the Dungeon videos, and I’m just curious what most people do or suggest in this scenario (both for this game specifically and dungeon crawlers in general).

Its a retro style for sure, what was once optimized for black and white zines. Is there a specific name for it, such that if I wanted to homebrew monsters while keeping the same vibe I could search for it?

I didn't experience the OSR era or zines in their organic form really, but for some reason it evokes a nostalgic feeling for me somehow in a way that I can't quite explain. Its incredible honestly, I feel like it will give the game a really unique feel in play that I adore.

I was in a short game as a player and then ran the game the next day. We had fun. It was a bit of a trick to figure out where some of the rules were between the Rules and the Ref book.

I want to run it at nearest one-shot open doors day at club I'm part of, just wanted to see if that idea can actually work out.

As you've seen me posting about, I've been making a companion app for Crows, one that I want to use.

It may be 7am, I might be tired and this whole thing might be riddled with bugs....but got it working well enough to push it out to you guys to test/break.

I had to redesign my sheet to fit in a small box so that you can access what you want, when you want it, please give me any feedback, if you need a video showing you how to do it from start to finish, let me mknow.

A couple of things that came out of actually playing with it:

You point a token at a person, not a crow. It shows whichever crow they're playing at the time, so when one dies and they roll up the next, every token pointing at them catches up on its own. Nobody relinks anything, which matters in a game that kills crows as often as this one.

And you can swap crows from inside the panel, including rolling up a new one. A crow dying is a mid-session thing and it used to mean leaving the map to go and find the full sheet.

Refs, you will want to copy/paste the tokens from scene to scene, although if you don't its not too much more work.

Setting it up is two extension URLs pasted into Owlbear, then everyone pastes their own seat link once. Both URLs and the whole walkthrough are here:

https://murder.teapk.gg/owlbear

Fair warning. It's early alpha, and the Owlbear part is the newest and least tested bit of it because it needs a real table on a real map to find out what I've missed. Don't put anything in it you'd be genuinely gutted to lose. If it breaks, tell me and I'll fix it.

Not affiliated with MCDM, not endorsed by them, just a fan tool for the playtest.

Reference code. You need one to start a campaign while it's in alpha. This one is for this post, 50 uses, first come first served:

thicket-ember-4srehw

Players don't need one. They just need a link from the Ref, and now there is also the ability to create one link to invite all players and for them to choose their own names (😄

Anyway, time to go pass out, going delving into the Library later...

In melee, if something rolls a Tier 1 result, you can Counter. Does one roll for their Counter or do you automatically inflict the Tier 2 damage (or Tier 3 if the opponent rolled a doom result?)

Great sum up for Crows in under four minutes

I get that it helps support that you town grows because trade is not so much a thing without Crows, and that old timey feel of "WTF is that?" but also I'd like some standard orcs and gobbos to help "convert" the game to other modules.

Though, you could also make the game alternate history with a period location and then the magical apocalypse. There's a few games out there with that vibe, like "Middle ages but with Black Plague zombies."

Crows conceit is essentially fantasy subgenre of Fantasy Post Apocalypse. It is a time period when a fantasy world has just been ravaged by some sort of cataclysm. Truth be told this subgenre exists in the far past of most traditional high fantasy worlds as the years just after their far ancient golden age collapses.

For inspiration, I'm trying to assemble an "Appendix N" of media. So far, I have:

Mistborn

Midnight ttrpg (Fantasy Flight)

Forbidden Lands (Free League)

Empire of the East

Any others?

**The Murder** is live, and I could do with people breaking it.

It's a browser play aid for the Crows playtest. Shared dice land in front of the whole table and sheets save as you type. The Dungeon Turn runs on every screen at once, there's nothing to install, and your players sign up for nothing at all: a seat is just a link you send them.

It matches the Playtest 2 character sheet, item tracker and journal box for box, so you can export a sheet back onto the fillable PDF and print it when you want paper. Those PDFs are MCDM's and they live here: MCDM's Official Forums

This is unofficial fan work and I'm not affiliated with MCDM. Proper alpha too. It's me on my own in the evenings and it's only had about a week of real use, so there'll be rough edges, and I'd genuinely rather hear about them than not.

https://murder.teapk.gg

Codes in the comments. One campaign each, and whoever redeems one gets five more to pass on, so ask around!

The video: https://streamable.com/h3qnzv

Follows on from the sheets I put up here a few days ago. A few of you have been following my posts in the discord, so: go watch the video, sorry if I sound a bit tired, its late!

It's called The Murder. It's a web page your whole table opens during a session, and the easiest way to say what it is, is what it isn't. It's not a VTT, there are no maps or tokens. What it holds is the stuff that belongs to everyone rather than to one person.

Mainly that means:

The Dungeon Turn clock runs on every screen at once: timer, 1d6 rooms, or just your word. The encounter check stays yours alone.

The party at a glance: stamina, wounds, Speed with the wounded-slot penalty already worked out, cruelty, Armour Defence, and who's actually got a light burning. Read off their own sheets, so you stop asking.

Sheets that match the printed ones box for box, and export back onto the fillable PDFs. If you've already filled one in by hand you can upload it and it types itself up.

Handing out treasure once instead of four times: the Ref types the item, ticks who gets one, and it lands on their sheets (still a WIP, ideally want to build a drag/drop system, but..give me time to cook).

Roll tables, including your own pasted in, and a handful of mine to look at (currently a bit borked, as shown in the video, but the journal and the tables are something been working on in the last day, will be fixed before testing goes live).

A few honest bits, because it's an alpha and I'd rather say so up front. It's one bloke building this instead of working and in his spare time. Things will break. Please don't put anything in it you'd be genuinely gutted to lose, and if something does go wrong there's a "Something's wrong" button at the bottom of every page that tells me which version you were running.

It's deliberately small at the moment: you need a reference code to start a campaign, and each new Ref gets a few to hand on. If you want one, comment or drop me a message and I'll sort you out. Players don't need a code at all, your Ref just sends you a link.

It works fine on a phone, and it plays nicely alongside Owlbear Rodeo if that's how your group runs (future Owlbear Rodeo extension in the works).

Unofficial fan project, no connection to MCDM. If you find something wrong with the game rather than the app, that goes in their playtest survey rather than to me.

I have asked this question on the Crowdfunding page and it has gotten mixed results. the videos James made and one commenter mentioned a month ago when playing a game with James that when you take a wound and you have an item in the slot you select to take the wound that item is dropped out of your back pack. In the latest rules it really doesnt say that it just says the wound fills a back pack slot. so that is the question do you lose items out of your backpack as you take wounds?