New Info Revealed for MCDM’s Upcoming Crows RPG

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New details have emerged about Crows, MCDM’s upcoming tabletop RPG—this time from an official source. In a newly released Patreon post, lead designer James Introcaso formally announced Crows as a survival horror dungeon crawler, with longtime MCDM collaborator Nick De Spain directing the art.

So what exactly is Crow’s all about? Below, we pick apart everything we know so far.

What is the Crows RPG?

Crows takes place in a post-apocalyptic fantasy world where the ruins of fallen necromancers are picked clean by those brave (or foolish) enough to enter them (aka “Crows”). Mechanically the game does share some similarities with Draw Steel, but where that game is a tactical cinematic heroic fantasy RPG, Crows is a chaotic post-apocalyptic dungeon survival RPG. While it’s not technically an OSR game, it definitely is influenced by that style of play. Key features include:

• Equipment-driven character design: In Crows, what your character can do is primarily determined by their gear rather than innate class abilities. Anyone with the right spellbook, weapon or tool can attempt powerful actions, while character options and skills improve how effectively that equipment is used. Loot isn’t just power, it’s also progression.
• Treasure-based advancement: Characters earn experience by bringing treasure back to town, not by defeating monsters or completing quests. This creates a strong incentive to avoid unnecessary fights and focus on extraction, reinforcing the core dungeon survival loop of “get in, get rich, get out.” Killing monsters is often optional and frequently a bad idea.
• Slot-based inventory as a core system: Inventory management is central to gameplay, using a slot-based system inspired by games like Knave and Shadowdark. Characters have limited hand, belt and backpack slots, and the order of items in a backpack matters during dangerous situations. As characters take wounds, they lose backpack slots, directly reducing their options and increasing the risk of death.

• Highly lethal, attrition-focused combat: Combat in Crows is fast, tactical and extremely dangerous, with monsters that don’t scale to the party’s power level. Characters are worn down through multiple health layers (armor durability, stamina and wounds) making prolonged dungeon delves increasingly risky. The longer you stay underground, the closer death becomes.
• Chaotic challenges: Challenges are resolved using 2d10 + a characteristic (Strength Agility, or Mind) + a relevant skill. Results then range from failure (11 or lower) to partial success (12–16) and full success (17+), while natural 2–3 results trigger Doom and 19–20 score Critical successes.
• Dungeon Turns and usage dice: Time in a dungeon is tracked in 30-minute Dungeon Turns, with random encounters and resource depletion checked at the end of each turn. Light sources, spells and equipment use usage dice that can burn out unpredictably, creating real-time pressure and sudden reversals. Sometimes nothing happens and other times, everything goes wrong at once.
• Town-building and character legacy: Beyond dungeon crawling, Crows features a persistent town that serves as the party’s home base. Gold invested into the town unlocks better gear, services and long-term benefits, while dead or retired characters permanently improve the settlement. Characters will likely come and go, but the town endures.

When will the Crows RPG be released?

MCDM has not announced a release date yet. A new BackerKit page, however, has been published, with a official campaign launch date of August 4th, 2026. This means we likely won’t see the game released to either backers or the general public until early 2027.

Notably, BackerKit was the primary crowdfunding method of the Draw Steel core books and the more recent Crack the Sun expansion. In a recent Bluesky post, Intracaso also announced that he would that he would be stepping down from his work on the Draw Steel RPG to focus exclusively on Crows for the foreseeable future, so it’s likely we’ll get more regular updates in the coming months.

Final thoughts

While there’s still a lot we don’t know about MCDM’s Crows RPG, what has been released online sounds absolutely fascinating, with inspiration from the OSR space and a unique equipment-based system. It also features a top-tier talent in the form of lead designer James Introcaso, so there’s definitely a ton of potential.

We’ll be keeping a close eye on this story in the days ahead and will update this page with new information as it’s made available. In the meantime, you can see all the details in the official MCDM Patreon post.