Crows: Fortune or Death

Rules TLDR

This is a game about traveling to dungeons, exploring for loot, and making it back to your Village alive. The loot you bring back is used to strengthen your crow (your character) and improve your Village. In the very likely case that your crow dies while on an adventure, you roll up a new one right away and continue playing. Crows die often but your Village continues to grow over time.

What's a crow?

That is your playable character. Just a regular human without any superpowers or much else special about them. They are called a "crow" because they pick at the dead bones of the world looking for shiny things.

Background

You weren’t always a crow. Your background informs the statistics and equipment you start with and is decided by a 2d6 roll. Some examples of backgrounds are Beggar, Cook, Farmer, Keraunomancer, and Tinkerer.

Characteristics

Your crow, and all other creatures in the game, has three characteristics with a score between -5 and 5.

• Agility (A): Agility represents your coordination and nimbleness. It’s used for dodging, attacking with ranged and light weapons, acrobatics, sneaking, and thievery.
• Mind (M): Mind represents a your mental acuity. It’s used to resist mind-bending magic, cast spells, notice hidden or secret things, or recall lore.
• Strength (S): Strength represents might and brawn. It’s used for resisting poison and forceful effects, making melee attacks, climbing, jumping, lifting, swimming, and throwing.

You'll start off with a score between -1 and 2 in each of these characteristics.

You also start with a Speed of 5.

Inventory

The items your crow has determine much of what they can do. Every crow has 2 hand slots, 4 belt slots, and 10 backpack slots, numbered 1 to 10. Items can be anything from weapons, armour, spell books, rations, bedrolls, chalk, coin purse, and more.

Where you keep your items matters. You can only use the items in your hand slots on your action. You can easily swap hand and belt slot items but digging something our of your bag requires a roll. If you wanted the item at slot 8 when in combat, you would need to roll 1d10 and get 8 or higher.

Traits

Traits enhance your crows ability to create and use equipment. Your background grants you a trait to start with but over time you buy more. Traits are grouped into themes like Alchemy, Camping, Conjuration, Necromancy, Pets, and Travel.

Life and Death

You have a measure of vitality called Stamina which has a starting value based on your background (typically between 5 and 9). When you take damage your Stamina goes down. When your Stamina is 0 and you take damage, you take 1 wound for every 1 damage. Each wound you take fills up a backpack slot of your choosing. For each slot occupied by a wound and an item, your speed is reduced by 1 (to a minimum of 0). When all of your backpack slots have wounds, you die.

Improve over time

Loot you find in a dungeon and bring back to the Village earns you gold and experience (XP). With gold you can buy new items or upgrade shops. XP allows you to improve your crow with new traits and increase your characteristics.

Be creative

When you come up with some clever idea to overcome an obstacle that sound like it would work - it just works. No rolls needed. If your idea has no chance of working, it just fails.

Tests

Whenever you perform a risky task with a reasonable chance of failure, the Ref (the player running the session) should call for a test. When you must take a test, roll 2d10 (called a power roll) and adds one the characteristic that the Ref deems applies to the task.

Tier 1 (11 or Lower)

If the result of the test is 11 or lower, it’s a tier 1 result. This result means that you didn’t do what you set out to do, and at the Ref’s discretion you might suffer a set back.

Tier 2 (12 to 16)

If the result of the test is 12 to 16, it’s a tier 2 result. This result means you either partially, but not fully, accomplish your task or succeed fully at a cost. The Ref decides the outcome.

Tier 3 (17 or Higher)

If the result of the test is a 17 or higher, it’s a tier 3 result. This means you do what you set out to do without any complication.

Test Example

How does combat work?

This game has combat and the rules for it are easy enough but the game is not about combat. You are strongly encourage to use your crows inventory, the environment, and your own wits to avoid combat or setup a situation in which the odds of winning a combat are greatly stacked in your favor.

Here is a brief look at the combat rules.

• Combat plays out on a grid and each creature takes a turn
• When everyone has had a turn, that is the end of a round
• At the start of every round one player rolls 1d10
  • ≤5 the enemies go first that round
  • 6+ the players go first that round
  • All creatures on the starting side take a turn in any order, then the other side has a go
• On your turn, you can take a maneuver and an action or use two maneuvers
  • Action include things like melee/ranged attacks, cast a spell, and taunt
  • Maneuvers include things like move, grab, knockback, and swapping items

Melee Attacks

Simple enough - you try to attack by making th power roll listed on your melee weapon item card. If you miss, the target of the attack can counter by automatically doing tier 2 damage to you.

Here is an example for the Unarmed Strike which all creatures can attempt.

Ranged Attacks

Items that can do ranged attacks list a how many squares away the target can be. A ranged weapon attack can go further, and takes a -2 penalty for every 1 square the target is beyond normal range.

If you miss on a ranged attack and the target was adjacent to one or more allies, roll any die. On an odd result, the attack hits one of those allies chosen randomly by the Ref. You deal the tier 2 damage of the weapon you made the attack with to that ally.

Ammunition used in a ranged attack is destroyed. Thrown weapons can be recovered.

Here is an example for a Shortbow ranged attack.

And you now have one less arrow.

Spell Casting

To cast a spell you must have the spell book for it. A spell’s rank form 0 to 5 that indicates its power. A higher rank means a more powerful spell.

Some spells can be cast as an action, other as a maneuver. You can use spells outside of combat too.

Each time you cast a spell from a spellbook, you must make a Mind test. The outcomes for each casting are listed in the spell’s description.

As an example, to cast Minor Healing to heal an ally, you would make the test below.