MCDM's New TTRPG, Crows: Fortune or Death, Brings Dungeon Crawling Terror

What the report says

News Written by Tyler ChanceyPublished: August 18, 2026 3:33 PMMCDM Productions, the team behind Draw Steel, has announced its second major original TTRPG project. The latest game, Crows: Fortune or Death, is a survival horror TTRPG dedicated to making treks into long-forgotten dungeons the stuff of nightmares.The Crows: Fortune or Death Backerkit CampaignThe Backerkit campaign for Crows: Fortune or Death is upfront about its setting and system. It is a game about playing as adventurers brave (or foolish) enough to delve into dungeons for riches and glory. But, unlike many contemporary TTRPGs, the contents of that dungeon do not change based on the group's level.

Players will die if they try to fight everything. The game's math isn't skewed in the player's favor. If you wish to survive, you will need to rely on your wits.As the description implies, Crows is a game with lethal difficulty and straightforward gameplay. Various bookkeeping elements such as tracking wounds and inventory are appropriately tense and interesting. Monster encounters in the game aren't the same fantasy fare, but deeply twisted monstrosities. In fact, they aren't given names; just classifications.This OSR-inspired ethos extends to other gameplay elements. The amount of equipment players can carry is severely limited.

Severe wounds can lead to less inventory space, which is an issue if you plan on taking any loot you find out of that dungeon.The rules for Crows: Fortune or Death will be spread across four books. The Core will contain the main rules required to play. The Characters book will contain rules on character creation and advancement. The Ref has rules for the GM, including monster statblocks and travel and encounter tables. The fourth book, Dungeons, contains four elaborate premade dungeons. The different pledge levels for Crows: Fortune or Death are as follows:Crows Starter Adventure for $10: A PDF of a Starter AdventureDigital Crows for $49.99: PDFs of the Core Rules and the Starter AdventureSoftcover Crows for $69.99: Everything in the Digital Crows pledge, and softcover physical copies of all four booksHardcover Crows for $119.99: Everything in the Digital Crows pledge, and hardcover physical copies of all four books containing extra blank pages for personal notesLimited Edition for $199.99: Everything in the Hardcover Crows pledge, a deck of inventory cards, a deck of monster cards, plastic card sleeves, a set of custom dice, and a Limited Edition Ref boxGoat Edition for $399.99: Everything in the Limited Edition pledge, three limited edition tins that contain four character journals, four Character rulebooks, six sets of custom dice, a GM screen, a dungeon turn timer, monster tokens, a stamp for marking dead characters, and a campaign-exclusive prewritten adventure, titled Ledger of DeathAt the time of writing, the Backerkit campaign for Crows: Fortune or Death has raised $382,458, which is more than half of its initial funding goal of $650,000.

Key details

Those numbers have been steadily increasing since the campaign launched, so it is a safe bet this project will be fulfilled. The campaign concludes on September 15, 2026. Tyler Chancey | Staff Writer Ever since he was small, Tyler Chancey has had a deep, abiding love for video games and a tendency to think and overanalyze everything he enjoyed. This… More about Tyler Additional topics: AnnouncementRPG