I use AI in the coding of my module but not artwork but that is still against MCDM Content Policy so no point working on this anymore
A community-built Foundry VTT system for the MCDM Crows TTRPG public playtest, tracking the second playtest packet (August–September 2026).
Disclaimer. This is a fan-made implementation. Crows is © MCDM Productions. This system exists to make the playtest playable at the virtual table — playtests need to be played for MCDM to get feedback. If MCDM requests changes or removal, that will be honored.
The rulebooks, character sheet, and other reference documents are not distributed here. Grab them directly from MCDM:
MCDM Productions on Patreon — look for the Crows August/September 2026 playtest packet.
This system implements those rules. You need the packet to read what the game is; this repo gives you the table to play it on.
Playtest 1 → 2 is not a patch. Conditions were rebuilt, the chaos count was replaced, initiative changed shape entirely, and every compendium pack was re-transcribed from the new books. A world built on the Playtest 1 version of this system migrates, but expect to re-check characters against the new rules.
Live demo → — no install, no Foundry.
Balhaunis is authored, not generated — the roads, the ground and every plot are fixed. Found an institution and it appears on the plot that was being held for it; move Prosperity and the homes, fields and woodland fill in behind it, always in the same order, so a village that falls on hard times and recovers gets the identical village back.
Hover a building to name it, click it to see the room inside and what its next level costs, and raise it to watch it grow on its plot — levels have no art of their own, so size is what an upgrade looks like. Name the village and it is written across the map. Roll in the Miasma and it chokes everything the ruin does not enclose (C:2218), which is the whole point of living inside one.
The page calls the system's own buildVillageProjection() for every frame rather than a copy of it.
See demo/ for how that is wired, how to run it locally, and for the separate procedural
layout engine that plans a settlement from a seed.
In Foundry → Game Systems → Install System → paste this manifest URL:
https://github.com/DimitroffVodka/crows_playtest/releases/latest/download/system.json
Or download a release zip directly from the Releases page.
Compatibility: Foundry v14 minimum, verified on v14.
- 2d10 tier-roll engine — Tier 1 ≤11, Tier 2 12–16, Tier 3 17+. Auto doom/crit on raw faces. Mod-chain chat cards with an explicit commit point, so an expertise can be spent after the roll and before anything downstream fires.
- Slot inventory — 2 hand, 4 belt, 10 backpack, plus six worn magic slots (head/neck/waist/arms/finger/feet). Multi-slot items must be contiguous; wounds fill backpack slots. Cards drag between slots, swap when you drop one onto another, and can be added or removed in place.
- Conditions — six, and none of them have levels:
blessed,grabbed,prone,unconscious,vulnerable,weakened. Bidirectionally synced with Active Effects and token statuses. (Playtest 1'sbonedis gone — it split intoweakenedandvulnerable.) - Damage application — Armor Dice → Stamina → Wounds, with multi-armor priority dialog (shield → light → medium → heavy) and Piercing (bypasses AD).
- Spellcasting — full pipeline with Usage-Die-on-cast, the per-cast chaos roll (1d6 on a non-doom tier 1; a 1 triggers a backlash), doom-on-cast = immediate backlash, and a d100+rank backlash table.
- Combat and initiative — side-based, per the rules: one 1d10 at the start of every round decides whether the crows or their enemies act first, re-rolled each round, with order within a side chosen rather than rolled. Ships a replacement combat tracker with the side roll, per-side grouping, manual reordering, and Surprised (skipped in round 1, +1 to attacks against them).
- Dungeon Turn — counter, end-of-DT pipeline (UD rolls, expiry of
blessed/vulnerable/weakened, encounter check), GM-callable. - Rest — 6-hour rest with auto-restore, encounter checks every 2h (skipped in town), rest activities: Tend Wounds / Identify Item / Prepare for Task / Craft Equipment / Harvest.
- Miasma — outdoor 24h resist test (2d10 + M + Endurance), Effects table dispatch with effect-id dedup, cruelty accumulation, catastrophic result → permanent NPC.
- Crypt boons — 10-boon institution with internment registry, once-per-cycle prayer, mechanical hooks for Vitality / Fury / Swiftness boons; chat-card scaffolds for the rest.
- Village — Prosperity tracker (−10..+10), 10-day cycles, institution registry, end-of-cycle event roll (d10 + Prosperity), GM management dialog, and an authored village map projected onto a Scene as Tiles, filling in with Prosperity (see it in the browser).
- Crafting — projects with prereqs/materials/goal, special-Mind crafting roll (doom=0, crit=re-roll, min 1), Identify Item 2d10+M tiered test.
- Advancement — TXP threshold table for expertise/stamina and characteristic bonuses, trait-tree purchase UI (4×3 grid per tree,
connectsTogating), XP-grant macros. - Pets — taming, bonding, ownership transfer, and combat commands, with the command test the rules require.
- Roll 2d6 for a background or pick from all 36.
- Characteristics are set, not incremented. Your background makes one characteristic a 2; some fix which one, some offer a choice. You then pick a spread for the other two: 1 / 0 or 2 / −1.
- Applies the background's expertise uses, stamina, equipment, spellbooks and starting trait, plus the universal kit — coin purse, knife, rope, six rations, and 3d6 gc (some backgrounds add coins on top).
- The four backgrounds that grant an animal spawn it as an Actor, bonded to the crow.
- Crow PC sheet — tabs: Main / Equipment / Inventory / Pets / Advancement / Downtime / Bio. The Bio tab records what your background granted.
- Monster sheet — rulebook stat-block format with inline GM edits, attack roll buttons, condition toggles, apply-damage dialog.
- Item cards — printed-card layouts per item type.
- 13 packs: backgrounds (36), traits (276 across 23 trees), weapons, armor, enchantments (40), gear, consumables, ammunition, spellbooks, monsters (71), loot, the rules-reference journal, and 31 rollable tables (backlashes, miasma effects, encounters, weather, interesting things, dungeon hooks and more).
- All content transcribed from the Playtest 2 packet and cross-checked against the books. Where a card and a rulebook disagree, the card wins and the divergence is recorded in
docs/discrepancies/.
playtest-packet/ ships a few play-time assets so you don't have to bring your own:
Art/— monster portraits and scene art — drop straight onto tokens or scenes.Maps/— Blood Library starter-dungeon battlemaps (labeled and unlabeled, including 8k).Crows Character & Inventory Sheets.xlsx— the official paper character sheet.
The rulebooks, monster cards, loot cards, and cheat sheet are not bundled — grab them from MCDM. These assets are repo-only; they aren't in the Foundry install zip.
- Install the system via the manifest URL above; create a new world using "MCDM Crows (Playtest)".
- Configure world settings (Game Settings → Configure Settings → System Settings):
- Default Dungeon EN — the 1d6 threshold for encounter checks (default 6 = lenient, lower = more encounters).
- Party is in the Miasma — ON when the party is overland in Cornath; OFF indoors or in town.
- Crypt Level — fallback when there is no Village yet; once the Village exists, Crypt level is read from there.
- Create the village — any crow's sheet → Downtime tab → Manage… on the Village strip.
- Make a player character — create an Actor (type: crow) → Bio tab → Open Character Creator. Roll or pick a background, set the characteristic it grants and choose your spread, name the crow and its NPC connection.
- Run combat — drag a monster onto the scene and add both sides to the tracker. Click Roll for the round: a 6+ puts the crows first, 5 or lower the enemies. Walk the turns; the next round re-rolls. Mark anyone caught unaware as Surprised — they are skipped in round 1 and attacks against them gain +1.
- Attack — put a weapon in a hand slot (only a wielded weapon can attack; the sheet says so on any weapon that isn't). Target a token with
T, or just click Attack and pick from the prompt. The chat card's Apply T2 / Apply T3 buttons run damage through AD → Stamina → Wounds. - End-of-DT — the GM End DT button on any crow's Time strip rolls DT-expiry usage dice, clears
blessed/vulnerable/weakened, and rolls an encounter check. - Rest — the Rest… dialog picks the activity and offers Town rest to skip encounter checks. Outdoor non-town rests auto-roll a Miasma resist when the world flag is on.
- End Village Cycle — Downtime → Manage → End Cycle. Docks Prosperity if nothing was founded or upgraded, then rolls the event.
The game.crows.* API is exposed for macros — game.crows.dt.end(), game.crows.creator.open(actor), game.crows.village.found(...), game.crows.miasma.resist(...), game.crows.crypt.pray(...), game.crows.rollTest(...). See module/crows.mjs for the full surface.
Issues and PRs welcome. Source content lives under src/packs/ as YAML; built LevelDB packs are in packs/ (committed). To rebuild after editing YAML:
npm install
npm run pack # build every pack from src/packs
npm run unpack # extract LevelDB -> YAML (rare, for round-tripping)
npm test # the suite
./verify.sh --strict
npm run release # gated build of dist/crows.zipFoundry holds an exclusive lock on the LevelDB packs while a world is open, so return to Setup before rebuilding or packing will fail.
You'll need @foundryvtt/foundryvtt-cli, installed via npm install.
- Crows TTRPG by MCDM Productions — see mcdmproductions.com.
- Foundry VTT system implementation by dimit (with significant pair-programming assistance from Claude / Anthropic).
- Background icons from game-icons.net, CC BY 3.0 — see
NOTICE.md. - Built and tested on Foundry v14.367.
System code is MIT-licensed (see LICENSE). Playtest rules content remains the property of MCDM Productions and is bundled here under playtest goodwill. If you fork, please respect MCDM's IP and remove the content packs before any commercial use.