MCDM Productions
Founding Date:
Feb 1, 2018
Website:
https://mcdm.shop
Press/Business Contact:
hello@mcdmproductions.com
Social:
Instagram
Twitter
YouTube
Major Releases:
2018 - Strongholds & Followers
2019 - Kingdoms & Warfare
2022 - Flee, Mortals! - The MCDM Monster Book
2023 - Where Evil Lives - The MCDM Book of Boss Battles
2025 - Draw Steel
Location:
Irvine, CA 92614
Selected Articles
Additional Links
Crows: Fortune or Death!
In a real dungeon crawl, tracking arrows and rations isn’t an accounting exercise. It’s a matter of life and death. You never forget where the flickering light of your torch ends as it burns down. The flame burns away the concealing shadow. In the dark, monsters aren’t pretty little chunks of XP. They are waiting teeth, claws, and death.
Better dungeon crawling starts here.
For years at MCDM, we published the supplements that made your D&D games better—Strongholds & Followers, Kingdoms & Warfare, The Illrigger, The Beastheart, The Talent, ARCADIA. Then we decided to make something for ourselves. What if someone made a fantasy game that leaned hard into the heroic aspect, with rules that made combat fun, victories epic, and turned characters into legends? That game is Draw Steel, and the ever-growing audience for our cinematic, tactical, fantasy RPG speaks volumes.
But that wasn’t the only game in our hearts, and not the only fantasy stories we had to tell. Something more sinister beckoned. We envisioned a fantasy game that was all about the survival horror that is dungeon crawls. A game that helps you tell stories of desperate people delving into a monster-infested pit, hoping to come out a few chests wealthier rather than remaining in the dark one life shorter. A game where characters pick over the bones of the dead for shiny objects while avoiding predators. That game is Crows.
We’re not the first game to learn hard into dungeon crawling, but we think Crows does it better than D&D. There’s no encounter balance in this game. Monsters aren’t how you advance. Treasure is. To get by threats, you can sneak, distract, or prepare a trap, but running headlong into a fight is a sure way to make the dungeon floor your grave. Clever thinking gets you further than kicking in the door.
Don’t dawdle in the dungeon. The game’s dungeon turns, tracked in 30-minute increments, mean the Ref never forgets to roll a check for an encounter or remind you that the torch you’ve had burning since you entered the crypt is about to go dark. The pressure of dungeon turns keeps the dungeon’s threat alive and rewards those who think fast and take risks.
Your equipment determines what your character can do. Crows has no classes. If you want to cast a spell, find its spellbook. To enter a rage, drink a rage potion. Do second-story work with your rope and grappling hook—no class feature needed. What you bring with you into the dungeon determines your capabilities. Choose wisely. Space is limited.
Inventory cards make finding, equipping, trading, and looking up gear a snap. No more looking up an item, writing it on your sheet, erasing it when you give it to someone else, rewriting when you get it back, and so on. Inventory slots turn your character sheet into a card game rather than a spreadsheet. Don’t forget to leave a few slots free so you can fill your pockets with gold.
When you bring your loot back to town, you can spend it on new equipment, or invest it back into your village, improving your institutions and life for you and your NPC friends who call the place home. Many crows will perish in the dungeon, but the village remains.
If you want to learn more about Crows, you can follow our dev updates on Patreon.
How We Make Dungeon Crawling Survival Horror
We have a series of videos on YouTube that shows how we make Crows on the MCDM YouTube channel. Check out the first one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHfTsYSsxo4&list=PLTsnSjGlraRMUmyww_in2H7CSdvA9CBY3&index=4
Behold the Horrors of Crows
[Monster pics here baby]
Gear Up to Get Rich or Die Trying
[Adventurer pics here baby]
Logos & Icons
The MCDM Team
Grace Cheung - Artist
James Introcaso - Lead Game Designer
Jason Hasenauer - Art & Art Direction
Jerod Bennett - Technology
Josh Gertz - Production
Lars Bakke - Development and Production
Matthew Colville - Writing and Design
Nick De Spain - Art & Art Outsource Management
Robert "Djordi" Djordjevich - Senior Game Designer
Willy - Muse, Debonair, Scamp, and Senior Game Designer
Contact
Inquiries - hello@mcdmproductions.com