Murder of Crows vs TSRPG

Compare Murder of Crows and TSRPG side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, and more.

	Murder of Crows	TSRPG
Genre	Horror	Universal
Tags	Rules-Light, One-Shot Friendly, Comedy, Mission-Based, Character-Driven, Random Tables, Low-Prep, Freeform Magic, Fast-Paced, Theater of the Mind	Rules-Light, Diceless, Theater of the Mind, Tag-Based, Beginner-Friendly, Fast-Paced, Low-Prep, Solo-Friendly, Freeform Magic, Modular
Core Mechanic	Roll 1d6 against the relevant Aspect (Beast, Omen or Trickster, rated 2 to 5): a roll below the Aspect succeeds, a roll equal to it succeeds and earns a Portent, and a roll above it fails. A helping Crow counts the Aspect as 1 higher, to a maximum of 5. When a Crow acts in accordance with its Augury, the player may roll two dice and use either; when it contradicts its Augury, or an Affliction affects the roll, the player rolls two dice and Fate (the GM) chooses which counts. A human may roll 1d6 to resist; if the human's roll matches or is lower than the Crow's, the Crow fails even on a success.	The storyteller sets a Challenge Rating (CR) and secretly picks a target number from 1 to the CR, by choice or at random. The leading character adds one attribute, every relevant trait and one piece of special equipment. Helpers add their traits and one piece of equipment each, capped in total at the leader's bonus. The target plus or minus the total bonus, wrapping around the range, is the span of success. The lead player then guesses a number. An exact guess is a critical success, and a guess one away is a near critical. A guess on either end of the span is a near miss, which succeeds with a complication. A guess outside the span fails. With a total bonus below +3, the only results are success and failure. Failure can impose penalties on participating characters' traits or attributes, weakening their later attempts.
Dice	d6	Diceless
Complexity	Very Low	Low
Availability	Free core rules	Free quickstart
Runnability	Book tools not listed	3 of 5 book tools
License	Proprietary	All Rights Reserved
Third-Party Publishing	No verified route found	No verified route found
Summary only, not legal advice. Check current terms before publishing.
Publisher	Jon Pessin	Skirmisher Publishing
Year	2026	2026
Languages	English	English
Best For	Groups who want a darkly comic one-shot as a flock of crows plotting a human's death, with tables that set up the hunt at the table.	Groups who want one simple guessing procedure for risky actions, usable across fantasy and other genres without needing dice, maps or stat blocks.
Highlights	Rolling exactly the Aspect's value earns a Portent, letting the player ask Fate one question answered by a brief, obscure vision. Acting in accordance with a Crow's Augury lets the player pick between two dice, while contradicting it hands that choice to Fate. Fate rolls or chooses with the Crows from d6 tables to set the hunt's victim, motive and complications.	The distance between a player's guess and the hidden target sets up to five outcome grades, so one guess decides both whether and how well a Challenge succeeds. Injuries are penalties on the same traits and attributes that build the bonus, and reducing every one of them to zero kills the character. Sacrificing a durable item or weapon after the guess turns a near miss into a full success and empties that slot until the next session.
Considerations	The premise is the flock plotting a human's death, which will not suit groups uncomfortable with murder as the goal. The rules include no death for Crows: a Crow that takes a fourth Affliction leaves the scene or goes unconscious instead. There are no experience, advancement or campaign rules.	Adventure opponents are written as Challenge Ratings rather than statistics, so the storyteller judges a rating for each approach to any new fight or obstacle. Fights resolve as one or a few group Challenges rather than individual turns, with fictional positioning in place of a tactical movement system. The storyteller calculates a fresh span of success from the group bonus for each guessed Challenge, and spans can wrap past the ends of the range.