Murder of crows is an upcoming TTRPG about a murder of crows investigating the murder of a crow

Crows are already murder mystery investigators in the film-noir tradition, you just don’t know about it! But the upcoming ttrpg Murder of Crows, wants you to channel your inner crow to solve the murder of one of your kind, and it's launching September 15th!

So what kind of real life crow behaviours can you expect from Murder of Crows?

1. Crows investigate murders.

Corvid research shows that when crows spot a dead crow, they will gather around the body to learn about potential dangers in their environment and pass that information down to the rest of the group. Which essentially means that crows conduct murder investigations.

And in Murder of Crows you can do exactly that-

You play as agents of C.A.W: the Crow Anticrime wing, and investigate the murders of your fellow crows.

2. Crows hold grudges

If you’ve ever accidentally angered your local crows, you'll know that crows are the dwarves of the animal kingdom: notorious grudge keepers. They can recognize and remember the faces of humans who wronged them, and even communicate these grudges to new crows, generations down the line.

Murder of Crows has you roll one of the 48 NPCs that populate this forest to hate, for whatever grudge fits your crow. The sillier and pettier- the better:

Hate on the bear baker because they beat you for first place in the pie baking competition.

Or despise the vegetarian wolf because they accidentally sneezed in your soup.

This poor denizen is statistically probably not related to this murder case at all, but that shouldn't stop you from trying to get your petty revenge.

3. Crows use tools

Crows are some of the smartest animals on the planet, and they possess an incredible ability to create and use tools to solve problems. Those smart bastards have been spotted creating hooks out of twigs to extract grubs out of deep tree crevices.

So naturally, Murder of Crows gives your crow detectives tools to use in your investigation, but these are not just the regular tools of the police procedural, but versions cobbled together from human trash. Think a listening device with teacups instead of headphones, or binoculars made from old glasses and toilet paper rolls.

These connections between real-crows and the game-crows help push players to embody the essence of crowkind: feel like crows, act like crows. And they’re Murder of Crows’ main way to connect the murder mystery and film noir genres to the core promise of playing as crow detectives.

Murder of Crows is launching this Sept 15th on Gamefound!