Shouting Crow Press is a team of two making fun, short and easy to learn ttrpg content as an independent Canadian game design studio out of Guelph, Ontario. I first was drawn to their Itch.io page for a cute little game that was recommended to me called Hedge Witch. Then I found that there were many more awesome ttrpg pieces to be found by them as well. Their itch.io page has solo games, single page games, full ttrpgs and more. This article is a brief review of some of the Shouting Crow content I found. Follow the table of content links below to a specific game I reviewed or read about all of them.
Fly Catcher
This is an adorable game created by Shouting Crow Press where you roll d6’s to be a Frog. You are a hungry frog and based on the numbers you roll you either gain hunger empathy or reach your goal of 100 flies to take care of your froggy needs. Be prepared to roll a lot of D6’s as 1s and 6s are bad by raising/lowering your hunger or empathy. The goal is to eat 100 flies and win the game.
Make this a solo journaling where you can add more details about each of your dice rolls or simply roll dice until you lose to hunger / empathy or if you reach your fly quota. Based on my rolls it is extremely difficult to win with 100 flies as you have a 2/6 chance of getting one of the numbers that bring you to one of the losing outcomes. The good news is whatever number you roll is the number of flies eaten that round. My first game I named my frog and lost after 15 rolls. The next few times I also lost (with a mix between Empathy and Hunger). To help with rolling faster, I rolled 10 d6’s at a time and then had 2 other d6’s on the side to keep track of the hunger and empathy stats. One of my frogs was so empathetic that in the second grouping of 10d6 I rolled 5 6’s killing my frog out of kindness. Be prepared to roll dice for a while, and if you are doing a solo- journaling a lot of creative writing on how to make each frog’s round unique.
I got a green version and a black/white printer friendly version (both pdfs) as a bonus to the Hedge Witch download on itch.io.
Game 1: Mr. Froggerton
2- Big juicy flies
5- Caught flies off the lily pad next to his log abode
1- Hunger down to 5- One of the neighboring frogs got to the fly first
6- Empathy up to 2- Gave a fly to the frog with no legs with the sign saying sold legs for money for family
1- Hunger down to 4- Mr. Froggerton was taken down by gang of tadpoles
6- Empathy up to 3- Gave a fly to the elderly frog crossing the pond
5- Got a 5 nice spry flies
2- Flies fell into pond and was eaten
2- Fly soufflé
1- Hunger down to 3- Gave a fly to the neighborhood wench as a token of love. Fly was eaten but no feelings reciprocated. Mr. Froggerton is heartbroken.
5- Flies on soggy toast
4- Dead flies found on sand, slightly toasted from sun
1- Hunger down to 2- While on the beach, a local toad took the fly
2- Took a nap on the lily pad. Woke to find 2 flies in his open mouth. Mr. Froggerton was quite pleased with this opportunity.
1- Hunger down to 1 and Mr. Froggerton eats the entire pond community who dare take his flies.
Total flies eaten: 27/100
I made my own sheets to go with the game where I typed in all of the information I rolled (the number rolled behind it in parenthesis). I have the six white boxes underneath the two stats to mark where my demon is at (you start the game with three each). I only placed 6 boxes under each stat because if you reach a 6 the game is over and your demon either goes feral or becomes a human. I have it in a plastic paper protector to use dry erase markers for tracking the Calamity/Civility stats.
Demon Get Your Due
This two page spread is a devilish version of Honey Heist created by Justin Vandermeer. Use two stats (Calamity & Civility) to be a demon trying to collect the souls you are due in a rootin-tootin tabletop game. This is a d6 game where you either get your quarry of the soul promised to you, or either lose your infernal edge becoming human, or become overcome by calamity and watch the world burn.
Devil Get Your Due is for 1-3 players and a gm for a 1-3 hour game. Page 1 is for playing the game as a demon, and page 2 is the gm’s guide. I like that on the GM page there is a box to remind everyone about safety tools and making sure that everyone is comfortable with violence, mortality and religion. In bold text there is also “Please avoid whitewashing and racial stereotypes-you can do better.” I absolutely support Shouting Crow Press with how well they handled that, and other ttrpgs should also be including these.
This is a role play heavy game that is rules light and relies on the skills and conversations of your players. The game master has a list of twists and tools to bring some western fun to your watering hole. I like the secret twists (such as the man at the saloon is an undercover priest).
No character sheet needed for this game, just something to keep track of your Calamity vs Civility on. I would suggest either a notebook or a white board marker. If you are able to have a printed sheet for each person they can also just circle what they rolled on the page itself. I also wrote down the name of my target and the details of my character for reference as well. All you need is a six sided die and some devilish friends to join your pose and you are good to enjoy this game.
Hedge Witch
This 20 page pdf has a cute game where you live your hedge witch life in this solo- rpg experience. Using six sided dice and a standard deck of cards (with Jokers) you are ready to go on an exciting rescue mission and use your magic to solve problems. This game even though you play a witch makes it clear that magic will not be the cure all to save the game.
The cover of this game has a cute little hedge witch with flowers around the band of her witch hat. The overall look is pretty simplistic but still is pleasing to the eyes. I also appreciated there being a black and white printer version as well that makes it easy to read the words in case the green background isn’t a vibe for you. The concept is you are a witch trying to solve the problems of the forest and it's citizens. You use clever, brave and magic solutions to go through all of the challenges. Each event is a new scene with challenges that needs to be faced. By rolling a d6 and using the stats on your character sheet you will try to meet or beat the numbers of the difficulty ratings of the cards pulled.
Character Sheet & Building your Witch:
Your hedge witch has two main statistics: clever and brave. By using both of these and some magic you will solve your way through all of the challenges the cards deal you for your story. You start with 6 points to split between the two skill stats and you start with one wild magic point. As you go through the game some cards will allow you to gain skill points and some others will curse you until the problem is solved.
The character sheet is nice and uncluttered but still has some cute stars at the top. There is space for your portrait along with space for you to write the skills, pronouns and characteristics for your PC. There is both a black and white and a green sheet that you can pick from depending on your printing options. There is also an alternate character sheet that you can organize your cards on.
The Game:
It should also be mentioned that this game can be played with a friend, as stated in the directions of the game. I find that it works well as a solo journal game but it is challenging. Starting the game with only one magic point made things difficult for my second game play (shown above in the notebook). Both times I did the game I failed significantly more than passes. The first Joker was pulled in my second game came in the 2nd pull and made things interesting but it made me use my magic point too early and never had a chance to regain any magic points back. I also got cursed with no fire and it was all night so I was only allowed to use clever solutions and I was unable to do many things because of it. Overall the game concept is great and the scenarios for the cards are also cute but overall it was challenging and I felt like I let down the forest and people that my little witch was trying to help.
I think if I were to play this game a third time I would take a concept from one of Shouting Crow's games called Bright things where I would have my witch learn from experiences of failure. I would homebrew a rule where for every failure I could add .25 to a stat to help bump something every 4 failures. In my second game I had 29 failures which would mean that I would only get to raise things a total of 7.25 points if I did it this way) but after being able to raise things even slightly I would have a higher chance of seeing more successes and gathering more Magic points which would have been more helpful. I think having failures is important to the concept of the game, so you can have character growth but either my dice were cursed or the amount of times I failed as a witch in this game was astronomical.
Fallow Ground
This was a 19 page “spread document” that captivated me with the caption “Feed the trees with your blood and rise again.” This hexcrawl game uses 1d20 and 3d6 to play. It’s definitely a more “nature is metal” game.
Character creation is made easy with 5 step by step directions to fill in your character sheet. Create your grove bound spirit that wanders to protect the Fallow Grounds of the Veluwe Forest as you learn magic and cast spells. This was one of the more complex games by Shouting Crow Press that I reviewed. Magic is devided by color (birthright) types and use a d20 to cast. What I like is that you are looking to roll a number in the spectrum between spell rank and mind (meaning more than the spell rank number but less than your mind stat). This gives a range instead of a static number to hit and makes it unique to this system.
Like fey from lore and other games, iron disrupts your characters connection to the woods and there are consequences for having that meta. The game encourages more natural materials so I had a small dagger of antler and a bone shiv. You are also able to do unarmed damage using your body or mind. There is creative freedom for weapons and armor as there is the base lines and stats given for these pieces where as when you get into materials, encounters and denizens you have a lot more detailed pieces to pull from.
As you play the game your character comes across challenges and then use a d20 to figure out actions, and then start your encounters across the hex map of your world. Each hex takes 1d6 hours to traverse and you travel protecting your place of rest. You also have to rest for 6 hours a day, forge for food, gather materials, along with fighting off rots and monsters. Death is inevitable and there are are things that can shatter your soul or fill you with rot as your undead body shambles through the grove. You are able to regenerate in most cases and there is a lot of rules that go with how your body/soul continues through the game.
Things that I liked-
the level less characters makes it easy to build characters and it's easier to keep track of scores that change vs. experience points.
I love the concept of the inked spells.
The step by step character building was also great and was easy to understand.
Each birthright has 2 spell lists to choose from, one being cleansing rituals and the others being a list that can do damage. You get to pick inked spells from both of these lists equal in rank totals to your mind so I was able to get a high level spell from both of these lists.
Thing I disliked/things of note-
A possible error under umber birthright as it says +1 will, I did it as +1 spirit as there is no will and the other two birthrights bumped up the other stats.
I would have liked more clarification on how to pick/what determines the encounters and denizens being encountered on the map. This also goes for which type of materials are available (though I do like that each type has a d6 ability to figure out what type of blossom, mushroom or wood). When just randomly picking I feel like you can make the game easier by only getting the materials you want, or placing the rot nearby where you start to help contain it.
Sordid Truths of Fire
This is a d20 system where you are a pyromancer trying to take down the kleptothermic parasites that have taken over your world. Your character starts with 10 points to put into the three game stats: stamina, reaction and passion. Avoid reaching too much burnout or frostbite (nat ls and 20s respectively) while fighting your way through wild things such as frost moths and kleptoherms such as the heat vampire. This is a solo game where you work your way through different levels of pyromancy. There are 2 spell lists that take a different amount of passion damage with a variety of outcomes such as hovering light lanterns, melting the layer of ice, or let a jet of fire come from your palms and feet.
One of the pages is laid out cleanly with your first, then and finally options to help you get through each of your encounters. There are four clear and concise lists of the melee & ranged weapons, the gear & tools and the combustibles available to your player. I also like that there are four other htings that your character can do: harvest, sacrifice, protect and aid. If your stats reach zero you pass out but if you die if you accrue 10 or more points of both burnout and frostbite.
This 2 page gaem is a story of a lost child (or children) trying to make it home and the birght things creating challenges helping them get there. I imagine the Bright things being will-o-whip type creatures. This game has two play modes, one as the child and one as the bright things. The bright things create 12 challenges that the lost children must complete using the statistics of clever, brave or wild. These challenges are trying to determine if the "child" is an innocent or a changeling. The children need to complete these challenges by rolling equal or lesser than the statistic number. If they roll higher they fail, and failures give half points added to a stat of the child's choice as we use mistakes as learning opportunities.
Bright Things
How to win- A child completes all 12 challenges and makes it home. If a child fails and is exposed to moonlite 6 times a roll is needed. A 1-3 on the die the child grows bolder and no longer is afraid of the curse, but if its a 4-6 the child is a changeling. A bright wins if they capture any changelings that are with the children on the way home. They also win if the children make it through their challenges and make it home with no changelings among them.
In the game that we tried there was a lot more fails than passes. I really like that the stats can grow with failure which made it easier over time to succeed in the clever stats. I do like the d6 rolls yet only starting the game with 5 points in stats made it really difficult. There are lots of different things that a bright can do to challenge the "children." Some of the pieces that came up for our game include the classic red mushroom fey circle with a picnic blanket full of treats in a beam of moonlight trying to entice the children. There was also a barrier of scarecrow men rigged with trip wires to whack the children if they tried to pass by them. Nature was a lot of the pieces with tree branches, rivers and scary animal sounds from the dark as parts of the puzzles the children had to create solutions to. There were two times that we were sure the children were going to have to roll and see if they were changeling but the dice were kind enough to only have fails in groupings of 6.
Generators and The Dungeon
Shouting Crow has provided two generators that are fun to roll and add to your game in a pinch. "This Brooding NPC Has a Terrible Secret" uses a d4 to find you a reason why the NPC sold their soul and how to save them. I rolled: A NPC sold their soul for (3) an iron crown and an empty castle (2) and now they're a thrall bound to an infernal master (2) haunted by prophetic nightmares. Their weakness is the first light of dawn but can be saved (2) if someone takes their place.
In "Bring Out Your Undead" there is a d4 chart for what undead vibe your creatures give off and other details such as movement, appearance, smells and motivations. I rolled " A (1) Vampiric creature (2) floating toward syou (3) skeletal in apperance with hallow black eyes. Smells of embalming fluid (myrrh) as they search for prey out of (3) loneliness.
I was happy to find that both of these d4 had 5 different options to roll from, making it easy to use them more than once in your games and giving a variety of differences to have between your monsters/secrets. There was also just a good variety that you could pick from to inspire your own creations. They were easy to understand and the options made sense together when I rolled them.
I also enjoyed the Mega Dungeon Maker. This is a great tool for GMs who want to make a large dungeon as this pdf helps break down such a large tasks into a simple once a day box. Every day write an encounter, trap, or experience inside your dungeon and add the walls and rooms to your dungeon using the convenient graph space. I also love that Shouting Crow Press listens to their customers and have both square and dot grids. If making a dungeon is overwhelming I recommend using this handy tool where you build one day at a time.
Six Sided Towers
This is a 2 page doc, the first being a foldable zine with 5 roll-able pieces to create a 6 leveled tower. Page 2 is blank floor plans to draw in what you roll. Each of the six levels you roll a six sided dice 5 times to fill in your tower. There are some fun pieces that can be rolled in your tower creation, but in my case there were a ton of re-rolled numbers. This just made it a creative exercise on how to take the same rolls and make new and unique pieces for the tower. I enjoyed playing around with making rooms and encounters based on the rolls. The only critique is I would have loved to have a square, hex or dot grid to help with making appropriate sized rooms and making maps that could be used at my table for other ttrpgs.
Body To Die For: Bare Bones Edition
I received this game in the "Solo But Not Alone 3" bundle. This is a solo game that has a safety first warning of themes of mortality, grief, transphobia, body horror and body dysmorphia. Your character for this game is an apprentice to a necromancer on "The Hill." This is a quest based game where your character works through self-actualization from the jaws of death. As this is game talks about life and death the safety warning is imporatant to listen to and this game will not be for everyone. It should be noted that this game may talk about death but it is not a game about dying, rather fighting for a better life. Over the 20 pages of the game you are the only living human surrounded by undead. As a transgender being you will keep track of your spirit body and numen points on your character sheet as you face challenges with easy, tough and hard ratings. This game is used with 2d6 and a standard deck of playing cards with Jokers included as the cards are pulled for each of the challenges. The game ends after you pull the second joker card. On the character sheet you will write down the spirit challenges solved, body challenges solved and keep track of all of the failures.
You will roll the d6 to see if you can complete each encounter by using your spirit or body stat to solve the problems presented by the cards. You can also use Numen to use necromancy to solve a challenge instead of rolling. You only start the game with one numen but can gain more by completing tough and hard challenges. This game will have lots of failure to remind you that life has despair and full of struggles. This game also has a transfusions table with two d6 tables, one for successfully resolved and one for failed resolved, with boons or banes to get from the charts. Some challenges also have wither consequences until they are successfully resolved.
Wands and Laserguns
In this 16 page spread game you play a wizard in future world with no magic. Without magic to protect yourself you use a d10, a deck of cards and the laser gun of your dreams (in your imagination) to fight your way through factions of enemies. The game has three stats of health, wands and laser guns. Unlike most games, Wands & Lasers guns start with only health as the stat with any numbers. You roll a d10 for this stat at the beginning of the game while guns and wands are 0. The deck of cards you use gets split into number and face cards, and during each encounter you will pull one from each half as the suit will determine the faction and the face will give you the boss you fight.
What I love about this game is the different suits have bonuses, such as diamonds let you skip encounters, hearts regain health, clubs let you add to wands stat and spades let you add to laser guns stat. Of course if you lose in your fire fight with the mobs and mafias you loose a health point. Each suit is a cleverly crafted mafia full with characters and a "royal court" of characters to deal with. There are a few other things to keep in mind as you play for "The Endgame" such as failing 5 clubs takes your magic away, failing 5 spades your lasers backfire and then it comes to if you loose all your health or you ran out of encounters.
Ailing Away
Looking for a new solo game? Shouting Crow Press is currently in a Crowdfundr to support their newest creation Ailing Away. At the time of writing this they have met their goals with 68 contributors, me included and still more time for you to join in as well if you wish. The game is a solo detective game that is to be similar to the game Clue where you will journal and find out who is the murderer at the spa resort you were sent to. Set in 1905 Venice we know I am a sucker for period pieces but put a murder mystery on top and I'm sold. This game is a one page solo game so no Gm or board is needed. All that is necessary to play is a deck of standard playing cards and some ten-sided dice (which will make my Cthulhu dice happy they get to play a new game).
The zine is to be 40 pages with illustrations. There are still many stretch goals to be unlocked, with a mini game already unlocked in the works to be added. I personally would love to see the expanded journal and the costumed video come to life as well.
Thoughts from the Fox
I really enjoyed the selection of games from Shouting Crow Press. The language was simple and easy to understand. The inclusion of pronouns, safety tools and general reminders about being decent human beings also got two big paws up from the fox. There is a great variety of solo games that you can do in your own time as well as games that you can share with friends. It has been shown that Shouting Crow Press listens to their fan base. There is also a wide variety of ttrpgs to choose from their library of games. Most of them are printer friendly or have a printer friendly version, but Sorid Truths is a pretty layout but very black in heavy and Wands & Lasergungs is heavy in pink and blue ink.
Prices for all their games are reasonable at $10 or under. Many also have community copies if you are willing to give them a rating and shout out. Part of the crowd funding options was also making community copies available for when Ailing Away comes out. I love that they want to make games accessible to everyone, even before the game comes out. Get your own copies of the many ttrpgs created by Shouting Crow Press on itch.io and follow them on Twitter at @shoutcrowpress