MCDM RPG current thoughts now that it's happening

[MadBear]

With MCDM funding their goal to produce an RPG, I got to say I'm really excited to see where their design leads. I've played through a ton of MCDM content and they make enemies that are leagues above the current 5e monsters, and their custom characters are so much fun while remaining balanced. On top of that while not specifically game related, I love that MCDM makes sure to pay their staff and contractors above industry standard.

The Great:

• Key Words: The game is aiming to be Heroic, Tactical, Cinematic Fantasy. With a clear goal like this, it shouldn't get bogged down trying to appeal to every type of game. As I've aged, I respect this so much more then games that try to be everything and end up doing it all poorly.
• Killing Sacred Cows: the fact that they have already expressed that they're willing to cut ideas that while great, don't fit the game, is great. For example they were going to have a Cosmic Dice that sounded really cool, but ditched it when they realized it wasn't supporting their main theme/ideas.
• Unique Resources: I love that this game is looking to have each class have a unique resource that they are managing, and the players get better as the battle unfolds. I'll always like D&D's attrition system, but this system of getting more resources throughout the battle is so much more fun (I've played the Beastheart an MCDM 5e custom class that did something similar, and it was a blast).
• Negotiation: The idea of having important conversations have a system implemented system is something D&D lacked that I wish they used. This not only has it, but the idea that there is a concrete patience meter that once hit stops negotiations is a great way to stop players from trying to talk to an NPC forever until they get what they want.

The Good:

• Kits: The idea that you pick a kit and then you can decide the exact nature of the weapon/armor seems great to me. This way I'm not pushed into picking a weapon that doesn't suite me but is "optimal" to play with.
• 2d6 dice system: I like the simple bell curve this provides, while still having a wide range of possible results.

The Undecided:

• Healing: You can heal yourself a certain number of times per day (not including things like healing potions), and that includes things like spells that a cleric can cast (called a conduit in the new RPG). It's there to prevent players from always healing to full after every battle, because there are no longer spell slots and this help keep the game balanced.

Overall, I'm super excited to play this game, and my friend who backs him on Patreon just got a test packet that we'll get to play through in the coming weeks.

[Beelzebub1111]

I backed it and didn't tell my player who is interested in the game. The reason being that he's shown interest in running it and if he knows I bought it I wouldn't get to play it.

The biggest problem I have with these types of games (lancer included as a similar example) is that I never know a story to run or a natural form of progression. I am much better with dungeon crawls and linked module sort of campaigns for overarching stories that they players build based on the situations they are put in. I really want to play this system but lack the confidence to run it in a way that's fun for my players.

[kyoryu]

The Great:
Key Words: The game is aiming to be Heroic, Tactical, Cinematic Fantasy. With a clear goal like this, it shouldn't get bogged down trying to appeal to every type of game. As I've aged, I respect this so much more then games that try to be everything and end up doing it all poorly.

YES. 100%. Fully in favor of this. No game does everything, so know what you're doing

Killing Sacred Cows: the fact that they have already expressed that they're willing to cut ideas that while great, don't fit the game, is great. For example they were going to have a Cosmic Dice that sounded really cool, but ditched it when they realized it wasn't supporting their main theme/ideas.

YES. 100%. The advantage they have is they have Big Names behind them, while not Actually Being D&D. They can mercilessly slaughter sacred cows while not having to worry about "that's not D&D!". Because it ain't.

Unique Resources: I love that this game is looking to have each class have a unique resource that they are managing, and the players get better as the battle unfolds. I'll always like D&D's attrition system, but this system of getting more resources throughout the battle is so much more fun (I've played the Beastheart an MCDM 5e custom class that did something similar, and it was a blast).

Meh. The resource management part of D&D at that level is the least interesting thing to me. This is neutral to me - like, if it works well, great, but I don't see it as inherently interesting.

I find the tactical (positioning, teamwork, etc.) parts of the game more interesting than the resource management bits. (Yes, I also understand resource management can be tactical, but I'm pointing out the aspects I find more interesting).

Negotiation: The idea of having important conversations have a system implemented system is something D&D lacked that I wish they used. This not only has it, but the idea that there is a concrete patience meter that once hit stops negotiations is a great way to stop players from trying to talk to an NPC forever until they get what they want.

Huge fan of social mechanics, especially ones with appropriate structures in place.

Kits: The idea that you pick a kit and then you can decide the exact nature of the weapon/armor seems great to me. This way I'm not pushed into picking a weapon that doesn't suite me but is "optimal" to play with.

This sounds great, I just hope it doesn't get into either clearly optimal/suboptimal choices, or it just being cosmetic. I'm okay with cosmetic, but for a game like this it seems a waste.

2d6 dice system: I like the simple bell curve this provides, while still having a wide range of possible results.

The dice system is the least interesting part of most games but honestly 2d6 works better for me than most. I like bell curves, typically.

Healing: You can heal yourself a certain number of times per day (not including things like healing potions), and that includes things like spells that a cleric can cast (called a conduit in the new RPG). It's there to prevent players from always healing to full after every battle, because there are no longer spell slots and this help keep the game balanced.

I think it depends on what scale of resource you want health/healing to be. Traditionally, HP has been both a combat-scoped resource as well as a day-scoped resource, meaning that the first combat of a day is unlikely to do any real damage to you. Splitting it into a more individual-combat pool (health) and day-based (heals) can, if done right, manage to keep tension at the combat level while keeping the "course of the day" resource drain working well.

Overall, it's not my preferred style of game, but it seems to be positioned well and I'd be more than willing to give it a shot. It sounds like they're a good job of doing what they're targeting from what I've seen and after-play reports, it's just that their target isn't my preferred one.

[MadBear]

Meh. The resource management part of D&D at that level is the least interesting thing to me. This is neutral to me - like, if it works well, great, but I don't see it as inherently interesting.

I find the tactical (positioning, teamwork, etc.) parts of the game more interesting than the resource management bits. (Yes, I also understand resource management can be tactical, but I'm pointing out the aspects I find more interesting).

I tend to agree. The thing I'm interested in about this system, is that it's not an attrition based resource management system. Instead, it's a resource that you tend to accumulate more and more of as the battle goes on.

For example, the Beast Heart (the equivalent of a beastmaster ranger kinda) has a mechanic called fury. Every round you gain fury equal to 1d4+the number of enemies your pet is next to. Fury is then used to execute powerful maneuvers. This leads to a scenario, where you tend to have more and more fury as the battle goes on, rather then lose the resource.

Now that is just an example, because ever classes resource works a little differently, so that's not how it works all the time. But this is definitely a resource system that I'm going to value a bit differently then the D&D system, where you start with 100% of your resources and slowly drain them.

With that said, you might still find it meh, but based on your response, I realized I probably didn't delineate what I meant enough, hence the long winded reply.

This sounds great, I just hope it doesn't get into either clearly optimal/suboptimal choices, or it just being cosmetic. I'm okay with cosmetic, but for a game like this it seems a waste.

I actually do agree, I hope that all kits provide worthwhile and useful abilities that make them worth using, and not having 1-2 that are "clearly" the best.

[JNAProductions]

This does sound interesting, though I've not been following them much at all.

Does the book have a release date? Tentative or firm?

[kyoryu]

I tend to agree. The thing I'm interested in about this system, is that it's not an attrition based resource management system. Instead, it's a resource that you tend to accumulate more and more of as the battle goes on.

For example, the Beast Heart (the equivalent of a beastmaster ranger kinda) has a mechanic called fury. Every round you gain fury equal to 1d4+the number of enemies your pet is next to. Fury is then used to execute powerful maneuvers. This leads to a scenario, where you tend to have more and more fury as the battle goes on, rather then lose the resource.

Now that is just an example, because ever classes resource works a little differently, so that's not how it works all the time. But this is definitely a resource system that I'm going to value a bit differently then the D&D system, where you start with 100% of your resources and slowly drain them.

With that said, you might still find it meh, but based on your response, I realized I probably didn't delineate what I meant enough, hence the long winded reply.

Yeah, that sounds pretty good. Build/spend abilities are a bit more interesting in my mind than daily attrition resources. I kinda don't like daily attrition the way most modern games are played - they work great for dungeon delves where "go into and out of a dungeon" is a presumed session of play.

Having different ways of gathering the resources is.... not interesting in and of itself, but can be an interesting lever to encourage different playstyles. Imagine a mage that gets power from being near enemies, for instance.

I actually do agree, I hope that all kits provide worthwhile and useful abilities that make them worth using, and not having 1-2 that are "clearly" the best.

Yeah, as I mentioned in the guardrails thread, I think it's okay if they're not perfectly balanced so long as each has an area where it's more useful, and none are overly limited in the general case.

I also prefer characters to not be hard-locked into a choice of A Weapon though I realize that's kind of a sacred cow of modern game design. The decision of "should I use this weapon or that one?" is, I think, an interesting one. But I'm also more into play-time decisions than build-time decisions, so there's that.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

One cool thing I heard is that there's a risk/reward system, where the longer you go without resting, the more you pile up bonuses for combat? It seems like a very cool decision point.

[Laserlight]

This does sound interesting, though I've not been following them much at all.

Does the book have a release date? Tentative or firm?

https://mcdm-rpg.backerkit.com/hosted_preorders says estimated June 2025

[JNAProductions]

https://mcdm-rpg.backerkit.com/hosted_preorders says estimated June 2025

That's a while away.
Oki. Thanks for the info! :)

[MadBear]

so my group just recently played the playtest packet #1, and I got to say it was an absolute blast.

The Good:
- The push your luck, victories vs rest mechanic, gave a refreshing take on why you would push on instead of leaving a dungeon to rest. Getting to start a combat with a fresh pool of resources felt great, and it made the last encounter feel epic as we unleashed the full scale of our abilities (and yet, we didn't just auto-win)

- Unique Resource system: Each class having its own resources that they used was quite satisfying. I played the tactician, and while I did okay damage, I felt like the groups leader as i commanded them to make attacks and move across the battlefield. The cleric (I forget the name the game uses for this class), was really interesting. They had two resources that were determined by a prayer to the gods roll they made. One helped with healing, while the other helped with DPS. I can really see this being an interesting class, and the god you pick determining which of the resources you get most often.

- Auto-hit: Not ever just missing and ending the turn was fun. Once we got into how it worked, I never once wished, to roll a to-hit roll again.

- unique damage mitigation: Each class had their own way to mitigate incoming damage to themselves or their allies. This ended up being an interesting mechanic, as you would constantly be wondering if/ when to use that ability (it works like a reaction, so you only got one per turn).

- Recoveries: You get a limited amount of recoveries per day. Recoveries are how you regain hitpoints in this system. Outside of combat you can use them readily, but in combat you need to either take an action, or have another PC who has healing allow you to spend your recoveries. The inherent limit, made it so that in-combat healing felt powerful, without being OP (once you ran out of recoveries, you couldn't heal, even if a caster cast a heal spell on you). since healing spells were fast (didn't take an action), it made them feel significantly superior, to a PC using an action to heal.

The meh:
- The diplomacy game needs a little more refinement. As it is, you are trying to increase the interest a person has in your cause of action, while racing against their patience. Certain things you say/do can also modify their patience (saying something offensive to them, will quickly end their patience regardless of how sympathetic they are too your cause). The biggest issue I saw, is that without seeding more clues/way to know learn about a target, it felt a little too random. The way its been pitched before, is that you would have the opportunity to learn about a person before engaging with them. I get this feeling the playtest put it in there without the same amount of thought that went into the combat system. Hopefully with time this improves.


The Bad:
- All damage rolls being a roll 2d6 add a static number did begin to feel a little too samey. Especially as you level, I can see this not being great. Apparently this is already being addressed, and the next playtest will have an updated version of how the damage roll works.

The Ugly:
- The skill system is severely underdeveloped atm. It's probably a little unfair to judge at this moment, because the playtest was really to test the combat, but as it is now, it's just way too simple and uninteresting (reminds me of 5e skill system, which I also dislike).

Overall:
Combat was fun, fast paced, intuitive, and always felt tense. The combat pillar of the game, is the only one that's been fleshed out enough that I can say it's good, and so I'll need to wait and see if the other parts of the game improve as time moves on.