Matt & James MCDM RPG Q&A
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- Опубліковано 31 лип 2024
- Back our campaign! | mcdm.gg/rpg
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#mcdm #ttrpg #mattcolville
00:00:00 PreShow
00:04:08 Start of Q&A
00:44:45 Why our own VTT - Ігри
Here are timestamps to the questions in the stream
5:19 Are we tired?
6:11 Do you know what I was doing before we went live?
8:43 Is everyone losing their minds on 3 million?
8:58 Can you tell us how skills and other things work that you've designed so far?
15:43 Do you talk with other designers to see if your systems are too similar?
16:45 Now that the cosmic die has been thrown out, have you considered a mechanic that will make this game explicitly fantasy?
17:22 The Negotiation System, in question of how will blackmail work?
21:57 The Heroic Resources, what is something that has surprised us when we were designing it?
30:03 Is there a likelihood of MCDM developing a digital compendium that can be searched?
32:25 You've talked about how the negotiation mechanics have rules that stop it from going in circles, how will that work if NPCs initiate negotiation with the PCs?
34:37 Is this a beginner friendly RPG?
39:36 When an RPG fan walks away from their first MCDM session, what do you want them to leave feeling?
41:44 If I was gonna play this game for real, in a campaign where Im a player, not a playtest, a long term campaign, what would I want to build?
44:51 Why aren't you partnering with this other company to make a VTT?
49:47 One of my favorite parts of d20 Fantasy is outside of combat spells, will there be something like this in the MCDM RPG?
51:37 Will something like feats be present in the game?
54:49 Mounts and vehicular combat and things like that?
57:40 Do you have any plans for more stretch goals?
1:01:01 Overland Travel?
1:05:17 Do the abilities kits give cost you a resource?
1:06:49 How will the Vasloria Box Set work as a product? Will we (the backers) automatically get it?
1:08:21 The Idea of the License
1:14:03 Can I turn into animals in the MCDM RPG?
1:14:27 How many ancestries will be in the book?
1:16:21 Do you guys want to hear what I was working on yesterday?
1:16:56 Advancement and can you improve your stats?
1:18:07 Will the rat people from Thief be core or in the Vasloria Box Set?
1:19:13 How involved are other people with the lore?
1:28:36 The GM screen, didn't get the Ajax addition but just want the Directors screen that comes that
1:29:34 If we have ways to come back from the dead, what are the ways we can still tell dramatic stories, what are the stakes?
1:30:42 Real life history/fantasy
1:31:03 How did we settle on the title Director?
1:36:17 You mentioned Timescape being like Spelljammer but has more Star Wars influences, care to elaborate?
1:37:57 How do you folks feel about how the stream is going?
Lancer came with a simple suite of independent online tools for DMing and playing, and it was pretty great!
The cut at the end 😂
Brilliant as always Jerry!
Jerry never fails to add quality and comedy, usually without appearing at all
You guys are awesome! Always loved listening to Matt, but now I also love to listen to James. You have some damn cool designer brains!
Great point about teaching things multiple ways. Redundancy helps everyone pick up the rules. If it's only in one place (and worse if that place isn't intuitive) it's easy to miss. Works in games and the classroom.
Thanks for doing these sessions. So fun to watch the journey.
I googled 'Evolve Lennox' and instantly got it. That art is dope as hell and now I wanna play an Operator.
I think what makes combat easier to delineate than skill challenges is that initiative roll. There should be some start to kickoff a skill challenge.
Just want to say that the Operator sounds really cool. That's all.
Agreed
I hope all those classes happen, even if is digitally at first, they can print them into appropriate supplements after.
Armorer artificer is all I hear. I'm down for an operator.
Agreed!
Operator sounds like an Eberron type class to me. What if I want it to fit a lower tech game? Then I thought- ki and chakras. It'd be a perfect reskin to have the "frame" as your internal energy system. Wanna punch people or shoot kamehamahas? Load up those ki points into the right chakra and blast away!
i have some questions for the cat. can you please put him on the mic?
thanks for sharing your process you guys!
4:10 for the Pre-Show
Mvp
GOAT
Perfect timing, I was just putting my headphones on to do house work and wondering what to watch :)
I liked the question about blackmail. The way I see it there are two ways blackmail could play out during a negotiation. One where it just ends the negotiation outright "We have your children, now do what I say!" And one where (imagine negotiating with a mob boss like Xanathar) you could threaten to let's say reveal the identity of an undercover agent in a rival gang. That sort of thing might not end the negotiation out right. It could even impress. "Ah~ I mistook thee for guillable fools, it seemeth I have been mistaken."
Also enjoyed the "Tower of Coins and Blades" lore bit. Love it when something familiar to the audience get's turned into something strange and foreign until the moment of realization hits. "They are dials and pointers, not coins and blades!" "And here, I was expecting heaps of gold and magical swords. Now it seems likely all we are going to find is old books and scrolls. Argh damned Wizards, should have known."
The more I heard about this rpg, the more excited I get.
Serious question. Are you excited about characters that essentially can't fail? Every attack automatically hits. You and your foes always will take damage. I'm not sold that this is fun. I've had plenty of games where players survived because the monsters missed or because the "tank" with high ac did their job. The fun of rolling dice is not knowing what the result is going to be. The auto hit feels very video gamey to me.
@@wingedhussar2909just play divinity 2 man
I love these Q&A streams and hope you do more!
I just love listening to these two and the whole MCDM team. Thank you both and the entire MCDM team. You are doing a fab job.
Re: 3rd party VTTs “I had to bust my ass to make it work, and that sucked.” AMEN.
I think a mounted “Cavalier” class would be sweet. Subclasses are just the different types of mounts you ride. Like one with a horse, one rides a Warg or something…
I’m excited to see how this turns out. I can’t wait to see the final product. The Tacticion is the class I’m looking forward to the most.
As much as I appreciate the indepth explanation on some of the answers, I do hope that future FAQs just flat out ignore the non-questions that need to be explained away
Re: Operator power resource.
Elite Dangerous is a space combat sim game with a really cool power distribution mechanic. It’s fun to manage while flying and fighting. Check that out for some inspiration. Even just the intro tutorials would be enough to see how it works.
Basically you have 6 pips of total power and 3 systems: shields, engines, and weapons. Each can hold up to 4 pips of power or as few as zero. So you can fly balanced 2/2/2 or go full 4 pips to weapons for faster rate of fire or reload but your shields and speed suffer while doing that (basically more dps). You can change it instantly while flying and fighting. If you need to make a tight turn, you can go 4 pips to engines and turn extremely quickly. Or if you go 4 pips to shields, you take less damage and shields recharge faster.
Would be cool if like at the start of the Operators turn they had to allocate their power to change their speed, damage, maybe range of weapons, etc. Then could have triggered abilities to redistribute to armor or something if they were attacked. Certain numbers of pips could unlock different abilities or features. Like 4 pips to armor could give massive damage mitigation. Maybe once per encounter to overload, or more than once but there’s risk. Thats dramatic!
I know shapeshifters have been in a weird spot. From what they've said, it's difficult to properly balance as turning into a bear is great early levels but not so much after.
What about doing a shapeshifting class (or even subclass for someone like The Beastheart) that deals with shapeshifting for short time frames at a time? Something like, "Spend (X class resource) to take the form of (creature) until the beginning of your next turn."
Each transformation would have its own set of buffs and abilities. I feel like this could easily be implemented since you could continue the transformation into subsequent rounds by spending the resource at the beginning of each turn (i.e. you're a flying creature in the air so you dont shift out at the beginning of your turn and fall).
I think in the other Q&A they talked about how they would implement something like this, where the caster gains stuff like bear claws to attack their opponent or squid arms.
Never thought about how in-house VTT could decrease dev time.
I’m all the way mentally invested. I can’t wait! Wishing you all the best of luck
"many companions make good mounts" 55:03 I'm not sure why but that made me laugh!
The process of negotiation is such a well-designed system. Dont make Blackmail a single action; its a step along the way in the natural progression of the negotiation itself. Its an ELEMENT of what you are doing, not a stopgap or endpoint
Amazing stuff guys. Keep it coming.
Very excited about your VTT.
Highlight of my day is listening to this live dream!
The stream is great! The more information presented is fantastic.
Titles that you have to earn which bestow benefits is an awesome idea. A fantastic DM and friend of mine basically treats feats the same way and everyone thinks that it's brilliant. It's especially great for newer players who aren't too sure what to do in their down time. Well - their character wants to be a chef and you want them to have the chef feat/title - so have them buy up some groceries and practice. Super jazzed about this game. :D
On the topic of an online tool/repository. Straight up I don't think I'd be playing 5e without 5etools, and I know a few people in my circle who would agree with that.
I'm really excited for this. A lot of the stuff they're doing I already do when running a 5e game, but to have a system dedicated and built off these concepts means less polish I have to do.
The diagram for pushing creatures was really good with more books had that.
LENNOX!!! YES! Favorite character in one of my favorite games!
I do love the unique take on the classic fantasy ancestries.
I'm so excited for this system! I run after school RPG clubs for secondary school students. One of the things that bums out and drives students away is missing/not feeling heroic/being bored (the other thing usually involves teenage drama). While no system can solve the drama of being a middle school kid, this one certainly seems to be a way to provide a consistently heroic fantasy.
Watching The Chain has made me and, by proxy, all of my character very paranoid about enemies returning from death. This has resulted in many decapitations, dismemberments, and immolations.
😆
They can't get back up if they don't have any limbs!
Would be pretty dope if the Vasloria box set get funded to get some of the Rat Catcher (priest, thief, fighter) characters as NPCs
I get that confusion about skill challenges. Got to mark the paradigm shifts in the game. everyone gets combat, the shift marked out by "roll for initiative". in my 5e games, I simply announce 'its a skill challenge', But yeah, there is something lacking there. no mechanic to mark the shift, like the initiative roll. what if there was a core skill to the challenge, that set the order, but was then excluded as an option: we are running across this plain, trying to outrace our pursuers, so roll athletics to set the order (foes do too) then on your turn, tell us what skill you are using to get ahead, but it cant be athletics. you also cant use any skill that's already been used, thus incentivising rolling higher in the order (party can make sure the right person gets to use the right skill, but maybe your foes will get to it first). Also its a challenge of first to x successes before x failures, so its helpful to be going first
Isn't this how 4e treated SKILL Challenges?
Congrats on 3M. 22 days to go.
1:13:49 didn't expect the Animaniacs/Pinky and the Brain reference (though replacing the intro "Charlie Sheen") 😂
I'm backing food and treats for max. The MCDM game is just extra 😻
I love the idea of titles ^^
Is cool that you earn them, instead of Feats, that you just take. This way they don't need to be balanced in relation to each other, but only in relation to how early or how easily it is to meet the requirements, and meeting the requirements can be interesting and memorable on it's own.
RE: Star Wars’ success. Based on reading her short fiction and watching her other movies, I think Leigh Bracket’s work was more present in The Empire Strikes Back than conventional wisdom indicates too.
Somehow I keep missing these. I believe in previous videos you said something about making the armour be extra hit points by reversing the math of damage reduction (10 reductions of 3 damage=30 extra HP), but then you also mentioned the Fury getting damage reduction after getting some amount of Victories. I wondered if this is also reworked to be additional HP for the combat encounter or does it involve subtraction/division?
Love the mention of film and games being similar in this stream. I work in film and the director being more like a manager is a great analogy, they may come with visual ideas, a script, and a vision but ultimately collaborate with hundreds of people to make it happen, and their job is more deciding ideas work and what ideas don’t work. Same with DMs (or GMs, or Directors) they have an idea for a campaign and possibly even a script but the players add so much to it and can change it based of what they do, and the GM can’t play by themselves, they need the players to do it, much like a director needs a cast and crew to make a movie.
the auteur theory sucks!
Dang it! I missed it.
I was too busy streaming and crafting
Really hoping Troubadour, and Null make it into the core game. Those classes sound really cool
The skill check system sounds very reminiscent of how Modiphius's 2d20 system (Star Trek Adventures, Dune, etc.) handles them (with flexible attributes to use for a skill depending on what exactly you're doing with it). Wonder if the MCDM folks have looked into/taken any inspiration directly from it?
What is this?
Good stuff on the cut Jerry
So I have reached the point of anticipation that my current D&D experience is feeling lacking in the face of the new shiny thing being described. I have a high FoMo resistance so this is rare for me. Good job yall.
Can you have a dm’s screen which has a falling “action-cut” bar? Like, normal dm’s screen but a little choppy guy on the top?
I wonder if health and damage will get a little crazy in later levels? Just looking at level 1 heroes and monsters, the health pools and damage already quite high comparatively.
Hopefully someone will correct me if I'm mistaken, but I think heroes only get ~10 HP every level after first. So, not too crazy, imo
@@TheBrassGeologist I don't believe they have yet nailed down 'leveling up' as it were, and how everything scales. But, I believe the major contributor to health in the game is the armor itself, so finding/getting magic armor is likely what will be the more significant source of health.
Yeah they've not written beyond 1st level yet, so no scaling has been thoroughly designed.
Dale is just south of Erebor, why do you ask?
half expected the tower of clocks to have first been a ruin, then fallen into disuse in an abandoned city, and to now be a vibrant monument in a thriving metropolis
That's really specific
@@antoniopadilha2476 ... thank you? I just thought b/c it "controls time" that it's "history" would be described as having an unusual flow or ordering
I really wish you guys do like a Witch class! That use Hexs as their Heroic Points!!
Interestingly, this kind of sounds to me like the Censor class (I don't have inside info, I'm just going off the summary on the sample page from the crowdfunding campaign), albeit I think that is intended as more of a paladin analogue. They "place divine seals on foes to deal damage and hamper them with supernatural power."
They talked about that somewhere, I believe they said that they thought about making that class, but now they’re thinking maybe that’ll be a kit. So, they’re definitely thinking about providing that witch fantasy, but I don’t believe they have it sorted out yet. Stay tuned!
In regards to over land travel, I've done something with good results. Time is meaningless in days and weeks. Especially for the heroic fantasy, it's a question of how many obstacles. Think about it as focusing on the exciting parts of travel
When you guys were talking about the operator and how you would fit that in to this lore and I was thinking the time raiders from flee mortals and then you said Dwarven mining suits and my brain just OH SHIT OH SHIT
And now I'm thinking what if the time raiders visited the dwarves in the past and then the dwarvs saw their rigs and they said we want those
INSANE IN THE MATT MEMBRANE
Sad I just opened it right as the stream ended. If you guys are still taking questions, what do you think encounter balance will look like for Directors in your system?
And this tower is going in my game😂
Just make it and let me playyyyy
1:12:00 Max the cat
Can we just go ahead and greenlight the name "Draw Steel" for this game? 😂
At the end of the day they can call their game anything they want, I'm not complaining, but I do hope that they call it something more thematic than "MCDM RPG".
Drip-feeding cat content to get us addicted, these guys are devilish
I knew Jerry was good, but Goddamn!
Draw Steel!
The montage scenes reminds me of those kinds of scenes in A-Team or McGuyver. 😅. Am I showing my age?
Lol, if you are, feel safe in that Matt has also used A-Team as a primary example of a Skill Challenge montage scene
will there be a monk equivalent kinda of character? i love being a really fast guy haha
Yes it was called 'the null'
Armed to the teeth with teeth 😄
Im always asleep when q&a happen 😅 Matt said he had to 'nerf' talent and other classes for dnd. I wonder if they will revise them for new system how they wanted to from beginning
Seems pretty obvious that they will
Was it a hard decision to move away from d20,d12,d8, etc. knowing that people LOVE and collect dice?
Hearing Matt saying he didnt really Vibe with spelljammer made me so sad, because i Think that entire aesthetic is so rad and weird and not at all represented enough in pop culture. It’s like if The treassure planet Disney movie crashed into a dirtbag kid from The local game store and They started hanging out and listened to Rush albums
The operator design reminds me a lot of the modular mech design in Lancer rpg
"MAX TURNS OFF THE INTERNET". Aright. I will blame max everytime my internet is down too, now.
You keep making weird niche classes that fit a weird character I've played in the past. Which is making my plan to make classes based on them harder.
I'm suppressing my hype because this coming out is still so far away.
Did I hear right? Play test packet in 2023? Anyone need a guy at a online table?
Can we make 3mil?
Respectfully, why do we want negotiation rules? What problem is this system solving? Negotiation feels like an aspect of role playing games that is served fine with just role playing + skill checks (deception, persuasion, intimidation) Not everything is for everyone, totally get that... just unclear how gamifying negotiation adds to the game. Ofc I haven't played with the rules, but I'd be worried it is about 1 level too complex in a way that would take away from the drama of acting out a negotiation in the classic way.
One part of the point is to make Negotiation a more obvious option. I believe it's in the previous Q&A that Matt mentions: the Kingdoms & Warfare adventure has a negotiation in it, but it's 5e so there's no dedicated game design for it. People really liked it, but didn't know how to apply it generally. Having an explicit system for it makes it easier to do yourself.
Additionally, Negotiation is for when a single Persuassion check should not allow for major shifts in the political landscape. Convincing a librarian to let you into the restricted section looks the exact same as 5e and like you describe: do some roleplaying and make a skill check. But convincing a general to not send his army to a battle should not come down to saying soemthing clever and making a single die roll. You could make it a sort of Skill Challenge if you want, and require multiple checks to do it. But instead of that, they've opted to create actual design for those situations instead of just hacking together some existing design that wasn't actually made for it.
They want the game to explictly do the things it does, and do them well. Negotiation could be done in their game without having explicit rules (you can do it in 5e, and it doesn't have explicit rules for it), but giving it its own intentional design means the system will work better and it makes it easier to recognize as an option.
Crap, no one asked again about traps and lock-picking. To me lock-picking is definitely not heroic but traps can be, I think Conan and traps are somewhat of a big deal.
What's not heroic about lock/trap-picking? Especially since that's a pretty standard aspect of the heroic Rogue/Thief/Shadow archetype
GIVE ME RAT PEOPLE CORE (please)
instead of your own ground up VTT, why not do a FoundryVTT system, that way you can use the existing groundwork and just make your system ruleset and how it works inside?
sorry, was existing question. Just got to the ~45min mark hearing you talk about why. Was just thinking from a code re-use perspective, didn't mean any offense by the question.
Foundry modules are made by fans so the fans will just take care of it as long as mcdm’s license is as open as most systems.
Matt’s hang up seem a bit weird about other VTT but hopefully their proprietary VTT is good that it’s worth the effort they are putting into building it.
And I really hope it’s a one time purchase. Would hate to pay a subscription to run exactly one game.
@@Nastara just point of correction, this is talk about a `system` not a `module`. Both can and are done by both fans and companies.
System being the underlying ruleset and everything (dnd5e, cypher, sotdl, a5e, fate, ect. are examples of systems).
Modules are plugins /to;for/ systems (midiQoL, MoAR Folders, Module Management+, ect. are examples of modules)
The game you are making doesn't really fit my brain, which vibes with the logical and excessive amount of rules of D&D 3.5, nevertheless I have to admit that you criticism of 3.5 are extremely valid, and I like your motivations for doing things the way you are doing, so I'm looking forward to challenge my brain with your game, which I think will fit my friends brains much better 😅
Why no DM screen.
1:28:45
Thanks. I personally think they should have waited and got more accomplished before going to crowd funding. I think it would have been way more successful.
@@bamboozledgreatcrowd8982They're not trying to be "way more successful". Their explicit goal is that they want the audience's feedback _during_ development. Matt literally opens the Kickstarter video saying "if it was already done, we wouldn't need to go to crowdfunding." They could just as easily make a product in secret and then just put it up on the store and sell it. That's explicitly not the point.
Did they say league of legends has good onboarding?!?!?!
Matt has said several times before that it doesn't. Surprised if he says otherwise here
@@eleintbloodJames said it in this stream.
.
I'm uncertain how I feel about Matt saying that they remove comments when people express a negative opinion about something that seems as though they're trying to make others dislike it too. Isn't that the nature of criticism? Does Matt never criticize Star Citizen on the official SC subreddit?
If I say "I personally feel like the implementation of this mechanic isn't fun, here's how I would do it", I don't really think the professional is to tell them "Then go make your own RPG, scrub." and then ban them.
I'm pretty sure Matt's talking about removing explicitly toxic comments, not anything that just expresses negativity. i.e. "This is just a shameless copy of X but worse, RPG's can't work without attack rolls, that's stupid. These guys are idiots, don't buy into this scam" or other such nonesense which he doesn't feel is worth people having to read through as they're trying to find actually constructive comments.
The thought the box set was part of the backer kit. You should make that more explicit.
It was made incredibly super explicit in the Kickstarter video, and I bet it's super explicit _everywhere,_ because MCDM is not a company trying to trick people into giving them money.
Is Colville drunk in those streams or is he usually so bitter? I lost count how many times he derailed the thing with his jabs at chat.
“Disparaging the boot is a bootable offence”
Having listened to this stream a few times, I have no clue what you're referring to. He gets short with people asking repeated/annoying questions a couple times, but I wouldn't call the stream derailed at any point, him bitter, or him _drunk_ lol
@@noahblack914
Instead of making snarky remarks and derailing by talking about people, he could have just ignored questions.
I watched that stream long time ago and I am not going to watch it again. But the guy went on tangents when he saw a comment he didn't like. An adult and sober person who is a professional would have handled that differently.
@@Wlof25 Completely disagree. A professional sober adult would easily do what he did (by definition, bc he is that), because calling out snarky BS and making it clear how it doesn't contribute to the discussion, is important and meaningful. He never derailed the stream, because that is part of the point of the stream. It's about making it clear what they are and what they aren't doing. And what they _definitely_ aren't doing is putting up with sarcastic nonsense from people who aren't actually interested in discussing it, they're just trying to score points. And instead of ignoring them and leaving it to the other viewers to decide if the bad-faith arguments matter, he decides to call it out and make it clear what's going on.
If you're mad about responding to snarky baseless arguments with snark, I don't know what to tell you, except you may need more world experience if you think it's only something a drunk would do. That's almost as much a bad-faith argument as the people who think they're "just making 4e again".
@@noahblack914 Whatever. I have no interest wasting my time watching the stream again to give you timsamps. So think what you want.
I hope they change the class names. Operator? Fury? Tactician? Sounds like a sci fi game.
Fury and Tactician are… sci fi to you?
operator I can sort of see, and it’s a fantasy mech suit, like the artificer, so it IS more tech-magic feeling.
Like, I guess what about the title/fantasy of tactician or fury explicitly points to something that isn’t in a lower tech fantasy? like a fury sounds like a shock trooper or berserker, and a tactician sounds like a seasoned strategic leader/warrior.
James please please get a little sleep mate. self care is important.
have you talked to lawyers yet about setting up your license? I know @runkleofthebailey has been talking about licenses lately on his rpg channel @rolloflaw
they have an in house lawyer