#mcdm rpg

[xochilexart]

Reva, my memonek elementalist for Draw Steel!

[probablygoodrpgideas]

Draw Steel (also known as the mcdm rpg) sent out playtesting stuff for backers and so far I really like that you can customize your devil PCs, you get 3 Fiend Points and can spend them on stuff like a prehensile tail, glowing eyes, or wings

[vixensdungeon]

I saw someone complaining that MCDM RPG’s fighter type class has a taunt mechanic, which is bad because it takes away the GM’s agency and fun.

As a gamesmistress, deciding who Goblin #6 is going to attack each round is one of my least favorite things so this actually sounds like it would increase my fun. And I don’t think I’d miss that tiny bit of agency next to the godlike agency I have as a GM in these types of games.

Oh, it’s also bad because it’s like in a MMORPG, which as an argument is very 2000 and late.

[jettermelon]

I'm reading the new playtest material for Draw Steel (The MCDM RPG), and I think I'm going to become insufferable. I don't have many articulate thoughts yet, but I just need to forewarn y'all. I'm not going to shut the fuck up about this game for a while, I fear.

[rpgsandbox]

The MCDM RPG

Whether you’re a group of local heroes sent to investigate mysterious goings-on in the nearby haunted wood, or famous mercenaries plotting a

MCDM’s first original game, a new Heroic Fantasy RPG from the folks who brought you;

Strongholds & Followers

Kingdoms & Warfare

The Illrigger

The Beastheart

The Talent

Flee, Mortals!

Where Evil Lives

Comes a brand new game, built from the ground up to give you a better system for running a better game.

Xorannox, The Tyract Lord Syuul

A Fantasy RPG where your character starts, at level 1, already a hero. Maybe even locally famous! You might meet in a tavern, or start in the middle of the action! 

Whether you’re a group of local heroes sent to investigate mysterious goings-on in the nearby haunted wood, or famous mercenaries plotting and scheming in the big city, the MCDM RPG makes building adventures and fighting monsters fun.

Basically, any adventure or story you’re running in your current Fantasy RPG, you can do that in this game. Just, in a more straightforward and fun way, unburdened by sacred cows from the 1970s.

You can absolutely run epic games with heroes exploring dungeons, but this game is not about dungeoncrawling. You don’t track torches or rations or worry about running out of light.

You can plunge, heedless of danger, into a dark and haunted forest, but this game is not about exploration. No hexes to explore.

By focusing on the core fantasy of epic heroes fighting monsters and tyranny, we think we can deliver a better experience for your friends and your table.

Fighting monsters in this game is a dynamic, action-oriented blast. Heroes and monsters often have abilities that knock their opponents into walls, through doors, into each other. 

Every hero has a small array of cool, thematic abilities they can use every round. You gain resources in this game as you play, so battles get more epic as they go. No slog.

The game uses 2d6, plus a handful of d4s and d8s. When you attack, you roll 2d6, add one of your attributes, and that is how much damage you do. Your attack roll IS your damage roll. 

You cannot miss. No more wasted turns, no more burning resources on spells only for your target to “save.”

Lady Morgant Lord Saxton

We love fighting monsters! But there’s more to the game than that!

Certain NPCs can be negotiated with to get them to change their allegiance or reconsider their actions. (Technically, ANY npc can be negotiated with but there’s usually only one per adventure) These NPCs have stats like Patience and Interest. 

We also plan on rules for Research & Crafting to let players unlock ancient secrets and build wonderous marvels. 

We have ideas for how to make language fluency relevant, better rules for wealth, renown. But it’s unknown how much of that we can fit in a 400 page rulebook.

full resolution - What is this game?

full resolution - Building A Heroic Narrative

full resolution - Tactician

full resolution - Dwarves

full resolution - Revenants

full resolution - Forced Movement

full resolution - Kits

full resolution - Necromancer

We are funding two books!

Heroes Basically, The Rulebook. Approximately 400 pages of rules for making characters, character customization, advancement. There’ll be ancestries (classic and new!), classes, skills, rules for combat, negotiation, research & crafting, and more!

We really like customizing characters and giving players lots of options. Even two heroes of the same class and ancestry can be very different in this game.

Monsters A monster book! Basically, Flee, Mortals! without the Villain Parties or Environments. MOST of the monsters in our 5E monster book, plus all the stuff we had to cut, and a bunch of new stuff!

You’ll also get rules for building balanced (or deliberately unbalanced depending on how much trouble your players have gotten into) encounters.

We’ve been testing and developing this game internally for almost a year now, but that was just the folks at the office and our friends. The first packet went to our Contract Testers back in August and have been pounding on it ever since.

The game is already working and it’s already fun! For the next 18 months we’ll be adding more classes, ancestries, progression, customization, and rewards.

We take testing very seriously. We want to make books that are fun to read, full of great ideas for your world and your game, and fun to play and that takes time. Polish, iteration, and lots of testing.

You do not need to take our work for it, come to the Discord and talk to them directly, or join a future playtest.

We think we can get these two PDFs finished by June of 2025, but we don’t think you’ll have to wait that long to play it.

If things go well, we intend to get you, our backers, a playtest packet sometime next year, hopefully by Q2 2024. 

We intend to publish this game under an open license, probably something like the Shadowdark license, because we want you, and anyone who wants to, to make, share, publish their own work using these rules and set in this world.

We hope, by the time the PDF exists, folks will not only have been playing this game for months, they’ll be making, sharing, selling their own original works using this material.

Lord Kenway Pinna

Backerkit campaign ends: Jan 5, 2024 at 8:01am GMT

Website: [MCDM Productions] [facebook] [twitter] [instagram] [youtube] [discord]

[grimseverity]

Judge, Tiefling Illrigger from the Chain of Acheron MCDM 5e Actual Play :) art by me

[sunbeargames]

Got to run the playtest of Draw Steel for my players. It's the new "tactical cinematic heroic fantasy" TTRPG from MCDM.

As a combat engine, it's a huge improvement from 5e. Better resource economy and better class design.

Everyone has a "heroic resource" to manage that goes up during each fight and can be spent on cool abilities. Rather than spamming Fireball at the start of each encounter, your cool moves are what you use to actually turn the tide of the fight or finish off the enemies.

Your turn is never wasted on missing. The Power Roll has a 3-tier result system, and on most abilities even getting a tier 1 result still does something good. You are always making progress, and so you never have the issue of waiting for your turn and then accomplishing nothing because you rolled a 1.

Initiative works by swapping back and forth between the heroes and the Director. The players pick one person to go, then I have a monster (or small group of monsters) act, then another player goes. The players decide the order they act in, which promotes a lot of teamwork.

The Director has a resource called Villain Points they can gain and spend like the Heroic Resources, so I can pull out cooler abilities as the fight goes on.

All that stuff is really flashy and cool, and was surprisingly easy to run. It was a little rocky like learning a new system always is, but we got the hang of things pretty fast.

I think ultimately Draw Steel still has to prove it can support the person running the game better than 5e did (a low bar, admittedly).

Currently, I'm waiting to see how it handles fail states other than dying. The heroes are hard to kill, which I like, but that means there needs to be ways for them to lose without the adventure ending, otherwise the stakes kind of just disappear because I'd have an incentive to pull my punches and not have things end in an anticlimactic fashion.

Rules for things like retreating, chase scenes, heroes being captured, and generally making it easy to help the party fail forward are going to be really important.

[thingsareswinging]

So I got the play test packet for The MCDM RPG the other day and decided to run it with my players, most of whom (myself included) had only ever seriously played D&D5e. This proved to be a mixed blessing, because it turned out that everyone instantly latched onto The MCDM RPG quicker than they ever clicked with 5e combat, and they had a grand time to the point where they would like our current campaign to be converted over to this new system.

Which is a problem because The MCDM RPG has not actually been written yet. It currently exists only in the form of five pregenerated characters and a clock tower full of kobolds. The kobolds do have jet packs, but it’s still not enough to actually make a campaign around.