My current campaign has a banished Third Moon hurtling towards the planet to destroy and erase everything we’ve been building for ten real life years in all the campaigns we’ve played. It’s up to past level 20 player characters to solve the existential crisis in a finale ten session capstone campaign. We start that Sunday. Can’t wait.
Not too far into this, but I'm happy the setup is being used for a conversation like this. St Jerry of the Walrus is behind it, I bet. Also, it seems Dael was bitten by a bugbear under the light of a full moon. She should get that looked at
1:59 I SAW THAT JERRY! Trying to cover up that you put Matt's card up at the beginning only to change it later when it's *clearly* Dael! You're not clever. (You're so clever & your editing makes everything shine brighter)
Maybe it's just how they talk about Kits, but I initially thought the idea of a kit was just to be a way to customize your character outside the context of your class. Like maybe I would be a Tactictian with the Wizard kit to simulate having some magical aspects to my character, or an Elementalist with a Knight Kit if I wanted to be a more tanky spellcaster or Rogue kit for a Fury to be a sneaky barbarian. Kinda bummed to hear it's now mostly a martial specific part of character creation because I liked the idea of kits allowing for some modularity for any of the classes regardless of their typical archtypes. I just liked the concept of breaking some of the typical tropes. Like a caster who took a martial focused kit just sounds really cool to me, in a way that getting some "defensive magic power" doesn't.
Haven't finished this video yet, so there might be an answer here that refutes me. But as if the most recent patreon packet, this is still technically true! There are martial kits for magic and psionics. Not a lot, but they're there, basically using a supernatural weapon. There are also options listed in the Wards and Prayers that casters get that allow them to use weapons. They don't get a signature ability out of it, but it allows them to use certain weapons or armor, I believe. We'll see how this gets fleshed out more as the game gets finalized as well! 😄
I may be wrong, but you still can get kits as a caster through titles! It's just not as universal as it was before because it was causing lots of problems.
The idea of martial kits was to abstract the equipment choices up from, “Should I wield a greatsword or a battle axe?” to, “How does my guy fight?” The fact that kits fulfill a bit of the multi classing niche was a side effect, not a primary intent. And, kits still do this! You can be a Fury with the Cloak and Dagger kit for a sneaky barbarian, or a Tactician with the Battlemind kit for a psionic knight. Casters still get this customization too. It just isn’t called kits.
@@AdellRedwinters I mean, I can’t say anything definitive about what the game will have when they’re done. I don’t work there, and nobody knows the future. 😅 What I can say is that in the latest Patreon packet, the Elementalist chooses Enchantments (their mechanical equivalent of kits), and one of them is the Enchantment of Battle that lets you use armor and weapons and get a little damage boost with weapon abilities. And while most of their heroic abilities (a much bigger portion of your character choices than kits) are ranged, there are a couple melee ones. Whether you would call that a melee-focused Elementalist is up to you. Personally, I wouldn’t call it melee-focused; more like melee as an accent color. But, that’s the trade off of their design choices; sacrifice some of the niche fantasies that typically come from multiclassing-like design, and in return deliver more robust and more fun core fantasies.
I would LOVE to (over time) buy a series of 60-page adventure modules that feel like floppy comic books (I imagine a sort of satin feel), and eventually a Vasloria (etc.) box to hold them all upright and dignified.
A superhero game I'm running right now is "Sentinel Comics". It's great fun, over the top superhero action. "Masks" is also great, wonderfully designed game, more focused on interpersonal drama. What I'm missing is a more tactical superhero game. There is not much in that area as far as I know.
For people who perked up on the superhero game topic (32:06), try Godbound if you haven't. The setting in the book is more medieval fantasy than your usual capeshit, but you could make adjustments or make your own setting. According to my DM, it's pretty intense to run because the characters are so powerful and can change the world on a whim, but damn does it feel good to play a god amongst mortals.
This was a shot of black coffee; there are so many wonderful ideas and methodologies in here I don't even know what to whoot at loudest. My fam isn't here so I'm hitting Northman levels up in here. I await with patience and fortitude for more hidden lore on the Null to emerge. Time to hit the gym!
It feels very poignant to me that y’all are having this conversation on stream (14:00) two weeks after you gave me written permission to write a book about Ajax. We love everything that the folks at MCDM do.
That was a great Q/A! I'm getting more excited for Draw Steel and its future. I'm relatively new to the MCDM world but have gotten my hands on most things you guys have put out thus far. One of my favorite books is Flee Mortals! (and Where Evil Lives.), but I wasn't around for the kickstarter. Any chance the Xorannox mini gets a re-release? I need it 😅
Regarding the first question I am deeply reminded of a campaign/villain idea I found on the giant in the playground forums. They used to have a Vote up a Villain thread that would appear occasionally, and the most thorough entry I can remember was called the Silver Hellstar by Afroakuma. The hellstar is described as a giant world ending machine of doom that converts the souls of things it blows up into devils to try and tip the balance of the blood war. But since its made up of the enslaved souls of angels and what not its trying to resist its own programming by forcing worlds to destroy themselves before it can get in range sending every soul to their designated afterlife rather than corrupting them into devils. Since its appearance in the sky as a distant star foretelling calamity starts to interrupt the power of divine magic in the world it basically stays visible to the party from day one. The party goes around investigating various people going nuts and becoming uncharacteristically violent, doomsday cultists start appearing and an archcleric of asmodeus pops up claiming that they've found the ruby rod of something. Then as the campaign starts to reach its direst point with invading armies of devils and nimblewrights you slay the final boss only to be told, oh, your too late. We were trying to spare you the ultimate pain, whereupon the hellstar decloaks and starts doing its own deathstar impression and the party is supposed to ride mechanical dragons into space to try and blow it up from within. It was a really intense idea. The only thing that made it so hard to use as a real campaign was the sigil of binding literally turning off clerics, though I don't think it would be unreasonable for the pc god of choice to anoint them there champion and exempt them from the chaos. Definitely my favorite interpretation of a galactus type threat.
Man, the Moon adventure makes me think of, obviously, Zelda: Majora's Mask, but also the bit in volume 2 of Saga where two of the protagonists wind up on a moon that the denizens insist is actually an egg that's about to hatch into a terrifying cosmic horror creature that's going to devour everything in the region of space. Post-Ajax idea: make him like Dracula in Castlevania. Every 100 years, he resurrects to be the big bad once again.
The Acolyte sounds interesting. Sounds kind of like a scion idea I've been playing with in my head. I'm sure you could flavor your Acolyte as being a scion of sorts.
Have you guys considered the eberron approach building out the setting wide without progressing the narative and with mysteries with multiple poasible answers? Main reasoning js to avoid a europe/the sword coast is the only fantasy place around
I have a question: loved the set up y’all had for this and it made me think of some of the big D&D streams out there. Once Draw Steel comes out, will you guys stream a campaign playing the game you guys made? Personally, I think it would be great content and a good way to promote the game.
Yeah I think we're gonna do that. We already stream our playtests! But it's not the same thing. Personally I'm just waiting for the game to be closer to done, so we can get a Character Builder done to make it easy to make a hero.
Hopefully I just don’t understand but I am concerned about how much Lore seems be a focus and a factor affecting game design. I really hope that the system is as Lore agnostic as possible. The elements that excites me about the product are the focus on fun cinematic gameplay that is designed for ease of play and optimization to create tension and tactical dilemmas and be fun. My personal campaign setting has been similarly designed to optimize gameplay over coolness or nostalgia for any other setting or typical fantasy world troupes. If a lot of lore is being imbued into Draw Steel, I’m concerned that the setting is not receiving the same rigor of play testing and design optimization as the core rules. Lore should be helpful to the Director to manage the game while also being as easy as possible for the players to imbibe and imbue with life and meaning. The fun game play comes first then the Setting and Lore should be molded to support that gameplay. Regardless of how cool Orlan or Vasloria, or Ajax or any of the other stuff maybe, if they make it harder for me as a Director to run or harder for my players to believe stuff matters, then that Lore is a detriment to the game. If the goal of MCDM is to indulge in fun narrative then the focus should be on finishing Matt’s novels and on adventures. If the goal is to be the best RPG company in the world and redinfing the system at the center of the game, the focus should be on what makes the best RPG. And I think you guys have been faithful to that with your play test and core rule design. I hope the Lore parts are considered similarly. I really wish I had the time and influence to follow all of the details of the development and interact with the process. Creating My own campaign setting I Basically worked backwards from my setting goals (easy to run with minimal need to create a huge amount of detail as background, flexible and easy to improv and adapt to player actions, small and simple enough that the players can actually grasp and understand the world, and full of innate to tensions and themes which encourage tension) and included in the design for my setting not what is cool but what characteristics of a setting make running the game easier for me while also maximizing the ease of immersion and player attachment to the setting as possible.
![KSI - Dirty [Official Visualiser]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/VoDh1h1dPUE/mqdefault.jpg)
FIGHT! THE! MOON!
Sad you missed this interview Matt! Hope you can be at the next one!
Man these questions are really good. Too bad Matt couldn't be there to answer them, but Dael did a great job as usual!
I’m just impressed with how quickly Dael was able to grow that amazing beard.
Great job Dael, good questions, great answers. I will email this to my grandma.
This Dael/Matt bit lasted way longer than I expected it to but I love it either way
What are you talking about? Matt wasn't even in the video.
Did Dael day something about Matt or something? That's pretty rude considering they flew here wall that way...
I’m about 9 minutes in, and I’m ready for it to be over
@@davidmartin5145same 😢
I really appreciate the slightly edited format. Watching you guys hang out live is fun, but this format is superior for a RUclips video
Dael did fantastic today; my favorite Q&A.
This was good, but I like her old stuff better.
My current campaign has a banished Third Moon hurtling towards the planet to destroy and erase everything we’ve been building for ten real life years in all the campaigns we’ve played. It’s up to past level 20 player characters to solve the existential crisis in a finale ten session capstone campaign. We start that Sunday. Can’t wait.
Not too far into this, but I'm happy the setup is being used for a conversation like this. St Jerry of the Walrus is behind it, I bet.
Also, it seems Dael was bitten by a bugbear under the light of a full moon. She should get that looked at
1:59 I SAW THAT JERRY! Trying to cover up that you put Matt's card up at the beginning only to change it later when it's *clearly* Dael! You're not clever. (You're so clever & your editing makes everything shine brighter)
The troll power of this video is fantastic.
Maybe it's just how they talk about Kits, but I initially thought the idea of a kit was just to be a way to customize your character outside the context of your class. Like maybe I would be a Tactictian with the Wizard kit to simulate having some magical aspects to my character, or an Elementalist with a Knight Kit if I wanted to be a more tanky spellcaster or Rogue kit for a Fury to be a sneaky barbarian. Kinda bummed to hear it's now mostly a martial specific part of character creation because I liked the idea of kits allowing for some modularity for any of the classes regardless of their typical archtypes. I just liked the concept of breaking some of the typical tropes. Like a caster who took a martial focused kit just sounds really cool to me, in a way that getting some "defensive magic power" doesn't.
Haven't finished this video yet, so there might be an answer here that refutes me. But as if the most recent patreon packet, this is still technically true!
There are martial kits for magic and psionics. Not a lot, but they're there, basically using a supernatural weapon.
There are also options listed in the Wards and Prayers that casters get that allow them to use weapons. They don't get a signature ability out of it, but it allows them to use certain weapons or armor, I believe. We'll see how this gets fleshed out more as the game gets finalized as well!
😄
I may be wrong, but you still can get kits as a caster through titles! It's just not as universal as it was before because it was causing lots of problems.
The idea of martial kits was to abstract the equipment choices up from, “Should I wield a greatsword or a battle axe?” to, “How does my guy fight?”
The fact that kits fulfill a bit of the multi classing niche was a side effect, not a primary intent. And, kits still do this! You can be a Fury with the Cloak and Dagger kit for a sneaky barbarian, or a Tactician with the Battlemind kit for a psionic knight.
Casters still get this customization too. It just isn’t called kits.
@@EthOrlen So the game will still have ways to play against type? Like if I want to be a melee focused elementalist?
@@AdellRedwinters I mean, I can’t say anything definitive about what the game will have when they’re done. I don’t work there, and nobody knows the future. 😅
What I can say is that in the latest Patreon packet, the Elementalist chooses Enchantments (their mechanical equivalent of kits), and one of them is the Enchantment of Battle that lets you use armor and weapons and get a little damage boost with weapon abilities. And while most of their heroic abilities (a much bigger portion of your character choices than kits) are ranged, there are a couple melee ones.
Whether you would call that a melee-focused Elementalist is up to you. Personally, I wouldn’t call it melee-focused; more like melee as an accent color. But, that’s the trade off of their design choices; sacrifice some of the niche fantasies that typically come from multiclassing-like design, and in return deliver more robust and more fun core fantasies.
I love how you were sitting around a table and we got to watch you as if sitting there too.
WILLY!!! It's always awesome to see him talk about MCDM stuff
You had me at plumbing.
Dael is looking particularly handsome today!
Came here to say the same thing
It's so sad that she got bitten by a werebugbear
Bummed I missed this live but love to see these dev q&a.
I, for one, am anticipating the return of MECHA-AJAX.
Ajax the Operator
That was fun, thanks “Dale” and J, D, & W! So much great stuff to look forward to 😊
I would LOVE to (over time) buy a series of 60-page adventure modules that feel like floppy comic books (I imagine a sort of satin feel), and eventually a Vasloria (etc.) box to hold them all upright and dignified.
14:24 and this, is why i love MCDM
1st live stream with you lad’s - exciting!! 🙌
A superhero game I'm running right now is "Sentinel Comics". It's great fun, over the top superhero action. "Masks" is also great, wonderfully designed game, more focused on interpersonal drama.
What I'm missing is a more tactical superhero game. There is not much in that area as far as I know.
Maybe mutants and masterminds?
The Four Harbingers of Absolute Awesomeness are here!
I'm with James on the base building loop. I would love to see something like that in the game.
For people who perked up on the superhero game topic (32:06), try Godbound if you haven't. The setting in the book is more medieval fantasy than your usual capeshit, but you could make adjustments or make your own setting. According to my DM, it's pretty intense to run because the characters are so powerful and can change the world on a whim, but damn does it feel good to play a god amongst mortals.
This was a shot of black coffee; there are so many wonderful ideas and methodologies in here I don't even know what to whoot at loudest. My fam isn't here so I'm hitting Northman levels up in here. I await with patience and fortitude for more hidden lore on the Null to emerge. Time to hit the gym!
🤖
@@antoniopadilha2476 /counterspell
“Hurr durr you can’t kill the moon, don’t you care about the tides???”
Uh, yeah I care about the tides:
Total
Imminent
Destruction of the
Entire moon
The mcdm crew is just the best. Now i need to watch "Dael's"(Matt's )reaction to this.
Watching this at 2x speed is hilarious. Dael looks like they're getting ready to bounce to the moon.
It feels very poignant to me that y’all are having this conversation on stream (14:00) two weeks after you gave me written permission to write a book about Ajax. We love everything that the folks at MCDM do.
SO good.
That was a great Q/A! I'm getting more excited for Draw Steel and its future.
I'm relatively new to the MCDM world but have gotten my hands on most things you guys have put out thus far.
One of my favorite books is Flee Mortals! (and Where Evil Lives.), but I wasn't around for the kickstarter.
Any chance the Xorannox mini gets a re-release? I need it 😅
Regarding the first question I am deeply reminded of a campaign/villain idea I found on the giant in the playground forums.
They used to have a Vote up a Villain thread that would appear occasionally, and the most thorough entry I can remember was called the Silver Hellstar by Afroakuma.
The hellstar is described as a giant world ending machine of doom that converts the souls of things it blows up into devils to try and tip the balance of the blood war. But since its made up of the enslaved souls of angels and what not its trying to resist its own programming by forcing worlds to destroy themselves before it can get in range sending every soul to their designated afterlife rather than corrupting them into devils. Since its appearance in the sky as a distant star foretelling calamity starts to interrupt the power of divine magic in the world it basically stays visible to the party from day one. The party goes around investigating various people going nuts and becoming uncharacteristically violent, doomsday cultists start appearing and an archcleric of asmodeus pops up claiming that they've found the ruby rod of something.
Then as the campaign starts to reach its direst point with invading armies of devils and nimblewrights you slay the final boss only to be told, oh, your too late. We were trying to spare you the ultimate pain, whereupon the hellstar decloaks and starts doing its own deathstar impression and the party is supposed to ride mechanical dragons into space to try and blow it up from within.
It was a really intense idea. The only thing that made it so hard to use as a real campaign was the sigil of binding literally turning off clerics, though I don't think it would be unreasonable for the pc god of choice to anoint them there champion and exempt them from the chaos. Definitely my favorite interpretation of a galactus type threat.
Man, the Moon adventure makes me think of, obviously, Zelda: Majora's Mask, but also the bit in volume 2 of Saga where two of the protagonists wind up on a moon that the denizens insist is actually an egg that's about to hatch into a terrifying cosmic horror creature that's going to devour everything in the region of space.
Post-Ajax idea: make him like Dracula in Castlevania. Every 100 years, he resurrects to be the big bad once again.
So... Galactus, Majoras Mask, Moonfall and Ascension?
The Acolyte sounds interesting. Sounds kind of like a scion idea I've been playing with in my head. I'm sure you could flavor your Acolyte as being a scion of sorts.
Nice music, too
Is matt going to be mad ur in his rush shirt?
Have you guys considered the eberron approach building out the setting wide without progressing the narative and with mysteries with multiple poasible answers?
Main reasoning js to avoid a europe/the sword coast is the only fantasy place around
14:00 are we getting a Draw Steel OGL?
There already is one!
True Clowns are too powerful to go into the monster book, they cannot even set foot in your world without it being Altered.
Masks is the leader in super heroes imo - but it’s very much narrative over combat crunch
I have a question: loved the set up y’all had for this and it made me think of some of the big D&D streams out there. Once Draw Steel comes out, will you guys stream a campaign playing the game you guys made? Personally, I think it would be great content and a good way to promote the game.
Yeah I think we're gonna do that. We already stream our playtests! But it's not the same thing.
Personally I'm just waiting for the game to be closer to done, so we can get a Character Builder done to make it easy to make a hero.
Phenomenal live stream! 🔥
With that said, Matt’s Aussie accent has gots to goo! Distracted me the whole damn video… 🙄
Flesh and blood is a new tcg.
I like how happy James seemed every time @monarchsfactory mentioned @mattcolville. I think it speaks to a great friendship.
"A real clown" I'm listening!
Does anyone know what's the shirt the James is wearing? It looks really cool.
Just fwiw, I'm a Vermintide fan and absolutely would fight the rats... although the radenwights aren't really those rats
Lovely goofs
Draw steel is a weird name considering there will be no steel weapons in my party past level 5 lol
Unfortunately, Draw Valiar didn't test well with focus groups.
Yeah we're all used to D&D where every party always has a dragon and a dungeon in it. But we'll muddle through somehow... :D
Skin is peak fantasy!
Dael, you forgot your sign-off was "Email this to your grandma"? Really? Tsk.
i feel so disconnected from whats going on with MCDM
Dael, what happened to your laugh?
So what *is* the difference between a clown and a real clown?
Hopefully I just don’t understand but I am concerned about how much Lore seems be a focus and a factor affecting game design. I really hope that the system is as Lore agnostic as possible. The elements that excites me about the product are the focus on fun cinematic gameplay that is designed for ease of play and optimization to create tension and tactical dilemmas and be fun.
My personal campaign setting has been similarly designed to optimize gameplay over coolness or nostalgia for any other setting or typical fantasy world troupes. If a lot of lore is being imbued into Draw Steel, I’m concerned that the setting is not receiving the same rigor of play testing and design optimization as the core rules.
Lore should be helpful to the Director to manage the game while also being as easy as possible for the players to imbibe and imbue with life and meaning.
The fun game play comes first then the Setting and Lore should be molded to support that gameplay. Regardless of how cool Orlan or Vasloria, or Ajax or any of the other stuff maybe, if they make it harder for me as a Director to run or harder for my players to believe stuff matters, then that Lore is a detriment to the game. If the goal of MCDM is to indulge in fun narrative then the focus should be on finishing Matt’s novels and on adventures. If the goal is to be the best RPG company in the world and redinfing the system at the center of the game, the focus should be on what makes the best RPG. And I think you guys have been faithful to that with your play test and core rule design. I hope the Lore parts are considered similarly.
I really wish I had the time and influence to follow all of the details of the development and interact with the process.
Creating My own campaign setting I Basically worked backwards from my setting goals (easy to run with minimal need to create a huge amount of detail as background, flexible and easy to improv and adapt to player actions, small and simple enough that the players can actually grasp and understand the world, and full of innate to tensions and themes which encourage tension) and included in the design for my setting not what is cool but what characteristics of a setting make running the game easier for me while also maximizing the ease of immersion and player attachment to the setting as possible.