The recent infuriating news about Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast, which comes at what I imagine is the worst possible time from a strategic standpoint (unless some Hasbro folks assumed that the work on the 2024 books was basically done and they could thus afford to fire a bunch of people who had just done said work) has had me taking more seriously the idea of a broader TTRPG space.
Don't get me wrong: I love D&D, and I think it's important that the infamously nuance-blind online community realizes that there's a distinction between the passionate game designers and artists who make D&D and the corporate parasites that pull shit like the OGL fiasco and lay off people to improve their own year-end bonuses. The public faces of D&D, which these days is primarily Chris Perkins and Jeremy Crawford, are not the enemy here.
The enemy, as usual, is basically capitalism (or whatever horrifying mutant "increase share value at the expense of all else" version of capitalism that exists today is).
Anyway, I love D&D, but I've also been playing it long enough to start to question some of its underlying assumptions. The game is nearly 50 years old, and while 5th Edition is very different than 1st Edition was (not even getting into the complexities of what "1st Edition" even means) there's clearly a strong effort to preserve elements of the game for the sake of nostalgia.
And thus there's a place for a game that's willing to upend the table.
I think that's the core premise of MCDM's as-yet-untitled TTRPG. (As a note, I'm not labeling these posts until we have a name to talk about this game.)
This game is still in development, and likely won't be released until 2025 (fitting, perhaps, that I'll get it ten years after I started playing D&D) so all of this is somewhat speculative, but I figured I'd go through what we know:
2d6 Rather than 1d20:
D&D's most iconic die is the d20, which is notably the largest die (sort of - you could argue percentile dice simulates a 100-sided die) used in the game, but it's also the one most commonly used. This means that for most rolls you make, there's the widest swing. And, as a single die, there's no greater chance for it to roll near its average than at its extremes.
The MCDM RPG uses 2d6 for most of its rolls, and will evidently be using d4s and d8s for other systems, but probably not any higher-value dice.
This means that you're more likely to roll average, and the absolute lowest you can roll is only ten lower than the absolute highest you can roll.
Now, it seems that this will be used both for combat and for skill checks, so we'll need to adjust our expectations. In 5E, as a DM I tend to set a DC of 15 as my standard "moderate difficulty" for a skill check. At early levels, a player who's perfectly set up for that kind of thing is going to succeed about half the time, but for other players you'll need a little luck, but it's still very doable.
We don't know how "characteristics" (their name for abilities) will scale with level, but it appears that the Tactician starts with 3 Might (the values here are your modifier - there's no weird raw score that is rarely ever referenced) so it would seem that a good base TN (Target Number, rather than using "Difficulty Class") might be 10 (though we don't know what kind of value that Skills might add, so it could be more like 12).
We don't know how critting will work. Supposedly it'll be more frequent than in 5E, which to me suggests it could happen any time you roll a 6 on either die, which would be about 31% of the time.
Classes, Subclasses, and Ancestries:
One thing that will be familiar is that there are a number of classes, each with its own subclasses, and that you'll be able to play various ancestries like humans, elves, dwarves, and presumably some weirder original creatures.
The classes that have been previewed look like they largely fit into familiar fantasy archetypes, but use unconventional names. Some will have obvious analogues: the Fury is the Barbarian, the Shadow is the Rogue, the Tactician is the Fighter, the Null is the Monk, the Conduit is the Cleric, the Censor is the Paladin. But we'll also see a little bit of unusual flair with some ideas like the Summoner as a kind of Necromancer/Conjurer and the Elementalist as a classic blasty mage. The Talent, of course, we've seen in 5E now, and while you could argue for it being vaguely similar to the Sorcerer, it's kind of its own thing.
Roll for Damage, No Roll to Hit:
One of the exciting and curious things about the game is that there's no roll to hit a target. Instead, it looks like damage will simply happen, but monsters and player characters will have ways to reduce incoming damage.
That said, it also just seems that we should expect higher damage numbers. In the Backerkit preview pages, we see that the Tactician begins at 1st level with 38 HP plus their Endurance score (Endurance being basically Constitution) and gets an additional 8+END with each level.
Compare this with a 5E Fighter, who's going to have 10+Con at 1st level, so likely only 12 or 13. There's a good chance you're going to have more than three times as much HP - but perhaps that's necessary given that you'll likely be taking more damage.
10 Levels:
The range from beginning adventurer to demigod-like hero is shortened here. The intention, according to Matt Colville, is that players should level up after an "adventure," which he suggests is something like a 32-to-64-page published adventure. The hope is that most campaigns will see players hit max level, and that all that exciting max-level content will not be a hazy dream the way it typically is in D&D.
Kits:
Equipment is handled very differently. The game's emphasis is on the tactical fighting of monsters, and so the nitty-gritty about every piece of equipment you're carrying (and how much it all weighs) is left abstracted into something called Kits.
We're given some examples of Kits, and different classes will be able to use different kits. For example, one of the kits a Tactician (and presumably a Censor) could take is "Shining Armor," which is described as being heavy armor, a shield, a medium weapon, and a thrown weapon, and grants bonuses like adding 20 HP, 1 Speed (speed is measured in squares on a grid, so this is the equivalent of 5 feet,) +1 damage with weapon attacks and +5 range with weapon attacks (I'd assume this applies to thrown weapons). It then grants a once-per-encounter ability called "Lead the Charge," which lets you and all your allies within 10 squares of you to move up to your speed.
Kits thus feel like a sort of mix of equipment and "vibe."
Initiative:
There's no initiative roll - instead, the players and the monsters take turns, and the party can discuss which order they want to take their turns in. The intention here is to encourage cooperative tactics - maybe the Fury has an ability that will knock those two kobolds closer to their allies and then the Elementalist can bring a Fireball down on them.
I'll be curious to see how this works when the party outnumbers the monsters (such as if you're fighting a deadly giant) and, by contrast, what happens if the monsters outnumber the party (such as a horde of zombies). Minions, like from Flee, Mortals! will likely be part of the game (the idea right now is that most of the monsters from Flee, Mortals! will probably also be in the base monster book) and will presumably attack as a unit, but we'll have to see how it works when you've got a party of five players facing off against, say, three hags.
Default Setting:
MCDM is working on three settings, all of which take place in the same cosmos, but which serve different fantasy subgenres. Vasloria is their classic heroic fantasy setting of roving monsters, ruins to explore, and small villages in need of defenders. Capital is their grand city of intrigue, where politics and social maneuvering are central. The Timescape is their science-fantasy setting, which Colville pitches as having a 1970s Used Future aesthetic, though is certainly more on the fantastical side of things than having any really hard science-fiction (if they hit the Star Wars balance I'll be pretty happy with it).
However, the assumption that Colville suggests is that most people will play in their own homebrew settings. I know that, despite my longest-running campaign taking place in Ravnica, I generally prefer to use my own lore and setting.
What I hope we'll see is some guidance on creating customized stat blocks, akin to the chapter in 5E's Dungeon Master's Guide, which I've used extensively to create my own monsters, and which has generally been pretty effective at making cool and appropriately-challenging monsters in my experience.
My Hopes for the System:
So far, the impression I've gotten of the game is that its core mechanics are relatively straightforward. The huge hurdle I think any new RPG system has to jump over is to tell us why we should play this instead of the system that we're already familiar with.
I think that, even if this game is everything I could hope it would be, there will still be an uphill battle convincing my players to try it.
Among my gaming friends, we're not the type that jumps around to a lot of systems, or even campaigns, very much. I have lots of friends who would rather not play than roll up a new character for a one-shot, and so the promise of a short, one-to-three-session adventure trying out this game will take a lot of convincing.
Furthermore, this game is promising to focus on a particular aspect of TTRPGs - the tactical combat side - which is, I'd guess, the thing most people think D&D does best. While I don't think there's any intention to be the "D&D Killer," in the sense that it would take all of the audience from D&D (which I just don't think is going to be possible in the short term when D&D's brand is at its most popular - terrible corporate decisions notwithstanding) it's clear that the intention here is to be the RPG that does what D&D does best, but better.
Given that I freaking love playing D&D, and think its combat system is super fun, I'd be overjoyed if it succeeds, because that'd both mean an even more fun game and create a pressure on D&D proper to improve.
But it remains to be seen if this will ever grow big enough to rival D&D, the way Pathfinder managed for a time during 4th Edition.
For my own personal predilections, I'll be curious to see how well this does the weirder aspects of fantasy. Colville's stated tastes strike me as erring toward tradition, with perhaps a generational preference for a kind of genre purity. But that's just based on what he says in his videos. By contrast, the actual design coming out of MCDM has proven to be a little more diverse - The Talent is by no means a traditional fantasy class, borrowing more from science fiction and horror (not that it's a "dark" horror-themed class, but that psychic powers often come along with paranormal stuff associated with horror) and if they come out with the Operator, we've got a very sci-fi-style class that could wind up fulfilling the promise of the Artificer better than 5E's version does (albeit with a narrower focus).
I've already pledged by own bucks toward the project (I'm considering shelling out for physical books, but it would more than double the amount of money I'd have to put in) and so I'm hoping to get some updates as the game takes shape.
I don't want to give the impression, though, that my interest in this game means I'm any less excited for the 2024 revamp of D&D 5E. I'm for sure getting the new core rulebooks when they come out, and will likely talk to my players about allowing them to convert to the new versions of their classes for my ongoing campaigns (and check in with my DM about converting to the new Wizard in our Wildemount game).
But I'm hoping that, moving forward, I'll have the chance to bring this game to the table as well and at least give it a good try.
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