Fyrrak's Downfall and The Conclusion of Dragonflight

 With the release of the final LFR wing for Amirdrassil, we're now basically in the Dragonflight epilogue.

First, let's talk about those last two fights.

I think since Aberrus, Blizzard has seemed to choose to make the difficulty of the raids a little more forgiving, and I actually think that this final wing of Amirdrassil might be just as easily runnable to farm gear and such as the earlier wings - which I would not say was the case with Raszageth. Sarkareth was not too hard, but this one really doesn't seem to be significantly more difficult than the previous wings of Amirdrassil.

All in all, even though Fyrrak is a deliciously fun villain (shout out to having two Critical Role people playing the final bosses of Aberrus and Amirdrassil, respectively) one cannot help but feel a slight notion of anticlimax to this expansion.

In a sense, Dragonflight has been partially a unified story of the struggle with the Primal Incarnates and their Primalist followers, but it's also been kind of episodic stories about the various dragonflights. Ending with the new World Tree, the story of the Green flight, and closing the chapter that started with the burning of Teldrassil is certainly an epic tale, but it does leave some other stories behind rather than leading to a grand culmination.

Also, while Fyrrak is the immediate threat, the main villain of Dragonflight has managed to escape the expansion unscathed. I think this is, overall, smart, because it lets us build to a fight with Iridikron and lets us build him up as a villain in a way that some previous final bosses (the Jailer most infamously) didn't get to be.

In a certain sense, this expansion feels like a callback to the very early concepts of WoW design - where the location was the more important aspect of an expansion (or the original game) than the "plot" of the expansion. The Dragon Isles as a place are kind of the star of the show here.

Now, plot-wise we know that there's more coming with future patches before we go to The War Within. But I doubt we're going to be getting any new raids (maybe, just maybe we could get a 2-3 boss mini-raid, but I doubt it) and raids are typically where the climactic moments of an expansion take place.

Ok, now for real, let's talk about the fights themselves.

Tindral Sageswift is probably the cooler of the two fights, conceptually, if only because of its unique intermission phases. Tindral himself is fairly straightforward - there are some AoEs to avoid, some plants to squash, and an incentive to try to stack the raid a bit. Tanks get to soak some fiery mushrooms.

But it's the two intermissions, where you hop on your dragon mounts and fly across practically the entire Emerald Dream zone that are pretty exciting. On LFR this phase is pretty safe - as long as you don't run out of Vigor, you'll be fine (hope you've gotten all of the dragonriding medallions). But given how central dragonriding has embodied the appeal of this expansion, it's a fitting thing to have in the raid.

Fyrrak is simpler in the sense that the entire fight takes place in a single room (which, to be fair, is true of most final bosses) but there are several phases. I think it's largely that on LFR these phases go by quickly enough that none feel like a huge threat. This might be a product of running these on the Tuesday the wing came out on LFR, but I did not wipe once on either boss when tanking this on both my Protection Paladin and Blood Death Knight. (The DK sadly is still wearing Explorere and Adventurer-quality gear, and still has his Aberrus tier chestpiece).

There are some cool things going on in this fight, though it's funny that we don't really fight him in his dragon form until the final phase. Also, things were going too quickly for me to check, but the guy summons Infernals, or at least something that uses those models. Will have to see if they count as demons or elementals (I'd guess the latter, given Fyrrak's affiliations).

The final cutscene shows Amirdrassil empowering the Dragon Aspects... and Vyranoth, making me wonder if she'll technically count as a Dragon Aspect moving forward.

Another curiosity is that they make it clear that the power of Azeroth is distinct from Titan magic, lending evidence to the theory that the World Soul is not inherently a Titan in the making, but perhaps something with the potentially to be all sorts of other things.

So, with Dragonflight nearing its final, completed iteration, what do we think of this expansion?

In terms of gameplay systems, I think this might be WoW at the best it's ever been. The new talent system, which took the best parts of the original vanilla version and the Mists of Pandaria version and put them together, is fantastic. The game is also a lot more flexible in allowing you to play the aspects of it that you want to. Dragonriding has made traversal a lot more fun.

In terms of story and aesthetic, I'd say this is on the high end of the mid tier for me. I think there's some fantastic character work (Iridikron genuinely feels like one of the best villains they've introduced because he actually respects how powerful Azeroth's heroes can be). But I also think there's nothing in this that has utterly wowed me, going beyond the baseline fantasy stuff I expect from WoW. It's been good, solid stuff, but nothing totally unique. (Here, despite all its problems, is an area where Shadowlands excelled).

Overall, though, if Dragonflight represent the new baseline for how WoW expansions are designed and the overall design philosophies that it represents are enshrined, this bodes very well for WoW's future.

Starting the Final Draft in Alan Wake II

 Alan Wake II's New Game Plus is now live, and I figured this was the right time to delve back into the game that's been swimming around my brain for the past month and a half.

Knowing most of how the plot is going to go, I'm resolved to take this journey slow. I finished the "Invitation" chapter, which doesn't really have any combat other than the initial "this is how you fire a gun" tutorial (that I managed to die on once because I forgot you don't need to shine light on Nightingale in the morgue and spent too many precious seconds fumbling for the not-yet-active "shine your flashlight" button).

However, there are already a couple differences - the first being that the opening monologue by our eponymous writer is different, suggesting that, perhaps, there are not only monsters and victims, but a third category: heroes. That really starts us off on a positive note, though the gruesome scene of Nightingale crawling out of the lake and getting hunted down by the Cult of the Tree is, as far as I could tell, unchanged.

I was a bit more thorough on exploration, so I got three Lunchboxes worth of manuscript fragments in the daytime exploration of the Cauldron Lake region (given that this is the only time you get to go there without any hostile Taken, I figured it was a good time to be very thorough) and also found a Cult cache that I hadn't gotten in the first run.

As far as I can tell (and we'll see if things change when we return to Cauldron Lake for the true first mission) the only thing you keep is any weapon upgrades you got and any music collectables you got.

But the big appeal here is that there's going to be new and changed cutscenes and manuscript pages. I've found one of these, talking about Saga experiencing a sensation of deja vu when examining Nightingale's body outside the abandoned convenience store.

In addition to trying to be a bit more of a completionist, I'm also going to really try to stay on Normal difficulty for the entire game. There's a new Nightmare difficulty mode, which I have... basically no interest in.

Anyway, let's see if we can find this miracle illuminated.

Pray For My Soul: My Party Has Hit Tier 4

 There was, in it all, a bit of a fakeout.

The premise, in short, of my current D&D campaign is that, on the city-plane of Ravnica, there is a conspiracy to bring the glistening oil of Phyrexia to convert the massive population into a horde of mechano-organic hybrids serving the hivemind of Magic's oldest villains.

Ravnica is a city ruled over by ten Guilds - groups that run aspects of society but have wildly different worldviews and goals. Half the population of the world is a member of one guild or another. And so, the Circle of Yawgmoth, the cult that seeks to bring Phyrexian corruption to the world, has representatives from amongst each of the ten guilds, each taking the title of "Praetor," which is a position of great and grand authority amongst the Phyrexians.

Their first Praetor was a merfolk in the Simic Combine (the biomancer doctor guild,) and the buildup to that fight was the entirety of tier 2 (levels 5-10).

Thus, most of the campaign has taken place in tier 3. My initial goal was to simply have them level up with the defeat of each Praetor - there were 9 left starting at level 11, so by the time they defeated them all, they'd be level 20 and we'd have the finale of the campaign take them to New Phyrexia itself (the corrupted plane once known as Mirrodin).

However, I decided that there was more that I wanted to do, including some adventures taking place amidst the many planes of the Magic multiverse. So I had to pull back on that - the new promise to the players was that once all the Praetors on Ravnica, the one for each guild, were defeated, they would hit tier 4. Before that, they'd still level up at these major milestones, but we'd stick at level 16 for a bit until everything was cleaned up.

But...

House Dimir is something special.

When I first discovered Ravnica upon its original release in 2006, I fell in love with House Dimir. It's the ultimate conspiracy, the shadowy organization with spies embedded everywhere. Beyond simple Magic the Gathering, it really cultivated within me a fascination with stories about deep, hidden secrets and spies and all of that.

If you've read any of my fiction on another blog here, you might be aware of "The House" in my Otherworld stories, and... well, you don't have to guess what inspired that.

In all honesty, in my mind, I think House Dimir became more powerful and more mysterious even than the game's designers meant it to.

And it does not play by the same rules as the other guilds.

So, upon the defeat of the penultimate Praetor, the Lich Traven Nazar, who had been a high-ranking banker in the Orzhov Syndicate (he ran Vizkopa Bank, which is the vast vault directly next to the guildhall, Orzhova Cathedral,) the party sort of took a moment to catch their breath after a difficult and deadly encounter, and then a high-pitched whine began to sound within their own heads and...

They jumped forward about a week, being celebrated as the heroes of the city for having defeated the Circle of Yawgmoth and saved the plane from the Phyrexian menace.

And, keeping with this narrative, I allowed the party to level up to 17.

But this also led to the entire world, including the player characters, forgetting that House Dimir exists, and forgetting about anyone they ever met who had been affiliated with the guild (including one of the characters of a player who has been unable to play for a while).

Now, the nuances of all of this are going to unfold as we play at 17th level, and you could make the argument that I wasn't even lying that all of the Praetors have been defeated.

While I've loved running the campaign, dramatically it's been a little one-note: pretty much any major threat is, once again, the Phyrexians. And with what is going on in House Dimir, let's just say... it's more complicated than that.

I've been setting this up for a while, showing that people across the city have been forgetting about House Dimir, but now it's truly everyone (you might wonder, given that half the populace is affiliated with one of the ten guilds, what has happened to the members of House Dimir? Well, that'd be telling).

I'm hoping that things will start to get a little more free-form. The challenge for me is to avoid derailing what I have planned for levels 18 and 19 when I use level 17 to foreshadow things that are going to go down at level 20.

Alan Wake II's "The Final Draft" New Game Plus Out on Tuesday

 While Alan Wake II has sat lodged in my consciousness since its release over a month ago, I haven't gone back to replay the game. There are a few factors at play there - for one thing, WoW released its latest raid, and I've been spending a lot of my gaming hours getting my many alts (see the name of the blog) through the released LFR wings.

But also because while brilliant, Alan Wake II felt like an experience akin to watching a movie or a fantastic season of television - you want some time to digest it. That and, well, to be totally honest, the survival-horror action of the game wasn't quite as "fun" as, say, the telekinetic action of Control, a game that I'd have happily blasted through a New Game + mode and wanted to replay immediately, but have felt hesitant to do so because of its bizarre lack of multiple save files (you can replay chapters, but my understanding is that if you return to "endgame," meaning the parts of the game after having beaten the main story, you'll revert to the progress on side-missions and exploration that you were at when you started that chapter - meaning I'd have to beat the various bonus bosses and such all over again - some day when the urge to re-experience it is greater than the fear of losing progress, I'll start it over from the beginning).

However, in addition to later DLC that I don't think has an official release date, Alan Wake II is getting a New Game Plus mode called "The Final Draft," which purports to have significant alterations to the story.

Spoilers Ahead for both Alan Wake II and Stephen King's Dark Tower series:

Why Does Crunchy Combat Work So Much Better Than Crunchy Just About Everything Else in TTRPGs?

 Listening to the Eldritch Lorecast a couple weeks ago, I heard them talking about MCDM's upcoming TTRPG, which I've been intrigued by enough to throw money through my computer at the company and backed the project for my very own pdfs of the core rulebooks when they come out in like two years.

The discussion point was "Negotiations," which is this new RPG's attempt to make important - once-an-adventure - RP moments with powerful NPCs into something with a mechanical basis. The way that Colville and James Introcaso (MCDM's lead designer) described it was that this would be like bartering with a Lich for some crucial artifact or convincing a villain's ally to step back from a grand battle and hold back their own forces.

The system, as described, uses two measures - Interest and Patience. Essentially, it breaks down "how to convince this character" into a challenge where you want to pique their interest without them losing out of patience. If the patience runs out, you're SOL and best case scenario they just stop talking to you. There are ideas here like (and I may have some of the terminology wrong here) such as Focuses - things you can bring up that would make them more likely to side with you (such as if that Lich you're negotiating with has always wanted to find a path to another plane, and you've got a lead on that) - or Pitfalls, where bringing them up can have adverse effects on their attitude toward you (like, maybe you bring up the paladin brother of said Lich with whom they've had something of a falling out).

I have not tried this, and it's something that's in development. Matt Colville has been very clear that the guiding ethos of this project is "no sacred cows," identifying this as something of an issue with D&D 5E, which, as we've seen in the One D&D playtest process, has strongly erred on the side of preserving what it can, sometimes - Colville would argue - to the detriment of the game.

But I understand, as well, some of the D&D team's reluctance to get into the nitty-gritty of "mechanic-izing" things too much.

I think that RPGs, particularly tabletop RPGs, have a strong push toward the path of least resistance. I'll confess that my own Ravnica campaign initially meant to really focus a lot on the Renown system introduced in Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica, but I think that system ultimately became too much to keep track of in the kind of ongoing campaign I like to run, where you could certainly break things into narrative chapters but there aren't as distinct "adventures." Do we gain a renown because we did that one project with Niv-Mizzet for a single session? Do only the Izzet members get it?

Indeed, I can imagine this is why Spelljammer ran into some issues - I think most players who heard about Spelljammer coming out were looking forward to a robust space-combat system, but what we wound up getting was essentially a little text box that said "yeah, your ships can have weapons, but they're utter crap and you should just fight hand-to-hand on the decks."

This was a bit infuriating...

But also, when I've watched streams of Starfinder, which has a pretty serious starship combat system that is very much part of the core rules, I always get the impression that that's the part that doesn't quite work as well - on foot you're basically playing Pathfinder but with power armor, laser guns, and aliens, and that's a system that just kind of works.

I think one of the issues here is that there's a feedback loop - combat in D&D feels pretty good (even if Colville and Co are looking to rebuild that kind of gameplay from the ground up) and so we see the folks at WotC really focusing on that as their main emphasis in revising the game. The One D&D playtest has been primarily about refining classes, and that refinement has really focused on the combat abilities of those classes - indeed, we've even lost some flavorful or utility features like the Monk's ability to do a solo Astral Projection spell (which is, to be fair, something that probably never gets used, but is still rad as hell).

Ship-to-ship combat has its own issues - one big problem I think it has is that if the whole party is one the same ship, there's basically a binary success or fail state. On foot you might see one party member go down or even die and realize that the stakes just got higher, but if it's just the one ship, any loss is a TPK (or the party gets captured and the campaign needs to adjust a lot to account for that).

But in a broader sense, I think that it's hard to bring in a new game system to one that people already feel is working ok.

Essentially: skill checks seem to handle most non-combat moments. Indeed, some simpler RPGs are basically just skill checks, like Kids on Bikes. Blades in the Dark and its ilk have a little more strategy built into them.

Where I think D&D becomes more satisfying is its combat - I think what I find a little underwhelming in KoB is that there's not really a way to "play well." It's fine for getting a story out there and all, and I've been having fun with our game of it. But even if, ultimately, everything's relying on the dice rolling in your favor, there are moves you can pull off in D&D that are just cool and effective. In our latest session, I realized (with some help from YouTube) that I could Misty Step through my Manifest Mind as a Scribes Wizard, and was able to get away from being surrounded on all sides by a ton of Mephits who had just bloodied me. I cast a lot of Fireballs (changed to Lightning Ball thanks to being a Scribe because half the mephits were Steam Mephits) that fight, running out of 3rd level spell slots, but it felt like a reasonable strategic choice - it was basically my only AoE spell I had prepared (we were expecting to encounter giants) and the amount of damage I did on these enormous swarms was pretty huge and would have taken our martial classes way longer to chop through (one of my Lightningballs did a total of 210 damage or something).

Now, can you build an RPG system that has the tactical satisfaction of D&D combat but simulating an entirely different situation? I think it would be foolish to say no, but I do think that it hits a bit of resistance.

I also think that there's some tension between the kinds of roleplayers you encounter. My friends are largely actors or people involved in show business in one way or another, so acting out a scene between their PC and an NPC, or sometimes just between PCs, comes pretty naturally. So there's even almost a sense of awkwardness to the idea of needing rules to resolve a scene. We'll still use Charisma-based checks, but I'm a little disinclined to use the "attitude levels" that are presented in the DMG, and instead go on what feels natural and right for a character.

But that's my play group. There are definitely plenty of people out there who are not as socially adept or even just don't really feel as comfortable getting into the headspace of another character. And having clear and objective rules for how you succeed in a social encounter might be welcome.

The question, then, is how much you want to make that a core part of your game.

MCDM seems to want Negotiations to be a big, dramatic thing that is just as high-stakes as a combat encounter, and even could award Victories (a resource that fuels abilities and later converts to XP when you rest).

The question is: will this get in the way, or will it feel fun and epic?

And will players and "Directors" (their term for GMs) just play without the system?

MCDM RPG's Classes So Far

 So, first off, yes, we don't have a name for the game yet. Apparently they've narrowed it down to a few options, but for now the logic is that if they start calling it by something, the thing people will understand better is "MCDM's RPG." They're going to have to make that switch eventually, unless they decide to just toss flavor to the wind and go with it like G.U.R.P.S. (which, to be fair, is meant - I believe - to work in lots of different settings - it stands for General Use Roleplaying System.)

The MCDM RPG is going to be class-based, which I tend to prefer - while classes can theoretically narrow the archetypes that your character can fill, I often find that skill-based RPG systems then prevent two builds with similar methods from standing out very well from one another - if you're an offensive spellcaster in Skyrim, you're basically using all the same Destruction spells. And in a sense, I think that when you have an optimizer mentality, not having classes pushes you into a certain sameiness. When you have classes, you're essentially giving the theorycrafters one point of "pick one that just seems conceptually cool" and then let them worry about making that particular class work at its most effective.

I've always liked RPG classes. So, what is on the docket for this one?

Well, Matt Colville has said that they will need a minimum of six classes to start with, but the sample pages from the Backerkit crowdfunding campaign shows a few more.

As a note: this RPG is going out of its way to avoid using the terminology inherited from D&D. In some cases this feels wise - I always liked Agility better than Dexterity, though maybe because I played WoW before I ever played D&D - but in some places I think it's meant to simply advertise boldly that "our Paladin is not the D&D Paladin. It's not even called a Paladin!"

Every class has a unique "Heroic Resource," rather than something broad like spell slots. And depending on the class, you might build this up over the course of your adventuring day or you might find it limits you (such as the Talent, who gains a negative resource called Strain - I'll be curious to see how that works out in the finished product, because Strain feels like it should work pretty decently in 5E's attrition-based resource system, but I wonder how it will feel alongside the other classes in this one).

So, let's look at the list. I'm going to list the "primary stats" and suggest what I think they're meant to be analogous to.

The Censor:

    The Censor clearly seems to be the Paladin analogue here, who has a resource known as Seals that they use to deal damage to foes and debilitate them. MCDM's earlier 5E class, the Illrigger, which recently got a revision, is the specifically-lawful-evil, Hell-affiliated version of this class, which will presumably be more heroically flavored. Might (Strength) and Presence (Charisma) are the recommended characteristics, which seems to confirm this as the Paladin-like entry.

The Conduit:

    Conduits are, then, the main analogue for Clerics or Priest-like classes. The idea here is that your power comes from a god or gods (honestly, I'd love to play a cleric that exists in a more historically-accurate portrayal of a polytheistic faith. D&D Clerics and other religious classes tend to be Cultish in the original sense of the word, focused on a single deity despite most people presumably worshipping many). Conduits' resource is Wrath and Virtue, the former of which fuels offensive abilities and the latter of which fuels beneficial effects - apparently it's somewhat randomized how much of each of these resources you generate as you make "prayer rolls," which is pretty neat. Conduits will be using Might (Strength) and Intuition (Wisdom... or possibly Intelligence).

The Elementalist:

    The Elementalist appears to be your classic Wizard/Sorcerer class, but with a stronger focus on elemental magic, blasting foes with fireballs and tidal waves. The heroic resource here is "Quintessence," though I haven't seen details about how it works (though it's a cool idea as the word refers to a fifth element in Alchemy). The main stats are given as Endurance (Constitution) and Intuition (which seems to be kind of Intelligence and Wisdom rolled into one).

The Fury:

    The Fury seems to be the equivalent of the Barbarian, who is rewarded with their resource, Rage (Matt Colville seemed almost apologetic that they were going to this low-hanging fruit, but it's probably the best name for it) by throwing themself into the fray. Their main stats are Might (Strength) and Endurance (Constitution).

The Operator:

    This is the most out-there concept, and has a rough analogue in the Armorer Artificer, possibly. You pilot a constructed "Frame" that is decked out with weapons and serves as a suit of armor, and also has its own mind. Your resource is Power, and your main stats are Reason (perhaps more traditional Intelligence?) and Intuition (Something akin to Wisdom?)

The Shadow:

    The Shadow is your sneaky Rogue/Thief/Assassin class. Its resource is called Insight, and its main stats are Agility and Reason, with an emphasis on being a kind of glass cannon that runs away from foes after striking rather than standing their ground.

The Tactician:

    Tacticians appear to be your Fighter analogue, perhaps being most specifically like a Battle Master, at least in terms of flavor. Tacticians get Focus as their resource, which, like a Fury's Rage, I believe only gets generated in combat. (We also get a preview of this class, though it'll take a bit of understanding the basic rules to figure out what it all means). Tacticians use Might and Reason (it seems to me that it's almost like they've divided up Intelligence and Wisdom and rearranged what goes where. Curious to see how it works).

The Talent:

    The Talent exists in 5E, but I assume this will have some tweaks to how it works to fit into this game's rules. Talents are psychically gifted and can use the power of their minds to generate various supernatural (but not magical) effects like telekinetically tossing foes around the battlefield or muddling enemy minds with telepathy. Their resource is Strain, which can build up as they use their powers and can impose various penalties on them as it gets higher (though never interfering with their ability to manifest powers - no death spirals). Talents like Endurance and Reason.

The Troubadour:

    Clearly an analogue for the Bard, the Troubadour uses a mix of musical power along with weapons to fight in a swashbuckling style. The Troubadour resource is Drama (which is amazing) and they prefer Agility and Presence.

Others?

    Colville has said that their Beastheart class is a likely addition to this list if they can fit it in the main rulebook, as it's one of the first they prototyped. The Beastheart is a little like if a whole class was built around being a Beast Master Ranger, with a system for companion beasts (that are not all mundane beasts - you can have a Gelatinous Cube companion) that can actually exist without the class, but where the Beastheart is particularly built around using a companion. There's also the Null, which is an unarmored, unarmed combatant with clear ties to the Monk, but with an emphasis on being the "antimagic" class.

Obviously none of this is final, and I suspect we'll see some of this being reworked. Each class is going to have multiple subclasses to choose from, and I'll be eager to see how this allows them to branch out. The Operator in particular fascinates me, perhaps because there's nothing I like more than being the guy bringing in so-called anachronism to medieval fantasy.

Backing MCDM's RPG

 I love 5th Edition, and I'm eager and excited to play with the revised rules in 2024. I suspect that it will continue to be my default RPG system I use at my table.

But I think, like some others, that while I appreciate the motivations for keeping "One D&D" compatible with pre-existing 5E content - indeed, I think it's the right choice and will be happy that the many books I've picked up over the years will remain usable - there's another part of me that is looking for something new.

MCDM's as-yet-unnamed RPG system is being pitched as explicitly trying not to worry about the legacy of older RPGs and to rethink and rebuild systems to work at their most fun.

Today they launched a crowdfunding effort, and got their initial funding in less than two hours. And I've signed on (not something I often do) to essentially pre-order the pdfs of the two core rulebooks - Heroes and Monsters.

Now, I'm not here to do advertising for them. If you want to see Matt Colville's pitch for it, he released an hour-long video talking about the crowdfunding campaign and the ideas that they're working on for the game.

But here are what I've gotten as key takeaways:

Not a Game of Attrition:

    D&D owes a lot to its dungeon-crawling roots, and one of the ways that the gritty, deadly vibe was established is by making character resources all limited. Your job, essentially, is to survive until your next long rest.

    And this works quite well in the kind of gritty fantasy story where you're a bunch of treasure-motivated scoundrels treading often in dangerous places that were wisely abandoned years ago. But in my experience, D&D is more often run with stories that emphasize doing good and saving the world.

    So, MCDM's system is meant to encourage players to press on from fight to fight. Some classes gain their resources as they fight, so that combat will build up to the most climactic abilities rather than having every player "nova" at the start and then hope the villain goes down before they run out of resources.

    One of the systems that they've talked about is Victories - as you defeat monsters, you'll get a building resource over the course of the day that will give you some bonus in the next fight - one example given was that the Talent (like their 5E version) is limited by the Strain that their powers can put on them, but they might also get to reduce their Strain by an amount equal to their Victory when a fight begins. Victory, then, at the end of the day, becomes Experience, and that's how you level up.

Nothing Misses:

    One of the most revolutionary ideas here is that there's no attack roll. When you attack an enemy, you roll damage. I believe monsters (and when a monster attacks you, player characters) can have defensive abilities that reduce that incoming damage or otherwise mitigate it, but the intent here is that you never arrive at your turn and fail an attack and then feel you've done nothing.

Ten Levels:

    While I've found that, with some adjustment, I've gotten pretty comfortable running stuff for a 16th level party, there is a general impression that D&D barely ever goes to high levels, and almost never to level 20. So, MCDM is going to only have ten levels, with an estimate of the power level of a 1st level character being around 3 if they were in 5E and a 10th level character being the equivalent of a 20th level 5E character, but with fewer steps in between and thus a higher likelihood that you'll actually hit that level.

    I'm curious to see how well they pull this off - on one hand, I've had players who felt overwhelmed by a new class if we didn't start at 1st level or if we leveled up too quickly, but on the other hand, I might not feel a need to level players up so much if there are only 10 levels to worry about.

Initiative is Looser:

    One idea that I'm... not entirely sold on but curious about is the way that initiative turn order works. Here, the party and the monsters will alternate turns, but the players can take their turns in any order. The intention here is to let players thing tactically about how they can set one another up to do impressive things.

    This will of course require a bit of adjustment on how to track turns and make sure no one is getting skipped. I'm eager to see it in action.

No d20:

    The system will be using 2d6 as its primary dice. You'll notice that A: this is going to have a smaller range of possible results, being 2-12, and B: it's also going to be less swingy, with a higher likelihood to roll near the average. They haven't detailed how Critical rolls are going to work, but they are supposed to be more likely, as the Rogue equivalent, the Shadow, will rely on them to gain a resource. (If it's just rolling a 6 on either die, that's a roughly 30% chance - which seems to me high enough that you'll see it often while still making it exciting when it happens).

We Shall See:

    The chance that a game can dislodge D&D as the most popular TTRPG is low - Pathfinder might have briefly done so during D&D's 4th Edition (through the very anecdotal evidence of my own experience) - but this is of course coming up as a scrappy new project amid a number of similar efforts that have resulted from the earlier OGL debacle from the beginning of this year.

    Given that there are so many coming out - between Kobold Press' efforts, Critical Role/Darrington Press' Daggerheart, Paizo's remastering of Pathfinder 2E to excise any and all D&D-related elements, and of course this, it's unlikely any one of them is going to overtake the soon-to-be 50-year-old beast that is D&D.

    But it's almost certainly a good thing to have more options, and I hope each and every one of those systems becomes popular in its own right, with tables across the world trying the ones that appeal to them.

    Personally, I think that the storytelling aspects of RPGs feel like they work best when the rules system melts into the background, and as a result, I'm a little more concerned with whether the gameplay mechanics can reinforce the story that we're trying to tell. But when it comes to tactical gameplay, a lot of the ideas that MCDM is presenting are really getting me excited. So, I've chucked 65 of my dollars at the project and will try to sell my usual players on trying out a brand-new system when it comes out. Wish me luck!