EDIT: what a snipe  The post below is in response to the still unnamed MCDM RPG having an auto hit mechanic.Bottom Liner posted:Ugh. The things I can talk about so far that I liked in the Playtests I've done are: - Positioning matters a lot more compared to 5e; you have a lot more physical interaction (push/pull/throw/etc) with the allies and enemies. - The way you can play around with initiative to your advantage, it made me go "oh that's very Gloomhaven-y" twice in the last playtest. - You can combo the gently caress out. - Monsters are fun to run - they also have abilities that work well with one another. Not surprising since Flee Mortals is by far the best 5e monster manual I have used (the monster are crunchy action oriented ones). - Nonetheless, it plays quite fast. In the last Playtest it took our party of 5 first timers or newbies about 45 mins to run through a boss encounter (5 players Vs boss + 4 lieutenant + a bunch of minions) and that was by far the slowest encounter. - If you don't care about any of this, I'll just say that, during the last playtest I was in, my panther kit barbarian-equivalent jumped from the ground below to the top of some battlemets to put an enemy caster into a chokehold, and then the guy who was playing the psion-equivalent picked us up with their mind and slammed us through the walls of the castle, pulping the enemy in the process. And all of these things have rules baked into the core systems to support them. The game is in a very early state of development of course and you can see the jagged edges here and there; plus they are still in a stage where relatively largemechanics are being changed from a version to another. If you are interested and want to see for yourself, there is a playets-pool channel on the MCDM discord server where they send our frequent requests for playtesters. Anyone can sign in; if you are picked for a test you'll get access to the current version being tested and play through a one shot adventure with one of the Playtest coordinators running it. It's quite fun! They used to do the same for their 5e material (at least for Flee Mortals and for the stuff that was going in their zine, Arcadia). tl;dr: it's a fun and crunchy-yet-fast paced TTRPG with more than a dash of heroic/power-fantasy going on. That Italian Guy fucked around with this message at 11:17 on Dec 8, 2023 |
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Dec 8, 2023 11:05
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That Italian Guy posted:- Positioning matters a lot more compared to 5e; you have a lot more physical interaction (push/pull/throw/etc) with the allies and enemies. I’m interested to see/try some playtests on this as the initial rules seem to suggest movement and forced movement can be *lots* on a turn. Both 4e and pathfinder 2e went with this kind of tactical map and grid approach, but IMO tend to be so conservative about movement that a lot of battles are incredibly stationary once a fighter or paladin kind of sets a front line spot, and it quickly feels like the whole point of having a map just goes down the drain.
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Dec 8, 2023 13:06
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Looks like they've made it to 2 million already, so they're going to hire someone to look at VTT and hire someone to look at a box set for Matt's Genericfantasysettingia
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Dec 8, 2023 13:54
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Afaik the reason they put a VTT as a stretch goal from the start is that they were approached by someone with a working prototype some time ago, so the possibility of getting an actual VTT is quite high. Especially since every time Matt Colville talks about 4e he mentions how a dedicated VTT for it was the right idea. So it's a combination of them wanting something like this and someone being proactive and acting on those desires. Fidel Cuckstro posted:I’m interested to see/try some playtests on this as the initial rules seem to suggest movement and forced movement can be *lots* on a turn. Both 4e and pathfinder 2e went with this kind of tactical map and grid approach, but IMO tend to be so conservative about movement that a lot of battles are incredibly stationary once a fighter or paladin kind of sets a front line spot, and it quickly feels like the whole point of having a map just goes down the drain. That Italian Guy fucked around with this message at 15:14 on Dec 8, 2023 |
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Dec 8, 2023 15:00
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So, the Catalyst/Petersen Games deal has apparently fallen through? Anyone heard more about that?
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Dec 8, 2023 18:55
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Looks like the only info so far is this leak from their private Discord.
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Dec 8, 2023 20:41
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Zark the Damned posted:Looks like the only info so far is this leak from their private Discord. It's a very strange situation. Catalyst absolutely were selling CW product for a while and now nobody knows why or what they were getting out of it.
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Dec 8, 2023 21:07
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That Italian Guy posted:EDIT: what a snipe I feel like I’m having to do a lot of reading between the lines on their pitch. My take is that this looks very 4e - tactical set piece battles without much framework between them (not a negative for me, just want to be clear). Seem fair? Compared to 4e or pathfinder 2, character creation looks much more streamlined. Thoughts on that? How messy are combat modifiers? Are they pretty mild or is it a +4 bonus -2 cover penalty +1 aura -3 other aura +2 position +2 flanking -4 darkness sort of thing? Oh, and it looks like equipment has been somewhat abstracted away? Ohthehugemanatee fucked around with this message at 22:04 on Dec 8, 2023 |
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Dec 8, 2023 21:59
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Jedit posted:It's a very strange situation. Catalyst absolutely were selling CW product for a while and now nobody knows why or what they were getting out of it. Possibly they were selling the CW stuff on a trial basis and it did nowhere near as well as they were promised? Haven't really followed the partnership.
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Dec 8, 2023 22:41
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Ohthehugemanatee posted:I feel like I’m having to do a lot of reading between the lines on their pitch. - There are a bunch of concepts that will feel very familiar if you have played 4e; some are similar mechanics (healing works in a similar way right now), but a lot more are similar from a design philosophy stand point (tags and technical language instead of natural language, for example). The round by round feels more dynamic compared to 4e because it's less about cooldowns and more about builders and spenders - although each class's core mechanic works differently from the others. It has a similar mouth feel, but the rules are different (IE: something like Lancer/Icon is also clearly 4e inspired while being its own game, if it makes sense). The caveat is that, compared to 4e, there is a good chunk of rules for the social part of things - way more compared to any DND edition ever. Colville likes his faction intrigue. - We don't really know right now tbh. As in, all the Playtests had pregen characters that you could only customize with a choice of ancestry (think innate racial stuff) and kit. The characters themselves were low level but not necessarily level one - although progression is another thing that is not available for public tests either ATM. - Combat modifiers are quite easy to manage - you have your base damage (based on the not-4e-power you use) and then you add boons and banes to the pool. You add a boon if something gives you a benefit (a buff, direct help, the enemy being prone, etc); in this case you add 1d4 to the pool for each benefit. If something gives you a penalty (debuffs, etc) you add a bane, aka -1d4. They cancel each other out, so that if you have 2 boons and a bane you roll +1d4. - Equipment right now is handled with kits, which I can't really talk too much about but that you can think of as a template that you can apply to any character independently of their class and that gives you DND-style proficiencies and numerical bonuses. The interesting part is that, while ancestry and class are a chargen choice, kits are not (so you can start with one kit and then swap.to another if you prefer). From a thematic stand point, you are going to track certain things (like magical weapons) but not other (like rations or arrows). Edit: forgot to say - the image on the Backerkit page can be opened at a higher resolution and are fully readable, there are some good examples of monsters/kits/magical items in there. Basics - https://mcdm.gg/RPG/BuildingHeroicNarrative.png Class example - https://mcdm.gg/RPG/Tactician.png Ancestry example - https://mcdm.gg/RPG/Dwarves.png A few kits - https://mcdm.gg/RPG/Kits.png A boss monster stat block - https://mcdm.gg/RPG/Necromancer.png That Italian Guy fucked around with this message at 23:16 on Dec 8, 2023 |
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Dec 8, 2023 23:08
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Thanks for writing all that. That all sounds really cool, and the whole package looks to take what I liked best about 4e while ditching the worse elements. There’s definitely some Strike! DNA in there too. I wish they’d presented it a little better though. There’s solid info out there when I went hunting for it but the campaign is really vague and most of what I found was buried in months old Reddit comments. I wish they would release even a really limited play test encounter.
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Dec 9, 2023 01:09
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Zark the Damned posted:Possibly they were selling the CW stuff on a trial basis and it did nowhere near as well as they were promised? Haven't really followed the partnership. Put a gun to my head, I'd say that Catalyst were the mystery angel investor who paid for the CW shipping and they did it in exchange for the right to resell all the existing stock and keep the proceeds. PG would have been trying to negotiate a longer term arrangement where Catalyst would take over the manufacture and carry on as the sale outlet going forward, but Catalyst declined because they were only doing it to make a quick buck towards their own shortfalls. Apparently Planet Apocalypse was also on the table as the other complete product, but I'm guessing the margins weren't there - also Catalyst would have to guarantee fulfillment on the Invasion faction minis for Cthulhu Wars backers, as those were baked into the PA2 project.
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Dec 9, 2023 01:43
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That Italian Guy posted:Afaik the reason they put a VTT as a stretch goal from the start is that they were approached by someone with a working prototype some time ago, so the possibility of getting an actual VTT is quite high. Especially since every time Matt Colville talks about 4e he mentions how a dedicated VTT for it was the right idea. I don't understand why everyone else is so blase about this. One does not simply walk into a fully operational VTT. I'm sure the possibility of getting an actual VTT is quite high but the ability to get one that's able to be used??? quote:We think a Virtual Tabletop that lets you play this game with folks remotely, especially in this day and age, is critical to letting people play how and when they want. We believe very strongly that a custom-designed VTT built from the ground up to work with our game is the best solution because it means we can custom tailor the user experience for our community. I mean this is a huge red flag, a flag of +20 you have got to be kidding me red flag.
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Dec 9, 2023 02:41
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CODChimera posted:also anyone been following along with Nemesis Retaliation? I feel like they are getting a little too greedy with some of this stuff, like there's 3 packs of acrylic tokens for Retaliation and then 2 more for the previous games. but then you have the "constructs" pack for the original that has hp counter bases for the aliens(actually useful) but its packaged with heap of not so useful terrain. AND they still haven't even said what is cross compatible In what sense? They've been very clear that you won't be able to use stuff from previous Nemesis games in Retaliation and you won't be able to use stuff from Retaliation in previous games. The minis are a different scale and the level of action etc is very different. The only question mark is that they plan to offer a character that represents someone like Ripley that survived from the original games into the more Aliens-style game that is Retaliation. It sounds like they want to make that care which original character you use (and some won't be compatible) but they're not done designing that. Comstar posted:I mean this is a huge red flag, a flag of +20 you have got to be kidding me red flag. Why is that a red flag? That's what most of the major VTTs do as far as I know?
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Dec 9, 2023 03:34
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Comstar posted:I don't understand why everyone else is so blase about this. One does not simply walk into a fully operational VTT. I'm sure the possibility of getting an actual VTT is quite high but the ability to get one that's able to be used??? I mean, the guy is not really steeped in the history and lore of game design. I think he found out this week that there were diceless RPGs. However this hasn’t stopped him being one of the most successful RPG merchants ever. I expect he’ll just go “Alexa, have my computer design me a VTT” and it’ll pop out a 20 years ahead of the curve VTT that works first time as there is precisely no justice.
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Dec 9, 2023 03:58
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HidaO-Win posted:I mean, the guy is not really steeped in the history and lore of game design. I think he found out this week that there were diceless RPGs. wait what Is this hyperbole or is this actually a thing that happened?
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Dec 9, 2023 04:15
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Comstar posted:I don't understand why everyone else is so blase about this. One does not simply walk into a fully operational VTT. I'm sure the possibility of getting an actual VTT is quite high but the ability to get one that's able to be used??? Yeah, a VTT seems like a very strange stretch goal for an RPG system kickstarter
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Dec 9, 2023 04:22
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malkav11 posted:In what sense? They've been very clear that you won't be able to use stuff from previous Nemesis games in Retaliation and you won't be able to use stuff from Retaliation in previous games. The minis are a different scale and the level of action etc is very different. The only question mark is that they plan to offer a character that represents someone like Ripley that survived from the original games into the more Aliens-style game that is Retaliation. It sounds like they want to make that care which original character you use (and some won't be compatible) but they're not done designing that.  no real details though, and they said the last 3 daily updates are just going to be the 3 minatures for the borg race. idk, feels like they didn't really plan a lot of this, esp when you consider the early versions had actual hordes of aliens and the scale is already all hosed up from the first game, the aliens are like three times the size of the crew
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Dec 9, 2023 04:51
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malkav11 posted:Why is that a red flag? That's what most of the major VTTs do as far as I know? Making a combo VTT/storefront as a stretch goal for your D&D heartbreaker is like when people used to talk up their RPG as the start of a "transmedia empire" in that A). it's putting the cart before the horse, and B). it's way easier said than done. Like I guess it's not as outlandish as the people who used to try and kickstart their dream MMO project for $50,000 because hey, how hard can it be, but it strikes me as an extremely weird overreach-y pivot to go from "I'm making a pretty conventional TRPG" to "and for my next trick I'm going to make an entire digital toolset marketplace ecosystem for it."
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Dec 9, 2023 05:20
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Yeah developing, with no experience, a vtt with integrated sales platform is more than just a stretch goal, it's a goal in and off itself that needs substantial time and resources. WotC still hasn't finished theirs and they started virtual tabletop development with 4e (to be fair they dropped it for years, but still, their current attempt is years in the making).
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Dec 9, 2023 05:39
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Sorry, missed that you had actually addressed the question I was raising and don't seem to be able to delete my post.
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Dec 9, 2023 06:20
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Also I guess I'm curious what about this game merits having its own customized VTT instead of just using Roll20 or Foundry, like I'm skeptical that the experience is so incredibly unique that it needs a bespoke virtual tabletop system to handle it all.
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Dec 9, 2023 11:19
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HidaO-Win posted:I mean, the guy is not really steeped in the history and lore of game design. I think he found out this week that there were diceless RPGs. It's kind of funny, because this comment mirrors something he wrote back in 2018 discussing how his first Kickstarter was a runaway success: quote:On old forums where folks have been talking about D&D for 20 years, people are trying to reverse-engineer our success. None of them can fathom what’s going on. They’ve never heard of me. Is there really this much demand for a Strongholds & Followers book for 5th Edition? Have we all been doing this wrong the whole time? As for his actual game design experience, in the late 90s/early 2000s he worked on the Dune RPG, the Star Trek RPG, and several 3E 3rd party books. For 5E he's now got four supplements: "Strongholds & Followers", "Kingdoms & Warfare", "Flee, Mortals!", and "Where Evil Lives" along with 4 new classes. He also helped put out 30 issues of a 5E magazine called "Arcadia" which was meant to be something of a modern recreation of Dungeon where each issue had new rules, classes, monsters, etc. Of course none of this guarantees that he's got the chops to create a whole new RPG system, and even if he does it's still likely that no matter how good it is it will still never be anything more than a footnote in the history of RPGs. However between his multitude of GM Advice / Game Design videos and his own published works it feels weird to try and brush him off as just some guy who's having baby's first idea for an RPG.
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Dec 9, 2023 14:11
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HidaO-Win posted:I mean, the guy is not really steeped in the history and lore of game design. I think he found out this week that there were diceless RPGs. Furthermore, the lead for the project may be Colville, but the lead for the game development is James Introcaso who developed several RPGs, including Burnbright and has worked on both WotC and third party DND products for a long time. Regarding the VTT development a) it's being outsourced and b) Colville's other area of professional experience is in massive multiplayer games, with Turtle Rock. He was not the tech lead, but he isn't here either. Not saying that this is a done deal, but after all neither are them. A self hosted piece of software like foundry was literally cobbled together by a single person at first, it's not exactly outside of the realm of possibility for something like this to happen in this day and age. That Italian Guy fucked around with this message at 20:05 on Dec 9, 2023 |
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Dec 9, 2023 18:59
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Kai Tave posted:Also I guess I'm curious what about this game merits having its own customized VTT instead of just using Roll20 or Foundry, like I'm skeptical that the experience is so incredibly unique that it needs a bespoke virtual tabletop system to handle it all. Eh, like, you probably don't need a custom VTT for any game, but having the software specifically do the things your game does without any need for the end user to figure out how to turn dials and levers to put it there and without a baseline assumption of D&D specifically (which is my experience of Roll20 at least) would probably be a nicer experience, especially when you're explicitly focusing on map and grid based combat the way they are, and in a way that's already sounding very distinct from D&D's take on it. I personally, as someone who has done exclusively theater of the mind play and typically with lightweight story-focused games like PBTA stuff or FITD or the like, would probably have preferred to play those games on a VTT that had that in mind from the off. (I think Role might be that, but I also don't have the players I was doing roll20 with anymore so I haven't investigated.) Roll20 just felt like it had so much cruft and so much of the screen devoted to stuff I did not need at all. None of which is to say they'll manage to deliver that of course.
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Dec 9, 2023 19:07
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I didn't know that James Introcaso developed Burn Bryte. That makes things quite interesting as Burn Bryte is afaik still a vtt-only (and I think roll20 exclusive) game.
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Dec 10, 2023 01:12
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Thanks for all the info you've posted, very helpful. Can you talk about non-combat mechanics at all? The campaign page is particularly light on those details unless I've overlooked something
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Dec 11, 2023 01:37
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Kai Tave posted:when people used to talk up their RPG as the start of a "transmedia empire" There will be 7th Sea the TV Series and 7th Sea the Board Game and 7th Sea the Videogame and and and also
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Dec 11, 2023 03:34
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That Italian Guy posted:
The post said specifically that it's being insourced and listed the benefits of that.
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Dec 11, 2023 07:02
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Tarnop posted:Thanks for all the info you've posted, very helpful. Can you talk about non-combat mechanics at all? The campaign page is particularly light on those details unless I've overlooked something Jimbozig posted:The post said specifically that it's being insourced and listed the benefits of that. So far the basic idea is that when you are trying to negotiate something, you do so over a conversation that also involves some dicerolls (as expected), but everyone has specific things that they are very receptive to (so you get an automatic success) or that are totally opposed to (so you get an automatic failure); there are mechanics to try and guess these. During the conversation you can raise or lower the other party's interest and they have a patience threshold after which the conversation ends, if it didn't end before for other reasons. At the end you get scaling levels of failure or success based on the results. This could of course be rather different in the next iteration so take it with a pinch of salt. Given the quality of their existing Foundry products, I would expect this to either be good or don't see the light of day at all - out of all the ones that I bought,.these are basically the only ones that come scripted, so that you can use automation with their crunchy mechanics. IE: Tome of Heroes or most other Foundry 5e supplements have no automation at all. That Italian Guy fucked around with this message at 09:30 on Dec 11, 2023 |
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Dec 11, 2023 08:32
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Foglet posted:There will be 7th Sea the TV Series and 7th Sea the Board Game and 7th Sea the Videogame and and and also "But John, aren't pirates kind of over now?" "I don't see how that's relevant."
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Dec 11, 2023 14:16
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That Italian Guy posted:Can't say much, especially cause I've played two rather different versions so far. At the moment the general gist of it is that when you negotiate with someone to obtain something, you engage in a conversation that involves some dice rolling (as expected); but you could also guess some of the pre-decided by the GM/adventure specific topics to which the NPC is particularly receptive (so you succeed without rolling) or opposed to (so you fail automatically); there are mechanics to try and guess some of those too. It usually plays out in a back and forth where you try to raise the NPC's interest and there is a patience threshold that ends the conversation if it wasn't concluded before it is reached. When the negotiation is over you get a scaling level of success and failure based on the results. I listened to the designer talk about it, and part of the goal for him is to make NPCs more interesting to the players. So if they know they will need to negotiate with someone, the gamified system encourages them to do their research and figure out what topics might interest (or annoy) the character. The mini game is supposed to encourage more exploration, in game research and drive the adventure itself. It reminds me of skill challenges in that I can see it working amazingly in the right group and being absolute garbage with the wrong group.
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Dec 11, 2023 15:33
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Dawgstar posted:"But John, aren't pirates kind of over now?" To be fair, pirates had been "over" for decades before Pirates of the Carribeans. it just takes one good film in a genre to kick off a whole craze. I'm looking at you Iron Man.
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Dec 11, 2023 16:19
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What's worrying me about Colville's game is how laser-focused it seems. From his description it's like 4e+, with there not being a simple fighter (or simple blast mage) as every class has to play resource juggling. I have no objection to resource juggling, but it isn't everyone's cup of tea.
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Dec 11, 2023 21:12
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Grey Hunter posted:To be fair, pirates had been "over" for decades before Pirates of the Carribeans. it just takes one good film in a genre to kick off a whole craze. That's fair but in this specific instance it felt like Wick was trying to ride the Pirates of the Caribbean train but diminishing returns were definitely a thing.
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Dec 11, 2023 22:03
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Dawgstar posted:That's fair but in this specific instance it felt like Wick was trying to ride the Pirates of the Caribbean train but diminishing returns were definitely a thing. 7th Sea 2E, on the other hand, was late to the party, coming out just before the fifth PotC movie. There was also a piracy-themed prestige TV series (Black Sails) that ran for four seasons during that era, and which made barely a ripple. Pirates were just a spent force in popular culture when 7S 2E came out. Anyway, the king of putting-the-cart-before-the-horse "transmedia" RPG properties remains Far West.
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Dec 11, 2023 22:13
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Yeah, I was going to say that I was playing 7th Sea TCG in high school well before PotC came out. It was a drat good game, too. They also had a d20 supplement book before they released their own official RPG line, IIRC.
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Dec 11, 2023 22:23
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FMguru posted:Original 7th Sea RPG & CCG predated the first PotC movie (1999 to 2003). It's one of the few examples of nerdgame culture prefiguring mass culture. Also 7th Sea 2e came about in large part because AEG was offloading a bunch of stuff and, presumably, Wick wanted it back because he liked it and wanted to make more of it.
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Dec 12, 2023 00:54
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Wait how do they have a prototype of a vtt for a bespoke system that isn't even out yet? Did they just throw together a map editor and dice roller and talk a good game?
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Dec 12, 2023 01:41
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Kwyndig posted:Wait how do they have a prototype of a vtt for a bespoke system that isn't even out yet? Did they just throw together a map editor and dice roller and talk a good game? It's a tinyurl link that goes straight to owlbear.rodeo
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