#mcdm — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #mcdm, aggregated by home.social.
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We delve into the first alpha playtest for MCDM's "Crows," the highly anticipated dungeon survival horror RPG from "Draw Steel" lead designer James Introcaso. https://ttrpgfans.com/mcdm-crows-rpg-alpha-playtest/ #mcdm #crowsrpg #ttrpg #tabletoprpg #drawsteel #dungeonjam
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We delve into the first alpha playtest for MCDM's "Crows," the highly anticipated dungeon survival horror RPG from "Draw Steel" lead designer James Introcaso. https://ttrpgfans.com/mcdm-crows-rpg-alpha-playtest/ #mcdm #crowsrpg #ttrpg #tabletoprpg #drawsteel #dungeonjam
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We delve into the first alpha playtest for MCDM's "Crows," the highly anticipated dungeon survival horror RPG from "Draw Steel" lead designer James Introcaso. https://ttrpgfans.com/mcdm-crows-rpg-alpha-playtest/ #mcdm #crowsrpg #ttrpg #tabletoprpg #drawsteel #dungeonjam
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My memonek elementalist for Draw Steel! She casts her earth magic by dancing
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My memonek elementalist for Draw Steel! She casts her earth magic by dancing
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My memonek elementalist for Draw Steel! She casts her earth magic by dancing
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My memonek elementalist for Draw Steel! She casts her earth magic by dancing
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What kind of GM are you? - Factor analysis results
Greetings, programs!
2 weeks ago, I asked what kind of GM you are with a 43 question survey. 101 of you answered! Then I analysed the data to find 9 underlying factors to GM style and named them. Then I got bored and didn’t publish the results outside of Discord.
Well, now it’s time to publish the results! I’ve named all 9 underlying dimensions of GM style, and created an acronym!
S.T.O.P.J.A.D.E.N.
- Strategism
- Tacticism
- Orderism
- Preparism
- Jesterism
- Authentism
- Directorism
- Egalitarianism
- Narrativism
I also wrote some detailed descriptions of some of the components. Here they are:
Preparism
If you’re high on Preparism, you spend a lot of time planning your sessions ahead of time and building great encounters. You have lots of maps, and use them even outside of encounters. You’d rather follow the game you laid out for your players than be surprised, and when there’s a question of what’s happening outside of the players’ view, you’ve probably already been tracking it.
If you’re low on Preparism, you’d rather improvise than plan. No matter what crazy idea your players come up with, you can figure out how to roll with it. You don’t have many maps, and the ones you do prepare are more likely to be used in combat than in roleplaying. You can get ready for a session very quickly, as long as you understand the world’s lore.Directorism
If you’re high on Directorism, you’re interested in making your players shine. Your players work with you to build the world and set the scene at the table. You give plenty of information about your setting to the players, and they feel like the center of the game world.
If you’re low on Directorism, you’re in charge of this story. This is your world, and you’re the one who immerses everyone in it. There’s plenty going on in your world that the players have no idea about. And you’d rather your players avoid making joke characters.Egalitarianism
If you’re high on Egalitarianism, everyone at your table is an equal. You take turns GMing, and tell lots of different stories together. You like challenging the characters rather than the players, and are happy to kill off a character if the table thinks it makes a great moment. You trust your players to look after their own dice and character sheets.
If you’re low on Egalitarianism, your players aren’t ready to do what you do just yet. You’re probably the only one who GMs, and you’re more likely to roll the dice and manage the character sheets. You only run the one adventure in your world, and you’d rather avoid killing off a character and making things harder for everyone.I wish My ADHD had given Me enough attention span to do detailed descriptions of the other 6, but alas. The good news is: You can look at the data and decide for yourself what you think they mean.
Closing thoughts: In My search for an easy to remember acronym, I realised that the dimensions seem to mostly be clustered into pairs.
Strategism and Tacticism are about how challenge is presented to the party
Orderism and Preparism are about approaches to planning and the unexpected
Jesterism and Authentism are about sources of fun
Directorism and Egalitarianism are about attitudes to player-GM collaboration
And Narrativism is on its ownSo you could visualise all of this data as four cartesian grids: Challenge, Planning, Fun, and Collaboration, and a slider for Narrativism. If I’m right about the pairs.
The following users expressed interest in being notified when results are released: @[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected]
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What kind of GM are you? - Factor analysis results
https://multiverse.soulism.net/c/rpg/p/113535/what-kind-of-gm-are-you-factor-analysis-results
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What kind of GM are you? - Factor analysis results
https://multiverse.soulism.net/c/rpg/p/113535/what-kind-of-gm-are-you-factor-analysis-results
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZs-Dj0tg_U
It is happening :D ⚔️ ⚔️ ⚔️
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZs-Dj0tg_U
It is happening :D ⚔️ ⚔️ ⚔️
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZs-Dj0tg_U
It is happening :D ⚔️ ⚔️ ⚔️
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZs-Dj0tg_U
It is happening :D ⚔️ ⚔️ ⚔️
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Matt Colville Blows Our Minds on MCDM and the TTRPG Industry! (MD 282)Mastering by Dungeons
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Got my Draw Steel books in the mail today. #DrawSteel #TTRPG #MCDM
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New details have recently emerged for MCDM's upcoming "Crows" RPG, an OSR-style dungeon crawler being created by lead designer James Introcaso. https://ttrpgfans.com/crows-rpg-mcdm/ #drawsteel #crowsrpg #mcdm #ttrpg #rpg #osr
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https://www.backerkit.com/c/projects/mcdm-productions/draw-steel-crack-the-sun
☀️ ☀️ ☀️ Can't recommend this enough! Their Delian Tomb adventure has been an absolute joy to play in person.
#TTRPG #MCDM #CrackTheSun #RPG #Games #Fantasy #Orden #DrawSteel
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https://www.backerkit.com/c/projects/mcdm-productions/draw-steel-crack-the-sun
☀️ ☀️ ☀️ Can't recommend this enough! Their Delian Tomb adventure has been an absolute joy to play in person.
#TTRPG #MCDM #CrackTheSun #RPG #Games #Fantasy #Orden #DrawSteel
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https://www.backerkit.com/c/projects/mcdm-productions/draw-steel-crack-the-sun
☀️ ☀️ ☀️ Can't recommend this enough! Their Delian Tomb adventure has been an absolute joy to play in person.
#TTRPG #MCDM #CrackTheSun #RPG #Games #Fantasy #Orden #DrawSteel
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https://www.backerkit.com/c/projects/mcdm-productions/draw-steel-crack-the-sun
☀️ ☀️ ☀️ Can't recommend this enough! Their Delian Tomb adventure has been an absolute joy to play in person.
#TTRPG #MCDM #CrackTheSun #RPG #Games #Fantasy #Orden #DrawSteel
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https://www.backerkit.com/c/projects/mcdm-productions/draw-steel-crack-the-sun
☀️ ☀️ ☀️ Can't recommend this enough! Their Delian Tomb adventure has been an absolute joy to play in person.
#TTRPG #MCDM #CrackTheSun #RPG #Games #Fantasy #Orden #DrawSteel
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MCDM has just launched "Draw Steel: Crack the Sun," a new BackerKit campaign featuring seven products with new rules, character options and adventures. https://ttrpgfans.com/draw-steel-crack-the-sun/ #mcdm #drawsteel #ttrpg #rpg #crackthesun
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MCDM has just launched "Draw Steel: Crack the Sun," a new BackerKit campaign featuring seven products with new rules, character options and adventures. https://ttrpgfans.com/draw-steel-crack-the-sun/ #mcdm #drawsteel #ttrpg #rpg #crackthesun
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I love the virgin days of the months following the release of a massive new game or expansion in the #TTRPG space.
Particularly proud of the giants! https://timescape.wiki/view/Giant
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Are there any fedi places to talk about the #DrawSteel #ttrpg? Lemmy or Masto or something similar, anything will do! I've seen a few for DnD but nothing else so far
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New DnD Class Guide for MCDM's Illrigger
Recently added to DnDBeyond, the Illrigger is a capable martial character fueled by the powers of hell.
https://rpgbot.net/new-dnd-class-guide-for-mcdms-illrigger/
#DnD #DnD5e #2024DnD #TTRPG #CharacterOptimization #MCDM #Illrigger
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#MCDM's Flee Mortals und Where Evil Lives sind auf #DnDBeyond
https://www.dndbeyond.com/posts/1725-upgrade-your-encounters-with-mcdms-flee-mortals
"Flee, Mortals!: 293 Monsters with Unique Mechanics
Where Evil Lives: 22 Lairs for Deadly Boss Fights" -
I'm not sure if it's horrifying or hilarious to see #MCDM effectively re-implementing #PbtA mechanics and doing everything except actually slapping "Powered by the Apocalypse" on the cover.
That's not actually true. It's deeply hilarious, especially since Dungeon World has existed since 2012 ...
...and Fantasy World since 2020, both of which fairly intense manifestations of the PbtA mechanics into pretty traditional fantasy settings.
https://unplayablegamesrpg.itch.io/fantasy-world
It very much feels like they are playing catch-up with one of the most popular non-D&D game development lines going, except making their Moves more focused on man-to-man skirmish combat rather than Theater of the Mind.
That's not necessarily a terrible thing; I've certainly been sitting down and doing some back of the envelope figuring to work out whether it's possible to do minis-focused combat using #Starforged the last little bit.
(NARRATOR: It appears to be.)
It's just very strange to see how far this mechanical architecture has percolated in the last decade.
MCDM and #Daggerheart taking up a PbtA influence is really quite the thing to behold.
It would be a true irony if it ended up driving more interest in PbtA/FitD-lineage games and away from themselves simply due to introducing the core concepts.
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Great preview from @dmdavid of the #mcdm #rpg and #criticalrole #daggerheart systems which are playtesting currently. Particularly like #mcdmrpg approach to the dying mechanics
https://dmdavid.com/tag/daggerheart-vs-the-mcdm-rpg-vs-dd-a-playtest-comparison/
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@kevin No? Mainly because to be a grognard means you need to be a bit of a graybeard into the really krufty wargames – not that there's anything wrong with that (he says, hastily covering up any view of the things on the shelves behind him).
I've written about Daggerheart literally today which includes a fair bit of criticism, and in some ways MCDM falls into some of the same holes, but the biggest is that neither one of them solves a problem that I have. Everything either of them promises to do I have games that I already own and know how to play that do that better.
That's really the problem for both of them at a certain level; they both push really hard at trying to do a very specific kind of thing in terms of their advertising and promotion and the vast majority of the people that would be interested in that already have something that make them happy. They aren't trying to build their own audiences, they're trying to take one that already exists.
That is almost impossible to do.
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Happy to see #GhostfireGaming & #DungeonDudes will have material on #DnDBeyond. I immediately find myself wondering if 3rd parties like #KoboldPress, #MCDM, and #ENWorld who compete with #WOTC #DnD on other #TTRPG fronts will ever get the chance.
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Just received a very pretty monster book from @hellomcdm @JamesIntrocaso
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Finally got to run the Furious Road scenario from Flee Mortals. It was lots of fun. Players did use their characters which made some things easier. #ttrpg #dnd #FleeMortals #mcdm
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#boatmode session 35 (yes, both sessions this week were on consecutive days). More basic dungeon crawl out on abd-Yson Island fighting skeletons, pirates and ferrets. And items! I love it when gems and items have a lot of personality.
Spent some time discussing OOC after which we rarely get time to do. I said that it’s super important that all the players have a way to communicate without me—so in case there’s a problem with the game, or they want to continue without me, they can. I love that they want to play in my campaign and I want that to keep being voluntary, and never that they feel held “hostage” by all communication going through me.
This may sound weird but it’s because I do have a very different style of DMing (I mean I have a blorby style which is different from the 3e/4e mainstream). A lot of things that other groups would be up in arms over—such as the amount of PVP, intra-party scheming and stealing etc, extreme lethality, mixed level parties etc seems to work fine.
Also I cheated on #blorb! I did an unblorby thing! They were examining some mosaic eyes on a mural and by the book the eyes were absolutely normal and I improvised that the eyes opened some doors further in. See, this is why I need the blorb principles—to reign me in. I don’t have a problem improvising things. “What’s the problem, it’s all wallpaper?” Not really… because there was no prep lacuna here to justify improvisation. The wall was described. It’s just that they thought the eyes were weird. I shoulda woulda oughtta just stick with it. The last something similar to this happened was some tar stuck to a wall in In Search of the Unknown (in KotB campaign) and before that the weird time-fluid on a house in Cookie Tin village in #Glitchworld.
I want to describe things in an interesting and vivid way, but, when my mere description turns into a “puzzle” I feel like I’m absolutely cheating compared to all the real and interesting solidly blorby puzzles they could be spending their time on instead (such as what happened in Jumlat or who made the weird claw marks down on level four). It’s only happened a handful of times over the almost 300 sessions over the last six years, but I want to do better.
I used to play an all improvised style, and then blorb is the other way around. As much as I can is set up for me to not have control, for me to lose control.
I finally figured out that that’s the central difference between me and #MCDM. Anything he can do to retain control—like fudging dice, stacking decks, secretly scripting scenes with particular players (such as what happens with commander in Chain #001), having clocks where instead of a clock he decides when things happen etc—he does. And I do everything to not have control. Never fudge, never stack decks, OK admittedly the occasional player-co-scripted surprise (like Jalara being the pirate queen of Durrar or [I don’t remember the character name] being a prisoner of Valindra in the Heart of Stone), and I love setting up mechanics to determine what happens. #gloracle take the wheel! The glorious oracle of dice, rules and prep!
I had a module where the water supply of a city was in danger, the party seemed to be more interested in other things. Now, the intent of the module writer was probably to, IDK, I think they just assumed that the party would follow those leads which makes sense if those leads are the only things going on, but, #boatmode is a “drinking from the firehose” style campaign. There are a lot going on! There was no built-in time pressure for the water supply—the players could save it whenever and if they did it within one day, they got even more gold, but no real deadline.
That is weaksauce. The entire world does not revolve around the Sea Ghost Trading Company. So I put it on 3d6 days + randomly how many would die.
Then, once those days were up, I really wanted to flinch. I was like “Why oh why didn’t I build in a chance for one of the many rival NPC parties I’ve made to be able to stop it?” But then I realized it was too late to make that change. I had committed to this mechanic and now it was time to just report it to the party on our internal “domain news” page. I really really wanted to cheat but I didn’t.
In hindsight, it might’ve been pretty patronizing and crappy to have some other NPC party be outshining the PC party that way. That did happen in our Coursair Council campaign (up north in Hawa) — I had the NPC quest giver on an “If the PCs don’t do it by X date, I’ll go do it myself” and I rolled both for the when and for the whether she managed to do it or not. She could’ve died in there, she could’ve been more patient — I rolled for both those things. But I get that the party thought it was a bit bad that she went down there and kicked all the cultists butts on her own. Almost DMPC style 🧕
This is why I can just eyeroll at stuff like “PTA is sim, Archipelago is sim”. OK, good luck with that. This is blorb.
