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The Tactician (Prototype)
🕑 Added 2023-07-06 20:28:23 +0000 UTCHey folks! It's been a few weeks since we last spoke, and that means it's been a few weeks since we did any work on the RPG! We've been heads-down on Flee, Mortals! and also Where Evil Lives which is the book the Lairs section turned into. And Arcadia still, and The Talent. And The Illrigger Revised!
But Flee, Mortals! is...done? The PDF is off to the printer for proofing, which will still take several weeks, but it's all just making sure the printed book looks exactly the same as the PDF. As developers? Writers, designers, artists, editors, testers? Our work is done. The PDF will spend some time going through accessibility, but otherwise...it's on to the RPG!
So today James and I had a meeting about designing our first class, for real. Until now we've been using prototypes which reflect some of our ideas about the real class design, but are otherwise just sort of thrown together to give us something to test the core rules with.
Currently we feel pretty good about the core rules: 2D6, Stamina, Health, Defense, etc.... So it's time to move on and actually try to design a real class! All the class abilities, subclasses, 10 levels, no dead levels!
That's going to take a while and probably more meetings before we're done but since we're kinda leaving the kludged-together prototype versions behind? I thought you folks might like to see what they looked like.
So...here's the old Tactician! :D This is v12 of the Old Tactician, so you may notice there are no references to the Cosmic Die or Surges in here.
If you've been following development thusfar, this should all make sense to you.
The real Tactician won't have an ability like Leading Strike. That was just James' way of, in the context of a quick & dirty prototype, showing everyone what kinds of things the real Tactician will be able to do.
The real Tactician will be able to taunt and mark (those might be two different subclasses? That's something we're working out right now!) and those will probably be in addition to doing something on your turn. Not built into an Action.
That's another thing; we think maybe you'll have a section on your character sheet labeled Actions and everything you can do on your turn as an action goes in there. As opposed to what you see here where everything is an "Attack."
Names are going to change maybe? I don't know if this game calls them Banes and Boons for the bonus dice?
Also I think the real Tactician will have attacks that target Reason? You can see every stat has an associated Defense. In the beginning there was no Defense there were only stats you could attack. So Might vs Agility.
Then we said "Nah we need something like Armor" and that's where Defense came from and that's why all these abilities target Armor (they should say "Defense!"). Then we said "No we need Defense, but we also need to be able to attack people's stats" and we haven't re-revised for that.
You can imagine how the Tactician would have an attack that's based on a feint, on faking-out your opponent and that would be an attack vs Reason. A sufficiently clever enemy will not fall for the fake-out!
Keep in mind, this is not a character. A character has an Ancestry, Upbringing, Career, and will start with all sorts of cool stuff like Renown, Contacts, Research, Skill Stunts, etc...
This is just something we whipped up to test our core gameplay loop. We already have other prototypes for Ancestries for instance.
Anyway, I hope that soon ("soon" who knows when really?) we can share the REAL Tactician with y'all, but we're only just getting started there. We have a lot of cool ideas for 10 levels of cool abilities! But actually winnowing them down into something useful and coherent, and making sure the Tactician isn't doing things better suited for a Fury or Shadow all gets ironed out.
In the meantime, hopefully this is a fun preview of how we think the Tactician would work at a very high level.
Comments
Prammster
awesome. :)
Arashi Namikaze
It's my 1st time seeing all this but it's really interesting to see. That your one announcement video about this system (from a while ago at this point), which also inspired me to get back into designing my game again, ended up going in a similar direction. Mine however still ended up being more like 5e than yours did.
Arash - Game Narrative 101
My next campaign will most likely switch to this and I try to anticipate what my table might not like about the transition. One of them is the 10 level thing either limiting how long we spend in a campaign (current pace: lvl 3-8 in 2 years) or "forcing" the table to go to legendary levels in the same time. Looking at the design though, I don't think that's more than a superficial problem because 1: the gameplay loop is fun! I can level the table up every 2 adventures instead and the game will still be fun and 2: even if that pace is slow, this system seems SO much easier to design for. Tactician player's getting antsy to level up? They've made it "their thing" to buff allies? Magic sword. Can spend 4 focus instead of 3 but give your ally's attack a boon die. Can do a million of these easily AND have fun doing it. Aces!
Jacob Montague
I can't wait to play a tactician. Likely the first class I'll go for if I can: 1) convince my friends to play this game 2) convince one to DM it eventually
Tony Sladky
So, is there any idea of what "level" this Tactician prototype is at? Like, obviously, this isn't close to where something like that could be concrete, but does this represent a level of complexity y'all think players would have in their first session? Third session? Tenth session?
BasCB
Or his keybord / screen was stuck!
JUST WHATEVER, IDK
Sounds like André is a big fan
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Legendlore
I can't wait for the MCDM RPG to enter playtesting, me and my friends are chomping at the bit xD
Gabriel Garvin Krotkov
Also I love the color coding of attack vs defense. The final product is going to read smoooooooth!
Gabriel Garvin Krotkov
One thing I noticed reading over the Tactician is the mixing of natural descriptions of time and gameified descriptions of time. For example, the Tactician gains Focus when a scene ends, and the Lead with Tactics boons last for 1 hour. Is this an intentional choice or something that just arose in the process of design? If it's intentional, I would love to hear some more about why it was chosen.
MCDM Productions
Yeah I really don't care how many pounds or grams something weights, I care about can my character lift it? Throw it? How many of these can I carry?
Reformed Hillbilly
It’s so minor, but I really liked where it listed the character’s weight 4. Weight classes instead of exact lbs is great. It’s the implication of the design for the game I enjoy
Mykayla Harris
Super interested in Where Evil Lives!!!
MCDM Productions
In case anyone here in the comments is unaware, there is also channel in the MCDM Discord that has a pretty active conversation each time there is an update here. Everyone in the MCDM+ tier should have access.
Roman Penna
Thanks for the update, this is a very fun preview - I like how the attacks are both damage and does something else. That's cool.
NealSig
Thanks for the update! Excited to see what y'all come up with in the future
Joe Auerbach
I love the feel of this. This took the tactician from "a solid fighter" to "a fighter who can help drive his allies forward to greater feats of daring"
Ormus Erebus
Really loving the amount and variety a fresh Tactician can do.
Nicholas Nyberg
This looks great! Can’t wait for the actual thing!
Nicholas Nyberg
It’s that D&D 4e influence at work. Pretty much all classes would make use of multiple attributes for their powers in that game
Vitruvian Link
Awesome, can't wait for the geologic "soon" and start rolling!
Stuart Cook
*very* interesting that some of the damage calcs for attacks is 2d6 + reason instead of it all being +might. I think that’s really cool.
