Yeah, you changed the way I thought, but not like 180, more like a ricochet. You for sure altered my trajectory and I think your influence is healthy for the culture of dnd. Thanks for everything.
Opening with Uncle Matt wondrous singing and ending with a grand reading from FIGHTER !!! Tis a good day my lads & lasses !! Once More Unto the Breach ! Let Us All Slay Dragons and Avoid Taxes !!
The "Running the Game" videos did what you wanted them to do as well as they can do it. But, RU-vid (and the algorithm) have rotted our brains into wanting more, and regular, uploads of similar content. Serialized episodic content industry helped us get really comfortable with "more like this."
Hopefully, there will be time to complete Fighter after the MCDM RPG is developed. Many of us have been eagerly waiting for the rest of the series - it's one of my favorites.
Pacific Rim was just such a joy to watch. The perfect amount of tongue in cheek silliness, and all those cgi robots and aliens actually felt huge and impactful. Loved it.
I loved running the game videos and the campaign diaries. They where amazing to get me thinking when I took over with our youngest players(highschoolers) after our west marches game ran it course.
On unimportance of names, case in point: nearly every Jrpg. A jumble of nonsense in English, everybody likes these games and somehow says the name with a straight face every time.
17:33 At least for myself, the kind of fantasy that the "gish" or "spellblade" speaks to is one that I often find in anime or jrpgs. The kind of "Magic Swordsman", a person who can wield a couple of spells really well, but they're mostly a fighter. The only game I've played that really *got* this fantasy in the TTRPG space was Pathfinder (both 1e and 2e) and their Magus class. The kind of characters I look at for this in media are Kratos Aurion from Tales of Symphonia and Red Mages in Final Fantasy (early ones more than FF14) as examples. Other than your mention of Elric, I'm not sure this is a particularly commonly served archetype in western media, at least, not that I can think of. Thank you for these streams, they're always fun to watch, even though I'm never around for watching them live. It helps to get me thinking critically about games.
I think the Witcher series is the closest popular Western equivalent, as a Witcher is mainly a Fighter with a collection of what basically are cantrips they can use in a pinch.
This is mostly off topic, but, for what it’s worth, Priest and Thief reminded me how fun it can be to read. It’s been years now since I read both of them in a few days but I think about them fairly often and have been reading pretty regularly since. Thanks for that
I really can't say enough how thankful I am that you have taken the time to put out all the content that you have over the years. My comment was definitely intended to be that same knock on the office door moment for you. I'm just a stranger, but it's very important that you know that it's been helpful for me throughout the years.
Love the stream Matt. i have been watching you ever since you did the interview with Jim and I have loved all of your content. You and your Work are very inspiring to this old gamer. Keep up the great videos man. You are the hope!
Paladin and swords college bard are Gish from 5e PH. They also multi class well to. If you want to reflavor as a arcane wizard type it's not terribly difficult.
I'm so excited for all the ideas being thrown around for MCDM adventures. Fingers crossed for there eventually being a space where the community can share modules and adventures using the new system. Also, thanks Matt for reading from Fighter, giving the people what they want and it was awesome! I always find myself inspired for what I'm doing in my own campaigns, adventures, and setting whenever I read (or in this case hear a reading) from Matt's novels. I find it as fruitful for inspiration as watching Star Wars, Indiana Jones, 13 Assassins, or any other number of epic adventures has been.
Good point about how making characters is not playing the game. I would go a step further and say that when you are focused on "builds" you are actually playing a DIFFERENT game. A solo game that takes place away from the table. Which is why I find that mindset so frustrating.
I've been working on designing a class that uses monster abilities and reflects or absorbs monster spells with shields and passive absorption. So as they fight goes longer they gain more abilities, and as they level they can keep some of these abilities. So no two of the class will be the same. Any tips for a good name for the class?
Ooh. Maybe something emphasizing the abilities like The Amalgam, or Shapesharer. Or take a predator/prey kinda vibe with it and go for Hide-Stealer or Mutated Hunter. Theres a word out there that sums up the vibe I'm getting perfectly,, but I can't place the exact word....
My reason for wanting a gish class is thematic. I'm fine with it playing much the same as a paladin, I just want the magic to be studious rather than holy
Great stream Matt! Glad to see you are in such a good place and I have great faith in you and your team to deliver something that is going to be wonderful. Keep fighting the good fight, and don't feed the trolls.
I feel the same way about the Hobbit movies. Good thing you didn't see 3. It was worse than 2! I think it was a poor decision to try to stretch one medium sized book into 3 movies
Man, I was literally singing "Cam Ye by Atholl" on the way home this evening. Imagine my bafflement when I boot up Matt's stream and he's singing the same!
Personally when I think of the spellsword archetype I think of someone like Geralt of Rivia rather than Prince Elric. In that sense I think something that could work along those lines would be some kind of spellsword kit, rather than a class or subclass. Light armor, a blade of some kind, and a single spell that’s probably powerful but situational.
I also have a novel in the works (ready for editing, FINALLY) people keep asking about (not as many, I imagine). Mine also has an asshole in it, whom I've had a hard time writing. So I guess what I'm saying is, I sympathize. And I've said it elsewhere, but I'm looking forward to the game! Everything sounds exciting and I think my friends will really enjoy it. :)
I thought that the way you're doing Kits would make it possible to just take a wizard-ish class and give them a martial kit with a weapon attack signature ability to make a decent enough gish in the core game.
I know this is a repeated sticking point with Matt about Warlock design, and that he doesn't get the archetype, but I legit think the Illrigger (whilst fiendishly focused) covers a good swathe of the Warlock archetype of serving an extrapalnar concept/entity, as well as being a pretty brilliant gish/spell-blade option.
I really like the take on the warlock, they use charisma because they're trying to convince their patron in giving them power, on the spot! :D I am totally going to play a warlock for whom the verbal component of their spells is them telling their patron to wake the f- up! :D I still like the fact that they don't lose powers if they break the deal, IMO dnd is not as one-dimensional as Matt doesn't think so, but maybe I'm wrong. And also I don't think that calling "dumb" anything that I don't like is a great way to express my opinions, eh.
I wanted to run a one-shot for my brother to show him the game. Before we played I asked what kind of character he wanted to play, based on regular fantasy or video games or whatever, and I made him a character on my own. Then, I ran him through one encounter at level 1. Just an encounter. It took 2 1/2 hours and he loved it. I told him he took a job to clear some rats out of a cheese shop’s cellar and started the adventure as he walked into the cellar. I think that’s the only way a new person can do a “one-shot”.
Shame no one in chat asked him to follow up on the comment about the bard being a class originally designed to not be played. Hopefully there's more streams so I can join!
If you look at previous videos he's done on older editions of D&D, you'll get it. Getting to be a bard had so many hoops you needed to jump through first using other classes. That's what he means by designed not to be played. The barrier for being a bard was high, and it basically seemed like they didn't really want you to be one (but a 'bard' was also something else entirely then: Bard = Merlin, not magical musician with a mouth).
So, here's how you do the setting crossroads at the end of the introductory adventure. The baddies escape with the 3mcguffins in 3 directions. Then, you write an adventure in 3 modules that can be ran in any order. It splits the difference between the short modular nature and the long form hardcover adventure
Huh. “If you wanna be picky, that’s fine. But don’t complain about it” (~25:00) That’s some good advice I’ll want to hang onto. A good mental filter on criticism you feel is addressed.
Regarding Hobbit part 2. It absolutely WAS a bad movie. However, I’d say it had one cool thing in it that I think about ALL THE TIME: When Bilbo puts on the ring in the forest, he can understand the language of the Spiders. And they were intelligently discussing attacking and eating the party. I loved that.
Ratalak? Radelak? Not sure on the spelling but your reading had me imagining Chris Evans character Ransom in Knives Out rather than Michael B Jordan - can't believe there's more ratcatchers to be had, I've gifted Priest to several of my friends over the years, this series is so good, though I hope you're never in a circumstance where you NEED to write another rather than want
TTRPG always under-represents summoners because they are annoying as hell without a computer to control them for you. Seems like 2d10 would make conversions from d20 games a good bit easier. 🤔 Organized episodic ttrpg play: Combining all the worst parts of home games and one-shots without most of the good stuff; the place you go when no one wants to play with you but you still want to play. 😉
The biggest problem with high level D&D is it just seems like the game is not properly designed for it. They have the levels and the cool abilities for the players, but there seems to be not much thought out into how the heck you run this stuff. It could also be a DM skill issue on my part but I think it’s more than that, it’s just so unwieldy. My 2 cents I might be totally off.
The monsters and encounter builder is lacking. I recommend throwing increasingly large numbers of high CR monsters until characters occasionally drop to zero HP. Later you can give them more resistance and vulnerability to give players the fun of discovering weaknesses. Target player and party weakness. This is tricky but watch what they like to do in combat and give det a trap against their favorite strategy
My thoughts on the gish question: There are a few problems that a gish solves: 1 i think traditionally fighters are conceptually really fun but mechanically uncomplicated and so adding cpmplexity on your fighter type is fun. No need for a gish to solve this. 2. There are characters in fiction for whom magic is not an offensive trick in their arsenal. They solve their problems with mystical solutions and guile but when the gauntlet is thrown down they throw punches. Dont necessarily need a gish class for this but it could help. 3. It stands to reason that if magic exists and is effective in combat there are people who use it along side their martial prowess. Probably need some specific mechanics to allow it. 4: jedi are gishes. The talent probably has some abilities that catch this feeling. I think if there isn't a list of spells that many classes share the drive for a gish is lessened. Alternatively just flavoring abilities you would otherwise give to a martial as magic can be very cool. Some of my favorite DND characters are gishes because combat is very dynamic when you have the ability to act on a lot of different axis. Sometimes you focus down damage on one guy, sometimes you create a big area of control. Sometimes you use your spells to cleverly get your friends out of a sticky situation. This game is not t dnd so the limitations of characters snd classes arent going to be the same. You might never be put in a situation where you're just throwing javelins because you can't close with an enemy or whatever.
I think they are waiting for Michael Moorcock to pass away before they produce an Eternal Champion movie (or series). I think there are people with money who would not want to see him on a press tour expressing his opinion.
The BBC has supposedly been working on a Hawkmoon series since 2019, and in the article that announced it MM was supportive and positive. Nothing more has been said since then.
never heard of the allman brothers so banged on their greatest hits on u tube and was liking wat i was listening too,, googled them to find out more info and dickey betts has just passed away a few hours ago...mad
The appeal of gish characters is also about trying to understand the mechanics of martials-casters dualism. Like, what makes HALF of caster or martial? Are they atoms, an indivisible concepts, or is there lesser parts you can realign or even replace?
It always bothers me when people blame an avenue of communication for the awful things people choose to communicate on them. It's not the internets fault, social medias fault, certainly not Twitters fault, that there are so many awful people out there. That they say and believe awful things. But if you listen to the things people say you'd certain think it was he case. The idea that "Twitter was a mistake" when all it really did was expose you to the ugly reality of the world you live in. Would you really live with your head in the sand, ignorant of such things? Not knowing won't protect you from any of it. Some people clearly would. Many would. Yet because of the internet I've seen the street level view of riots in China and the government oppression of it. I've seen natural and man made disasters and the people reacting to them, living them, as it happens live. I saw what Occupy Wallstreet was vs how it was reported from across the globe. I watched the rabble storm the American capital live hours before mainstream media could get the machine running and start reporting on it. Over and over I've seen reality from across the globe because of social media and the internet that would have been denied me by conventional means. I see real people expressing real thoughts and feelings and emotions. Whether I like them or not. With the downfall of Twitter and the increasingly tightening of control on online platforms I wonder what I won't see in the future because its much like what I didn't know and have never heard about in the past. The internet, the very idea of an accessible global communications network that anyone can potentially access and use, is not a bad thing. It's people that are bad. Always have been. Always will be. There's thousands of years of recorded history to back that up. But don't get it twisted. That doesn't mean you should hide from that reality. That you need to suppress information to "protect" people from it. There is also immeasurable good out there in the world. The internet shares that as well. All you do when you take it away is give even more power to the powerful and reinforce their ability to control the narrative to suit their needs. Sadly we have to expose ourselves to the ugliness of the world if we want to see it for what it really is. Good and bad alike. Anyways.... mostly this is just a shout out to Matt for talking like a sane and rational person. I find that in depressingly short supply in my sphere, online and off. Obviously it spoke to me and caused a certain need to pontificate, see above. So thanks.
This is probably never gonna get read by anyone of note but I still wanna leave my thoughts somewhere about the Gish discussion, I think the problem with "finding" the fantasy to go for is very simple: being too focused on the party always being heroes, because the gish fantasy is usually reserved for bad guys, which is great for me because I love playing bad guys. the witch king of angmar is, when you boil it down, a gish, same goes for a lot of "evil overlord" type villains, they are sorcerers or mages, but then you see them waving a sword around.
You want a gish. You are being stubborn about wanting to be able to use swords and magic. Fine you can do both mechanically only a quarter as well as well the specialists. You happy now?
I wanted to give the reader some sense of what Heden meant in that first novel when he said "Radallach is a piece of shit and someone should have put him down years ago."
I strongly disagree about the name of the game or a character not being important. It creates a context. If Aragorn was named Waldo the Magnificent Magnificent, it would not be the same. It's like the player who comes to the table with a character name that does not fit the theme of the campaign can ruin the game for everyone else.
i think matt agrees with you that names are important for defining the tone and believability of the setting (he's talked a bunch about what he thinks makes certain 'fantasy' names work or not for him in other streams, and how titles should be evocative and indicative of what's inside); so I took 'not important' in this context more as it not being something that needs a particular spotlight, that warrants a dedicated reveal, or that's going to make or break the game's reach on its own if only they choose the right one. (as long as the choice's not actively confusing like the Wii U i guess, lol)
It's seems more that they are taking the position that anything above X quality will suffice, so sure Aragorn shouldn't be called WtMM, but if Tolkien had applied his rules for naming characters and came up with a different result no one would notice a problem.
From my experience playing an Eldritch Knight, I agree that a gish is a hard class to create and balance. Defensive spells were helpful to stay on my feet, but could easily be flavored as nonmagical abilities. Utility spells tended to step on other players' toolkits. Offensive spells, due to Ability Score splits that favor physical traits, tended to be easily avoided or inaccurate because of low spellcasting scores. And the low number of spell slots... eye roll. So it was all very unsatisfying when you actually tried to use magic. I had a lot of fun with that character, but it was rarely because of her gish-related mechanics. And, yes, as a brand new player, I chose that class because I didn't want to choose just swords or just sorcery, I wanted to do both!
Matt, pretty sure the market has historically outperformed 3%. I think return in the market is something like 9% annually, on average. So, the beat advice for money is put in the market and don’t plan to touch it for like 30 years. 🙂
