The Best Defense | Designing The Game 

This was possibly the biggest hit during the playtest in my mind. Players loved the feeling when they avoided the damage because it was something *they did* as opposed to, oops the monster missed. It also, along with the initiative system, kept them really engaged the whole combat unlike 'oh it's my turn, I cast fireball.'

I would love to see a quick combat video in action, just to see the exact flow and how fast it actually works out. I'm very excited for this RPG!

Having a legendary enemy be capable of the same actions the heroes have seems like it would be a cool way to show how much cooler they are if normal enemies can’t take those same actions. It’s like legendary actions in dnd but doesn’t make you feel innately inferior to them.

While non-Patrons don’t get to see how the sausage gets made, I for one appreciate that the DtG series allows the rest of us to at least taste-test it. Thanks James, Matt, and the rest of MCDM.

Separating the resistance roll from the damage roll seems like a no-brainer, it's what D&D does! Very cool to hear how all the iteration panned out.

the issue at 4:10 sounds quite realistic in a sense… but as you said, it’s not the fantasy! That’s how some games have us play, particularly like Assassins Creed and many soulslike. Maybe save that system for some kind of sword dueling game, but it doesn’t encourage the heroic mindset for this game. Love this game design philosophy. It’s why I’m so excited for this game.

This damage system is continuing to evolve even now! We love that we got to automatically deal damage in combination with a resistance roll. The next step is adding even more variability to damage, so it's not always just the 2d6 average number of damage. Miles to go, but it's shaping up!

I think you guys are making a lot of good decisions with this game. I love the idea of triggered actions. Same satisfaction that a Blue player has in Magic the Gathering. “IN RESPONSE… I TAP TWO ISLANDS AND CAST ‘NO WAY, JOSÉ’!’”

Playtest was fun 😎 triggered actions feel like a more impactful group maneuver from Arcadia

Man, this is all making me feel better about my amateur design, as I went through almost all the discarded steps when trying to make my own system.

I have played Mork Borg and the Black Sword Hack, and one of the issues I had with both games is that, as the gamemaster, I did not roll any dice and felt that I was not really controlling anything. I totally relate with James' discussion here. This aspect of the game is looking great.

“Countering became the best way to deal damage.” Aka how I play Assassin’s Creed.

Love the amount of refinement on display and the commitment to fun, heroic and cinematic gameplay, and the willingness to start over with dead ends. I love the development process and I really want to join the Patreon to see the sausage factory.

I've played a lot of Kult: Divinity Lost where all of the rolls are made by the players. And as a story driven GM who encourages engagement from my players, I really like that. As a GM, it meant less bookkeeping and I could focus more on the story being told.

Guys! Just got my copy of „Where Evil Lives“ delivered to Germany. Just wow! …if this is the baseline for how you approach DM materials in MCDM RPG, can’t tell you how cool this will be. Thanks a lot for your work! ❤❤❤ Also great approach to the defense system James! Keep up the MCDM way! ❤❤❤

This is interesting. I've got at least a couple "only players roll" RPGs on my playlist. I forgot there had ever been an iteration of MCDM RPG like that.

When you're jonesing so hard you think you might smoke some bits of concrete you found and then your dealer walks around the corner... I needed this video.

Thanks James! I’ll be honest. I love the fact that you’re sharing the thought process behind the decision making during the design process. Seeing this makes me more excited for the finished product.

I’ve played 1.5 playtests, and can confirm. I had more fun DUE TO combat than I ever have in 5E. I’ve had more epic story moments in 5E because I’ve played hundreds of times more, but those were due to story, not the mechanics. Can’t wait to add a layer of epic storytelling to this system!

Here: Start with the original rules. 1. 2d6+char attribute = damage 2. Subtract defenders static "defense" 3. Defender takes damage - defense "net damage" And here's the change 4. If the attack has an effect, that effect will have a TN. If the "net damage" meets or beats the TN, the attack successfully inflicts the bonus effect. Narratively this says "the attack was so impactful or so poorly defended, that there is a bonus effect" "That mighty blow connected really well and did a lot of damage. It connected so well, it knocked the enemy back a few squares."

As a game designer myself it's really nice to have a peek at your process for designing the game. This series as a whole has been awesome! I'm wondering where the decision to use different terms came from, comparing to D&D. I'm well aware we can still say "saving throw" and "DC" at our own table and call our Director "DM", but it kinda feels like when you are playing a souls-like and now Estus is called "drinku healu" and bonfire is "saving blaze"... You know what I mean? As far as I know, those terms are not licensed and cannot be licensed by WotC, so I'm wondering if this decision is to just further distance this system from D&D and avoid comparison or if you guys just think it sounds cooler. Anyway, nice work so far, looking forward to play!

Never been happier to back a project

I use the Director-Doesn't-Roll style for GMing for my kids. They roll two dice against "target numbers" to attack, dodge, defend, etc, and have to add the numbers together themselves (yay math!). Works really well in that sphere, and I don't feel like I'm playing a different game; just a very different role.

I appreciate the window into the creative process!

I love these videos so much. Thanks for taking the time to do them!

I really appreciate the level of iteration you all are putting into this. Every time you read off a version you were trying, in my head I'd think "Okay this solves this negative feeling, but it risk creating this other negative feeling. I wonder if they ran into that" and then you'd continue on to confirm my suspicion or bring up one I hadn't thought of. On paper, I really enjoy what you've come up with for the current iteration of attacks. I wonder if you'll be doing more iteration like this on other mechanics you've come up with so far. For instance, the "Kit" system you've described does a lot of good stuff, but I think there's potential downsides that I think will need to be addressed to make the best version of the game.

Nice, really fun to follow the train of thought through this. Thank you

Was bummed I wasn’t able to back this at the time, but you definitely have my pre order!

I can’t wait to playtest this game!

They were “this” close to taking another step into the PBTA game system. Dang. Maybe in their next game I like where you ended up! Very cool

Love the iterations and explanations!

Love seeing how the sausage is made! I’m excited to see what happens making the damage range more extreme

Very cool video, thank you! Looking forward to this game!

I am reminded of the 5th Age Epic rules with the card deck. Director never held the card, everything was player driven, they attacked, they avoided being attacked. As Director, I LOVED this, I could focus on everything else, and players had to constantly be engaged. This makes me vwry happy. ❤

I love asymmetric game mechanics. I bet giving directors something like “arrogance” (for when the heroes are struggling or have failed some fight or objective, or had to retreat early) and “fear” (for when the heroes are doing especially well and advancing very quickly) could change the shape, impact, and behavior mechanically of enemies, and the players would totally buy it.

Amazing. Thanks for sharing guys.

"If an attack simply pushes a target back 2 squares, that can probably happen automatically" Might wanna rethink that specific example, I've seen many an enemy (and some players) executed by naught more than a short-distance push ⬇🕳 But yeah, everything else about the current design sounds pretty good!

Love it. Thanks for the video. I love the design updates

Killed it with the Patreon playtest, killing it with the videos!

Every time I watch one of these videos I feel my DM brain expanding lol Keep up the good work!

SO EXCITED!

Man, 30 seconds into this and I'm hooked.

Very excited for this game.

Thank you for these designing the game videos. Although this isn't the system for me for multiple reasons, it is interesting to get some insight into your iterative design process.

Great stuff.

I really like what I'm seeing and it seems more simple with just 2d6 versus the d20, but I'd like to see how some powerhouse monsters work - Dragon, Balrog, Lich, etc. to ensure these apex monsters are not nerfed.

Thank you for being confident to share the failures. I think the biggest lesson that any game designer can take away from these videos is: Get your ideas to the table ASAP and try them out. Fail faster and live your way to the answers to paraphrase Rainer Maria Rilke.

Fascinating how you worked through it. I've been on Contested rolls like yours at the 7m mark for my gritty dark ages ttrpg design, and happy to stay there! Appreciate it's not a good fit for your game though.

I backed this game and I want it to be good, but so far I'm still pretty unconvinced. That's ok though, after 30+ years in the hobby I totally understand not every game hits everyone the same, and I'm willing to try any game to find out if it's for me. Hoping for the best! So that said, I absolutely appreciate the consideration put into the mechanics here and in each other video. Balance and implementation are much more important to a game's longevity than uniqueness.

I hope the counter play style is worked into a kit for a big tower shield knight or like fencing kit for shadows

Gotta say that I love design for monsters/ NPCs and players. The goal of designing a monster for the GM and the goal of designing a player character are so vastly different! You can’t hit two vastly different targets with the same design! I’m also personally a fan of players-roll-everything, mostly for the spotlight effect it has on the feel of the game.

Sounds great!

Nice!

Cool stuff!

Bold of you to assume at the start of the video that I'm capable of retaining any information from previous videos.

I am loving dealing damage consistently currently, feels good. But excited to see where goes if it changes.

I like this combat mechanic. But I would love to see certain monsters and bosses be given the same/similar resistances that heroes get. In Fellowship of the Ring all of the Uruk-hai in the attack would be standard enemies. BUT Lurtz (the guy with the bow) was special. He was portrayed as more of a threat and did more than a standard monster would. The drama of the scene would have been lost if it was random orc archer number 12 that shot Boromir AND it wouldn’t have been as dramatic when Aragorn arrived and attempted to rescue him. I imagine boss mechanics are already being worked on but I would love to see how they interact with the standard attack/defense mechanics.

The concept with the director ot rolling sounds like rhe perfect system to me. Would i miss rolling? Probably, but the mechanics just sound absolutely wonderful to me.

I really do like the to-hit - defenses = Dmg!... maybe add a static damage and the die result (like your chat concept) tells you if you do "half that damage' , 'the base damage', or 'double damage'? [please read that in the abstract as Im trying to convert the idea into a "design-pattern"] (an aside; Also consider putting 'critical' outcomes on "doubles"). This concept is essentially the same as your chart idea but "decouples" the chart in a useful way. Moreover I think having a "Degree of success" interpretation of the dice roll as a "universal concept" serves the game design in many ways including in social role playing scenes etc. This way you dont always have to recopy the chart everywhere. Like through all the spells etc and reduces the "overhead". Im thinking of yes, PbTA but also my old favorite Talislanta, for this universal table idea which, like you say, becomes really "no table" as the players and Director intuit the brake-points and no longer need to rely on the table during play. I think looking to Japan and the Standard Rule System (SRS) a 2d6 rules engine (Sword world, Goblin Slayer, Ryuutama etc) would be informative; they use a charts version of "damage" in very simple ways. Another approach with the 2d6 is to read the two d6's as separately as "High" and "Low" results which are how you read and determine, by selecting the higher or lower (assigned by the rules eg use the Low dice for X or use the High dice for Y) of the two dice giving you the "effect" "effort". If you were open to accepting a 3d6 range over the 2d6 you can use the separate d6 results in the form of "Low", "Mid", and "High" and your selection of which die (as determined by the rules) is based on the special things the classes can do and gives your "effect" "effort. I hope this is helpful. PS also pick up a copy of the "Talisman RPG" from Ulisies Speil (yes its in English) some really hidden but amazing design concepts in that game too. Worth a review for any designer imo.

Honestly this sounds great to run, it takes a lot of energy to constantly be rolling stuff if you’re running a lot of lil guys at once and it’s like “oh cool now I have to roll dex saving throws for all these dorks”

I'd love to see you guys play dune again with all of the expansions that have been coming out!

If I wanted to avoid powerful status conditions I would simply avoid being hit. 😊 (Slick premise, looking forward to seeing how it stands up to scrutiny!)

The updates seem pretty legit! I’m excited for the full release of mcdm table top game! That said, I miss the peace out at the end of the video.

I hope they consider allowing select, elite monsters to have triggered actions to mitigate damage as well. I understand that it feels heroic to never have your own attacks mitigated while being able to avoid damage from your opponent...but that's also the sensation you get when hitting a punching bag. Not all monsters need to have this, and I think it would be suitably dramatic and cinematic to have tougher monsters get a few good licks in on the players as well. I am not playtesting, so maybe this desire is sated via other methods (special monsters or abilities) but taken at the face value of this video I would hope it evolved that direction if it currently isn't.

I’m so excited about this game! This is going to be the new standard to which all other TTRPGs are compared.

I was about to suggest some way to let the player decide if they want to fight the effect or not with a limited resource of some kind. So that they had a choice of trying to resist the knockback with the one "token" they have or keep it to perhaps resist some other effect down the line. Which is basically what you ended up doing in the end. :)

I'm a bit surprised you didn't go for something like hit a number on a die to make an effect happen. like if one of your dice in your attack roll is a 6, the effect happens. it would give flexibility in how often an effect triggers, and you could even do some lowball stuff, like a poison effect that only activates on a lowball number.

I realized pretty early on as a dm that you could take armor class, subtract ten, and use the remainder as a bonus to a defense roll with a target number of a monsters attack bonus plus ten. Then, take average damage for attacks and it greatly sped up running the game.

You could also incorporate the Resistance Roll into the damage roll. Monsters would have a TN to have conditions applied to them. 1) Damage is rolled (result: 10) 2) Effects are applied 3) Conditions check: "Does the monster resist poisoning?" - director checks: "Monster has TN 9 - so it is poisoned." This should shake out to the same probabilities, but it A) reduces the amount of dice rolled B) means, higher damaging abilities have a better chance of applying conditions C) high damage rolls are additionally rewarded with conditon effects. Might be that your current version with 2 rolls allows for more fine tuning (good). Thinking about it, it's basically the same as adding a guaranteed bit of damage to a D20 save-or-suck spell (simple but elegant).

I'm so glad you didn't use the asymmetrical version. At our table we feel disconnected with this kind of game design.

If I understand you correctly, I feel like monsters need modifiers to their TN rolls. Bosses should have bonuses, and some creatures should have weaknesses to specific Characteristics. A scarecrow monster should be easier to push around than a rock golem and therefore they should have modifiers to the TN rolls. Just a thought

I feel like the chalkboard outlines might be hurting more than helping. In the final method, "Step 2: Apply Effects" is handwaving away a lot of complexity and making the process look simpler than it is. Not that it's necessarily complex. Of course, now that there's the Power Roll tables, this whole video may be a bit of a moot point.

TN as Target # could instead be Trigger # - named for the Triggering of a cool thing.

I like this solution but isnt it working just cuz its basically how dnd does it? Attacks do damage and then theres a saving throw for additional effects?

I mean.... it kinda sounds like you guys want a saving throw mechanic in there. Although class specific reaction do sound cool.

The effect trigger number is a nice method to solve the initial problem. 2d6 is a 6 average. So rolling 2d6 and gettint a 9 is essential a minor crit. [9+] effect [10+] effect Etc

Apart from the lack of attack rolls, I don't understand how the system differs from D$D.. you roll damage, than things happen and you have a resistance roll which is no different from a Saving Throw in D$D... It even has Difficulty Class to roll against..

Personnaly I use the second version of opposed roles you talked about, Opposed roles keep the players engaged and feel like their skills matter. I wished you add developped a bit more on why you didnt keep it rather than Matt saying "Its the same than the first but with an additional roll" but my system doesnt really work the same than yours so I didnt have the same issues that you had with your first version.

This sounds really promising, I am curious how it will work as player's level up though. Will they be stuck on 2d6 + stat damage forever? How about their TN's, will they always be less than 12? I'm keen to see where this goes. Keep up the great work though!

Isn't... that functionally very similar to the "not fun" example you gave at the start? You always take damage, except for the one time a round you can use an ability against it, and a small effect might just happen. Obviously the bigger effects are mitigated by getting a roll, but how would this work to simulate a tactical and cinematic moment like Aragorn and Gimli on the helms deep causeway? Obi-wan putting up a perfect defense against... Well anyone? Holding a position against numerous foes is a big part of cinematic combat, but this design seems like you're gonna be sliced to pieces?

Very much like World Engine and Cypher where it comes to players only roll.

Sounds awesome! But what about PvP?

If a big focus on the game's design is feeling cinematic, would it make sense to incorporate "failing forwards" into the different attacks/abilities/etc? That even on a miss or save, something always happens to advance the story?

How does monster armor / damage resistance work?

The main issue that first comes to mind for the system settled on at the end of the video is just unpracticed player/director behaviour. Especoally from games like dnd that require to hit rolls before a detrimental effect gets a saving throw, I could see players or directors rolling their damage dice then announcing what they did and what the resistance roll is, making the game slower.

Would only important enemies have triggered actions? If the DM is running a bunch of monsters with different triggered actions would that be kind of hard to manage?

Wohooo!

wooh!

I think the quick and dirty fix to the original Damage-Defense roll, leaving aside the counter issue, is to require a damage threshold for effects to apply. This allows for powerful effects to require a higher roll than weaker ones to kick in. It also opens up room for scaling the same effect at different thresholds or multiple outcomes for the same effect. To combat player's lack of agency when being attacked, they could be given an option to reduce a fixed amount of incoming damage in exchange for a penalty on their next turn. This could be a menu of options with higher reductions for greater penalties. From a reduction to their next roll, a move speed penalty, or even skipping their next turn altogether. Further testing may be required to see if reducing damage below zero this way would necessitate giving up the counter abilities. All these solutions can be symmetrical.

in pbta games, GMs generally dont roll and ive never seen that cause an issue

Do we know if there is a way for a hero to roll a “critical hit” in this version?

Im curius about how this would work in pvp. Im not thinking in players being toxic,no. Im thinking in thinks like tournaments and the like.

Man game design is tricky huh 😅

I've been working on developing my own system that's only purpose is to allow *ME* to run an awesome game, so it doesn't have to be communicable to anyone else. As such, I have LOADS of freedom to make things that feel good TO ME as a GM, but wouldn't necessarily be fun for someone else in the same role. I do player-only rolling during combat, and I love it. I definitely get how it wouldn't appeal to a wider audience, but I don't have to worry about that, so I don't. Hurray for homebrew nonsense!

Love that there is a new system to play but I feel like it's complicated. I guess time will tell.

Honest question: with the most recent system, how does player versus player combat work then?

I'm liking what I'm seeing! It really feels like we're getting to the stable state that you guys want the game to behave like. I know you aren't looking at names for things right now, but the placeholder TN seems clunky to say. May I humbly suggest Threshold as the number to reach or beat?

as much as i love a design delve, this seemed like a very roundabout way to explain why you added saving throws

The director/gm not rolling is literally the whole numenera system and it's great

Will there be d4s, d8s, d10s, d12s, or d20s in the game?