Patreon Survey 1 Insights (Patreon)

We’ve come far but have much, much further to go—that’s what the results of Patreon survey tell me. Honestly, that’s exactly where we dared to hope we were, so that’s great! We’re on the right path!

It is I, your James Introcaso, breaking down some of our biggest insights from the first Patreon playtest. While this post is going to cover some of the biggest pieces of the game we plan to change, it’s not going to cover every detail. As I’ve discussed in a previous post, playtest feedback is super useful, but it doesn’t drive our design decisions. We do that as the folks building the game. We use playtest feedback to tell us if we’re accomplishing what we set out to do and adjust our game to make sure we hit the mark.

Before we dive in, I just want to give all you who filled out the survey an enormous thanks. Your feedback was invaluable! We’d be in the dark without it. I hope you had fun reading, running, and playing the material!

What You Liked

Let’s start by digging into the stuff that you liked. Overall, the survey results were very encouraging. Many of the game’s core ideas scored super high, with average scores over 4.5 (out of 5) and a lot of super positive comments for the following rules. Note, aspects of these rules may still change based on feedback, but the core ideas will stay in place.

Automatic Damage: This was overwhelmingly loved by respondents, more than any other rule. People liked that creatures automatically did damage on their turns with attacks. It’s safe to say that automatic damage will continue to be in future iterations of the rules. However, there were some issues with damage feeling the same across the board and with people conceptualizing what it means for every attack to deal damage, which I’ll address below.

Heroic Resources: Heroic resources are a hit! Folks enjoy the fact that their class features don’t go away over the course of an adventure, but have some way of being regulated. These seem to be hitting the goal of making battle more interesting the longer it goes on.

Victories: Victories scored very well in our tests. For most groups, Victories were a BIG incentive. They encouraged players to keep going and made heroes feel more powerful as the day went on. These are working as intended. Awesome.

Recoveries: Folks like the way recoveries work! The math and narrative here needs a lot of tweaking, but people liked having a resource they could use to heal themselves and that there was a good tension between Recoveries going down as Victories went up.

Abilities: People really like the way our abilities (things like the shadow’s In All This Confusion or the fury’s Brutal Slam) worked. Even the primitive presentation of these abilities scored big points for people.

Combat Overall: While there are lots and lots of little and medium places to go and clean up combat, overall it receives high marks. Despite its problems, people think combat is easy to learn and FUN. Most respondents reported that the encounters move faster than their 5e combats. We’ve been working on combat more than any other aspect of the game. I’m glad to see it’s what people are having the most fun with.

Forced Movement: You all loved this so much that many comments asked for more forced movement abilities. Getting thrown around the battlefield and pushing enemies around is for sure a lot of fun. We’ll probably give the presence of forced movement a little boost. We don’t want the game to be all about throwing your foes, but we do want battles to feel epic and fun, and forced movement aids in that.

Shifting: You all liked having the option to shift. Shifting meant that melee heroes could still slow down attackers and protect their squishy friends but also kept the battle dynamic and full of movement.

Critical Hit Effect: The critical hit effect was a big favorite. Folks loved that a critical hit is always useful because it gives you an extra action. Many folks said they forgot a crit when they rolled an 11, but we’re adjusting the way damage rolls work, so we’re going to work on a clear critical hit trigger as we make that new system.

All of this is excellent. These are our favorite parts of the game, and it’s good to see that most of our Patrons agree.

Now, let’s get into some of what’s changing. While taking your feedback is the start of the revision process, we also have meetings where we discuss the feedback and brainstorm solutions. It’s my job to get those rules ready for a test and run it for the MCDM staff. If that works out, then I type up the rules in a more formal document and share them with our contract testers. This isn’t just one person reading feedback and deciding, “Here’s how we solve this.” There are many stages to finding the right solution—a lot of refinement and iteration. We may get more into the specific iterations and roads we went down on some of these solves in future posts.

A quick reminder that as we dive into the issues with the game, we’re not looking for your design suggestions or solutions. We have a lot of our own ideas that we plan to try. We’ve also already tried a ton of stuff. Save your good ideas for the games YOU create!

Higher Damage Variety

While automatic damage scored super high, respondents were very clear in the comments that they didn’t love all attacks dealing 2d6 + a modifier damage. This was especially expressed by Director respondents, who felt like all the creatures they controlled did about the same amount of damage. It felt weird that a kobold, a fury, and giant elemental all dealt close to the same amount of damage. That is totally fair criticism.

Our initial design goal was that boons, banes, and impact dice would help set different creatures and different attacks apart. While there is a lot of opportunity to gain these bonuses and penalties in the playtest version of the game, having the default damage number be 2d6 + modifier for damage plus or minus the occasional bonus dice didn’t really excite folks.

Getting into all of the iterations we’ve created and scrapped to improve damage variety is going to be a future Patreon post, but I will say we have tested an iteration a couple of times now that we feel pretty good about. It’s going to go to our contract testing team next, so stay tuned.

Boons and Banes Hard to Track

Boons and banes are fun to stack but hard to track. Many respondents reported their groups enjoyed stacking one boon on top of another, but that the number of boons and banes seemed to quickly get out of control and interrupt the flow of the game as players would remind each other, “Don’t forget a boon from your target being prone!” and “Hey! My conduit also gave you a boon.” You can imagine how this issue could be worse at higher levels if there are many effects that create boons and banes.

As we develop a new system for damage, we’re also looking at a way of controlling the number of boons and banes a roll can have. Right now we’re playing around with the idea that there might be a limit to the number you can stack and new rules for canceling each other out. This seems to work a lot more smoothly at the table while still allowing the excitement of double boons and double banes, but it’s got a lot more testing before we make it part of the game. I’ll get into more detail once we run some more tests.

Resistance Rolls Slow Play

Resistance rolls got in the way of flow. Folks didn’t love rolling an attack, having a target roll resistance, and then having to compare the resistance roll to a number for every attack. They wanted things to move more quickly, and felt like the resistance roll got in the way of our design goal for combat to flow. Many folks also didn’t like that resistance rolls were an all-or-nothing result, and wanted to be able to deal different levels of effect based on the outcome.

We’re going to scale back on resistance rolls in our next iteration and make the severity of effects that are dealt to a target more about the attacker’s roll than about the target’s resistance. Roll average, and you push your target back 3 squares. Roll high, you push the target back 5! Roll low, you might push them 1 or not at all!

Conditions Hard to Track

Respondents are finding that conditions are unfun to track. It’s easy for a player to forget they’re affected by one condition and what that condition means. If a creature is affected by multiple conditions, those problems can turn one creature’s turn into a slog as people pore through rules for the right information.

We think the solution for conditions is twofold. First, we are going to look at the list of conditions and slim it down. Right now there is a lot of overlap between conditions (for instance grappled and restrained). If we can make our list of conditions small and simple, then it can fit easily on a character sheet, note card, or the back of a Director’s screen. Conditions that are easy to reference also stick in your memory more easily.

We also want to make condition tracking easier. We have a good idea about how this could work. Instead of conditions being either on or off, each condition has a value, like weakened 3 or on fire 5. At the end of your turn, you roll a d6 for each condition you have, and reduce that condition by the number rolled. Now you have a reason to write your condition down on your sheet and every round you make progress towards shaking it off.

A condition’s value can also affect its strength beyond staying power. For instance, the higher your on fire value is, the more fire damage you take from the condition. Values also allow easy condition stacking. Already weakened 1 by a spider bite and ANOTHER spider bites you? Now you’re weakened 2.

Condition values also give us shorthand for an effect we only want to stick around for 1 round. For instance, if we want you to shake that frightened condition off at the end of your next turn, we just call it frightened 1. Now you’re guaranteed to end it at the end of your next turn, because you’re going to roll at least a 1.

If conditions are detailed on your sheet, we can leave a blank space for you to write a condition’s value when you earn it. Then you can see that you have a condition, what it does, and what its value is.

Taunted Too Powerful

On the condition front, many of you don’t like that taunted prevents a creature from moving further away from their taunter. You thought it felt too much like the condition imposed a form of mind control. We’re going to cut that from the condition. The tactician’s special Taunt ability may impose a special penalty that punishes taunted foes from moving away from the tactician, like a free attack!

Frightened Not Powerful Enough

People also felt that the frightened condition wasn’t imposing enough of a penalty and that tracking the condition wasn’t worth it. The first iteration (before this test) of the condition prevented a target from moving close to the source of their fear. That became unintendedly devastating if a creature became taunted and frightened of the same creature. We’ll likely bring that aspect back to frightened now that we’ve lost the limited movement aspect from the taunted condition.

You REALLY Don’t Like Falling Damage

Perhaps one of the things respondents commented on the most was that they felt falling damage wasn’t nearly high enough. Heroes fell from great heights and seemed to survive without a scratch. Our new damage system is likely going to decrease health across the board, which means the current system for falling damage won’t have to get a huge adjustment, but rest assured that it will get tweaked.

How did the rules for falling damage get to such a weak state to begin with? Honestly, the rules are a holdover from earlier versions of the game. Across the board, creatures had much lower health, so 1 damage per square fallen made sense. As we updated our game and changed the way damage was dealt, it meant the rules for falling damage should also change to keep pace. But falling damage got overlooked! That’s my fault, and it’s why we test. There is only so much a human can keep in their brain, even as they review the game. Falling damage fell off my radar. Thank you for catching it!

Boring Tests and Skills

For the most part, people didn’t have any specific issue with the rules for tests and skills other than they wanted to see something a little different than what they’re used to from d20 fantasy games. I don’t really have a problem with modern d20 skill systems. They’re part of the history of D&D that has moved the game from dungeon-crawling survival into more heroic during 3rd edition. However, your comments have inspired me to look at the skill system more closely and ask, “Can we make this even more heroic and cinematic?”

The new way of doing attacks could also be brought over to tests. This isn’t something we’ve tested yet, so I’m not going to detail the rules. If it works, it would allow for an even more heroic feel to tests and would make skills feel more like fun character-building details and specializations rather than must-have options for attempting specific kinds of tests. This system would allow for some more failing forward and complications from failed tests similar to a Powered by the Apocalypse game. As a bonus, this would also fix the fact that skills are currently a little too easy for heroes who have a high skill and characteristic and too hard for heroes who don’t.

Negotiation

The results for negotiation are super interesting. Many of you REALLY like the system as it stands, some of you want more time with it, and some of you aren’t on board. The question here is, can we keep the parts of the system that we and the folks in the first group like and move the needle with everyone else?

After a great conversation with Matt, I think we can! He has an idea for simplifying motivations and pitfalls that will make the system easier to run on the fly and as a natural conversation. We’d still keep Patience and Interest as ways to track how the negotiation is going, because the numbers tell us that folks really like those aspects of the rules. It’s motivations and pitfalls that need to change along with some better examples of how we imagine a negotiation would go.

Longer, More Specific Rests

This one is fairly straightforward. Rests were initially 12 hours. I thought that was long enough to encourage folks to get out of the dungeon and go find a safe place to rest without entirely breaking the flow of the game. It turns out that thought was wrong. Most players and Directors didn’t think that 12 hours would encourage people to leave a dungeon. In addition, the wording of the rules confused most folks, who weren’t sure if they HAD to go find a safe place like an inn to rest in order for it to count, or if they could risk a rest on the side of the road or on the floor of a dungeon.

The next set of rules will be more specific. In order to get the benefits of a rest, you have to rest in a safe place—the kind of place where there’s no risk of getting ambushed because of a roll on a random table. A rest also needs to be at least 24 hours long. To help make this distinction, we’re also going to change the name of a Rest to a Respite. This way folks understand that sleeping on the road or in a dungeon is still a viable option in terms of narrative that won’t erase their Victories.

Goodbye Health, Long Live Stamina

This change is actually pretty simple. While most folks liked dealing damage every round, they had trouble conceptualizing what it meant narratively for health to go down with every attack. They envisioned every attack with a weapon or spell as a hit that drew blood, making heroes seem more beat up after one encounter than John McClane at the end of Die Hard. “Every hit drains my health, and my health is my vitality, right? So am I riddled with arrows, scorch marks, and cuts?” To compound this issue, people liked Recoveries from a gameplay perspective, but they weren’t sure what Recoveries represent narratively. With the way folks were imagining health worked, Recoveries felt like a limited reserve of Wolverine’s healing factor, supernaturally healing up wounds whenever they were used.

To address these issues, we’re reconceptualizing health as stamina instead. We’ve always imagined health as a combination of vitality and your overall energy for dodging incoming blows. It’s not that every attack deals a bleeding wound to you, but that each one chips away at your energy. An attack might make you sweat as you leap back to avoid an arrow, and another might just graze your elbow with a dagger nick, leaving a dull, distracting pain. Eventually, this draining of energy leaves you open for bigger blows that really harm your vitality, possibly killing you. Recoveries are a limited way to rally and get back some of that energy by taking a breather, having a little magical help from someone like a conduit or troubadour, or getting a friend like a tactician to inspire you with a rush of adrenaline. Of course, your body can only rally so many times in a day before your energy reserves are completely shot.

We’re going to do some better explaining of this concept in the next iteration of the document, and we’re also going to start using the term stamina instead of health to help people understand what we’re going for.

Heroes a Little Too Complicated and OP

Here’s two problems that seem complicated but having both at the same time actually makes them each easier to solve. Heroes are a little too complicated, and they’re a little too powerful. At least, that’s how many of you feel (along with me). Most groups steamrolled through the adventure we sent over with heroes barely spending any of their Recoveries and with some of their options forgotten or simply never used.

Cutting out some of the character options will reduce the complexity and strength of 1st-level heroes. Two birds, one stone. What’s on the chopping block? The first thing we’re likely going to cut at 1st-level is Victory benefits. These things:

They’re the only once-per-encounter player character option, and they can actually add a significant amount of strength to a hero. It seemed like for most groups the fact that Victories increased your capacity for resources was enough to keep them adventuring, so we don’t need that extra carrot for Victories to do their job. We’ll like have different Victory benefits for heroes that appears in levels beyond 1st.

Another way we can reduce the strength and complexity of heroes is to make their triggered actions a little simpler. Let’s take a look at the tactician’s Parry triggered action:

If we cut the option to spend 1 focus and increase Parry’s damage reduction, the ability gets simpler and less powerful. It’s still an awesome triggered action you can use every round. In testing it has allowed tacticians to remain heroic without becoming impossible to harm. There are other abilities with similar riders that we can trim. Take the shadow’s In Al This Confusion triggered action:

We’re probably only keeping the first sentence of the “Effect” entry. Simple. Clean, and doesn’t totally negate the damage and add a TON of mobility to the shadow.

In addition to these reductions in complexity, we’re also planning on adjusting the number of Recoveries the heroes have. Across the board, they’re getting lower. But we’ll see. With changes in damage and defensive triggered actions, maybe they’re okay to stay where they are. I think the number of Recoveries each hero gets is something we’ll constantly adjust until the game is released.

More Description and Examples

Overall, folks want more narrative descriptions for abilities and examples of play for new concepts. We were always planning on adding these, but we don’t like to waste a lot of time writing, editing, and refining multiple narrative descriptions and examples for concepts until we’re sure they’re working. Now that you’ve helped us get there in a major way, expect to see a lot more of that in the future.

More to Come

There is so much more to come. This post gives an overview of some of the biggest changes we’re going to make, but there are plenty of details and other tweaks that you’ll see in future posts. I’m really looking forward to sharing those. I’ve already written a post about how your feedback is changing minions.

Hey! If you’re a member of the MCDM Discord channel, you should link your Patreon and Discord accounts. You can read about how to do so here. Linking your accounts will give you access to our #mcdm_rpg-patrons channel on Discord. It’s a great place to discuss the MCDM RPG!

Thanks for helping make the game great!

—James