Hello folks! It is I, Hannah Rose. I have once again liberated my office chair from the cat (for now, anyway) and I’m here to present this month’s fantastic issue of ARCADIA. Here’s what’s inside:
Cover Art by Zuzanna Wuzyk
Wow. Just wow. I love everything about this gorgeous cover, from the color palette (note how the highlights of the dragon match the shadows ...
2023-03-29 17:30:01 +0000 UTC View Post
Hello folks! It is I, Hannah Rose, here on a beautiful spring day with a beautiful table of contents for your perusal. Here’s what’s coming in ARCADIA 26:
The Nocturne Market by Kat Kruger with art from Clara Daly and Nikki Dawes
When t...
2023-03-22 18:10:06 +0000 UTC View Post
Hey folks! As I said in the last update, there’s not a lot to talk about right now, everyone’s working on Flee, Mortals! and ARCADIA, but I thought it would be fun to pitch you on the class ideas we’ve been talking about internally. A lot of these classes have already been mentioned either in these updates or in passing in various streams, so it seems relatively harmless to describe them here.
This is also a good opportunity to talk about our approach to class de...
2023-03-21 19:36:30 +0000 UTC View PostAnother playtest and a whole new set of problems and ideas! But first, a story…
I was working on a video game years ago and the artist I was sitting next to suggested we should implement a very complicated new feature.
We’d been working on this game for years at this point and I pointed out, we had tried that, we had half the team working on that exact idea for six months and they couldn’t make it work.
“Well, I can imagine it working,” he said, a...
2023-03-13 18:33:35 +0000 UTC View Post
We ran another playtest last Friday. I don’t think every playtest will automatically cause an after-action report like this, at some point we’ll be testing too often for that, and sometimes we won't be testing anything new, just “what do new players think?”
But this one was interesting! We tested all of the following
We just released the announcement video for our new RPG, really just announcing that we’re working on it, so we thought it’d be a good idea to write something up welcoming folks and sort of setting expectations.
First of all, hello! My name’s Matt Colville, and on behalf of the MCDM crew, welcome to this crazy experiment! We’re working on what we think of as a “AAA RPG” meaning a big-budget, premiere title. Whatever form the finished product takes, it’s going to have full ...
2023-02-24 01:00:56 +0000 UTC View Post
Hello folks! It is I, Hannah Rose, here with the TWENTY-FIFTH issue of ARCADIA! And it is, if I may say so myself, a total banger. Here’s what’s inside:
Cover Art by Ernanda Souza
One of my favorite things about ARCADIA covers is the chance to let artists come up with their own cool fantasy creations, and this beautiful sea jaguar is no exception! From ocean to forest, she and ...
2023-02-22 18:30:01 +0000 UTC View Post
Hello folks! It is I, Hannah Rose, here with the table of contents for a very cool issue of ARCADIA. This month is all about leaning into things that are epic, weird, and delightfully extra.
Legendary Inspiration by Steve Fidler with art from Marcel Budde
So you know that optional inspiration rule? Maybe your group uses it, maybe they don’t, maybe you MEAN to use it but...
2023-02-15 18:30:01 +0000 UTC View Post
Hello Incredible Patrons,
It’s me, your James Introcaso. We had another playtest of the new MCDM RPG on Friday last week. This time I was the GM, and we had two players new to the RPG, Nick and Grace from our art team. It was my first time running anything longer than a single encounter in our system, and I was surprised at how well things went. It seems (fingers crossed) that the core of our game is pretty solid, at least for battling monsters!
By the way, if you haven’t read...
2023-02-13 18:39:02 +0000 UTC View PostWe’re doing a weekly test on Fridays (alas, not every Friday, Flee, Mortals! and ARCADIA still come first) and tinkering with the rules for our new game and I want to make sure folks understand exactly what we’re doing and why.
You’re gonna see us talking about actual play. This isn’t paper-design, we’re actually trying out our ideas, as we have them, in a real gameplay environment. Here’s a dungeon, here’s some goblins, let’s go. Play. Record what work...
2023-02-10 18:34:55 +0000 UTC View Post
Matt ran the Delian Tomb for a few of us in the office last week. But we weren’t playing fifth edition. We were playing our new RPG.
James Introcaso, MCDM’s Lead Game Designer, here. I know you’ve been following our updates for a bit about the creation of the MCDM RPG. We’ve got a few things to share from the latest playtest, which wasn’t perfect, but was a lot of fun, which means we’re moving in the right direction! To me, fun is probably the most important factor ...
2023-02-07 21:19:11 +0000 UTC View PostThere's not a lot of fun mechanical stuff to talk about right now, and probably won't be for a little while as we iterate on the core die mechanic and dial in something fun that we like.
So in the meantime, we thought you folks might enjoy some LORE! This was written for Flee, Mortals! the MCDM Monster Book for 5E, but it's not clear it will all FIT in that book? We only get about 400 words usually to describe a monster entry and this is much 2023-01-29 20:55:31 +0000 UTC View Post
Hello folks! It is I, Hannah Rose, here with the year’s first issue of ARCADIA—and a little something extra! Here’s what’s inside:
Cover Art by Grace Cheung
When I told the team that we’d ended up with a dragon theme for January, Grace delivered on an EPIC cover! It’s such a gorgeous, unexpected color palette for a tense battle scene—even the pink and gold ARCADIA logo by itself is stunning!
We Ride Dragons by...
2023-01-27 18:30:01 +0000 UTC View PostHello, all! It is I, Hannah Rose, here soaking up some SoCal sun before I return to my beloved but damp Pacific Northwest tower.
tl;dr ARCADIA 24 is coming out this Friday instead of Wednesday.
Long(er) version: It’s been quite a week (month, year…) here at MCDM, with some amazing stuff happening and lots more exciting plots in the works. I’ve been looking forward to sharing the awesomeness that’s in ARCADIA 24, but we’re going to push ...
2023-01-23 20:24:23 +0000 UTC View PostThis is a real design doc written by the design director and shared with the team. This was not originally intended to be a patreon post. It has been lightly edited to reflect this.
What’s the purpose of Armor in a fantasy RPG?
Players arrive at the table with archetypes already in mind, and they don’t even know where they got them from. The Paladin wears plate mail. The Thief wears leather. The Monk or Barbarian wear no armor, but are ...
2023-01-23 19:57:40 +0000 UTC View PostThis is probably the last update for a little while. We all got other stuff to do. But actually, we’re so enthusiastic about the current direction, I suspect we’ll be noodling on it and tinkering with it and testing it in our spare time. Matt said, in our Discord, “I'm sort of fizzing with excitement right now. I don't just want to get back to the design, I want to get back to playing!”
We think we have a core system that does what we want, and is exciting and fun, without a...
2023-01-21 22:15:04 +0000 UTC View PostArmed with a dice mechanic and some newly minted Goblins, a Tactician and a Beastheart with their pet Fungus Dude (Mot!) we played a combat.
It went ok. We learned a lot. Basically, we learned we didn’t like it. 😀 Well we liked some of it! Every test, we keep some things from the previous test. But we also discover issues with the new design.
The first problem we ran headlong to is the CLASSIC problem which is; how is armor supposed to...
2023-01-20 19:33:09 +0000 UTC View PostMCDM is almost 5 years old (!) and so far, we have been an explicitly design-driven company. Matt’s a game designer, so that makes sense, but also the company’s projects focus on new optional rules for 5E, and new custom classes for 5E. So the art team tends to end up illustrating the things the designers are talking about, rather than inventing new stuff.
But making our own game means we can use our own world. And that can and should belong to ...
2023-01-19 18:19:29 +0000 UTC View PostThe other day we discovered Patreon may randomly get unlinked from users Discord accounts, and users may not properly have their roles updated when swapping patreon tiers. This resulted in a sizable number of users retaining access to channels that are reserved for active patrons, and vice versa.
We have since addressed the issue to the best of our ability.
At this point if you don't have a green patron role in the Discord server, you should double check your Patreon acco...
2023-01-19 03:33:40 +0000 UTC View Post
Hello folks! It is I, Hannah Rose—and I’m writing this in the airport because I’m on my way to the MCDM offices for a week of design jams, brainstorming, and rolling some dice with the team! As Matt covered in last week’s post, things are—inevitably—shifting over here. But for the next seven months, we have some absolutely fantastic articles coming in ARCADIA from vetera...
2023-01-18 19:00:05 +0000 UTC View PostWe don’t necessarily want to make a generic fantasy game. We sorta got one of those already, don’t we?
Well what’s the alternative? Probably the alternative is; it’s about something. Pendragon is about Chivalry and the Arthurian Romances and your character is defined by the chivalric virtues and vices. They are actually your stats.
The Star Wars RPG isn’t about the Force, but it is abo...
2023-01-18 18:36:38 +0000 UTC View PostIt is the end of the first day of design on the MCDM RPG and I’m thinking about two things. Flow, and the Null Result.
There was a point in our prototype combat between James’ Goblins and Hannah’s Tactician where James asked Hannah what one of her stats was. I think at this point we were imagining each stat was also a defense you could attack.
Earlier we imagined maybe Defenses are separate from stats? None of these ideas are new. We’re not trying to have new ...
2023-01-17 17:58:13 +0000 UTC View Post
Hello Patrons! It is I, the Baron Vladimir Harko…wait, no. It is I, Matt Colville! Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all….
Anyway enough with the literary allusions, there’s a ton of stuff happening right now, including Big Changes to this Patreon, and we want to talk to you folks about what we’re planning.
TL;DR; I hope you like MCDM art, writing, design and worldbuilding, because you’re about to get a lot more of it! 😀
Unfort...
2023-01-12 00:15:04 +0000 UTC View Post
Hello folks! It is I, Hannah Rose, closing out the year by brining you the most excellent ARCADIA 23!
Cover Art by Patrik Hell
A strange creature, their intricate weapon, and mysterious architecture amid smoke and flying embers—this cover is perfectly ARCADIA! I can’t get enough of the textures, from the filigree on the bow and garments to the twisted tree bark to t...
2022-12-21 18:30:01 +0000 UTC View Post
Hello folks! It is I, Hannah Rose, here with a snoozing voidcat, a big pile of dice, and the table of contents for ARCADIA 23!
Gemstone Arcana by Mario Ortegón with art from Elisa Serio
These spells and feats turn gemstones into much more than currency. Properties of gemstones from agate to zircon provide inspiration for lore and worldbuilding, with spells for all caster classes like
Hello Folks,
It is I, your James Introcaso! We are currently exploring the possibility of making a Best of ARCADIA compilation that compiles beloved articles from the magazine's first two years—in print! At the moment, we’re not sure if this is an idea we’re going to make a reality. To make a decision, we need your help!
We have created a very short three-question survey that will allow you ...
2022-12-12 21:00:05 +0000 UTC View Post
Hello folks! It is I, Hannah Rose, here with the newest awesome-stuffed issue of ARCADIA.
Cover Art by Martin Sobr
This cover evokes a classic dungeon crawl with adventurers beset by the forces of evil, delving deeper one level (L-E-V-E-L) at a time! Can you spot the hidden rogue?
Heroic Champions by 2022-11-23 18:30:01 +0000 UTC View Post
Hello folks! It is I, Hannah Rose (as well as the cat squeezed between me and my laptop), here with the table of contents for ARCADIA 22.
Heroic Champions by Will Doyle with art from Patrik Hell
Scheduling is the worst final boss—but one that’s easier with a smaller party! If you’re interested in playing or running a one-on-one game, these classes—the heroic warrior, the heroi...
2022-11-16 18:14:01 +0000 UTC View Post
Hey Snazzy Patrons,
James Introcaso here with just a quick update. ARCADIA 6 is now available on Roll20! You can pick it up on the Roll20 marketplace along with the first five issues.
We are working on getting more issues of ARCADIA up on Fantasy Grounds,...
2022-11-09 19:00:06 +0000 UTC View Post
Hello, folks! It is I, Hannah Rose, here with the latest issue of ARCADIA just in time for All Hallows’ Eve. Here’s what’s inside:
Cover Art by Nick De Spain
We showed this cover off early, but I just can’t get enough of it. Are the pumpkin minions literally coming out of the lich’s ribcage? That’d be a pretty cool villain action!
Hunting a Myth by ...
2022-10-26 17:30:01 +0000 UTC View Post