MCDM's New Tactical TTRPG Hits $1M Crowdfunding On First Day!

Matt Colville's MCDM is no stranger to crowdfunding, with three million dollar Kickstarters already under its belt. With the launch of The MCDM RPG, that makes four!

This new game is not a D&D variant or a supplement for D&D, which is what MCDM has focussed on so far. This is an all-new game which concentrates on tactical play, with a fulfilment goal of July 2025. It comes in two books--a 400-page 'Heroes' book and a 'Monsters' book which is an adaption of the existing Flee, Mortals!

The MCDM RPG

Whether you’re a group of local heroes sent to investigate mysterious goings-on in the nearby haunted wood, or famous mercenaries plotting and scheming in the big city, the MCDM RPG makes building adventures and fighting monsters fun.

www.backerkit.com

The game takes aim at traditional d20 fantasy gaming, referring to the burden of 'sacred cows from the 1970s', but point out that it's not a dungeon crawling or exploration game--its core activity is fighting monsters. The system is geared towards tactical combat--you roll 2d6, add an attribute, and do that damage; there's no separate attack roll.

At $40 for the base Heroes PDF and $70 for the hardcover (though there are discounts for both books if you buy them together), it's not a cheap buy-in, but with over 4,000 backers already that's not deterring anybody!

Even more ambitiously, one of the stretch goals is a Virtual Tabletop (VTT). There's already a working prototype of it.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

The main comparison to this game thst ai can think of in video games would be Fire Emblem, and missing is not uncommon, when Level is equal.

Fire Emblem's Hit is a whole discussion to itself. A lot of players - maybe most - don't know this, but it doesn't just roll a d100 and if it's under the hit, it hits, which is what it looks like. Rather it rolls two d100s, averages the result, and if it's under the Hit, it hits. So what this means is that low Hit numbers will hit even less often than the number would suggest, but high Hit numbers will hit far more often than the number would suggest.

For example, 70 Hit in Fire Emblem isn't 70% hit chance, it's 82.5% hit chance, and you're less likely to get streaks of misses (or unlikely hits, to be fair). Whereas Pokemon uses a linear miss roll and thus feels more like D&D in that you can fail fail fail despite good odds.

Discussed in some detail here:
The end result is that Fire Emblem is significantly less swingy and RNG-ish than 5E or most D&D relatives, or even than something like BRP. You will generally miss pretty rarely unless you're making a really bad tactical choice and/or have woefully unoptimized PCs in a game largely about optimizing your PCs (whether via equipment, level ups, becoming BFFs, or whatever).

It's also a battlefield-focused tactics RPG which I think is a rather different deal.

Looking at other games:

1) Virtually all action-based RPGs, you can't miss unless you actually miss, and players rarely miss (particularly in melee) - So all the Souls games, Witcher 3, Cyberpunk, Mass Effect 1/2/3/A, Diablo 3/4, Oblivion/Skyrim/Fallout 3/4/Starfield etc. have no mechanical missing. Path of Exile does, but at a much lower percentage than D&D, to the point where it rarely factors into character builds.

2) Most non-action MMORPGs, like WoW or FFXIV have either no misses or single-digit percentage miss chances. Current WoW for example, you can only miss at all with auto-attacks. In older WoW you couldn't miss unless a target was higher level, and it was a very low % for any intended content. FFXIV is similar to older WoW but at max level you will never miss any enemy without intervention (i.e. debuff etc.) AFAIK.

3) Tactical RPGs - most of these use some kind of trick to at the least make you hit more often than the % shown. Some don't let actual active abilities miss or be resisted, only generic attacks.

4) CRPGs - This is the genre most likely to feature misses because of D&D and Pathfinder-based games, but they've also trended away from it - for example, Dragon Age: Origins has misses, but they occur far less often than an equally-optimized D&D character would see, and it also helps make Mages, who cannot miss, wildly overpowered compared to other classes. DA2 and DAI do not have misses, just varied damage. Pillars of Eternity has misses - again at a much lower rate than D&D (15% base in Pillars 1, 24% in Pillars 2) - and focuses on different amounts of damage.

What's interesting to me is that, despite having played all these games, I had to look a lot of this up, because the general experience of any game that isn't D&D/PF-based, missing outright is relative rare, and usually indicates things have gone wrong, if it's even possible.

EDIT - Not sure that reddit link is displaying correctly, let me know if it isn't.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

I have no idea if I'd like this game or not. I'd have to try it first.

 

[Aldarc]

If you'd asked me a decade or so ago about the idea of attacks not missing I'd have said the same. But since then I've realized some things about mechanics that changed my mind:

1) A lot of non-d20 TT RPGs have mechanics such that, de facto, misses are extremely rare, and usually only unskilled combatant getting a spectacularly bad roll can outright miss without intervention from the target. People don't usually even note this, and you can play them for years without really catching it. Examples would be Shadowrun and most iterations of Storyteller. A skilled combatant is generally not going to miss - the question is - how hard are they going to hit, and how well will the target soak? So in real terms I don't think what MCDM is doing is very different there.

2) Many videogame RPGs, perhaps most, at this point, have misses either be non-existent or very rare, and even the few that use them, the odds tend to drastically lower than D&D (obviously excluding D&D-based and similar games like BG and Pathfinder here!), and that doesn't seem to make the gameplay in any way worse or even really more predictable, because it just shifts stuff around.

I'd also personally say I feel like there's a bit of a conflict between attrition-based play and having people miss/enemies save as much as they do in D&D and its ilk, like it's a design issue that hasn't yet been fully addressed by any edition of D&D or even any OSR game that I know of. Like I feel like the ultimate dungeon crawl resource grind TT RPG probably has less missing and less enemies saving than current d20 games have, but that's a whole other discussion!

There are also a fair number of lauded TTRPGs in the d20 OSR space that also involve automatic hits where players are rolling damage without making attack rolls, namely the popular Into the Odd family of OSR games: e.g., Electric Bastionland, Maze Rats, Cairn, Mausritter, etc.

I have to admit that I understand where MCDM is coming from in the design space. How many classic TSR-inspired dungeon fantasy RPGs are out there? Dozens? How many 4e-inspired games - I guess 13th Age?

Strike!, Lancer & Icon (same creator), Gubat Banwa (Philippine fantasy), Fabula Ultima (JRPG TTRPG), Beacon, and Emberwind come to mind. Stonetop, which uses a modified version of Dungeon World, also came out of a 4e D&D campaign.

All of these games have cited 4e D&D as inspiration. They uncoincidentally also take open inspiration from JRPGs as well. Likewise, Matt Colville even said recently in one of his streams how a number of detractors who used World of Warcraft to detract from 4e D&D ignored the similarity 4e had with D&D inspired JRPGs.

 

[Zaukrie]

I have no idea if I'd like this game or not. I'd have to try it first.

The lack of a quick start set of rules is holding me back some. I get why they are trying it like this, they are a small company that needs to pay people to work on this....

 

[overgeeked]

There are also a fair number of lauded TTRPGs in the d20 OSR space that also involve automatic hits where players are rolling damage without making attack rolls, namely the popular Into the Odd family of OSR games: e.g., Electric Bastionland, Maze Rats, Cairn, Mausritter, etc.


Strike!, Lancer & Icon (same creator), Gubat Banwa (Philippine fantasy), Fabula Ultima (JRPG TTRPG), Beacon, and Emberwind come to mind. Stonetop, which uses a modified version of Dungeon World, also came out of a 4e D&D campaign.

All of these games have cited 4e D&D as inspiration. They uncoincidentally also take open inspiration from JRPGs as well. Likewise, Matt Colville even said recently in one of his streams how a number of detractors who used World of Warcraft to detract from 4e D&D ignored the similarity 4e had with D&D inspired JRPGs.

I would welcome our tabletop JRPG overlords.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

There are also a fair number of lauded TTRPGs in the d20 OSR space that also involve automatic hits where players are rolling damage without making attack rolls, namely the popular Into the Odd family of OSR games: e.g., Electric Bastionland, Maze Rats, Cairn, Mausritter, etc.


Strike!, Lancer & Icon (same creator), Gubat Banwa (Philippine fantasy), Fabula Ultima (JRPG TTRPG), Beacon, and Emberwind come to mind. Stonetop, which uses a modified version of Dungeon World, also came out of a 4e D&D campaign.

All of these games have cited 4e D&D as inspiration. They uncoincidentally also take open inspiration from JRPGs as well. Likewise, Matt Colville even said recently in one of his streams how a number of detractors who used World of Warcraft to detract from 4e D&D ignored the similarity 4e had with D&D inspired JRPGs.

Wait Fabula Ultima is 4E-inspired? I may have to take another look at it. Also hadn't heard of Emberwind, will take a look at that.

 

[Parmandur]

What's interesting to me is that, despite having played all these games, I had to look a lot of this up, because the general experience of any game that isn't D&D/PF-based, missing outright is relative rare, and usually indicates things have gone wrong, if it's even possible.

Very interesting run-down. S tion games ate a bit different than a turn based strategy game, since the hits are about player skill. Fire Emblem reaches a balance that feels good, in my experience...but even cooking the numbers to reward optimization still feels more appealing than removing the gambling aspect entirely. I feel that "no wasted turns" misses the dopamine rewards thar come from success when you know failure is a real possibility.

But I'm sorry, I don't want to derail this thread further: I think they are doing a good job doing their thing.

 

[Aldarc]

Wait Fabula Ultima is 4E-inspired? I may have to take another look at it. Also hadn't heard of Emberwind, will take a look at that.

The basic resolution system comes from Ryuutama (i.e., Studio Ghibli + Oregon Trail), but the game takes explicit inspiration from 4e D&D (among other games):

Among the countless sources of inspiration for this game I want to mention Jonathan Tweet & Rob Heinsoo's 13th Age; Alberto Tronchi's Aegis; Christian Giffen's Anima Prime; D. Vincent Baker's Apocalypse World; Takeshi Kikuchi & Studio F.E.A.R.'s Arianrhod; John Harper's Blades in the Dark (from which the Clock mechanic was directly derived); Luke Crane's Burning Wheel; Rob Heinsoo, Andy Collins & James Wyatt's Dungeons & Dragons: 4th Edition; Fred Hicks & Rob Donoghue's Fate; Rikizō's Kamigakari; Junichi Inoue's Tenra Bansho Zero; and Ron Edward's Sword, Soul, and Sex collection of supplements for Sorcerer.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

The lack of a quick start set of rules is holding me back some. I get why they are trying it like this, they are a small company that needs to pay people to work on this....

That's not the issue - they're just not at the point where a quick start would make sense. They're earlier in the design process - this more like D&D Next was when it was in internal playtesting, before the first open playtest.

Very interesting run-down. S tion games ate a bit different than a turn based strategy game, since the hits are about player skill. Fire Emblem reaches a balance that feels good, in my experience...but even cooking the numbers to reward optimization still feels more appealing than removing the gambling aspect entirely. I feel that "no wasted turns" misses the dopamine rewards thar come from success when you know failure is a real possibility.

But I'm sorry, I don't want to derail this thread further: I think they are doing a good job doing their thing.

That's very good of you, I don't think it's much of a derail given we're waiting for more info at the moment! Re: "risk of failure", well, the final system remains to be seen, but my expectation is you can still have attacks totally fail to work, but it'll be because the enemy used some kind of spell/ability, or you roll so low they soaked the damage or the like. This is what I mean by shifting things around - instead total failure being RNG based on a high-variability.

I think D&D's gambling angle would work a lot better if it also used a "cooked" system, as it were - if you missed like, default 15% of the time, in D&D (which is what Pillars 1 went for), rather than, like, default 30-45% of the time (I forget exactly what the intended default is for 5E, but I think it's between those), I think you could retain the rush you describe but lose a lot of the swing-y-ness which can turn some combats into tedium or totally undermine good play (or buoy up really bad play lol!).

But that would require moving away from a single d20 roll as hit, which complicates matters - I don't think anyone wants to be, for example, rolling 2d20 and averaging them! So there are other considerations at the tabletop.

 

[SteveC]

Wait Fabula Ultima is 4E-inspired? I may have to take another look at it. Also hadn't heard of Emberwind, will take a look at that.

I really like Fabula Ultima and I also like 4E but I don't see much crossover between the two. I think Fabula Ultima has Fate and Blades in the Dark as it's strongest influences. The core mechanic is roll two attribute dice together versus a target. Otherwise it has mechanics that strongly enforce it's JRPG roots. I really do recommend it, but it has a much stronger narrative structure than anything 4E was doing.

I really like it and recommend it but from the running a JRPG type of game and not because of tactical combat.

Edited to add: the biggest 4E aspect I can think of in the game is that it does use a "bloodied" status that has game effects.