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.

 

[overgeeked]

For those of you who spend time on gaming boards and channels other than ENWorld, what has the discourse been like? So far, I'm pleasantly surprise at how civil the reactions and discussions seem to be. I wonder if this is due in large part to Matt being clear about the games theme and design objectives and being clear on what that game is not, rather than trying to win everyone over.

The reactions I've seen are mixed and the negative side is far more pronounced. A lot of people are dumbfounded that this isn't 5E, shocked that it doesn't work exactly like 5E, people rehashing the edition wars due to part of this game's inspiration being 4E, etc. The other bits are complaints about MCDM, Matt personally, and issues with previous Kickstarters. The last one is fair to bring up, but read more as mean-spirited sniping more than anything.

 

[Morrus]

The reactions I've seen are mixed and the negative side is far more pronounced. A lot of people are dumbfounded that this isn't 5E, shocked that it doesn't work exactly like 5E, people rehashing the edition wars due to part of this game's inspiration being 4E, etc. The other bits are complaints about MCDM, Matt personally, and issues with previous Kickstarters. The last one is fair to bring up, but read more as mean-spirited sniping more than anything.

Given that it’s about to hit $3M in less than a week, I guess the negative stuff doesn’t really matter.

 

[darjr]

Given that it’s about to hit $3M in less than a week, I guess the negative stuff doesn’t really matter.

As his fan base grows so too grows the anti-fans. I’ve had to block a few people for having simply backed the game.

 

[Morrus]

As his fan base grows so too grows the anti-fans.

I think that's a truism generally.

 

[Parmandur]

Slightly different situation, but I'm currently running PF2e with it's 4 degrees of success to resolve actions (crit success, success, fail, crit fail). There are spells that the only way a target can have no effect happen to them is on a critical success. For example, the spell fear has no effect on a crit success save, the target is frightened 1 on a success, frightened 2 on a fail, frightened 3 and must flee on a crit fail.

Why am I mentioning this? Because the most common results are a success and a fail, so something happens and the player reaction has shifted from being happy they landed a frightened 1 effect to being disappointed that's all that happened but at least they don't feel like they wasted their turn because again, something happened. That's what MCDM RPG sounds like to me. You rolled snake eyes? That sucks and you're going to be disappointed, but at least you moved the enemy's HP a bit and it wasn't a completely wasted turn.

At the very least, I appreciate that they are thinking outside the box in that I would not have thought abstractly that I liked the chance of failure left to my own devices. Learned some from that.

 

[overgeeked]

As his fan base grows so too grows the anti-fans. I’ve had to block a few people for having simply backed the game.

Yeah. People are strange.

 

[Retreater]

I have a friend who's generally a good guy, well liked, etc. He got himself banned from the MCDM Discord for something he wrote that I think was not taken as intended without given a warning or the ability to clarify himself. Not saying they were wrong to do it, just that they don't put up with half the stuff that is acceptable on ENWorld.
That being said, my friend still loves MCDM's work and eagerly backed this new project.
(We both joked that our wives would get angry with us if we backed the $500 Ajax editions.)

 

[mamba]

A lot of people are dumbfounded that this isn't 5E

apparently these are people that paid zero attention to any of the videos about the game…

 

[SteveC]

As his fan base grows so too grows the anti-fans. I’ve had to block a few people for having simply backed the game.

This is such a strange thing, but I do understand it. For what it's worth, the fact that you support and talk about so many games is incredible. And some of those games are ones I didn't hear about or am not interested in, but that means I can learn something! Our hobby contains so many different ways to play it and that's cool. Sad to hear that some people have problems with that.

 

[Aldarc]

The reactions I've seen are mixed and the negative side is far more pronounced. A lot of people are dumbfounded that this isn't 5E, shocked that it doesn't work exactly like 5E, people rehashing the edition wars due to part of this game's inspiration being 4E, etc. The other bits are complaints about MCDM, Matt personally, and issues with previous Kickstarters. The last one is fair to bring up, but read more as mean-spirited sniping more than anything.

I somehow get the impression that many people don't really get how the OGL Fiasco caused massive waves in the designer space regarding their professional relationship with 5e D&D and WotC.

Sure, it could work like 5e D&D. But it's hard to imagine that people who believe that have been paying attention to a single word that Matt Colville has been saying about D&D for the past six to eight years.