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: Draw Steel

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.

 

[SteveC]

Matt spends the end of his video passionately talking about why they pay what they do and the people he works with. You can really feel it from him....

Matt was saying that he pays $.25 a word (and more if the work involves a lot of design, since that isn't reflected in word count). He also said that other gaming companies were paying $.02 a word, which is just shocking. To almost an insulting degree.

 

[darjr]

Matt spends the end of his video passionately talking about why they pay what they do and the people he works with. You can really feel it from him....

Yea. If anything, at the end of the day, your helping writers get paid more. I really believe that and have heard from writers that have fared better after they worked for MCDM.

 

[Velderan]

That sucks, I don't see how a failed KS and you get no refund, I'm pretty confident that I'll get my ShadowDark eventually, but its still frustrating that the delivery has been pushed back a few times and we want to try it out but prefer a hard copy book at the table.

If a KS fails, it's because the funds were not enough to cover what was promised and by the time that's realized, the project was probably mismanaged enough to not have money left to refund anyone.

 

[SteveC]

And, in Shadowdark's case, because she had been expecting to sell a few thousand books at most, not 13,000. That necessitated a different printer, longer production times, and bigger shipping containers.

This is such a good point! I have been involved with printing at both ends of the spectrum and you go to completely different printers for print runs that different. One printer I talked with laughed me out of town for a small order. I went with a company and was happy with them but they were completely unable to handle a larger order. Now this was about 10 years ago, so things may have changed, but the point is that it's not worth some printers time to deal with smaller orders.

 

[R_J_K75]

Ever backed something on Kickstarter before? I have projects that are years overdue.
2-3 months is "margin of error" territory.

Yes I have and rarely does the product arrive as promised. I'm sure you're not happy about waiting 2-3 years for a KS to be fulfilled but I'm just annoyed with "the margin of error" becoming common place and acceptable.

 

[R_J_K75]

You could really just educate yourself on the realities of publishing instead of just believing everyone is lazy or lying to you or w/e.

If someone agrees to ship something by a certain date perhaps, they should educate themselves the realities of publishing, shipping and customs instead of making a promise they can't keep, that's another point of view. Nowhere did I say everyone is lazy and lying to me.

 

[Zaukrie]

Can we talk about mcdm in this thread? Please?

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Can we talk about mcdm in this thread? Please?

Am I wrong in thinking the art they put on the campaign page are meant to be Colville's live-streamed campaigns?

 

[SteveC]

I am currently looking for it, but someone in the thread may already know about it: there was a "session recap" from the playtest they had at Gamehole Con that I saw on Reddit. I am unable to look for it at the moment, but if you can find it, it talked about the mechanics and sample scenario. I will check and see if I can find it later on.

 

[Nightfly]

After watching the video, seems to me that they should have decided to present this as a Superhero game, not a fantasy game. No dungeons, no exploration, no mystery, etc. I'm not backing this.

With respect, I think you misunderstood. It's not that there are no dungeons and no exploration -- it's safe to assume will be gobs of both. It's just that it isn't a dungeons/exploration game in the same sense that 1e was, or Shadowdark is. Shadowdark makes a point of prohibiting darkvision and any magical light sources, so even high-level characters have to constantly fret about how many torches they have. You could have a +30 to hit, but once your light runs out, you're gonna die. This game is not that. Matt is a big fan of Shadowdark, but he's going for something different here. Maybe that's your thing and maybe it isn't, but there will be plenty of dungeons and exploration, just no torch-counting.