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.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Some folks have asked whether the MCDM system will have dungeons or not. I'm sure it will - it is such a strong fantasy trope that I can't see how they ignore it. But Coleville has said the system is not about exploration or attrition, but rather about big heroic fights. So I suspect the dungeons will be smaller and simpler than the sprawling old school dungeons you see in many games these days. They will probably resemble the old 4E Encounters dungeons, with 2 or 3 set pieces strung together.

It may be that Colville's Delian Tomb serves as an archetype for the sort of dungeons they are aiming at - though that is pure speculation on my part.
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Map by Kyle Capps

Exactly. I'm not sure why people are confused by this, and interpreting "the game isn't about dungeons" to mean "WE HAVE BANNED DUNGEONS AND THEY ARE NOT ALLOWED!!!". It's like, The Elder Scrolls videogames aren't about dungeons or particularly focused on them - the open world and enclosed locations which aren't dungeons are much bigger focus, but they still have dungeons in them.

Outside of Moria and D&D-derived fantasy fiction, I think most adventure sites in fiction are pretty limited in scale, too. I'm not sure that not focusing on huge dungeon complexes is a big issue beyond MCDMRPG failing to be a new edition of D&D, which it isn't attempting to do.

Even in D&D-derived fantasy fiction, if it's anything but a videogame, the number of locations in a dungeon that are actually described or shown is usually going to be possible count on one or two hands.

I certainly did notice in 4E, as it wasn't really attrition-based in the same way, my dungeons tended to be smaller and more specific/setpiece-based, with little in the way of waffle. I'd also note that Baldur's Gate designs its dungeons this way for the most part (a small number of important fights), whereas both Pathfinder CRPGs took a more standard D&D-like attrition approach, where you have larger numbers of unimportant fights which wear your resources down.

Funny story

My wife just gently tapped my arm. Why?

Because just yesterday I told her to punch me in the arm if I suggested I might back another game!

Someone on the Backerkit comments was like "I told myself I wouldn't Kickstart any more games... but this isn't Kickstarter!".

 

[mamba]

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.

I’ll go out on a limb here and say they did inform themselves first. There simply is a difference between what you think you expect the conditions to be 6-9 months down the line and what they turn out to be then.

In addition, as was mentioned, the print run ended up much larger than anticipated, that also means it takes more time to print them and more containers to ship them in, when container space is not so easy to come by, delaying the delivery.

In the end these are estimates, and they can slip. If that is more than you are willing to accept, wait until the books are available or back at the PDF level, that does not mitigate all delays, but at least the ones related to printing and S&H

 

[overgeeked]

I’ll go out on a limb here and say they did inform themselves first. There simply is a difference between what you think you expect the conditions to be 6-9 months down the line and what they turnout to be then.

In addition, as was mentioned, the print run ended up much larger than anticipated, that also means it takes more time to print them and more containers to ship them in, when container space is not do easy to come by, delaying the delivery.

In the end these are estimates, and they can slip. If that is more than you are willing to accept, wait until the books are available or back at the PDF level, that does not mitigate all delays, but at least the ones related to printing and S&H

It’s really weird. No one can see the future. People can make an educated and informed guess. But not predict it perfectly. Getting mad at people for life and the world happening is more than a bit…wild.

 

[mamba]

Very surprised to see how much support this essentially untested RPG is getting with no play content and rules that just don't seem that innovative. Very surprised.

Matt clearly has a following and audience. When I compare this to what Shadows of the Weird Wizard (24h: 176k / full: 411k), Tales of the Valiant (24h: 487k, full 1,151k) or Shadowdark (24h: 288k, full: 1,366k) did.

ToV and SD had good timing with the OGL thing, SotWW imo came too late for that, and it affected the result, but Matt is blowing past all of them. Guess that answers whether December is timed badly…

 

[Nightfly]

Exactly. I'm not sure why people are confused by this, and interpreting "the game isn't about dungeons" to mean "WE HAVE BANNED DUNGEONS AND THEY ARE NOT ALLOWED!!!". It's like, The Elder Scrolls videogames aren't about dungeons or particularly focused on them - the open world and enclosed locations which aren't dungeons are much bigger focus, but they still have dungeons in them.

This, but I don't think Matt even meant to suggest that dungeons would be de-emphasized. Pretty sure he just meant dungeon crawls would be not the point of his game, which is different. A recent video he did distinguishes the point: he said that 4e was great for fun combats, but terrible for dungeon crawls, which he defined as "survival horror" kind of experiences. He gave a shout-out to Shadowdark as a game that does the latter thing well, as he did again in the book excerpt.

Admitting up front that his game (or 4e) is not great for a "Will we run out of rations?" style game is not the same as saying dungeons will be few if any. We had tons of dungeons in 4e, it's just that they didn't have that "we're all gonna die" feel from 1979, for better or worse. Personally, I love the fact that Colville is crystal clear on what he wants the game to be, and not be. That bodes will for the final product.

 

[darjr]

Matt clearly has a following and audience. When I compare this to what Shadows of the Weird Wizard (24h: 176k / full: 411k), Tales of the Valiant (24h: 487k, full 1,151k) or Shadowdark (24h: 288k, full: 1,366k) did.

ToV and SD had good timing with the OGL thing, SotWW imo came too late for that, and it affected the result, but Matt is blowing past all of them. Guess that answers whether December is timed badly…

I think Dec is timed badly. And we still have this result.

 

[agrayday]

it started off (24hrs) better than Avatar ($1.2M).... lets see if it has legs to get to $9M (81,000 backers).

Is there 81,000 people who know MCDM?

 

[Zaukrie]

it started off (24hrs) better than Avatar ($1.2M).... lets see if it has legs to get to $9M (81,000 backers).

Is there 81,000 people who know MCDM?

No chance, imo. But I'd take five million

 

[overgeeked]

it started off (24hrs) better than Avatar ($1.2M).... lets see if it has legs to get to $9M (81,000 backers).

Is there 81,000 people who know MCDM?

MCDM YouTube has 83.5k subscribers. Matt’s YouTube has 439k subs. So I’d say yes, 81,000+ people know who MCDM are.

They’re on track to cross $2 million before the 24 hour mark. They’re sitting at $1.96 million and 11,210 backers just over 16 hours in. It would be wild to say that they are going to beat Avatar, but they’ll likely be a great second or third place behind it.

 

[agrayday]

MCDM YouTube has 83.5k subscribers. Matt’s YouTube has 439k subs. So I’d say yes, 81,000+ people know who MCDM are.

They’re on track to cross $2 million before the 24 hour mark. They’re sitting at $1.96 million and 11,210 backers just over 16 hours in. It would be wild to say that they are going to beat Avatar, but they’ll likely be a great second or third place behind it.

actually that is an interesting thought to think about, social media subs to actual consumers of your product ratio. (I am sure some media/marketing person has figured it out).
Side note, at least for me, despite the numbers, i do not see a large media presence of Avatar RPG sessions, or people talking about it, like i do other systems.