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.

 

[mamba]

Whilst this is obvious a truism, there's a real "have your cake and eat it" element here. A lot of Kickstarters do very much treat the whole process as if it's just a long-distance order - often the product is essentially finished or close to it, and you can order a ton of already-created stuff from the same company as "add-ons". Hell some Kickstarters or similar are just like "ordering windows" - c.f. the Gloomhaven one that made $5m+. Whilst there was technically a small new product available, given the average order was $146 and that product only cost $15, certainly the majority of orders must necessarily have included Gloomhaven or Frosthaven proper and relatively few must have been just the actual new product.

you probably know what is new vs what is you adding completed products to your funding, so you know what to expect. You probably even have a good idea how far along the digital rewards are.

Since we were talking about Shadowdark, you know that the rules were mostly done and the PDF would fulfill soon while the books were obviously not printed yet.

If you back $20 new stuff and $100 addons, unless everything ships together to reduce cost, you should get the stuff that is already printed soon.

There really is no secret here, new stuff takes time, printing it will take time. You are not preordering something that sits in a warehouse somewhere, ready to ship. If that is your expectation, then you are wrong and probably should not back

 

[darjr]

The preview pages strongly suggest that it will work like everything else: casters will have a resource to spend and powers that use that resource. Very 4E.

Note they have said they want classes to work differently. Specifically pointing out the differences between initial 4e PHB and 4e Essentials.

 

[Bacon Bits]

listening to James, looks like we'll get adventures...wonder why they aren't part of the backerkit stretch goals (well, money is why, but whatever). Maybe we'll get some as part of the playtest....

One of the things creators have learned about crowdfunding is that while an endless laundry list of stretch goals does increase your funding, it will very quickly turn your project into a totally unmanageable mess. I think this is exactly what happened with the Mighty Number 9 video game kickstarter.

MCDM has had problems in the past with fulfillment specifically of the stretch goals. With one of their books the backers ended up waiting an additional year to get promised resin figures. With another there was a promise to play at one turn of Campaign for North Africa on stream, but it's become clear that doing that would be like a month-long project just by itself so I think they're now planning to do a partial playthrough of Battle for North Africa, which is much simplified but also doesn't have the same reputation. All of that can cause some ill feelings in your backers.

It's better to limit yourself to what you know you can get done. You can always do more later.

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

I think the collective belief is that Dec is bad timing, if for no other reasons than tax purposes. But I wonder if the timing of the BackerKit campaign is timed to end in January. I wonder if that timing means they technically receive their money in January so that taxes don't apply to 2023.

I also think that since Dec seems like it's collectively agreed to be bad timing it paradoxically means that it's a great time for crowdfunding because nobody else is running campaigns!

 

[darjr]

One of the things creators have learned about crowdfunding is that while an endless laundry list of stretch goals does increase your funding, it will very quickly turn your project into a totally unmanageable mess. I think this is exactly what happened with the Mighty Number 9 video game kickstarter.

MCDM has had problems in the past with fulfillment specifically of the stretch goals. With one of their books the backers ended up waiting an additional year to get promised resin figures. With another there was a promise to play at one turn of Campaign for North Africa on stream, but it's become clear that doing that would be like a month-long project just by itself so I think they're now planning to do a partial playthrough of Battle for North Africa, which is much simplified but also doesn't have the same reputation. All of that can cause some ill feelings in your backers.

It's better to limit yourself to what you know you can get done. You can always do more later.



I think the collective belief is that Dec is bad timing, if for no other reasons than tax purposes. But I wonder if the timing of the BackerKit campaign is timed to end in January. I wonder if that timing means they technically receive their money in January so that taxes don't apply to 2023.

I also think that since Dec seems like it's collectively agreed to be bad timing it paradoxically means that it's a great time for crowdfunding because nobody else is running campaigns!

I think it’s seen as bad timing because people are spending money on family trips and gifts and food and donations to charity and dealing with winter etc…

I didn’t take into account the business sides perspective. But add it to the list.

Also I dint think that MCDM were in a bind. Their patreon is huge. I just think it was time.

I do think that it could have been bigger with better timing, which I admit is flooring to think even as I type this.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Or people could just read what they're agreeing to. I'll 100% continue to blame people for unrealistic expectations when they're told this upfront when they back a project.

I feel like this is a unrealistic and anti-human attitude that refuses to acknowledge the realities of the situation, so is ultimately unhelpful. The reality is that a lot of organisations putting stuff onto KS are attempting to convey certainty, and a lot of products going on KS or similar are essentially finished and simply gauging how much they need to manufacture/print/etc. So whilst I would say people can be overblown about not getting stuff, I would certainly forgive people for seeing the lines as unclear/blurred.

@Staffan - I'm pretty sure they called out some of that stuff as non-new, like a lot of the minis, just packaged differently, but like hmmm.

The one thing I'll say my players universally seem to dislike is slot based magic where if the target makes their save, nothing happens and they lose a resource and their turn. PF2e for example has a bit less of that with the 4 degrees of success where sometimes a successful save still results in something happening, but I think if the MCDM leans further in that direction my table might enjoy it a lot.

Yeah honestly I'm astonished this has lasted so long as a system. Nobody likes it.

I notice from the Necromancer stat block that PCs can save against enemy attacks (in which case they take damage but not the status effect, I think), but that might not be symmetrical, or only certain kinds of NPC/monster might be able to do it (i.e. elites and higher).

 

[Ruin Explorer]

There really is no secret here, new stuff takes time, printing it will take time. You are not preordering something that sits in a warehouse somewhere, ready to ship. If that is your expectation, then you are wrong and probably should not back

This is a bit goal-post-moving.

We were discussing pre-ordering, not ordering existing product. And that's precisely what a lot of KSes and the like give the impression of being - pre-orders, which is absolutely not the same as "sitting in a warehouse". That's a nonsense.

Pre-orders are very often of stuff that is yet to be manufactured or finished.

 

[Retreater]

Does anyone on here follow the development on the MCDM Patreon? I'm curious if I should subscribe?
(However, I do think that backers should get some design notes. I don't know if that's entitlement on my part.)

 

[Reynard]

Note they have said they want classes to work differently. Specifically pointing out the differences between initial 4e PHB and 4e Essentials.

Well, they said they want every classes resource to work differently and be specific to that class fantasy. I expect the power/attack/spell format will be pretty similar across the board, evidenced by the previews.

 

[darjr]

Well, they said they want every classes resource to work differently and be specific to that class fantasy. I expect the power/attack/spell format will be pretty similar across the board, evidenced by the previews.

They did say that too. I swear I did hear they want them to play different too. But ya maybe different types of the same mechanics.

But they absolutely did bring up the PHB and Essentials divide.

 

[overgeeked]

Does anyone on here follow the development on the MCDM Patreon? I'm curious if I should subscribe?
(However, I do think that backers should get some design notes. I don't know if that's entitlement on my part.)

I'm not a patron. But I am following this game's design as a fan of Matt and MCDM. The design notes on the patreon are months ahead of where they are publicly, include some real nitty gritty game design noodling, and are filled with dead ends, as Matt calls them. Providing those to backers who might not also be patrons would cause a lot more confusion than anyone wants to deal with. Matt drops videos on YouTube explaining where they are with the design going forward.