Crows, James Introcasos MCDM Dungeon Crawler RPG

[HatWearingFool]

I’m a little underwhelmed based on that… some interesting stuff but feels kinda of meh. But I’ll try to keep an eye out for further developments.

 

[TolkienThePiss]

Matt Colville chimed in on the MCDM SubReddit

Every company I've worked at had a problem. Some of them dealt with it better than others.

The problem is; you have rock star employees who can direct a whole project, but they're stuck as a lead. Lead Animator, Lead Designer, Lead Programmer. They have lots of power! But they still have a director above them.

Well, if you want to keep those employees happy? You need to give them a project to direct themselves. Most companies I've worked at responded very poorly to this problem. But not all!

James doesn't need MCDM. That dude could go off and do Crows on his own if he wanted to. If James decided, or decides, to leave and do his own thing, we would all respect that. How could we not? That same thinking is why MCDM exists!!

But we're happy he wants to stay and do Crows and it was obvious: "this dude doesn't need MCDM, if we want to keep him happy, we need to make him a director and give him his own project." I flashed back to all the brilliant people I've worked with who just...left. Because they were a lead and the powers that be just refused to even consider spinning up a new project just to keep one person happy.

We don't see it that way. We want to make Crows! James and I have been talking about Crows almost as long as we've been talking about Draw Steel!

I was the project lead for Draw Steel. I spent my time thinking "How should this work?" James then spends his time figuring out how to implement those ideas. How to balance it. Now, that line is not anything like as rigid as I'm making it out to be, there's big chunks of the game that were James idea and I had a lot of influence over the nuts-and-bolts language.

But stuff like...what are the classes? What are the ancestries? The idea of the Heroic Resource, Signature Actions. Those were all my ideas. Ok, well James seemed to like those ideas and he worked hard to build the language for Draw Steel that supports that.

But that's hard work! Harder than my job! You do the job of the Lead long enough and pretty soon you're thinking "Man I'm doing all the hard work, I want to be the one who decides what the classes and ancestries are!"

Yeah, good idea! Go do that! I sure as naughty word don't have the time for it! Also, I don't have those kinds of ideas for Crows! Draw Steel was my baby, Crows is James'. I just want it to exist, I don't have strong opinions about even stuff like "should it be class-based?"

So this is an experiment, but it's a necessary one. We never imagined MCDM as The Draw Steel company. I've worked on card games and war games and RPGs and big video games and small video games and VR games!

MCDM is a game company. We're gonna make more games.

No real details yet, but will keep an eye on it.

 

[Reynard]

Very cool -- a crunchier Shadowdark (sort of, maybe).

 

[CommodoreKong]

Matt Colville chimed in on the MCDM SubReddit


No real details yet, but will keep an eye on it.

It makes sense not to just be the Draw Steel company now that they moved away from making 5e products. Usually it’s not a great idea to put all of your eggs in one basket. We know that MCDM is giving Draw Steel serious support in 2026 and I imagine we’ll be seeing a similar crowdfunder for the 2027 Draw Steel product slate toward the end of this year.
Crows probably won’t be my thing but hopefully it’s successful for them as well.

 

[TolkienThePiss]

They also have a boardgame in the works called  Derelict which sounds a bit Space-Hulkey. Not sure how far along that is, but I think that's Matt's new design project whilst Intracaso works on Crows.

 

[Mannahnin]

They also have a boardgame in the works called  Derelict which sounds a bit Space-Hulkey. Not sure how far along that is, but I think that's Matt's new design project whilst Intracaso works on Crows.

Assuming for a moment that that IS the concept, trying to recapture/build on the magic of Space Hulk by doing your own version not owned by GW sounds like a very worthy idea for a middle aged gamer nerd given the freedom to choose his own project.

 

[darjr]

I miss Space Hulk. My son eventually took his copy with him.

 

[Mannahnin]

I need to reassemble my copy. I swiped several of the super-detailed terminators from the last version to use in my Blood Angels army, so I gotta substitute other terminator models to make my set playable again.

 

[Tigris]

I think you answer your own question when you quoted:

“It LITERALLY states that it uses the D&D 5E SRD”

So yeah it “copies” a lot of stuff that was released in a format for other people to copy from…

But the main purpose is that its there to make 5E products. Because without such an SRD its hard to make your own classes, subclasses etc. And no one forces people to copy 5E for their own games. Its a choice to copy it instead of doing your own work.

Game mechanics also cant be protected most of the time. So its also legal to just copy a boardgame from another and give it different names, but still the boardgame community does react badly when people do. Thats one of the reasons why in mainstream boardgames there is so much more innovation than in RPGs.


People state in here that they want more innovation in dungeon crawlers, but then do reward copying others. For boardgame prizes copies of monopoly are excluded from even having the chance to receive a reward, thanks to that there are 188 different boardgame mechanics listed on BGG, not just roll and move, while RPGs are still mostly stuck with "roll to hit".

I am not sure why you have such a hate on for Shadowdark, but this is legitimately rude.

And in boardgaming (and many other places) its considered rude to copy other peoples work, even if it is legal.

 

[Reynard]

And in boardgaming (and many other places) its considered rude to copy other peoples work, even if it is legal.

You may have noticed that this is mainly a TTRPG community, so whatever weird possessiveness board gamers have over mechanics I can't speak to. But video games not copying each other? LOL.

Anyway, more importantly, using an existing system as a foundation is NOT the same thing as "not doing the work." That is what is rude: accusing a designer of not really being a designer because they started with an SRD. i don't know how much game design work you have done, but making a new game even when using an SRD is a serious commitment and requires serious effort, patience and skill.

And finally just a pet peeve: Shadowdark is far closer to B/X than it is 5E; it borrows, what, one mechanic (advantage/disadvantage) that was a 5E innovation?