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.

 

[Reynard]

Good lord. At this rate, Colville is gonna buy Twitter.

To be fair, at this rate the way Musk is managing things, I'll be able to buy Twitter.

 

[darjr]

The fund has slowed to a crawl, but for this one a crawl is many funds normal.

 

[Reynard]

The fund has slowed to a crawl, but for this one a crawl is many funds normal.

I expect a curve similar in shape to Flee! Mortals: dedicated fan spike at the outset, gentle slope up, and the waffler spike at the end. The waffler spike might be even bigger since it comes after Christmas and some folks will get cash gifts, bonuses or even money from returns.

 

[Morrus]

I expect a curve similar in shape to Flee! Mortals: dedicated fan spike at the outset, gentle slope up, and the waffler spike at the end. The waffler spike might be even bigger since it comes after Christmas and some folks will get cash gifts, bonuses or even money from returns.

Crowdfunders have generally moved from the traditional U shape to a backwards J these days. Creators are getting really good at building up the launch, which front loads them even more than they used to, but the last 48 hours doesn’t generally reach the heights it did. Of course there are always exceptions and MCDM breaks exceptions all the time so who knows!

 

[Reynard]

I always wonder what the marketing budget looks like. Did MCDM spend $10K to make those $2M? $50K? More?

 

[Morrus]

I always wonder what the marketing budget looks like. Did MCDM spend $10K to make those $2M? $50K? More?

You don’t make $2M out of $10K marketing. If you could, marketing would literally be a license to print money!

Most of their traffic will be organically generated—it’s their following. They have a big and loyal customer base cultivate over years via the YouTube channel, other outlets, the previous big Kickstarters, and a growing reputation.

Marketing will add stuff on top of that, But it’s not a magic wand. Basically there’s a concept called ROAS — return on ad spend. It varies but it’s a multiplier—so a ROAS of 4 means for every dollar you spend on ads, somebody spends 4 dollars on your product. The industry makes a big difference as is how well you target it. Some broad stuff like alcohol at Christmas etc I’ve heard of advertisers getting a ROAS of 10x or so. TTRPGs my main experience is what Backerkit is able to achieve and that’s a lot lower in my experience — they aim for about 2x-3x, but they don’t always achieve it.

So your $10K would make $20K revenue (low end) to $100K (high end for highly targeted stuff like the above). Probably somewhere in the middle .

That said, as I keep noting, MCDM is great at defying expectations and breaking out of the regular models.

 

[darjr]

Crowdfunders have generally moved from the traditional U shape to a backwards J these days. Creators are getting really good at building up the launch, which front loads them even more than they used to, but the last 48 hours doesn’t generally reach the heights it did. Of course there are always exceptions and MCDM breaks exceptions all the time so who knows!

What is the fund projection/tracker besides kiqtrack?

 

[Morrus]

What is the fund projection/tracker besides kiqtrack?

Backerkit’s own one is the most accurate in my experience (though none of them are particularly accurate this early in a campaign). Backer Tracker it’s called.

Kicktraq is beyond useless!

 

[Reynard]

You don’t make $2M out of $10K marketing. If you could, marketing would literally be a license to print money!

Most of their traffic will be organically generated—it’s their following. They have a big and loyal customer base cultivate over years via the YouTube channel, other outlets, the previous big Kickstarters, and a growing reputation.

Marketing will add stuff on top of that, But it’s not a magic wand. Basically there’s a concept called ROAS — return on ad spend. It varies but it’s a multiplier—so a ROAS of 4 means for every dollar you spend on ads, somebody spends 4 dollars on your product. The industry makes a big difference as is how well you target it. Some broad stuff like alcohol at Christmas etc I’ve heard of advertisers getting a ROAS of 10x or so. TTRPGs my main experience is what Backerkit is able to achieve and that’s a lot lower in my experience — they aim for about 2x-3x, but they don’t always achieve it.

So your $10K would make $20K revenue (low end) to $100K (high end for highly targeted stuff like the above). Probably somewhere in the middle .

That said, as I keep noting, MCDM is great at defying expectations and breaking out of the regular models.

Thanks for the detailed reply. So of I understand you correctly, any advertising they purchase is intended to hopefully get a relatively few more sales on top of what their core audience is going to invest?

I bet that is an interesting discussion at these places: what percentage of our followers are likely to back this product? How many patrons who are already giving us money are going to back it?

 

[mamba]

What is the fund projection/tracker besides kiqtrack?

my rule of thumb is roughly 2.5 times the first two days, Kicktraq has no idea how to predict anything, it just is a linear projection from ‘now’ to the end of the campaign