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.

 

[Jd Smith1]

So the weapon you use makes no difference to combat? You cannot miss? Seems odd for a 'tactical' game.

 

[Retreater]

So the weapon you use makes no difference to combat? You cannot miss? Seems odd for a 'tactical' game.

They have different features and are used based on your "kit" - so a barbarian isn't going to get the same abilities using a dagger as she does using a greataxe.
And - no - you don't miss. But you might do basically no damage. Think of this like throwing a fireball in literally any edition of D&D. Even successful saves do half damage. Same concept. You don't waste your action accomplishing nothing.
No one has a problem with half damage fireballs.
(There are ways to completely avoid damage - reactions/feats/etc.)

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Sorry, "to grok."

"Heroic Fantasy is a vague term, turns out I was equating it with "High Fantasy" bit to je fair the Wikipedia for High Fantasybalao says it can be termed Heroic Fantasy.

High fantasy - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

"The romances of William Morris, such as The Well at the World's End, set in an imaginary medieval world, are sometimes regarded as the first examples of high fantasy. The works of J. R. R. Tolkien—especially The Lord of the Rings—are regarded as archetypal works of high fantasy. The term "high fantasy" was coined by Lloyd Alexander in a 1971 essay, "High Fantasy and Heroic Romance", which was originally given at the New England Round Table of Children's Librarians in October 1969."

I mean, it doesn't say that in the quoted bit - "Heroic Romance" is not the same as "Heroic Fantasy", and that was in 1969, before modern conceptions of fantasy genre really existed.

In another bit it does have this:

"High fantasy" often serves as a broad term to include a number of different flavors of the fantasy genre, including heroic fantasy, epic fantasy, mythic fantasy, dark fantasy, and wuxia.[11] It typically is not considered to include the sword and sorcery genre.[12]

Which is directly contradicted by clicking the link for Heroic Fantasy which has no other definition than S&S.

I literally can't find a definition of "Heroic Fantasy" which includes Tolkien - only ones that explicitly exclude him. It's usually defined oppositionally to or at least contrasted with "Epic Fantasy", which includes Tolkien and Alexander.

For example:

https://xigxag.co.uk/catalogue/genre/epic-fantasy-heroic-fantasy/

And interesting attempt nuance the difference between Heroic Fantasy and S&S can be found here:

Epic, heroic, urban… What’s the difference between fantasy sub-genres? | Pop Verse

A look at the differences between the main fantasy subgenres and the direction of the newest subgenres.

pop-verse.com

Heroic Fantasy in this case basically means Sword & Sorcery which has gone to university, signed a code of conduct and had a shower.

(Goodreads' definition is similar, though as with all genres, the audience's determinations are insane and relate almost entirely to popularity - any popular/well-known book will be in much larger genres than less popular ones.)

To be clear I'm just interested in this, not trying to critique your interpretation particularly.

 

[Parmandur]

"High fantasy" often serves as a broad term to include a number of different flavors of the fantasy genre, including heroic fantasy, epic fantasy, mythic fantasy, dark fantasy, and wuxia.[11] It typically is not considered to include the sword and sorcery genre.[12]

Which is directly contradicted by clicking the link for Heroic Fantasy which has no other definition than S&S.

LOL, check out the reference for 11 there:

Crawford, Jeremy; Perkins, Christopher; Wyatt, James, eds. (December 2014). Dungeon Master's Guide. Washington, United States: Wizards of the Coast. pp. 38–41. ISBN 978-0-7869-6562-5.

To be clear I'm just interested in this, not trying to critique your interpretation particularly.

It's all good, I was literally confused about the literary terms. I will take solace in that academic terms of art for Fantasy are...underdeveloped...to the point where the 2014 DMG is considered an authority, lol.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

LOL, check out the reference for 11 there:

Crawford, Jeremy; Perkins, Christopher; Wyatt, James, eds. (December 2014). Dungeon Master's Guide. Washington, United States: Wizards of the Coast. pp. 38–41. ISBN 978-0-7869-6562-5.

It's all good, I was literally confused about the literary terms. I will take solace in that academic terms of art for Fantasy are...underdeveloped...to the point where the 2014 DMG is considered an authority, lol.

Hah nice re: reference! And yes I think a lot of that is because as many literary fiction authors and reviewers and quite a number of Ivy league English lit professors have frequently opined, fantasy books are for children, teenagers, and dilettantes, and not to be taken seriously. I feel like opinions didn't start seriously getting revised on that until GoT kind of shoved a very different type of fantasy to what they imagined in their collective face, and fantasy as a whole started getting too popular to entirely dismiss (so about 2015!).

 

[Jd Smith1]

They have different features and are used based on your "kit" - so a barbarian isn't going to get the same abilities using a dagger as she does using a greataxe.
And - no - you don't miss. But you might do basically no damage. Think of this like throwing a fireball in literally any edition of D&D. Even successful saves do half damage. Same concept. You don't waste your action accomplishing nothing.
No one has a problem with half damage fireballs.
(There are ways to completely avoid damage - reactions/feats/etc.)

Unimpressive. I'm not against a 'one-roll' system, but this sounds like just another tired mis-mash of old techniques.

 

[Parmandur]

Hah nice re: reference! And yes I think a lot of that is because as many literary fiction authors and reviewers and quite a number of Ivy league English lit professors have frequently opined, fantasy books are for children, teenagers, and dilettantes, and not to be taken seriously. I feel like opinions didn't start seriously getting revised on that until GoT kind of shoved a very different type of fantasy to what they imagined in their collective face, and fantasy as a whole started getting too popular to entirely dismiss (so about 2015!).

I think it is a little more simple than that.

I graduated from UC Berkeley with a degree in English Language & Literature in 2007. A lot of my fellow English majors are now starting to come online as full-on established Professors: one of my groomsman is an English Professor now, specializing in Shakespeare. And the people getting English degrees at prestigious schools in the mid-Aughts, before moving on to get PhDs? Grew up with Harry Potter as their first big read, and watched the Jackson LotR movies as teenagers.

The ongoing generational shift favors Fantasy in the Academy.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I think it is a little more simple than that.

I graduated from UC Berkeley with a degree in English Language & Literature in 2007. A lot of my fellow English majors are now starting to come online as full-on established Professors: one of my groomsman is an English Professor now, specializing in Shakespeare. And the people getting English degrees at prestigious schools in the mid-Aughts, before moving on to get PhDs? Grew up with Harry Potter as their first big read, and watched the Jackson LotR movies as teenagers.

The ongoing generational shift favors Fantasy in the Academy.

I did mention HP in a previous draft of that post, but I felt like it was confusing the issue! But I do think it factors in, as does LotR. It's ironic because in an interview Rowling gave when HP was first "going big", she violently and in no uncertain terms rejected the idea that HP was fantasy*, and used that kind of "fantasy books are cheap thrills for teenage boys" formulation (I think what she said was even nastier than that - implying writers were basically pandering to them, I can't remember the exact wording). It was such an outburst that even in text you could tell she'd unsettled the interviewer, who presumably thought it was uncontroversial to describe HP - which is obviously fantasy, right down to genre tropes - as "fantasy". She rejected the label a couple of times more in that era (less violently) before pivoting 180 to being "beloved fantasy author" later on, without every actually apologising for position/aspersions cast.

* = This isn't even the wildest claim she's made re: the genre/originality of HP, but detailed discussion of such grandiose claims ill-befits this thread.

 

[Emberashh]

Also, a strong case can be made that planning/preparation doesn't work very well in most RPGs, as a fun use of the group's time.

That depends on how it manifests. Planning and Prep doesn't have to be tedium.

Plus, I'd make the case that theres bit of overstating of how prominent these elements have to be to "count" as it were. These elements contribute to a greater whole; they really shouldn't be so disproportionately designed that they overshadow or otherwise takeaway from other elements.

The satisfaction comes from having the right tools at the right time and knowing its because a choice you made earlier paid off, and not from some obtuse management game thats effectively only there for its own sake. Hence, the idea that you can strike a middle ground between abstracting (which negates the latter benefit of paying off a choice) and obtuse mechanics (which can get in the way of the overall point).

And insofar as negating heroic or cinematic, naturally I don't agree as previously. Even on the merits of those styles, theres a strong case for more of a focus than we see in actual cinema, thats called for due to the nature of the medium. Games aren't cinema, so we can't use a general rule in cinema as a general rule in games.

Case in point, in video game land Crafting mechanics are often a good example of this, such as in The Last of Us games. There, Crafting is pretty abstracted from the real thing, and that makes sense given it isn't supposed to be all that complex. However, Crafting isn't abstracted so far that its absent or diminished to nothing; its integrated into the gameplay loops and the choice of making a Molotov or a Bandage matters to how you play the game.

You don't see 99% of what makes up the Crafting mechanics in TLOU in most equivalent movies or television, and yet TLOU isn't lesser for it in terms of being a really interesting story. On the contrary, its better, because how you choose to play is just as much a part of the overall story the game tells as the cutscenes and in-play dialogue is.

The same goes for other kinds of stories than post-apoc. We only see brief scenes of Narsil being reforged in Lord of the Rings (films), and IIRC, we don't see it at all in the books, but that doesn't mean a well designed Smithing mechanic and gameplay loop couldn't or shouldn't be a part of a LOTR RPG.

What matters is that its integrated and isn't just there to check a box or only there in service of itself.

So if you're going to worry about games being made into VTT-centric ones, your main concern should be 5E 2024, frankly. It's a bit like a group of men laughing at a guy trying to avoid getting bitten by a small dog missing the tiger that is creeping up behind them.

I'm just relating what I think other people could be concerned about. I'm not worried about this at all; either the game works physically or it doesn't, and the proverbial dice will fall where they may.

 

[Parmandur]

I did mention HP in a previous draft of that post, but I felt like it was confusing the issue! But I do think it factors in, as does LotR. It's ironic because in an interview Rowling gave when HP was first "going big", she violently and in no uncertain terms rejected the idea that HP was fantasy*, and used that kind of "fantasy books are cheap thrills for teenage boys" formulation (I think what she said was even nastier than that - implying writers were basically pandering to them, I can't remember the exact wording). It was such an outburst that even in text you could tell she'd unsettled the interviewer, who presumably thought it was uncontroversial to describe HP - which is obviously fantasy, right down to genre tropes - as "fantasy". She rejected the label a couple of times more in that era (less violently) before pivoting 180 to being "beloved fantasy author" later on, without every actually apologising for position/aspersions cast.

* = This isn't even the wildest claim she's made re: the genre/originality of HP, but detailed discussion of such grandiose claims ill-befits this thread.

One suspects there might be a bit of a gap in understanding between Rowling and the fans of her earlier work or aomething.

Anywho...how about them always hitting attacks, am I right?