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.

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

I'm starting to feel heroic for making it this far in the thread. ;-)

I’m not sure what the game mechanic for this would be. But I know it was not fun.

 

[Shardstone]

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.

This is very much true, speaking as a English Professor.

 

[Zaukrie]

I'm starting to feel heroic for making it this far in the thread. ;-)

I had to skip a lot.....like the pages of two people arguing over the meaning of a word

 

[SteveC]

Just checked the crowdfunding and it hit $3 million. Congrats! I was talking with my online gaming crew and the thought was how much good will Matt has developed over the years that people are willing to back the project at this point. It will be exciting to see how this all works out.

 

[mamba]

At this point though we have to move past vague assumptions and be more concrete; in the LOTR example, for instance, I'm not suggesting that Smithing needs to be a core part of the gameplay loop, or necessitated for progression, or anything like that.

It should be integrated, meaning if you do engage with it it will enhance other loops, with them enhancing it in turn, but being integrated doesn't mean it has to be required to be done nor that it needs to take up disproportionate playtime.

I guess you need to become less abstract here too then, I am not sure how smithing improves other loops, or at least not any loops that fall on the heroic side, and not the mundane one

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

I guess you need to become less abstract here too then, I am not sure how smithing improves other loops, or at least not any loops that fall on the heroic side, and not the mundane one

I’ll put more trust in MCDM’s paid playtesters over unpaid forum theory crafting what has a wider appeal of fun while fitting the four words goal.

 

[Scribe]

$3,041,093

21 days remaining lol

 

[Emberashh]

I guess you need to become less abstract here too then, I am not sure how smithing improves other loops, or at least not any loops that fall on the heroic side, and not the mundane one

Well given they used movies, Ill use one too. Iron Man 3 when Stark has to build some gadgets when his suit is out of commission. I can't imagine anyone saying that movie doesnt fall squarely under the Heroic label, and as I related, the scenes of him crafting his gadgets are just right for the purpose of that medium.

And we can go back to the first Iron Man as well; you'd be hard pressed to argue the significant time we spend observing him build the MK1 suit was superflous or undermined his origin as a hero.

In a game, they'd necessarily be more involved (again; games are about doing), but the proportion to gameplay would be identical to the proportions in the films; not the whole point, but not anemic either.

And fwiw, we do actually have scenes in the LOTR films of the Heroes maintaining their weapons, Aragorn in particular, and even in the books, Legolas is explicitly called out as having to scavenge for arrows on many occasions. The general concept of Smithing is not some far fetched thing to consider for a gamified version of that world, particularly if we're assuming an open-ended RPG rather than a direct adaptation, which is what we would have to assume given the context of this topic.

Smithing might be out of place if you're intending to create Peter Jackson's The Fellowship of the Ring the Video Game, but thats not a given if you're just creating an open game set in Middle Earth.

Plus lets remember too that there's an entire race of people in LOTR whose entire cultural shtick is that they're great craftsmen. Depicting that aspect of the Dwarves as nothing but set dressing not only is a missed opportunity but quite a bit of a disservice in a medium like a game.

 

[MacDhomnuill]

Yeah, I mean, we'd have to see. I'm not sure how anyone can think that they can judge this game without trying it. I have no problem with anyone who doesn't WANT to try it - that's fine. But you can't really think that you know much about it. Heck, no one knows much about it yet.

Even the designers don’t know much about it…

 

[SteveC]

Even the designers don’t know much about it…

This is one of the times where I'm not sure how much of a post is a joke, but we do know a fair bit about the design, but it just isn't finalized yet. I posted this earlier, but this is a report from a session they ran at Gamehole Con. You can get some ideas about the mechanics, but I think it's more important that you get a sense of what kind of a feel they are going for in the game. It's described as "heroic" and I think this session gives a pretty good example of what they mean by it.