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.

 

[darjr]

I'd like to add that the product of the patreon lately has been the RPG development. It's been a great product. Worth it to me.

Now if only I could get into a sanctioned play test!!

I might just have to run ENWorld playtests outside of the team.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

I'd like to add that the product of the patreon lately has been the RPG development. It's been a great product. Worth it to me.

Now if only I could get into a sanctioned play test!!

I might just have to run ENWorld playtests outside of the team.

I'd be in to playtest it.

 

[pwhimp]

with so many games out there, having something that is genuinely not a variation of something found in another one is hard. It also isn’t really the goal. The goal is to create a good game, not a string of novel ideas.

And even when you end up with a 2d6 system, that does not mean you simply took it from somewhere and ran with it.

They had several videos talking about the different dice mechanics they tried, and in one of the recent ones James Introcaso said they spent three months on just those, and when he then looked at the bell curve of the one they had arrived at (2d12, but one had numbers from 1 to 9 and the other 1 to 3 only), it was almost identical to the 2d6 curve.

When he told Matt that, he said something along the lines of ‘oh well, at least we got there organically’, so even though they now use 2d6 that does in no way mean that they just took it from somewhere.

The same is true for the auto-hit, and probably lots of other stuff too. Even when you do not start with ‘we take X from game Y’, but test things on a wide open field until you get to a mechanic you like and produces results that fit your vision, chances are you did end up with something that was done somewhere already.

Convergent evolution ftw

 

[Zaukrie]

I'd like to add that the product of the patreon lately has been the RPG development. It's been a great product. Worth it to me.

Now if only I could get into a sanctioned play test!!

I might just have to run ENWorld playtests outside of the team.

You're not in the pool? I just added myself

 

[darjr]

You're not in the pool? I just added myself

I am but never seem to make the queries for testers until it's like 30 deep. Even when I've been camping on discord.

 

[Squared]

I’m not going to back this project, it looks like they have plenty of support already. This is also not my cup of tea, it is both D&D derived and high level play, both things that do not interest me.

On the other hand, I will be watching this with interest. There is a large amount of rpg games on the market focused on dungeon crawling and low level play. There are fewer that focus on the high level play and that sounds like what this game will be focusing on.

Good rpg games have focus in their design and this game sounds like the designer knows what he wants. It also sounds like he will be bringing something new to the design space. And just because it doesn’t interest me doesn’t mean that it might not interest my wife or the rest of my group.

Also if this does manage to be successful it might spawn some spinoff games, some of which I might be interested in.

^2

 

[overgeeked]

I am but never seem to make the queries for testers until it's like 30 deep. Even when I've been camping on discord.

Exactly. I'm in the pool, too, and I got a discord chime indicating an announcement...I was online, in front of my computer...and clicked over to the discord tab...and there was already 15-20 people asking for spots. It's kind of a terrible way to do playtesting.

 

[darjr]

Exactly. I'm in the pool, too, and I got a discord chime indicating an announcement...I was online, in front of my computer...and clicked over to the discord tab...and there was already 15-20 people asking for spots. It's kind of a terrible way to do playtesting.

I think they are trying to lessen the front loading by waiting and picking among all the aspirants, but it becomes a large list quickly.

 

[darjr]

At some point it crossed 15 thousand backers and 2.8 million.

 

[Nightfly]

I listened to the entire Q&A today as I was watching football and cleaning. Some takeaways:

* They expect a playtest packet this month for Patreon supporters.

* I love Matt's honesty. At one point he said if that if money was tight for you with the holidays coming up, don't feel like you have to support the project, because they've already raised enough money that "it's definitely happening".

* On that note: Matt says repeatedly that this game won't be for everyone. It won't involve cutting purses to get seven copper, and if that's your bag, try a different game that does that better. They want big, heroic fantasy.

* For example, will you be able to shapeshift into a bear? Probably, but that's not enough, because "a bear can't fight Thanos". They want your shapeshifter to do bigger and cooler things than just that.

* In designing the game, they conceptualize the "fantasy" first, then build the rules around that. What does a badass fantasy archer look like? Visualize that clearly, then figure out how to make it happen. At different points Matt mentioned Jason Bourne and Captain America as people you might want a character to resemble.

* They want to build from the ground up, rather than be beholden to RPG ideas "from 1974". So just because we have 50 years of thinking that "a third of attacks miss" and do nothing, that doesn't mean that attacks will miss in their game. They want no wasted turns.

* They want a strong tension between deciding whether to press forward or retreat when adventuring. Incentivize both and let the characters debate and decide.

* He name-dropped Shadowdark yet again, although I forget the context. Matt can't write or say anything without mentioning Shadowdark, which I think I kind of cute. Speaking of which:

FYI, this is not yet another Shadowdark thread.

All your thread are belong to us.