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

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.

 

[Aldarc]

It's not really a discussion about 4e per se. It's about how this new MCDM RPG represents a fairly sparse but growing field of TTRPGs inspired by 4e D&D. This sort of open would almost be unthinkable a decade ago. But Matt Colville was arguably one of the public content creators for D&D 5e who brought positive attention to 4e D&D. And this MCDM RPG does seem to extend from Matt Colville and James Introcaso's desire to design a fun cinematic, tactical fantasy adventure game that scratches a similar itch as 4e D&D, albeit without needing to remain beholden to 1970s game design.

Fairly or not, I do expect that this game will be compared to 4e D&D, if only because the inspiration is fairly explicit and transparent.

The character sheets so far are one page. I wouldn’t say they are simple but they are not full of a lot of moving parts.

They have admittedly only designed one level, so we will see how the character sheet changes across ten levels of additional design.

 

[darjr]

They have admittedly only designed one level, so we will see how the character sheet changes across ten levels of additional design.

I’m mostly concerned about the ease of entry at first level. But yea higher levels could get more complex. I dint think they want them too.

 

[Eyes of Nine]

The digression into 4e reminded me of something else Matt said on the stream.

He wants this new game to be homebrewable. He called out 4e as being very difficult to homebrew, because classes were so complex and there were 30 levels of each one. Coming up with your own class was a huge effort and very difficult to balance. He does not want this game to be like that. He wants third-party crunch to be published and people to cook up their own stuff in their own games.

This is great, and I am glad.

He also said that the game would primarily use 6-sided dice, but with the occasional d4 and d8. A viewer asked, "Will my d12s still be useless?" and Matt had to break the news that indeed they would.

This is sad. At least we'll always have Coyote and Crow!

 

[darjr]

16 thousand backers. Soon 3mil.

 

[el-remmen]

I am a fan of MC's videos and I have Flee, Mortals! and Strongholds & Followers, but this game is not for me. Well, not for me to buy and run. However, I would definitely play it and if in some future I get a chance to, I will order a book then.

Really happy for their success though. I hope it surpasses their most optimistic expectations.

 

[CubicsRube]

I think maybe people are a bit too hung up on the always hit aspect.

If there's sufficient variability in the damage roll there's still be a big difference in feel, for example rolling double sixes vs snake eyes.

 

[Panzeh]

Yeah, I mean, if your game is going to feature a lot of attacks, having the hit roll and damage roll isn't 100% necessary, especially when the damage roll is already abstracting so much. I look forward to seeing how it pans out in play- a lot of effects that affect the hit roll are effectively damage reduction anyway, just once-removed, so it's not that weird to me. It's going for a more curated tactical experience.

 

[Parmandur]

I think maybe people are a bit too hung up on the always hit aspect.

If there's sufficient variability in the damage roll there's still be a big difference in feel, for example rolling double sixes vs snake eyes.

Obviously, there is nothing wrong with it, it's all mathematical abstraction and can be modeled different ways.

 

[MNblockhead]

For those of you who spend time on gaming boards and channels other than ENWorld, what has the discourse been like? So far, I'm pleasantly surprise at how civil the reactions and discussions seem to be. I wonder if this is due in large part to Matt being clear about the games theme and design objectives and being clear on what that game is not, rather than trying to win everyone over.

 

[Velderan]

I think maybe people are a bit too hung up on the always hit aspect.

If there's sufficient variability in the damage roll there's still be a big difference in feel, for example rolling double sixes vs snake eyes.

Slightly different situation, but I'm currently running PF2e with it's 4 degrees of success to resolve actions (crit success, success, fail, crit fail). There are spells that the only way a target can have no effect happen to them is on a critical success. For example, the spell fear has no effect on a crit success save, the target is frightened 1 on a success, frightened 2 on a fail, frightened 3 and must flee on a crit fail.

Why am I mentioning this? Because the most common results are a success and a fail, so something happens and the player reaction has shifted from being happy they landed a frightened 1 effect to being disappointed that's all that happened but at least they don't feel like they wasted their turn because again, something happened. That's what MCDM RPG sounds like to me. You rolled snake eyes? That sucks and you're going to be disappointed, but at least you moved the enemy's HP a bit and it wasn't a completely wasted turn.