Hey folks, Matt Colville here on behalf of MCDM. Last week the RPG Crowdfunder wrapped and the final numbers were basically insane. Over 30,000 of you pledged over $4.5m dollars to this crazy idea we have. That is more than anyone imagined. Our days of losing sleep wondering “is anyone interested in this?” are over! Now we have all NEW reasons to lose sleep! 😀

For context, no one has had this kind of success in this space without either A: being attached to an existing, known IP like Avatar: The Last Airbender, or B: by marrying their content to the 5E ruleset. It’s the kind of success that has people who haven’t been paying attention these last five years scratching their heads. Trying to ‘explain away’ what’s happening here. 

Well, I don’t think it’s that hard to explain. Folks want to get excited about something new. That’s…that’s normal. That should not be seen as weird, or something to ‘explain away.’ 

We took a lot of chances with this project and it seems like they’re all paying off. Our biggest funding day (outside the first three and last three days) was when we previewed the Human Ancestry write-up. Just humans? Just posting humans moved the needle in a major way? Yeah, actually it did! We were as surprised as you!

It’s not final, none of that text or layout or graphic design is final, but it represents our vision. A book, a ruleset, that takes nothing for granted. “What if humans were cool actually?” Is apparently a radical idea! 😀 And people seem to like our answers!

And if you liked that, we can’t wait to show you some of the stuff we’re planning for this game.

I think folks look at the success of this crowdfunder and expect us to take a victory lap or something. Well, this post is as close to that as we’re gonna get. We are all fizzing with excitement and ideas and knowing A: we have the power to execute on these ideas to the fullest and B: we have an audience (i.e. you) that want to see it, that are excited for it, makes a huge difference. We’ve only been back to work for about a week since the holiday break but the tone shift from November to now is massive. 

We still have limitations! We gotta get these books done in about 18 months, and fit them in about 800 pages. Lots of folks imagine this level of success means “they can take as long as they want.” Nope. That’s one reason we didn’t add more products to the pledge levels. We can’t grow the scope of the project, without pushing the deadline out, and we can’t go to the people and say “18 months” when we really mean “who knows how long it will take? Depends on how successful we are!” That is not kosher. 18 months is real, 800 pages is real, and now begins the hard work of making it happen.

That’s why no “victory lap.” We don’t get to relax and high-five each other until the rules are done, and people are playing them natively, outside the context of a playtest.

If we go to GenCon 2025 and see scores of tables full of people playing our game? Then we’ll take a victory lap. 😀 Because otherwise, what is there to celebrate? We had a great pitch? We raised a lot of cash? 

Well the money, the number of backers, these are just a means to an end. The end is: a great game people love, and play, and create new campaigns and worlds and heroes in. That’s the goal. That’s the only thing that matters to us. That’s why we spend so much time in testing. We want to get it right.

The good news is…people are already playing the game! And they like it! Our goal was to get a playtest packet to the patrons before the end of 2023…and we did! That itself is a testament to our scheduling and production pipeline. The system works! 

They’ve had the packet now for a couple of weeks, we sent them a survey to fill out last week, and already a few hundred people have filled it out. And it’s sort of…breathtaking the responses we’re seeing.

Over 80% of respondents are answering every question within the 4 or 5 out of 5 scale. That means we’re on the right track. However! That doesn’t mean we’re done. There’s a lot of “I love this, but it would be nice if….” And we take that stuff seriously. We can SEE how even stuff we took for granted, and thought was final, would be improved if we pulled it apart and put it back together again in a different way. 

No spoilers, but we are already testing some big changes here internally based on this feedback. In other words “this is cool!” isn’t good enough for us. When we see folks saying “I like it but…” we focus on the “but.” Blimey.

IF all this works, if we find better ways to do these things based on tester feedback, then I think you’ll be surprised and happy at how fun the first backer packet is. How polished it is.

For context, the patrons don’t get all the tools to make real characters. Those systems aren’t all online yet. But our goal with the first backer packet is that you will be able to make a “real” character with it. 

We don’t want to show you stuff that isn’t fully cooked. You are paying for a polished, finished product. The patrons are paying to sit outside the sausage factory and watch us get covered in giblets trying to push pork slurry into meat tubes and, just like this metaphor, it is gross. And the patrons have to do a lot of work to play the game. They’re getting naked Google Docs, no layout, no onboarding. Just the rules. It’s way less info than they are used to getting, and they’re still making it work!

This is all to say; by the time you get the first Backer Packet in, we estimate, July? You’ll be getting a much more polished product. Still not final! But WAY closer to final. And we’re already hard at work.

We haven’t actually seen a lot of questions that aren’t already answered in the videos or the backerkit page. Most of the questions we see, the community answers on their own. That’s sort of amazing. But there are some new questions!

The Ajax Edition

There are a handful of “unclaimed” Ajax editionses. Folks who downgraded their pledge at the last minute before the campaign ended. This number will go up because some folks' payment methods didn’t go through. This happens every time we run a crowdfunding campaign; some folks' credit cards expire between backing and being charged. There are lots of reasons, and we want to give everyone time to sort that out, so probably March or April you may see a handful of Ajaxes in Backerkit. 

Preorders

Lots of folks want to preorder the game now that the crowdfunder is closed. We want that too! But it takes a while to get everything set up for that in the store. We expect you’ll be able to preorder the game on Backerkit by the end of this month (January).

If You Have Any Other Questions…

Just email [email protected] and we’ll get back to you ASAP. We’ve seen a lot of people show up in our community Discord and ask Customer Service questions, but that’s not what the discord is for! 

Asking those questions anywhere else means A: we might not see it and B: you get a lot of other people trying to answer, even though they don’t know the question. So, if you SEE someone asking CustServe questions? By all means, tell them to email [email protected]! 

So…What’s Next?

Well the next big moment for you backers is the first Backer Packet later this year. But I doubt it’ll be radio silence between now and then.

I think what will probably happen is; sometime around March, you’ll start seeing some dope art from the art team. We have a lot of original visual design to develop. What do all these different Ancestries look like? As we figure these things out, we’ll share them with you. That’s something I’m personally HUGELY excited for. I don’t know when that will start happening, we have a lot of project management stuff to handle this month, so you’ll find out along with the rest of us!

So I suspect the next update will just be us showing off some visual design. Until then…

Peace! Out!