Matt Colville's indie RPG, a direct challenge to D&D's jack-of-all-trades fumbling, has earned nearly $4 million on Kickstarter

pcgamer.com:

While Dungeons & Dragons' huge OGL stumble didn't quite convert the game's captive audience to the hundreds of other (very good) TTRPGs out there, it's still caused a resurgence of people checking out other games. 

It also prompted several creators (like the minds behind The MCDM RPG) to start doing their own thing—both to capitalise on some freshly curious players, and to avoid a scenario where a game with an uncertain future is vital to their livelihood.

MCDM is a company started by Matthew Colville, most known for his D&D videos on YouTube. It's produced several popular supplements for D&D's 5th edition (5e) such as Strongholds & Followers, which fleshes out the game's understaffed mechanics for base building. 

The MCDM RPG itself was announced by Colville back in February: «our goal is to make something tactical and cinematic … heroic fantasy, mostly fighting monsters, with like two other gameplay pillars we think are important.» 

The game directly wants to get all the fuss out of your dungeon crawling. While 5e streamlined all of this considerably, it still has a lot of holdovers—such as lengthy equipment tables, a half-hearted stab at environmental and rations rulesets, and a zero-to-hero philosophy. 

While none of those things are inherently bad, all that old school crunch goes largely ignored by players wanting a more heroic experience (there's a reason lots of games start at level 3). As its Kickstarter page states, the game is «unburdened by sacred cows from the 1970s».

It's been doing well. At the time of writing, the Kickstarter looks like it could hit $4 million in funding, or at least come very close. Colville's promise to escape older editions of D&D is also very promising—and also a little funny, because