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Matthew Colville
NicknameMatt Colville
OccupationGame designer, writer
GenreFantasy, tabletop role-playing games
Years active1997–present

Matt Colville is a writer and game designer. He is a former employee of Pandemic Studios and Turtle Rock Studios; Colville is now the Head of Writing and Design at MCDM Productions, a tabletop role-playing game design studio he founded in 2018. He is also known for his YouTube web series "Running the Game" where he gives guidance to players and dungeon masters of the tabletop role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons.

Career

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Game design and writing

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Colville stated that in 1997, he "started out in the tabletop industry working on the Dune CCG & RPG" before he joined Pandemic Studios where he "worked as a designer and then Lead Writer for [the video games] Mercenaries 1 & 2".[1] Colville was then the lead writer for the video game Evolve (2015) when he worked for developer Turtle Rock Studios.[2][3][4] In 2024, Tyler Chancey of TechRaptor commented that "Colville's influence in the TTRPG space cannot be understated", noting that Colville has contributed to "the CODA System Star Trek RPG, the (now-discontinued) Arcadia magazine, and multiple supplements for D&D 3e".[5]

He self-published the fantasy novels Priest (2011) and its sequel Thief (2014).[6][7][8] In 2017, Colville started co-writing with Matt Mercer on the Critical Role comics line, Critical Role: Vox Machina Origins, for Dark Horse Comics.[9] A hardcover collection of the first six issues was released in May 2018; the trade paperback was then released in October 2019.[10][11] In 2024, he contributed a vignette in the book Fifty Years of Dungeons & Dragons.[12]

YouTube

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By 2014, Colville had been a Dungeon Master for 28 years, and as a writer and game designer he shared tips on Reddit "on how Dungeon Masters can best serve their players, their stories, and their games."[13] Colville started the YouTube series "Running the Game" in the 2010s;[14][15] by 2018, his YouTube channel had over 180,000 subscribers and on Twitter he had around 40,000 followers.[16] In 2019, Colville was the Dungeon Master of the actual play show The Chain which featured a custom character class, the illrigger, he designed.[17][18]

Kym Buchanan of PopMatters called Colville's "Running the Game" series "excellent" and said that "he tries to bolster expectancy among novice DMs. In so many (rapid fire) words, Colville encourages finding the sweet spot of facilitating anxiety."[14] On his introductory videos on how to play Dungeons & Dragons, William Herkewitz of Popular Mechanics said, "Matt's amazing intro-to-D&D videos are lengthy, but they delve even deeper into the machinery of the game than I get to in this article."[19] Academics Michael Duddy and Benjamin Rosnau, in their study on the impact of TTRPG-specific media on players, highlighted a reference to the positive influence of Colville's instructional videos.[20]

MCDM Productions

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Colville launched a Kickstarter in 2018 to publish a guide that would help players design strongholds and other features for a Dungeons & Dragons game campaign.[21] After seven days, his Kickstarter for Strongholds & Followers raised over $1,000,000 USD, far exceeding its $50,000 goal.[22] Colville became known as the "King of Kickstarter" after his success on this Kickstarter.[16] This led Colville to found MCDM Productions in 2018, with Strongholds & Followers as the company's first release.[2][23] Colville is the tabletop role-playing game design studio's Head of Writing and Design.[24] Following the release of Strongholds & Followers, MCDM Productions ran successful crowdfunding campaigns for additional Dungeons & Dragons supplements such as Kingdoms & Warfare, Where Evil Lives, Flee, Mortals!.[2][25][5]

He started a crowdfunding on BackerKit to publish an indie tabletop role-playing game and earned nearly $4,000,000 by January 2024.[26] He ultimately earned $4.6 million to create this fantasy role-playing game.[27] On the success of the crowdfunding campaign for the MCDM RPG, Chase Carter of Dicebreaker commented, "chalk up part of that windfall to Colville's career as a YouTube creator and 5E designer – he gained acclaim as the internet's favourite dungeon master by doling out advice on running D&D campaigns with a killer combination of approachability and wisdom usually only seen in community college adjuncts".[27] Draw Steel, formerly titled the MCDM RPG, was included on Polygon's "The most anticipated TTRPG books of 2025" list.[28]

References

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  1. ^ "About". MCDM Productions. Retrieved April 27, 2025.
  2. ^ a b c Nelson, Samantha (December 7, 2023). "MCDM Productions is raising money to produce its own D&D alternative. With roots in video game development and at Critical Role, Matt Colville's crew is branching out". Polygon. Archived from the original on April 26, 2025. Retrieved April 26, 2025.
  3. ^ Milburn, Colin (2024). "Mutate or Die: Neo-Lamarckian Ecogames and Responsible Evolution". In op de Beke, Laura; Raessens, Joost; Werning, Stefan; Farca, Gerald (eds.). Ecogames: Playful Perspectives on the Climate Crisis. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. p. 405. ISBN 978-94-6372-119-6. Retrieved April 26, 2025 – via Internet Archive.
  4. ^ Wood, Austin (June 5, 2018). "Evolve dev says '4v1 caused more problems than we ever imagined'". PC Gamer. Retrieved April 27, 2025.
  5. ^ a b Chancey, Tyler (May 14, 2024). "Flee, Mortals! Now Available On D&D Beyond". TechRaptor. Retrieved April 27, 2025.
  6. ^ Colville, Matthew (June 1, 2017). My Novels, Priest and Thief (YouTube).
  7. ^ "Priest: Ratcatchers, Book One: A Fantasy Hardboiled". Amazon (Product page). Retrieved April 27, 2025.
  8. ^ "Thief: Ratcatchers, Volume Two: A Fantasy Hardboiled". Amazon (Product page). Retrieved April 27, 2025.
  9. ^ Johnston, Rich (September 20, 2017). "Critical Role Gets A Comic Book Origin For The Vox Machina, Out Now". Bleeding Cool. Archived from the original on September 23, 2017. Retrieved September 23, 2017.
  10. ^ Romero, Rachel (March 11, 2019). "HYPE: Dark Horse Comic Series Updates & The Mighty Nein Art Book". Critical Role. Archived from the original on March 14, 2019. Retrieved March 18, 2019.
  11. ^ Smith, Tim (May 24, 2019). "'Vox Machina Origins' Collected From Dark Horse". ICv2. Archived from the original on April 26, 2025. Retrieved April 26, 2025.
  12. ^ Colville, Matt (May 14, 2024). "Designer Vignettes I & II". Fifty Years of Dungeons & Dragons. The MIT Press. pp. 15–16, 120. doi:10.7551/mitpress/15175.001.0001. ISBN 978-0-262-37798-0.
  13. ^ Hamilton, Kirk (July 14, 2014). "Excellent D&D Tips From A Veteran Dungeon Master". Kotaku. Archived from the original on April 26, 2025. Retrieved April 26, 2025.
  14. ^ a b Buchanan, Kym (May 11, 2017). "Hard Fun in Gaming: On Finding the Sweet Spot in Anxiety". PopMatters. Archived from the original on April 26, 2025. Retrieved April 26, 2025.
  15. ^ Ashley, Kendall (June 8, 2016). "This Cool Webseries Teaches You How To Be A Great Dungeon Master". Geek & Sundry. Retrieved April 29, 2025.
  16. ^ a b Mannolini-Winwood, Sarai (May 7, 2018). "Matt Colville: The King of Kickstarter". The Artifice. Archived from the original on April 26, 2025. Retrieved April 26, 2025.
  17. ^ Knox, Kelly (February 4, 2019). "Matt Colville's New D&D Campaign THE CHAIN Has an Evil Custom Class You Can Play Too". Nerdist. Retrieved April 27, 2025.
  18. ^ Youakim, Gannon (January 1, 2019). Dungeon Classroom Guide: Using Tabletop Role-Playing Games in the Classroom (Honors Capstone Projects thesis). University of Minnesota Morris. Retrieved April 27, 2025.
  19. ^ Herkewitz, William (March 20, 2018). "So You Want To Play Dungeons & Dragons..." Popular Mechanics. Archived from the original on April 26, 2025. Retrieved April 26, 2025.
  20. ^ Duddy, Michael; Rosnau, Benjamin (2024). "Right Table, Wrong Idioculture: Examining the Impacts of TTRPG-specific Media at the Player Table Level". New Explorations: Studies in Culture and Communications. 4 (2). doi:10.7202/1115380ar. ISSN 2563-3198.
  21. ^ Hoffer, Christian (February 9, 2018). "Matt Colville Launches Kickstarter for a Dungeons & Dragons-Compatible Strongholds Guide". ComicBook.com. Archived from the original on April 26, 2025. Retrieved April 26, 2025.
  22. ^ Hoffer, Christian (February 16, 2018). "Matt Colville's 'Dungeons and Dragons' Kickstarter Raises One Million Dollars in a Week". ComicBook.com. Archived from the original on April 26, 2025. Retrieved April 26, 2025.
  23. ^ Colville, Matthew (March 12, 2018). "The Story of MCDM". MCDM Productions (Press release). Retrieved April 29, 2025.
  24. ^ Law, Eric (January 11, 2023). "Dungeons and Dragons Content Creator Matt Colville is Making a New Roleplaying System". Game Rant. Retrieved April 29, 2025.
  25. ^ "Matt Colville's new D&D supplement lets you rule your own kingdom". Wargamer. July 20, 2021. Retrieved April 27, 2025.
  26. ^ Randall, Harvey (January 2, 2024). "Matt Colville's indie RPG, a direct challenge to D&D's jack-of-all-trades fumbling, has earned nearly $4 million on BackerKit". PC Gamer. Archived from the original on April 6, 2025. Retrieved April 26, 2025.
  27. ^ a b Carter, Chase (January 5, 2024). "YouTube's favourite dungeon master earns $4.6 million to create a fantasy RPG beyond the influence of D&D. Matt Colville's MCDM RPG escapes fantasy heartbreaker territory with a mega-successful crowdfunding campaign". Dicebreaker. Archived from the original on April 26, 2025. Retrieved April 26, 2025.
  28. ^ Nelson, Samantha (January 1, 2025). "The most anticipated TTRPG books of 2025". Polygon. Retrieved April 27, 2025.
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