Montages & Negotiations | How to Draw Steel #5

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Intro

Hello, everyone!

Welcome to what is probably the last video in the How to Draw Steel series! At this point you already know about the power roll, tests, abilities, character creation, and combat.

So today we’re gonna discuss Draw Steel’s systems for the two other pillars of play. I’m talking, of course, about montage tests and negotiations!

And, if by the end up liking these mechanics, make sure to check out my upcoming Draw Steel supplement: Hooked on Crafting. More about it after the video.

Montages

Given that Draw Steel calls itself a cinematic game, I think ‘montage test’ is the perfect name for its instantiation of skill challenges.

As you can probably imagine, this mechanic is deployed when the heroes want to tackle a large task together, but we don’t want to narrate absolutely everything as we would in a regular scene.

So, like in a movie montage, we’re only gonna see snippets of each hero doing something that takes the party closer to their collective goal, be it crossing a dangerous swamp or prepping a village before a siege.

In practice, a montage test is a sequence of individual tests whose outcomes count towards a global limit.

Before beginning the montage, the director must set its success and failure limits. For five heroes, for example, a montage test of moderate difficulty has a success limit of 6 and a failure limit of 4.

In this case, if the heroes get 6 successes on their tests before they get 4 failures, or if they get 4 failures before 6 successes, the montage test ends!

To start the montage test, the director sets the scene by describing what kinds of challenges the heroes need to overcome in order to achieve their goal.

It’s also a good idea to set the stakes in case they fail because, if there is no pressure at all, then we can just assume that the heroes take their sweet time and succeed.

Next, each hero, one by one, picks a challenge and tries to overcome it with an appropriate test.

The director sets the difficulty for each test individually, so a good idea might be rewarded with an easier test or even an automatic success.

But there are limitations. An individual hero cannot use the same skill twice, and two heroes cannot try to overcome the same challenge! Both of these rules keep the players from cheesing the whole thing.

In case a hero doesn’t have a good idea for how they can overcome one of the challenges without breaking the rules, it’s always possible for them to assist another hero in their test.

But there’s no automatic advantage here, folks! Assisting someone in Draw Steel involves making a test whose outcome can either help or hinder the assisted hero.

If every hero has gone, but neither the success limit nor the failure limit has been reached, it’s time for round two.

This second round is the last chance the heroes have of beating the montage test, otherwise it automatically ends to avoid a slog.

In between the two rounds the director can make an interlude, introducing other challenges, raising the stakes, or just adding some flavor.

Once the montage is over it’s time to determine the final outcome.

If the montage ended because the success limit was reached before the failure limit, the heroes achieve a total success: they do what they wanted and don’t incur any complications.

However, if the failure limit was reached before the success limit or if the time ran out, there are two options.

If the heroes got at least two more successes than failures, they achieve a partial success: they do what they wanted, but incur a complication.

Finally, if the heroes didn’t get at least two more successes than failures, they suffer a total failure: they don’t do what they wanted.

So, to summarize: montage tests are a sequence of regular tests meant to condense a long collaboration between the heroes into a fun mini-game.

The director announces the challenges and the heroes have two rounds to overcome them. If they reach the success limit before the failure limit, they achieve a total success.

Otherwise, the montage ends either when the failure limit is reached or when the time is up.

Then we check if they have two successes or more than they have failures. If so, they achieve a partial success; if not, they suffer a total failure.

Negotiations

Recently another small youtuber covered negotiations in one of her videos, but I’ll cover it again here just to be safe.

Negotiations are Draw Steel’s system for important roleplaying scenes where the heroes are trying to convince an NPC to help them out.

Like, think of those key plot moments when the PCs are arguing with a king, asking him to lend his army to their cause! Stuff like that.

Ultimately, the goal of negotiations is to help the director and the players think about NPCs complexly; people with their own motivations who might be persuaded by the right kind of argument.

In practice negotiations are, like montages, a sequence of tests, but without as much structure on the players’ side.

Before a negotiation begins, the director sets the NPC’s start starting attitude: their interest and their patience.

Both of these numbers go from 0 to 5, but interest usually starts between 1 and 3, while patience starts between 2 and 5. Patience, by the way, can be affected by the the heroes’ languages.

Anyway, the heroes’ objective will be to raise the NPC’s interest as much as possible before their patience runs out.

Next the director must choose the NPC’s motivations and pitfalls from the 12 options listed in the book.

These are the kinds of arguments that will work particularly well (and poorly) if brought up by the heroes. They are things like justice, freedom, or vengeance.

Now it’s time for the heroes to start the negotiation by making an argument that tries to sway the NPC.

To determine how well the argument worked, the PC makes a test using a relevant skill and the outcome will depend on whether they touched on a motivation or pitfall.

If the argument didn’t appeal to a motivation or used a pitfall, then the outcomes look like this.

Notice that only on a tier 3 the NPC’s interest will actually increase.

If the argument touches on a motivation, then the outcomes look like this.

Now it’s much easier for the interest to increase, making it very advantageous for the PCs to think carefully about what this NPC really values.

If the argument touches on a pitfall, then no test is necessary: both the NPC’s interest and patience decrease by 1.

There is also a whole impression score here that relates to the PCs’ renown, but I’m not going to get into that right now.

Check out page 288 of the Heroes book to learn more

Going back to the negotiation, now it’s time for the NPC to make an offer based on their current interest.

Since that ranges from 0 to 5, we have six total options. From worst to best: no and, no, no but, yes but, yes, yes and. Let me clarify.

On interest 0, the NPC refuses the heroes’ offer and will try to obstruct their plans. The negotiation stops immediately.

On interest 1, the NPC flat out refuses the offer.

On interest 2, the NPC refuses the offer, but they might help in some other less impactful way.

On interest 3, the NPC accepts the heroes’ offer, but asks for something extra in return.

On interest 4, the NPC simply accepts the offer.

Finally, on interest 5, the NPC accepts the offer and sweetens the deal with some additional help. They can stop negotiating.

Once this first offer is made, the NPC indicates if they still have patience left. If so, it’s up to the heroes to decide if they want to keep making arguments or if they take the offer.

If the PCs are willing and able to continue making arguments, the NPC’s interest will fluctuate up or down based on the tests, and their patience will steadily decrease.

The heroes can even make tests to uncover the NPC’s motivations if they haven’t done their research before showing up to negotiate.

At some point the negotiation will stop. There are four ways for this to happen: interest drops to 0, interest reaches 5, patience drops to 0, or the heroes choose to stop making arguments.

At that point the NPC makes a final offer based on their current interest. Take it or leave it.

To summarize: negotiations are a system for momentous encounters where the PCs are trying to convince an NPC to do something.

This NPC will have an interest score, a patience score, motivations, and pitfalls.

Then the PCs must make arguments that get resolved as tests. These can have different effects on the NPC’s scores depending on whether the argument used a motivation or pitfall.

Finally, the NPC will make offers based on their interest until the negotiation is done. This can happen on interest 0 or 5, patience 0, or when the heroes are done.

And that’s it for montage tests and negotiations!

If you found them interesting, I’m almost done with the first draft of Hooked on Crafting.

This is my supplement with a quest hook for every single treasure in the Heroes book. And, right now, it has more than 50 montages and 50 negotiations.

Links for Hooked on Crafting, and my Patreon, and my Discord will be in the description.

Until next time! See ya.