TDS 014: Draw Steel is (Content) Complete

TDS 014: Draw Steel is (Content) Complete

· Caio · #podcast  #mcdm  #ttrpg  #draw-steel 

This episode was originally published on YouTube and Spotify. This page only contains the transcript.

Intro

Hello everyone! Happy 2025 and welcome to the fourteenth episode of The Dice Society podcast!

In case you’re joining me for the first time, my name is Caio and I’m the author of thedicesociety.com. This is a show about the Draw Steel TTRPG, where I talk about its development, my playtest experience, and first- and third-party content being made for the game.

There is a lot to cover today, folks! Just before the holidays, MCDM released new playtest packets for backers and patrons! According to the devs, the system is now content complete. We’ll talk about what that means and all the new rules we got in just a moment.

With the new packets, the creators in our community had a field day. There are so many cool creations to talk about that I decided to devote a whole segment of the podcast to them. Prepare your browser, ‘cause you’ll be opening a lot of tabs!

But, before we handle all of that, we’ll see what James had to say about future products in the news segment. Cool? Cool. Now let’s draw steel and get started!

Community and news

News

Besides the release of the new playtest packets, there’s actually not a lot to talk about. The MCDM team took a well deserved break for the holidays and then spent the beginning of the new year planning their next moves.

In a recent Patreon post, James summarized what they want to make in order to properly support Draw Steel over the course of the year:

And, speaking of rules, let’s leave the news behind and move on to our first main topic for today: the new playtest packets!

New packets

On December 20th of last year, the Draw Steel community got what are, most likely, the final public playtests of the game. While BackerKit backers got levels one through three, Patreon supporters got basically the whole game, save for a few details here and there.

And by ’the whole game’, I mean the whole game: 9 classes, 12 ancestries, 18 careers with 6 inciting incidents each, 100 complications, more than 400 monster statblocks, and enough kits, perks, titles, and treasures to make you give up counting.

From now until the release of the game in the late Q2 / early Q3, it’s just polish, polish, polish. That means a bunch of editing, balancing abilities and monsters, making things clearer in the text, and laying out the books. But there will be no new mechanics added; the game is content complete.

So, what has changed from the previous packets? Quite a lot, actually, but nothing too unexpected. I’ve talked about a few of these changes in episodes 011 and 012 already, so I’m not gonna go through them all over again; Build-a-Bear ancestries, cooler heroic resource uses, perks on every other level… That’s all been talked about before.

As for truly new stuff, there are minor changes all over the documents. Revisions like renaming the Censor’s Judgement to Wrath, tweaking how the Tactician’s Mark ability works, downgrading the Catch Breath action to a maneuver… That kind of stuff is everywhere.

But there are also more substantive alterations. On the damage front, most single-target abilities now add a characteristic to the damage so that they scale better with level; for example, the third tier result of the Fury’s Brutal Slam now does ‘9 + Might damage’. Damage mitigation also got an upgrade, with kit stamina bonuses now scaling with echelon of play.

Surges and potencies were the next area to receive a major facelift. If you need a quick refresher, surges are a little resource that you are given by some abilities and that you can spend to power up your own attacks, while potencies are thresholds that monsters need to pass in order to avoid the negative effects of some abilities.

Surges are now much more consistent in their application, and the receiving player is always the one who decides when and how to use them. There are two options for spending surges: you can “increase the damage you deal by an amount equal to your highest characteristic score per surge spent to one creature or object targeted with the ability”, or, in the case of abilities with potencies, “spend two surges to increase the potency by 1 for one of the creatures targeted with the effect”.

With these changes and some additional tweaking to the default potencies values, resistance rolls are no longer a part of the game. Some monsters still might ask heroes to roll a test in order to mitigate the effects of their abilities, but this is no longer called a resistance roll.

On the usability front, XP to level up is now the same for every level, the devs added quick build options for faster character creation, and there is a new gorgeous character sheet. I honestly can’t tell you how much I like this sheet.

For directors, there is now a big chapter at the end of the book containing tips and trick on how to run the game. Of note, there is a big list of sample negotiators, examples of montage tests, and a whole section dedicated to campaign pitches. There is also a link to Matt’s Running the Game series, ‘cause… You know… That’s actually where you’re gonna learn how to run the game.

And that’s it for the Heroes book, but the Monsters book also has some new goodies. Besides an introductory chapter about the purpose of monsters, a huge section dedicated solely to encounter objectives, updated encounter building guidelines, and new factions like animals and dragons, the bestiary has some fantastic additions.

For example, there are now whole chapters dedicated to rivals and dynamic terrain objects. Rivals are monsters with class abilities and variations for each echelon of play, so they can gain levels kinda like heroes; there are also options to add ancestries to their statblocks, making them even more like PCs. Dynamic terrain objects (or DTOs) are hazards, traps, siege engines, or even arcane objects that affect the the dynamics of an encounter; they also have statblocks, with information about stamina, triggers, and how to disable them.

Retainers also got their own section. They work similarly to Flee Mortals retainers, gaining new abilities and more stamina as they level up. The difference here is that you can choose abilities from their faction or from their role! For example, the bugbear retainer is an ambusher, so at level 4 they can gain an exclusive bugbear ability or a generic ambusher ability.

To finish off the bestiary changelog, most monsters got a new tag in addition to their level and role: their organization. This is, if I understood it correctly, an indication of how many creatures it takes to ’equal’ a hero; for example, you need eight minions to challenge a hero, but you only need one solo to challenge five heroes. Between minions and solos, we now get, in increasing power, bands, platoons, troops, and leaders.

Phew! That was… A lot. But the biggest new thing we got was, for sure, an updated Creator License, which means we can all start making content for this new version of Draw Steel! And a lot of people have already made some pretty cool stuff. Let’s talk more about this after the break.

Intermission

Hey there! Before we move on to the next segment of the podcast, let me just quickly plug The Dice Society’s mailing list.

We all know how messed up social media algorithms are and how they have a weird tendency of not showing your stuff to your followers. If you want to avoid the algorithms altogether, how about subscribing?

I won’t flood your inbox, I swear! I just wanna send you a ping once a new piece of content is out, that’s all. You can subscribe at the link in this episode’s description and you can always unsubscribe if you feel like it’s not worth the space in your inbox.

Thanks for your time! Now back to the show…

Community creations

Alongside the new playtest, we got an updated Creator License. Actually, we got the same license, but with a note saying that now it also applies to this most recent backer packet; nothing about it applying to the Patreon packet, though, so content above level three is still off limits.

With the license, creators can “reuse and freely reference the DRAW STEEL text, mechanics, and game rules, including proper names, locations, and characters”. MCDM’s artwork can’t be reproduced or copied, but you can use Draw Steel’s “visual designs as inspiration to create your own original illustrations”.

Given this very permissive license, creators went to town! There is so much cool stuff to talk about that I decided to gather them all into their own section for this one episode. With the sheer volume of items to go through, I’m gonna break down the creations that caught my eye into subgroups and dive deeper into a single creation of each category.

Before we begin, though, let me just highlight the Manifold Creator Collective. This is a new Discord server idealized by @aestus_rpg with the goal of giving Draw Steel content creators a place to talk shop, ask for feedback, brainstorm, and share our projects with each other. If you are interested in creating content for Draw Steel, make sure to leave a comment on the linked thread to get added to this awesome little community.

With that out of the way, let’s start with online tools. My favorite character builder at the moment is for sure Forge Steel by @andyaiken, and it was recently updated for the new rules. Actually, Andy has been updating it with new cool features all the time, so you might want to check out the thread to catch up with the latest additions. In fact, I like Forge Steel so much that I’m going to mention it twice more today.

Other online tools that caught my eye were the updated Stawl encounter builder by friend of the show @jonstodle, a character sheet with built-in rules reminders by @xochilex, the character sheet toolkit 2 by @mrmattdollar, and a simplified encounter calculator by @strugglebus07.

Moving on to director options. Strongholds & Followers for Draw Steel by @zetesofos is an attempt to adapt the S&F D&D rules into Draw Steel. It’s already a pretty solid document, with strongholds by class and even specialist shops.

I also liked the Blood Wolf armor by @.thelazyhero1220, a tactician retainer by @max_falcon_est, and new perks by @zetesofos.

As for player options, meow-o-nekos by @tamwin5 definitely caught my eye. This ancestry is a cat person that has fun traits like ‘Everyone speaks Cat’ and ‘Actually a Liquid’. According to Tamwin, they are ’the native denizens of axiom, the pwane of uttewmost Nya’.

Running the risk of having to pay them royalties, @zetesofos also made some cool player options: the Shadow College of the Crimson Embrace and the Conduit Journey & Glory Domains.

We also got some videos from the community! The first one, called Let’s Make a Draw Steel Hero in Forge Steel!, is from me. In it, I use some artwork by MCDM’s own Grace Cheung as inspiration for my own Harlequin Mask Shadow. Since I go through the whole process with Forge Steel, it’s super easy to follow and might help beginners better understand how to create their own characters.

There were some other interesting videos too, like Running Mysteries in Draw Steel by @sterling2063, and The Curse - A Draw Steel Adventure by @aestus_rpg (which actually shows up again in a second). In case you missed them, there were also Brainstorming a Low-level Adventure and Adventure Brainstorming, Part II!, both by someone called @mattcolville.

In the tokens and cards department, Hero Token cards by @virtuegm55 is a set of MTG-like cards that explains how to use Hero Tokens. As a Magic: the Gathering player, I can 100% see myself handing these out to my players when they do something heroic.

Also make sure to check out 3D printable monster tokens by @aryisiege, condition cards by @dragonturtlemk1, and monster tokens by @zetesofos.

Speaking of tokens, let’s talk about VTTs. Stat Bubbles for Draw Steel by @ectoseamus is an Owlbear Rodeo extension that can display temporary stamina and heroic resources on your tokens. I’m a big fan of OBR, so I’ll definitely be using this for my sessions.

If you don’t use Owlbear, there is also an updated Draw Steel Ruleset for Fantasy Grounds by @kasrith37, an updated Roll20 VTT Setup by @exxodis, and a tool for using Forge Steel character sheets with Roll20 by @jackpoll4100.

In the reference materials category, I loved the Draw Steel cheat sheet by @strattonimbus. This is an updated version of ‘How To Look Cool While Playing Draw Steel’, the cheat sheet that came with the previous backer packet. It’s a single page and contains all the information you need, what more can you wish for?

Class intros by @sparksign, player-facing quick reference cards by @beartech11235, and a 12 panel director screen by @virtuegm55 are some other reference materials that you might want to check out.

To finish off, the community also made some cool adventures for us directors to run. The Curse by @aestus_rpg is a short adventure that introduces a potential campaign antagonist: the Petal Prince. I read it from start to finish, and it’s very fun and evocative. Plus, it includes a new monster and three new items!

If you need more to run, check out a conversion of Fall of Blackbottom by @kj_tailor, and Plug-And-Play Combat Encounters by @gubdm.

Gosh, now I need some water… But yeah, it’s a lot of new stuff! I’m super happy to see all of these amazing creations before the game is even out. Make sure to read this episode’s description for links to every single thing I mentioned and Aestus’ thread introducing the Manifold Creator Collective in case you want to start making stuff for Draw Steel.

Oh, and if I forgot your favorite creation from the community, make sure to leave a comment under this episode so that I can feature it next time. Thanks!

Outro

And that’s it for today, folks. I hope you guys enjoyed the episode and the topics I chose this time.

Make sure to check out this episode’s description for links to Matt’s and James’ Twitch channels; MCDM’s and Matt’s YouTube channels; Draw Steel’s, MCDM’s and Matt’s subreddits; MCDM’s Patreon; MCDM’s Discord; all of my socials; The Dice Society’s mailing list; and a full transcript of this episode.

Before you leave, make sure to rate the podcast in your platform of choice and leave a comment on YouTube or Spotify if you have any questions or suggestions for future episodes.

See you all next time… Thank you very much for listening to me for this past year, and goodbye!