TDS 018: James Introcaso on Draw Steel's Design
This episode was originally published on YouTube and Spotify. This page only contains the transcript.
Intro
Hello everyone and welcome to the eighteenth episode of The Dice Society Podcast! My name is Caio and this is a show about MCDM’s Draw Steel TTRPG where I talk about its development, my playing experience, and first- and third-party content being made for the game.
Today’s episode is a little different. Instead of the regular Draw Steel news roundup, I’ve got something really special for y’all: an interview with none other than James Introcaso.
If this is your first time listening to this podcast, James is MCDM’s lead designer and an overall very prolific game designer. He’s worked on countless DM’s Guild bestsellers like Xanathar’s Lost Notes to Everything Else, Cellar of Death, and My Dad’s Monster Manual; a few official Wizards of the Coast titles like Descent into Avernus, and Dragon Heist; and multiple third-party hit products like Explorer’s Guide to Wildemount, Kingdoms & Warfare, and Flee, Mortals!.
More to the point of this episode, though, he’s the person in charge of Draw Steel’s game design. He agreed to sit down with me and have a conversation about the process and principles behind the game.
I’m really proud of how this interview turned out, and I hope y’all have as much fun listening to it as I had recording it. I learned as many game design lessons in this hour as I had over my whole life of TTRPGs.
Before we begin, just a couple of things: first, we go into a lot of detail about Draw Steel’s mechanics and features, so, if you need a refresher on those, checkout Aestus’ interview with James, where they go through most of the stuff that makes DS the incredible game that it is.
Second, if you still need your monthly fix of Draw Steel news, I’ll add a short segment after the interview going over the main points of the past month. You can also listen to Goblin Points’ latest episode, in which Jon covers April’s MCDM news, including Draw Steel stuff. Link in the description.
And that’s it for now. Let’s get on with that interview, cool? Cool. Now let’s draw steel and get started!
Interview
Transcript not available :(
News and Community
How did you like the interview? Great, right? James is an awesome guest, it was great talking to him!
But, just so we don’t loose the habit, let me quickly summarize last month’s Draw Steel news and creations from the community in algorithm-friendly numbered lists. In the news department, we have…
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Number 1: MCDM released a playtest of the new Delian Tomb adventure on Patreon. Go check it out, it’s awesome!
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Number 2: The Codex now supports Triggered Abilities. Check out Rise Heroes Rise’s latest danger room video to see how they’re working.
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Number 3: The dice from MCDM’s dicefunder have started to ship. The custom titles that come in the box are public, so you can check them out for free with the link in the description.
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Number 4: The team started working on a demo adventure to be used in conventions and game stores. It should be free and modular, but we still don’t know much about it.
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And number 5: Paul Hughes wrote a big post on Patron going over the design of the Beastheart. It’s an awesome post if you want to know more about MCDM’s pet class.
Now for the creations from the community…
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Number 1: A-a-ron is making custom Draw Steel dice which you can buy right now! I personally commissioned a Dice Society-themed set and ohmygod, they look amazing.
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Number 2: TicTacTactics made some IRL ability cards for Draw Steel. They look super cool and I kinda wanna make some…
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Number 3: Inge and Dig made a Gol ancestry! The art looks really good and the PDF is free on Itch, so you should definitely go get it.
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Number 4: the_f_bard is starting a fanzine for Draw Steel. The first issue should come out in June or July, and submissions are open to everyone! Reach out to them to share your work.
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And number 5: Triglav Game’s vampire class has funded! Ananam made the announcement on BackerKit and invited everyone to their Discord server. Great job, guys!
I’ll try to go over all of this in more detail on the next episode, but this will unfortunately have to suffice for now. I’m moving houses and jobs, so I really can’t write any more than this… Sorry!
Outro
And that’s it for today, folks. I hope you guys enjoyed the episode!
A special thanks to my current Initiate-level patrons: IronMonocle and Shaeomar! Thank you so so much <3
Make sure to check out this episode’s description for links to all of my socials, The Dice Society’s Patreon, and a full transcript of this episode. I’ll also leave some links there to James’, Matt’s, and MCDM’s accounts so you can follow them too.
See you all next time, thank you very much, and goodbye!