TDS 020: Draw Steel Is Here

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

Intro

Hello everyone and welcome to the twentieth episode of The Dice Society Podcast! My name is Caio and this is a show about Draw Steel, a tactical roleplaying game made by MCDM.

As you probably already know, Draw Steel is out. Let me repeat that: Draw Steel is out.

A year and a half after the BackerKit campaign. Thirty months after the first Patreon post. So many livestreams. Uncountable Discord messages. And the game is finally here.

I’m at a loss for words. I guess the only thing I can say is congratulations to the team. They did it, they fucking did it. As you hear this, thousands of backers have already played their first sessions. The game is real.

So let’s draw steel and get started!

Draw Steel release

Ok, sentimental moment over. Let’s begin today’s episode with the big news: everyone who backed Draw Steel has received their PDF copies of both the Heroes and the Monsters books. July 31st will, from now on, be known as Draw Steel Day!

Together with the core books, MCDM has also released two adventures: The Road to Broadhurst and The Delian Tomb. I’ve talked about both before, but I’m guessing at least a few new people are going to be listening to this episode, so let me quickly summarize them…

The Road to Broadhurst is a free one-shot meant for experienced Directors who want to demo the game at conventions and stores. It’s also pretty modular, so you can run it in one, two, three, or four hours, and for three, four, five, or six players.

The packet includes a 12-page PDF, a cheat sheet, two maps, four encounter sheets, and nine pregens (one of each class). Speaking of encounters, the adventure is super simple: the heroes need to escort a medicine wagon to the small town of Broadhurst; along the way, they face two combats, one montage test, and one negotiation.

Finishing the adventure in Broadhurst is useful, because that’s exactly where The Delian Tomb starts. This second adventure is truly Draw Steel’s starter set; for ten bucks, it literally guides beginner Directors through the rules as they become relevant.

The first encounter, for example, has instructions for how to set up minis on a map, read-aloud text that explains the rules of combat to everyone, and even suggestions of what exact actions you might want to take on your first turn.

But don’t assume that this is a short adventure; the main PDF has 70 pages, and this is only the beginning! You also get a 96-page PDF of encounters, a 75-page PDF with starter rules, a bunch of handouts, nine fully-arted simplified pregens, and more encounter sheets and maps than I can count.

As for the story, it is based around the famous Delian Tomb from one of Colville’s first videos. The tomb itself has been greatly expanded, but now the heroes also have plenty of adventuring to do outside of the tomb.

I personally haven’t played all the way to the end, but what I did see was really fun. For ten bucks, this is almost a no-brainer! If you’re at least a little bit interested in Draw Steel, this is definitely where you should start. You can get it right now from MCDM’s website or from DriveThroughRPG. Links in the description.

And that’s all for the adventures! As for the core books, there’s actually not a lot for me to say… If you’ve bought the books, you can look at the PDFs yourself. That’s the news!

If you want my opinions, though, I posted a big review on YouTube, which quickly became my most-viewed video ever! I do suggest watching it and maybe subscribing while you’re there? But I can give you the gist of it; here it goes…

Draw Steel 100% delivers on tactical, heroic, cinematic fantasy. The combat system is dynamic and cooperative, the core gameplay loop incentivizes players to keep pushing forward, and the mechanics help your story flow without weighing it down.

Combat is obviously the highlight of the game, given that even lowly melee fighters get plenty of cool tactical options, but it isn’t the only thing the game excels at. There are some really good social mechanics in the rules, and the flavor and worldbuilding are visible at every corner of the text.

But, it’s not all perfect. As with every creative endeavor, there are things that will not work on even the biggest fans of the system! For me, the layout felt a little too dry, I found first-level characters too complex, and… I prefer my dwarves bearded! There, I said it!

Overall, if you’re excited about the tagline ’tactical, heroic, cinematic fantasy,’ you’ll most likely enjoy Draw Steel. You can already get the PDFs from the MCDM store, but, if you want to wait for the physical books, they’re being printed right now and should start shipping in the near future.

The only downside of this first printing of the books is that it won’t include any bug fixes made after the release. Revised PDFs should be coming very soon, but the books that have already been printed will stay that way forever. From what I’ve seen, though, there are no problems large enough that a short errata won’t fix.

And… that’s it for the release. Twenty episodes later, I’m finally covering the actual, real game instead of drafts and playtests. It was a wild ride that I never thought would be as fun as it was. I found an awesome community, made new friends, and have played so much Draw Steel.

I have to congratulate the MCDM team and all of their contractors for putting out an amazing product that will, for sure, leave a mark in the TTRPG space. I’m super grateful to have been a small part of this journey.

If you want to stay with me for this new chapter of The Dice Society, I recommend joining my Discord server. I have some cool things in the oven that just might be of interest to you… Link in the description.

News

Now let’s talk a little bit about the miscellaneous news from the past month. There’s not a lot, so I’ve organized it into a numbered list:

• Number 1: As you probably expected, the Draw Steel Creator license has been updated to include the core books. Expect a lot of updates to online tools like Stawl and Forge Steel in the coming weeks.

• Number 2: All the way back in July, patrons got the playtest of the Fall of Blackbottom. The adventure changed a bit, but the core remains the same as the version we saw in the last playtest.

• Number 3: Titancraft is going to launch a Kickstarter campaign with assets for Draw Steel! We don’t know much more than this, but I’ll keep you posted when the campaign launches.

• Number 4: I’ve already talked about the new ancestries coming to Draw Steel over the next few months: radenwights, shadow elves, goblins, gnomes, and fairies. But we’re getting another one! Dragonfly people! I’m excited to see the art for this.

• Number 5: During GenCon, MCDM tested a new way to sell physical products that are lighter and smaller than RPG books: dice boxes. At the Chessex booth, they sold Draw Steel dice that came bundled with a QR code for The Delian Tomb; this way, new players could get both dice and a starter adventure in the same packet! It’s a cool idea, but we have to see how well it works.

• Number 6: MCDM posted the first episode of their in-person playthrough of The Delian Tomb. It is run by lead designer James Introcaso and will probably last five or six episodes. I really enjoyed the characters they brought to the table, it was super fun to watch!

• And number 7: We got a little more information on the monetization of the Codex, MCDM’s tailor-made VTT for Draw Steel. Their current plan is for patrons to get access as part of their subscriptions and for non-patrons to get a key when they buy the core rules of the game. Note that everyone at your table needs either a Patreon subscription or an access key to play, not just the Director! To make this easier and cheaper, they plan on offering table packs at a discounted price once the Codex is ready for prime time.

Ok, that’s it for the news segment. Now follow me to the community corner, where I’m gonna talk about the new creations that came out since my previous episode.

Community

Given the release of the game and the sheer amount of time since episode 19, we have quite a few creations from the community to cover.

We’ll start with videos for people just getting into Draw Steel. The first one is by me and it’s called What Is This Game?! It is the pilot of my new How to Draw Steel series that teaches newbies… How to play the game, obviously. The next episode is coming out pretty soon, so keep your eyes peeled!

We also got a video by sterling2063 called Where to Get Started With Draw Steel and one by Sam McGurran called Its Time To Draw Steel | Why YOU Should Run The MCDM RPG.

Besides videos, we also got a bunch of guides for beginners. JesterOC made Draw Steel Crash Course v1.0, a slide deck to show to your players, and Jonas Tintenseher made a one-page Draw Steel cheat sheet which I thought was amazing.

KJTailor made both the Newbie Director Helper, a document with tips for new Directors, and a changelog that lists all mechanical changes implemented since the last playtest packet. Finally, finaljas90 wrote a build recommendations guide to help people select good treasures and imbuements for their characters.

In the world of livestreams, we got an awesome Draw Steel retrospective by Jon de Nor and a PDF giveaway by Rise Heroes Rise! In the latter, Cameron runs a bunch of crazy characters through my very own adventure; it was super funny!

Moving on to VTTs, Seamus wrote an article called Running Draw Steel in Owlbear Rodeo which is actually where I run my games. Also Kasrith made a collection of Roll20 Macros if you prefer that platform.

Speaking of virtual, Jon de Nor updated Stawl with a Montage Test Runner and added a bunch of cool features for patrons that I have already begun using. Xentis also updated their tool, the Steel Compendium; now it features all of the content from the final books, so you can easily access it online.

If you’re a content creator or just looking for some visually interesting stuff, we got new templates too. Dazrin made a gorgeous DS Style Template in Google Docs and Cal designed Blank Class-specific Character Sheets for those who weren’t too hot on the official ones.

Finally, in the products department, I have four new items for you to add to your shopping basket. Pesto is crowdfunding his Kobold Ancestry alongside JeffCStevens’ Weapons of Legend; by the way, if you back both, you get some extra goodies! I had never seen this kind of collaboration before, but I’m glad it’s already happening in the Draw Steel space.

Anyway, Heart of Arcana released the final version of their Tomb of the Crescent Moon and the_f_bard, along with many contributors, launched The Blacksmith’s Guild - Issue 2.

As always, the link to every single community creation mentioned here is in the description of this episode and on the transcript that I post on my blog. Make sure to check’em out!

Outro

And that’s it for today, folks. I hope you guys enjoyed the episode!

A special thanks to my current Initiate and Adept-level patrons: Seth Lang, Tomas Rodriguez, Brandon West, and TDAWS! Thank you all so so much <3

Make sure to check out this episode’s description for links to all of my socials, The Dice Society’s mailing list, and my Discord server. 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!