TDS 023: Draw Steel Year One Crowdfunder
This episode was originally published on YouTube and Spotify. This page only contains the transcript.
Intro
Hello, everyone, and welcome to the twenty-third 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.
Iiiiit’s Draw Steel Christmas, folks! November has come and gone, but it left many gifts for the DS-heads. Steel-heads? Steelers? Anyway, we’ve got a lot news to cover, from playtests to full releases.
But the main event today is MCDM’s new BackerKit campaign: Draw Steel Year One! Or just CRACK THE SUN for short. This is going to be the main segment of the episode, with my impressions and a few tips on how to navigate the pledge tiers.
Before we get to all of that, though, how about we talk a little bit about the creations from the community?
Let’s draw steel and get started!
Community
Today’s community corner comes with a little competition. Someone called Matt Colville made a whole video talking about community creations!
As someone who’s been covering this sort of stuff since the very beginning, it’s really nice to see the amazing stuff y’all are making get a shout out from the man himself.
Ok, let’s get to the new stuff! Starting with crowdfunders.
The first one is my own Hooked on Crafting, a supplement with quest hooks for every single crafting prerequisite in Draw Steel.
I won’t bother you with the whole pitch because I already made a video covering everything you need to know about the campaign. So just head to the product’s Itch page to learn more! But remember that the campaign ends on December 17th, so you don’t have much time left.
The next crowdfunder is A Refugee’s Guide to Nomas, by Sam McGurran and the_f_bard. This supplement brings you a psionic city with factions, districts, and NPCs.
You can even watch a bunch of us Draw Steel folks playing a one-shot in Nomas! Rise Heroes Rise posted the video on his channel so you can check it out.
The last crowdfunder is The Cave of Amber Tears, by Heart of Arcana. This campaign is actually already over, but I still wanna highlight it because it set a new record for Draw Steel crowdfunders: 6003 dollars.
This is just a few dollars more than Triglav Games’ Boggits of Kingsmire with November’s exchange rate. Either way, these campaigns are getting bigger and bigger!
Now for adventures. To Defy the Stars, by Heart of Arcana, is a 7th-level space-faring quest against the herald of XXAXX. From the Ashes, by DimaJeydar, is on the opposite end of the spectrum: this is a 1st-level adventure that works as the start of a new campaign.
The Bale Crossing, by Hill_Dwarf, is a 2nd-level sea adventure that can be used as a follow-up to The Fall of Blackbottom.
And finally, You Meet in an Ambush: Codex Edition, by Haezan, is a port of my own adventure to the Codex VTT! Now, once you download the PDF, MCDM patrons also get a code to download a Codex module with the full adventure, no prep required.
In the zines corner, we got the announcement of Ratcatcher Magazine Issue 2, by Onslaught Six and others. We also saw the release of the Blacksmith’s Guild Issue 4, by Max_Falcon_(EST) and others.
If you’re looking for aids and supplements, we also got a few of those. NPC Generator, by EspressoBeans, is able to quickly generate a random NPC with loads of information right from your browser. Codex Fabuludens, by ghost.of.ezekiel, is more physical; this is a set of 36 cards with rules references for surges, conditions, hero tokens, and taking your turn.
MrMattDollar continues his skill-based supplements with Masterful Smithing, with 32 treasures, perks, followers, and more. Dwarves Art Pack, by Inge, is a set of five dwarf illustrations that you can use on your own Draw Steel products.
Finally, to close off the last community corner of the year, Rise Heroes Rise published an unboxing of his Draw Steel Ajax Edition box. The amount of cool stuff in there is breathtaking!
As always, the link to every single creation is in the description of this episode and on the transcript that I post on my blog.
News
As I said in the intro, November brought some cool news and products. Black Friday was kinda Draw Steel Christmas for a lot of people!
However, since this episode is coming out soon after Goblins Points’ November roundup, I really recommend you just listen to Jon’s summary of the news! I’m not gonna say anything too different than what he’s already covered…
But, if you’re driving or washing the dishes, let me give you the gist of it, starting with playtests.
November saw the public playtest of the Beastheart, Draw Steel’s upcoming pet class. I talked a little bit about the Patreon playtest last time, but now anyone can try out the class!
In the meantime, patrons got a couple of exclusive playtests: the Dark Heart of the Wood and the Codex.
The first one is a quest where you battle a Thorn Dragon after investigating a town besieged by cursed plants. I did end up running this adventure for a few people and I really liked it! Did I also kinda kill someone’s character twice? Yes, but that was the best part.
As for the Codex, patrons finally have official access to the VTT. With the Delian Tomb fully implemented and six activation codes per patron, regular folks can finally start running full games using the tool.
Besides playtests, this Black Friday also brought us a couple of releases: The Summoner and The Fall of Blackbottom.
The Summoner is priced at 15 dollars, but you get a lot of content: 61 pages with the class itself, of course, but also rewards, a retainer, rivals, advice for players and directors, and loads of minions.
The Fall of Blackbottom is going for 20 dollars and it includes: the full 84-page adventure, tons of maps, pregens, and director sheets. This, by the way, is Draw Steel’s hardcore introductory adventure, meant for people who want to begin a campaign with a white-hot start.
Speaking of hot, how about we move on to the main topic of today: MCDM’s new crowdfunder for Crack the Sun?
Year One Crowdfunder
No transcript for this part :(
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, TDAWS, Brandon West, and Antan Karmola! 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, for The Dice Society’s two-year anniversary! Thank you all very much, happy holidays, and goodbye!