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Draw Steel Playtest July 2024
🕑 Added 2024-07-27 01:55:23 +0000 UTCUPDATE: The survey is now closed. Thank you for all your feedback!
UPDATE: The survey for the playtest is now available!
UPDATE: The documents have been updated as of 7/28/2024 at 8:30AM Pacific US time to give some clarity on the generation and retention of Insight, Focus, and Piety as well as the Fury's Bear Claws ability.
Folks, it’s time to DRAW STEEL™!
THIS is the new Patreon packet representing a major chunk of the rules. It’s a lot, and folks are going to be excited to dig in. But we strongly encourage you to read this post before opening up the packet.
What’s In The Packet
The new Patreon Packet includes everything you need to start an actual campaign. That includes character creation! Meaning you get:
All the ancestries that will be in the Heroes book are currently available.
The rules for designing the culture your hero comes from are included. Future drafts will include preset choices for folks who want to skip the a la carte process.
Several careers are included. Many more are coming in the future!
The first level of five classes! Each with several subclasses.
Tons of kits! This is all the martial kits for the game plus about half of the caster kits.
Complications! Lots of classic heroes have some high weirdness in their backstory the first time we meet them. Whether your hero starts with one is up to you!
And that’s not all! You also get rules for…
Renown!
Negotiation!
Montage Tests!
It’s a lot!
There’s More To Come
Obviously there’s more classes and levels to come. A lot of things in here are incomplete. We designed enough to prove out an idea, we polished it based on feedback, and now it’s your turn to take it for a test drive. But we imagine you’ll have even more options in the finished game. There’s only 10 complications right now for instance, but we have many more planned. We’ve got rules for research, crafting, and treasures coming soon!
So please keep that in mind as you’re designing your character. Some things, like ancestries and martial kits, we think this is probably all of them. But things like careers and complications and languages? There’s lots more work to do.
There Are Known Issues
Some of the stuff in here, we already know needs revision and we have solutions planned. Please check the known issues list. It takes time, weeks, to get a packet ready and in that time our testers find problems, we talk about solutions, agree on a plan, but that new design has to go through testing first, before we can add it to a packet. So all packets will be slightly out of date with our internal design.
Tons Of Polish Left
The current packet has been through a lot of testing. And your feedback will help us polish it even more. And then the backers will get a chance to poke holes in everything. Lots of names are going to change. Wacky names will be tamed, boring names will get more exciting. Names that are impenetrable or abstruse will be made clearer. More balanced, yes, thanks to your feedback, but also more straightforward.
But please remember you are reading raw text and this is not how the game was meant to be experienced. The art and layout will make the rules easier to use. Many of you by now know the maxim: presentation is part of design. Well, there’s very little presentation in here and that’s going to make it harder to figure things out.
If you can’t figure out some rule, don’t panic, that’s normal in any game like this. We encourage you to come by the discord and ask questions about the things that aren’t clear (more on this below).
What’s Not Going To Change
We are broadly happy with the current design. Our goal moving forward is to polish the stuff that’s in here, not throw it out and start again. That means lot of balance changes, tweaking rules, but if you don’t like the power roll, for instance? If you don’t like managing your heroic resource? Well it’s possible the game’s not for you. That will absolutely be true for some of you! We just hope it’s very few. 😀
Your Feedback
You’re going to have a LOT of feedback, even from just reading the packet! And we want to hear it! That's why we put together this survey. You have until August 27th at noon Pacific US time to get us feedback!
Before you fill it out, we'd love for you to actually play the game if you have a chance to do so. Many things that are not immediately obvious will click once you start playing. So as you make characters, build encounters, actually play, keep notes about the things that weren’t clear, the features that seemed too strong or too weak.
We also want to encourage the community to talk about the game and ask each other questions, just like you would if we were all at a big table reading the rules together.
It’s A Lot
This is a complicated game! It won’t be possible for new players to hold the entire game in their head at once. 1st level heroes in this game are already (locally) famous and start with all their core features. This means the first time you play, it may take a couple of rounds, maybe even more than one encounter, to really lock in how your stuff works. When it’s best to use your trigger, how your Heroic Resource works, how you can or should synergize with the other players. That’s fine, just play and it will all become clear. Well, most of it will. Some of it will! 😀
Some terms in here, some rules, you’ll have to learn. We try to use clear language but tactical rules can get very fiddly and it takes several drafts and iterations to make it clear. We also deploy jargon when we think its appropriate and that means not every term in this game will be perfectly clear the first time you use it. As you play and get used to things, a lot of stuff will become clear and you’ll start to see why things work the way they do.
So don’t panic if you begin your first encounter feeling a little overwhelmed. That is normal. It’s a brand new game, and it’s a tactical game with everything that means.
Use The Discord (it’s free!)
We very strongly urge you to use the MCDM Discord to ask questions and otherwise talk about the game. If you ask questions here on the Patreon, very few people will see your question. There’s also an LFG channel there specifically for patrons looking for games with other patrons.
Something you’ll notice when you read the rules; not every rule will be perfectly clear to you the first time you read it. That’s normal, happens with every game more complex than, say, Codenames. But just talking to other players, other patrons, other folks in the community, the answers will be clear. The same rule that had you scratching your head? Was perfectly clear to someone else. And you probably understood something that baffled other folks. So not only will you get good and pretty rapid answers to your questions, you can also help other people learn the game! That’s a normal part of learning any new game; discovering how everything works together is actually pretty fun, so do not miss out.
Being a patron means you get access to the patrons-only channel in the discord, that’s where all the talk will happen so be sure to link your patreon account to your discord account!
Community Creations
At this point we expect and hope lots of people will start making and sharing stuff with the community. That’s good! We love that! It’s sort of why we do this? But please do not just copy huge chunks of the document and share it online. Quoting a sentence or paragraph for clarity? No problem. But posting entire columns of text will be frowned upon.
Folks will be tempted to take the entire packet and drop it into an online framework to make character creation easier? We get that but that’s just another way of copying and distributing the rules. We already have a first draft of our creators license, and it includes language on which parts of the finished book you’ll be able to copy and use as-is to make your own third-party or homebrew creation easier, but right now none of that is locked in, and the rules aren’t complete!
Anything you make that uses your own language we have no control over, knock yourself out.
From Us To You
We’ve put an enormous amount of work into this over the last seven months, and there’s lots more to do. But the only reason we do this is so you can take it and play with it and make it yours. Please do so. Your stories of character creation, encounter design, adventuring, teamwork, vanquishing villains are like oxygen to us.
Comments
BaconBits
I know these are just playtest documents, but... since nobody in the TTRPG business seems to do it, would you guys consider adding the embedded index to the PDF? It really helps with Ctrl+F searching a PDF. It does increase the file size, but it makes searching the PDF almost instantaneous. The problem is that the document security on protected PDFs doesn't permit it. https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/using/creating-pdf-indexes.html
Eran Arbel
It has been previously stated that you don't want Dwarves to be more Dwarf throughout the game, but isn't the upgrade to the Draconian's rush just that?
Daniel Outhier
Presumably because "Draw Steel" isn't something e.g. wizards do. I'm on the fence about it personally.
Ernge
Question about distributing: I'm assuming it's okay to post the whole packet in a Discord group with friends so I can play with them, is that right?
Eran Arbel
I think it also sounds like "trying to be cool" but not really.
Eran Arbel
I'm saying how this makes me feel. It's not that I had a problem with Pathfinder because we knew where we were going or with Dungeon World even though the world we were in wasn't a dungeon. I'm trying to explain my feelings, unlike a grognard. I think I especially feel this way about this game is because it's so evocative and because I care about it and put much hope on it.
Heliks
That's kind of like thinking "Flee, Mortals!" will exclude people who play a character who is immortal, or that "Where Evil Lives" cannot be used for an antagonist that is Chaotic Neutral, and especially not if the location isn't the antagonist's legal mailing address. It's alright if you personally don't vibe with the title - "I don't like it because it doesn't sound good to me" is a legitimate stance to take - but I think saying that it is being exclusionary to people who don't resolve actions specifically and literally with an alloy of iron and carbon is doing a disservice to readers' abilities to think in the abstract.
Alexander Morland
All the ancestry stories makes the hair on my arm raise. So good. They are really good at making me want to play them.
Ernge
I remember it too! I feel like he may have even said it in multiple videos.
Ernge
That's true. I had the same doubt about "Draw Steel" when I first saw someone predict the name. But I'm starting to think that it's no worse than "Dungeons and Dragons". I've played Dungeons and Dragons for years without ever seeing a dragon, and I'm only in a dungeon occasionally.
Samhain
Then that’s on your circles; it’s not MCDM’s responsibility to idiot-proof the name. Honestly, I think the name is fantastic.
Eran Arbel
Combat is not always steel. Action can be called on occasions that are not strictly combat. Also, I'm afraid that in my circles, it'll be the opening to too many jokes.
Eric Gershik
Exclusionary how?
Eran Arbel
I don't like the name because, even after listening to Matt explaining it, I still feel it's reductive and could feel exclusionary but I hope it grows on me.
Piper Deck
I also couldn't find it at first, but there's a link to do that in the header of the Dropbox page
Eric Venegoni
This is really great! It has this quality of feeling exciting and new, but also familiar to an MCDM fan. I am super excited to see what my players less exposed to the development have to say, but we are excited to try. We use so much MCDM in our 5e as it is, it’s time we had the pure, uncut stuff right from the source. Draw Steel!
MCDM Productions
Yeah but we felt the time was right to let folks in on the name. We originally thought the name and the license would happen with the backer packet.
Eran Arbel
Did you say you would include the license for homebrewing when you released the name?
Tanner Pancake
My body is ready
Moshtradamus
Shout out to the guy who reccomended the name Draw Steel during the Kickstarter! I remember you!
Tirso Peguero
Yessssss. I've been reading your updates for months amid a dry spell of gaming and this is exactly what I need to dive back in!!
Ordinal
Could you share the enclosing folder on Dropbox please? So that we can just copy the whole folder to our own Dropboxes, or download the whole thing at once?
Otto
HUZZAH 🍻
Chris Cassada
This is the best news I've woken up to in many, many months! I love the name and can't wait to shout it right before combat encounters!
Otto
When I read DRAW STEEL! I heard Matt’s voice immediately. I’m probably imagining it, but I swear he said that in a video 😅
Jake Walsh
Who knew that Grace’s guide to painting chainmail was also a hint at the name… Draw Steel…
Nathan Peacock
Looks like my regular session tomorrow is getting a slight schedule change! 😁😁😁
Sunbear Games
This is probably my first contender for the game I'll be primarily playing/homebrewing after D&D. Excited to read the new packet!
Gustavo
w00p w00p
Roman Penna
Wooo. Thanks for all your hard work James and team :)
Stef Linson
Immediately digging in (after reading the post)! Very excited!
BaconBits
Ah, I guessed the name correctly. You told us in the Kickstarter! Can't wait to read and play the packet.
Josh Williams
Tops! Starting a campaign ASAP!
Bryce Anderson
Great name! Absolutely love it! Can’t wait to tear open the packet and play with some buddies.
Mentalic
Great name
That black guy
Simple effective and used before , good stuff
Paul L.
Steel hath been drawn!!!
slvgRPGs
Oh my god NAME REVEAL!!!!!
Jacob Montague
Huzzah!
Tobias L
LETS GOOO!!!
Jesse
LET'S GOOOOO
Danny N Thach-Song
Excitement!
Chappy Hall
Rad! Can't wait to try it out!
Eaten Sandwich
Such an evocative name! Very excited!!
Malachi Lynch
Woohoo!
Spencer Aurand
Pumped!!
Peter Bess
Heck yeah!!! Time to venture forth and "Draw Steel!" Love it.
Jake Walsh
It is a good day
Nick Enquist
Whooooo!!!!!!
