Looking for Draw Steel extended play review

[AdmundfortGeographer]

(in which case, Victories become more of a pacing tool)

Good point.

You can ignore victories as a meter for when to level up.

But victories are used as a metric for how powered up in a day the heroes are at the next encounter (more victories = more starting heroic resource), and how tough the director makes the monsters in the next encounter (for every two victories, encounters are bumped up in difficulty = to +1 character, also each victory = +1 malice)

 

[Blue]

Good point.

You can ignore victories as a meter for when to level up.

But victories are used as a metric for how powered up in a day the heroes are at the next encounter (more victories = more starting heroic resource), and how tough the director makes the monsters in the next encounter (for every two victories, encounters are bumped up in difficulty = to +1 character, also each victory = +1 malice)

Are there easy tools for this? If characters are pushing on or not seems mostly in their control, so the Director needs to be able to on the fly mid-session handle those changes. It seems like if something is the 7th encounter of a day or the first of a new day will make a large change in what the Direction needs prepared.

Also, how does it handle what in D&D would be called "non-level specific worlds"? Must the director craft the encounters to be on-par for the party, or can the party be in an area with varied challenges and it's up to them to figure out what they want to do, like a classic D&D megadungeon.

EDIT: I'm not asking this trying to poke holes in it, I'm trying to see how good of a match for the playstyle of a particular group it is.

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

Are there easy tools for this? If characters are pushing on or not seems mostly in their control, so the Director needs to be able to on the fly mid-session handle those changes. It seems like if something is the 7th encounter of a day or the first of a new day will make a large change in what the Direction needs prepared.

Great questions. As far as the party pushing on, the most direct tool for when a party pushes on is within the player’s control.

Are PCs too low in each of their recoveries and do they want to press their luck and push on and risk death and dying because they have no recoveries to boost their Stamina during combat, or take the respite and recharge their recoveries? It’s fun to watch the players wrestle with this one!

Also, how does it handle what in D&D would be called "non-level specific worlds"? Must the director craft the encounters to be on-par for the party, or can the party be in an area with varied challenges and it's up to them to figure out what they want to do, like a classic D&D megadungeon.

EDIT: I'm not asking this trying to poke holes in it, I'm trying to see how good of a match for the playstyle of a particular group it is.

Directors are empowered to craft encounters that are out of their party’s current capabilities, and let players be stupid and run into a buzz saw. Then have the tools to turn what would be the TPK into “you wake up in the hobgoblin general’s dungeons”.

Also, directors are not mandated to spend their malice points. One way to let up on the gas of an encounter is just let malice go unspent if you want to let the PCs suffer for a series of unfortunate tier 1 results from the RNG gods curse. I’m learning to not press my players to the bleeding edge and spend every drop of Malice now, but at the start I was feeling like I was giving them a soft session if I wasn’t spending all points.

Because PCs running out of recoveries is the closest measure to PCs dying or needing to take the respite (respites refresh recoveries to max again plus respites victories reset to 0 and convert into XP), I often reminded players that when a session was coming to a close they left some hero tokens unused and the rules allow conversion of 2 tokens into a recovery. And since they supply of hero tokens refreshes every session those tokens are basically free recoveries, using them up means their characters can last longer before needing to take a respite/rest. I just ran a playtest of Dark Heart of the Woods (an upcoming adventure for the future Encounters book), and saw how the adventure design gave out hero tokens as rewards with victories. So that is one more tool at your disposal to give out if you seen things turning dire, offer hero tokens and let the players decide if they want to spend them on recoveries or something else!

 

[zakael19]

Are there easy tools for this? If characters are pushing on or not seems mostly in their control, so the Director needs to be able to on the fly mid-session handle those changes. It seems like if something is the 7th encounter of a day or the first of a new day will make a large change in what the Direction needs prepared.

Also, how does it handle what in D&D would be called "non-level specific worlds"? Must the director craft the encounters to be on-par for the party, or can the party be in an area with varied challenges and it's up to them to figure out what they want to do, like a classic D&D megadungeon.

EDIT: I'm not asking this trying to poke holes in it, I'm trying to see how good of a match for the playstyle of a particular group it is.

There's online tools (Forge Steel) that I think are pretty great which allow you to input the current # of party victories and it'll update the encounter balance calculation on the fly.

it's a highly mathed and refined tactical combat game though, it's set up for "balanced" combat to work well. If you want to handle challenges which would lethal to face head on, they'd work better as Montages involving avoidance or subterfuge or whatever (I think the new official adventure has something like this - trying to avoid an invading army or such).

Also, I think that the Victories -> XP thing just works great. I've kinda come to loathe "milestone" (GM fiat) leveling, and love the player-controlled side of the house (with caveats, as noted it's up to the GM to set up Montages/Negotiations/assess skill chains as earning Victories, and deploy Encounters). The total lack of any sort of player-facing XP system (unlike ALL THE ACTUAL NARRATIVE FIRST GAMES ahem) is one of the weakest parts of Daggerheart IMO, and I'm glad DS! didn't go that route by default.

 

[Staffan]

Directors are empowered to craft encounters that are out of their party’s current capabilities, and let players be stupid and run into a buzz saw. Then have the tools to turn what would be the TPK into “you wake up in the hobgoblin general’s dungeons”.

Another thing is that the game explicitly supports victory conditions beyond "kill them all". This can be as easy a variant as "Kill that one in particular" or "Kill half of them", but it can also be things like "Bring Macguffin to the spot" or "Protect this thing" or whatever else.

 

[zakael19]

Another thing is that the game explicitly supports victory conditions beyond "kill them all". This can be as easy a variant as "Kill that one in particular" or "Kill half of them", but it can also be things like "Bring Macguffin to the spot" or "Protect this thing" or whatever else.

Yeah, by "supports" we mean even more "presents a framework on how to use that with an explicit list and suggestions on setting it up and Victories are based on success at the encounter objective and not killing."

 

[Aldarc]

Gotcha. Thanks, that's reassuring. It sounds like you're saying they are strongly grounded in their setting & lore. I've played plenty of bespoke games, like Blades in the Dark, that craft the character choices for the setting.

"Opinionated", which I've seen from not just you but others, was worrisome. To pull a dictionary definition: "assertively dogmatic in expressing opinions."

Tailored to the setting and a unique, non-D&D feel? That's all good.

I have seen the term "opinionated design" before, too, and it is surprisingly difficult to find a concise definition of the term. It looks like it comes from the world of software development, and basically mean "constraints." But if anyone has a good blog post, substack, whatever digging into the term as it relates to TTRPGs, I would much appreciate it.

I have personally talked before about how I like "games with opinions" or "opinionated games." I don't know about @zakael19, but I typically mean that the game's author has clear opinions about how the game should be played, best practices, underlying game philosophy, and genre experience that are communicated clearly through the text. They are less "You can do whatever you want with the game! YOLO!" and more "This is a game about A. I designed this game to do X and it's not designed to do Y and Z. Play should focus on this, let me tell you how..." IME, a lot more indie games, whether narrativist or OSR, tend to be fairly opinionated about what the game is about and what it isn't about.

 

[zakael19]

I have personally talked before about how I like "games with opinions" or "opinionated games." I don't know about @zakael19, but I typically mean that the game's author has clear opinions about how the game should be played, best practices, underlying game philosophy, and genre experience that are communicated clearly through the text. They are less "You can do whatever you want with the game! YOLO!" and more "This is a game about A. I designed this game to do X and it's not designed to do Y and Z. Play should focus on this, let me tell you how..." IME, a lot more indie games, whether narrativist or OSR, tend to be fairly opinionated about what the game is about and what it isn't about.

And DS! is very opinionated and open in that regard as it walks through what it thinks “tactical heroic cinematic fantasy” is right on the first and second page.

 

[Aldarc]

And DS! is very opinionated and open in that regard as it walks through what it thinks “tactical heroic cinematic fantasy” is right on the first and second page.

Draw Steel recommends playing other games for other play experiences.

 

[zakael19]

Draw Steel recommends playing other games for other play experiences.

It’s very funny to see somebody go “but what if instead we played in the framework of this game away from its strengths and focus.” Proof that RPGers are skilled at playing the game their table wants even if the ruleset wants something different.