Looking for Draw Steel extended play review

Blue said:

So the core group that I play with are all great roleplayers, but generally have a wide range of system mastery. Looking at some of the points above, will that be a problem? Not just it terms of character building, but also what actions and such to use during play.

For instance, when we played PF2r there was a fairly wide power gap between characters, and support characters played by some of the players who could contribute more supporting others would go for direct damage instead.

Click to expand...

In my experience being the director for about 8 sessions, as well as reading and watching tons of other play reports, Draw Steel might end up having a sort of system mastery where characters can make OP characters, and over time we all start seeing similar builds as word gets out.

But in my experience Draw Steel characters are all very effective and hard to make bad character builds. It might not be the sort of game where there is the mini game to wrench out every drop of blood for one specific trick that dominates.

Instead what I’m seeing is the optimization is in the party. That is finding the ways one character can setup other characters to be even better. Like one character that picks an ability that gives targets weakness to fire. So another character might have an attack with spending a heroic resource allows them to change the damage type, so could pick fire damage and be even more effective. Otherwise the attacking character would still be amazing, but that optimized team work is something that parties who are willing to cooperate and share their abilities with each other will really dominate even more.

So the system mastery that seems to be designed in the game is not so much character builds as it is party builds.

Found this AMA over at reddit (opened a few hours ago. OP says they'll keep the AMA going through the holidays):

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.

definiteFreakyFishGuy said:

Found this AMA over at reddit (opened a few hours ago. OP says they'll keep the AMA going through the holidays):

Click to expand...

Yeah, that's what I referenced last page. It's an interesting "extremes" view of the system in that the OP and their group basically aren't using a lot of the mechanical frameworks around play/progression/especially combat that often (they're level 4 after all that and generally I think you should expect 3-4 Victories per session averaged which hits about 4-6 sessions per level). But they're having fun!

Reynard said:

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.

Click to expand...

That's interesting! I've largely considered it in the realm of TTRPG design in my head, eg: Apocalypse World (especially 1e) is a highly opinionated design; so is Fabula Ultima. They are designed for a specific type of players to get the most of out it, have a strong authorial voice throughout the text, avoid being generic in their approach to what world-building and implicit settings are present, and are geared towards maximizing a certain experience.

I think DS! gets pretty close.

I’ve wondered about that too.

I may be wrong but the vibe I was getting is that Draw Steel plays close enough to standard tropes about medieval fantasy we all come to it that we can not pay attention too much and go with the trope … but it’s just enough different that we have to pay attention to what’s different and the changes kinda feel like … but why?

Then each change starts to add up and no longer feels like standard medieval fantasy nonsense and becomes … Matt’s specific fantasy.

- - - -

Mind you, I’m put my campaign in my home brew so I’m swapping out the Orden and Timescape elements just like I swapped out D&D’s great wheel and Realms/Greyhawk elements.

So im not minding the effort and in fact I am enjoying playing around with different cosmology expectations, like I’m not forced into the “four” elements or the dumb boring blood war.

zakael19 said:

Also this is just my experience & etc. A guy just posted to reddit that he's done 50 sessions in teh game from playtest forward and his group is level 4 because they've been using it more as a vibe-based "talk to NPCs" and role-play game then a focus on its Victory granting frameworks and tactical combat.

Click to expand...

Oh, I need to look into this, it might be a complete showstopper. The group has been using milestone for 5e and PF2r, with the strong idea that overcoming challenges in any way,m including completely avoiding them through intelligence, knowledge, or expending resources, are all perfectly fine ways to advance.

If RPing our way through a scene, fighting our way through a scene, and stealthing around a scene so it doesn't happen don't all give the same rewards, this might be a poor fit for the group.

For my group, they don’t want a game where negotiation to avoid combat is on the table. They want a monster fighting story.

They’ve liked the few negotiations I’ve forced on them from published scenarios gave victories. But they were more stunned that it could even happen. It’s outside their expectations and wants. They mostly wanna have a monster grinding game so when we’re done with Delian Tomb, that’s what I’ll give them.

Blue said:

Oh, I need to look into this, it might be a complete showstopper. The group has been using milestone for 5e and PF2r, with the strong idea that overcoming challenges in any way,m including completely avoiding them through intelligence, knowledge, or expending resources, are all perfectly fine ways to advance.

If RPing our way through a scene, fighting our way through a scene, and stealthing around a scene so it doesn't happen don't all give the same rewards, this might be a poor fit for the group.

Click to expand...

While the main way to get XP is victories in combat (which convert into xp when taking a respite), you also grant victories for successful negotiations and skill montage tests.
As a director of my characters did something clever to get around a combat encounter I would give them a victory for it.
You can also have characters level up with less xp or more. If you want to you can just tell the players when to level up.

Blue said:

Oh, I need to look into this, it might be a complete showstopper. The group has been using milestone for 5e and PF2r, with the strong idea that overcoming challenges in any way,m including completely avoiding them through intelligence, knowledge, or expending resources, are all perfectly fine ways to advance.

If RPing our way through a scene, fighting our way through a scene, and stealthing around a scene so it doesn't happen don't all give the same rewards, this might be a poor fit for the group.

Click to expand...

Yeah, that's not really a concern - the book outright mentions ways to tweak advancement, like CommodoreKong mentions. Adjusting the amount of XP, or just using Milestone leveling (in which case, Victories become more of a pacing tool) are explicitly called out in the book.

And both Montages and Negotiations are supposed to potentially grant Victories as well, so the potential investigation before dealing with capturing somebody can directly benefit the fight and what have you.