Anonymous3
Explorer
Matt didnt even suggest the name. His partners/colleagues all put names down and it went through multiple voting processes to finally arrive at Draw Steel.
Draw (baseless) Conclusions.
Draw Steel the MCDM RPG!
- Thread starter darjr
- Start date
Draw (baseless) Conclusions.
Ruin Explorer
Legend
As an aside, whilst I wasn't hugely impressed by the name, when I mentioned to my main group that the MCDM RPG was now called Draw Steel!, they seemed to think it was a cool name, that's a random little bit of anecdata for us.
Ruin Explorer
Legend
Interesting, had it on in the background. A few observations:
1) Matt didn't handle the legal stuff very well, like, he's too busy trying to be a hero and blaming the evil lawyers, and also frankly overcomplicated some fairly simple stuff. Not sure why he wanted to discuss that seemingly almost unprepared on stream lol. I could have done a better job, frankly, without even being prepared. You can't have that sneering/blaming attitude to lawyers, man, not when you're explaining a legal contract.
2) Oooof some very sophomoric opinions and Just So stories re: film, though I feel unqualified to offer comment on his Gen X music opinions. Particularly insane to hear that the 1970s didn't have attractive movie stars and that Robert De Niro wasn't good-looking (on what planet?). I feel like this is very cis-hetero-male talk of the most blind kind lol. Like, oh yeah Robert Redford, Al Pacino, Bobbie De Niro, John Travolta, Burt Reynolds, James Caan, Clint Eastwood, Harrison Ford, etc. none of them were at all outstandingly hot to the point where they're considered paragons of hotness to this day! You could perhaps make more of a case that some less-conventionally attractive women got more starring roles (which is I'm sure what he's thinking), but "Oh now we just cast hot people for escapism, not like the 1970s" has to be one of the worst and least reflected movie takes I've ever heard.
3) Interesting stuff about design and what choices they make and how they make them. This is where he seemed most "in his element" to me. Agreed with most of his points.
4) Lore stuff was decent but it's kind of a pity we're getting yet another fantasy setting where elves are Just Better Than Everyone Else And Everyone - including the other races - Agrees With That. Also the whole "gods are definitely real and highly active" seems hard to square with people venerating them the way they alleged do, and with there being so many of them with such precisely defined domains, but maybe that's just because he wasn't being asked to explain that part. A lot of the gods had fairly decent concepts in the sense that they weren't dull and felt somewhat original (or at least entertaining), but most of them seemed like total wankers, in an unacknowledged way, which, in a 1994 product might have been forgivable, but in a 2024 one seems far less so.
Like, the supposedly-super-popular farming god believes physical strength denotes honesty and goodness, and has people have tree-cutting competitions to show who is telling the truth, etc., which is obviously horrifically ableist, sexist, ageist, arguably racist, and so on, and I felt it was a little weird he didn't like, nod at that, he seemed to think this was just a belief one might reasonably have (AFAIK, no known historic human god has ever had anything even close to this belief, note, before anyone suggests otherwise) - like does Matt even know that that's totally creepy and messed-up? Does he realize that any society which venerated physical labour the way described would be pretty terrifying for like, the majority of humans? Or is this part of the same Gen X cis-hetero-guy deal that makes him think they didn't have super-attractive movie stars in the 1970s?
And the god who believes if you share knowledge or skill, it diminishes the power of that knowledge/skill, that's like, super-creepy. That's an evil god, directly deleterious to society (esp. when one considers stuff like medicine, sanitation, structural integrity of buildings/earthquake resistance, and so on). But he seems to think most people would be totally happy and cool with that? That's the kind of stuff that tears societies apart. That causes mass slaughters because the believers are trying to strengthen the power of some knowledge by reducing how many people know it! Especially as he stresses that believers routinely go around publicly blaming failed architecture, broken swords, etc. on sharing knowledge! This is a god who is literally opposed to science, opposed to the advancement of society, even opposed really to engineering etc. - but it's Nekros the Tyrant we're supposed to be afraid of? Hmmmmm. Feel like that guy is less likely to cause huge problems for society in the long-run than Mr Knowledge Is Power And Should Be Secret.
It's difficult to discern if he's just letting us draw our own conclusions, but understands the issues - absolutely no evidence from a single word he said here supports that, sadly - or just doesn't understand that this stuff is creepy-as-hell and deeply anti-heroic in this supposed heroic-fantasy setting, which unfortunately seems like it might be the case. I agreed with his earlier design statement that you shouldn't, say, jam a cosmic-horror-themed character in a heroic-fantasy-themed game (or vice-versa), but he seems to be very keen to put some seriously creepy Dark Fantasy/Grimdark gods in a heroic-fantasy-themed setting.
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Scribe
Legend
I mean is it evocative of how the game is intended to be played? If so, I would say its a success.
My immediate thought is that it would be an action first, high energy, conflict game.
Draw Steel! is what you say if you are throwing down the gauntlet.
Twitch streamer Matt Colville has always been the archenemy of YouTuber and MCDM owner Matt Colville.
Ruin Explorer
Legend
He is definitely a man who could benefit from a script and an edit to express his ideas lol.
SteveC
Doing the best imitation of myself
I'm not in a situation where I'm defending Matt's gods (or really anything about this project), but I think this brings real-world concerns into a game that doesn't have any application. From everything I've seen, the game has no mechanical options based on sex, race, age, or disability. I haven't seen a game that does any of this in a long time.
In the last couple of years, we've had a discussion on characters in wheelchairs in gaming. I was wondering what mechanical approach people were taking to it, and the answer seemed to be that it would have no mechanical effect. This was controversial because there were what I'd refer to as simulationist players/GMs who commented that there were a lot of limitations that come from needing to be in a wheelchair. But the general discussion (and this was for D&D) is that if you wanted to play a character who needed a wheelchair, it wouldn't have any mechanical effect. I haven't seen anything different from this in the MCDM game.
What I'm saying is that there's no reason that you couldn't have an epic lumberjack follower of this god who was in a wheelchair.
And in general, the celebration of physical prowess is very much something we talk about in terms of real-world mythology and society. My daughter is eight and is going through the entire mythology kick that you get in those times. The fixation on physical prowess that the Greeks have is something that is seriously talked about. She had a mythology unit in school that talked about the Olympic games. It was in conjunction with the real-world Olympic lead-up, and they talked about the Para Olympics in this context.
I think Matt would disagree with the notion that a god who celebrates physical skill says anything about the game world.
Ruin Explorer
Legend
Flatly no. That's not a reasonable position. It's ignoring the world and world-building entirely.
Old people, women, sick people, small people, people who have been injured or harmed by disease, people born without limbs and so on all exist in this fantasy setting. All of them, who together are easily the majority of humans, would be directly disadvantaged by a religion that put physical labour, and particularly competitive physical labour, at the heart of its teachings, and what it honoured most.
It's not even that good as fantasy concept, because even if a religion did this, the reality is it would grade on a curve, within like, decades of emerging, or it'd be DOA. This is part of why I question whether Matt has really thought these through, or whether his particular worldview has prevented him from doing so.
I get that you seem to what to turn this into some irrelevant discussion about wheelchairs in D&D, but this is about world-building.
I don't think he would. It absolutely tells you a huge amount about this god and his worshippers. Why on earth would you think otherwise?
Also the god doesn't celebrate "physical skill" (which offers much more potential for diverse capacity), but rather "physical labour", and Matt's specific example was that they had tree-cutting-offs to determine legal disputes under than religion. Obviously anyone who is small, weak or in ill-health is going to lose such a contest, unless they're so much more skilled at tree-cutting that it's incredible.
The point is that IN SETTING, this god would be extremely creepy and oppressive, and lead directly to a very patriarchal society.
The god is literally ableist and pretty much all kinds of -ist by celebrating physical labour above all else. Sure, a guy who was physically weak or whatever could worship him, but if he got into a legal dispute with a burly moron, he'd lose. It's not like there have never been religions which are -ist in various ways in human history, but this one is pretty special in that it manages to hit virtually of them, and further, the fact that's obviously going to lead to an oppressive and probably very patriarchal society where this religion is practiced is absolutely something that should be acknowledged. On top of that the focus on physical labour and agriculture really seems awfully close to Pol Pot's ideas. To be clear, I'm not saying it doesn't mirror themes and ideas that have appeared through human history - it does - but what it takes them to an extreme without seemingly realizing that at that extreme, they're potentially extremely destructive and oppressive.
I'd also argue it's not really appropriate for "heroic fantasy", theme-wise, because it's got too many negatives. It'd be one thing if the god celebrated physical labour, and thought it was great and honorable and to be praised - but Matt was careful to describe (and I suggest you watch the video if you're going to continue to argue specifics) that this god's worshippers didn't just think physical labour ruled, they actively thought people who did more physical labour and were better at it were more honest and better people, and people who were worse at that, couldn't be trusted. That's road to Year Zero stuff which more befits a Dark Fantasy setting.
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mamba
Legend
I feel like there is plenty of precedent for that
trial by combat?
are they supposed to be the gods the heroes align with or the ones the evil cults the heroes fight worship?
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