What gets me playing Draw Steel and not Pathfinder 2e?

[WillPhillips]

I have a question: if you are purely into rules light why worry about a thread about Draw Steel and PF2e?

Weird question. Assuming it's in good faith: just because GMing and playing them isn't of interest doesn't mean I don't appreciate what they are trying to do - not to mention keeping up with the TTRPG hobby space, more broadly.

But forced movement isn't really "extra things to track". You're already playing in an environment so there's nothing added to the fiction. If you're helping visualise by means of a sketch map that's not adding rules complexity. And if you're already putting people on a battlemap you're not tracking something else with forced movement, just making use of what you are already tracking.

It's absolutely something extra to track, even if you're playing a game with maps and minis. It's another variable to account for - just the same as if you have a game like PF2E with dozens of conditions. The both all come out in the wash to me.

 

[Neonchameleon]

It's absolutely something extra to track, even if you're playing a game with maps and minis. It's another variable to account for - just the same as if you have a game like PF2E with dozens of conditions. The both all come out in the wash to me.

Except it literally isn't something to track. It's a one-and-done thing. All you are tracking is the physical position of the model in the map. It's a one-and-done rather than something you have to track. There is no ongoing effect that actually needs tracking - all that there is is that the NPC who was here is now there. You are already tracking the position of the character (using the map to do it) and there is no reason after the event that how they got there needs tracking.

Meanwhile conditions are extra things to track. If a monster is Poisoned or Dazed that is something extra to track because it has an ongoing effect and you don't by default track that something isn't poisoned. But you always have a position on the battlefield. Changing an existing state isn't adding something new.

 

[Thomas Shey]

It's absolutely something extra to track, even if you're playing a game with maps and minis. It's another variable to account for - just the same as if you have a game like PF2E with dozens of conditions. The both all come out in the wash to me.

I think the idea is that position ends up needing to be managed in a game with maps anyway, where things like conditions are extra actual bookkeeping. I kind of get the point since I try to at least put condition flags on tokens in VTTs whenever possible to remind people there's something, because they're going to be looking at the map anyway. Similar, pushing a token or mini around is just an extra bit of movement that otherwise wouldn't occur and is jsut recorded the way any other position is.

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

Similar, pushing a token or mini around is just an extra bit of movement that otherwise wouldn't occur and is jsut recorded the way any other position is.

having played about 7 sessions of Draw Steel I think I can offer a bit of devil’s advocate to moving minis just being new positions on a map.

Pushing/pulling/sliding into other creatures and the damage formula is some extra head processing.

Then the scenario of pushing/pulling/slide into objects and the damage formula that determines whether the object takes enough damage to destroy the object or not.

All part of the fun in Draw Steel and it does sometimes grind the action to a pause while everyone tries to confirm the result. I hope it’ll become more second nature to calculate it someday.

 

[zakael19]

having played about 7 sessions of Draw Steel I think I can offer a bit of devil’s advocate to moving minis just being new positions on a map.

Pushing/pulling/sliding into other creatures and the damage formula is some extra head processing.

Then the scenario of pushing/pulling/slide into objects and the damage formula that determines whether the object takes enough damage to destroy the object or not.

All part of the fun in Draw Steel and it does sometimes grind the action to a pause while everyone tries to confirm the result. I hope it’ll become more second nature to calculate it someday.

You're not really "tracking" that per se in that it's not ongoing. It becomes part of the action resolution, in the same way as calculating damage or hit/miss. DS! does have a lot more potential for cascading actions though, between forced move into circumstances + triggered actions (sometimes including additional forced move!).

DS! does try and manage the overall number of dice rolls by getting rid of on-action saves (you just check all affected by the success tier's defense beat - eg all creatures in the area of effect with Reason < 2), damage rolls (baked into the success tier), multi-attacks (mostly), and other similar stuff so that you can do the movement and destructible calculations in the space that might've been eaten by all that.

 

[Thomas Shey]

having played about 7 sessions of Draw Steel I think I can offer a bit of devil’s advocate to moving minis just being new positions on a map.

Pushing/pulling/sliding into other creatures and the damage formula is some extra head processing.

Oh, naturally. Any extra tactical choices are. What I'm questioning is whether the extra is significant at the recording-and-remembering end the way things like conditions are.

Then the scenario of pushing/pulling/slide into objects and the damage formula that determines whether the object takes enough damage to destroy the object or not.

All part of the fun in Draw Steel and it does sometimes grind the action to a pause while everyone tries to confirm the result. I hope it’ll become more second nature to calculate it someday.

I'd expect people to become more used to it, at least.

But I think that's a different thing than conditions. PF2e is fairly far into the "as you advance you get more tactical options" school of games. Those require more processing because you have to remember you have them, and how to do them (I won't go into my usual rants about exception based design), but short of ones that are time bound (so you have to keep track of whether you've used them that fight) they don't have any extra bookkeeping overhead; you do them and you're done (mind you, one of the things they may do is impose a condition, so they can cause more bookeeping indirectly, but some degree of that's inevitable if you're going ot have a combat system that doesn't come down entirely to "I hit and do damage")

 

[AlexofBarbaria]

Draw Steel puts a LOT of design effort into pushing dudes through barriers. I acknowledge the simple fun of smashing people into breakable things but wonder if it gets a little over the top and WWE in play.

 

[ffanxii4ever]

Draw Steel puts a LOT of design effort into pushing dudes through barriers. I acknowledge the simple fun of smashing people into breakable things but wonder if it gets a little over the top and WWE in play.

Could it be? Sure, but it is a deliberate choice, and it pretty quickly reinforces the borderline supers style of feel.

It is not a game where you are playing as desperate mercenaries, struggling to make ends meet and a goon with a knife and a lucky shot can take you out - you start by playing as the fantasy equivalent of street-level supers and pretty quickly can hit Avengers-levels of competence.

 

[Zetesofos]

having played about 7 sessions of Draw Steel I think I can offer a bit of devil’s advocate to moving minis just being new positions on a map.

Pushing/pulling/sliding into other creatures and the damage formula is some extra head processing.

Then the scenario of pushing/pulling/slide into objects and the damage formula that determines whether the object takes enough damage to destroy the object or not.

All part of the fun in Draw Steel and it does sometimes grind the action to a pause while everyone tries to confirm the result. I hope it’ll become more second nature to calculate it someday.

It does. I've got about 50 sessions under my belt as part of a longer form campaign, and while its not a short learning curve - there does seem to be a point where these mechanics become intuitive, and then the players start to focus less on HOW does a rule work, and more about how to make a rule work for them.

 

[Zetesofos]

Could it be? Sure, but it is a deliberate choice, and it pretty quickly reinforces the borderline supers style of feel.

It is not a game where you are playing as desperate mercenaries, struggling to make ends meet and a goon with a knife and a lucky shot can take you out - you start by playing as the fantasy equivalent of street-level supers and pretty quickly can hit Avengers-levels of competence.

As an aside, but James Intracaso (lead designer) is noodling at a new project called Crows that is VERY much that desperate mercenary style game; where you don't have powers, your most valuable tools are your inventory, and dying is VERY likely.