Episode 2024.9 Published on 5 August 2024

The RPG Has A Name, New Play Test Packet, and MCDM on Alchemy | July Roundup

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Intro

Velkommen! I'm Jon de Nor and this is Goblin Points.

What a month! MCDM launched on a new VTT, there's a new fan channel on YouTube, and the patron play test packet finally dropped, to much celebration among the patron community on Discord. But it's finally been announced, the MCDM RPG has a name!

Draw Steel

The Name

To quote the updated header on the Backerkit campaign, "Get ready for Draw Steel." With the release of the patron play test packet, MCDM also officially started using the name of the RPG publicly, and it's called Draw Steel.

No. I'm not gone. I just wanted you to have a little moment to let the name sink in.

As Matt's said multiple times, the name was never really a secret, it just wasn't announced yet. Matt even teased in the past that the name was out there for anyone willing to go looking. One member of the community mentioned that he'd observed that MCDM had registered the trademark for Draw Steel in December of last year, and Matt has confirmed the name was settled for the crowdfunder campaign. They even used the phrase "Get ready to draw steel" in the header of the campaign, only to be able to change it to "Get ready for Draw Steel" when the name was announced.

Also, Matt left an easter egg in the comment section of the YouTube video showing off building the Delian Tomb. One commenter mentioned they were ready to draw steel, with Matt commenting "Good name". And during a discussion in the Discord on what to call the initiative system in the RPG, Matt mentioned that people will probably call it Draw Steel Initiative.

Also, also, James let the name slip in one of his streams, but said it was an internal code name for the game. Afterwards, the general manager asked those who noticed to kindly keep any suspicions about the name to themselves, and let people figure out on their own, and the community respected the wish. James said after the announcement that he panicked and came up with the "internal code name story" in the moment. He apologized in the Discord chat, but I think I speak for the whole community when I say, we all forgive him, and not to think of anymore of it.

Splitting Out Movement

Anyway, enough about the name, let's talk about the game.

In last month's roundup I mentioned that movement has been split from maneuvers. This means heroes can do an action, use a maneuver and move on their turn in combat. It's also possible to "downgrade" the action to a maneuver or a move, allowing the hero to use two maneuvers and move, or use one maneuver and move twice.

They split movement from the maneuvers because it was too often competing with other maneuvers. Originally the other maneuvers, apart from move, was added to give interesting options when moving was not desirable, but this has ended up clashing with the design goals of the RPG.

Draw Steel wants combatants to move a lot on the battlefield. This often happens through abilities that move targets, either through forced movement, or by allowing allies to move outside of their turn. This also means that creatures often have to move on their turn, but by spending their maneuver to move, they're not able to use any of the other maneuvers.

As the design team wanted to add new maneuvers, they had to work around the limitations that they couldn't be used if the hero wanted to move on their turn. This complicated the rules for when maneuvers could be used unnecessarily. By splitting out movement it not only solves this problem, but it also reinforces the design goal of having combatants move a lot.

Maps

And speaking of combat encounters. With Draw Steel explicitly using squares when measuring distances, ranges and areas, there have been some concern in the community about maps, and more specifically the constant need for maps. Because the game expects combat to be done on a grid, it puts an onus on the director to always have maps ready for any combat encounter.

James addressed this by saying they don't expect adventures for the RPG to have many small, trivial encounters with just a couple of guards at the door. Either make the encounter a set piece combat with a lot of enemies, worthy of it's own prepared map, or make it a test.

The heroes are most likely powerful enough to defeat the two guards with relative ease. Have the players instead describe what they do, and have them roll a few tests to determine outcomes. This works, when there aren't many combatants.

And for those playing digitally, Codex, the VTT, will also be able to help out with it's built-in map building capabilities. But more on that later.

Crafting

Now, we move on to crafting. When crafting weapons, armor and implements (for spell casting), the player is able to add extra properties to the item, build-a-bear style. There are 30 different properties for each type of item, and adding the property will take extra time, and consume extra ingredients.

And those ingredients is something the hero needs to find on their adventures. They might find that psionic crystal they need in an overminds treasure hoard, or receive the much needed valiar ingot as payment for services rendered to a noble.

While it is possible to craft most supernatural items in the game, there will be some items that are unique and not possible to be crafted by heroes.

Skills

Let's talk a bit about how skills work in Draw Steel. There are currently around 50 skills in the game. These are not broad skills like they are in D&D, but very granular. They're so specific that many of them don't need a description. The Climb skill is for climbing, the Swim skill is for swimming, for example.

Don't worry, the director is not expected to remember all these skills. On the contrary it's expected that the player remembers which skills their hero has. So, if a hero is trying to climb a cliff face, the director asks for a Might test and it's up to the player to remember that their hero has the Climb skill, and can add a bonus to their roll.

These granular skills accomplish a couple of things. It makes different heroes feel more unique, as they pick up different skills as they level up. It also reinforces that a hero is not skilled in everything, and sometimes will attempt actions without getting a skill bonus. And it makes it easier to judge whether a skill is applicable or not.

Monsters

To be able to squeeze in as many monsters as possible into the Monsters book, the design team is looking at a system where they create a few template stat blocks for different animals, and include instructions on how to modify those stat blocks to instantiate many different animals.

So, if the director needs an octopus stat block, the instructions would tell them to use one of the existing stat blocks, add the aquatic trait, and reflavor the signature attack as a tentacle attack. If the director needs a cheetah, increase the animal's speed and swap the signature attack for a claw attack.

Willy from the design team wrote a great post on Patreon where he explains how generic traits combined with a bit of flavor evokes the right idea of what animal it is.

Creating Monsters

But the tools for creating monsters does not stop there. The design team wants to include tools for creating new monsters in the Monsters book. James mentioned that if it turns out they can't fit the tools in the book, they'll release the tools in a free PDF instead. That's how important it is to them to make it easy for the director to run.

Patreon Play Test Packet

Now. The second biggest thing, after the announcement of the name, of course, is the release of the new patron play test packet. Here are the things that are included.

Ancestries

First, all the ancestries that are going to be in the Heroes book are included in the packet. Those are: Devil, Dragon Knight, Dwarf, Hakaan, High Elf, Human, Memonek, Orc, Polder, Revenant, Time Raider, and Wode Elf.

Cultures

Second, there are rules for generating a culture. The culture of a hero details how they grew up and what shaped them in their younger years. Their culture determines which languages they know, and it grants different skills based on what kind of environment the hero grew up in, how their society was organized, and how they were brought up.

Careers

Third, there's a list of careers which details what a character did before they became a hero. The packet includes a list of 8 vocations which grant skills, and a title, and sometimes new languages, renown, or project points.

Each career also has a few inciting incidents each, to pick from. The inciting incident is the event that made the character give up their current life, and instead become a hero.

Classes

Fourth, there are five classes included: Conduit, Elementalist, Fury, Shadow, and Tactician. Each class have a few subclasses included, and the details to create a level one hero. The original intention was to include materials for the first three levels, but at the last minute they decided to limit it to just the first level.

Kits

Fifth, there are 15 martial kits, and seven caster kits included. The martial kits mainly focus on using physical attacks, with or without weapons and grant bonuses to stamina, speed, stability, damage and range.

The caster kits focus on casting spells and the implement used to cast them. They grant bonuses to stamina, speed, stability, damage, distance, and area. They grant fewer bonuses than the martial kits, but they all include a ward that grants a unique kind of defense.

Complications

Sixth, we have complications. These are optional to use and it says to confer with the director before selecting one. A complication makes a hero more interesting and grants a benefit, but also a drawback. The benefit and the drawback kind of even out, so it's possible to combine heroes using complications and heroes not using them in the same party.

Renown

Seventh, rules for renown are included. Renown increases as the hero levels up and become more known. Renown let's the hero recruit followers to help out with research and crafting projects, and it influences how NPCs regard the hero when negotiating with them.

Negotiation

Eight, negotiation rules are in. If the heroes try convince an NPC to give them something they want, they end up in a negotiation. This is not when the heroes are trying to bribe their way into a party, it's when they need the king to lend them some of their army to protect a neighboring region.

Montage Tests

Ninth, rules for montage tests. Montage tests lets heroes work together towards a common goal by making multiple tests each. You can visualize them as a montage sequence in a movie with multiple small vignettes with each character contributing. If the heroes succeed on enough of the tests they make, they succeed at their overall goal.

Bestiary

Tenth, a bestiary. It explains how monsters work, includes tools for building encounters, explains how villain power works, and how minions and captains interact. The monster types included are demons, goblins, humans, radenwights (rat people), time raiders, and war dogs, for a total of 67 monster stat blocks.

Adventure

And lastly, there's the adventure: The Fall of Blackbottom. This is set at the same time as the first episode of The Chain of Acheron, the D&D game Matt DM'd and streamed back in 2019. (Whew, time flies). The heroes have to battle demons while trying to save bystanders while the inn they're in collapses.

Get In On the Fun

If you're at all interested in getting your hands at the game, I highly recommend getting in on the fun and signing up for the Patreon for a single month. It'll cost you $8, and you get access to the complete play test materials and all the juicy Patreon posts from the team. A lot of people in the Discord have signed up for the Patreon just to get play test packet.

Coming From D20 Fantasy

An interesting section in the play test packet is a section named Not D20 Fantasy. This section is a primer for people coming from D20 fantasy.

D20 fantasy is a catch-all term for TTRPGs that use a D20 mechanic. In most cases this is a reference to D&D and all it's modern editions, but it also encompasses similar products like Pathfinder or DC20. They are not the same as D&D, but they rely on many of the same tropes and make a lot of similar assumptions.

The section lists a few main differences from D20 games, and warns players not to make any assumptions based on what they know from those games. Some of the words used in the rules for Draw Steel might also be used in D20 games, but they might mean different things. The section advises to not make assumptions when encountering a term and look it up in the rules instead.

A Completed System

Also, with the release of the patron play test packet, the rules for the core system are complete. They might need some polish or tweaking, but they're not going to change. Everything that's in now, will stay in. They're not going to add or remove more rules.

In fact, the rules and content included in the play test packet should be enough to get a campaign started. And that's exactly what they're doing internally. They've started a campaign with MCDM employees to get a feeling for how the game feels over the course of multiple sessions, multiple victories and multiple levels.

Mot's Miscellaneous

And now, here's some small bits of news, in what I call Mot's Miscellaneous. [Mot sounds...].

Ship Combat

There won't be anything for ship combat in the core rules, but the design team wants to do something with ship combat in the Timescape at a later date.

Leveling Up

Every time a hero levels up there's going to be one, maybe two choices the player will have to make. There might be more, but it looks like the team is trying to keep the complexity of leveling up low.

Monsters: Undead

There's going to be a robust selection of undead in the Monsters book. James said he wants to run a campaign all about defeating the undead.

Encounter Sheet

The encounter sheet is on the back burner. The team wants to get monsters into shape first; then they'll be able to focus on getting the stat blocks into a well organized sheet. The whole encounter sheet might be superfluous, if they manage to make the regular monster stat blocks good enough.

The Summoner

The Talent is most likely out as a core class, and won't be included in the Heroes book. The Talent overlaps a lot with the Elementalist, and it's heroic resource will likely have to be redesigned. It may be replaced by the Summoner, which feels more distinct from the other classes.

The Null

The Null is being, somewhat, reimagined as a martial psionic class. A kind of antithesis of the Talent, which is a caster psionic class.

Book Printing

The general manager of MCDM mentioned that they will use a printer in Europe this time, which should lower the price of shipping for some customers. They reiterated that they're aiming for printing in the second quarter of 2025, but might have a better estimate in March or April.

Draw Steel on YouTube

And lastly, MCDM has been very active on YouTube this month. They've published multiple shorts with snippets from the Q&A they published at the beginning of the month. They've also shared a video showing off Codex in action.

And that was Mot's Miscellaneous.

Codex

Speaking of Codex. Codex is the virtual tabletop that's being developed specifically for Draw Steel. Development hasn't been too active for the past few months because of the core rules of the game changing frequently. Now that the rules have stabilized and likely won't change much, we expect development to pick up again.

Codex uses the same software core as another VTT, DMHub, and features that are developed for DMHub very often also show up in Codex. So while Codex has been on the back burner, the development team has been working on a 2.5D system for the VTT. 2.5D is a visual trick that uses flat images, or textures, to simulate a 3D image. In the VTT this gives the impression that walls stretch upwards, away from the battle map.

2.5D is a great way to elevate the visuals to something more than a flat image, without incurring the cost of true 3D. A 3D battle map increases the system requirements of the computer to run the VTT, and it increases the threshold for creators to contribute. 3D modeling is a lot more consuming and less known to creators than 2D work. The design team at MCDM is eager for others to contribute to the Draw Steel hobby, and making the bar for entry higher by making the VTT 3D is not something they want.

The Codex development team also said they want Codex to have robust support for in-person play. This includes having dedicated support for table screens, where a screen like a TV is flat on a table and used to show a map, while placing minis on top of the screen. And they also want to support wall mounted displays with views that are player facing, and a separate view for the director.

A wish coming directly from Matt was that Codex support parsing well formatted text from Draw Steel materials. That means that it's possible to give Codex a monster stat block, an ability description, a class, or an item, and have it create the appropriate entries inside the VTT. It also hooks up dice rolls, damage and effects properly.

Deni from the Codex team showed off importing the PDF containing the core rules, and Codex figuring out the classes, their abilities, kits, rolls, and effects. That means it's possible to create a PDF with a list of new supernatural items, kits or backgrounds, import the PDF in Codex, and have them show up ready for use without any manual data entry!

Codex inherits robust support for third party extensions, so people in the community have the ability to develop mods that can add new systems or change the behavior of existing systems in Codex. Some of the example the developer team mentioned was adding enemy AI, in which monsters can make decisions on what to do by themselves, generating random terrain on maps, or automate destroying terrain. The modding system is the same system used to develop most of the VTT, so there are great possibilities.

There are no possibilities to try Codex, though. The VTT is not ready for testing by the public, but the developers have expressed a wish to have something ready in the near future.

It's also important to remember that the release of Codex is in no way tied to the release of Draw Steel, other than that the rules of Draw Steel need to be finished for everything to be ready in Codex. The release of Draw Steel will not be influenced by the progress of Codex.

MCDM on Alchemy

This month Alchemy launched Flee, Mortals! and Where Evil Lives on the platform. You're now able to use monsters, items and inspiration from the books in your adventures.

Alchemy is an online tool to play RPGs. Unlike most other digital tools, it's made for playing theatre of the mind. Instead of having a battle map in front of the players, Alchemy lets DMs set the mood with music, sound effects and beautiful backdrops.

Please Welcome The Power Roll

This month marks the premiere of a new YouTube channel dedicated to covering Draw Steel, and other topics. Wish The Power Roll a warm welcome and check out their YouTube channel. Their first video is a series of good reasons to give the RPG a try, once you get the chance. Their channel and video is linked in the show notes.

From the Community

And now it's time to highlight some of the creations from the community. If your podcast players support chapter links, the chapters link directly to the creations.

Strongholds, Followers, and Organizations

Zetesofos has started work on a set of rules to unify the rules in Strongholds & Followers and Kingdoms & Warfare. MCDM has had plans to do something similar, but those plans are on hold.

6 Companions

Colonel17 is at it again, making fantastic companions, for any character to use, but they also have mystic connections that are special to the Beastheart. Colonel17 has created two beast companions, the Alpine Shepard and the Giant Ram; two bug companions, a Giant Wasp and a Colossal Fire Beetle; and two cryptid companions, the Chupacabra and the Yeti.

Electrokinetic

Swimavidly has created the Electrokinetic Talent subclass, which wields electricity. Swimavidly is open about the fact that it's a reskin of the Pyrokinetic subclass, but with lightning instead of fire. This was done to preserve the balance from the original subclass.

007: MCDM RPG Prototype & Mouthfeel

The Dice Society has released a new episode of their podcast. In this episode they relate their experience from a playtest, and the RPG's mouthfeel.

Building your 1st Dungeon for D&D - aka the Delian Tomb in DMHub!

DMHub published a video on their YouTube channel showing off building the Delian Tomb in their VTT. While this is showing off how to make a D&D designed dungeon, it gives a good preview of what to expect from Codex in terms of map making, and exploring and running a dungeon.

Talent Psionics

ChaosOS has released a new version of their Foundry VTT module that adds support for the Talent in the D&D system in Foundry. This fixes some issues that occured when the D&D system was updated.

I think this will be a Short Video

Matthew Colville has published a video on why he thinks videos will be short, but then balloons as the original thesis statement gets lost in the need to build an argument.

Draw Steel: MCDM RPG Patreon Packet & Rules Review!

IronMonocle has published a great post with their thoughts on the rules of the patron play test packet of Draw Steel.

From Around the Web

As usual, I've included links to MCDM's stuff showing up online, outside of our community. I want to highlight Patrick Haesler which has created original music for The Shifting Library from Where Evil Lives. Links to his music and everything else can be found on GoblinPoints.com.

Outro

And that was everything for July. If know of anything that should be included next time, send me an e-mail on [email protected].

Links to everything, including this script can be found on goblinpoints.com.

Until next time. Snakkes.

Links

Draw Steel

MCDM on Alchemy

From MCDM

Please Welcome The Power Roll

From the Community

From Around the Web