Episode 2024.11 Published on 5 September 2024

Backer Packet Release, Djordice Dicefunder, and the Creator License | August Roundup

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Intro

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

The flood gates have opened, and Draw Steel is here in full. The backer packet has dropped, along with the Creator License. More people are playing the game, and homebrew is flooding out from the community. And that's just in the last couple of days of August. But we also got word of a dicefunder, a new Timescape wiki and a few details about Codex. What a month!

Dicefunder

Let's start with MCDM's announcement of a crowdfunder for dice sets, tailored for Draw Steel.

The campaign is called New Dice For A New Game and launches on the 20th of September 13 o'clock GMT. Add or subtract your timezone difference accordingly.

The dice included in a set are two 20-sided d10s and one six-sided d3 and the price is $20. These are dice that are meant to be used, not to display, so there will not be any metal dice or exotic materials. The dice will be produced by Chessex, a veteran in the dice business.

There will be five color sets to choose from, one for each of the five classes included in the play test packets: Conduit, Elementalist, Fury, Shadow, and Tactician. Each set is dedicated to the iconic character for that class. There will be details about the character, and a unique title which grants an ability. There's also supposed to be a sixth set, but that won't be revealed until the crowdfunder launches.

And who are these iconic characters I hear you wonder. In the core rules, whenever there's a reference to a class in the art or the lore, it's always the same character. In the case of Tactician, that's Sir John (a strong name). You will find Sir John in the Tactician dice set.

What I also hear you wonder is, what with the sides? Well, I'll tell you: the two d10s included in a set are actually d20s but with the number one through ten printed twice on them. These are colloquially know as djordice in the Discord community; named after one of the members on the design team, who popularized them.

But why djordice? A lot of people prefer rolling d20s over d10s, as they tend to roll better, which is more satisfying, and some make it point that a d10 is not a platonic solid. I'll let you google that on your own.

It is important to note however that a djordie is not 2d10. A single djordie will give the same result as a regular d10, so you'll still need to roll two to make a power roll.

There will also be a d3 in the set. This is just a regular six-sided die with the number one through three printed twice. One could argue that the set is missing a d6, which is the last kind of die used in the game. MCDM believes that people already have d6s aplenty, and don't need another one. Despite that, they're looking into providing an option to add a d6 to the set.

And again, mark off September 20th, 13 o'clock GMT, 6AM pacific, and 23 o'clock Australian Eastern.

Draw Steel

Now, let's Draw Steel!

The Class Lineup

So, after much back and forth, the final class lineup is ready. There has been a bit of uncertainty lately whether Talent or Summoner would make the last class to be added to the core rules. In the end Talent won out.

The design team explained their reasoning. Summoner will probably leverage minion squads when summoning creatures. Those rules are not finalized, though, which means Summoner would have to be put on the back burner until the minion rules were done. This causes too much of a delay.

The other option was to develop Summoner in parallel with the minion rules, but that just means that both Summoner and the minion rules would suffer. Better to develop the class and squad rules properly, separately.

All this means Talent is back in. The nine classes in the core rules are: Censor, Conduit, Elementalist, Fury, Null, Shadow, Tactician, Talent, and Troubadour.

Including Talent also makes sense in that it works as a natural opposite to Null. Both classes use psionics, but while Talent is a caster focusing on affecting external elements, Null uses psionics to make themself more powerful.

Talent in Draw Steel will be pretty different from the D&D version. The strain mechanic used in D&D assumes the hero will have less and less resources, but in Draw Steel it's the opposite. When they tested strain in Draw Steel, the Talent hero constantly wanted to take a respite to clear their strain, while the other heroes want to press on.

To fix this, the current prototype of Talent uses a heroic resource name clarity. Clarity can be spent to manifest powers, but the Talent hero can also push themselves into negative clarity in exchange for some negative effects.

Road To Level 10

And speaking of classes. The design team is working on getting the classes to level ten, and with that James shared some details about what heroes get at each level, as they level up.

At level one the hero gets a bunch of abilities and features. This makes the hero feel heroic, even at level one. Beyond level one, every level grants a new ability or class feature. Every time there are a few options to choose from.

The exception is at levels four, seven and ten. Each of these levels represent the first level in a new tier of play. Each tier of play represents a bump in hero power and monster danger. With a new tier of play, everything gets more intense.

At levels four, seven and ten, the hero doesn't get a new abilities or features, instead they get to increase their characteristic scores by two points, learn a new skill and a new way to generate heroic resources.

When increasing characteristic scores, there are some restrictions. It's possible to increase one characteristic by two, or two characteristics by one. However, no characteristic can't be more than three at level four, more than four at level seven, or more than five at level 10.

When getting new abilities, none of the old ones are swapped out. The new ones usually have a higher resource cost, which keeps the cheaper abilities useful for generating resources.

In general, level increases do not increase the damage of abilities directly. Some class features will increase damage, and by increasing the characteristic score it's more likely to roll a high result on the power roll. That also results in doing more damage, and getting the cooler effects.

But the fun doesn't stop at level ten. There are no more levels to gain, but there are still titles to be earned. These end game titles are usually more powerful than the titles gained when adventuring before level ten.

It's also worth noting that kits don't get more powerful either as the hero levels up. Instead, kits are improved by using supernatural weapons and armor. In addition to potentially boosting the kit, the supernatural weapons and armor level up with the hero, making them more powerful the higher level the hero is.

Lightening the Director Burden

At the beginning of August, most of MCDM went to Gen Con. They showed off Draw Steel and got a lot of positive feedback. But they did notice some issues with running the game.

Djordi has written a post on Patreon on what they learned from Gen Con. And one of those things, was that the mental load of running the game is too high for directors. Part of that comes from playing the game in person, instead of digitally. The game is supposed to support in-person play by default, so this is a major bug.

They took away three major points to improve about the game:

Squads and how they interact with captains needs some streamlining. The mental load of running captains, their squad benefits and the squads themselves is too much.
There are too many options to spend villain points on. It's just too difficult to remember them all. They're going to reduce the number of options, instead making each of them more impactful.
They're also looking at conditions. When a lot of conditions being applied during battle it's hard to track them all and remember what they all do.

The feedback is that directors are interested in complex mechanics, but they need to be simple to run. The goal is to retain the number of options and opportunities to run interesting combat, but not make it too difficult.

Backer Play Test Packet

And now, what's maybe the biggest news of August. The backer play test packet is finally here, and ready for download. The packet is mostly the same as the one patrons got a month ago.

The two big updates are the new adventure, Bay of Blacbottom, and the ancestry artwork. The Bay of Blackbottom is a prequel to The Fall of Blackbottom, it can be played in a single session, and works a more gentle introduction to the game. There's also a folder in the packet containing artwork of most of the ancestries to get people inspired, and to show what a memonek looks like.

They've also clarified some rules and tweaked some rules. While there is a changelog for the new version available to patrons, it's far from comprehensive, so any patron might want to read through the whole packet again, just to make sure you're running things correctly, according to the new rules.

There are a few things that's worth mentioning. They've reworked the monsters to make them easier to run. General traits are now included in the stat blocks, instead of a common section separately. That makes traits much easier to remember.

They've also really reworked how villain points work. There are now fewer ways to earn them, making it easier for the director to remember when they get more, and there are less options to spend them on. But, as promised, the options are a bit more powerful than they were in the patron packet.

License

And with the backer packet, we finally have the license. Called the Creator License. This has been highly anticipated by a lot of the community. People are eager to start creating homebrew and have wanted to know how much of the text from the rules is allowed to use.

It turns out that is all of it. All the text in the core rules are free to be reused or repurposed, and that includes all proper nouns too. The only criteria is that you clearly indicate that what you produce and publish is not an official product of MCDM, and that it's not endorsed by them.

The license also permits use of all the visual designs, but you're not allowed to use any of the actual art, unless you get written permission. That means you're free to create your own visuals of memoneks, time raiders or steel dwarves, inspired by MCDM's art.

It's important to note that the license only applies to the backer packet. They do reserve the right to update the license in the future, but the change does not have any retroactive effects. If the license changes, it will only be in effect for products they publish after the license change. Any previous product is still under the license that was current during it's release.

This also means that if you want to publish a product, and only use content from an older publication, you can use the old license current to that product, even though there might be a newer version of the license.

Before the drop of the license, Matt also explained that he and MCDM have a deep belief in having an open license. They believe that the open license will be essential to make the game successful. The actual customers of MCDM are the directors and creators. Making it difficult or complicated for them to enjoy the game, just makes them leave.

Draw Steel Homebrew

And, of course, the release of the license opened the proverbial flood gates of homebrew. Only minutes after the license went live, people started publishing the homebrew they'd been working on since the patron packet dropped.

There's already multiple adventures, some one shots, some that'll last multiple sessions; a bunch of kits; a lot of subclasses; some new classes; many ancestries, including ones made for other settings than the Timescape; and some tools for character creation and encounter building.

If you have access to the new play test packet for backers, I highly encourage you to check out the Draw Steel homebrew section of the Discord, where people are actively sharing new stuff all the time. Link directly to the channel in the show notes.

Mot's Miscellaneous

And now, at the end of the section on Draw Steel, there's a few small tidbits that is worth mentioning, even though there's not much to say. Here's Mot's miscellaneous [Mot sounds...]

First: Crits have changed to apply on both natural 19s and 20s. Previously natural 20 guaranteed a tier 3 result, while natural 19-20 in combat awarded an extra action. Now both natural 19s and 20s always guarantee tier 3, and when in combat, an extra action.

Second: James made a post on Patreon going over treasure. Treasure is the umbrella term for magic and psionic items. I encourage you to check to The Dice Society podcast which recently did a deep dive on the post. Link in the show notes.

Third: There are multiple long running play tests going on. There are two campaign internally at MCDM and multiple run by contract testers to see how the game works when running a campaign.

And, finally. Friendly fire will probably not be a thing. It could be argued that it's tactical to care about positioning when it comes to area abilities, but the design team lean in favor it being heroic, and the allies being spared from the effect.

Codex

There's not much to report on the Codex this month, but MCDM uploaded a video to their YouTube channel showing off the VTT in action. The map from the adventure included in the play test packets had been recreated using the internal map building tools of Codex. It shows off the dynamic lighting, how movement works, and movement between floors.

With the game requiring a lot of teamwork, it's easier to coordinate if the players can all see the same things on the map. Asked about how this could work in Codex, the developers responded that there will be controls to allow players see more of the map than what their token's field of view.

Somewhat related to Codex is that MCDM is working with a partner to develop a character builder for the web. The builder will likely have access to the same database of content as Codex does.

Codex itself will also have character builder features, but it's nice not having to fire up the VTT every time you want to do a bit of experimenting.

Timescape Wiki

And now, for something completely different: There has been an MCDM wiki on Fandom for a while, but it's been abandoned for years at this point. The good news is there's now a new coordinated effort to start a new wiki.

The new wiki will only contain information about the multiverse setting used in Draw Steel. There will not be any real world information about people or MCDM.

The new wiki is hosted on an independent platform, without all the ads and tracking found on Fandom's wiki pages. There are only a couple handfuls of pages, but it's a start.

D&D Beyond Success

James couldn't share specifics, but said that Flee, Mortals! and Where Evil Lives! is selling fairly well on D&D Beyond. But what's more interesting is that it's also led to a boost in sales in the MCDM shop. It looks like new people are discovering MCDM and checking out their other products.

From the Community

And now, for a bit of a different community section. Usually I list all the community creations I've found, but this month, there's just too many. What I'll do instead is summarize them a bit. I strongly encourage you to check out the links section for all the great stuff the community has created.

The Dice Society

The Dice Society has dropped a two new podcast episodes and a video this month! An episode on the patron packet and their experience playing it, the aforementioned episode about treasure, and a video with an introduction to Draw Steel.

Draw Steel Actual Plays

Robin Baggett and Average Roll have both released video series of their groups playing the adventure The Fall of Blackbottom, which was included in the patron play test packet. While Gundam played through their own adventure using Draw Steel.

Matt Colville

Matt released two videos this month. At the beginning of August, a video about what makes a good player character. At the end of August, a beefy four and half hour stream creating a character in Draw Steel.

Don't Shout Mimic

Don’t Shout Mimic has released a bunch of videos from their group with their experiences with running and playing Draw Steel, and some tips on writing adventures for Draw Steel.

Draw Steel Commentary

IronMonocle has written a follow-up to the post I included in last month's roundup. This time they cover how combat and negotiation work in Draw Steel.

VTT

sterling2063 has made a video on how to set up Fantasy Grounds to play Draw Steel. And haezan has written up instruction on how to set up Foundry to do the same. None of them are complete solutions, but they improve the experience of playing.

Draw Steel Homebrew

Now, some homebrew for Draw Steel.

WitnessTTRPG and Gub have created adventures for Draw Steel. The Wrath of the Iresouls will probably last a few sessions, while Something Rotten in the Golden Apple is a one-shot.

David Watches, IronMonocle, Kuroshi, Ashley, Morgs, and prinner have all created new kits. There are too many to list, but the variety is fantastic.

TDAWS_MP132, Tamwin5, and randomnumber46 have all created new classes and subclasses. You've got detectives and gunslingers, and more.

Aestus_RPG have created a treasure item, an artifact to be specific.

And MrMattDollar has created a character builder in Google Sheets to help with character creation.

5e Homebrew

And last, but not least. Some 5e homebrew.

HunterAvP343 has made a collection of Gnoll units for use Kingdoms & Warfare. electralumen has created a Tusker Demon companion. And Spartior has created the Empress of Shadow, a CR 23 demon.

Goblin Points Video

A small addendum to the creations of the community. I've also published something in the last month. It's a video of me creating a Draw Steel character to use in a one-shot. I make a time raider conduit of love and war. Go check it out on YouTube.

From Around the Web

As is to be expected, the web is flooding over with new Draw Steel content. In the links section there are a whole bunch of links to videos and posts about Draw Steel from outside our regular community. I assume this is only the beginning.

Outro

Alright that's everything for August.

If you want to be featured on Goblin Points, or know of someone else who should be, leave a comment on YouTube or Spotify, or send me an e-mail on [email protected].

Links to the MCDM Discord server, the subreddits for MCDM and Draw Steel, the YouTube channels of Matt and MCDM, the complete link section, and this script is in the show notes. It's also on goblinpoints.com.

Next episode is on the 20th. I'll be talking with tamwin about the backer packet, running Draw Steel, and his homebrew. See you next time. Snakkes.