Intro
I'm joined by Ananam of Triglav Games. They are at the time of publishing this episode crowdfunding a vampire class for Draw Steel. It's an ambitious project and they've pulled out all the stops with professional art, playtesting and layout. In the interview we talk about how they're designing the vampire class, what it's like to designing classes for Draw Steel, and the decisions for the crowdfunder and what they've learned from it.
I'm Jon de Nor and this is Goblin Points.
Interview
Jon: Welcome to Goblin Points, Ananam.
Matt: I'm happy to be here.
Jon: So, tell us a bit about yourself and also how you ended up in the Matt Colville / MCDM community.
Matt: Okay. So, hello everyone. My name is Mateusz, but you can call me Matt. I am many things in Triglav Games, our third party team that intends to support Draw Steel in future, now and in future, but I'm here as a lead designer behind the vampire class for Draw Steel that's currently live on BackerKt.
Jon: How did you find Draw Steel, or maybe just MCDM in general?
Matt: That's a long story, because I've joined the Matt Colville community back in, I believe it was 2017. So, very early in the Matt Colville's YouTube career. Basically my first DM, Robert, knew that I wanted to DM, but I was really nervous about this, didn't know how to start, didn't want to make any mistakes. And he basically showed me the Matthew Colville channel on YouTube and was like, 'This guy makes a lot of sense. Listen to him.' And I'm like, 'Okay'. And I did.
My big DM journey has begun when I started watching Matt Colville's videos basically and from that very moment I was a big fan of Matt and I watched most of his stuff. If his video was regarding what's about like DMing, I watched it probably many times. I loved the campaign diaries and then I supported him all along his journey. I backed and used Strongholds and Followers. I've used Kingdoms and Warfare. I've backed the Flee Mortals stuff, but unfortunately because my group switched to different RPG system I didn't use the Flee Mortals, but still was happy to support MCDM. And when MCDM announced that they are doing their own system, I was like, 'F yeah'. I don't know how much profanity I can use.
Jon: All of it.
Matt: Okay. Well, I was delighted. I was delighted, because I was waiting for Matt Colville's and MCDM's own RPG system. I was tired of that old RPG with the five in its name. And we're playing Pathfinder second edition for three or four years and we also grew tired of it.
Jon: Okay.
Matt: So, we decided it's time to maybe look for something else. We tested some things, we played some fourth edition. Once Draw Steel was shown, back then called simply MCDM RPG, we were like, 'Okay, we will give this a try'. And we did and we loved it and we decided to do a switch sooner than later.
Jon: Have you played in a Draw Steel campaign already for a while then?
Matt: No, we did a series of one-shots.
Jon: Okay, yeah.
Matt: And, since we are developing for the system, we've did a lot of playtests.
Jon: Sure, yeah. And talking of the crowdfunder, tell us a bit about the vampire class. Where did the inspiration for the class come from and what's your thinking behind the design?
Matt: Okay. So, once again it's gonna be a long story. I've been developing my own setting for years now, maybe like five years, and it's also because of, or maybe thanks to, Matt Colville who inspired me to create my own setting. I've always known that I wanted to create some content and we did. I've gathered some people who are willing to help. That's basically, most of them are now Triglav Games.
So, I had some people and we decided we will produce third party content, but when we decided to do this we are still playing Pathfinder second edition and we started doing, preparing content for Pathfinder second edition. And we are doing a lot of world building, making my setting bigger or making it ready for being released.
Jon: Okay.
Matt: We've done a lot of world building and we were discussing a lot of stuff like which ancestries or races are the core part of our world, our setting. And we've talked about dwarves and elves, but one of my friends and one of my team mates was the most excited about vampires because he's a vampire super fan. Even though we decided that the vampires are not a major part of the setting, he was still eager to do some vampiric stuff.
And we've had this discussion at the end of the previous year, but since the December Patreon packet dropped for Draw Steel, well we decided to make the transition. So, very quickly: After the start of this year we're discussing, okay so we probably want to switch to doing stuff for Draw Steel, because some of my players were not eager to play Pathfinder anymore, because it's a very rules-heavy system. I probably should not get into this, because I don't want to shit on the system, because Pathfinder second edition is a pretty good system. We've enjoyed it for years, but we just grew tired of it.
Jon: If you love something, you know how to complain about it too.
Matt: Yeah. When it was new and shiny it was great, but we've found a lot of things we didn't like about the system. It was very rules-heavy and some of my players did not enjoy it because, well, too many things to remember, basically.
Jon: Okay, yeah.
Matt: You need to be pretty hardcore to remember everything about playing Pathfinder second edition. I know people will disagree and I disagreed for a long time, but when compared to the Draw Steel, well Draw Steel is just so much better and so much easier to learn and to play correctly.
Jon: Okay, yeah.
Matt: Yeah. So, once we decided to do the switch new possibilities opened for us. And we are talking about doing something with vampires, because that friend of mine, his name is Kamil, he's a second designer in Triglav Games. He was like, 'How about we do something about vampires?' He was super excited about this and we're like, 'Vampires excite people. Let's do something exciting.' Vampires resonate with a lot of people, they're a classic. And also there a lot of different things associated with vampires, because they can be associated with blood, with shadows, they've got many different abilities in different medias, in different franchises. So there's a lot of stuff we can do with vampires.
Initially we've talked about doing a vampire ancestry but since, like I said, vampires can do so much different stuff they're very big source of inspiration. We've quickly came to a conclusion that it would be a waste if they were only an ancestry. Basically, that's a material for a class.
Jon: Right, okay.
Matt: And we started talking about what would be the different things a vampire class would be able to do. There was a lot of the things that it could do. So basically, it was one or two discussions and we've decided upon doing a vampire class because it was just such a good inspiration; there was a lot of material for doing it. And I think that was a good call to make, that was a good choice for our class.
Jon: Yeah. Based on the preview that you have in the crowdfunder campaign, it's already pretty impressive the amount of work that has gone into it. And actually, speaking of the amount of work that has already going into the class, because I know that you've already done some testing and you've also had the fantastic art that's in the crowdfunder of Irina, the iconic vampire. You've had all this done. How much did you prepare for the crowdfunder? Or, how much did you feel like you needed to have ready before you wanted to launch the crowdfunder?
Matt: Well, we believed that we need to show something to the people. So, the three things we decided to do and show to people were design, obviously, the layout, because people like seeing how the final book might look like, and also we've already decided to hire a professional illustrator and do something badass. And I think if you've seen the illustration, for people who are interested, the art for Irina is wonderful. I was super amazed.
Jon: Yeah.
Matt: I was super satisfied with the art. It's great.
Jon: It was even approved of by Matt Colville.
Matt: Yeah. And I believe he didn't see the final version when he was speaking about it.
Jon: Oh, okay.
Matt: Yeah. There were many work in progress stages and I believe he had seen one of the middle ones.
Jon: Okay. I want to mention the testing again, because you've contracted Pesto Enthusiast to do some testing for the class and I was wondering how that's been to have him test your class. How does it feel to have him trying to figure out if the class is broken?
Matt: Well, I was initially afraid, but as it turned out... We are confident in our design, but we are not professional testers, we did not work on Draw Steel full time. So I was like, 'Okay it looks solid to us, but maybe if we show it to a professional Draw Steel tester he will basically shit on it'. I was prepared to face the consequences of doing the design but, to my surprise, positive surprise, there were not that many bad things about it.
Jon: Oh?
Matt: He had some feedback. He pointed out he liked some of the stuff. Some of the stuff he was positively surprised also. And the feedback we got was mostly positive. Some clarifications needed, this kind of stuff. There were some overpowered things that we got rid of right before the crowdfunder. And there still are: Just two days ago we've received another round of feedback from his playtest. And literally yesterday we were talking about the revisions and then we did some revisions to the design.
But once again, even after actually playing the game, after Pesto's playtest, it's still not bad. There are some small problems, like pain points, but nothing too scary. I don't have to redesign the whole class basically.
Jon: Nice. Okay, that's good.
Matt: Yeah.
Jon: I also wanted to ask you about the timing of the crowdfunder, because the game isn't even released yet and I'd call it a daring tactic to have the crowdfunder launch before even the game is out. What was the thinking behind being this early?
Matt: Well, the risk we took was calculated, but man are we bad at math. No, basically I think this might have been our biggest mistake thus far-
Jon: Okay.
Matt: ... because we over estimated the enthusiasm that it's gonna get. There are some conditions we are currently in that are pretty bad for us. One of them is probably we should not have do a crowdfunder before the game is out, because the audience is not here. We believe only the most hardcore people are playing the game right now.
Jon: Right.
Matt: It's reasonable to think that. We're enthusiastic about the content. We saw the first crowdfunder, the adventure, the dragon adventure, and we were like, 'You know what, we are probably gonna have amazing art and a layout and class content is probably more popular than an adventure. So, if they succeeded, we can probably succeed too.' We're like, so the example of the first crowdfunder showed that maybe it's the right time.
Jon: Right.
Matt: But maybe it was not. Maybe the audience is not here. I also have to say that we had an amazing start to the crowdfunder. The very first day of the crowdfunder was simply great. Now it has drastically slowed down, but maybe we'll still get there with a trickle of backers every day.
Jon: Sure, yeah.
Matt: But yeah, so the first thing that's limiting us is the size of the audience. I don't think a lot of people are playing the game right now. A lot of people are playing the game, but there are not that many people that are willing to support third party content for an RPG that's not out yet. So, this was probably our mistake. The second thing that we were too enthusiastic about is I think we cannot just come out of nowhere and be like, 'Look at our content. It's great.' I mean, it is great, but it comes down to people knowing you and trusting you.
And in this very moment I want to thank every single backer we have right now in the crowdfunder because, as I said, the very first day was great. We've got a lot of backers from that very first day and I'm thankful to every single one of them. We were also surprised that some of the backers decided to back at the higher pledge tiers. They really believe in the content, which makes the whole team really happy. But I believe the people who backed immediately were the most hardcore fans and we quickly ran out of the hardcore fans, so to speak.
Jon: Okay, yeah.
Matt: I believe more people will be enthusiastic about the content, but only once there are more people playing the game in general.
Jon: Right.
Matt: But coming back to that second point: I don't blame people that don't trust third party creators who come out of nowhere-
Jon: Yeah, true.
Matt: ... with their projects, because that's basically what happened. We are no-names. No one knew about us previously to that crowdfunder. Out of the blue we just come out with a pretty big and ambitious project. I don't blame people.
Jon: If this crowdfunder shouldn't reach its goal this time around, do you imagine you wanna try again at a later point? Maybe after the game has released?
Matt: We are currently speaking about our options.
Jon: Okay, yeah.
Matt: Let's start with saying that maybe it will still succeed.
Jon: Yeah.
Matt: Yeah. Because the amount of people backing has drastic slowed down, but there are still people backing. Optimistic projections show that we might still fund.
Jon: Okay.
Matt: And maybe there will be some people in the community who will find this project, share it on their social media, which I encourage by the way. Maybe there will be a new influx of new backers. So, you never know. There are still three or four weeks, or when this interview releases it will still be two more weeks I believe.
Jon: Yeah, should be.
Matt: Yeah. And so, a lot of different things might happen.
Jon: Yeah.
Matt: But if we fail to fund it's not the end of the world. We already have some experience from the crowdfunder, because this was our first crowdfunder ever. We're learning a lot. So, even if we fail, it will only make us stronger. Yeah.
Jon: I have had some questions submitted by people on the Patreon who are paying members and one of the questions was around doing class design, and now that you've done a fair bit of class design... And I think you've even designed beyond the four levels that are included in the crowdfunder. The question was about do you have any tips for other potential designers that want to design classes and... Basically, what's your experience designing a class for Draw Steel and do you have any tips for them?
Matt: You can start with two different approaches. One of them is start with the mechanics and one of them is start with the fantasy. What we did with the vampire was start with the fantasy. As I've said previously, fantasy of the vampire really broad (there's a lot of material, a lot of inspiration) and we wanted to give justice to the vampire. So we've decided that vampire's a great thing to fantasise about and we tried to make a class that allows people to play any vampire they want and to be satisfied when playing a vampire.
So what you have to do when trying to design this way, you have to find a thematic niche and build up on it. The niche doesn't have to be broad. The vampire is pretty broad and resonates with people, but you can start with any nice you want. In Pathfinder second edition there are currently 25 classes and four more are on the way.
Jon: Wow.
Matt: So, if you are looking for inspiration, you can always go to Pathfinder and look up their classes. Some of the classes in Pathfinder second edition are actually built upon the mechanics. So if you've got an idea for a cool mechanic you can implement the mechanic and then look for flavour or look for a theme that represents the mechanics. Basically, this way. But the revolutionary mechanical stuff, I think, is done by MCDM in Draw Steel currently. The summoner is a kind of like a brand new design. The beast heart is kind of like a brand new design. It's a class with an retainer attached. And I know retainer is not the same as your companion, but they might be pretty similar.
Jon: Yeah.
Matt: But it's basically a new design. With the vampire, there is very little innovation. It's like a normal, solid Draw Steel class. There are two new things, or maybe three new things. In vampire's case you can select two subclasses from the get-go. This is somewhat similar to conduit.
Jon: Yeah, okay.
Matt: Yeah, vampire gets a bloodline and as part of the bloodline you get two blood legacies out of four available. Then you select two subclasses. That's the first pseudo innovation, because conduit already does that.
Jon: Yeah.
Matt: This innovation is like the slots for abilities are shared between the class abilities and subclass abilities so you can use your class slots for subclass abilities. So the structure of the class is a little bit different, but it also resembles the elementalist. I think the only true innovation in case of the vampire is the drawback table. So with the null and the fury you've got the resource table that you gain benefits based on how much resource you've accumulated, right.
Jon: Yeah.
Matt: And the vampire has a table like this too but at the same time, because the benefits from this table are pretty strong and we wanted to implement the fantasy of vampire going feral, we also added a table with drawbacks when you've accumulated thirst.
Jon: Right.
Matt: By the way, thirst is the class resource for the vampire. So, the biggest innovation for the vampire is probably the drawback table. So, yeah, the biggest innovation for classes are probably done by MCDM, but if another third party creator comes up with a good idea for a mechanic and tests it out and it's working maybe he should be looking for a theme that will support the mechanic. A lot of classes in Pathfinder second edition are basically like a representation of a cool mechanical theme but, personally, I want to implement the fantasies. The fantasy of a vampire was what brought this project to life and we have got many ideas for many different fantasies.
When we are in the stage of being really enthusiastic we're like, 'Yeah, so we will do a vampire now and at the end of the year we'll do a second class'. Which might still happen, we are eager to do more classes and people who've played the vampire are also really happy with the class. So, we've got a lot of positive feedback from players from the Pesto's playtest, we've got a lot of positive feedback from some other people that played the class. Cameron from Rise Heroes Rise.
By the way, he told me to say hi to you. He wanted me to ask you about the Cave of High Weirdness. Something like that.
Jon: Oh, okay. Yeah, it's a campaign where he's directing and I'm one of the players where we're an all-devil party. We're just a bunch of very sexy devils-
Matt: Oh, I see.
Jon: ... that is trying to figure out what's going on in a very weird cave.
Matt: So it's this kind of campaign. Next time you will all be playing furry furies.
Jon: I actually played with Cameron a couple of days ago where he actually played the vampire again where The Dice Society was running a playtest of his adventure that he's working on and Cameron played a vampire. I mean, it's a really well designed class; at least the parts that we've seen. Cameron also had a lot of fun just roleplaying a vampire, especially he interacted with a high elf. They have this elven glamour that makes them attractive to whoever is looking at them, they always seem attractive, and for Cameron's vampire's case that was a big throbbing vein in his neck.
Matt: Oh my god.
Jon: They just captivated Cameron's vampire. He has this enormous vein that just looks so juicy.
You mentioned a bit about wanting to do more design. So you've already have ideas for more classes. Oh, you're already working on a setting it seems like, and the vampire class is just the first thing that's public from that setting. I assume that you have ideas for more classes and, I assume, ancestries and maybe more?
Matt: Yes, we've got big ambitions. We've got a lot of ideas and we wanted to do a lot of products or projects or whatever you call it. Well, doing a setting guide, or at least a guide to a part of our setting, was one of our big goals for the future. Our setting is very grounded (of course it's a fantasy setting, but it's very historical, pretty grounded) and it reflects upon our own world in the medieval times. So, what we wanted to do was to create a setting guide for a part of our setting that's Slavic because we, being Polish people, wanted to do some Slavic content. I believe Slavic mythology and Slavic culture is not explored that much in mass media.
Jon: True.
Matt: So, we wanted to do something with this. Slavic monsters, some Slavic-related classes. And the vampire, it's hard to say that a vampire is Slavic content because, let's face it, it's not anymore. Even if the vampire has roots in Balkans, I don't consider to be super Slavic. Well, I did some research with the vampire's history and I believe ancient cultures have creatures that resemble vampires, for example ancient Greeks had a creature called, I will probably butcher the pronunciation, vrykolakas, something like this-
Jon: Okay.
Matt: ... and look like. Creature of the night, drinking blood, you know. So, even Asian cultures had some creatures resembling vampires. And then different terms related to vampires originated in the Balkans. Like Dhampir is, I think, Albanian; I might be wrong. Strigoi is Romanian. So, I don't think vampire is strictly Slavic; it's probably not, like not at all. We kind of associate it with Slavic things. It's very prominent in Slavic culture.
Jon: Okay, yeah.
Matt: I'm gonna say it this way. Us being Polish, we've had ideas to do a Witcher-like class, obviously.
Jon: Right, yeah.
Matt: And obviously it's not going to be called a Witcher. I was thinking a slayer might be a good name.
Jon: Okay, yeah.
Matt: Or a professional. Something like this.
Jon: I like that. A professional.
Matt: A professional, yeah. Something like this. We've had some ideas. Also, because there is a lot of occultism associated with our culture, we're thinking something like a spiritualist class for the Slavic stuff. Spiritualist or an occulist or animist; something like this.
Jon: Interesting.
Matt: Yeah. So, we are thinking about a lot of different Slavic-related content. We will do setting guide with some geography with two new classes probably. I cannot say. Nothing is final. We might not do this at all in the future, but we wanted to do this and we're fantasising about the things that we could put in the setting. Obviously some Slavic monsters, Slavic character options, this kind of stuff.
We wanted to start with something small. We decided the vampire class is really cool to us, it will probably cool with other people, let's do the vampire. Doing a new class is also a pretty ambitious project for people who never publish stuff.
Jon: Yeah.
Matt: But the design is solid. We are happy with the design, the players are happy with the design and the testers are happy with the design. It's in a good state already and it will only be better.
Jon: Yeah. I smile at you saying you wanted to start small and then you decide to go for a whole class.
Matt: Oh yeah?
Jon: I would have thought small meant maybe an ancestry and some kits.
Matt: Well, we've got a lot of enthusiasm.
Jon: Well, that's good.
Matt: Let's face it, if we sat down to do an ancestry, if we did the whole research for doing an ancestry and doing an actual ancestry that's like, I don't know, two days.
Jon: Okay.
Matt: After two days of designing the stuff, I will start testing it or send it to some testers. Because ancestries are pretty small in Draw Steel, kits are pretty small. There are lot of rules elements that are pretty small. So, if we wanted to do the small rules elements, we would do a lot of them.
Jon: Yeah, okay, yeah. I wanted to ask about Triglav. Is that how you pronounce the name of the studio?
Matt: Yeah.
Jon: How big are you? Because it sounds like you're multiple people.
Matt: Yes. There are currently six of us.
Jon: Okay.
Matt: I am doing a lot of stuff. Well, as you can see probably, I am on social medias. I am also managing the stuff, speaking with different people, for example I did the art direction for the two art pieces that we got from our illustrator. And I am the lead designer behind the class. There is also another designer, Kamil. We discuss the design stuff. He did prototypes and abilities for the vampire. And the plan was that Kamil would be the lead designer behind our next class.
Jon: Okay, yeah.
Matt: There is also Eryk who does the IT stuff, which is funny because almost every single person in our team is working in the IT. I am a software engineer. Kamil is a software engineer. Second Kamil, who is our editor, is front end developer. Mikołaj is a software engineer.
Jon: Just a bunch of nerds really.
Matt: Yeah, a bunch of nerds really. Yeah, agreed. Sylwia is doing some graphic design for us. For example Sylwia designed the Triglav Games logo. She did some graphic stuff for the crowdfunder campaign.
Jon: Is this just a side gig or are any of you working full-time on this?
Matt: No, this is all in our free time. We gain no money from this. This is purely a passion project.
Jon: Right.
Matt: We wanted to make money with the crowdfunder, but it's not for us. We will not probably become rich from the crowdfunder, you know. Every single penny that we would have gotten from the crowdfunder would go towards more art, more testing. Basically, we want to produce the best product that we can.
Jon: Yeah.
Matt: We work in IT so we are living comfortable lives.
Jon: Okay, yeah. I was really impressed with the layout example that you had. You showed it off to me a bit early before you launched the campaign and I mentioned that it gave me Strongholds and Followers and Kingdoms and Warfare vibe, with the borders around the edges and also that it has a distinct look, but still feels... It feels appropriate, but still distinct. Was it a goal to mimic that same vibe that S&F and K&W has or is that more of a coincidence?
Matt: Our layout designer, Ida, never did anything related to RPGs. She was recommended to us and we reached out to Ida and she was like, 'Sure, I will give it a try'. And she asked for references so-
Jon: Right.
Matt: A lot of the references came from MCDM, because I've sent her Strongholds and Followers, Kingdoms and Warfare, Flee Mortals. But these were not the only things that I had sent to her. So, it's not like, 'Please, do everything like MCDM'. No, it's not like this.
She also did a lot of proper exploration of design. We asked her for it to maybe look medieval, maybe look gothic and be related to vampires. This kind of stuff. We gave her keywords and we gave her some example design and she was like, 'I will explore this. I will give you examples and we will narrow down the design to what you'll like and what you won't.' And she did. She found a lot of medieval manuscripts and we liked some elements of it and we didn't like some elements of this.
We've explored a lot of fonts, for example, for this thing. Even for the banner for the campaign. We've went through, I don't know, 40 fonts. Yeah, it took a lot of time to narrow it down.
Jon: Yeah, I can imagine.
Matt: But basically, to some it up, the objective was not for it to look like MCDM stuff, but because MCDM stuff is high quality, looks good and it also references medieval stuff it might look similar. But we believe that the design we have is more gothic.
Jon: Yeah, I'm not trying to say that you're straight out copying their style. I really like that it was reminiscent of previous MCDM stuff. It felt kind of appropriate for a supplement to MCDM stuff.
Matt: Well, let's also be honest about the quality of MCDM stuff, because they probably produce one of the highest quality stuff in the industry. So, if we want to be like other people, let's be like the best of them.
Jon: That's a good point.
Matt: Yeah, basically. I have a question for you when you...
Jon: Okay.
Matt: So, one of the subclasses, one of the blood legacies of the vampire, is called Noxious Stalker. This is a subclass that runs on walls, does a lot of jumping, has toxic blood and you can exhale toxic vapours.
Jon: Okay, yeah.
Matt: Did you recognise what was the inspiration for this subclass?
Jon: Did I recognise the inspiration? Immediately when you said running on walls, I had this image in my brain, but I'm not really sure where that image is from. I don't think I can say where... No, I don't think I can say where you've got the inspiration.
Matt: The subclass was inspired by the xenomorph from Alien.
Jon: Oh!
Matt: You are jumping a lot-
Jon: Yeah.
Matt: ... , you are a predator, you walk on walls and you've got acidic blood. Yeah, you see the inspiration now?
Jon: Yeah. Incredible.
Matt: We wanted to implement the fantasy of being a savage beast. The fury can somewhat realise this fantasy, but we wanted to be a real savage beast and what is more savage than an Alien?
Jon: Yeah. That's really interesting. You've got four bloodlines. Do they all have a very specific source of inspiration or are some of them a bit more general vibes, you'd say?
Matt: I would say the three other blood legacies are more general. The Noxious Stalker, its abilities were inspired by the Alien, but at the same time being a bestial, like a savage beast hunting for people, is a pretty broad fantasy. But being a hunter is vampires fantasy in general. So, the Noxious Stalker is just more feral, more bestial.
The other three blood legacies were going into more general vampire themes. For example the charms, the illusions of Elusive Beguiler is general theme and the subclass uses illusions and charms to control people. One of the abilities I really like is the Bottomless Pit that basically makes enemies think they are falling constantly. They cannot get up. It is pretty funny.
The other subclass, the Gloom Weaver, is about being elusive, being hard to catch because you turn into mist. Caio from The Dice Society themed it as turning into vampires, a swarm of bats basically. But in general this is a subclass also about controlling shadows. Some shadow control stuff is just, like, costs more thirst. But the basic stuff is about teleporting, disappearing, being concealed, this kind of stuff. It's more like a assassin subclass.
Jon: Okay, yeah.
Matt: There's also the Crimson Conductor. It's about controlling blood, yours and your enemies, but it's also about being performative with what you do. It's like a gory display, gory performance kind of subclass. And that's all of them. We've got a lot of inspiration from different media, because vampires are pretty popular.
Jon: Yeah.
Matt: I've watched the Netflix Castlevania twice and there's a lot of cool stuff there. For example, from watching Castlevania I decided to give the vampire a choice between having the characteristic of two for agility or strength, or might sorry. Old habits. Or might. Because in the original Castlevania series there's a vampire, I think his name is Godbrand or something like this, and he's a Viking vampire. So, I was like, it makes sense that some vampires are built like bulls. You can be a Viking vampire. And actually, when we were talking about doing some character art for different subclasses, we were thinking about showing the different subclasses for the vampires, but also showing where they came from. So for example, one of the character art for the vampire would be maybe, could be a Viking vampire to show that people from different cultures also can be vampires, all around the world. So, there will be maybe a Viking vampire, a pirate vampire, this kind of stuff maybe.
Jon: Okay, yeah. I think the traditional image of a vampire, at least to me, is very much the tall, slender, cloaked figure. The classic Dracula-looking dude.
Matt: Yeah, basically that's the baseline. We wanted the iconic vampire to look somewhat like this with some Slavic elements, because even the name Irina, it comes from Greek, but it's a very popular Slavic name.
Jon: Okay, yeah.
Matt: But we also wanted to show characters from a lot of different cultures also being a vampire. Maybe even from different races. We would have limited number of the character art, maybe one piece per subclass. And we're talking about doing, 'Do we want a dwarf vampire?' That would be amazing.'
Jon: I think you mentioned somewhere that you have more bloodlines that you've started work on, but didn't include in the crowdfunder. Is that correct?
Matt: We've had many ideas for the blood legacies. I think at some point we've had seven and two of them are included as stretch goals in the campaign.
Jon: Yeah, okay.
Matt: We've got ideas for their abilities. One of them got scrapped, because I personally felt like there was not that much material. I mean, I don't want to force the design. If the inspiration is not that deep, if I cannot come up with many different ideas for abilities, probably I should do something else and drop the idea. Do not force abilities, basically.
Jon: Yeah.
Matt: We've implemented four blood legacies and two more that we wanted to do. One was ice and frost and cold related. It was, I believe, called the Frigid Trapper and it's a subclass of a vampire that can create traps with the ice to hunt. Because the fantasy of the class, and we tried to implement it in a way that made people feel like a hunter, is that you are a apex predator. You are a hunter. You hunt for, most likely, people, but you do not... Thematically you do not have to feed up on the people, you can feed up on animals. We don't want... Just because you're a vampire doesn't mean you are automatically evil.
Jon: Okay, yeah.
Matt: We want players to have the option to be a heroic vampire. We've produced some stories, some of them are in the editing right now, that show the story of our iconic vampire, Irina. Well, the first story will premiere tomorrow actually.
Jon: Oh!
Matt: Yeah, we're gonna drop the first story. Some of the stories basically show how a vampire can be not a villain, you know.
Jon: Yeah.
Matt: Because Draw Steel is explicitly a heroic game we've included a sidebar in the design document talking about vampires make perfect anti-heroes.
Jon: Yeah.
Matt: Think about it, talk about it with the director. We don't want people to go against the party when playing the vampire.
Jon: Speaking of anti-heroes, I also think that you as a third party is in a perfect position to make a bit more, let's call them alternative heroes than MCDM is allowed in their core rules. I mean, the core rules need classes to really show off this is what the game is about, but I think part of the freedom that you have as a third party is you don't need to follow those strict rules. You don't have the onus to show how the game is supposed to be played. You have the opportunity to expand what is possible in Draw Steel. I think the vampire fits really well into that, where I think for some people the very explicitly 'we're always heroic' vibe that Draw Steel has might be a bit off putting. They want something that's a bit more dark or a bit more edgy maybe and I think the vampire can really fill that void where you don't have to play a goody two-shoes. You can play someone that's, with no better word for it, a bit more edgy.
Matt: Well, we did not think about a vampire this way. That was not one of the reasons we did the vampire. And I also believe you can play any class in a edgy way.
Jon: Sure.
Matt: You don't have to be good with any class and also if you want to be an edgelord you an also play shadow.
Jon: Yeah, okay fair enough.
Matt: So it's not like not being an explicit hero was not an option previously. I believe it was.
Jon: Yeah.
Matt: My games tend to be darker. Our setting is more... It is also a heroic fantasy, but more also dark fantasy.
Jon: Okay.
Matt: The players are heroes still, but their world is dark and full of terrors.
Jon: Okay, yeah.
At the end of my interviews I always ask my guests for a recommendation, something they want other people to check out or be aware of. So, what have you brought us?
Matt: How much time do you got?
Jon: As much as you need.
Matt: There's a lot of stuff. I made a list.
Jon: Very good.
Matt: One of my beloved genre of video games, computer games, are metroidvania. Castlevania was one of the inspirations behind the class, one of many inspirations, but from this type of game I want to recommend Hollow Knight, which is a beautiful metroidvania kind of game. It has nice story behind it, beautiful art and the best thing about Hollow Knight is its music. And if you like metroidvanias I can also recommend both games of Blasphemous, one and two, which are also metroidvania-
Jon: Okay.
Matt: ... but they are dark and hardcore, you know. Dark and hardcore, man. I finished both games earlier this year. They are great. For more vampiric stuff, I've started playing a game called V Rising, which is a survival game but about being a vampire. So you build your own castle and pillage villages, this kind of stuff.
I'm also a big fan of tactical and strategy games. Currently from the RTS games I'm playing Age of Empires 4, which is great as a game, but also because of how it represents the different civilisations in different times. The different civilisations that are in the game speak different languages. The languages changes through the ages, for example the English civilisation speaks old English and when you age up to different ages their English becomes more and more modern. And it's like this with every single civilisation. The architecture changes too. So it's great, even for the audio and visuals. And from the tactical games I can give you a short list, the stuff I like. I like the Desperados games. I think tomorrow is a new Commandos games comes out... Oh, by the way, when we are recording this a new DLC for Age of Empires 4 dropped like three hours ago. Yeah, so you know in half an hour I'm gonna be playing.
From TV series, different kind of TV series I love the, maybe 'love' is the wrong word, but the Chernobyl show from HBO is pretty good. One of my most beloved series is Fringe. I don't know where it's streaming, but Fringe is great. 100 episodes of great stuff. And I've also fallen in love with The Expanse, the sci-fi show.
Regarding board games, there's a very big Polish studio, Awaken Realms. They do a lot of great board games and one of them is Nemesis; it's the whole series of board games. It's basically Alien the board game, but they cannot use the term Alien for copyright reasons, you know.
Jon: Yeah.
Matt: Trademarks. It's amazing. It's super fun game. Thematically it might be similar to what Matt Colville is talking about with the Derelict.
Jon: Okay, yeah.
Matt: I recommend you check this out. And for family gaming, there's a game about pandas eating bamboo that's called Takenoko.
Jon: Ah, yes.
Matt: And it's amazing for family play. I cannot recommend this enough.
Me being Polish, I must also recommend you all read The Witcher series by Andrzej Sapkowski.
Jon: Of course.
Matt: Of course, yeah. They are a lot better than the Netflix series.
Jon: Oh, okay.
Matt: So, just stick to the original. The books are great. You will enjoy them. You will love them. They are amazing. And I also like the old school, more dark fantasy or sword and sorcery stuff like Conan books, The Black Company, Elric of Melniboné. Yeah, so this is what I recommend. This is the kind of stuff I vibe with.
Jon: That's a really impressive list. If the listeners don't find anything they like on your list, I... Then there is no pleasing them.
Matt: Yeah. Dear listeners, if you like at least half of the stuff I've mentioned we can be friends.
Jon: Thank you so much for coming on, well, Matt. I can't call you Ananam now.
Matt: Okay. I believe this means we are friends.
Jon: Of course we are.
Matt: So you have to learn how to pronounce my real name.
Jon: It's something like Mateusz maybe?
Matt: Yeah, close enough.
Jon: Close enough. How do you pronounce it?
Matt: The letters are correct, just different kind of accenting maybe. Mah-teh-oosh.
Jon: Mateusz.
Matt: Something like this. Mateusz.
Jon: Well, Matt, or Mateusz-
Matt: Yeah.
Jon: ... thank you so much for coming on. It's been a pleasure to have you on Goblin Points.
Matt: Oh yeah, it's been a pleasure for me too. Thank you for inviting me. I hope we'll do it more times in the future.
Jon: Yes.
Matt: Possibly because we will have more stuff to show.
Outro
Thank you again Matt, for coming on Goblin Points. It was a pleasure to have you on. I think maybe the most interesting part to me was the honesty around the crowdfunder. It was early in the campaign when we recorded this, but already Matt and the rest of the team at Triglav seems to have taken the experience to heart and learned from it. We'll see more from Triglav in the future, and I'm looking forward to it.
I want to thank TDAWS, Seth Lang, and The Dice Society for submitting questions for Ananam. Paying patrons can submit question for upcoming guests. Link to join can be found in the episode description.
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 5th. That'll be the roundup episode for April. See you next time. Snakkes.
Links
Recommendations
- Games
- Hollow Kngiht
- Blasphemous
- V Rising
- Age of Empires 4
- Shadow Tactics
- Shadow Gambit
- Desperados
- Commandos
- Darkest Dungeon
- Board Games
- Awaken Realms - Nemesis
- Takenoko
- TV Series
- HBO - Czarnobyl
- Fringe
- The Expanse
- Books
- The Witcher
- Conan Books