The previous post covered the basics of gameplay and character creation in Draw Steel. Today, I want to explore two major subsystems in the game: combat and negotiations. 

Draw Steel! Combat in the MCDM RPG

One of Draw Steel’s guiding words is “tactics,” and fighting monsters tactically is where this game seems to shine, at least as written. 

Unlike many other games, the players and Director have a lot of leeway regarding establishing combat initiative. You can choose whatever order makes sense when a fight starts based on the narrative setup. If the turn order feels unclear, the director or a player can roll 1d10. On a six or higher, the players go first. The sides take turns until everyone has acted, then a new round begins. If one side has more creatures than the other, they all finish their turns before the next round starts. Whoever acted first (players or Director) continues to act first in all subsequent rounds, but individual players and Director-controlled enemies can change when they act within each round. 

The cool thing about this method of establishing combat order is that the players can talk about who is going next, allowing the game's tactical part to come through. Based on the playtest I ran in January, players felt good about discussing who would go when and what they wanted to pull off. The current playtest preserves that function, and this will work wonderfully for my group, although groups that aren’t as close or that have strong opinions about who goes first might benefit from the alternative initiative system, which involves rolling agility to see who goes first on each side. 

The game is meant to be played using a grid, so all ranges, sizes, and areas use square units. For example, you might shoot an arrow 12 squares, or the blast of your spell affects a 4x4 square area. A creature's size is also determined by the number of squares it occupies, so most, if not all, player characters have a size of one. Weights differentiate between creatures of the same size, which can come into play when a creature is being force moved (discussed below). A lighter creature will usually move further than a heavier creature. If you prefer measurements, you can treat a square as five feet or two meters (or you can make the distance whatever you want, as long as it stays consistent throughout the adventure). 

On your turn, you can take a movement, a maneuver, and an action. You can also make your action a movement or a maneuver if you wish. 

Movement allows you to move up to your speed; the base speed for most characters is five squares. If you have special movements, you can incorporate them into your turn. Shifting is an interesting type of movement ability, which allows you to move up to half your speed and prevents creatures from making opportunity attacks against you. 

Forced Movement allows you to move another creature and includes push, pull, and slide movements. Each option tells you how far you can move the enemy. Forced movement is where having a stability score comes into play. If you have a stability score of one and an enemy uses an ability with force movement of three, you will only get moved two squares. Push and pull are pretty self-explanatory. Using the forced movement slide allows you to move someone in any horizontal direction; it does not need to be a straight line—you could slide someone in a circle around you if you want. The vertical keyword allows you to toss creatures in the air, and some cool rules explain how to slam creatures into or through other creatures or objects. 

Besides the evocatively named abilities, forced movement is one of the main things I am most excited about in this game. Throwing and moving people around will add a lot of dynamic, exciting action to combat. I cannot wait for one of my players to throw an enemy through a wall. Talk about cinematic! 

Maneuvers are smaller or shorter actions: hiding, drinking a potion, grabbing an opponent, etc. Maneuvers make it seem like Draw Steel wants to enable the setup or not-as-fun actions (drinking a potion might be necessary, but it’s not as fun as attacking an opponent), so you can either benefit from the maneuver or skip it and do the fascinating stuff. Free maneuvers mean you don't need to waste a maneuver to open a door or pick up an item from the ground.   

Actions are the meat of combat. Typically, you’ll use an ability from your class or another feature. To give you a sense of the abilities, a fun elementalist ability that lets you aid your allies and do damage simultaneously is Nourishing Rain.

You can also use an action to catch your breath (during which you use a recovery to regain ⅓ of your stamina), charge, defend, or heal (during which you allow someone else to use their recoveries). 

Another aspect of combat is a triggered action, which can happen on your turn or in the round in general. Triggered actions function much like reactions from D&D but can be more interactive and impactful. Reactions in D&D are basically just that, a quick response to something, usually a denial or punishment of some sort. Triggered actions seem more fluid and teamwork enforcing, really embracing that tactical feel. Each triggered action has a specific cue that tells you when you can use it, and you can only use one per round. Opportunity attacks are also considered a triggered action. Free triggered actions follow the same rules as above, but don’t use up your triggered action slot.

Flank Them Now! is an excellent example of the type of interactive triggered action that differentiates this tool from a simple reaction. 

A triggered action like this is so much more than an attack or counterspell—it can change the flow of the game and set up some awesome combos among the heroes. Triggered actions reinforce teamwork. It’s also possible that triggered actions might feel like they interrupt the flow of combat or are another thing to keep track of. That will probably be a group-by-group thing to navigate, as some will love it and others will not. I’m hoping my groups do!

Dying & Death

When your Stamina drops to zero, you start dying. Unlike in D&D, you do not fall unconscious when dying, but you do suffer some reduction in ability. You cannot use the Catch Breath action, and you lose 1d6 Stamina whenever you make a Might or Agility Test, attack, or use an action or triggered action. If your Stamina reaches the negative of your winded value (half your Stamina—it works kind of like the bloodied condition in some versions of D&D), you die. If your Stamina is 40, your winded value is 20; if you reach -20 Stamina, you die. 

The dying condition is a compelling way to give players a choice about how they react: you can keep fighting and injure yourself further, or play it safe and know you’ll probably live to see another day. I think a lot of people will choose to keep fighting, especially toward the end of a fight. Dying feels like it could create some epic end-of-fight scenes. Given how many classes can heal, it might end up being nothing—I will have to wait and see how that plays out when I run the game. 

The Draw Steel playtest also mentions that someone would need a powerful magic item to bring you back to life. That makes me think a conduit or green elementalist may not get the ability to resurrect teammates! That intrigues me, and I think I like it. Powerful healers are interesting to play and watch, but I also like it when death is more than a minor inconvenience for players and the story. It's still early—we will see what abilities are available at higher levels. 

The playtest covers other minor rules and interactions for combat, but these basics get the idea across quite well. Now, on to Negotiation! 

Negotiation in Draw Steel

Negotiation is a fascinating new subsystem that allows players to interact with the world in a more involved way—employing negotiation forces the players to treat NPCs as complex beings to get what they want. Negotiations are a tool to convince a conflicted NPC that they want to help the player characters. Directors will typically employ negotiation for important moments, and the whole group will contribute. Plenty of situations call for a simple roll to persuade an NPC to do or believe something, but higher-stakes situations call for negotiation. Draw Steel uses the example of using negotiation when persuading a king to send his army to help another country. 

NPCs have two main negotiation stats, each with a 0-5 range: interest and patience. Interest represents how much the NPC wants to help, and patience indicates how much longer they are willing to keep negotiating. If either of these stats drops to zero, the negotiation ends, and the heroes do not get what they want. The best outcome is reached when the NPC’s interest reaches five. 

Negotiation works like this: to raise an NPC’s interest, players need to make successful arguments appealing to the NPC’s motivations while figuring out and avoiding their pitfalls. Each NPC has at least two motivations and one pitfall. Arguments that appeal to motivations have better outcomes, while arguments that contain an NPC’s pitfall cause the heroes to fail the argument: the NPC’s patience and interest decrease by one. 

The Draw Steel playtest includes a list of 12 motivations and pitfalls. The NPC may give hints to alert players to their motivations or pitfalls, but players can also make a power roll to get that information. The list of motivations and pitfalls is as follows: Benevolence, Discovery, Freedom, Greed, higher Authority, Justice, Legacy, Peace, Power, Protection, Revelry, and Vengeance.

Players make arguments with a reason, intuition, or presence power roll. The better the roll, the better the results. Depending on the outcome, interest might increase while patience decreases or stays the same. Players can take some time to discuss the arguments they want to make before rolling. 

Another cool negotiation feature is the integration of the renown system. I haven't mentioned renown yet, but basically, as you do awesome stuff, more people know who you are. As you become more famous (or infamous), renown allows you to attract followers, amongst other things. During a negotiation, you can get an edge on your power rolls if you are famous enough to impress the NPC. Your edge allows you to make an argument using the flirt, lead, or persuade skills. If you are infamous, then you get that edge for using the brag, interrogate, or intimidate skills. 

As a GM, my NPCs are sometimes a weakness. I typically only have a handful of NPCs that mean anything for the story; the rest are cardboard cutouts. I think the negotiation system is going to help me with them. Not with their voices—no, as my players could tell you, my NPCs will still all change accents multiple times in the same sentence. But with the negotiation system, I can make them at least slightly more three-dimensional. Using the motivations and pitfalls will help flesh the NPCs out and add a sense of realism. 

The negotiation system is an exciting mix of roleplay and mechanics that might work in harmony or be rough, depending on the Director and the players. The list of motivations and pitfalls will also play a big part in how negotiation feels. The goal was to cover as much as possible while having a manageable list so players have some idea of what they should be aiming for or avoiding in their arguments. I will need to try negotiation before I can say whether they nailed it with the right number/combo of motivations/pitfalls. I expect it will take a few tries for my group to get it to flow and balance the narrative aspect with the mechanics. 

What’s Next

While I did not cover everything in this packet, I hope I wrote enough to give you a good idea of what the game is like and some of my early opinions. I might throw in an update with additional thoughts once I’ve run the game. In the next post, we’ll go back to worldbuilding, and now that I have the rules, maybe I’ll explore some homebrew ideas!