I’m on the fence about this system and Matt Colville generally. Draw Steel seems like a reworked 4th edition. TTRPGs that play too much like board games fail IMO because board games do it better. Matt also has become a pseudo cult-lite leader in the space and that’s really distasteful to me. The game itself is also extremely expensive. On the other hand, I agree with a lot of Matt’s design philosophy and the game itself seems promising and interesting.
Valid point. I dragged our gaming group at the time into 4th edition and as a whole we bounced off it pretty hard. Those of us who were already fans of TTRPGs got a bad taste from all the board game / MMO like mechanics while those of us who were relatively new to pen and paper actually adapted better to that exact frame work. In the end though, I ended up with a decent if not useless collection of 4th edition books on my shelf and we moved on. The comparison is definitely worth noting. The effect of personalities like Matt Colville to the hobby is also interesting and definitely at times distasteful. TTRPGs are such a subjective experience and social media is such a powerful tool for setting examples and expectations. It is supremely frustrating to sit down and head a table where your players bring with them preconceptions and tired cliche ideas that they were inodiated with by scrolling through video shorts. You want to couple conjure woodland animals with a shape change spells, yeah I thought that video was funny too... It often feels like these funny videos are robbing the players of having authentic experiences and replacing them with second hand stories. Not to mention the comparisons that occur while running the game. Well Matt Coville said you should do it this way... Matt Mercer lets his players ... ect But yeah, valid points. I do think Draw Steel will be an expensive but nice addition to our wall of games we play once or twice, and definitely the source of a few mechanic ideas but probably not the core of any long running campaigns. Then again, I am often wrong lol.
There are a lot of character options, trust me you can make tacticians that are very different from each other.
Good to know! I suspected there would be but it's nice to know that there is enough room to make some really memorable characters.
I’m on the fence about this system and Matt Colville generally. Draw Steel seems like a reworked 4th edition. TTRPGs that play too much like board games fail IMO because board games do it better. Matt also has become a pseudo cult-lite leader in the space and that’s really distasteful to me. The game itself is also extremely expensive.
On the other hand, I agree with a lot of Matt’s design philosophy and the game itself seems promising and interesting.
Valid point. I dragged our gaming group at the time into 4th edition and as a whole we bounced off it pretty hard. Those of us who were already fans of TTRPGs got a bad taste from all the board game / MMO like mechanics while those of us who were relatively new to pen and paper actually adapted better to that exact frame work. In the end though, I ended up with a decent if not useless collection of 4th edition books on my shelf and we moved on. The comparison is definitely worth noting.
The effect of personalities like Matt Colville to the hobby is also interesting and definitely at times distasteful. TTRPGs are such a subjective experience and social media is such a powerful tool for setting examples and expectations. It is supremely frustrating to sit down and head a table where your players bring with them preconceptions and tired cliche ideas that they were inodiated with by scrolling through video shorts. You want to couple conjure woodland animals with a shape change spells, yeah I thought that video was funny too... It often feels like these funny videos are robbing the players of having authentic experiences and replacing them with second hand stories. Not to mention the comparisons that occur while running the game. Well Matt Coville said you should do it this way... Matt Mercer lets his players ... ect
But yeah, valid points. I do think Draw Steel will be an expensive but nice addition to our wall of games we play once or twice, and definitely the source of a few mechanic ideas but probably not the core of any long running campaigns. Then again, I am often wrong lol.