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I have been playing and running Draw Steel's playtest since August of last year, and have since moved on to the release version. I recently ran a brief level 5 game. This is my play report: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Be1a7GJ1gjK7SqYQWZmxA2Tx_nIF6vRcTNqOKuUUQ3g/edit

The full version is above, but to summarize:

• I had four players. One had already played the system a fair bit, and had experience with grid-based tactical games like D&D 4e and ICON. The other three were new, but also had experience with tactical games.

• I set this in the timescape's space-fantasy upper worlds, in a UNISOL-aligned manifold. The story began with a counterattack on the fleet of Lord Syuul, and culminated in delving into the minds of two Space Gods to save a planetary system.

• I kept basic numerical statistics transparent, but enemy traits and abilities opaque.

• Negotiations were received poorly by the players. They felt too rote (uncover, appeal, uncover, appeal, repeat), and it quickly became evident that some PCs should just step back and let the characters with relevant perma-edges (e.g. High Elf Glamor) handle everything.

• Montages had a somewhat better reception, but the players still were not too warm on them. They just do not like 4e-style skill challenges.

• Combat was the most well-received facet of the system. The consensus seemed to be "decent, would definitely play again, but nothing special compared to other grid-based tactical games we have already played."

• One pain point was that some characters felt locked into optimal combat routines. Our shadow simply spammed Shadowstrike, because it was the best thing to do. The players mentioned that 4e's AEDU felt more varied from turn to turn.

• Another pain point was the sheer complexity, leading to slowdown. Maybe it was because three of the players were new, but mid-level combat felt significantly more complex than mid-level 4e combat, in large part due to the constantly fluctuating Heroic Resource pools. And this is before we get into tracking surges on each PC, and on each attack...

Update: The troubadour's player is writing up their own post-adventure report. It will be ready when it is ready, maybe in a day or so as of the time of this update.

When I say superpowered urban fantasy, I'm talking about media like:

• Fate/Stay Night: Unlimited Blade Works
• Kaiju No. 8
• Mob Psycho 100
• KPop: Demon Hunters
• Solo Leveling

Basically, superpowered protagonists in a modern-day or cyberpunky setting with demons and ghosts and other edgy superhero villains.

It all started after my entire RPG group watched KPop and I decided to run our Daggerheart one-shot in such a world. It was surprisingly fun! So much so that I decided to run three more one shots for various people and various systems set in such worlds. I used Kamigakari, Prowlers & Paragons and OVA for that.

What I realized is that the TTRPG space is sorely lacking in such games. The lion's share of urban fantasy is horror-adjacent with Kult, Chronicles of Darkness, Vampire and so on. Some translated japanese TTRPGs like Double Cross, Kamigakari and so on exist, but they're super niche and don't tend to have a great reputation — undeserved, in my opinion. Kamigakari specifically feels like anime D&D 4e with less numbers bloat, it's fuckin' awesome lol.

Not much else to say I suppose. If you're looking to run something like this I can recommend:

• Daggerheart, it's super easy to reskin for a modern day fantasy world. I let everyone pick whatever Heritage they wanted, but that they had to have a human facade.
• Kamigakari for a tactical, grid-based urban fantasy game. Character creation is complex and the rulebook is honestly very confusing. You'll need to re-read it multiple times and even then you'll stumble through your first session, but once it clicks it's really good.
• OVA and Prowlers and Paragons are superheroic d6 dice pool systems. OVA is the simpler of the two, both in the rules and character creation. OVA is explicity meant to evoke an anime feel and does so through the inclusion of certain tropes as ability keywords while Prowlers is a more traditional superhero game that you can nevertheless reskin as an anime game.
• Others that I've read but have yet to try are: Double Cross, Shinobigami, the Valor System and Shin Megami Tensei. I considered Fabula Ultima, but it's trying to emulate JRPGs and didn't set the right tone for me.
• The Secret World for 5e and Savage Worlds is, from reading, a very interesting superpowered urban fantasy setting without the anime aesthetics, if that's something you'd prefer.

I think there's a number of games or settings which have factions and politics as part of it, but these are handled almost entirely through the narrative. I'm curious about games which take time to provide a framework for how strong/capable/dangerous a faction is, how to present the shifting political landscape, world-building for different factions' strengths and weaknesses, and how this relates to the PCs.

I think I enjoy how Blades in the Dark does it, though if you're not playing in Duskvol and trying to do a homebrew setting, there's a lot of spreadsheets involved in the faction game. I like that Urban Shadows has factions as part of the narrative and gameplay, and that the factions have their own special moves for how successful they are at some things. I'm also a little fond of the special prestige classes from dnd 3.5 which had a prerequisite of joining a particular group/guild/faction.

So have you guys ever seen Star Wars or any other sort of series to get an RPG/TTRPG, and you’re not the biggest fan of the stories told sometimes but love the setting. Like if you didn’t like say The Second Season of The Promised Neverland, Naruto, SAO, ect but then they released a TTRPG/RPG that is the setting and you loved it because you could play in the setting. Have you guys exasperated that at all. For me it was Star Wars (I like the first 6 movies and I have not seen the Clown Wars show or another show).

Hello everyone,

Soo I'm a brand new DM that recently got tired of tracking combat and XP manually in my Pathfinder campaign, and I decided to build a small app to make the GM’s job easier, and I wanted to share it with the community.

What it does:

• Tracks XP automatically for encounters
• Manages initiative order for PCs and enemies
• Saves and organizes multiple combat sessions
• Fully open-source and customizable

Tech stack:

• Built with Flutter (Dart), so it works on Android, iOS, or an emulator
• Code is available on GitHub for anyone to use or improve

GitHub link: XP & Initiative Tracker

I’d love to hear feedback from GMs and players:

• What features would you add?

Thanks for reading, and I hope it’s useful for your tables.

Hello! I wanted to start working on a sandboxy exploration campaign set in a science-fantasy post-apocalyptic wilderness. However, I can't really worldbuild without a system to serve as scaffolding, and I'm having trouble picking one (partially because I'm not super well read so just don't know what's out there).

Traits I'm looking for:

• Homebrew friendly. I want to be able to make my own setting and populate it with interesting factions/NPCs/creatures with minimal fuss.

• Medium complexity. Hoping for something between Blades in the Dark on the lower end and D&D 5e on the upper end.

• Flexible genre, with room to push both ends of the science-fantasy spectrum to get a nice planetary romance vibe.

• A good framework for wilderness exploration, survival, and maybe some settlement building.

• Player characters on the more mundane end (no superheroes), with a focus on solving problems with diagetic reasoning.

• Snappy action. While I do not anticipate combat to be a focus of the campaign, it should be fun when it happens, with enough depth that players aren't just doing the same thing over and over.

• Decent balance. The math should be fairly predictable and easy to work with, with few seriously over/underpowered player options.

• A focus on the strange and wondrous, both to help the GM come up with fresh ideas and keep the players excited to explore.

• Easy VTT integration. I play mostly digitally, so something that works on Foundry or Roll20 would be nice.

Systems I've already considered:

• Numenera. Seemed promising, so I read a fair sampling of it, but quickly got frustrated with how shallow it felt. Most of the "mystery" of the setting is LOLRANDOM dressed up with pretty artwork. I like the genre-bending, dreamy feel and idea of bonus XP in exchange for more danger/drama, but the weird player-facing mechanics are a tough sell.

• Path/Starfinder 2e. Has solid inspirational material (Lost Omens: Impossible Lands is what sparked the idea initially) and I love the heavy customization/tactics, but it's a bit too stiff and linear for what I'm going for. Also, I've been GMing it nonstop for like half a decade and need a break.

• Fabula Ultima. While charming and open-ended, I don't think it has the meat I'm looking for. It's too simple. Big fan of the collaborative worldbuilding and social/emotional "bond" mechanics, though. Will likely steal some elements, at the very least.

• Ashes/Worlds Without Number. I'm a huge Kevin Crawford shill and fully intend to make heavy use of XWN's robust GM tools, but the 2d6 binary pass/fail system is a bit dry and generic. I'd like something with a little more unique flair and emotional depth.

So yeah, I'd love for the community to either help me find a good fit, or talk me into reconsidering one of the systems I've ruled out. I know this request is both really vague and frustratingly picky, but I've kind of stalled out and need help finding a good base before committing to any setting details.

Also, I'm down to hear about any non-titterpig inspirational sources, too! Again, I'm not super well read, so having a bigger internal library to pull from will help me make a cool playspace for my friends to explore. Thanks!

So i just saw this in kickstarter...a part of me is curious to back it..but the other part knows the track record with shadowrun and if i were to Dm anything shadowrun related it would be 4th/20th edition...but dunno... any thoughts?

I'm running a Halloween one-shot next month, where my players are brought into a Silent Hill-like version of our city. However, so many of the RPGs out there have guns and firearms as a given (we live in Japan), or with some kind of superhuman/supernatural power tacked on. The closest I've come to an RPG that might suit us is Endure RPG, but I'd like to see what else is out there.

• No Dread or Ten Candles; we've played them already
• No magic or superpowers
• No guns as base equipment
• Just ordinary self-insert folks trying to survive and unravel a supernatural/occult mystery that's gripping their city

The Draw Steel summoner's open beta playtest closes in a couple of hours. I have already filled it out and submitted it, and I would like to share my thoughts and experiences on it.

The full version of my report is here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1h2to8GJMvfcmg-G_aJCX4aGbZwaptldwpC5h7j0KyCo/edit

To summarize some key points, this is a superb start. A summoner really feels like they are overwhelming the opposition with eight, twelve, or even greater numbers of minions. It feels epic to see so many squares of the battle grid occupied by minion after minion after minion.

However...

• The class has an uncomfortable amount of ambiguities. Furthermore, the minion rules are tough to grasp, especially since they diverge from bestiary minions at several key junctures.

• Midair fall summoning should not be possible.

• The bestiary has many board wipes available to enemies (some of which call for individual tests from each target, forcing a summoner’s minions to make all of those tests). "Oops, all your minions are gone" feels punitive and unfun for a summoner.

• Call Forth should not be eligible for Learn from a Master (Hone Ability).

• Take the Hit! is currently the single best summoner triggered action by an extreme margin.

• The class's damage is front-loaded. It is excessive at 1st echelon, okay at 2nd echelon (Rex Scepter aside), and underwhelming at 3rd and 4th.

• Swap Ward is just too good as printed, and too universally applicable.

• Many of the treasures and titles in this document are too strong. The Warbanner of Pride, the 33 Field Commanders Baton, the Rex Scepter (particularly with sprite dandeknights, and yes, even without the misreading of it that allows extra attacks on Strike for Me even on a natural 18 or below), Safeguarded, and Summoner Successor are especially egregious.

• The retainer summoner is not good when it is stuck with razors and violences, and not ensnarers and gushing spewlers.

• The rival summoner is a weak enemy for its EV. Its only good trick is chump blocking with its triggered action; everything else it does drains the enemy side's Malice for not that much gain. It is boring to fight.

Atop all of this, everything is cumbersome. Resolving a summoner's turns is a hassle due to managing many minions, particularly a fey summoner's flying minions, which force the tracking of altitude and can share spaces with other creatures. The Safeguarded and Summoner Successor titles, in addition to being too strong for their sheer damage output, also flood the board with too many minions, severely slowing down the game. The retainer summoner and the rival summoner cause significant slowdown, too.

I am sincerely interested in and invested in this class, and I hope that it can become the best it can be.

Here is a bonus showcase. A level 5 fey horde summoner with a Rex Scepter (which can be picked as a starting leveled treasure if the game starts at level 4 or higher) and the Summoner Successor title is currently one of the highest-damage builds in the game, if not the highest-damage.

At the start of combat, the fey horde summoner summons two sprite dandeknights. At the start of their turn, they summon four dandeknights as a horde summoner (maximum 12 minions and two squads summoned as a horde summoner), and three dandeknights as a Summoner Successor (maximum 8 minions and one squad summoned as a Summoner Successor).

The character starts their first turn with nine dandeknights on the field. Thanks to the dandeknights' Staccato Swings and the Rex Scepter, each deals 4 damage with a ranged free strike. The nine dandeknights all swing for 9 × 4 = 36 damage. If the summoner spends 5 essence on a Rally Cry, they each deal 3 more damage, so that is another 9 × 3 = +27 damage.

But wait, the summoner has not even used their main action yet. They use it on a Strike for Me through their Rex Scepter, most likely earning a tier 3 result using the item's double edge. That is seven more free strikes, for 7 × 4 = 28 damage.

The summoner has not spent a single Heroic Resource yet. They also have a fly and hover speed and 12 Recoveries. Take the Hit! makes them and their party exceptionally durable, while Swap Ward lets the summoner teleport around the battlefield, all but immune to non-damaging effects.

The summoner gets more and more dandeknights each round. If the enemies are lacking in board wipes, they will be swamped by large stacks of automatic damage.

I should know. I have played this exact build.

I am curious if people have made any interesting characters that they would like to share and or show off.

One-shot for 1st level characters. Can be easily modified to any D20 fantasy (and Daggerheart too)

It includes an A5 zine-format booklet, complete with original artwork, friendly layout (no flipping), and cuttable handouts (blank page on the reverse). Also includes a separate high resolution map for VTTs

It also includes 5 new monsters:

Badger (LV 0) Giant badger (LV 1) Awakened giant badger matriarch (LV 2) Green centipede (LV1) Bat, Swarm (LV 1)

Would love some feedback!