Latest / Sessions Canceled / Draw Steel, Tactial Heroic Cinematic Fantasy | Tabletop Shoutout: Ep. 164

Transcript

Draw Steel, Tactial Heroic Cinematic Fantasy | Tabletop Shoutout: Ep. 164 · Sessions Canceled

• 0:15
  Good up, Internet. The GM has started to build a
• 0:18
  shrine to Matthew Colville in his bedroom and is is praising
• 0:26
  the ground upon which he walks and might be starting a cult in
• 0:30
  in the name of MCDM. So sessions cancelled until we
• 0:34
  can talk to him about it. But he keeps mumbling about how
• 0:37
  he's been saved. He's been saved from the horrors
• 0:41
  of 5th edition, and that draw steel is his new his new best
• 0:45
  friend. Now, there's a lot of candles in
• 0:50
  that room. It's looking a little sketchy,
• 0:51
  I'm not gonna lie. Bit of a fire Fire hazard.
• 0:55
  Bit of a fire hazard. Bit of a fire hazard.
• 0:57
  I don't know where he got a 24 by 36 print of Matt Colville's
• 1:00
  face, but that's that's a thing that he has now.
• 1:05
  That is impressive, yeah. Anyway, we're we're back again
• 1:13
  talking about another game that is not not 5 VI mean we did, we
• 1:19
  did hit our 5V quarter. We were talking about UA last
• 1:21
  week. So you know got the got the
• 1:24
  mention 5E in some capacity in there, but now we're talking
• 1:30
  about the real 6th edition. We don't need 6th edition
• 1:35
  anymore. We have 6th edition at home now
• 1:37
  y'all and it's called draw steel.
• 1:42
  But can I just say by the way, because we've talked about this
• 1:46
  before, the name draw steel. I still don't love it.
• 1:49
  I. Don't like it?
• 1:50
  It's it's. Growing on me.
• 1:52
  It's growing on me as I keep hearing people say it.
• 1:55
  It's growing on me. No, because I can't.
• 1:57
  I if you were like, hey, do you want to play draw steel?
• 2:00
  I'd be like, wait, wait, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
• 2:02
  What? Like you're using a verb to
• 2:07
  describe verb like. It's a little weird in steel.
• 2:12
  It's a verb. It's a little weird in that
• 2:14
  sentence structure, yes, but like the game, just the game as
• 2:19
  it's on its own being called. Draw Steel is not.
• 2:21
  I don't know, it's growing on me.
• 2:25
  Still not my favorite, still not what I probably would have gone
• 2:28
  with, but it's growing on me. I do have so you know how like
• 2:33
  you feel about storyteller in, in in White Wolf games.
• 2:38
  So I have my, I have that now it's director.
• 2:41
  Oh, I think director's a good one.
• 2:43
  No, I hate it. Why?
• 2:45
  Because I think it's as pretentious as would you think
• 2:47
  Storyteller is. I don't think Storyteller's
• 2:50
  pretentious. I think Storyteller does a poor
• 2:53
  job of describing what you're doing and sounds off.
• 2:59
  But director, like director makes sense to me because it
• 3:03
  does actually kind of describe what a game master does.
• 3:08
  You you direct you're you're directing the scenes like that
• 3:11
  is a lot of your job is being a director like a movie.
• 3:15
  Director. Well, not quite right, because a
• 3:17
  a director often has, at least in the moment, final say on on
• 3:22
  how a scene plays, which you do not have as AGM specifically.
• 3:25
  You don't have like, you don't have in the exact same sense,
• 3:28
  but you are in a sense directing what's going on, right?
• 3:31
  You're instructing your actors which to say your players about
• 3:35
  what they can and can't do or what they are or not do, are not
• 3:38
  doing. And you're describing what's
• 3:39
  going on like it's not that far of a stretch.
• 3:43
  And Matt Colville's a big movie guy.
• 3:44
  He loves his movies. So, you know, he went with
• 3:47
  director. Yeah, I mean, like he's entitled
• 3:50
  to, it's his game, but I, I don't.
• 3:51
  Feel like you're just looking for reasons to hate right out
• 3:53
  the jump. I feel like the negativity is
• 3:55
  very quick to go. No, no, no, I was very neutral
• 3:59
  on this game because I knew almost nothing about it and I
• 4:01
  but what actually that's not true.
• 4:02
  I came out on it positive because I like the the kit, the
• 4:05
  gear kits and I really like the talent.
• 4:07
  So I came into this being like pretty excited.
• 4:09
  I'm not going to lie, I'm. Shocked that you like kids?
• 4:14
  I really expected you did not like kids.
• 4:18
  I was a little, we're not going to probably not going to get to
• 4:22
  them today, but like I was a little on the fence about them.
• 4:26
  But the way that he described them when I was watching the
• 4:29
  video on like one of the the the videos on Draw Steel while I was
• 4:32
  working back when I had a job, I was like, oh, actually this is
• 4:35
  pretty cool once it's explained to me.
• 4:38
  Fair enough. Once you say it to me like I'm
• 4:40
  six, I'm like, ah. So yeah, we're talking about
• 4:45
  Draw Steel, MCDM's new RPG. Before the steel is drawn,
• 4:49
  however, I need you to draw your phone out of your pocket or draw
• 4:54
  your mouse upon the mouse pad. That didn't work as well, and
• 4:58
  hit the follow or subscribe button on whatever podcast
• 5:00
  platform you're currently listening on.
• 5:04
  The mouse pad analogy didn't work as well, but I feel like
• 5:06
  draw your phone out of your pocket.
• 5:07
  That one works pretty well. Yes, that being said, I like
• 5:12
  several things that this game has to offer, but I have some
• 5:15
  nitpicks so we will get to this. So I feel like before we talk
• 5:24
  about the game, we have to talk about the history a little bit
• 5:29
  of this game, because this game exists in this game exists in
• 5:33
  like kind of a very specific context.
• 5:36
  I mean, like all I mean, I mean, all games do, but this game was
• 5:43
  a response to a very specific thing.
• 5:47
  So for those who don't know the history and do not know who Matt
• 5:52
  Colville is. So Matt Colville is a, is a guy,
• 5:56
  he's a YouTube who, you know, basically his main shtick was
• 6:01
  sort of giving GM advice and, and talking about running DND
• 6:05
  and how to run it better, blah blah blah.
• 6:06
  That was kind of his main thing. He does all sorts of other shit
• 6:08
  too, but like, that was his main stick.
• 6:10
  He does whatever the fuck he wants on his YouTube channel.
• 6:12
  This is really, really the best way to put it.
• 6:15
  Including having bad opinions about the Dune movies.
• 6:19
  Yeah, or or having nonsense or having conversations with like
• 6:23
  Viking historian Youtubers because he can.
• 6:26
  So he just doesn't have the fuck he wants on his YouTube.
• 6:28
  But one of his main shticks was telling people how to.
• 6:31
  Basically his idea was he wanted to dispel the what's the word
• 6:40
  I'm looking for? He wanted to dispel the myth of
• 6:44
  like GM being so intrinsically difficult and wanted to show
• 6:48
  everyone that DM ING is not actually that hard, and so went
• 6:53
  out of his way to explain like this is how you DM if you're if
• 6:56
  you haven't done it before. Like that was like his big crux.
• 6:59
  Anyway, Long story short, a whole long, I have to truncate
• 7:03
  it because there's a lot of history here.
• 7:04
  A whole long series of things happened.
• 7:06
  Eventually he founded his own company called MCDM.
• 7:09
  The company was founded on the back of a Kickstarter for a book
• 7:13
  they were making called Strongholds and Followers which
• 7:15
  is a supplement book for 5 E that added mechanics for
• 7:20
  strongholds and Followers. Titles in the name?
• 7:24
  What titles in the name? What the fuck did I just say?
• 7:27
  Does what it says on the tin. You know what I'm trying to say
• 7:29
  there? Titles in the name what?
• 7:33
  I was a little confuzzled on that one, I'm gonna be honest.
• 7:35
  But it's fine. We made it through.
• 7:36
  I don't even know what I was going for there.
• 7:38
  I don't even know how that OK anyway.
• 7:41
  So MCDM gets founded and for a while their shtick is making
• 7:48
  five Ed and D5E supplements. So they made strongholds and
• 7:52
  followers. Then they made kingdoms in
• 7:54
  warfare. Then they made a book called
• 7:56
  Where Evil Lives which was basically about making like
• 8:01
  really cool boss fights was the kind of the main crux of it.
• 8:03
  And then a book called Flea Mortals which was basically an
• 8:06
  alternative monster book to the Monster manual.
• 8:11
  But as time went on, eventually Matt came to the conclusion why
• 8:17
  are we doing this nonsense for 5 E?
• 8:19
  Let's make our own God damn game.
• 8:21
  And so they started making their own game which for a while was
• 8:24
  just the MCDMRPG. Now it has come out officially
• 8:28
  and it is Draw Steel. So the idea behind Draw Steel
• 8:38
  and the reason it exists is because Matt Colville as a as a
• 8:46
  as AGM and a game designer and all these things, he likes the
• 8:52
  classical heroic dungeon fucker monster slapper type game that
• 8:59
  5E is. But he, much like much like me
• 9:05
  and Isaiah do, felt like one of five ES biggest one of not big,
• 9:10
  maybe not biggest, but one of five ES flaws is it tries to
• 9:12
  kind of make everybody happy and be somewhat generic in its
• 9:16
  methodology and stuff. So people primarily play D and
• 9:21
  D5E as a fantasy superhero heroic fight the big monster to
• 9:28
  save the universe type game, right.
• 9:30
  That's generally how like the Critical Role style of game is
• 9:33
  what most people do with 5E. But 5E as a game.
• 9:37
  And the designers kind of try to pretend that that's not what 5E
• 9:42
  is and sort of try to act like DND does all these other things.
• 9:48
  And like, it can still be like a gritty OSR game or it can be
• 9:52
  like a a social intrigue game. But like really at the end of
• 9:57
  the day, 5E is mostly a heroic fantasy monster slapping game.
• 10:01
  That's the crux of it. So draw a steal, basically, Matt
• 10:06
  Koval is like, what if we just took that idea and just really
• 10:10
  hammered in and focused on that element, that of that element of
• 10:16
  the game that people are already playing?
• 10:17
  What if we just made the game 100% about that and got rid of
• 10:21
  all the extra fluff nonsense that 5 E sort of kind of
• 10:24
  pretends like it has sometimes, Yeah.
• 10:31
  Anything to add there? No, yeah, I mean, I mostly
• 10:33
  agree. I I think you can definitely see
• 10:36
  the the the grognard parentheses affectionate in this game
• 10:41
  because it's not afraid to be crunchy and a little more
• 10:45
  convoluted for the sake of doing what it wants to do.
• 10:48
  Yeah, which I think on one that is good, but on the other,
• 10:50
  that's a nitpick I have because I am not the intended audience.
• 10:55
  You are absolutely the intended audience.
• 10:56
  What are you talking about? How are you not the intended
• 10:59
  audience? I'm an I'm, I'm an adjacent
• 11:01
  audience. How?
• 11:04
  Because I do like the crunch. I just don't like the way they
• 11:06
  did the crunch. OK, but methodology doesn't mean
• 11:11
  you're not the intent. You're You are 100% the intended
• 11:13
  audience. You are a 5 E player who wants a
• 11:15
  more complicated heroic fantasy game.
• 11:19
  You're 100% the intended audience.
• 11:24
  I might be changing. Whether the OK, whether the
• 11:27
  execution hit the way you wanted, You are the kind of
• 11:30
  person that they are going for. I suppose.
• 11:35
  Because to explain what I mean, this game is basically trying to
• 11:44
  make a game that is a game you can sink your teeth into for a
• 11:52
  long time. Like it's gonna be a game that's
• 11:54
  hard to to grasp and understand at first, but there's a depth to
• 11:59
  it. And once you start to get past
• 12:01
  that initial struggle of learning this game, I think it's
• 12:04
  actually quite easy to understand.
• 12:05
  Like the systems are there. It just, there's a bit of a
• 12:09
  learning curve at the beginning, but it's going to be really
• 12:12
  satisfying, I think once you learn it.
• 12:18
  And if you're the kind of person who's looking for a game to like
• 12:21
  sink their teeth into a little extra, this game's definitely
• 12:25
  going to give you that. But also still wants to do the
• 12:28
  heroic fantasy thing like, and it the, the game does not
• 12:37
  necessarily I, I think they did a quite good job of having the
• 12:42
  crunch be in there, but making it a modern version of crunch,
• 12:47
  right, 'cause there's a lot of games that have crunchy
• 12:49
  mechanics, but their design is very like stuck in the past, if
• 12:54
  you will, right? Shadow run, I'm looking at you.
• 12:59
  And that kind of crunch is annoying because it feels like,
• 13:03
  oh, you guys haven't really updated your methodology or your
• 13:06
  design in any way. Draw Steel has the crunch, but
• 13:09
  is also very modern and is trying to address common gripes
• 13:14
  that people have with RPGs right now, like common complaints.
• 13:23
  The so it's, it's a fun kind of crunch, I guess is what I'm
• 13:29
  saying. And Matt Colville is of the
• 13:33
  opinion, and I tend to agree with him on this one, that the
• 13:40
  idea that making a game more simple, like more simplified
• 13:45
  games will sell better is an idea that game designers have
• 13:51
  cooked up, but it's not an idea that he believes customers
• 13:56
  actually agree with. And I tend to agree with him on
• 14:00
  that. And the common example that he
• 14:03
  cites when he says that is League of Legends, which is a
• 14:08
  incredibly complicated game on many, many layers that takes
• 14:12
  many hundreds of hours to even have like a decent grasp of the
• 14:16
  game. And I say this as someone who
• 14:18
  has somewhere between like 600 and 800 hours in League of
• 14:21
  Legends and that's one of the most popular video games in the
• 14:25
  world. So like I definitely I see where
• 14:30
  he's coming from. So basically they did not go out
• 14:33
  of their way to simplify draw steel for the sake of better
• 14:37
  sales or or wider appeal or whatever.
• 14:40
  This is very much not that game, which I personally appreciate
• 14:44
  quite a lot. I don't know about you, but I
• 14:48
  appreciate it. Yes, like.
• 14:51
  I I do really like the the desire to sort of maintain a
• 14:57
  level of noodliness for the sake of again, like achieving your.
• 15:02
  For the vision. Yes for for like, yes for for
• 15:05
  achieving your your sense of vision.
• 15:08
  And I think it does do it well. Like I have criticisms, but I do
• 15:14
  think it does it pretty well. You'll you specifically, you see
• 15:18
  it in things like the way that the classes are built and and
• 15:21
  the way that you sort of maneuver the game as each class
• 15:25
  and the way that it feels really refreshing to build your
• 15:29
  character in a, in like a 5 E or DND adjacent style of build.
• 15:34
  Like looking through it, it was a weird.
• 15:37
  You know what's funny? I started off annoyed by this
• 15:39
  the like, I got 3 versions. I have 3 windows open and each
• 15:44
  of them are different points in the rule book because I'm I'm
• 15:46
  building it like I was building a test character while I was
• 15:49
  reading the book just to see like how well I was retaining
• 15:50
  information. OK And I started off being
• 15:53
  annoyed because I was like fuck what is this 2016 or I have to
• 15:56
  do this shit again. But then you got kind of into
• 15:59
  it. But I got kind of into it.
• 16:01
  It's like I, I kind of enjoyed the process of going through
• 16:04
  like the three different pages and be like, OK, wait, it's I
• 16:07
  all right, this kind of works. On this and then this with that.
• 16:09
  Yeah, it's like, all right, background.
• 16:11
  All right, background has languages.
• 16:12
  OK, let me open up another thing.
• 16:13
  All right, look at languages. OK, All right, now it's got
• 16:14
  skills. All right, I'm gonna go look at
• 16:15
  the skills, all right? See what those do.
• 16:16
  And all right, I'm gonna go here.
• 16:17
  Like, yeah, I kind of liked it. And like, I was kind of mad at
• 16:21
  first, but the fact that I was like, Nah, hold on.
• 16:24
  This is kind of like it. This feels like the first time
• 16:26
  again. I kind of like this.
• 16:27
  Well, I mean, also, perhaps maybe you were a little
• 16:30
  frustrated because you haven't had to do that in a while.
• 16:33
  Yes, yes. And frankly this is because of
• 16:35
  Lancer, this is because of Comcon, because I just have a
• 16:37
  full compendium of every rule I need and I can click on it and
• 16:40
  build. There it is.
• 16:42
  Well, you also haven't had to build your character in Lancer,
• 16:45
  right? So like you haven't had as much
• 16:47
  of that aspect of that game. I have, I I've built characters
• 16:51
  in Lancer like to help my players do it, but OK, fair
• 16:54
  enough. Yeah.
• 16:57
  Yeah, For me, the thing that I really like, the thing that I
• 17:02
  like the most about this game, whether you like what they did
• 17:07
  or not, with the game itself, the the vision is uncompromised.
• 17:13
  They have an objective. They're like, this is this
• 17:16
  literally the opening of the book is explaining what kind of
• 17:20
  game this is and saying, if you don't like the sound of this,
• 17:24
  here's a bunch of other games you could try instead.
• 17:28
  This is how our game works. That's it and I like that a lot.
• 17:32
  So for example, the the literal first thing this game talks
• 17:37
  about, it says this what is this game question mark and one of
• 17:40
  the things so like for one little paragraph out of this,
• 17:44
  you can fight monster monsters and dungeons, but this game is
• 17:48
  not about dungeons. Lots of games focus on that
• 17:51
  gameplay and do it really well, like Shadow Dark.
• 17:54
  So they specifically call out games that are called out.
• 17:58
  Shadow Dark, Forbidden Lands, call it Cthulhu, Paranoia, and
• 18:01
  Daggerheart are all called out. DND is very explicitly not
• 18:04
  called out. I caught that.
• 18:07
  I did catch that. Yep.
• 18:11
  So in that first pay, in the literal first page of the book,
• 18:15
  five other games are called out explaining.
• 18:18
  If you want a different vibe, consider this game.
• 18:24
  Love that because they're very specific about what this game is
• 18:30
  and what it's about, and all of the design fuels that vision.
• 18:36
  And for me, that's always the most important thing.
• 18:39
  Does your game, what is your game about?
• 18:42
  And do your mechanics reinforce what your game is about?
• 18:45
  That is always like, even if I don't like your game, if you're
• 18:50
  designing for your vision, like let's say someone's making a
• 18:53
  game about fucking baking cookies, I have no interest.
• 18:57
  I do not like this game, but everything about it is just
• 19:00
  focused on baking cookies and running a bake shop.
• 19:03
  I appreciate the non compromised vision, you know what I mean?
• 19:09
  I'm not playing. I'm not playing Hello Kitty RPG
• 19:11
  Adventure, but I appreciate the Hutzpot.
• 19:14
  There's someone out there who doesn't want to play goblins
• 19:16
  with a fat ass but you appreciate the vision.
• 19:18
  Yes, I mean you're wrong if you don't want to play goblins with
• 19:21
  fat ass but that's that's beside the point.
• 19:23
  Completely agree. Yeah, you should want to play
• 19:26
  the fat ass goblins, Yes. OK, so I'm talking about what
• 19:30
  this game is about. So what the fuck is this game
• 19:32
  about? So the game describes itself as
• 19:36
  tactical, heroic, cinematic fantasy.
• 19:41
  Those are kind of the four pillars that the game bases the
• 19:44
  design on. They're like the four keywords,
• 19:46
  if you will, and I basically agree with three of the four of
• 19:52
  them. Can you guess which one?
• 19:56
  I don't necessarily agree with Isaiah.
• 20:00
  The four basic keywords. Hold on, let me just let me just
• 20:02
  let me just let me just let me just scroll to it real quick
• 20:04
  because I was at a different point in the book.
• 20:06
  Tactical, heroic, cinematic fantasy?
• 20:12
  I'm assuming probably no. Probably cinematic.
• 20:19
  Cinematic, yes, yeah. So, yeah, so it explains the
• 20:27
  game, says what is this game? And then it gives you a
• 20:29
  breakdown. It starts with the tactical part
• 20:31
  and then it explains the heroic part, then the cinematic, then
• 20:33
  fantasy. OK, so the tactical I I
• 20:38
  basically think they hit three of the four really well.
• 20:40
  And the cinematic 1 is, you know, So what are these 4
• 20:47
  pillars that they're designing? Like the reason I'm talking
• 20:51
  about this is because if you watch any of Colville's streams
• 20:53
  when they were designing the game, or you listen to James
• 20:56
  Intracasso or watch any of his videos, they always, always
• 20:59
  would hammer home this phrase of tactical, heroic, cinematic fan.
• 21:05
  Like they would say it over and over again 'cause it was like
• 21:07
  they're, they're sort of North Star for the design.
• 21:10
  So the tactical part, I think they hit really well.
• 21:14
  The game has all these different elements of like movement, area
• 21:20
  of effects type abilities, buffs and debuffs, abilities that are
• 21:25
  like positioning is Positioning is so important in this game.
• 21:30
  Like there's so many abilities in this game that you can do
• 21:34
  like force enemies to move, move your allies forcibly get
• 21:39
  yourself out of the way, position certain angles for
• 21:42
  certain attacks. There's like burst AOE abilities
• 21:46
  for almost every single class that you know start or you know
• 21:49
  originate from you like the positioning is.
• 21:53
  Crazy spitefully heavy on positionals because I like I
• 22:00
  think and I I don't watch a lot of Matt's streams, but it like
• 22:03
  he would definitely be someone where it's like you don't
• 22:05
  fucking move enough in D and I don't like that.
• 22:09
  I don't know if he, I don't know if.
• 22:14
  He's saying for a fact that it's spiteful, but it almost seems
• 22:16
  like a spiteful's not the right word.
• 22:18
  It is. It seems like a direct response.
• 22:21
  It is a response. The movement meta of D&D and
• 22:24
  like a it. Is 100% a direct response
• 22:26
  because I don't know if he necessarily has a problem with
• 22:31
  the the way that the like the sort of lack of movement that 5
• 22:36
  E tends to have and that element of it.
• 22:38
  I don't know if he is bothered by that, but he definitely feels
• 22:43
  like the movement and positioning elements of the game
• 22:46
  is really, really important if you want to have that tactical
• 22:50
  feel. Like one of the earliest design
• 22:54
  decisions he would talk about on stream and stuff was like forced
• 23:00
  movement, pushing enemies around.
• 23:02
  I mean, there's a mechanic, there's a whole mechanic based
• 23:04
  around punching enemies into walls or through objects to deal
• 23:08
  extra damage. I was that MCDM is doing a
• 23:16
  actual play of the Delian Tomb adventure, which is their like
• 23:19
  kind of starter adventure thing. And literally the the the Knoll
• 23:25
  player, which is the monk essentially punched a goblin
• 23:29
  through a wall into another room and killed him.
• 23:32
  I kind of love that I but I can only see it as Guilty Gear wall
• 23:35
  wall breaks. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 23:41
  Fun fact, you know the the streamer I watch Octopimp.
• 23:44
  Yeah. He has a lot of mods on his
• 23:46
  Guilty Gear and one of the mods he has is anytime he punches
• 23:50
  someone through the wall it's the Yoda scream.
• 23:53
  I love that. It's so any any time I see the
• 23:56
  it's the Yoda scream from Lego Star.
• 23:58
  Wars, it's so funny to me that you said the streamer.
• 24:01
  I watch Octo pimp because I'm an I'm an OG octo pimp.
• 24:04
  I know you are fan. I know you are.
• 24:06
  I've been here. What is it?
• 24:08
  I'm not exactly saying quote not to me the old, but I was there
• 24:13
  and they were. He likes to disassociate from
• 24:16
  the Homestuck thing these days. He doesn't talk about it too
• 24:19
  much. Look, I understand that totally
• 24:21
  fair, but you cannot erase your cannot erase your history mind.
• 24:25
  No, I know, I know. Now I know him as Axel.
• 24:30
  Yeah, yes, he's much more focused on The Voice acting
• 24:34
  through these days. I mean, he's still streams,
• 24:35
  obviously, but anyway, regardless, yeah.
• 24:38
  So I just imagine punching someone through wall.
• 24:40
  I just hear the Lego Yoda scream.
• 24:43
  Yeah, you know the one. Yeah.
• 24:48
  So yes, the the the point I'm getting at the forcing of
• 24:51
  movement and the repositioning and the not staying in one place
• 24:56
  basically was a big core tenant of the game.
• 25:00
  That's not the only element of the tactical bit, but it is one
• 25:03
  of the big focuses of the tactical bit.
• 25:06
  Another great example, in the actual play they were fighting
• 25:08
  an on keg boss A a legally distinct on keg I don't remember
• 25:13
  what it's called but big bug thing and there were like bones.
• 25:18
  There were rib bones sticking out of the wall and if anyone
• 25:21
  got punched into the wall they took extra damage from the rib
• 25:24
  bones stabbing them. I like that.
• 25:27
  Yeah. So yeah, the tactical thing, I
• 25:31
  think they nailed it. I mean there's also some of the
• 25:34
  stuff like the Bard can do in terms of like buff, the
• 25:38
  Troubadour can do in terms of like buffing allies and throwing
• 25:42
  out like different moves is very good.
• 25:46
  Take a shot because Isaiah has another Ludo narrative break
• 25:52
  because to me troubadour has always been the evolved the the
• 25:55
  cavalry mounted healing class in Fire Emblem.
• 25:57
  So I read troubadour and had like a weird eyes crossed
• 26:00
  moment. I'm.
• 26:00
  Going to be honest though, that's not what a troubadour is,
• 26:04
  so in this case I think they're using the word more correctly.
• 26:07
  They almost certainly look, druids also are not typically
• 26:10
  dark mages. But and yet I think druid still,
• 26:15
  15 years after playing Blazing Sword, I'm like, ah, yes, dark
• 26:18
  wizard. Yeah, yeah.
• 26:20
  No, no, a troubadour. A troubadour is essentially
• 26:24
  another word for a Bard. Yes, I know a troubadour.
• 26:27
  You're you're a travelling entertainer.
• 26:29
  Yes, so the the the heroic part of the game.
• 26:34
  What how's the heroic part feel again?
• 26:37
  I think they really nailed the heroic part.
• 26:39
  The abilities in this game you there is no dirt farmers
• 26:44
  allowed. When you are level 1 you are
• 26:48
  fuck off powerful right from the jump you have so much shit.
• 26:53
  Well, it's it's funny because it's like even the the Fury,
• 26:56
  which it's funny because in fucking in Fabula, the fury is
• 27:00
  the monk, but in this game it's the barbarian.
• 27:02
  Even the theory in this game is like, I'm just going to open up
• 27:05
  a pocket dimension. Yeah, I just I what?
• 27:09
  What? I mean at at level 1 like the
• 27:13
  sensor, which is your roughly your paladin equivalent, you
• 27:17
  have like whole like holy judgement, you know, burn them
• 27:22
  with holy damage because they're a bitch.
• 27:24
  You have like magical blessed hammer swings, like all the like
• 27:28
  cool over the top anime esque shit that 5E does.
• 27:33
  You have all that shit basically right from the jump.
• 27:36
  Like right at level 1. You have stuff like that like I
• 27:40
  do. Appreciate that the game is not
• 27:41
  interested in you being like, well, I get my in level 1D and D
• 27:46
  you're like I have you know my thing.
• 27:49
  You know, it's either spell casting or your, your, your
• 27:52
  divine Smite. And that's like the only thing I
• 27:56
  have and I can only do it three times a day.
• 27:58
  I they do appreciate that this game is frankly uninterested in
• 28:01
  that kind of play. Not even a little.
• 28:02
  Literally level 1. Level 1 is the densest level for
• 28:07
  every class. It is, yeah.
• 28:09
  You get the most shit at level 1.
• 28:12
  It do be thick. It's kind of the mentality that
• 28:16
  5 E does a little bit with subclasses.
• 28:18
  At Level 3, where you get your most important abilities as soon
• 28:22
  as you get the subclass. This game is doing effectively
• 28:25
  the same thing, but instead of at Level 3, it's at level 1.
• 28:30
  There is only 10 levels, so also so the ability, like the pace at
• 28:36
  which you gets abilities is scrunched down more because
• 28:39
  there's 10 levels. So every level up you get more
• 28:43
  shit. Like generally speaking, but
• 28:49
  the, yeah, the feeling of the abilities, like you're a
• 28:53
  paladin, you're a, you're a sensor at level 1.
• 28:55
  You have your divine smacking, you have your healing, you have
• 29:00
  your like judgement wrath and your magical senses.
• 29:03
  Like all that shit right from the get go.
• 29:05
  You don't have to wait for any of your cool iconic stuff.
• 29:11
  Then we get to the cinematic part.
• 29:15
  I, I, I honestly when they use the word cinematic, I think they
• 29:21
  just mean epic shit, Just cool shit.
• 29:26
  Because to me, a really tactical, grid based heavy game
• 29:32
  like this simply cannot be cinematic, you know?
• 29:36
  Like, see, you know I disagree with you.
• 29:38
  I think they're too. What I mean is, I think that
• 29:41
  game design is too anathema to what I think of in terms of a
• 29:46
  game being cinematic. If a game's going to be
• 29:49
  cinematic in the way that I'm thinking about it, it needs to
• 29:53
  be something like Dungeon World or Apocalypse World or, or akin
• 29:56
  to that, where there's a real free flowing movement of how the
• 30:02
  the camera, as it were, moves around and, and and eats up the
• 30:07
  scene. I just don't think a tactical
• 30:10
  grid based turn based game is gonna do that.
• 30:13
  But again, when they're saying cinematic, they just mean really
• 30:17
  cool shit like punching goblins through walls.
• 30:19
  That's, that's what they mean by cinematic.
• 30:22
  Just cool shit happens, which is not really how I would use the
• 30:25
  word, but that's what the game is saying.
• 30:28
  Well, I think so, yes. This has a a piece of that in
• 30:32
  it. But I think you can look no
• 30:33
  farther than the Hakan's ability.
• 30:36
  What's it called? Doomsight, which I think is a
• 30:40
  perfect example of like a super interesting cinematic gameplay.
• 30:43
  For those of you who don't know, I'm just, we're just, I'm just
• 30:45
  going to say it now. You basically get to work with
• 30:47
  the director to say at one point in the campaign there will be a
• 30:50
  fight and in that fight this character will die.
• 30:53
  But during that fight I have infinite health, I do Max damage
• 30:59
  and I pretty much just negate most negative effects against
• 31:02
  me, which essentially guarantees you a win in that fight if you
• 31:06
  can't be killed effectively. But you will die like and you
• 31:12
  cannot come back. You're just dead.
• 31:14
  So but again, that to me it feels like you're is just really
• 31:23
  cool shit. Like it's a very cool idea and I
• 31:26
  love it. But the word cinematic just
• 31:30
  means a more specific thing to me.
• 31:32
  Like cinematic means to me. I'm envisioning the game
• 31:36
  literally like a movie, which I think with a turn based tactical
• 31:40
  game like this is really hard to do.
• 31:42
  You can have, you can have really epic cool abilities that
• 31:48
  in retrospect create really cool moments, but that's not quite
• 31:52
  the same to me as directing the game like a movie, 'cause when
• 31:57
  I'm running Apocalypse World, I can literally move the, the
• 32:02
  proverbial camera around like a movie director.
• 32:05
  I can, I can dictate what we're focusing.
• 32:08
  Like this thing is happening with these two characters.
• 32:11
  We're going to focus on this for a while because this is the most
• 32:14
  important moment. As opposed to I want to focus on
• 32:17
  what's happening with the Fury player, but it's not their turn.
• 32:21
  So I can't, you know, I have to be beholden to the games.
• 32:23
  You know what I mean? Like.
• 32:25
  I, I see where you're coming from, I, I think.
• 32:27
  It's like a It's a different definition of the word yes.
• 32:31
  Well, I think that's exactly how you put it, because I I would
• 32:33
  quantify something like Doomsight as quite cinematic,
• 32:35
  but I see what you're saying. Yeah, I just, I don't know, Sean
• 32:41
  Merwin on the Eldridge lore cast said basically the same thing I
• 32:45
  said where he was like he was like, it doesn't really jive
• 32:50
  with what I think of as the word cinematic, but the way they're
• 32:54
  using it makes sense in their context.
• 32:59
  Honestly, actually, I'm just because this is the contentious
• 33:02
  one. I'm just gonna read this one.
• 33:05
  Just. Over.
• 33:06
  To get the to get the point across.
• 33:08
  So OK, so cinematic closely tied to the heroic keyword.
• 33:12
  The cinematic keyword is about how we like abilities and
• 33:15
  features to be strongly evocative.
• 33:18
  You can imagine your character doing or saying these things in
• 33:23
  all this. Confusion is a good name for the
• 33:25
  Shadows ability to slip out of melee and retreat to safety.
• 33:28
  The text of the ability says how it works, but the name creates
• 33:31
  an awareness and explains how it's working.
• 33:34
  When Sir Van Azor, the Dragon Knight Fury, leaps into a goblin
• 33:37
  war spider, cleaving through the goblins, riding the creature in
• 33:41
  a single turn, you experience that action in your mind.
• 33:44
  It feels like a movie. It doesn't feel as simple as you
• 33:47
  rolled well, but an epic scene. But like an epic scene, complete
• 33:50
  with slow motion in the Carpenter boot soundtrack.
• 33:52
  See that second paragraph? I disagree.
• 33:55
  I don't feel like I envisioned the game quite in that fashion.
• 34:01
  I kind of have to agree for the simple of fact that they had to
• 34:05
  call out the Carpenter Brute soundtrack.
• 34:07
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm so I'm done.
• 34:08
  I'm good. Like I get what they mean again,
• 34:12
  it's just not how I would freight like it.
• 34:15
  To me, that's all just sick, cool evocative shit happens,
• 34:20
  which is fine. I'm not complaining about that.
• 34:22
  And I I was Speaking of and like the name of the abilities, like
• 34:25
  in all this confusion is an is an ability name.
• 34:29
  I do like that all of the abilities evoke a vibe very
• 34:34
  strongly. Like they're all very, they're
• 34:38
  all kind of poetic, actually. They are, yes.
• 34:42
  Oh, the last last little last little paragraph.
• 34:45
  You should imagine your tactician character leading the
• 34:47
  battle, granting your allies free strikes, extra maneuvers,
• 34:50
  coordinating the battle. That's what the name implies.
• 34:54
  And if we've done a good job, when you read through the
• 34:55
  characters ability, you'll think, yes, this is what I was
• 34:57
  imagining. I can't wait to do this.
• 34:59
  I do agree with that. I do think I read through the
• 35:01
  characters and go, yes, I want to do that thing that that like
• 35:05
  gets me hyped. I do agree with that part, yeah.
• 35:10
  It's just I I don't know what I would have.
• 35:12
  The thing is too, I'm bitching about the use of the word
• 35:14
  cinematic, but I also don't know what word I would have used
• 35:17
  instead of it. Right.
• 35:19
  That's something worth mentioning as well.
• 35:20
  I I don't know what I would have used either.
• 35:22
  Yeah, I don't know what you could say evocative.
• 35:24
  I think evocative works if you want this.
• 35:27
  I might have. I might have just used the word
• 35:30
  epic to be honest. Right.
• 35:32
  But Epic I, I don't think epic. Epic explains scale, but not
• 35:37
  feeling. I think for me at least, I don't
• 35:40
  know what I think Epic level gameplay.
• 35:42
  I think about what you're fighting, but I don't, I can't
• 35:45
  see how you're doing. I don't know.
• 35:48
  I mean, hold on, Tactical, heroic, epic fantasy.
• 35:55
  I mean, well, it does evoke a the upper echelon of play a
• 36:03
  little bit when you use the word epic, but I feel like it also, I
• 36:08
  don't know, 'cause there's the current use of the word epic and
• 36:10
  then there's the old school use of the word epic.
• 36:13
  Right. Well, the old school use the
• 36:15
  word epic was just larger than life, right?
• 36:18
  Well, the old school use of the word epic I think, which I think
• 36:22
  kind of fits. In the original sense of the
• 36:23
  word. Yeah, which I think kind of fits
• 36:25
  with cinematic, right. Like, like would you say, like
• 36:30
  would you say Homer? Like when you talk about the
• 36:32
  epic, you know, the Odyssey that is the epic or, or the epic that
• 36:36
  is the Odyssey that evokes a, a kind of a cinematic element, I
• 36:42
  feel like. But that's not really how the
• 36:44
  people use the word so much anymore.
• 36:47
  Sort of. I think they're similar parts of
• 36:50
  the brain, but like his in the modern sense.
• 36:54
  When I think cinematic, I think, you know, I, I, I, you hear the
• 36:59
  music playing, you think about things in terms of camera
• 37:02
  angles. You know, you, you think of sort
• 37:07
  of suspending disbelief for the sake of cool, right?
• 37:10
  Like cinematic to me is giving your cool speech while you're
• 37:13
  doing your attack or calling out your attack name, shit like
• 37:16
  that. Yeah.
• 37:19
  I mean, some of that's, some of that's there.
• 37:24
  I don't know, maybe, I don't know, maybe evocative may maybe,
• 37:27
  maybe evocative's a good word. I don't know.
• 37:32
  The last word of the four is fantasy.
• 37:34
  I mean, it's a very high fantasy, over the top.
• 37:39
  There's lots of Dragons and goblins and monsters and all
• 37:41
  sorts of crazy shit. So, you know, that obviously
• 37:44
  fits. I will say, though, this game
• 37:47
  does make a point in terms of its setting that the characters,
• 37:51
  the PCs are the heroes. They are exceptions, not the
• 37:55
  rule. Most people are dirt farmers.
• 37:58
  And don't you know, there's only like, I think in Matt Colville's
• 38:03
  words, he said there's probably only like 10 level 10, level 10
• 38:08
  characters in like the entirety of the universe.
• 38:12
  He was like. That's really interesting.
• 38:16
  Basically he was like, your characters at level 1 are heroes
• 38:21
  and they are already exceptional at level 1.
• 38:24
  You're not nobodies, you know what I mean?
• 38:28
  Well, I think that that's that's simple, that's simple
• 38:33
  explanation that really evokes massive ramifications for the
• 38:38
  game. If there are 10 level 10
• 38:40
  characters in the universe that that is been created for draw
• 38:45
  Steel right? That's.
• 38:47
  Ish. I mean, he was kind of like a,
• 38:49
  it was, you know, it's not like a set and stone thing, but it's
• 38:51
  like that's. The difference between Did you
• 38:55
  play Fable? No.
• 38:58
  OK so in Fable 1 you had the heroes is what they were called
• 39:03
  right? And you had and they were just
• 39:05
  named after the weapon they used.
• 39:06
  So like hammer, sword, blade, dagger, all that.
• 39:10
  And there's like a league of them, right?
• 39:12
  They're like an adventures Guild.
• 39:14
  In the second game, the heroes die off in like a coup.
• 39:19
  So when you're like, Oh yes, I'm Hammer, you're like, oh shit.
• 39:24
  The difference there is staggering.
• 39:26
  Right In one, you're cool, right?
• 39:28
  Like The Avengers are cool. But when you think about things
• 39:33
  in terms of Marvel to Watchmen and then you think about Doctor
• 39:37
  Manhattan, completely different scales.
• 39:40
  So I think that is very evocative.
• 39:42
  If you hit level 10, it's like, well, now there's ten of these
• 39:45
  yahoos, now we're at 14. That's important when they're
• 39:50
  when your numbers are though was so low.
• 39:51
  Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I mean it, it's
• 39:58
  making a point that player characters are a big deal in
• 40:02
  this game. They're not intended to be dirt
• 40:04
  farmer nobodies, right. Like it's.
• 40:08
  It emphasizes that point a lot. Yes.
• 40:11
  So then after describing the game as a little section talking
• 40:19
  about if you're coming from D20 fantasy games, which is to say,
• 40:22
  if you're playing D&D, if you've only played D&D it, it explains
• 40:27
  some of the, the kind of core differences of the game.
• 40:34
  A big, another big element of the design of this game was that
• 40:39
  Matt Colville wanted this game to be, as he puts it,
• 40:44
  everybody's first, second RPG. Which is to say.
• 40:50
  How's that feel? I'll give him that.
• 40:51
  That's impressive. Yeah, well, and to to tease that
• 40:56
  statement out, what he means is everybody's first RPG is almost
• 41:01
  always DND, with very rare exceptions.
• 41:04
  He wants Draw Steel to be your first, second game you play
• 41:09
  other than DND, and he wants it. And he it was built.
• 41:14
  It was built with that objective in mind as being a game that
• 41:20
  assumes you've played DND but nothing but nothing else.
• 41:25
  Or probably nothing else. Right.
• 41:29
  So this little bank, this little section, so it mentions
• 41:34
  character options are different. It says, we strongly recommend
• 41:37
  you start exploring Draw Steel by looking through the character
• 41:40
  creation section before you decide what you want to play.
• 41:43
  You can't just assume the conduit is basically a cleric.
• 41:47
  In some ways it is, but in other ways it's quite different.
• 41:50
  And I would agree with that. You're going to look at the
• 41:52
  classes in this game and you are going to go, OK, this class is
• 41:57
  this class from D&D and they are to a point.
• 42:01
  But do not assume they work exactly the same because they
• 42:03
  absolutely do not. Smaller bonuses and penalties.
• 42:11
  Draw Steel is built around the roll of 2D10 dice to produce its
• 42:15
  outcomes. So basically bonuses and
• 42:18
  penalties are going to be within a tighter range because when
• 42:21
  you're working on a dice curve that is based on 2 smaller dice,
• 42:25
  that greatly affects the math. So you have to basically if you
• 42:29
  look at something and go, oh it's only a + 2, that sucks.
• 42:33
  A + 2 is a lot bigger of a deal than you might initially think
• 42:35
  it is. Yes, this is.
• 42:38
  This is also true in like Apocos world and shit.
• 42:40
  But you know, again, assuming this is going to be your first
• 42:42
  second RPG, you might not know that abilities automatically
• 42:46
  deal damage. This is a big, big element of
• 42:50
  this game. You cannot miss.
• 42:53
  There is no missing. You can fail skill checks out of
• 42:58
  combat, but there is no missing. Fights are a battle of attrition
• 43:04
  over. Essentially every fight is on a
• 43:07
  timer. Who is going to run down the
• 43:09
  other person faster? Because even if you roll poorly,
• 43:13
  you still get a result and you still deal damage.
• 43:16
  It's just the worst possible result and the least amount of
• 43:19
  damage. You don't need to rest all the
• 43:24
  time is the next one. Most D20 fantasy games are games
• 43:29
  of attrition. You know your rundown, your
• 43:32
  spell slots and your health and your yadda yadda yadda.
• 43:37
  Draw Steel has an element of that, but you can press on a lot
• 43:43
  more than you could in something like 5E or an OSR game, for
• 43:47
  example, for a multitude of reasons.
• 43:53
  There's multiple mechanics that make that the case.
• 43:57
  This is one of the things I have opinions on.
• 43:58
  I'm going to bring it up specifically later when we get
• 44:01
  to Victor, OK? This game has a shit load of
• 44:04
  skills. There's a big skill list, but
• 44:07
  you don't need to memorize it all.
• 44:09
  That's you know. Sure, we won't be able to point
• 44:15
  out every difference beyond what's noted here.
• 44:17
  Assume that these rules work like any D20 fantasy game you've
• 44:20
  played. Or, sorry, don't assume that
• 44:22
  these rules work like any D20 game you've played.
• 44:26
  We don't have space to point out every exception.
• 44:28
  Just fair. And the last one, we don't
• 44:32
  expect you to do everything to the letter.
• 44:34
  I thought this was kind of funny.
• 44:35
  This is actually one thing Draw Steel does have in common with
• 44:39
  D20 fantasy. This is a big bit of big book of
• 44:42
  rules. Don't stress if you need to look
• 44:45
  something up or make a ruling about an edge case on the fly.
• 44:49
  If everyone's having fun, you're doing it right.
• 44:51
  But real quick. I counted there are 57 skills in
• 44:56
  this game. Yeah, there's a lot of skills,
• 44:59
  yes. 57 Yeah, Yeah. Nuts.
• 45:04
  Yes, Sir. Small thing.
• 45:13
  This character sheet is terrible.
• 45:17
  I have not looked at it. Oh, OK.
• 45:20
  The one in the like is there a page at the back in the?
• 45:23
  Book there is no there's no character sheet in this rule
• 45:25
  book. It's one of the gripes I have.
• 45:28
  You have to find it separately. It is 4 pages.
• 45:32
  Oh is it on their website? Yes.
• 45:34
  And I think a big problem with that is they tried to do too
• 45:39
  much. This is a small thing.
• 45:41
  I'm going to. I'm going to segue a little bit.
• 45:43
  They try to do too much. The first page, totally fine,
• 45:46
  tells you what you need, gives you a list of conditions, your
• 45:48
  benefits. Not entirely sure what modifiers
• 45:51
  are yet. I'll probably get to that later
• 45:52
  on in the rule book because I haven't finished it yet.
• 45:55
  But you know, it gives you your name.
• 45:56
  Human. Yeah, neither.
• 45:57
  One of us have finished. All this stuff.
• 45:59
  No, the thing to mention, neither one of us quite finished
• 46:02
  reading the book yet. I don't know how many parts this
• 46:04
  is going to be. So fucking I don't know.
• 46:05
  Buckle up. Yeah, yeah.
• 46:08
  So with that in mind, first page totally fine, gives you your,
• 46:13
  you know, your name, all that jazz, how many victories you
• 46:16
  have, your wealth for now and XP, your level, your stats,
• 46:20
  stamina recoveries, heroic resources in the case of the one
• 46:23
  I'm making, which is a talent clarity, number of surges.
• 46:26
  You have again, modifiers. Not entirely sure what that is.
• 46:29
  Your potencies. Those are all the same.
• 46:31
  Don't necessarily think we need a section for that on each
• 46:33
  class. Little thing, conditions and
• 46:36
  spending your hero tokens. I like that this there's like a
• 46:38
  little tutorial. Appreciate that.
• 46:41
  Then you get your class features, your ancestry traits.
• 46:44
  The PDF they give you is editable, but you get 3 to 4
• 46:49
  ancestry traits when you make your character as a lot you do.
• 46:53
  Yes the text gets very small. Just keep that in mind.
• 47:00
  Page 2. A third of the page is listed
• 47:04
  for just your skills. I feel like in this situation
• 47:09
  you can sacrifice the big list for just a little box and leave
• 47:14
  it up to the players to write down their skills.
• 47:18
  I I because it's a lot. You get your career, your
• 47:21
  complications, your culture, your perks, titles, and
• 47:25
  projects. I don't think projects should be
• 47:27
  on the second page and then the next two pages are just class
• 47:30
  abilities up to level 10. The the character sheets are a
• 47:36
  little cumbersome in in I almost said sloppy.
• 47:41
  That's not fair. A little messy.
• 47:44
  I'm gonna be, I'm gonna be so honest.
• 47:49
  I kind of don't give a shit about how character sheets are
• 47:54
  laid out as long as they're like, mostly functional.
• 47:57
  I just figure it out. So I've never really thought
• 47:59
  about it that much. Oh see, I character sheet layout
• 48:02
  is really important to me because I need and as agmi want
• 48:08
  that information to be as easily and readily available to the
• 48:11
  players, myself included as possible.
• 48:14
  And I I can already see it now with the party I have right now
• 48:18
  character. This character sheet would be a
• 48:20
  migraine to maneuver. I would do want to mention for
• 48:29
  the skills at least though too it is worth pointing out that
• 48:31
  the skills are broken up into groups which does help a little
• 48:35
  bit with the there being a lot of them correct 5 they're
• 48:40
  they're broken up into crafting, exploration, interpersonal
• 48:43
  intrigue, and lore skills. So in terms of organizing and
• 48:47
  keeping them all in your head, that does help.
• 48:49
  Yes, it absolutely does. I will give you that.
• 48:51
  And it does list them in the character sheet.
• 48:54
  Honestly, I feel like the the large list of skills, not that
• 49:02
  big of a deal as a player. As a director though, oh,
• 49:07
  that's, that's a little stressful.
• 49:09
  Yes, I agree. 'Cause I gotta be like fuck,
• 49:13
  wait, let's roll me something. Roll me.
• 49:16
  I don't know is is there a skill called Flippity Knocks in this?
• 49:21
  I don't remember like. This is one of those things that
• 49:25
  we talked about, right? Like sacrificing efficiency for
• 49:28
  the vibe. It's clear that, you know, the
• 49:31
  the Warhammer Fantasy style. I've got a kajillion skills and
• 49:35
  that way I can really focus a character in on what I want them
• 49:38
  to do and not have. Like, you're not having that
• 49:40
  problem in 5E where it's like, well, I'm a rogue and I have a
• 49:43
  bunch of professions, Fuck it, I'll just take animal handling
• 49:46
  because I don't know what else I want.
• 49:47
  You know what I mean? Right, Right.
• 49:48
  Yeah, yeah. This game is like, not
• 49:49
  interested in that, that analysis paralysis.
• 49:53
  It's it's this game is definitely designed for a level
• 49:55
  of meta play of like I've you've not fully done the spreadsheet
• 50:00
  build, but you're like you're you're in a similar vein, like
• 50:04
  maybe a little bit less so than I'm doing things with my hands.
• 50:07
  You cannot see doing similar things to Pathfinder where you
• 50:09
  sort of have a pre built idea of what the character will be at
• 50:13
  session one. Yeah, I wouldn't I don't think
• 50:15
  it's quite Pathfinder extreme, but it's kind of in it's in
• 50:18
  going in that direction. Yes, Pathfinder 1D is 100% a
• 50:23
  from everything I've heard from spreadsheet builder.
• 50:25
  Exactly. Yeah, it's not that much, but
• 50:30
  someone looked at that and went, I think that is kind of fun.
• 50:34
  And I'm not saying that Sam would love this like podcast.
• 50:37
  Sam would love this game. I'm just saying.
• 50:40
  Oh no, he would. He's a spreadsheet builder, so
• 50:42
  oh. Yeah, oh, yeah.
• 50:44
  Oh yeah. No, he'd like it.
• 50:46
  I I will say on the other side of the like the complete others,
• 50:50
  end of the extreme, a game like Fabula which doesn't have any
• 50:55
  skills at all, I do find myself wanting there to be skills in
• 50:59
  Fabulous. It's interesting.
• 51:03
  Oh yeah, there's been multiple, multiple occasions as we're
• 51:06
  playing, running fabulous Ultima where I'm like, man, I wish
• 51:09
  skills were a thing in this game and not just the stats.
• 51:13
  Well, so you know, it's funny on a on a player level, that's not
• 51:16
  as big an issue because our character sheets do come with
• 51:20
  skills on them and it's just, it's just telling you what dice
• 51:24
  to roll. But like if you were like roll a
• 51:26
  persuade check, you can just click that on the character
• 51:29
  sheet and just. No, I'm not.
• 51:30
  I'm not talking about for that I mean.
• 51:32
  Proficiencies. You mean like things that you
• 51:34
  can? Yes Yes.
• 51:35
  Players that they'd be better at?
• 51:37
  Yeah yes, yes. For someone who's running the
• 51:40
  two D8 build, I get that. I wish it was there too.
• 51:43
  Exactly, I want Goramaru to have athletics proficiency or
• 51:47
  something, you know what I mean? Like yeah so on the on the
• 51:51
  complete other far end draw Steel is the one end of the
• 51:55
  extreme with a Dick load of skills and fabulous Ultima is
• 51:58
  the other end of no skills at all.
• 52:01
  I do find myself wanting the happy medium a little bit.
• 52:05
  I get that, I do. Yes, yeah.
• 52:09
  But anyway that's that's neither here that that's something we
• 52:13
  can talk about when we do our inevitable campaign is done.
• 52:15
  How do we feel about Fabulous? Because there are definitely not
• 52:24
  to say that I don't like Fabula, I do.
• 52:26
  But there are definitely elements of Fabula that are
• 52:28
  getting on my nerves as we play more where I'm like just, I just
• 52:31
  wish. That's fair.
• 52:34
  I mean, I don't think it's the perfect game.
• 52:36
  Not. Yeah.
• 52:37
  We're also not talking about Fabula again.
• 52:39
  No, no. But I am interested to see what
• 52:41
  you have to like, what you have to say once the campaign's done.
• 52:44
  It's very, very, very, very specific things.
• 52:47
  Like it's very focused complaints, I would say.
• 52:52
  Anyway, Speaking of the big list of skills, there's a lot of like
• 52:59
  keywords and phrases and terminology.
• 53:06
  There's a lot of terminology in this game.
• 53:08
  But I will say there is a fucking massive glossary 06. 6.
• 53:17
  Pages 6 pages of a glossary. When I tell you.
• 53:23
  Anything you need to wait? What'd you say?
• 53:26
  I didn't read that shit. Put that at the back of the
• 53:28
  book, no? No, no, I I'm not.
• 53:30
  No, no, you don't need to read it.
• 53:31
  I'm just saying, anything you might need to look up is in that
• 53:35
  fucking glossary. It is my I.
• 53:38
  What I'm saying is is that groceries are typically at the
• 53:40
  back of the book. Keep it there.
• 53:43
  It's in a slightly odd place, but like what?
• 53:44
  I don't know. It's fine.
• 53:46
  Here's the thing. When you see the word glossary,
• 53:48
  you know, you can just get past it and worry about it later.
• 53:50
  You know what I mean? Like, but it is very big and
• 53:54
  it's very thorough, like really thorough.
• 53:58
  So as you're playing, as you get tripped up on specific
• 54:03
  terminology and because this game has a lot of like using a
• 54:08
  keyword to it tell you how like an ability works, there's a lot
• 54:12
  of that built into the game. This glossary is going to help a
• 54:15
  lot. Again, six whole 6 pages, double
• 54:21
  column. So there's a, excuse me, there's
• 54:26
  a lot of shit in there. Then we get to the basics.
• 54:31
  All right, so the basics of the game, what's the what's the
• 54:35
  general basic flow emphasis on basics.
• 54:39
  This game does the thing I don't like where character creation
• 54:43
  comes before they tell you how to play the game.
• 54:46
  So we're not really going to get into the meat and potatoes of
• 54:49
  playing the game with this episode cause so we're mostly
• 54:51
  going to be focused on character creation.
• 54:55
  But the the basics gives you some of that gives you some of
• 54:59
  the real stuff. So first and foremost, what are
• 55:03
  your attributes in this game? They call them characteristics.
• 55:06
  You have might, agility, reason, intuition, and presence.
• 55:12
  There's five abilities instead of 6.
• 55:14
  That's fine. I've always felt like which
• 55:19
  fucking I've always felt like wisdom could probably go the way
• 55:23
  of the dodo, so whatever. They're pretty much what they
• 55:28
  sound like. Might agility, you know your
• 55:31
  strength, your dex thing reason is just your logical element of
• 55:37
  you know do have brain big yes. Also I said wisdom, but actually
• 55:43
  the ability the the the attribute they got rid of in
• 55:46
  this game is constitution because your character's stamina
• 55:52
  health health in this game is referred to as stamina instead
• 55:55
  of hit points. I actually like that better
• 56:01
  because it reinforces the heroic theme better.
• 56:04
  I think reason is your general like logical mind deduction,
• 56:10
  your smarts, intuition being your sort of you know, your
• 56:13
  wisdomy vibe of instincts essentially and presence being
• 56:19
  your your force of will and personnel.
• 56:25
  The game mentions a couple of weird dice.
• 56:27
  Sometimes it asks you to roll D threes and D1 hundreds, just
• 56:30
  doesn't have to work those. Then it mentions this is
• 56:35
  basically the core die mechanic of the game is the power roll.
• 56:41
  So the way this game works is when you make a power roll, you
• 56:44
  roll 2D10 and you add your characteristic.
• 56:48
  What characteristic you're adding will change depending on
• 56:51
  what power or ability you're using, and then the outcome of
• 56:56
  the power roll is broken up into tears.
• 57:00
  So you have Tier 1, Tier 2, and tier 3.
• 57:02
  Effectively they took the degrees of success from
• 57:09
  Apocalypse World and translated it into a like heroic fantasy
• 57:14
  superhero vibe. So tier one is if you get an 11
• 57:20
  or lower, Tier 2 is a 12 to 16, and then tier 3 is 17 and up.
• 57:25
  Essentially, when you use an ability, if you get a Tier 1
• 57:29
  result, you get the worst result, you do the least damage,
• 57:32
  and you have either no effect, no extra effect, or the least
• 57:36
  effective version of the effect. Tier 2 is the middle of the
• 57:40
  road, and tier 3 is the best possible outcome.
• 57:44
  That's the general flow on the power rolls.
• 57:48
  Every major ability you have as a as a character, especially in
• 57:54
  combat, is going to be based on a power role of some kind.
• 57:58
  Yes. And I think that's really
• 57:59
  interesting because that sort of means that if I'm reading this
• 58:04
  correctly, there basically is no way to actually fail a role, no?
• 58:12
  That's what I said before, yeah. You can't fail roles in this
• 58:13
  game. Yeah, it's, it's yeah.
• 58:16
  Well, you can't fail power roles.
• 58:20
  Yes, you can fail fail skill tests.
• 58:25
  There is that so like in D, and if you were to translate it to
• 58:29
  D&D terminology in Draw Steel, you cannot fail attack roles or
• 58:34
  spell checks, but you can roll ability.
• 58:38
  You can fail ability checks. That would be the D&D
• 58:42
  translation you can. Also, just in case anyone was
• 58:50
  curious, you can downgrade your power roll to a lower tier if
• 58:55
  you want to. I haven't seen any ability where
• 59:00
  it makes sense that you would want to, but if you want to, you
• 59:03
  can. They basically they say it like
• 59:05
  if if a Tier 2 gives you slowed, but it's tier 3 gives you
• 59:10
  restrained and for whatever reason you'd prefer to use
• 59:12
  slowed, you can downgrade to a Tier 2.
• 59:15
  I feel like it would have made more sense to just say you can
• 59:17
  choose the effect of a lower tier while maintaining things
• 59:20
  like damage. Sure.
• 59:24
  Yeah, Like I said, I haven't seen any reason where it would
• 59:27
  make sense to necessarily do the downgrade anyway.
• 59:30
  But I don't know, maybe there's there probably was some edge
• 59:34
  cases that happened in play testing.
• 59:36
  Then that's why that rule is the thing would be my guess likely,
• 59:40
  yeah. Then it briefly mentions natural
• 59:43
  roles, which is to just say the phrase, you know, you rolled a
• 59:46
  natural 20. It it's just a basic explanation
• 59:50
  of that. Then you get to edges and
• 59:52
  Baines. So you don't have advantage and
• 59:55
  disadvantage. You have edges and Baines.
• 59:57
  So an edge is a + 2 to your roles.
• 1:00:02
  And then if you get a double edge, which is to say 2
• 1:00:06
  instances of an edge bonus. You automatically upgrade
• 1:00:11
  whatever your role is, you upgrade the tier.
• 1:00:14
  So if you roll the Tier 1 result, you automatically bump
• 1:00:17
  it to a Tier 2 regardless of what number.
• 1:00:20
  And then Baines are the exact same thing except in the
• 1:00:23
  opposite direction. So it's a -2 or you downgrade
• 1:00:25
  your tier. I don't know why they gave this
• 1:00:30
  a fancy name necessarily, as opposed to just calling it like
• 1:00:33
  -2 or +2 or whatever. There's probably a reason that
• 1:00:37
  I'm just not thinking about. But yeah, that's that's edges
• 1:00:42
  and banes. You can wait now I'm free.
• 1:00:51
  I don't remember if they cancel out.
• 1:00:54
  They do, yes. So.
• 1:00:55
  They do the big. Thing is that you can get the
• 1:00:57
  double edge or the double bane which automatically will give
• 1:01:00
  you a + 1 tier of success or tier or -1 tier of failure.
• 1:01:07
  If you have for example a double edge and a single bane, it
• 1:01:10
  doesn't matter how many things that you get that would add on
• 1:01:12
  to your edges, it's still considered a double edge and a
• 1:01:14
  bane will bring it down to a single edge and vice versa.
• 1:01:18
  If there are equal amounts, they just flat cancel.
• 1:01:22
  Yeah, OK. Yeah, see, I didn't.
• 1:01:25
  Read that a while ago. I mean, I, I did, I read it a
• 1:01:28
  while ago, so I just couldn't quite remember how it mapped
• 1:01:33
  out. And then it briefly mentions
• 1:01:38
  like basic other bonuses and penalties that can be
• 1:01:41
  potentially opposed. Essentially, you know, your
• 1:01:43
  director could be like, oh, you have a bonus for XY or Z or
• 1:01:46
  whatever and then a couple of abilities will give you
• 1:01:51
  automatic tier outcomes. So like sometimes it the game
• 1:01:54
  might say you automatically get a Tier 2 on this regardless of
• 1:01:57
  what happens that would supersede any other like
• 1:02:01
  negatives. And then you have hero tokens.
• 1:02:06
  These are basically inspiration from 5 E, except they are
• 1:02:15
  tracked in a pool, so it's not individual.
• 1:02:20
  The entire party gets hero tokens and the entire party can
• 1:02:25
  spend from the pool basically anytime you get a hero token.
• 1:02:33
  Or. You you get hero tokens anytime
• 1:02:35
  you do something heroic. So the examples it gives a hero
• 1:02:41
  who leaps off a Cliff to reach the bottom and aid a friend, who
• 1:02:45
  crosses a burning bridge to save a stray cat, or who wazers their
• 1:02:48
  most prized treasure as part of a negotiation to get shelter for
• 1:02:51
  a group of refugees might earn a a hero token.
• 1:02:54
  The director has final say regarding what heroic acts earn
• 1:02:58
  hero tokens. Here's what I'll say about this.
• 1:03:02
  Is this still a little bit of the Mother?
• 1:03:05
  May I problem like inspiration? It is, yes.
• 1:03:11
  However, I like this better because it's very specific about
• 1:03:16
  what kinds of things should earn hero tokens, right?
• 1:03:20
  It doesn't just say like 5 E says something along the lines,
• 1:03:23
  oh, if your players do something cool or something funny or
• 1:03:27
  something like it gives you a big, very broad general list
• 1:03:30
  that's really vague. This is specifically saying that
• 1:03:33
  they do a heroic action and take a big risk to save somebody
• 1:03:38
  else. If they do the superhero thing,
• 1:03:40
  If they do the Superman save the squirrel, they get a hero token.
• 1:03:46
  It does still have the problem that the director has to
• 1:03:48
  remember to give it to people, but at least the director has a
• 1:03:53
  more specific kind of action to be keeping an eye out, you know
• 1:03:59
  what I mean? Is sort of I, I'm with you that
• 1:04:03
  I really like yes, it is better, but I still do not like this the
• 1:04:08
  way that this is handled. There are a lot of systems that
• 1:04:13
  they talk about upfront that have to involve your GM
• 1:04:17
  basically just deciding to to slide you a crisp high 5.
• 1:04:20
  And I, I find this annoying because as we talked about in
• 1:04:26
  the mother may I episode discussion in conversation is
• 1:04:29
  not mother may I right. If if the, the exam, I was
• 1:04:34
  talking to a paladin about this yesterday.
• 1:04:36
  If there's a situation in a game like Fabula where it's like you
• 1:04:39
  cause a storm, like talk to your deal about how that works.
• 1:04:44
  The the conversation is not whether or not you can do it.
• 1:04:46
  It's the details about that thing.
• 1:04:48
  So if you're in a desert as opposed to an ocean, maybe it's
• 1:04:51
  a sandstorm, maybe it does fire damage as opposed to lightning
• 1:04:54
  damage. That's the conversation I like
• 1:04:56
  whether or not I get one of the primary currencies of the game.
• 1:05:00
  Yeah, that I'm not vibing, I mean.
• 1:05:07
  The the hero tokens are not really one of the primary
• 1:05:11
  currencies of the game. They're very much a little extra
• 1:05:13
  bonus, right? Like they're not intended to be
• 1:05:18
  vital, but like, yeah, it it still has that little bit of the
• 1:05:27
  mother mare problem, but it's a lot better if you're more
• 1:05:31
  specific about it. I think that helps a lot.
• 1:05:36
  And because it's kind of a little side bonus thing, I'm
• 1:05:39
  mostly fine with it. You just remind your director
• 1:05:42
  every once in a while, like, hey, is that hero Turkey worthy?
• 1:05:46
  You know, like, I don't know, that's not too bad.
• 1:05:50
  That's not that much worse than like, spending a fabulous point,
• 1:05:53
  I feel like. Right.
• 1:05:55
  But with Fabulous, you have very clear rules for what you can and
• 1:05:59
  cannot do and what you can or cannot spend them on, and how
• 1:06:01
  you can or cannot get them. Well, I'm talking to you whether
• 1:06:05
  or not. Can or can't get them, But I'm
• 1:06:06
  talking about when you Stew it on the changing the story one
• 1:06:10
  that requires your GM to like be like, yes, it's OK, you can do
• 1:06:13
  that. You know what I mean?
• 1:06:14
  I'm talking about that one specifically.
• 1:06:16
  Sort of. Here's the thing.
• 1:06:18
  This is not that far away from that.
• 1:06:21
  It's, it is and it isn't right because we, we have
• 1:06:25
  confirmations literally that when it comes to the, the
• 1:06:29
  narrative editing thing, there's not much that you can't.
• 1:06:33
  Do right, No, but the GM still can ultimately say I don't want
• 1:06:39
  to deal with that, you know, like I just don't that's going
• 1:06:44
  to be too disruptive like yes. And no, it's an unspoken rule
• 1:06:48
  that they can say no to those things or like it's spoken.
• 1:06:51
  But the the rule is always read to me that you should err on the
• 1:06:55
  side of say yes unless it's like, can I one shot the final
• 1:06:58
  boss? And that's when you say no.
• 1:07:00
  But I think that's true in this scenario too.
• 1:07:02
  I think you should err on the side of giving them the token
• 1:07:05
  whenever the action felt heroic in like, even a little bit like.
• 1:07:11
  I think that's the case here too.
• 1:07:14
  Fair enough. I think the language is clearer
• 1:07:16
  and fabulous. I don't know, I mean the
• 1:07:20
  examples they give for the earning hero tokens thing I feel
• 1:07:22
  like makes it pretty clear to me.
• 1:07:25
  Like when they mentioned like jumping off a Cliff, saving the
• 1:07:28
  cat, helping the refugees. I feel like that makes it like
• 1:07:32
  solidifies what kind of actions it's it wants.
• 1:07:39
  I suppose, yeah. I don't know.
• 1:07:42
  I'm not in love with it. I think once.
• 1:07:46
  You, I mean, I'm fine. I'm, I mean, I wouldn't want it
• 1:07:49
  not I wouldn't. I wouldn't want to remove it,
• 1:07:51
  that's for sure. I wouldn't want to remove it.
• 1:07:54
  I just I would want clarification on it.
• 1:07:56
  If you do this thing, then you do get that thing because this
• 1:07:59
  game is sort of afraid and they talk about it, right?
• 1:08:01
  They're like you. You can't re re up your your
• 1:08:05
  heroic resource by just like squishing a rat in your bag of
• 1:08:08
  rats every time you want to get a new thing.
• 1:08:11
  The game is clearly afraid of that, which I don't think it
• 1:08:15
  should be. I mean, I disagree.
• 1:08:18
  I think that's worth being afraid of because there are
• 1:08:20
  Jackass players who do that kind of shit.
• 1:08:22
  Right. But we've said before, don't
• 1:08:24
  play like don't build for assholes.
• 1:08:26
  That's where you get the GM authority to say no, you can't
• 1:08:28
  do that. But the game doesn't design.
• 1:08:33
  There's nothing in the game where they try to design around
• 1:08:35
  that problem. They just say to you, don't let
• 1:08:38
  people do that. So I don't think they're
• 1:08:40
  designing for assholes in this case.
• 1:08:42
  I think they are. I think if you take the time to
• 1:08:43
  write down a a, a bespoke thought from the GM in the rule
• 1:08:47
  book that says, no, you cannot squish rats to get your heroic
• 1:08:50
  resource back. That's not interesting rule.
• 1:08:53
  But that is a. Ruling.
• 1:08:56
  But there's a difference between giving the director some advice
• 1:08:59
  on how to handle that problem and trying to tightly design A
• 1:09:03
  mechanic in such a fashion that that will that that like
• 1:09:06
  physically can't happen, right? Like 5 E has this thing where
• 1:09:10
  they're trying to design it so tightly that that's just never
• 1:09:13
  going to happen. Whereas in this game, it's like,
• 1:09:16
  yes, someone could try to abuse that.
• 1:09:18
  Don't let them abuse that. I think that's fine.
• 1:09:21
  Like, I don't think, I don't see, I don't see any major
• 1:09:25
  mechanics in this game that got compromised by the mentality of
• 1:09:28
  designing around assholes. I get I feel like that thing is
• 1:09:37
  right there, like I I think what the ruling on the squishing the
• 1:09:40
  rats in the bag that is designing for assholes, because
• 1:09:43
  again, you took the time to bring it up and you're not even
• 1:09:45
  really referencing the GMs. It's not even really advice because
• 1:09:48
  it's not referencing the GM. It's basically saying you
• 1:09:52
  player, you can't do that. Hold on, I'm trying to find
• 1:09:58
  where it is in the book. Give me a second.
• 1:10:00
  I like, I guess, I don't know, I, I just don't think that kind
• 1:10:03
  of wording is that disruptive like that saying, saying that,
• 1:10:08
  you know, squishing rats in a bag is not heroic, so it doesn't
• 1:10:13
  earn victories. I don't feel like it's that
• 1:10:16
  disruptive to the game. So it's fine to have that in
• 1:10:19
  there. It's not, it's not literally
• 1:10:23
  upending the design like it's not, it's not affecting the
• 1:10:26
  design of the game. They still have the victory
• 1:10:29
  system working the way it does. They didn't change the victory
• 1:10:32
  system to try and avoid people abusing it.
• 1:10:35
  They just said director and players don't abuse it.
• 1:10:39
  Right, so, but like they still design the rats in a bag thing
• 1:10:42
  is not what I have the problem with.
• 1:10:44
  The thing that I that's bothering me is the heroic
• 1:10:47
  tokens and it's, it's the way that they kind of describe like
• 1:10:52
  heroic tokens are sort of this up in the air.
• 1:10:55
  If you want to do it, you can do it, but it's up to the GM,
• 1:10:57
  because we don't want people to abuse the system.
• 1:10:59
  And they give you an exact example targeted to the players
• 1:11:02
  about abusing the system. Like the game assumes that the
• 1:11:08
  system is going to be abused first and foremost, and that is
• 1:11:12
  intrinsically planning for assholes.
• 1:11:16
  No, I totally everyone's, every game is going to be abused no
• 1:11:20
  matter what you do. Right.
• 1:11:23
  But this game is assuming that there is a player who's reading
• 1:11:27
  that correctly, who's going to abuse that system and is yelling
• 1:11:31
  at that. That person specifically, they
• 1:11:33
  are assuming playing around that.
• 1:11:35
  Ethos, they are assuming correctly that people are going
• 1:11:38
  to do that behaviour. So it's mentioning, hey, please
• 1:11:41
  don't do that, that would be shitty.
• 1:11:44
  Right, and mentioning it is fine, but when you retroactively
• 1:11:47
  plan abilities around it like leaving victory up to the
• 1:11:52
  director. I don't feel like they've
• 1:11:57
  they've retroactively planned anything around it.
• 1:12:03
  Like the way the victory system works.
• 1:12:05
  I don't think has is built around this this problem with
• 1:12:08
  assholes assumption. I think it's built in such a
• 1:12:11
  fashion that the director is going to give you going to
• 1:12:14
  present you with suitably heroic battles and then you will be
• 1:12:20
  rewarded for such. And then there's might be that
• 1:12:23
  one player at the table who's like, what if I try to abuse
• 1:12:25
  this system? And then the game is like, well,
• 1:12:29
  no, your director is is presenting you with these
• 1:12:33
  things, with these kinds of encounters to do this already.
• 1:12:37
  Don't try to like screw your director like that.
• 1:12:42
  Like it, it didn't. It didn't compromise the design.
• 1:12:45
  They designed the thing they wanted to, right?
• 1:12:48
  I don't feel like any. I don't feel like the design got
• 1:12:50
  compromised because of that fear.
• 1:12:53
  I think it did. I just, I, I don't understand
• 1:12:58
  how, but fine, we're moving on. We can move on.
• 1:13:00
  Yeah, it's fine. But like, yeah, I think you're
• 1:13:01
  just gonna have to read it. Screen this.
• 1:13:03
  One I just I don't, I really don't follow your logic.
• 1:13:06
  Well, so OK, so that this is the thing I have to finish on then.
• 1:13:10
  You cannot plan something and tell players that they don't
• 1:13:13
  have control over gaining one of their key resources, in this
• 1:13:17
  instance, heroic, heroic resources, whatever you want to
• 1:13:19
  call them, telling players they don't have control over how they
• 1:13:22
  get paused. No, no, no, no, no, no.
• 1:13:24
  Pause, pause. There's this important
• 1:13:25
  distinction. What mechanic are you talking
• 1:13:27
  about here? Are you talking about hero
• 1:13:28
  tokens, victories, or heroic resources?
• 1:13:29
  Because those are three distinct things.
• 1:13:32
  Those are very, very distinct. Victories and heroic resources.
• 1:13:37
  They named them both in the rats in a bag.
• 1:13:41
  Yes they do. Pause.
• 1:13:43
  Yes, very two very different mechanics.
• 1:13:45
  Because heroic resources have very specific triggers,
• 1:13:49
  Victories are the one that are are slightly more nebulous based
• 1:13:53
  on the director. Yes, but in this instance I'm
• 1:13:55
  talking about I'm. I'm referencing both of them
• 1:13:57
  because that is explicitly what is referenced in that blurb.
• 1:14:02
  It says victory. Gather up those sweet, sweet
• 1:14:05
  victories and heroic resources. In this instance I am leaning
• 1:14:09
  more towards victories, but keep that in mind.
• 1:14:12
  OK. So in the sense that the game is
• 1:14:15
  telling you, again, you cannot do this thing and then removing
• 1:14:22
  a player's ability to to control whether or not they get their
• 1:14:27
  primary class resource, having that be a thing that has to be
• 1:14:31
  awarded to them. And I'm in this instance, I'm
• 1:14:35
  talking about victories as opposed to heroic resources,
• 1:14:37
  because victories are how you get your like, how those
• 1:14:40
  victories charge up your whole resources and how you get your
• 1:14:42
  XP, all that shit. They're not how you charge up
• 1:14:44
  your heroic resources. They are at Round 1.
• 1:14:47
  You get a certain amount of them based on your victories.
• 1:14:49
  Yes, that is. True.
• 1:14:50
  Yes, the very first round. Yes, you get a certain amount
• 1:14:52
  based on victories you currently have, but they're not the like
• 1:14:55
  only option. No it's not.
• 1:14:58
  And to be fair again, the heroic resource is less of a problem,
• 1:15:02
  but it is the victories thing that is the primary problem, and
• 1:15:05
  heroic tokens are sort of part of that insofar as they work
• 1:15:07
  almost exactly the same way. Well, again, hero tokens are a
• 1:15:12
  little extra sprinkle on top. They're not like a core thing.
• 1:15:15
  No, they're not a core thing, but it it, it's all sort of
• 1:15:17
  connected. I just don't.
• 1:15:22
  I just don't see anywhere where the design got compromised
• 1:15:25
  because of this one little fucking blurb.
• 1:15:28
  The blurb is the compromise. It's a very minor, I mean,
• 1:15:33
  Isaiah, do you want players to go around scooping up bags racks
• 1:15:37
  and bonking them on the fucking head to get like free XP?
• 1:15:39
  Like, is that the thing you want?
• 1:15:40
  Don't think that's going to happen commonly.
• 1:15:43
  It is going to happen though. There are those people.
• 1:15:45
  That's the problem. No, Yeah, but commonly, right,
• 1:15:47
  because that now you're talking about like risk reward stuff,
• 1:15:50
  you're getting into an argument of like percentages.
• 1:15:53
  How often is this realistically going to happen?
• 1:15:55
  Probably not so much. Maybe Matt was just sort of
• 1:15:58
  preparing for some like the graveyard gamification.
• 1:16:01
  Of things assholes, right But, but.
• 1:16:05
  And how does this and Fabula doesn't bring it up at all.
• 1:16:08
  It just says there are situations where where a camera
• 1:16:12
  what they call you, but the GM can say maybe that wasn't worth
• 1:16:16
  that thing or maybe you can't go that far.
• 1:16:19
  It's not saying that this will happen because one is, is sort
• 1:16:24
  of subtext. Like, yeah, maybe this could
• 1:16:26
  happen. You, you have the control to do
• 1:16:28
  it. In this case, it's text.
• 1:16:29
  And that text is, it's such a tiny little paragraph.
• 1:16:33
  Like it's not, it's not a tiny paragraph, though.
• 1:16:36
  It's a tiny paragraph in terms of written writing.
• 1:16:38
  But what it stands for, what it means is a massive fucking
• 1:16:42
  problem. If I do a fight in the same way
• 1:16:45
  that you can have shitty players, you can have shitty
• 1:16:47
  GMs. You do a fight and the GM just goes.
• 1:16:49
  Now I don't think you get a victory for that.
• 1:16:52
  The game is. The game is accounting for
• 1:16:53
  shitty players, but it's not accounting for shitty GMs Well.
• 1:16:58
  OK. I mean, first of all, because
• 1:17:00
  again, if you that's on the table no matter what like you
• 1:17:04
  can't. Tell it you how you should think
• 1:17:07
  about it, but at no point does it even the odds and tell you if
• 1:17:12
  you do this thing you will get a victory.
• 1:17:18
  Well, because the idea the the director is told to design
• 1:17:24
  victory worthy encounters like that's the other end of it.
• 1:17:29
  Right, but that can in the same way that someone could ignore
• 1:17:34
  the good faith argument of not squishing rats in a bag and
• 1:17:37
  therefore they planned around the rats in a bag thing.
• 1:17:40
  The GM can just ignore that like they ignore giving out advantage
• 1:17:45
  in DND, which is a common fucking problem.
• 1:17:48
  I don't, but what else would you want them to do in this?
• 1:17:50
  Like I don't understand what the alternative here is.
• 1:17:52
  Like this doesn't make any sense.
• 1:17:54
  Literally just do the fabulous thing.
• 1:17:56
  Tell the GM this is what awards players victories.
• 1:18:00
  You can award them extra ones for doing XY or Z, but realize
• 1:18:05
  that they don't always get them. Give them a definitive, then
• 1:18:09
  apply the provide them extras. But the game does.
• 1:18:14
  But it doesn't. There is not a single thing in
• 1:18:17
  the 1st 100 pages of this game that says.
• 1:18:20
  No, it's in the director bits. Towards the back, there is a
• 1:18:24
  rule that says you definitively get a victory if you do XY or Z.
• 1:18:29
  It it it says I, I mean, I don't remember the exact wording, but
• 1:18:33
  it says like, if players do this, they get a victory.
• 1:18:37
  Yeah. Like that's basically how it
• 1:18:38
  phrases it. Like if they, if they, and
• 1:18:42
  generally it's talking about in context of like in a combat
• 1:18:44
  encounter. If they fight a on like a combat
• 1:18:48
  encounter on par with their skill, they get a victory.
• 1:18:51
  Right, but but there's a caveat in there, because I'm going to
• 1:18:54
  read this as it's written. Each time your hero survives a
• 1:18:57
  combat encounter in which the party's objectives are achieved,
• 1:19:01
  you gain 1V. Caveat, the director can decide
• 1:19:07
  that a trivially easy encounter does not earn heroes a victory.
• 1:19:13
  I don't think the director should have the ability to just
• 1:19:16
  choose that. If you do choose that encounter,
• 1:19:19
  do it is choosing the victor. The director can say, well, I
• 1:19:23
  think you guys no, because there's a mechanic.
• 1:19:26
  There's not. That's not, that's not trivial.
• 1:19:28
  That's not random or trivial because there's a mechanic that
• 1:19:31
  specifically it tells it's it's it's designing the encounter.
• 1:19:35
  If the essentially in D&D terminology, the game is saying
• 1:19:39
  if it's an easy encounter, they don't get into victory.
• 1:19:42
  If it's a medium or hard encounter, they do get a
• 1:19:44
  victory. That's essentially what the game
• 1:19:46
  is saying. It's not random.
• 1:19:49
  It is dictated like there is math behind the encounter
• 1:19:52
  building in this game. OK, so then that therefore we
• 1:19:54
  get into a language problem. It is dictated, but it isn't
• 1:19:58
  because you are setting a standard by saying can decide.
• 1:20:02
  That's very powerful language can decide versus this happens.
• 1:20:13
  I think you're getting way too strung up on like a couple of
• 1:20:17
  words and how they phrased it. I really think this is not as
• 1:20:20
  big of a problem as you're making.
• 1:20:21
  Like I think you're making them out and out of Molly earlier.
• 1:20:26
  Well, so, yeah, is it more it, does it seem more important
• 1:20:29
  because we've spent 15 minutes talking about it?
• 1:20:31
  Yes, sure. But the fact of the matter is,
• 1:20:34
  is that it is intrinsically isometric.
• 1:20:39
  The power is given. That's every table top game.
• 1:20:44
  Not, but not doesn't have to be in Fabula.
• 1:20:47
  I know exactly what the fuck will give me Fabula points.
• 1:20:51
  I know that I don't have to guess it.
• 1:20:53
  I know it in Lancer. I know exactly what will give me
• 1:20:57
  core bonus abilities. I don't have to guess.
• 1:20:59
  I don't have to trust daddy GM. I get one core bonus in combat
• 1:21:03
  permission. I can buy more.
• 1:21:06
  GM has no control. Fabulous.
• 1:21:07
  Points. Fabulous points are not XP
• 1:21:10
  points, right? So that's already a weird apples
• 1:21:14
  to oranges situation. This is talking about awarding
• 1:21:17
  XP, which ultimately is always going to be up to AGM in some
• 1:21:24
  fashion because they're the ones designing the the challenge.
• 1:21:29
  Like I OK, so here's there's no. Avoiding that.
• 1:21:32
  It's not as apples to oranges as you think it is, because it's
• 1:21:35
  not fabulous. Points are not just an extra
• 1:21:37
  thing you get. They're not just some sprinkles
• 1:21:39
  on top. I know they're not class.
• 1:21:41
  Skills in fabula are in like are are reliable on fabulous points.
• 1:21:45
  So in that instance, but they're.
• 1:21:47
  Not XP points, right? They can get converted to.
• 1:21:51
  They do get converted to. They get converted when used,
• 1:21:55
  but they're not XP when earned. Experiences are very explicitly
• 1:21:59
  XP. That is like they're they're the
• 1:22:01
  earned XP that gets converted when you rest.
• 1:22:05
  Right, and I have my own problems with that, but.
• 1:22:09
  I, I don't even, I we need to move on.
• 1:22:14
  We're not. We're getting absolutely
• 1:22:15
  nowhere. This is ridiculous.
• 1:22:17
  I I don't think it is ridiculous.
• 1:22:18
  I think this is a valid problem to have with the game.
• 1:22:24
  I guess I think you're building a mountain out of molehill out
• 1:22:27
  of this, thinking that the game is like going out of its way to
• 1:22:30
  design for assholes, when I don't think that's what's going
• 1:22:32
  on here. I I think they're trying to
• 1:22:36
  address a problem that's going to come up every once in a
• 1:22:38
  while. Like, I think it's going to come
• 1:22:40
  up enough that they needed to mention it.
• 1:22:43
  OK, but. There's a lot of play testing.
• 1:22:45
  Do they think it will? Coming up enough to where they
• 1:22:48
  have to mention it in the 1st 20 pages, that's important.
• 1:22:53
  If they put it exclusively in the GM section, that's a
• 1:22:55
  different thing that's telling GMs. All right, well, look,
• 1:22:58
  there's a there's a situation where this could come up.
• 1:23:00
  Maybe you should think about it a certain way.
• 1:23:03
  But when you put it in the front, the thing that players
• 1:23:05
  are guaranteeing to read, they're talking, pointing at the
• 1:23:08
  players. Yeah, to say, you know, players
• 1:23:12
  like you might have this thought, like that's not what we
• 1:23:16
  want you to do in this game. Don't have that behaviour.
• 1:23:19
  Like they're discouraging the kind of negative behaviour they
• 1:23:21
  don't want players to have, but you're assigning guilt.
• 1:23:24
  I think it's totally you. You don't.
• 1:23:27
  Here's the thing. You do not definitively know
• 1:23:30
  that that's going to happen at every single table.
• 1:23:32
  It could happen at every single table, but you don't know that.
• 1:23:35
  So you're essentially applying guilt before there is there's
• 1:23:38
  reason to do so. You're you're letting your.
• 1:23:44
  Child. There's no other way to see it.
• 1:23:47
  You're showing. You're wearing a kid into the
• 1:23:49
  cookie jar and saying there's a cookie there into the kitchen
• 1:23:51
  and saying there's a cookie jar up there.
• 1:23:52
  Don't you dare fucking touch it. You just assumed that that kid
• 1:23:55
  was going to try to eat cookies from the cookie jar.
• 1:23:57
  You didn't give them any benefit of the doubt.
• 1:23:59
  That is what the game is doing. That feels excessively negative.
• 1:24:06
  I mean, I like this game a lot, but this is one of the genuine
• 1:24:10
  problems I have victories in general I don't like.
• 1:24:13
  I don't think they work well. I've never I've never I don't
• 1:24:16
  have practical use to them. I've not played the game but
• 1:24:18
  from a like someone with GMN player experience looking at
• 1:24:23
  that going no I don't like the way that that's worded is that.
• 1:24:27
  So similar to how just regular XP works.
• 1:24:30
  Like they're not really that different.
• 1:24:32
  It's. Not though in DND Doesn't matter
• 1:24:36
  what level of combat it is, any combat encounter will
• 1:24:41
  definitively yield you XP and there's not a goddamn thing you
• 1:24:46
  just can do a. Nitpick with this one.
• 1:24:48
  Little like edge case element that the the the the the GM
• 1:24:53
  could potentially say no, no, that wasn't XP.
• 1:24:56
  Because theirs has roll on effects.
• 1:24:59
  If you can choose that players don't get victories, that that
• 1:25:02
  changes how many victories they go into more difficult
• 1:25:05
  encounters with. That changes how longer, how
• 1:25:07
  much longer they want to fight on before they take a respite.
• 1:25:10
  That shifts the way that you think about respites in general.
• 1:25:12
  This is a small domino, but those dominoes do exponentially,
• 1:25:17
  exponentially grow in size as they topple.
• 1:25:21
  That's the truth. But you're but you're completely
• 1:25:25
  disregarding the fact that the director is is is told to design
• 1:25:32
  like a victory worthy encounters explicitly as their job.
• 1:25:36
  Like they're said, you should do this like this is how you should
• 1:25:40
  run this game. Like, is that not relevant here?
• 1:25:49
  No, you're right, that is relevant.
• 1:25:51
  And that does change things back a little bit more than a little
• 1:25:55
  bit, I'd say decently. So that does sort of shift
• 1:25:59
  things back into perspective. But I personally don't like
• 1:26:02
  being looked at like I'm going to abuse the system before I
• 1:26:05
  fully even thought about it. And again, there is still that
• 1:26:08
  knock on effect that can happen. AGM can just decide that that
• 1:26:15
  wasn't a victory worth encounter.
• 1:26:17
  You can ignore those rules. You're.
• 1:26:19
  Going to choose that, please. Let's move on.
• 1:26:22
  That's fine. We're going in circles here.
• 1:26:27
  When you do earn hero tokens, the things you can spend them on
• 1:26:32
  you. You spend them on buffs, You
• 1:26:33
  spend them on what are called surges.
• 1:26:37
  You can use surges to essentially buff up potency.
• 1:26:41
  Tears and shit. I think I don't even really
• 1:26:45
  remember. You can also use them for re
• 1:26:46
  rolls. Yes, the surges.
• 1:26:48
  I to be honest, I'm not 100% clear on the surges myself.
• 1:26:51
  I did read it but I was a little bit confused so I'm going to
• 1:26:55
  look at them real quick. If I remember Crumby, it's, I
• 1:27:01
  don't know, I'm right, it doesn't matter, whatever.
• 1:27:02
  You can spend the point to get 2 surges allowing you to increase
• 1:27:04
  damage or potency of an ability or assuming either one of the
• 1:27:07
  other. You can spend hero tokens to re
• 1:27:09
  roll failed saving throws giving you new ones.
• 1:27:11
  You can spend them to re roll general checks and you can spend
• 1:27:13
  2 on your turn when you take damage to regain stamina equals
• 1:27:16
  to the recovery value before you took the damage.
• 1:27:19
  So basically you can take a hit and then burn 2 and say actually
• 1:27:22
  I came back stronger than I was before having your cool hero
• 1:27:24
  superpower up. OK, hold on, I'm just going to
• 1:27:31
  read what surges do here. Hold on.
• 1:27:33
  When you gain a surge, you keep track of them on your character
• 1:27:35
  sheet. Surges can be used in combat to
• 1:27:36
  deal extra damage to your foes and increase the value of
• 1:27:39
  potencies whenever you deal roll damage.
• 1:27:41
  You can spend 3 surges to deal extra damage to one creature or
• 1:27:44
  object targeted by the ability. Each surge you spend deals extra
• 1:27:47
  damage equal to your highest characteristic score.
• 1:27:52
  Whenever you target one or more creatures of the ability that
• 1:27:55
  has a potency, you can spend 2 surges to increase your post
• 1:27:57
  increase your potency by buy one for one target.
• 1:28:01
  You can increase potency by more than one using surges, though
• 1:28:06
  you can spend additional surges to increase the potency of
• 1:28:08
  multiple targets. That's the surge.
• 1:28:11
  Therefore, there's sort of a they're, they're essentially a
• 1:28:15
  floating modifier that you get you can toss around based on a
• 1:28:18
  bunch of different character abilities.
• 1:28:22
  Then it just brings up some stuff.
• 1:28:24
  It talks about always rounding down how to dictate creatures
• 1:28:28
  versus objects, supernatural versus mundane, what qualifies
• 1:28:32
  as PCs versus MPCA, Lot of like sort of basic, basic just RPG
• 1:28:40
  language explanation essentially.
• 1:28:43
  Then it gets into your primary heroic the the things that you
• 1:28:48
  use to sort of reinforce the heroic combat nature of things,
• 1:28:53
  one of those being victories, essentially the thing that
• 1:28:57
  Isaiah hates. The way victories work is each
• 1:28:59
  time your hero survives a combat encounter in which the party's
• 1:29:02
  objectives are achieved, you earn 1 victory.
• 1:29:04
  The director can decide that a trivially easy encounter doesn't
• 1:29:07
  earn a hero's victory and can award additional victories for
• 1:29:10
  particularly challenging encounters.
• 1:29:12
  You can acquire victories for non combat challenges.
• 1:29:17
  When your heroes successfully overcome a big challenge that
• 1:29:19
  doesn't involve combat, the director can award you a
• 1:29:20
  victory. Such challenges could be things
• 1:29:24
  such as a particularly complicated and deadly trap and
• 1:29:26
  negotiation, A montage test, a complicated puzzle, or the
• 1:29:29
  execution of a clever idea to avoid a battle.
• 1:29:32
  Especially difficult sound just can get your extra.
• 1:29:34
  Essentially, victories are your experience points.
• 1:29:37
  When you finish a respite, which is essentially the this game's
• 1:29:42
  equivalent of the long rest, you lose all of your victories and
• 1:29:46
  they convert into XP. So if you had five victories,
• 1:29:48
  you rest, you get 5X PXP does the usual XP accrues.
• 1:29:55
  Every level is 15 XP points in this game.
• 1:29:59
  They do not increase as you go up in levels.
• 1:30:01
  It's a set amount. Then the main thing, and this is
• 1:30:06
  like one of the really, really core the mechanics of the game
• 1:30:11
  is heroic resources. So every class has a heroic
• 1:30:15
  resource. Your heroic resource increases
• 1:30:21
  throughout a fight based on some very specific parameters which
• 1:30:26
  differs from class to class. Everyone accrues their heroic
• 1:30:29
  resource in different ways. So how your particular class
• 1:30:33
  gets them, you know, basically depending on what class you
• 1:30:37
  pick, you have to read to figure out how your particular class
• 1:30:41
  acquires heroic resources. But essentially heroic resources
• 1:30:44
  are heroic resources are your ammo count that you spend to use
• 1:30:49
  on more powerful abilities. So you have your signature
• 1:30:52
  abilities, which you can do all the time, and then your heroic
• 1:30:56
  abilities, which are ones that you need to spend heroic
• 1:30:58
  resources to utilize. So if your class has something
• 1:31:01
  that costs three heroic, you know, if you're a sensor and you
• 1:31:04
  have something that costs three piety, you have to spend the
• 1:31:08
  three piety to use the ability. This is the core mechanic of
• 1:31:13
  literally all of the classes. These are like built into
• 1:31:18
  everything and each class is a different name and a different,
• 1:31:22
  like I said, a different way they get them.
• 1:31:23
  Yes. To add on to that, typically the
• 1:31:26
  way that you do get them, there seems to be two primary ways and
• 1:31:28
  a couple offshoots typically you.
• 1:31:31
  Everyone has the one. Basic way, Yes, you get the one
• 1:31:34
  basic way, which is say at the start of start of combat you get
• 1:31:37
  a certain amount equal some of the victories you have.
• 1:31:39
  Typically at the start of your turn you get a certain number
• 1:31:42
  back. The big change there is that
• 1:31:44
  some classes get a just flat number back, either one or two
• 1:31:48
  depending. And there are somewhere you have
• 1:31:49
  to roll AD 3 to get them back. And it seems like abilities that
• 1:31:55
  are typically stronger off RIP are the ones that you have to
• 1:31:58
  roll for. So there is stuff for the fury
• 1:32:01
  for doing their like big damage. So those heroic resources have
• 1:32:06
  to get rolled on. See you know whether or not you
• 1:32:08
  can do that, that brutal criminal critical equivalent
• 1:32:11
  every round. But there are other ones like
• 1:32:13
  the sensual where you just got like 2 or so back.
• 1:32:16
  It's not to see if you can use the ability, it's to see how
• 1:32:19
  much of your heroic resource you accrue.
• 1:32:22
  Right, but I never I read that as like it's to to to it's to
• 1:32:28
  create a level of unsurety so that you can't do the big Dick
• 1:32:31
  damage attacks every round. Right.
• 1:32:33
  It's like a oh do I? Oh yeah, you can't necessarily
• 1:32:36
  do your best thing every round. Yeah, like the yes, the the
• 1:32:38
  conduit has to roll a death. Or the conduit can choose to
• 1:32:42
  pray at the beginning of a round and roll AD 3 and potentially
• 1:32:47
  get 3 of their heroic resource back at the beginning of a turn.
• 1:32:50
  Which is a lot. But if they roll poorly they can
• 1:32:55
  piss their God off and there can be downsides to that.
• 1:32:58
  So it's a little bit of a risk reward option there.
• 1:33:01
  The Bard can also do. The troubadour can also do a
• 1:33:04
  similar thing. Then you have recoveries which
• 1:33:10
  are, if you're familiar with 4th edition, those are your healing
• 1:33:17
  surges as they called them in 4th edition, which effectively
• 1:33:24
  you can, you can use a manoeuvre to which a manoeuvre which is
• 1:33:28
  the rough equivalent of like a bonus action.
• 1:33:31
  You can use your manoeuvre to heal yourself during your turn.
• 1:33:37
  And a lot of class abilities will also give you the option to
• 1:33:41
  spend a recovery. So for example, the sensor,
• 1:33:46
  which is the paladin has an ability called My Life for yours
• 1:33:50
  where they point at an ally and heal that ally by spending one
• 1:33:56
  of the sensors recoveries for that ally.
• 1:33:59
  The conduit has an ability where they can heal an ally and they
• 1:34:03
  say, OK, you player, you can spend a recovery right now even
• 1:34:08
  though it's not your turn to regain some health.
• 1:34:12
  So there's lots of different ways that recoveries can go off,
• 1:34:15
  but they're basically little mini healing boosts that you get
• 1:34:18
  throughout the combat. The that's the, that's the main
• 1:34:22
  way you're going to keep yourself up in this game is via
• 1:34:25
  recoveries. And almost every class has, as
• 1:34:29
  far as I can tell, has some kind of thing that interacts with
• 1:34:32
  recoveries. It's very much, I think they're
• 1:34:36
  trying to avoid the problem of you have to have a healer on the
• 1:34:39
  team. And I do think they've seemed to
• 1:34:41
  have mostly avoided that because even the tactician, which is
• 1:34:44
  your like fighter equivalent, has a bunch of ways that they
• 1:34:47
  can heal their teammates with recoveries.
• 1:34:49
  Yes, I I have not seen a single class.
• 1:34:51
  From what I can tell me, I didn't have some sort of
• 1:34:54
  interaction with it. Yeah, pretty much.
• 1:35:00
  Maybe I didn't see one on the Elementalist.
• 1:35:02
  I don't know. Well, I guess it depends on your
• 1:35:06
  subclass, actually. But, and in case anyone's, in
• 1:35:12
  case you're like Mike Merles and you think it's stupid that the,
• 1:35:16
  what did you say? The, the, what the fuck was the
• 1:35:19
  class called in 4th edition? Oh, God, The warlord.
• 1:35:23
  You can't shout your hand back on.
• 1:35:26
  And so it's stupid for a class like the warlord to be healing.
• 1:35:29
  The idea is that your characters are heroic characters like
• 1:35:32
  Rambo, and after they just mowed a bunch of dudes down, they roll
• 1:35:36
  behind the tree, you know, RIP a piece of cloth off their clothes
• 1:35:40
  and like, you know, suture up or not suture up, but like, wrap up
• 1:35:44
  their wound really quick and like, burn it with a cigar.
• 1:35:46
  Like it's that kind of idea of like, you take a breather and
• 1:35:49
  just fucking tank the hit 'cause you're that much of a badass.
• 1:35:52
  Yeah. You get all your recoveries back
• 1:35:57
  when you finish a rest bite. There's no short rest in this
• 1:36:00
  game, There's only rest bites, which are long rests.
• 1:36:03
  So recoveries are kind of your replacement for the short rest
• 1:36:06
  thing. And then a rest bite is
• 1:36:12
  literally you rest in a town or a safe place for 24 hours.
• 1:36:18
  So it's very much not a night of rest.
• 1:36:20
  It's like a rest bite in this game is like, I'm taking some,
• 1:36:24
  I'm taking at least a day to like chill the fuck out and
• 1:36:27
  really like relax. So you can't just you can't just
• 1:36:33
  sleep it off and be good to go. You need to like spend some
• 1:36:36
  actual time resting. Yes, not in love with this one.
• 1:36:39
  I understand the the legitimacy of it.
• 1:36:41
  I understand why the thought process is there as a player.
• 1:36:44
  Not in love with it, as AGMI. Get it?
• 1:36:47
  Well, it's all going back to the theme of the game, right?
• 1:36:49
  The idea that heroes can push on for a longer time, but when they
• 1:36:55
  finally do choose to rest, they have to rest for a while.
• 1:36:57
  It's it's the Age of Ultron thing, right?
• 1:36:59
  They can fight and fight and fight until they're eventually
• 1:37:01
  worn out and then they have to all go to Hawkeye's place and
• 1:37:04
  sit around for three days and chill out.
• 1:37:06
  Yes, my my only gripe is that there are some abilities that
• 1:37:09
  only recharge an arrest fight and then some of them I don't
• 1:37:11
  think are necessarily good or cool enough to get that
• 1:37:14
  recharge. And yes, you can sort of push it
• 1:37:18
  off by getting victories, which can restart things, but given
• 1:37:23
  how much time it is, I think that can be that that can be a
• 1:37:27
  source of annoyance for players. I don't think players are really
• 1:37:33
  going to notice much. They might not.
• 1:37:36
  I've not played the game enough, I mean.
• 1:37:38
  Mechanically, it's not that different.
• 1:37:40
  It's only really different, like fictionally.
• 1:37:46
  Sort of it's it's harder to do to to say, all right, we're
• 1:37:49
  going to spend a full day in the dungeon doing fuck all versus
• 1:37:52
  we're going to take a rest at night, sleep in our. 10 You
• 1:37:55
  can't spend a day in the dungeon, right?
• 1:37:58
  Space has to be in a, in a place of like, it has to be in like a
• 1:38:01
  town or a, you know, a hovel or like it needs to be explicitly
• 1:38:07
  safer than that. I don't think it says it has to
• 1:38:10
  be. I think it says it's recommended
• 1:38:12
  that it is. Recovered during rest fight
• 1:38:17
  isn't doing nothing, that's sleeping.
• 1:38:18
  In addressing image you also undertake one rest bite
• 1:38:20
  activity. Just keep in mind that what your
• 1:38:25
  rest during enemies are still scheming.
• 1:38:27
  If it tested is safe, it's best to take a rest bite in a safe
• 1:38:30
  place where you aren't in a hostile environment at risk of
• 1:38:32
  being attacked. If you rest bite is interrupted
• 1:38:34
  by enemies attacking an earth tremor, swarms of biting
• 1:38:37
  insects, and similar distractions, the rest bite ends
• 1:38:39
  early and you don't gain them. OK, so I guess yes it doesn't.
• 1:38:43
  It doesn't have to be. It does specifically say the
• 1:38:46
  standard 8 hours or so of sleep one gets a night doesn't count
• 1:38:50
  as a respite. The rules assume all heroes take
• 1:38:52
  time to sleep and eat and take care of all the other functions
• 1:38:54
  necessary for life, even if they aren't engaged in a respite.
• 1:39:01
  So yeah, I guess you could maybe try to rest a dungeon, but it
• 1:39:04
  would be quite difficult. I think.
• 1:39:07
  It's I think given the way the rest of the mechanics work, I
• 1:39:10
  think it's fine. I don't really don't think.
• 1:39:12
  I think it makes sense and I actually think that's more
• 1:39:14
  interesting that you push it and push it and push it until you
• 1:39:18
  can push it no more and then you have no choice but to like
• 1:39:20
  retreat essentially. I feel like it's more
• 1:39:22
  interesting than I will just bar the door and sleep in the
• 1:39:25
  dungeon. That always felt goofy to me.
• 1:39:27
  Well, so I guess maybe I would. It would bother me less if it
• 1:39:30
  wasn't the if your respite is interrupted at all, you just
• 1:39:34
  lose the 24 hours. I think that kind of frustrates
• 1:39:38
  me. Yeah, but if it didn't work that
• 1:39:40
  way, it wouldn't work mechanically as well if it
• 1:39:43
  didn't work that way, given the way the rest of the game works.
• 1:39:46
  It can because long rest can be interrupted up to I think an
• 1:39:51
  hour. Then you get like like.
• 1:39:53
  Right. This game doesn't have that kind
• 1:39:55
  of distinction, right? It has it.
• 1:39:58
  It only has the one form of resting and abilities are based
• 1:40:02
  on a resource that you know goes up over the day you can't like.
• 1:40:09
  There isn't really, mechanically speaking, a respite has to be
• 1:40:13
  either on or off because there isn't, there isn't any a
• 1:40:16
  mechanic that could really granularly work there.
• 1:40:20
  That's not, I don't think that's true.
• 1:40:21
  I think you can have the exact same thing like you can have in
• 1:40:23
  a 24 hour period, you can have up to an hour where your
• 1:40:26
  respite's interrupted, where you don't lose the whole thing.
• 1:40:29
  Because you can have a situation where like, narratively
• 1:40:31
  speaking, you're going to your respite, you're doing some fun
• 1:40:33
  role play and then, you know, afternoon rolls around and then
• 1:40:38
  some weird shit happens and it's like, I will now you don't get
• 1:40:40
  the rest bite. Like it just, it feels like an
• 1:40:43
  easy way to waste time. If something interests the rest,
• 1:40:46
  bite. Like when you're almost there,
• 1:40:48
  you know what I mean? I guess, but if you know it has
• 1:40:52
  to be a 24 hour safe period, then you're just going to go out
• 1:40:55
  of your way to make sure like, OK, we need to be sure we're in
• 1:40:59
  like a totally safe place because if it gets interrupted,
• 1:41:01
  that's going to be a problem. Like if you know that ahead of
• 1:41:04
  time then you're not as likely to be in that weird getting
• 1:41:08
  interrupted situation. I don't think that's true.
• 1:41:11
  I think that that happens plenty of times in things like D&D,
• 1:41:15
  like, Oh yeah, we chose like a safe spot in the dungeon.
• 1:41:18
  The doors locked, we barred it. There's no way in.
• 1:41:20
  And then a ghost goes to the wall.
• 1:41:21
  Like, I mean, that's possible no matter what.
• 1:41:24
  You can be in a town and a fucking assassin tries to kill
• 1:41:26
  you. Like that's kind of the the way
• 1:41:28
  that these heroic narratives work.
• 1:41:29
  Is that like, safe is kind of a nebulous thing.
• 1:41:34
  Sort of, but I think that I, I really think that the dungeon,
• 1:41:37
  the resting in the dungeon, I think this game is very
• 1:41:39
  explicitly trying to avoid like, I don't think they want you
• 1:41:43
  resting in the dungeon. I feel like they think that
• 1:41:45
  they're saying that's sort of like off tone, that the idea of
• 1:41:50
  the rest bite should be you're in Rivendale and you're relaxing
• 1:41:54
  with the elves. Like that's a rest bite as
• 1:41:56
  opposed to just sleeping in the dungeon or whatever.
• 1:42:02
  That might be a situation where I just don't agree with the
• 1:42:04
  designers on the vision, but fair enough.
• 1:42:08
  Well, again, you got to get your mind out of the like, dungeon
• 1:42:11
  fucker DND style of things, right?
• 1:42:13
  Because that's not what they're trying to do.
• 1:42:17
  True, yes, it's not what they're trying to do, but it's I think
• 1:42:20
  there are certain things that you can't avoid, right?
• 1:42:22
  Like, just given the way that victories work, players are
• 1:42:24
  going to want to go as far as they can without resting because
• 1:42:27
  they are actively rewarded for not doing that.
• 1:42:31
  Right. That's the point, yeah.
• 1:42:32
  It can be an easy situation where the players might, you
• 1:42:36
  know, overextend themselves and are therefore unable to re to
• 1:42:40
  rest. I I guess I don't really see how
• 1:42:48
  that would be happening, but OK. All right.
• 1:42:56
  So after the rest by bit, we get the echelons of play.
• 1:43:01
  This is basically the tiers of play.
• 1:43:02
  In 5 E there's four echelons. Like there's 4 tiers in 5 E. 1st
• 1:43:08
  to 3rd level is your first echelon, 4th to 6th level is
• 1:43:11
  your second echelon, 7th to 9th level is your third echelon, and
• 1:43:15
  then tenth level is your your 4th echelon.
• 1:43:21
  These don't on their own, they do not have a mechanical effect,
• 1:43:24
  but the reason they do matter is because some mechanics in the
• 1:43:28
  game will specifically reference the echelon of play that you are
• 1:43:32
  currently at. So for example, I think it quite
• 1:43:35
  a few of the kits will specifically say, let me see if
• 1:43:40
  I can find it. Yeah, so like the arcane or no,
• 1:43:43
  sorry. The Cloak and dagger kit
• 1:43:45
  specifically says stamina bonus is +3 per per echelon.
• 1:43:51
  So if you're in the second echelon, A plea, you would be
• 1:43:54
  getting a + 6 stamina bonus, which is to say plus 6HP.
• 1:43:58
  So the echelons can have mechanical effects, Certain
• 1:44:02
  things reference them, yeah. Then after the echelons of play,
• 1:44:14
  it gets into setting stuff. We're not really here to talk
• 1:44:19
  about setting stuff. I'm not necessarily not my bread
• 1:44:24
  and butter. There's a whole several pages on
• 1:44:28
  the setting. It's called Orden and the
• 1:44:29
  Timescape. Matt Colville is a fantasy
• 1:44:35
  novel. I mean, he's a writer.
• 1:44:37
  His he, he worked in video games as a writer.
• 1:44:40
  That's like kind of his main thing.
• 1:44:42
  So there's a lot of world design stuff going into this game.
• 1:44:48
  I did actually read all of it or or almost all of it, and it is
• 1:44:52
  interesting stuff. I we're just not going to go
• 1:44:54
  over it here. But if you're curious, yes, the
• 1:44:56
  game has a setting yes, there's lots of lore and juicy tiddly
• 1:45:00
  bits to sink your teeth into. Then we get making a hero.
• 1:45:08
  So you know how how does character creation work in this
• 1:45:13
  game? So it starts talking about your
• 1:45:20
  first session, which this is Matt Colville's weird hatred of
• 1:45:28
  the phrase first session coming out.
• 1:45:30
  I feel like or sorry, his weird, his weird hatred of the phrase
• 1:45:33
  session 0 coming out because they call it your first session
• 1:45:37
  and then they say often referred to as session 0.
• 1:45:44
  I don't know he had he just has a weird semantic hatred of the
• 1:45:47
  phrase session 0. Whatever.
• 1:45:50
  I've heard I've heard tell of this.
• 1:45:52
  I've not actually seen the the video where he talks about it.
• 1:45:55
  It's just a, it's just like a pet peeve.
• 1:45:57
  He's talked about it on streams. It's just like a pet peeve he
• 1:45:59
  has about it. But anyway, he talks about the
• 1:46:01
  first session was just to say session zero and just how to,
• 1:46:04
  you know, how to run it. What should you do as the
• 1:46:06
  director a little bit, you know, basic stuff.
• 1:46:09
  And then we get into the actual steps of making your hero, which
• 1:46:14
  is to say making your character. Step one is simply just think
• 1:46:20
  about it, which is to say, what kind of character do you want to
• 1:46:24
  play? Why did they become a hero?
• 1:46:27
  Why did they choose or what did they do before being a hero?
• 1:46:30
  Why did they choose to be a hero?
• 1:46:31
  What's their personality? How do they fight?
• 1:46:33
  So on and so forth. Then you pick your ancestry,
• 1:46:37
  which is you know, your species, which in this game you have
• 1:46:40
  devil, dragon, knight, dwarf, wode, wode, elf, high elf,
• 1:46:45
  hakan, human, Memonok, orc holder, revenant, or time
• 1:46:51
  Raider. A couple of those you'll know
• 1:46:54
  what they are, and a few of them will be a little different.
• 1:46:59
  Future supplements will almost start the book literally says
• 1:47:02
  future supplements will introduce additional ancestries.
• 1:47:06
  So there's there's quite a few places where the book is like
• 1:47:09
  we're going to add more later. Don't worry, they do that quite
• 1:47:12
  a few times. Then you have your culture.
• 1:47:17
  So this is this is a really interesting element of the like
• 1:47:20
  character creation in this game, rather than just assuming your
• 1:47:25
  culture based on your ancestry, which is, you know, more or less
• 1:47:27
  kind of how DND does it. You build your culture out of
• 1:47:33
  you make several different choices.
• 1:47:35
  So it'll be like what kind? It'll say, I forget exactly how
• 1:47:40
  it breaks it down, but it'll be like, are they did they live
• 1:47:44
  secluded or the urban or are they nomadic or the wilderness?
• 1:47:48
  And then it'll have like what kind of culture do they live in,
• 1:47:50
  bureaucratic or communal? And then like what kind of
• 1:47:53
  upbringing did they have? Basically it breaks the culture
• 1:47:58
  bit down into several parts and then each part will have a
• 1:48:02
  mechanical effect on kinds of skills and things that you get
• 1:48:06
  from your culture. So essentially you build instead
• 1:48:09
  of just having origins the way like 5 E does, you build your
• 1:48:14
  origin out and then after your origin or after your culture you
• 1:48:20
  have your career which is essentially what did your
• 1:48:24
  character do before they became an adventurer.
• 1:48:29
  Your career will also inform some skills and give you a perk.
• 1:48:34
  A perk is essentially a brain, a feat, A perk.
• 1:48:43
  A perk is the equivalent of a feat in this game.
• 1:48:47
  It will also, oh, the culture part will also dictate
• 1:48:51
  languages. Languages are very are a big
• 1:48:54
  deal in this game. There's a lot of languages and
• 1:48:57
  there are actually some mechanical effects based on what
• 1:49:00
  languages you have, particularly the negotiation mechanic.
• 1:49:05
  If you have, for example, if you share a language with a person
• 1:49:09
  that you are negotiating with, you can get bonuses to the
• 1:49:13
  negotiation. Negotiations are essentially
• 1:49:16
  like social, social contests. That social contest mechanic
• 1:49:21
  that this game has. Then after your career, you
• 1:49:24
  choose your class. I don't need to explain what
• 1:49:27
  classes, it's your class. Then if your class, you have
• 1:49:31
  your kit and your kit is essentially your equipment, what
• 1:49:37
  do you fight with? And kits will give you some
• 1:49:40
  flavour in terms of what kind of weapons and armor you have.
• 1:49:44
  And then it will give you mechanical things like damage
• 1:49:46
  bonuses, it'll affect your speed, it can affect your
• 1:49:50
  stamina. And then every kit has a
• 1:49:54
  signature ability. So like essentially the
• 1:49:58
  signature ability tied to your kit is like your basic attack
• 1:50:01
  with your weapon is the easiest way to put it because there is
• 1:50:07
  no attack action in this game that doesn't exist.
• 1:50:13
  Every every attack thing you do is either going to be an ability
• 1:50:20
  from your class or it's either going to be a signature ability
• 1:50:23
  or a heroic ability. A heroic ability.
• 1:50:27
  There is no just I attack. That's that.
• 1:50:30
  Does not that not a thing? Interesting, I don't think I
• 1:50:34
  noticed that. Yeah, there's no attack action.
• 1:50:38
  It's either so like your basic, your basic attacks, quote UN
• 1:50:42
  quote, are going to be your signature abilities from your
• 1:50:45
  class or your signature ability from your kit.
• 1:50:47
  Those are going to be your most like simple, straightforward
• 1:50:51
  attacks. Everything, anything else is
• 1:50:55
  going to be based on a heroic resource or based on a special
• 1:50:59
  ability or something like that. It's always, it's sort of the,
• 1:51:09
  it's kind of what 4th edition did in its design where
• 1:51:11
  everything is like a special power.
• 1:51:13
  There's no, there's no simple straightforward, just smacko,
• 1:51:19
  right, right. And then you have then you add
• 1:51:22
  your free strikes, which are off turn attacks, basically special
• 1:51:30
  abilities. You have to respond to certain
• 1:51:32
  things not on your turn. Every hero does have you do have
• 1:51:39
  attacks of opportunity. That's that's your free strike
• 1:51:41
  thing. That's one of your free strikes.
• 1:51:44
  Everybody gets that. You get your, your melee or
• 1:51:46
  range weapon free strike. And it's just, you know, if
• 1:51:50
  somebody moves away, smack them. I do really appreciate that this
• 1:51:56
  game does not differentiate between it or doesn't say that.
• 1:51:59
  That brain please. Attacks of opportunity can be
• 1:52:04
  ranged or melee or spelled. It depends on whatever your
• 1:52:07
  signature thing is. And it's not like DND where it's
• 1:52:08
  like well I'm an Archer who does not know how to swing sword
• 1:52:12
  therefore I'm just fucked. Or I'm a wizard and I'm just
• 1:52:14
  fucked. Like I need to a whole different
• 1:52:15
  feet to be able to do that. The game just doesn't know you
• 1:52:17
  can do it for it. Appreciate it.
• 1:52:22
  Yeah, the game is big on whatever your characters like
• 1:52:29
  from a from a, a thematic and from a fictional standpoint, the
• 1:52:33
  game is really invoking this idea of regardless of what kind
• 1:52:36
  of weapon your character chooses to fight with, that is their
• 1:52:40
  thing. And so just because you're a
• 1:52:42
  wizard with a dagger does not mean you're less effective than
• 1:52:46
  the than the, the fighter with the big sword.
• 1:52:49
  Like both characters, that's the weapon they fight with.
• 1:52:53
  That's just how they fight. Like literally one of the kits
• 1:52:57
  is like a robe and was it's like wizard stick and robe and stick
• 1:53:03
  and robe is literally like I'm a wizard with the wizard staff.
• 1:53:06
  This is my main attacking implement.
• 1:53:10
  And my just because I use a wizard staff, I'm not less
• 1:53:15
  effective in any sort of sense. It's going back to that heroic
• 1:53:19
  thing of like, it's kind of anime.
• 1:53:21
  Honestly. There's a lot of anime in this
• 1:53:23
  game. I don't know if I don't think I
• 1:53:25
  said that before. There's a lot of fucking anime
• 1:53:26
  in this game. It is very anime coded for sure.
• 1:53:30
  Yeah, like initially it doesn't. It might not come off that way,
• 1:53:34
  but if you start looking at it with that mentality, you'll
• 1:53:38
  realize that there's a lot of weeb shit in this game.
• 1:53:40
  There's a lot of like, how does your character fight?
• 1:53:44
  They fight with a magical book that fires fairies from it.
• 1:53:47
  You're like, that sounds like anime nonsense.
• 1:53:50
  There's a lot of that going on. And I think the, I think a lot
• 1:53:53
  of the designers, I'm almost positive are big fucking weebs.
• 1:53:58
  There's an ability in this game that the sensor gets called Ride
• 1:54:02
  the Lightning and I I don't know how else I'm supposed to take
• 1:54:06
  that other than a fucking Guilty Gear reference.
• 1:54:09
  Yeah, that's. Ride the Lightning.
• 1:54:12
  Yeah. Come on now.
• 1:54:15
  Yeah, that's a that's a little on the nose.
• 1:54:17
  It feels like, I feel like that if that's if, if, if that was
• 1:54:22
  written in there without the intention of reference to Guilty
• 1:54:25
  Gear. I'm going to be really fucking
• 1:54:26
  sad because I saw that and it literally you literally charged
• 1:54:32
  forward enveloped in lightning. Like that's literally what the
• 1:54:37
  ability to you do, ride the lightning.
• 1:54:39
  I was like, wait a minute, do I want to play a sensor?
• 1:54:41
  It's like, wait, fuck it. I can shout ride the lightning.
• 1:54:46
  Hell yeah. Like no, but you have to shout
• 1:54:49
  it from accent corn, right Lightning.
• 1:54:52
  Yeah, yeah, the really awkward delivery.
• 1:54:54
  Yeah, yeah. I like, I can't.
• 1:54:57
  I'm going to read this ability. I'm actually just going to.
• 1:54:59
  Read this. Oh what?
• 1:55:02
  God, I don't want anything with him.
• 1:55:04
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm just going to read light to
• 1:55:07
  lightning because it's hilarious.
• 1:55:09
  So lightning and Thunder infuse your body.
• 1:55:12
  Whenever you use an ability to deal to deal roll damage to
• 1:55:15
  another creature, the ability deals extra lightning damage
• 1:55:18
  equal to your presence score. Additionally, if you use an
• 1:55:20
  ability that force moves a creature, the force movement
• 1:55:23
  distance gains a bonus equal to your presence score.
• 1:55:25
  While you're under the effect of the Wind Walk feature, lightning
• 1:55:28
  enhances your locomotion to grant you a bonus to speed equal
• 1:55:31
  to your mite score if Wind Walk is already grant.
• 1:55:36
  If Wind Walk already grants you a bonus to speed, this bonus
• 1:55:39
  adds to that. So you you literally Wind Walk
• 1:55:43
  with lightning like I how else am I supposed to take that
• 1:55:50
  anyway? Yeah, so there's.
• 1:55:51
  That's pretty. That's pretty chip code.
• 1:55:52
  Chip code. That's pretty.
• 1:55:53
  It feels very chi coded. That's a pretty Kyle Kiskovich
• 1:55:57
  coded. Yeah, like, hello.
• 1:56:01
  Anyway, that was an attraction. But yeah, so there's a lot of
• 1:56:03
  anime shit in this game. So that's that.
• 1:56:04
  That's part of the vibe is like, yeah, the wizard can do an
• 1:56:08
  attack of opportunity with their magical staff.
• 1:56:10
  Like that's part of leaning into that, that heroic feel.
• 1:56:15
  And then you have a complication you can pick from.
• 1:56:17
  Complications are technically optional, but essentially you
• 1:56:19
  can take like a downside to get a benefit in a different area.
• 1:56:23
  A lot of games have that. Then you just flesh out your
• 1:56:27
  details, which is just, you know, back story and appearance
• 1:56:32
  and personality and all that stuff.
• 1:56:34
  And then the last step to character creation is make quote
• 1:56:37
  UN quote making connections, which is basically just having
• 1:56:41
  the director go around and ask a bunch of questions of the
• 1:56:44
  various characters and how they might know each other.
• 1:56:47
  There is a bulleted list of some sample questions, such as when
• 1:56:51
  you were fighting, when you were fighting a monster, one of your
• 1:56:54
  party members saved your life. What were they?
• 1:56:56
  What were you battling and who saved you?
• 1:56:58
  So they're very Dungeon World and Apocalypse World style
• 1:57:02
  narrative prompt questions. And that's.
• 1:57:07
  Yeah. So 10 steps to making a
• 1:57:09
  character. You're going to spend a lot of
• 1:57:13
  time on class and culture. Those two are going to be a
• 1:57:16
  while. That is exactly where I was at
• 1:57:20
  while building a car. That's where I'm at right now.
• 1:57:22
  That's the meat of it. And then it mentions a couple
• 1:57:27
  options. So like or or not, it mentions a
• 1:57:31
  couple of, I don't know, rules, rules about how your character
• 1:57:37
  is. So it mentions adventuring gear.
• 1:57:40
  Basically, this game doesn't give a shit about tracking gear,
• 1:57:44
  much like how Fabula doesn't give a shit about tracking gear.
• 1:57:48
  If you should reasonably have it, your character can have it
• 1:57:52
  at the director's discretion. You might lose gear or something
• 1:57:55
  might break, or there might be some sort of narrative reason
• 1:57:58
  that you don't have access, like if you're thrown in prison, for
• 1:58:01
  example, you don't have access to your lock picks like that
• 1:58:04
  kind of a vibe. But generally the game doesn't
• 1:58:06
  really care about tracking food and water and torches and all
• 1:58:10
  that hootenanny. There's a little paragraph on
• 1:58:14
  changing your character options. So that was interesting The they
• 1:58:18
  basically say if you don't like the character choice you made,
• 1:58:22
  just just change it. Just swap it.
• 1:58:24
  Fuck it, go for it. It literally says if they say
• 1:58:30
  it's fine to swap that aspect out for something else, go for
• 1:58:32
  it. You shouldn't be stuck with any
• 1:58:36
  option that makes the game less fun for you.
• 1:58:38
  So they no, no bones about how that is, if you want to swap
• 1:58:41
  things out, fucking swap things out.
• 1:58:45
  And then you get, and then it also mentions an optional rule
• 1:58:49
  to like swap out your abilities on a respite.
• 1:58:51
  If you want to sort of, you know, split the difference a
• 1:58:53
  little bit with your GM and say, can I, you know, I don't like
• 1:58:56
  this ability, can I pick a different one?
• 1:58:58
  And the GM says, all right, next time you rest you can.
• 1:59:02
  And then it just talks a little bit briefly about heroic
• 1:59:04
  advancement. Levelling up is actually really
• 1:59:08
  easy in this game. So it's 15 XP.
• 1:59:13
  When you rest, you convert. You know, you, you do a fight,
• 1:59:16
  you earn a victory. Once you have a certain number
• 1:59:18
  of victories, you rest, or well, or not.
• 1:59:22
  Once you have a certain number, you you accrue however many
• 1:59:25
  victories you accrue, you take a respite.
• 1:59:28
  Once you rest those, those victory points convert directly
• 1:59:32
  into XP points. Once you have 15 XP points, you
• 1:59:34
  level up. Levelling up is literally just a
• 1:59:37
  case of looking at your chart under on your class page and
• 1:59:42
  just taking the abilities that your class tells you to take,
• 1:59:45
  much like how 5 E levels up level ups are.
• 1:59:48
  That's not to say that you don't have choices when you level up.
• 1:59:51
  There are a lot of choices to make when you level up.
• 1:59:54
  Don't worry because basically every class has a big swath of
• 2:00:01
  different heroic abilities to choose from, or perks that you
• 2:00:05
  choose from, or. Every couple of levels you get
• 2:00:09
  stat increase or characteristic increases, so there's plenty of
• 2:00:12
  choices to make. And then if you want to speed up
• 2:00:16
  the pace of your game, there's some suggestions for XP curve if
• 2:00:21
  it's double XP, or XP curve if you want to do it slower, so
• 2:00:25
  half or double. The game also does briefly
• 2:00:30
  mention milestone XP. Yeah, The funny thing about the
• 2:00:39
  way the game describes milestone XPS, it gives an example where
• 2:00:43
  it says, for example, in a campaign where the heroes have
• 2:00:46
  to face 9 evil mages, it makes sense that each time the heroes
• 2:00:51
  defeat a mage, they gain a level.
• 2:00:53
  The director should keep the milestone goals flexible though.
• 2:00:56
  Defeating A mage could mean stopping them with violence,
• 2:00:58
  using negotiation to make them stand down, or anything else
• 2:01:01
  that thwarts the evil plants. I would argue that's not
• 2:01:04
  actually describing milestone XP.
• 2:01:08
  Yeah, I I think so. They, they have the one directly
• 2:01:11
  underneath it. It's just like whenever the GM
• 2:01:13
  decides. That's the milestone one.
• 2:01:16
  That's that's milestone. Yeah.
• 2:01:17
  I, I, I was also confused by that little distinction.
• 2:01:19
  I'm going to be honest. I feel like whenever the GM
• 2:01:24
  decides is how most people do milestone and the one that they
• 2:01:27
  described is is the way I feel like people should do milestone
• 2:01:32
  but they don't do it that way because I actually really love
• 2:01:37
  the idea. I like the idea that oh you have
• 2:01:40
  to kill 9 evil mages to and each mage is a level up.
• 2:01:43
  I actually like that idea as a level up curve, but that's not
• 2:01:46
  how most people use milestone. Yeah, I, I think if you asked 10
• 2:01:50
  GMs, exactly 0 of them would tell you that that was
• 2:01:53
  milestone. Yeah, like.
• 2:01:56
  Here's the thing. It should be.
• 2:01:59
  Right. Yeah, that might be a more apt
• 2:02:01
  way of describing milestone versus LOL whatever the fuck I
• 2:02:05
  want, but yeah. But yes, when the director says
• 2:02:09
  so is basically how everybody else ends up doing it.
• 2:02:13
  So whatever. And then after that we get to
• 2:02:19
  the actual making of your character stuff and it starts
• 2:02:21
  with ancestries, but we're going to stop here.
• 2:02:27
  Guess we're it's two hours deep so we're going to put the brakes
• 2:02:33
  on this bus. Oh baby, we got so much to go
• 2:02:35
  through next week. I, you know.
• 2:02:40
  Yeah, I know. Here's the thing.
• 2:02:42
  Here's the thing. We can sort of breeze through
• 2:02:46
  the classes because the classes are so detailed that you could
• 2:02:49
  reasonably spend 45 minutes per class because the class is not
• 2:02:53
  built like DND, it's built like no other game I've ever seen
• 2:02:58
  where your subclass dictates what you get.
• 2:03:01
  Every single level. Every level you get, you get a
• 2:03:04
  specific tailored ability based on your subclass, which does
• 2:03:09
  leave the the character sheets or that the the class pages are
• 2:03:13
  thick. Yeah, the class pages are
• 2:03:15
  fucking. Long.
• 2:03:16
  We're talking like 15 ish pages per class.
• 2:03:19
  Yes, yeah, yeah. I mean the class.
• 2:03:21
  So classes start on page. Let me see, hold on, let's see
• 2:03:30
  the first class. So the first class is the
• 2:03:33
  censor, which starts on page 79. The last class is the troubadour
• 2:03:40
  which ends on page 215. So let's do the math on that
• 2:03:49
  real quick. 136 pages are dedicated to classes.
• 2:03:57
  So that's a lot. Yeah.
• 2:04:01
  And yeah, no, we're definitely not going to go into every class
• 2:04:04
  because that would be fucking three hours by itself.
• 2:04:11
  We'll, we'll jump around a little.
• 2:04:12
  We will explain the broad strokes, get the point across.
• 2:04:17
  Yeah, I'm not going to be reading every fucking class
• 2:04:19
  ability or anything like that because there's so many, so
• 2:04:24
  many. Also, I don't I don't think, I
• 2:04:28
  don't know if your subclass gives you an ability every
• 2:04:32
  level, but it's pretty. Every single level until level
• 2:04:38
  10 where you get a like a universal final level thing.
• 2:04:42
  Let's put this way. More often than not your level
• 2:04:45
  up rewards will be hailer to your subclass.
• 2:04:49
  Maybe not all of them, but. Well, you tend to get you tend
• 2:04:51
  to get some stuff from your you'll get like a thing from
• 2:04:55
  your subclass and then a thing from the main class.
• 2:04:57
  Like they tend to you tend to be you tend to get both and a lot
• 2:05:00
  and quite a few of them. And not every single level, but
• 2:05:03
  like, for example, Level 3 on the sensor, you get look on my
• 2:05:06
  work and despair, which is something that every sensor
• 2:05:09
  gets. And then after that it also
• 2:05:11
  mentions your subclass shit. No, no, actually Level 3 I don't
• 2:05:16
  think you get a sub. No, Level 3 you don't actually
• 2:05:18
  get a subclass one for the sensor.
• 2:05:20
  That one is just class specific. But yes, there are a lot of
• 2:05:25
  subclass abilities, and yes, you're always picking up new
• 2:05:30
  powers. The talent one is even Wilder
• 2:05:34
  because you get 3 subclasses, but you get 5 other pseudo
• 2:05:38
  subclasses that you can also level into.
• 2:05:41
  Kind of. It's a lot.
• 2:05:44
  I didn't look at the talent so. No, I'll get into it next week.
• 2:05:48
  It gets wild. Yeah, no the.
• 2:05:50
  Talent is the longest subclass and it's not close.
• 2:05:53
  The longest class? Yeah, that makes sense.
• 2:05:54
  Yeah, I was getting real Mystic vibes.
• 2:05:58
  I went well my. Baby boy, I mean, that's
• 2:06:02
  literally what the talent was made to be so.
• 2:06:04
  Yes, no, I know, I know. It's just funny.
• 2:06:07
  It's so much Mystic vibes. That's explicitly what the
• 2:06:09
  talent was made. They made the talent.
• 2:06:11
  Well, you know they made the 5 E talent right?
• 2:06:15
  They did. Yeah, that was MCDM.
• 2:06:17
  Oh oh sorry my I my brain auto corrected to Mystic.
• 2:06:20
  I was like, I thought that was Merle's.
• 2:06:22
  No no no no. I'm saying MCDM made the 5 E
• 2:06:26
  version of the talent a while ago.
• 2:06:29
  Yes, yes, I did read that forever ago.
• 2:06:32
  And that was basically the prototype version that is now in
• 2:06:36
  this game. And it was almost explicitly as
• 2:06:39
  a response to the Mystic thing that came out.
• 2:06:42
  So yeah. Yeah.
• 2:06:46
  The other thing too about classes is like, there's no
• 2:06:50
  spells in this game, so everything is done through your
• 2:06:54
  class abilities. So there's a lot of fucking
• 2:06:56
  class abilities to compensate for the fact that there are no
• 2:07:01
  spells in this game, which I think is a thing that people
• 2:07:08
  kind of bitched about with 4th edition, funny enough.
• 2:07:12
  That there wasn't enough. No, so the idea that if I
• 2:07:17
  remember, Curly 4th edition also didn't have spells, everything
• 2:07:20
  was just based on powers and people didn't like that vibe
• 2:07:25
  because it has like kind of an implicit superhero feel to it,
• 2:07:31
  which it kind of does, but like, I don't care.
• 2:07:34
  Yeah, yeah. I mean I like as someone who's
• 2:07:37
  not read 4th edition I I don't have a personal opinion on it
• 2:07:40
  but. It works basically the same as
• 2:07:42
  this game. It's the same idea.
• 2:07:45
  You have all the like the signature and the heroic
• 2:07:47
  abilities, it's the same kind of thing.
• 2:07:50
  Gotcha. There's a lot of 4th edition DNA
• 2:07:53
  in Draw Steel, if that wasn't obvious.
• 2:07:57
  You know, given that Mister Colville will not shut up about
• 2:08:02
  how good 4th edition is, I'm not surprised.
• 2:08:05
  I'm. Not even saying I want him to
• 2:08:07
  shut up about how good it is. Frankly, someone should be
• 2:08:10
  batting for that fucking edition.
• 2:08:12
  There's a lot of for E in MCDMA. Lot of people have pointed it
• 2:08:16
  out so. Perfect.
• 2:08:19
  Anyway, this has been us. If you like this nonsense,
• 2:08:24
  follow us on the social media that is has the links in the
• 2:08:29
  description and if not, I don't know, go fuck yourself I guess.
• 2:08:33
  Goodbye.