Hey folks! Welcome to…DRAW STEEL! All backers should already have received an email with a link to the first Backer Packet! (Or you can just click here) It includes everything you need to make characters, build encounters, and play the MCDM RPG, officially known as Draw Steel. This is really exciting for all of us, everyone on the team is dying to see what you folks do with this.

Now, spoilers, there’s only 5 classes, and all you get is 1st level. We have a lot more built out and in testing, but you folks only get the polished, tested stuff and right now that’s 5 classes, only first level but AS YOU WILL SEE! That’s still a lot! 😀It’s certainly enough to make characters and play for weeks before you level up. And it won’t be another 8 months before Packet 2!

You should all read the Draw Steel Backer Playtest Letter before you jump in. Among other things; it tells you what kind of feedback we’re looking for. I know it’s a lot. “Hey read this post that says read this PDF so you can read the….” But IF you read all this before you get stuck in, you will have slightly fewer questions. 

As you read through the rules, be aware that things can still change. It’ll all be based on playtest feedback, and we are generally happy with the rules as they are so nothing big will change, but the numbers, which abilities are which kind of action? That stuff can and will absolutely change. Especially now than all y’all are pounding on it! Also, a lot of the names of abilities are temp. Some are more temp than others, but expect some names of some things to change between now and release. The class names? High level stuff like that? That’s all locked in. But the names of abilities and traits are in flux.

This is also the debut of the Draw Steel Creator License, which lets you use, make, share, sell your own content using anything in the packet, including the rules, language, and lore. Holy crap!

Frankly, it’s a huge risk, sharing this with you folks at this stage. Because this is literally just raw text. No layout, no graphics, no illustrations (well, SOME illustrations, stay tuned). I don’t know if you’re ever tried to learn how to play an RPG from literally just a word doc, but it is brutal. Presentation is part of design, and there is basically NO presentation here.

This means there are some of you, maybe even literally you the person reading this right now, who WOULD love this game if you were reading the finished PDF or hardcover book with all the graphic design and illustrations and diagrams, but who will bounce off this text version.

That’s going to happen. It’s natural. And it sucks because that’s someone who might have fallen in love, and now thinks the game is not for them. But even though we know that’s going to happen, we think getting everyone’s feedback is worth that cost. 

I guess this is our way of saying: if you think you’re one of those people? If you start reading the rules and your eyes start to water? We give you permission to hold off, and wait for the finished PDF or hardcover book. There’s no moral imperative to play THIS version of the game. 

But also, if the experience of reading these rules right now is a pain? Well, just wait a few days and probably someone, probably many people, will make videos describing everything, walking you through making characters or building encounters. There’s already lots of videos online of people actually playing Draw Steel! 

Sure, we could make those videos (I plan on livestreaming making a character on YouTube this Saturday the 31st of August, 11am PST) but I don’t think the folks who make the game are the best folks to make those videos. Think about your favorite board game or card game, war game or video game. Who are your go-to creators? I bet there’s not the manufacturer of the game!

Also! You can come by the Discord and just…ask how things work. We, the DevTeam, are probably going to just sit and watch because part of the test of these rules is “can folks figure it out on their own?” It’s fine if there’s some rule that isn’t clear. No rulebook this complex is perfectly clear to everyone on their first read. But we need to see: can people figure it out together?

And we’ve seen that work! We did the same thing with the Patreon packet, and the patrons did a great job of self-assembling and figuring out most of their questions on their own with no input from us.

So, check out the Draw Steel Backer Playtest Letter. It explains a lot of stuff not covered in this post. But one thing it doesn’t cover is…the license!

The License

This is the debut of the Draw Steel Creator license. It grants you the right, if you follow the rules, to use the text in this packet to make your own products according to the constraints of the license. 

You may have a lot of questions, and there is a FAQ; but you will see it is very short.

This is because the license is a legal agreement. We wrote it in plain language (for the most part!) to make it as clear as possible. If you are not confident you understand, if you’re not willing to take the risk that maybe you don’t understand, then you need to talk to a lawyer. Here’s why.

With game rules, we feel an obligation to make sure if folks misunderstand something that we correct it, give feedback, provide errata, etc… But game rules are not a legal document.

Any answers we give about the license could be construed as legal advice, and we are not your lawyers. If we inadvertently give a wrong or bad answer, or our answer is misinterpreted, we could be responsible for that. We made the license clear to avoid these kinds of issues.

Frankly, a lot of the questions we already get, and have always gotten, about our books are covered under normal copyright law and fair use. If you do not know the law, if you are not familiar with copyright and fair use, you should read about it before you worry about the license. 

It’s natural to think “well why won’t they answer this question?” But that’s because the license IS the answer. Any questions you have are not questions for us; our answers are already in the license. They are questions for your lawyer. 

You may notice, the license only covers this packet. That’s because this is our first go round with something like this, and we are using the Backer Packet as a test case. If it turns out we left something out of the license, or didn’t put something in we should have, we will revise the license for when we publish the next packet or the final game, depending.

There is one clause in the license that might seem alarming—the fact that we can amend the license. That will freak some folks out because they naturally start wondering “well, what happens to my quite-lucrative Draw Steel product if MCDM changes the license, and I hate the new terms?” Good question!

There is language in the license that explicitly states any changes we make to our license only cover new content we make under the new license. Our old content will still be covered under the old license, so IF we make changes to the license, you can keep using the old license and the old content that it covered. You only need to agree to the amended license if you want to use the new content we publish under it.

But in reality, and this is important so I hope folks made it this far, there is no such thing as an agreement that cannot be amended. Someday, everyone at MCDM will be dead, and other people will own Draw Steel and they will have the rights to do whatever they want with it and the license. 

So, use it at your own risk! But…you know, we WANT people to use this text and this game. We want folks to be able to make their own stuff, share it, sell it, whatever. So our real advice is just: use common sense. Tons of people make and share stuff online based on other games with open licenses, and they don’t talk to lawyers and nothing happens because most of what people make and share is fine. 

But if you’re worried then you should talk to a lawyer. We are not your lawyers! Anyway, on to some fun stuff.

Layout Example

Hey you want to see what the book’s gonna look like? 😀

This is a “near final” example of the layout for the Heroes book. This is what we think it’ll look like. It’s just  one ancestry but you get to see some lore, some game text, some actual rules. It’s a good example. We hope you like it! 

Click here for a higher resolution version

Go Forth, and DRAW STEEL!

That’s it folks! You’ve been incredibly patient, and we’ve busted our ass to get you this packet by the end of August and…we did it! We might actually get this game done by the backerkit deadline. Maybe not but…maybe! Let me put it this way; I will not be surprised if our dates slip, that’s not unusual in any game dev environment, but it’s especially common with crowdfunders. But so far…it’s gone basically according to plan? Which is frankly a minor miracle but we’ve taken everything we learned from the last 6 years and that includes scheduling and project management, and speaking as someone on the inside? It seems to be working. Of course now that I’ve said this, I’ve probably whammied us. 

The whole team has worked incredibly hard to get this packet to you. That includes not only everyone at MCDM, but all our testers, everyone in the testing community, our patrons. The mod team has had to do a ton of working making sure folks can find what they need in the Discord. This packet is only the beginning. It is already at what we believe is a high level of polish, but it still needs more work! That’s where you folks come in!

With this many backers, there’s no way everyone loves it. But we hope it’s clear how much work we’ve done. How seriously we have taken this challenge. We’ve put our best work into this. 

Oh! And we included a folder of ancestry art because, yeah, it’s still just a playtest and that means no illustrations and no layout, but trying to figure out what a Time Raider or a Memonek or a Hakaan are just from the text? Is pretty abusive. 😀So check out the art folder to see what’s what. There’s some COOOOL new ancestries in there!

Thanks for your support everyone. It’s been a lot of work getting here, but we think the result is worth it. We hope you agree. 

Peace! Out!

-MC

Hey folks!

We are very close to having something for you all to try out. We just sent the latest playtest packet to our contract and volunteer testers, and they’ve already started pounding on it. If things go well, we think this will be the packet that goes to Patrons in July sometime and if that goes well, that packet will be what we send to you in August. As the MCDM Team is out of office at GenCon at the start of August, so we expect to deliver the packet a few weeks after we return. This makes it so that the packet can include the encounter that the folks at GenCon will be playing! Exciting!

That packet you get will still be a playtest packet. You folks are going to have tons of feedback! But, as you know, the stuff we send you will be “close to final.” Meaning we still expect to make changes, things like balance changes, language changes as we learn how clear our text is, etc.

You folks have been super patient so far, we’ve been VERY hard at work, we hired more designers and a new producer (Gertz! From the first ever stream we did!) and now things are happening both very quickly, and in a very organized fashion. 

You know our philosophy; the backers are paying for the polished, finished product. So we want to make sure the first Backer Packet is stable, and represents what we believe in. If you want to know more about the internal development process, there’s our Patreon which has tons of juicy updates including a new 2,000 word post about our setting, but you don’t need to worry about that, you can just come by James’ weekly dev stream and ask whatever’s on your mind.

I also recommend you come by the Discord and ask how things are going in the #mcdm_RPG_discussion channel where you’ll see some of our playtester coordinators, or their players, talking about how the game plays and feels right now. 

But the message is—things are getting done, tons of stuff is in and working, and we think you’ll have the first Backer Packet in just over a month! Wooo!

Thanks for your patience and support,
The MCDM Team

Hey everyone,

This is just a quick update letting you know that we have sent out all Backerkit surveys for the MCDM RPG campaign.  If you have not received your email with your survey link, please email us at [email protected] and we'll make sure you get the information you need.

I pre-ordered the books, do I need to fill out a survey?
Nope! The pre-order process asks you for all the information collected in the survey.

Can I add more books to my order?
Unfortunately, no. As the base order of two books is already expected to be over 6 pounds (2.7kg), our experience has told us to add another set of books would prohibitively increase shipping and handling costs.

Our recommendation if you want multiple book sets is to place an additional order via our pre-order store.

Why can't I set my country in the shipping information?
There are some places in the world where we know shipping is difficult. Please contact us directly at [email protected] and we will assist you in completing your survey.

I need some other assistance with my order!
We want to help you. Please email [email protected] and we will assist you as quickly as we can. (Usually within one day)

Hey folks, Matt Colville here on behalf of MCDM. Last week the RPG Crowdfunder wrapped and the final numbers were basically insane. Over 30,000 of you pledged over $4.5m dollars to this crazy idea we have. That is more than anyone imagined. Our days of losing sleep wondering “is anyone interested in this?” are over! Now we have all NEW reasons to lose sleep! 😀

For context, no one has had this kind of success in this space without either A: being attached to an existing, known IP like Avatar: The Last Airbender, or B: by marrying their content to the 5E ruleset. It’s the kind of success that has people who haven’t been paying attention these last five years scratching their heads. Trying to ‘explain away’ what’s happening here. 

Well, I don’t think it’s that hard to explain. Folks want to get excited about something new. That’s…that’s normal. That should not be seen as weird, or something to ‘explain away.’ 

We took a lot of chances with this project and it seems like they’re all paying off. Our biggest funding day (outside the first three and last three days) was when we previewed the Human Ancestry write-up. Just humans? Just posting humans moved the needle in a major way? Yeah, actually it did! We were as surprised as you!

It’s not final, none of that text or layout or graphic design is final, but it represents our vision. A book, a ruleset, that takes nothing for granted. “What if humans were cool actually?” Is apparently a radical idea! 😀 And people seem to like our answers!

And if you liked that, we can’t wait to show you some of the stuff we’re planning for this game.

I think folks look at the success of this crowdfunder and expect us to take a victory lap or something. Well, this post is as close to that as we’re gonna get. We are all fizzing with excitement and ideas and knowing A: we have the power to execute on these ideas to the fullest and B: we have an audience (i.e. you) that want to see it, that are excited for it, makes a huge difference. We’ve only been back to work for about a week since the holiday break but the tone shift from November to now is massive. 

We still have limitations! We gotta get these books done in about 18 months, and fit them in about 800 pages. Lots of folks imagine this level of success means “they can take as long as they want.” Nope. That’s one reason we didn’t add more products to the pledge levels. We can’t grow the scope of the project, without pushing the deadline out, and we can’t go to the people and say “18 months” when we really mean “who knows how long it will take? Depends on how successful we are!” That is not kosher. 18 months is real, 800 pages is real, and now begins the hard work of making it happen.

That’s why no “victory lap.” We don’t get to relax and high-five each other until the rules are done, and people are playing them natively, outside the context of a playtest.

If we go to GenCon 2025 and see scores of tables full of people playing our game? Then we’ll take a victory lap. 😀 Because otherwise, what is there to celebrate? We had a great pitch? We raised a lot of cash? 

Well the money, the number of backers, these are just a means to an end. The end is: a great game people love, and play, and create new campaigns and worlds and heroes in. That’s the goal. That’s the only thing that matters to us. That’s why we spend so much time in testing. We want to get it right.

The good news is…people are already playing the game! And they like it! Our goal was to get a playtest packet to the patrons before the end of 2023…and we did! That itself is a testament to our scheduling and production pipeline. The system works! 

They’ve had the packet now for a couple of weeks, we sent them a survey to fill out last week, and already a few hundred people have filled it out. And it’s sort of…breathtaking the responses we’re seeing.

Over 80% of respondents are answering every question within the 4 or 5 out of 5 scale. That means we’re on the right track. However! That doesn’t mean we’re done. There’s a lot of “I love this, but it would be nice if….” And we take that stuff seriously. We can SEE how even stuff we took for granted, and thought was final, would be improved if we pulled it apart and put it back together again in a different way. 

No spoilers, but we are already testing some big changes here internally based on this feedback. In other words “this is cool!” isn’t good enough for us. When we see folks saying “I like it but…” we focus on the “but.” Blimey.

IF all this works, if we find better ways to do these things based on tester feedback, then I think you’ll be surprised and happy at how fun the first backer packet is. How polished it is.

For context, the patrons don’t get all the tools to make real characters. Those systems aren’t all online yet. But our goal with the first backer packet is that you will be able to make a “real” character with it. 

We don’t want to show you stuff that isn’t fully cooked. You are paying for a polished, finished product. The patrons are paying to sit outside the sausage factory and watch us get covered in giblets trying to push pork slurry into meat tubes and, just like this metaphor, it is gross. And the patrons have to do a lot of work to play the game. They’re getting naked Google Docs, no layout, no onboarding. Just the rules. It’s way less info than they are used to getting, and they’re still making it work!

This is all to say; by the time you get the first Backer Packet in, we estimate, July? You’ll be getting a much more polished product. Still not final! But WAY closer to final. And we’re already hard at work.

We haven’t actually seen a lot of questions that aren’t already answered in the videos or the backerkit page. Most of the questions we see, the community answers on their own. That’s sort of amazing. But there are some new questions!

The Ajax Edition

There are a handful of “unclaimed” Ajax editionses. Folks who downgraded their pledge at the last minute before the campaign ended. This number will go up because some folks' payment methods didn’t go through. This happens every time we run a crowdfunding campaign; some folks' credit cards expire between backing and being charged. There are lots of reasons, and we want to give everyone time to sort that out, so probably March or April you may see a handful of Ajaxes in Backerkit. 

Preorders

Lots of folks want to preorder the game now that the crowdfunder is closed. We want that too! But it takes a while to get everything set up for that in the store. We expect you’ll be able to preorder the game on Backerkit by the end of this month (January).

If You Have Any Other Questions…

Just email [email protected] and we’ll get back to you ASAP. We’ve seen a lot of people show up in our community Discord and ask Customer Service questions, but that’s not what the discord is for! 

Asking those questions anywhere else means A: we might not see it and B: you get a lot of other people trying to answer, even though they don’t know the question. So, if you SEE someone asking CustServe questions? By all means, tell them to email [email protected]! 

So…What’s Next?

Well the next big moment for you backers is the first Backer Packet later this year. But I doubt it’ll be radio silence between now and then.

I think what will probably happen is; sometime around March, you’ll start seeing some dope art from the art team. We have a lot of original visual design to develop. What do all these different Ancestries look like? As we figure these things out, we’ll share them with you. That’s something I’m personally HUGELY excited for. I don’t know when that will start happening, we have a lot of project management stuff to handle this month, so you’ll find out along with the rest of us!

So I suspect the next update will just be us showing off some visual design. Until then…

Peace! Out!

Hey folks! We hope you’re enjoying the holidays! We are MOSTLY trying to take it easy over the break but we actually love working on this stuff and sharing it with you. It’s exciting! 

When we first started planning this backerkit campaign we had a lot of ideas for what kinds of stuff we wanted to show off, and we knew we wouldn’t have time to get it all done by our launch date. So we ended up with art for the Revenant finished in time, but no text or design, and the text and design done for the Human entry, but no art.

Once the Backerkit campaign was clearly doing well (massive understatement) finishing these things for you folks to check out was a no brainer.

So here’s the last preview of the game! 😀 Obviously none of this is final. We might take an entirely different approach to how we present information in the finished game, but this absolutely represents what we like, and how we intend to go about it. 

It is fun to make this stuff, and we hope that comes across in the preview.

full resolution - Humans

We’re sure there are folks who have their own ideas about What Humans Are About in their world or game, but we also have ideas! And we assume folks who have their own idiosyncratic ideas about different ancestries will homebrew their own. Just like we did when we all started worldbuilding as kids discovering the hobby for the first time. It’s fun to think about “what makes these people distinct and fun?” 

So we may change how we present these ideas, but it’s unlikely we’re going to throw out the ideas themselves. We like this take on humans! This is sort of our whole philosophy. We get inspired, that inspiration drives us to create, and the finished product appeals a lot to some people! But not everybody! That is just the bog-standard, normal creative process.

Maybe this will get folks to get a little more excited about playing a human? I mean, probably not, we’re all already playing humans and where’s the fun in that? But maybe! 😀