Draw Steel: Heroes¶
Chapter
Introduction
This is a game about fighting monsters. About larger-than-life, extraordinary heroes plunging into battle against terrifying, monstrous enemies.
Chapter
The Basics
The flow of playing Draw Steel is like playing any other tabletop roleplaying game with a Director (also called a Game Master or GM in other games). Play is a conversation between the Director and the…
Chapter
Making a Hero
If you're not the Director, then you create and play one of the main characters in the game's story—a hero. Your hero is a person motivated to fight forces of evil to protect the innocent, but each he…
Chapter
Ancestries
Fantastic peoples inhabit the worlds of Draw Steel. Among them are devils, dwarves, elves, time raiders—and of course humans, whose culture and history dominates many worlds.
Chapter
Background
What makes a hero? Is their desire to stand up for the innocent and protect others somehow innate? Are they born knowing that tyrants must fall? Does a higher power instill the idea that sometimes tho…
Chapter
Classes
While all your character creation decisions bear narrative weight, none influences the way you play the game like your choice of class. Your class determines how your hero battles the threats of the t…
Chapter
Kits
The knight in shining armor. The warrior priest. The sniper. Censors, furies, shadows, tacticians, and troubadours can tap into these and many more archetypal concepts using kits. A kit is a combinati…
Chapter
Perks
Heroes don't just fight monsters. They engage in exploration, investigation, negotiation, and more. Perks are features you can use to customize your hero and give them heroic moments outside of combat…
Chapter
Complications
Beyond the abilities and features bestowed by ancestry and class, your hero might have something else that makes them... unusual. Perhaps an earth elemental lives in your body. Maybe your eldritch bla…
Chapter
Tests
When you want your hero to rifle through a desk and locate a specific document, scale a castle wall, negotiate a treaty with a monarch, or undertake any other activity with a chance of failure, you'll…
Chapter
Combat
When the heroes face a problem that can be solved only with action, or when they come up against creatures who want to harm them, it's time to throw down!
Chapter
Negotiation
Negotiation gives the heroes a chance to get what they want without combat... or at least without further combat! You might negotiate with a king to obtain military support against an incursion of dem…
Chapter
Downtime Projects
As a team, you and your fellow heroes can achieve great things. But the time between adventures gives you a chance to pursue your own individual goals: uncover forbidden lore in ancient tomes, forge w…
Chapter
Rewards
Virtue is its own reward... but wouldn't a magic sword also be kind of nice? As heroes adventure, they find and craft treasures even as they are awarded titles, earn renown, attract followers, and ama…