Okay. Cool cool cool. I don’t super have a plan, but that’s fine. We’ll just yap and things will be good.

We played a lot of Draw Steel this weekend. Like… a lot a lot. I’m pretty sure 24 hours over the course of two days. Which was crazy fun and also I’m completely exhausted. But it was really cool to do something I love so much and tell such an incredibly rad story with people I love so so much.

Basically, our game took place 3000 years in the past of my world during one of its apocalypses. And our heroes were responsible for escorting and guarding a ritual to seal a rift to the plane of demons and bad stuff. Everyone had such cool characters :). There was a deathless emperor, an archdevil, two Saints (including the Saint of Shadow who CREATED SHADOWS. Like before them, THERE WERE NO SHADOWS IN MY WORLD. That’s sooooo cooooooooolllllll), and just a human guy. (That’s being uncharitable. He’s the last of a famous party called The Armoury who has been successfully fighting back demons. But his party has been slowly killed and now he’s the last one. And he’s kitted out with all the equipment of his dead friends/wife. Crazy fun).

It was really cool. There was a moment in which everyone hid in the Archdevil’s shadow and found like 200 souls he keeps there (including people from the other characters’ backstories). And the deathless emperor consumed a bunch of the Archdevil’s souls to be powered up.

Also there was a moment when my boyfriend (playing the archdevil) leaped across the table and screamed directly in the face of my partner (playing one of the saints). And my partner didn’t flinch in the slightest (the rest of us at the table flinched so much). It was incredible.

Anyways, I’ve only played Draw Steel at lower levels (like 1-3), so immediately jumping to max level was an experience. I really thought the game would fall apart. But it actually held together.

We only had 4-5 players, and I had to balance encounters for like… 15 players at one point, but it still held up fairly well. The only thing is that meant that there were…. uhhhhhh…. a LOT of baddies on the field.

Look at my notes for trying to keep track of all the baddies’ hit points. Like I actual felt like I was losing it (I think I held it together pretty well lmao)

There were other aspects of the system beyond combat that I thought wouldn’t work (Montage scenes and Negotations) because they don’t scale at all past 1st level. But with a couple tweaks (only using the hard options and creating a new difficulty tier for rolls) they actually held up and were at times tense.

I also really surprised myself by how little prep I need. Like I spent the past week stressed out of my mind that everyone would hate the campaign and they’d think it wasn’t worthwhile and they’d be disappointed (not diagnosed with anything starting with A). But with minimal prep work, it actually turned out really good. Turns out, Mike Shea of Slyflourish knows what he’s talking about — you don’t actually need thousands upon thousands of pages of prep to have fun with your friends (crazy concept).

It was just really fun and I’m really lucky.

Other News

There’s this little thing called Draw Steel

It released :). It’s very fun (can you tell I like it).

They have a starter adventure (I’m currently running it) that is so good. And I love this cover. It’s very much giving the vibes of old school adventure modules which is very fun. I dunno I like :)

They also put a bunch of work into the Art Description for the core rules, which is apparently inspired by like museum art description which is INCREDIBLY cool.

That’s All!

It’s all nerd shit because I only gave myself like 20 minutes to write this (oops). I do love writing about Draw Steel. Technically, now that the game is out I’m on the hook to update old things I’ve published which is… part of the way done.

Alas, Shakespeare essay and podcast scripts first. (I haven’t read any of the Shakespeare essay feedback I’m scared lmao). ALSO crazy but our passage identification Shakespeare final seems to be open book?!?!?!?!?!?!?! My boyfriend spent some of a drive trying to convince me to speed run the final. Which would be iconic, but I only speed run major assessments if I’m missing an AMS Council meeting :D. (I wish I were joking)

Until Wednesday at 10:03 pm, buzz on, my busy bees!

Proudly goon squad since 2025