A couple weeks ago (in between designing ubussy.ca), I started work on a collection of retainers for MCDM’s forthcoming tabletop roleplaying game Draw Steel. It’s like D&D, but better! In Draw Steel you play a hero who has a specific class—sort of like a character archetype. These range from The Conduit who channels divine energy into blessings to The Tactician whose mastery of warfare allows them to read and direct the battlefield to The Talent who possess an innate psionic talent that allows them to make their thoughts manifest.

These work great as a player class, since a player will be able to learn the abilities of their character over the course of weeks, but not so great if the heroes manage to convince a high priest of Khravila Who Ran Forty Leagues to join them for a day to fend off the Bloodskull Hobgoblins. This is where retainers come in! They are a mechanism to have a simplified character information for a party’s “sidekicks.” The core rules already include a number of retainers, such as the Angulotyl Hopper and the Time Raider Mind Healer, but none correspond directly to the existing hero classes. So I’m making my own! At time of writing I’ve made 23 retainers—one for each class’s subclass, except for one.

The only class I have left to design retainers for is The Troubadour. I’ll walk you through my design process in this newsletter, and by the end, we’ll have made three new retainers! Well… mostly I’ll have made them, but you’ll have been along for the ride.

(if you’re not into 3700+ words of unedited nerd shit, skip to Other News)

A Draw Steel Crash Course

Draw Steel is a fantasy fighting monsters game. So magic and dragons and that jazz!

Here is just a couple of terms that will help you understand some of the design we’re talking about:

• Surge. A small damage bonus that you can spend at a later time.

• Power Roll. A die roll that determines how effective an action is. The result is broken into 3 tiers (Tier 1, Tier 2, and Tier 3).

• Edge/Double Edge. A bonus you can get to a specific roll, potentially increasing its damage/effect.

• Bane/Double Bane. A penalty you can get to a specific roll, potentially decreasing its damage/effect.

• Free Strike. A creature’s weakest attack that deals a little bit of damage with no other effect.

• Shift. A type of careful movement that prevents opponents from attacking you.

• (M|A|R|I|P)<((Weak)|(Average)|(Strong)). You nerds know Regex, right? Anyways, if you see something in the form M<Weak it basically means that what follows it is not guaranteed to happen!

• Push/Pull/Slide X. It’s forced movement, with X as the number of squares the target moves. Push and pull are directly toward and away from you respectively, whereas slide can be in any direction.

What is The Troubadour

A critical part of design is figuring out what you are trying to do. What feeling you want to evoke. What fantasy you want to support. For example, in Mothership (a sci-fi horror game along the vibes of the Alien movie), you can’t make a skill roll to hide because when the monster approaches: the game wants you to have to scramble to describe how your character is hiding—not just roll some dice and do some math to figure our how well you do.

So… what’s the fantasy of The Troubadour? Well, let’s read what they’ve written in the Heroes book:

The troubadour also has three subclasses. Let’s read the write up for each of those:

What’s our takeaway from this? Troubadours are all about Drama—and each subclass has a different twist on how it interacts with drama. For our troubadour retainers to feel like troubadours, somehow they need to capitalize on drama. Build on the highs and lows of the battle! And each subclass’s retainer should do so in a different way.

I have a document where I jot down my design ideas. Here’s what I wrote for what makes a troubadour retainer a troubadour:

You might not know exactly what this means, but in essence, it means that the troubadour retainers will react when their allies achieve an overwhelming success! Add a little spice to the high points of a combat. And it’s a little bit random when they can use this ability—only after something dramatic happens.

I think we have a good idea what mechanic is going to be tying our different troubadours together. They’ve got a cohesive shared identity in this triggered action, so let’s get into what makes them different.

Auteur

You seek drama from story and recount, using your magic to manipulate the sequence of events unfolding before you.

As with the troubadour above, let’s establish what the auteur is about. From the description above, we can see that they are manipulating the events of the story they are in! Like a fourth wall breaking character. Looking at just the names and flavour text of some of the hero Auteur’s abilities supports this:

• Blocking. No, no, no, you lose the audience that way. Try it like this …

• Twist at the End. You didn’t see that coming, did you?!

• Recast a Supporting Part. (this one doesn’t have flavour text)

• Fix it in Post. (no flavour text again)

• Take Two! One more, and this time make it interesting.

• You’re All My Understudies. It's important for everyone to know each other's lines, just in case....

• Deleted Scene. You narrate quick flashbacks and conveniences into the scene to make the story flow as smoothly as possible.

• Rising Tension. You narrate the tension of the scene and put all hope into your subject to turn things around.

So we’re going to want to make our retainer a little bit meta. They should rely on wit and be empowered by the narrative surrounding them. I’ve decided that mechanically, the auteur will fill the roll of a Controller, with the ability to move around and hinder groups of enemies. Remember, each retainer will have a Signature Ability (the attack they’ll use almost every round), a Troubadour Triggered Action (which triggers when an ally rolls well), a 4th level ability, a 7th level ability, and a capstone 10th level ability.

Our auteur is gonna be a yapper, so we want their signature ability to exemplify that. We also want to make sure to get a little bit of controller energy in here, so we’ll allow it to target multiple creatures and have the possibility of moving them around.

Motor Mouth (Action; Signature)
A torrent of impassioned words leaves your enemies disoriented and out of position
Targets: 2 Enemies within 7 squares of the auteur
Tier 1: 1 damage
Tier 2: 3 damage; slide 1; P<average suffer effect
Tier 3: 5 damage; slide 2; P<strong suffer effect
Effect: If this ability targeted two creatures, each creature who suffers the effect makes a free strike against the other target before or after the slide (auteur’s choice). If the ability targeted only one creature, if the creature suffers the effect, the distance of the slide increases by 2.

For the auteur’s triggered, I’m giving them a bit of help maneuvering their allies. Teleporting is very good in Draw Steel, but this only allows them to swap places and inconsistently as well.

Understudy (Triggered Action).
The cast has rehearsed this scene so much they can play each other’s parts
Trigger: an ally rolls a tier 3 on an ability power roll
Effect: The target gains a surge which they can immediately use. After the triggering ability resolves, you or an ally within 5 squares of the target and the target teleport, swapping places.

For our 4th level ability, I want the auteur to place an object onto the battlefield that helps their allies and hinders their enemies. We’ve also really got to get some of that fourth-wall breaking action going. Here’s what I’ve got:

Product Placement (Action; Encounter)
The slaying of the Ashen Song: brought to you by our friends at Established Titles!
The auteur integrates a sponsored product into the scene, its presence inspiring their allies. Create an object in a square within range that has Stamina equal to 5 times the auteur’s level. When an ally starts their turn adjacent to the object or moves to be adjacent to the object for the first time in a round, they gain a surge. When an enemy starts their turn adjacent to the object or moves to be adjacent to the object for the first time in a round, they take corruption damage equal to the auteur’s highest characteristic.

For our 7th level ability, I’d like a chunky AoE. We’re a controller after all!

Scene Malfunction (Action; Encounter)
“Yikes, someone from the tech crew should get on that…”
Targets: all enemies in a 4×4 Cube within 7 squares
Tier 1: 3 damage; A<weak prone
Tier 2: 5 damage; A<average prone and can’t stand (EoT)
Tier 3: 7 damage; prone; A<strong can’t stand (save ends)
Effect: The area is difficult terrain for the auteur’s enemies until the end of the encounter.

Our 10th level ability should be really impactful! It’s the max level! Let’s make it play into the story teller aspects of the Auteur.

Rising Action (Action, Encounter)
A climactic fight like this one should have a little extra spice to it
Targets: 1 Ally
Effect: The target gains 3 Heroic Resources, 6 Surges, and have a double edge on all ability power rolls until the end of their next turn. The target then shifts up to their speed and uses a Signature Action. The Director gains 3 Malice and an enemy of their choice can shift up to their speed and make a free strike.

As you could see, there were really two origins for the design of each ability: mechanical or narrative. I think most often, my process begins with a mechanical idea (like “this should probably be a big AoE”), followed by figuring out what a fun narrative justification for it would be (“a scene malfunction! Like a bit of the backdrop falling onto your enemies”), and finally a specific mechanical instantiation.

Sometimes, there is a specific narrative fantasy I need to hit. For example, in an adventure I’m writing, I knew that there would be an aspect of memory/personality loss. That narrative hook was my inroad to design. From there, I decided that a fun way to instantiate that would be for your character to lose skills (and memories associated with those skills). These two parts of design (mechanical and narrative) really work in unison, one inspiring the other. I love TTRPG design :)

Duelist

Drama embraces your every movement done in tandem with another. You perform dances of death, putting trust in your opponent to return your passion in kind.

We’re not going to go quite as in depth on these next two, just since it’s kind of abusive to make all the people who don’t care about nerd shit scroll past all this (if you’re trudging your way through all this… why? I genuinely want to know send me an email or DM or GitHub commit).

Let’s do a quick survey of existing Duelist abilities:

• Riposte. “I’d have brought treats had I known I’d be fighting a dog.”

• Classic Chandelier Stunt. Audiences love this bit.

• Verbal Duel. (no flavour text, but you basically insult an opponent and whoever gets more insulted takes psychic damage)

• Blood on the Stage. It's love and blood or drama and blood. Either way there's always blood.

• Fight Choreography. You and your partner make a flashy show of derring-do, then back to your corners.

• Masterwork. (no flavour, but I’ll just put the first line of mechanics) Select one of your signature abilities and name it after yourself.

• Renegotiated Contract. No, no. You don’t die until the sequel.

These are a little less illuminating than those of the Auteur, but I’m sure y’all get the idea. A rapier wielding, swash buckling, panache-filled scoundrel! I think that our duelist should be move all around the battle field so mechanically, they’ll be the Harrier role.

You won’t see it in these abilities, but I’m giving them a climb speed so they can run up walls and stuff. I just think it’ll be cool :).

To start us off, it’s the signature ability! We want to give off the vibe of not just someone who is a master of their weapon but someone who has fun and looks good doing it.

Heel Hook (Action; Signature)
A quick slash before the spotlight shifts to your real foe
Targets: 1 Enemy within Melee 1
Tier 1: 3 damage
Tier 2: 5 damage; A<average prone
Tier 3: 7 damage; A<strong prone
Effect: If this ability knocks a target prone, the duelist can shift 2 and deal damage equal to their highest characteristic to another creature they end this shift adjacent to.

And for our triggered, we don’t want the duelist’s allies to be showing them up! Plus, the duelist could do with a little bit of extra mobility. They’re a harrier. [Designer’s Note: taunted is a condition that makes an enemy want to attack you way more]

Eyes on Me (Triggered)
Can’t let someone else take all the glory!
Trigger: an ally rolls a tier 3 on an ability power roll
Effect: After the trigger resolves, the duelist shifts up to half their speed and makes a melee free strike. The target of the free strike is P<average taunted (EoT).

For fourth level, let’s give our duelist something that can help them out against multiple enemies. I really wanted something for this that gave the vibe of trading blows with two people at once.

Sword Dance (Action; Encounter)
“Two of you against little old me? I don’t like your odds?”
Targets: 2 Enemies within Melee 1
Tier 1: 3 damage
Tier 2: 7 damage; slide 1
Tier 3: 10 damage; slide 2
Effect: Each target can choose to make a free strike against the duelist. If they do, the duelist makes a free strike against the other target then shifts 3.

Now, for 7th level, I’d really like an ability that absolutely slaps against a single target. Probably should give them some kind of nasty condition, too.

Fatal Stab (Action; Encounter)
A dramatic thrust of the rapier leaves your foil moments from death
Targets: 1 Enemy within Melee 1
Effect: If none of the duelist’s allies are adjacent to the target, the target makes a free strike against the duelist. If they do so, the potency of this ability increases by 1.
Tier 1: 6 damage; M<Weak bleeding (save ends)
Tier 2: 10 damage; M<Average bleeding (save ends)
Tier 3: 14 damage; M<Strong bleeding (save ends)

For 10th level, I’d really like something to make the duelist themself shine—while also uplifting the entire party. Maybe something like the duelist doing a bunch of cool things, and granting a benefit to their allies when they do so? Let’s see what we can do.

Star of the Show (Free Maneuver; Encounter)
Show them something to make those tickets worth their while
Targets: Self
Effect: The duelist shifts up to their speed. At any point during this movement, the Duelist can use an action. If the action requires a power roll, each tier gains the following additional effects.
Tier 1: All allies within line of effect can shift 2.
Tier 2: All allies within line of effect to the duelist gain 5 temporary Stamina. The duelist uses Star of the Show again, but if the action requires a power roll, they cannot roll higher than a tier 1.
Tier 3: All allies within line of effect to the duelist gain a surge. The duelist uses Star of the Show again, but if the action requires a power roll, they cannot roll higher than a tier 2.

Virtuoso

You find drama in music and song, weaving magic between the vibrations of your sound and filling the audience with your pathos.

This is the musician. The rock god. High support! But also blasting enemies with those sick guitar rifts. Let’s look at some of the hero Virtuoso abilities:

• “Thunder Mother”. All for thunder motherrr!🎵Run and hide for coverrr! 🎵

• Harmonize. Give the chorus a little punch.

• Fire Up the Night. Maybe you and I🎵We can still bring the light!🎵

• Legendary Drum Fill. You start a drumroll that roars like thunder with every impact the heroes make.

• Feedback. Your music pounds the crowd to the beat until their hearts can’t stand it anymore.

• “Radical Fantasia”. 🎵Viras my Viras will you hold their hands as they cryyy- aaaiigh? 🎵

• Melt their Faces. The power of music rips through the reality around the target and blows them away.

• Jam Session. Your jam session breeds new genres that compel everyone to get up and move.

So very music themed :D. I think that the Virtuoso would make a very fun Support, using their music to uplift their allies. A lot of their abilities should also be an area of effect (or at least multi target) since… sound.

For our virtuoso’s signature, it can’t just be something that buffs their allies, but I think it should have the option to—on top of dealing damage.

Victorious Chord (Action; Signature)
Target: 3 Cube within 10
Tier 1: 1 sonic damage
Tier 2: 2 sonic damage; push 1
Tier 3: 3 sonic damage; push 2
Effect: Each ally in the area gains a surge.

For the triggered, I like the idea of not only the virtuoso being able to boost their allies, but also encouraging the entire team to do the same. [Designer’s Note: Normally, you can only deal 3 surges of damage to a creature on any given attack. With this, each ally can deal 3 surges of damage, which can add up real fast!]

Power of the Choir (Triggered Action)
Your entire team hits a powerful note in unison, sending your foe reeling
Trigger: an ally rolls a tier 3 on an ability power roll that deals damage
Effect: The target gains a surge which they can immediately spend. Additionally, each of the target’s allies within 5 squares of them can contribute surges to the power roll. Each ally has a separate limit to the number of surges they can spend.

For our 4th level ability, I want a nice big buffing AoE. I think the virtuoso will get another one at 10th level, but that’s a long time to wait for being able to jam out with some musical accompaniment while the party blasts away at the zombies rushing towards you.

4th: Rallying Ballad (Free Maneuver; Encounter)
Your allies start feeling the beat as the tide shifts in their favour
Target: All allies within 5 squares
Effect: When an ally starts their turn in the aura, they can shift half their speed as a free maneuver, gain an edge on the next power roll they make, and can end one EoT effect or roll a saving throw against one save ends effect. This effect lasts until the start of your next turn

For 7th level, let’s finally give the virtuoso a good single target option—but with some extra mobility for their allies.

7th: Blow Them All Away (Action; Encounter)
Someday, they’ll recognize that none can match you
Targets: 1 Creature within 10 squares
Tier 1: 7 sonic damage; push 3; P<Weak dazed (EoT)
Tier 2: 11 sonic damage; push 5; P<Average dazed (save ends)
Tier 3: 15 sonic damage; push 7; P<Strong dazed (save ends)
Effect: Each ally adjacent to the target can fly up to half their speed.

Finally, we want a really epic capstone that boosts all of the heroes. Not only is this ability going to make the heroes extra effective, but it is going to make them more resilient to their enemies’ attacks. All with the power of music

10th: Maestro of the Divine Orchestra (Free Maneuver; Encounter)
With an epic musical score in the background, there is nothing your allies can’t do
Target: All allies within 5 squares.
Effect: Until the start of your next turn, allies in the area increase their Stability by 3, increase their characteristics by 2 for the purposes of resisting potencies, cannot roll lower than a tier 2 on ability power rolls, and gain a surge when they use an action.

Wrapping Up

Now that we’ve done the preliminary design, I’m going to go ahead and throw all of this into Affinity Publisher so it’s nice and easy to look at. I’ll also make some tweaks to the wording and the math.

That’s it! At least a first draft. I’ll probably go through it 4-5 more times before the whole retainer collection gets published (hopefully in a month or so). Yea. This is the type of nerd shit I like to do. I hope you folks enjoyed this little peak into my hobby.

Other News

Now, we’re off my nerd shit and on to what is basically The Ubyssey section. If you skipped your way down here… hi! You probably made a good decision.

I Love You Sam Low

Happy (Belated) Trans Day of Visibility

I have a gift in the form of a former AMS President/current BOG member getting pied for 8 minutes. Mostly by the former VP AUA and the current President. But also a little bit of UBC’s VP Students? Which… wild and hilarious.

A Love Letter to Sam Low

In the spirit of Yeg Records, I am making an RSS Feed for AMS Council. We’re parsing the agenda pdf, linking the supporting documents, and bundling it all up into an RSS Feed! It’s a little more scuffed because the good ol’ AMS only has agendas in PDF but we tried.

Generating the feed is actually fully done, I just haven’t quite sorted hosting it yet. But you know. Once I do it’ll be really cool :p. So many people will use it like…. me. And… maybe Sam Low… Yeah. Lots of people.

Chat, We Got Permission for the Dréley Fanfic

Not saying that the fan fiction got approval to be written, but…. The only problem is that it’s not supposed to make it into The Ubyssey because of concerns that apparently UBC Admin people maybe read the paper. Unfortunately, I can’t guarantee it won’t end up in The Ubyssey because:

Any claims from non-Ubyssey editors that they can control, influence or begin reporting is unacceptable, false, misleading and threatens both press freedom and editorial independence. The Ubyssey has been independent from the AMS since 1995 and any claim that anyone influences their reporting is false. Only Ubyssey editors may control what is published in the newspaper. Any assertion from external forces — including bee themed joke candidates and current and former AMS staff members — regarding their ability to influence, bias or falsify The Ubyssey’s reporting is unequivocally false.

Ubyssey’s Year in Review

I want to preface this by saying The Ubyssey — UBC’s student newspaper since 1918, independent since 1995 — adheres to the Canadian Association of Journalists’ Ethics Guidelines and takes any and all possible steps to ensure that their reporting is fair, balanced and honest. As stated above, any claims from non-Ubyssey editors that they can control, influence or begin reporting is unacceptable, false, misleading and threatens both press freedom and editorial independence. The Ubyssey has been independent from the AMS since 1995 and any claim that anyone influences their reporting is false. Only Ubyssey editors may control what is published in the newspaper. Any assertion from external forces — including bee themed joke candidates and current and former AMS staff members — regarding their ability to influence, bias or falsify The Ubyssey’s reporting is unequivocally false. Ubyssey editors, staff and volunteer reporters may not accept gifts. They do not solicit gifts or favours for personal use, or give the impression that they do. They return unsolicited gifts whenever possible or practical.

That being said… I’m just putting it out into the world that I really hope that the words “most kissable organization” make it into the 2024-2025 Ubyssey Year-in-Review. If those words do happen to end up there, I’ll kiss every Ubyssey person who wants me to kiss them.

Anyways, y’all mf-ers are freaky

I spent a normal amount of time looking at old Ubyssey issues last night.

From the Web

• Can We Mass Produce Housing (About Here on YouTube). Sam Low shared this on his Mastodon, but I promise, I had this one in the draft beforehand. I’m not taking all my content from you.

• Girl’s Lower Mainland (The Ubyssey). The annual Ubyssey spoof issue. Out in print but also available on Issuu. Dare I say layout cooked on this one. I’m also incredibly excited for these to hit web. Sam Low worked very hard on them and I’m sure they’ll look amazing.

• Proof by Induction (Storytime with Wil Wheaton wherever you get your podcasts). Wil reads José Pablo Iriarte’s “Proof by Induction”, in which a mathematician consults with his dead dad to formulate a proof (but mostly to chase approval his father never gave him). This baby has got so many math words in it.

• Divestment protest held outside March Board of Governors meeting (The Ubyssey). I think Spencer cooked, as always. “Depending on how ‘complicity’ and ‘has’ are defined” is an incredibly line. Also: “The protestors, seemingly unaware that the actual Governors were still upstairs, loudly called on those walking out to divest and gathered to conclude their protest.”

• How to Watch Dimension 20 (Dimension 20 on YouTube). I love myself some TTRPG action, but I cannot help but think that filmed games are absolutely unwatchable. The signal to noise ratio is just so bad. It isn’t fun to watch someone try to add up 10 one-digit numbers over the course of two minutes. Dimension 20 is among the best produced filmed games, but still… Anyways, I just wanted to rant about something I love

From the Archives

From the December 2, 2010 issue of The Ubyssey

That’s All

I think I spent too much time on this newsletter chat. I’ve got two quizzes tomorrow that I have done zero studying for (and also I don’t pay attention during the lectures). So… you know. We’re probably cooked. But this newsletter is more fun than doing well in my courses anyway. You cuties are all worth it <3.

I’m really hoping I haven’t made any massive blunders in this one because there are 3 minutes before publication and I don’t have time to proofread. Please don’t cancel me.

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

(Also, I’m putting it at 60/40 odds in favour of Spencer having clicked on the link to his article)