Blood and Brilliance: Draw Steel Campaign Chronicle

The new spot for posting campaign chronicles has me inspired to start throwing in some of my own, since I've had such a good time reading through/learning tricks from the others I've seen so far. For the past six months, I've been running an ongoing game of Draw Steel, and last week we had our first game since November. I won't recap too much since it's been a pretty long-running game, but here's a speed recap. This'll be a long one, but for future sessions I'll be a lot faster I think.

We opened with a collaborative Session -1, in which we built a setting that worked with the core fantasy of Draw Steel. Most of it is pretty standard fantasy stuff, give or take a few exceptions like memonek (almost robot-esque beings from a plane of law). The setting we came up with revolved around powerful gems that form pseudo-sentient hive minds deep underground, but can be separated and harnessed for magical abilities. The players wanted a sort of "New Gods" coalition of humans to feature as antagonistic empire builders, who have found and hoarded the knowledge of safely using the gems to themselves and used them to build an empire, while doling out less powerful "gem devices" to the less fortunate at a profit. They set up a very cool concept for a flying city, in an almost steampunk-esque world where most technology is powered by gem fragments.

First session started with a bang. They wanted the inciting incident to start right when the city took off, and they did! The session started with the party's execution, which was interrupted by the unannounced early launch of the city. They fought the disoriented guards, escaped, and have spent the past six months fighting their way through the forces of the Curator, who runs the museums (propaganda) in the city and foiling his plots. The players reached level 3 (out of 10, in Draw Steel, so they're nearing the end of the first "tier" of play) and completed a dungeon.

Our most recent session was a big one. I've felt like the game has been stagnating pretty badly, not necessarily because of the content or characters, but just because scheduling issues have been absolutely terrible and there have been various issues with a few players. Recently, we lost a player from scheduling concerns, and probably another one down the line, so I asked a mutual friend of the remaining players if he'd like to join, and it was an absolute blast. He's totally new to TRPGs, but took to it quickly, and I think the shakeup of the player composition combined with a little break from playing has really breathed some new life into the campaign.

This session, the group decided they wanted to pursue their goal of finding a way to sabotage the city's engines. They decided the best way to do that would be to break into the noble's district, and after some digging (which occurred between sessions) they found a clocktower run by the city's engineers where they keep their schematics. The party did some roleplay with their new member, planned their approach, and got in using a classic "disguised as nobles" trick with the clothes of some rulers they'd killed a few sessions back. Inside, they snooped around, met some people, stole some gear, and just managed to get into the vault before we ran out of time for the night. Next session, they're gonna keep sneaking and looting, and probably get into a fight or two if they slip up!

I expect the next few months will be the end of their fight against the Curator, and their attack against Ajax and the New Gods, probably resolving around level 5 to coincide with the start of the summer. While I could definitely see us playing a lot more of this game, I think it will be good to wrap it up while we still have momentum (I hope!) and a very clear ending to the story of everyone's character, and I can take what I've learned for the next Draw Steel campaign which I definitely want to run. I have three big takeaways this week:

1) A change in players can really breathe some life into a game. Losing some players was really sad, but some of them have really different playstyles that I think has been causing some unresolved tension in the game, but everyone's a good sport so it's resulted in lots of slow games and cancellations rather than arguments or campaign collapse. With that said, the new player fits in really well with the current group, and they meshed great! I'm hoping that continues, and the stirred pot situation we've started keeps that refreshed energy.

2) Taking a break from a game can also renew enthusiasm going back in. I think this is rarer than my usual experience (I've often left a campaign fallow for a bit, and then we all lose momentum and start something new instead of restarting the old one) but I'm glad that sometimes, a little absence does make the heart grow fonder. I think the collaborative setting helped with this quite a bit actually, as the players all said they loved the setting they built and wanted to keep exploring it.

3) I really love Draw Steel. I've seen some very valid criticisms of it (very tactical, crunchy, and some systems like Negotiation can be frustrating if not implemented just right) but man have I enjoyed it. Cool stuff happens all the time, and the game facilitates it really well, the classes all feel super flavorful and awesome, and the enemies are just a blast to run in combat. I have fallen in love with this system and I'm definitely going to run it again soon.

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