Intro
I'm joined by Jenny [REDACTED]. She's one of the most prolific creators in the Draw Steel community. She just released Across the Solar Expanse, Space Battles back in March, and is working on a new seafaring supplement. We dive into the inspirations and ideas behind her designs.
I'm Jon de Nor and this is Goblin Points.
Interview
Jon de Nor: Welcome to Goblin Points, Jenny!
Jenny: Hello. Welcome — welcome to be here. That's me. I'm here. Hi.
Jon de Nor: Give us a short introduction of yourself and also how you came to be in the Matt Colville/MCDM community.
Jenny: Yeah. Okay. Well, I'm Jenny [REDACTED]. I make stuff for Draw Steel because it's a great game. I started playing TTRPGs when I was like in high school, and I played 5e for the most part, as I think most people did. And I was having a lot of trouble sort of challenging a lot of players and making fun fights seem fun and interesting. So lo and behold, my searches across the internet landed me on Matt Colville's Action-Oriented Monsters video, which is what onboarded me to Matt's content and all the Running the Game series. But Action-Oriented Monsters was my awakening as a designer.
As soon as I had the, I guess, permission to just do what I wanted and make monsters cool, I created the most obscene abominations ever defeated by man, and terrorized my battlefields with monsters that actually felt cool and engaging and fun. And then, of course, when Flee, Mortals came around, I ran and used the hell out of those monsters and just continued to live in this amazing MCDM space. And I truly was one of those people that were like, "Hey, what if there was just a whole game like this?" So that being said, however, I — this is controversial — did not back the original Draw Steel crowdfunder.
Jon de Nor: (dramatic gasp); (laughter)
Jenny: I very much passed on it. It was obviously, and it helped it immensely, but it was around the time of the OGL debacle. And I had looked through and seen a couple other games that people were pitching, things like the DC20 RPG, like Dungeon Coach, his RPG, and a couple — I think Daggerheart was also springing up at the same time, like the original, like the announcements of it and things like that. And I was sort of like, I just kind of put up a wall of a sea of people trying to capitalize on, "Hey, D&D sucks, come over here!" And so I just sort of kind of drowned it out, along with all the noise of these other things, and I didn't really latch on to it. I had heard about it. I'd seen it. I was obviously an avid MCDM fan, so I had seen the videos and stuff, but I wasn't really interested in it.
But because I'm an avid MCDM fan, I've been a patron for a long time. So I got the original Patreon playtest packets. So a couple months down the line, like once production started and the game was going, I'd check my email, see this cool PDF, look through it, like, "Hey, this looks pretty neat. Hey..." Got some players together. I only managed to scrounge up two people. And we playtested a fight with some goblins. It was a Tactician and a Shadow, and it was some of the most fun I've ever had in doing a combat of some goblins.
But after that little playtest, I hadn't really touched it again. I didn't look back at the newer packets, and it just kind of kept going and going until eventually it'd come out. This was obviously only a couple months ago, right. It's very new game. And I'm like, "Oh, this game is out. I remember that being kind of fun. Oh, the starter set adventure is only 20 bucks? Yeah, I'll pick that up. That sounds sweet."
I cracked open the PDF for The Delian Tomb. I skimmed through it, read it. I immediately closed it, went back over to the store, and immediately bought both the Heroes and Monsters books. And the rest is history. For the last eight or so months, I've been hard pressed in the Draw Steel community, creating content and making all sorts of stuff for it.
Jon de Nor: Yeah, that's actually one of the things that was mentioned by my patrons who submit questions, because Ananam, of Triglav Games, literally asked, where does Jenny find the energy, inspiration, and time to do so much stuff?
Jenny: That's a great question. It comes and goes, really? I have been asked — maybe it was Ananam who said it in the homebrew server, but there was definitely someone else who's like, where do you find the, like, how do you just make this stuff? I'm a very much, like, a hyperfixation person, right? I am, I'm not officially diagnosed with anything, but obviously I share a lot of neurodivergent traits with my many friends, as many people do. I am a specifically a person who really latches on to things that are new and exciting. And I either, you know, let them run their course and do their thing, or they become a part of my personality forever.
One such other thing that I think I can only compare Draw Steel to other than the, I guess, the original D&D, right, is Magic: The Gathering, and specifically just card games in general, and games. I'm a very avid gamer in all the senses of the word, right? I play a lot of video games, but I also play like card games, and obviously TTRPGs. And I am like very precise, and I absorb information so incredibly fast, that the amount of time it takes me to become like, really good at something is incredibly short.
So as soon as I got my hands on Draw Steel, sort of reading the rules, and like started understanding it, I immediately just started going to work and making stuff, and just starting to be like...I don't know what...I really, I've been trying to capture it, like, I've had conversations in the homebrewery server about this very topic, of what is it about Draw Steel that invites so much creation and creativity? Like, the environment that MCDM has cultivated, Matt Coville like, you know, bridging the gap of making people entrepreneurs, right. So many different facets and things about it. But I even can't explain for myself what about it really decided, "Hey, this is going to be it."
Other than one specific note, and this is a fun anecdote. Haezan — great person in our community, they are now a dev for DMHub, they created the Scion on the Codex and are working on other stuff like the Gunslinger — I don't even know if they know this, but they were the first person to respond to my first post in the MCDM Draw Steel server about my original Draw Sails, like, pirate ship rules. Which are so bad, do not go and look at that creation post. They are not good.
Haezan was the first person to respond, and literally their response was just like, "Hey, this is awesome!" And that one comment just like ignited a spark in my brain of like, "This is it. This is what it's all about. It's making shit and having some person, anyone, just go, 'That rules.'" And that has driven me like...I think about it a lot, because it is such a small moment and I don't even know if Haezan even remembers that, but I do, and it has stuck with me for a long time, of like, that's what it's all about.
Jon de Nor: As a as a person that puts stuff on the internet, sometimes, just like the one person that actually says something nice and it's like, "Oh my God, it was all worth it after all!" (laughter)
Jenny: All it takes is a little bit of positive reinforcement.
Jon de Nor: So you started out creating stuff immediately. Let's just jump right past the Draw Sails stuff. And I think that we talked a bit about it before we started recording, but I think the first thing I remember seeing from you was the solar ancestry, partly because of the art that came with it.
Jenny: Yes. The solars is and has been my long-term project. Hopefully, fingers crossed, there has been more information and you guys have seen a lot more stuff about it by now, but anyone who's been in the homebrewery server for a long time will know that this has been something I've been spitting. Obviously, we've seen some solars pop up in certain places. It's on Forge Steel thanks to the implementation that Andy did, the solars was like my jumping off point for actually making good design in Draw Steel. Once I had like, kind of gotten the actual fundamentals of itm I was inspired by this piece of art I saw, and I thought, well, wouldn't it be cool if Draw Steel's like aasimar-type ancestry, or like angel person, was sort of like this celestial space person, right?
Because I'm a big fan of sci-fi, sci-fi fantasy in general. Like my favorite movie of all time is Return of the Jedi. I know it's not the best Star Wars movie, but it's been my favorite because it's been that way since I was a kid. So, you know, bias, but space fantasy, all that sort of stuff really tickles my brain. And seeing Draw Steel like put it in the forefront of the core rules with the memonek and the time raiders and like the timescape and this is like, "This is also Draw Steel. Draw Steel can also be this," immediately made me go "That's awesome." And so I whipped it up, I created it, I put it out. It's obviously free. You can get the solar ancestry with the Across the Solar Expanse product coming soon. Hopefully.
Jon de Nor: Do a bit of digging on the Across the Solar Expanse product, because you've sent me some spreads that the listeners hopefully will have had a look at once this gets out. And of course, there's the amazing stained-glass art that's on the...it's an introduction page about the solar. And there's also an impressive list of adversaries.
Jenny: Yes. There's quite a lot in this one. I forget the exact number but it's above 30.
Jon de Nor: (laughter) So these are 3rd-echelon monsters that are all part of like a...are they part of, like, one big monster band or are they multiple smaller ones?
Jenny: So there's two monster bands that are basically variant of each other. There is the solars and the eclipse knights. Eclipse knights are also solars. They have just undergone a form of, I guess you could call it torture. They are solars who have committed crimes against solar society and for those crimes, because in the law of the solars, whenever a solar dies, their essence, they kind of like twinkle into light, and their essence returns to the stars from which they were born, and kind of scatters across the cosmos and sort of again "impregnates" these new stars.
And then when those stars explode due to supernovas and a solar is born, that solar was born from a star who has been, you know, graced with the essence of another is sort of like the lineage of that solar. They're not reincarnated. They are new people, but they are like descendant from those before them. So if you were to, you know, lock up, you know, and or like execute your eclipse knight, your bad guys, their essence would just spread across the stars, and then you'd get a bunch more bad guys in several millennia. So the only place in the universe where you could reasonably trap a solar is a black hole.
So solars cast their prisoners into the heart of a black hole where they shall never see light or escape again. But something happens to certain solars who are cast into black holes. A mysterious presence, may it magic or otherworldly, calls to them. The void itself bonds with the solars. They lose their starry visage, their skin turning deep purple or black, their hair becoming the same trapped light you see behind a black hole in space, and they emerge on the other side, reborn as envoys of oblivion.
And so...So they're the Sith. They're the bad guys. That's the point. (laughter)
Jon de Nor: (laughter)
Jenny: Is that like, because they also have solar blades. They have psi blades and lightsaber rip-offs that are, you can find those in the book as well. They are magic items, designed by MrMattDollar. So that's kind of the, where my space fantasy comes in, where it's the Sith versus the Jedi.
And there's some nuance. You'll see it in sections on the eclipse knights about like how to play in eclipse knight. There are like different takes you can take with it, right? You don't have to be an evil person to play an eclipse knight. There's a lot of interesting stories to be told where you are not an evil person, and you were cast into a black hole and had to crawl out. Maybe you're on a path of redemption, or maybe you were framed, right? And just because you went through that process doesn't mean you're any more evil. It just means you look different. And there's, you know, a bit of political dichotomy that could happen there between solar society and how they view eclipse knights and how they're raised and taught to treat eclipse knights versus their own kind.
And then, of course, regular solars can come in all sorts of colors of stars, your yellows, your reds, your blues and whites. Whereas eclipse knights, usually they either go the black, like dark black skin, almost like void, inky black, and then golden yellow hair, that is like the kind of light you see trapped behind the black hole in space, like the images you see. Or they go dark purple hair and skin, like more fantasy black holes that have, like, the purple magic. The Void Elementalist in the core rules takes that approach of like purpley black holes, which are complete, utter nonsense. But it's fantasy. So you could do that. Eclipse knights, by the way, make great Void Elementalists. They go hand in hand, like that's like, you know, two peas in a pod.
Jon de Nor: That's by design, then.
Jenny: Yes, the eclipse knights — so I don't think the eclipse knight ancestry will be revealed. I think — I sent that spread to you, but I think I'm going to keep that one under wraps, because it is the only ancestry in the book that's behind the paywall, because the other one is free.
Jon de Nor: (laughter)
Jenny: But they have some features that make them quite good at teleporting as they tap into the void of the of the black hole that birthed them. Rebirthed them, I should say. So, yeah, those are the two monster bands.
Jon de Nor: I'm looking at the eclipse knight ancestry page now with a with a piece of art. that's...I mean, it is a Jedi, or rather a Sith. (laughter)
Jenny: Yeah, yeah, it's pretty apparent. The art — that one would probably be — I've shared the art in the homebrew service. So that one's probably on the preview pages. Yeah, it is very good. That same artist — and I probably should have them all pulled up right now — I know that I can say off the top of my head that Vermillion is the person who did the stained glass pieces. I believe that's Vermilion77 on VGen. They are also the person who did the stained glass for my Qua'ri, for the Jams of the Timescape entry. Their stained glass pieces are so great.
I believe — and then shout out because they, you know, in terms of getting them more work — but I believe they also did a piece of art for Jonas's College of Infinite Reflections Shadow, which is just released, very recently to when we're recording this. So they did one of those too. TheLagger702 does all of those big splash pages in the ancestry. So there's one for the solar as well. That's not in the spreads, but there's one for the solar and then another one that's also in a different part of the book, I think just near the table of contents. They're like just really awesome, like full splash page pieces. I have put so much money into the art for this product, because I want people to know what these things look like and have it be really realized.
Jon de Nor: Yeah, the art pieces in the spreads that you've sent are...amazing. (laughter)
Jenny: Yeah, they're really good.
Jon de Nor: There are two pieces, actually, in one of the spreads, with some solar monsters. They, too, look so good. I was looking at them earlier and I'm just enchanted.
Jenny: I am so happy with those two there. They are so good. That artist is actually, I invited them. They are an artist from the Draw Steel community that is done by Rengeld. You can actually find their work and their listing for commission in the Draw Steel Brewery server. In the Art Showcase forum. You can find and hire them for your stuff. Do that! They are very good. I just recently got another piece from them for Under the Black Flag, which is another thing I'm working on because I don't sleep. (laughter) Um, but yeah.
Jon de Nor: (laughter) But that leads us nicely into Black Flag, which is a ship supplement, as in ships on the sea, not in space. Correct?
Jenny: Correct. Yeah, but it will eventually lead there, as I'll get to. But yeah. So Under the Black Flag is a pirate, nautical-themed supplement for Draw Steel. We've got, you know, you got your pirate kits, your Buccaneer firearms...you've got sweet nautical themed subclasses like the Fathomless Vessel, which I'm very excited to sort of be the first person to make a subclass for a homebrew class, I think. I don't think that's been a thing so far, mainly because I know that, like, other people were badgering me about making subclasses for their homebrew classes, so I might make it a trend.
It's got some fun subclasses, as well as the Elastikinetic Null, which is a Null who can use their psychic powers to stretch and grow their limbs and body. Which might not seem pirate-y, until you think about our very favorite good friend, Monkey D. Luffy, of One Piece fame.
Jon de Nor: Mm, okay.
Jenny: Mainly just because I wanted to make a stretchy subclass, and I figured it would be a good place to do it. And then, as well as the Siren Troubadour with their alluring voice. And then, of course, can't have a nautical pirate game without ship-to-ship combat.
So the ship-to-ship combat has been a struggle, slash, journey. As we know from my very first toe dipping into draw, steal design Draw Sails, which I put in the Draw Steel MCDM server — I should go delete that, honestly, but — they were an attempt at bridging the gap of playing a hero versus playing a boat. So there is some issues that come with designing ship-to-ship combat in most TTRPGs, and usually that results in you busting out a board game in the middle of your TTRPG session, where the rules are so separated from what you're normally doing that it is a different game that you are stapling on to your existing game.
And that was what I something I decided I really wanted to avoid, and I did so not only in this, but also in Space Battles, which — we can cover a bit more, but Space Battles take a similar design approach. But for this pirate ship, there's a unique design challenge of all of the heroes effectively occupying the same character, which is the ship.
In Space Battles, I circumvented it, because I took design fantasy from Star Fox or X-wing pilots, where everyone is in their own single starfighter, so everyone is still unique and separate. But on a pirate ship, you kind of really can't do that. Everyone's on the same boat. So there is this unique design thing of how do Heroic Resources work? How does Stamina work and Recoveries? Do we all share a health pool, because we're one thing taking damage? Well, heads up, that was Draw Sails, and it didn't work.
Apparently, if you give one ship 90 Stamina at level one, it just doesn't die, or come under any threat of injury. So that didn't work, and I really wracked my brain to try to figure out how to make that work, and how I would handle Stamina and Recoveries, with everyone basically being the same token. And the solution came to me, I think, just like randomly on one day. But it helped as I have recently become a Star Trek fan.
Jon de Nor: Oh!
Jenny: I was not previously. I had not seen any Star Trek. Star Wars, ride or die. My only, like my big pieces of sci-fi, are like the Alien franchise, Star Wars and then Doctor Who. In recent years I became a big Doctor Who fan.
Jon de Nor: Oh, I very much approve.
Jenny: Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah, I have a 3D-printed TARDIS deck box with my Magic: The Gathering 14th Doctor deck in it that has all the Doctors in it. Literally sitting right next to me. But yeah. So the Doctor, yeah, Doctor Who. And then I recently acquired sci-fi — like I'm collecting the fucking Infinity Stones of sci-fi, I acquired Star Trek. I've been watching Next Generation. I've seen a couple of the other shows as well. That is like the quintessential like bridge crew fantasy in terms of, like, fighting on a ship, like, you know, everyone's tumbling over as the ship takes damage, you know, "Shields holding it 30%!" Right? "We just lost decks 4 through 16!" or whatever.
And in that side of fantasy, the ship is taking damage in different parts of the ship. Like the shields are holding, right, and taking some damage, but also like, "Oh, that blow, we just lost that deck," or "Oh, engineering is down," right? And so I thought, what if I translated that to a pirate ship? And say, yeah, we just took damage — which part of the ship just got hit? Did our cannons take a blow? Did we just lose a bunch of crew members who were manning those cannons, and now, like, we need someone to replace that? Did we get hit in our rudder and now we can't turn? Did we get hit in the sails, and now we're not as fast?
Shout out to Spyger, good friend Kyle, because I could not for the life of me think of more things on a ship. Then they gave me a quick other list of possible things that could take damage. And I landed on six of them.
Jon de Nor: Oh, nice.
Jenny: To fill out, like, what's usually the max party size. So the ships...and let's see if I can do this in memory. We have the mast which handles like, you know, speed. It's what carries the sails. So the mast, slash, sails. We have the crow's nest, which is the ship's lookout. The helm, which is the ship's wheel, and the rudder, as that's what happens when you turn the wheel. So that's all about turning and maneuvering the ship. We have the crew themselves, as is, just how many people do we have manning, and how many deckhands? The cannons, and the powder reserves, how well those are keeping up. As well as the hull, you know, it's taking the brunt of the damage mostly, it's at the front of the ship, so that's the main thing.
So the breakdown of the design is that not only do each of these parts of the ship matter, but they matter in very specific ways. Each part of the ship has its own Stamina and Recovery pool. And when your band of heroes go on a ship, you can decide which of the stations you want to manage. And those are the stations that are active. So you're not punished if you don't have six people. As long as you have your minimum of three, you just pick the ones you want to use, and those are the ones you manage.
And that way — in quotation marks — hopefully, still needs a lot of testing — the ship and the party's general HP still scales with the amount of people on it, right? Let's say you have four players. Well, now there's only four health pools because there's only four stations active. So it becomes and now it becomes equivalent to just having four heroes fighting some goblins. Right. Math-wise, I'm still working if that's going to work out.
When a station is active, it provides a bonus that the whole ship gets to benefit from. For example, the crow's nest grants a bonus to the distance of the ship's ranged abilities because someone was acting as lookout and is able to point out and help you aim, right? Or, you know, obviously the mast provides a bonus to the ship's speed, or the helm provides a bonus to the ship's Disengage. And Disengage, I'm bringing back. I think Disengage is slept on. No one takes the Disengage move action in Draw Steel normally unless you have a crazy high bonus. So it is a big deal in open waters. You're going to be Disengaging a lot.
But not only do you get a bonus, you gain an increased benefit if you are a certain officer role. So there is currently nine officer roles. There's more than there are stations, because there's a bunch of different roles you can play on the ship. And these are the classic fantasy stuff. You've heard this in every TTRPG, that's not original. You got your captain, you got your first mate, you got your helmsman, the gunner, the boatswain, the chef, the surgeon, and the navigator, right? These are all basically the "classes" that you play on a ship, they determine which special abilities you gain access to and can use in ship combat.
So if you are, for say, the boatswain, right, which is like the ship's repairman, and you are managing the hull, you gain a special extra benefit, because that is the kind of place that you're most likely to be. And there's a couple overlaps. It's not just one and one. There's like two roles for each station. So in case you don't have a boatswain, someone else could potentially take the hull and be useful. But it also it adds a tiny bit level, more level of like tactical play, if you don't have a full party, where you're like, "Which ones do we want to prioritize, and what roles are we to maximize our efficiency of, like, which stations we want to pick up?" So there's a bit of aspect in like shipbuilding and like, you know, getting ready to sail the seas.
The last bit that stations have is they have damage thresholds. Now, this isn't a threshold as in it taking damage, or like, how much it can take, slash, reducing it. Rather, when a station becomes winded, the ship receives a negative penalty as the station has taken more damage. If it is dying, that penalty gets worse, and if it dies, a.k.a. is destroyed, that penalty is very bad, and will stay that way until it is repaired during a respite. Usually shouldn't happen because it's about as often as a PC death, which doesn't happen often, but it can.
This adds another level of tactical gameplay that sort of makes up for the slight lack of positioning. Positioning will definitely matter, and making battlemaps that are fun and engaging — also, this is played on a hex grid, so that's fun — but making battlemaps that are engaging for that is a challenge. But it kind of becomes a game of like, you know, Battleship or you're just sort of like lobbing your attacks at away enemies. But in play, it's like, as long as the battlefield is dynamic and your characters have a goal, an objective, keeping them moving and actually interacting with the battlefield has been very helpful, and like, is engaging.
But the other layer of aspect is choosing who and what to heal, and keeping people up is way more important than you just being like, "Eh, it's the Fury. They'll be fine." You know, you need to be healing more. So yeah. The stations also grant you a special trigger that is like your triggered action that lets you do cool stuff. There's no, like, ground through breaking design in a lot of these. A lot of these, you'll see a lot of similar design and effects that you see in base Draw Steel classes. Because the point isn't to make unique and different stuff, the point is to be on a boat.
Jon de Nor: (laughter)
Jenny: We want to play Draw Steel, but on a boat. So rather than make a different ruleset that has d6s and different dice to see how many shots you land or whatever and ranges, everything in the combat is played out in Draw Steel combat. You've got your signature abilities, you got your power rolls, you got your heroic abilities, you got your trigger, you have your maneuver. Everything is the same. And it plays out just like Draw Steel combat, because Draw Steel combat is the reason we are playing Draw Steel.
Jon de Nor: (laughter) True! In these combats on the ships, are the heroes and their classes contributing much, or is it all tied up to the officer roles and the ship's abilities?
Jenny: So mostly no, but there is a caveat for both this and Space Battles, which I'm tooling around with. We'll see how well it does, slash, if I'll add more, but your officer role gives you two signatures...I think it gives you two. I forgot. I don't have the document pulled up in front of me, I probably should. It gives you some signatures, it gives you a 3-cost heroic ability, and it gives you one or two maneuvers. This, plus the trigger you get from your station, gives you the full suite of level 1 abilities, save for your 5-cost ability, and your 5-cost ability comes from your hero's class. You gain a unique ability based on your hero's class.
Jon de Nor: Ah, yes!
Jenny: So, for example, and I'm so sorry to people who have bought Space Battles, because I'm probably going to update this and add this later, I completely forgot to give the Summoner a special thing. I did not even — I designed multiple abilities for homebrew classes, some of which are not even out yet, and I didn't make an ability for the Summoner. Just fully forgot that is an official class that is out and does stuff. But don't worry about it, you know, rest easy. There is a special Summoner main five cost heroic for the ship combats and it I. I literally just thought about the fantasy and I'm like, "Well, what would being a Summoner be really good on a ship? Well, obviously you can just make more crew. You can just make more crew members."
Jon de Nor: (laughter)
Jenny: So the 5-cost ability for the Summoner is Instant Deckhands. It is a buff you apply to multiple stations, as you create minions to help man those stations. It actually perfectly loops into another facet of the game design, which is new. This wasn't in the first playtest, but I'm trying it out for this playtest document, which is that heroes on the ship have a limited action economy. On your turns, you can only take a combination of two of a main, maneuver, or move. If you use your main and maneuver, you can't move. If you use a maneuver, you can only main action or move. So it's not like dazed, where like, you only get one of the three. You get two of the three.
This is because, if every single person got to move the ship, the ship would be flying around at like 150 miles an hour on the water relative to the rest of the monsters you are fighting. It sort of leveled out in the first playtest we did for it. But I'm trying this because I think it could serve the same purpose, where the heroes who are good at moving the ship are moving the ship, and the heroes who don't need to, if they go to another position, then you're fine, it's not any harm done. But you have to kind of push and pull about moving the ship around is the main reason for that design.
So with Instant Deckhands, you can choose two stations, and until the end of the encounter or until those stations are dying, they can take all three actions. So you are manning those ships in those stations. So the heroes who are manning those stations are more capable of doing stuff. They have more hands on deck, so they are able to do more. So I made a special 5-cost for basically all the base classes, the Summoner...didn't make one for the Beastheart — oh, no, I did, I lied, I made one with the Beastheart. I was, I think I was fully like, I don't care, it's not out yet, but it's about to be! It should be this month, so it'll probably be out by the time Under the Black Flag eventually comes out.
So I made one for the Beast Heart and then for our homebrew subclasses or homebrew classes, we have the Gunslinger, the Kiln, the Magewright, Scion, the Vampire — which I didn't also include in Space Battles — and the Vessel. Look out, Space Battles enjoyers; the Vampire and Summoner and Beastheart, I guess, maneuvers will be coming soon, hopefully. For Space Battles, they give you a special maneuver, which is in addition to your ship's regular maneuver. This is a bit of variety.
This one, I took a different approach, and I was like, what if....I took a different approach because I wanted it to be more punchy. Because a 5-cost is like, your ult, right? Especially at 1st echelon, at level 1, it is the biggest thing you can do. So I like the idea that the biggest thing you can do is your class. That is pushing forward not only like — I'm doing, I'm playing Draw Steel on a boat, you know? The Elementalist can create this big area of effect that they create rocks to crash into the enemies. The Gunslinger just has Fire Everything, which they just create a bunch of 2 cubes on the battlemap to blow people up. You know, it's a little fun design space of thinking, like, what...how a class interacts with being on a pirate ship, and sort of that fantasy.
So this is something that needs a lot of testing. Hopefully you find it cool and want to go and have a danger room and playtest it yourself. Please do! And let me know about it, because I have no idea if this works long-term.
Jon de Nor: (laughter) I have to say, this preview, the playtest document for Adventure on the Seas, is 42 pages? It is massive.
Jenny: Yeah, yeah, there's a lot of stuff in there. Luckily, I'm thinking I'm going to cut...not cut, but like, in terms of my long-term goals, I'm not going to do as much as I thought I was going to do. I might just leave this with 1st-echelon ship stuff and then do a separate one with more echelon ship stuff. I haven't decided yet.
I currently am thinking of doing a level 2 band for enemy ships, and a level 3 band for enemy ships. Right now we have a level 1 band that is just your classic navy, like, schooners and gunboats and your man-of-war, right? The type of classic fantasy stuff. But for the 2nd-level enemy ships, I want to make a fleet of ghost ships.
Jon de Nor: Ooh, nice!
Jenny: Because that is a classic fantasy of pirate fantasy, is fighting ghosts. And I like the idea of a fleet of ships that can just phase through rocks and islands because they're ghosts! And they're just teleporting around and creating ghastly mist and doing stuff. That seems fun and scary. And then for the level 3 band, because I thought of an idea and I thought it was really cool, is the level 3 band are ironships, and they are the fleet of the war dogs. So they're like iron, almost like battleships, like near-modern battleships that the war dogs fight and sail on. And that being like a big like navy aspect to, I imagine, what would be if you played a pirate campaign in Orden, that you'd be facing off against the forces of Ajax on the Seven Seas. If there's Seven Seas in Orden, there probably is. It's big.
Jon de Nor: (laughter) Yeah.
Jenny: Shout out Matt. Matt Colville, how many oceans does Orden have? We need a number, stat!
Jon de Nor: There are seven cities of Hell, isn't there? Yeah, I think so.
Jenny: Yeah, there's seven.
Jon de Nor: Yeah. So I don't know, maybe it needs to be a different number. But Matt also likes when stuff just randomly have the same name or number, I guess.
Jenny: Yeah, yeah. This is the Atlantic Ocean. Just no correlation to anything or any other landmass.
Jon de Nor: It has been mentioned a few times during the pirate supplement, but Space Battles, which you released in March, which I have been enjoying reading through for both the news episode of Goblin Points, and also in preparation for the stream I'm doing next week, as of recording this. And I've been lapping the whole of Space Battles up from the art, to the ancestries, the monster bands, oh, the new subclass...I love everything about it. (laughter)
Jenny: I am very happy. Happy to hear that. I was very proud of it. I thought it was really cool. I just kind of kept making stuff and then I eventually had to do the classic thing where I say, "Jenny, you need to stop. You need to cut it off. You did it. You did the thing. There's enough of it. There's enough. You can stop." And so I did, and I'm very happy with what it is. The ancestries, classic sci-fi, fantasy stuff. Mainly of my own creation. But you know, you get classic like your lizard guy, your android, right? We have the Qua'ri, which is my James of the Timescape entry. Number 5, you know, humblebrag. 5th place. Expanded with some extra features. The three subclasses, the College of the Hired Gun, the Slayer Fury, and the Space domain for Conduits and Censors.
Jon de Nor: Yeah, both the College of the Hired Gun with the piece of art of a person that's taking off using some rocket boots thingies, which to me immediately screams, this is, of course, like a bounty hunter from Star Wars, very clearly. And I love the piece of art that you've used for the Slayer Fury subclass, which made me immediately think, because in the art they're carrying like a huge, like, motorized chainsaw sword.
Jenny: Yes.
Jon de Nor: And to me, it immediately screamed, "This is Doom. (laughter)
Jenny: Yeah, big, big...there's actually, like, I think College of the Hired Gun is like explicitly, "Oh, you're a Mandalorian," like, that is what you are. You're Boba Fett, right? You're Mando. Literally, the trigger is Not a Scratch, which is just a hyper-strong, like half damage, reduce force movement, and reduce the potency, because it just bounces off your armor, is the flavor there. But the Slayer Fury was a lot of things. Obviously Doom Slayer was the first thing I thought of. The main trigger for the Slayer is...
Jon de Nor: Rip and Tear.
Jenny: Rip and Tear. Yeah, obviously, duh, pfft. Yeah, okay, yeah. And then also, yeah, that's literally from Doom. It's a classic Doom phrase. But it is inspired by the fantasy of, not just in Doom, but in other video games, where you get an enemy like stunned or low HP, and you can press a button to finish them. And in Doom, a lot of the times is you just grab them and rip them in half. (laughter)
Jon de Nor: I read that and I'm like, that's literally straight from the game! (laughter)
Jenny: It's that, paired with — this is another big part of the fantasy, actually, and if I was to play this character in Draw Steel, I would make them this subclass — but Kratos from God of War also falls under the Slayer.
Jon de Nor: Yes, I totally see it! Yeah, yeah.
Jenny: So in — yeah, yeah. Because in God of War you have like a stun mechanic. If you stun an enemy, you can go up and then finish them, and literally most of the time, Kratos is ripping these zombies in half, going crazy. But he's also, as we get to level 2 in the Slayer, and this is another fun part — I love the Slayer, I had so much fun playing it — but it is a ranged Fury subclass. You are incentivized to use ranged attacks. The first bit on your Growing Ferocity — I think it's your Growing Ferocity. It might just be the static ability. I think it's just the static ability. Growing Ferocity is a different thing.
But the static ability of your Growing Ferocity, like how the Berserker or the Reaver gets like forced movement bonuses and stuff, the Slayer Fury gains a bonus to ranged damage if they are within 5 squares of you. Which is a fun bridge, where you're like, I'm not telling you to take the Sniper kit and stand on this side of the battlefield. I'm telling you to be just close enough to hit all of the enemies you want, because 5 squares is not a lot. That's, you know, that's your ranged free strike.
Jon de Nor: Yeah, yeah.
Jenny: So as long but as long as you stay within 5 squares, which is really close to the action, you get those benefits. At level 2 you get Run and Gun, which is really similar to some other Fury stuff, lets you charge and then make a strike afterwards of any kind. However, it limits you to ranged strikes.
Jon de Nor: Oh!
Jenny: So unlike the other ones, where just like you could do any melee signature, any melee heroic, you can instead do any ranged signature, any ranged heroic. One of the playtests I did, had a perfect like use case example of this. I took the Raider kit, right? So I had like some axe-throwing stuff. So not all like has to be a gun, right? Just took an axe-throwing kit, and the solo monster was like just like 2 or 3 squares away from my full movement and a charge, and they were up on like a ledge. So I literally, I move over in position; initiate the charge; in the charge, jump; land on the ledge; and even though my movement couldn't get me close enough, I'm close enough to throw my axe with my signature and hit and deal extra damage to the ghost.
There was another situation as well, I was fighting...it was a lot of solos that I fought this thing on, which meant I couldn't really playtest the Rip and Tear that much, like getting to tear through enemies as much. But the Run and Gun stuff and like playing with the range was really fun.
There's another time where I literally, like, charged at this big old remorhaz that had swallowed a party member, and I jumped up mid-air, did my ranged attack, landed directly next to the enemy, and then followed up with some other thing. And it's just a lot of fun in terms of jumping around and being a Fury who's effective at range, even if that range is, you know, still five squares.
Jon de Nor: That changes so much how the Fury plays. Being able to do be effective, more effective at range.
Jenny: Yeah, it came from a secondary idea I had in my head, which is just like literally just me like glazing the fuck out of Draw Steel's mechanics and combat and stuff, is about the Knockback maneuver. And how the Knockback maneuver, like the minimum, you know, tier 1 is push 1, which might not get literally any creature with stability. But imagine if you get run up on by some goblin, right? And there's a goblin in melee with you and you're a ranged character. What are you going to do? Well, if you Knockback, even at minimum, you push them 1 square away, and now you can ranged attack them without suffering the bane. You could have Disengaged, but what if you want to move, you know? No one Disengages, right? No one Escapes Grab and no one Disengages.
But so the fantasy of like, oh, what if? Wouldn't it be cool if you got like the idea of like an archer character Sparta-kicking someone back and then immediately popping an arrow in their face? It just seemed so cool to me. And so that's one of the Slayer Fury's later abilities. It's even in there, I think, in the Growing Ferocity table. But they get a high level ability called Kickback, where, when you use the Knockback maneuver on someone — I think, their Growing Ferocity table, wn you use the Knockback maneuver, you have an edge on your next strike against the target, which seems counterintuitive until you remember that this is like a pseudo like ranged Fury subclass. So when you push someone away, then you get an edge.
Or even if you're up against a wall, you can just push them into a wall and then hit them, then melee at them. But so with Kickback, when you use the Knockback maneuver and slam someone into a wall, you can spend a ferocity to make a ranged free strike against them. So like immediately follow up. I think it also does some extra forced movement. And if that forced movement is enough to break the wall behind them, then they are thrown through the wall and they keep going. So the idea is that you, Sparta-kick someone so hard, and while they are actively flying back, you shoot them in the chest so hard they fly back harder. There's also a little bit little bit of Master Chief in this fantasy, too.
Jon de Nor: In the Space Battles supplement, you also introduce something you call "unique treasures", as a variant on leveled treasures.
Jenny: Yeah, I — and this is not a solo opinion, as I think we both know that some good friends in our community are working on alternatives to leveled treasures as well, shout out Mythic Treasures — but I always saw the leveled treasures as a attempt to mimic Matt Mercer's Vestiges of Divergence, right? Which is a very popular, you know, [Critical Role], very popular. We see a lot of these mechanics in a few of the books that they've collabed on with [Wizards of the Coast]. But these are magic items that have multiple stages, right, dormant, awakened, and other names for them, and there's multiple tiers. I think — and to MCDM's credit, I think there technically is only three in the base of these items.
But when narrative, or, like, important events, like milestones, happen to your character, the weapon grows in strength and its power increases. So you have this cool magic item that is growing along with you. Which I think is an amazing mechanic! Because how many times have you designed a character with a cool weapon, only to immediately find, like, a +1 greatsword in a magic chest and be like, well, fucking like goodbye, my dad's sword, you know? Brennan Lee Mulligan did a great bit on that where he's just like, "Oh, Frostmourne! You know, just toss out your dad's sword." Just amazingly cool weapon.
So it kind of bridges that and it makes that feel cool. But I felt that the leveled treasures, the level gaps were so far apart that it never really felt like it was growing with you. It just sort of felt like, at certain thresholds, it got better. Like how your Stamina gets better at echelon thresholds, right? Or how, you know, you get a bonus to something. It never really felt like the item was personal. So with unique treasures, I aimed to fix that a little bit by, one, making them more available at 1st level, where like, you could find this in your first adventure and it won't break the game. Like giving a person a leveled treasure at level 1 is usually seen as pretty bad, so then why does it have a 1st-level effect? Right.
Jon de Nor: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jenny: So I designed the unique treasures to have a sort of scaling presence. One, more level spots. So not just the 1-5-9, right? I think it's 1-3-5-7-9. And they have, usually, multiple abilities in those level blocks. And I don't know if I specifically called it out, but it's how I would do it — you don't have to hand out all of those effects to the hero when they hit that level So I could say, you've got the level 1, you know, Phoenix Saber, but it only has the first trait, right? And then after your first adventure, you do some fun heroic thing. You make amends with a past, you, you know, did some cool thing. Now your sword glows and now you have the second trait. It's moreso — the level cap is like, "Don't give them these traits until they're this level," is what the level cap I think means really.
And then again, it's still — you're encouraged to hand out — I don't, again, this is...I only had one column to write out how they worked. But another way I would do it is like, I could sometimes show a player the entire item, and say, "Hey, this is what the item looks like. These are all the traits. Does that seem like something you want to use for your character?" Or if you are the kind of DM that likes to make stuff specifically for your players, you can design a unique treasure for them specifically and just say, "Hey, you've got this cool item." Maybe do a campaign where everyone starts with one, is usually how I like to do things. But only show them the first trait. This is an item, this is what it does. Oh, it's like a cool, cute trinket. That's neat.
Well, then all of a sudden you kill the guy who killed your dad, and then your sword glows, and I hand you another card. And now your sword does another thing. And now you discover that this magic item is attuned to you, right? It has this unique thing where it grows alongside you, and that's sort of like...it's less of like this fun thing I'm trying to push, and more like, "Hey, this is how I'm going to do leveled treasures, by the way, in case you guys wanted to rip this off, because this is, I think, way better." for at least my purposes of how I would think of a level treasure.
I wouldn't, I would never want a player to just go, I guess, like window shopping in the Heroes book and sort of like pre-select, like, "I want to get the a Blade of Quintessence." Okay, well, now, maybe you build your character hoping that you get a Blade of Quintessence, and so you won't see one for like eight sessions because of how the gameplay works. In getting the...going on this epic quest to find the materials for it, getting the project source, then doing 450 points worth of downtime projects, like, "Awesome! Yay! I finally have my character concept after a year."
So this sort of bridges that gap of like, let them have cool stuff at level 1. Like, we're heroes, you know? We should have a cool magic item that, sure, it's like a trinket, basically, at level 1, but by level 7 and level 9, it feels like a leveled treasure. You should have to earn that.
Jon de Nor: In the Space Battles...you touched upon it briefly. You've also included combat rules for space, and as you mentioned, you kind of went, I don't know if I should call it halfway, but you did kind of like...you didn't go as far as making all the players one big thing, but they instead control, or drive their own...what am I trying to say? Pilot! They pilot their own smaller ships, like individual ships.
Jenny: Yes. I initially landed on that because I did not want to have to come up with and tackle my pirate ship problem, so I sideboarded that. I'm like, "Fuck it. Everyone's just in their own thing, right? Everyone loves Star Fox." Shout out Super Mario Galaxy Movie, in theaters now. I actually haven't seen it yet. But you know, we all saw the poster and the guy who was in it. But so Star Fox is a very cool thing. Great for my childhood, but also just like the X-wings and Star Wars. Star Wars, I think, really encapsulates the starfighter fantasy. The TIE fighters versus the X-wings dogfighting...if anyone's played Battlefront 2, the starfighter mode is like easily the best thing ever made by man. So fun, so much fun.
And so I wanted to capture that fantasy. Also so that I didn't have to do the pirate ship like bullshit of everyone on one on one ship, like Star Trek, right? Like the bridge crew. We are, you know, lock X-foils in attack position, evveryone going out there, fighting in a space dogfight. So that was a lot easier to do because I just designed classes that are the ships. So again, I'm not claiming that these are very innovative and new designs. A lot of them are literally just ripped straight from certain classes and signatures and heroics, but they are renamed and flavored in the context of a spaceship, right?
I think my easiest, most fun example of this is the Scoundrel's Trench Run heroic ability, right, where they move very far in a straight line, and any enemies they pass by, they deal damage to, which is just 1000 Cuts from the Shadow. But when you visualize it in your head as you going, like, you know, weaving between enemy ships and blasting them as you go, it's way cooler.
Jon de Nor: Yeah, yeah.
Jenny: So again, like, it's not broke. I'm not fixing it. I'm just putting a nice shiny coat of space fighter paint over it, and sort of...like this, anyone really could have done this, but I did it for you, is kind of my idea, right? Like you could have done, you could have just been like, "I'm playing a Shadow, but I'm a spaceship But now I'm like, well, I changed the names for you already, so you don't have to worry about that.
There are some specific rules for like zero-g, slash, like, fighting in a, you know, what would technically be a 3-dimensional space, right? You think, "Oh, space combat, like, that's crazy. You could go in any direction!" Well, you can go in any direction normally. Our world is 3D.
Jon de Nor: (laughter)
Jenny: We still play on 2D maps. I think most of the time, the benefits, slash, like, things that happen when you're in a 3D space, like that in space is, you think about like weaving up and down over like asteroids, or like wreckage of ships and stuff, or flying over an enemy ship. So all I did was add a rule that's like, hey, you can basically walk through walls. It's just difficult terrain because you're just taking extra time to fly under it or fly over it.
Jon de Nor: Right.
Jenny: And then implementing that rule....and actually, I have been toying — someone asked this in the MCDM forum post a bit ago, and I wasn't thinking about it. I said it wasn't too much in the cards, but then I started thinking about it, and I think it's very possible that a Codex integration is going to be very possible. I've been messing around with the Codex. Specifically that you can allow tokens to rotate, so the direction of a token can matter. But also when you're messing with objects, I can place an asteroid down as an object, and give it the properties that it can be moved through, that its squares are difficult terrain, but that it blocks forced movement only.
Jon de Nor: Oooh.
Jenny: So you can you can go and fly through that asteroid no problem, because you are purposely flying through it. But if someone shoves you into the asteroid, you best believe that you smack right into it and take damage.
Jon de Nor: Oh, nice.
Jenny: So that is fully available to do and integratable in the Codex. And that's how it works in Space Battles, is that, if you're force-moved into an obstacle, then you take damage as if it was a wall, but you can move through it willingly, no problem.
Jon de Nor: This really reminds me...I did an interview with Tom Bloom, the designer of Lancer, and he mentioned that — because he had just tried Draw Steel, which was why I interviewed him for Goblin Points, and he mentioned that Draw Steel went too simulationist, because elevation should just be a status effect. Like there shouldn't be a fly keyword or three dimensions, only use two. And if they're if they're off the ground, they're just a status effect. This kind of reminds me of that, where you could make some complex 3D thing, or you could just make asteroids difficult terrain, and it kind of simulates, or, it abstracts the same thing, but it works.
Jenny: Because you're like, there's no difference in being like, "Oh, no, the enemy's underneath me," because you as a spaceship can just turn and look at the enemy.
Jon de Nor: Yeah, yeah.
Jenny: So like any place the enemy can be, you can also look because you're in 3D space, so there's really no advantage to height, and, you know, depth. At least, not enough that matters, right? And in that way, you also like can't do like the cheesiness of flight, where you're like, "Oh, I'm actually 8 squares up, can he reach me?" You know, like, so I can't say you go, like, I dip and sink down. Everyone's still on the same 2D plane. There's no elevation changes.
With that, obviously there is turning. There's...like, forward momentum is a big thing, where at the start of your turn, your instantly force-moved 2 squares forward, because you're in a spaceship and you are flying. And I don't know if you know this thing about this theory of relativity, and laws of motion, but, you know, unless you pump the brakes, which is kind of hard to do in the middle of a space dogfight, you're going to kind of keep going forward. There are some classes and ships that can work around that.
And that's the best thing, I think, about doing it this way, is that I come up with a bunch of rules for how fighting in space works, like turning and, you know, the forward momentum and that sort of stuff. And then now when I'm designing these classes, I can give them abilities that break those rules, which is like the core key, the forefront of that, right? So for example, the Hurricane ship, I think Slipstream is their trait. But at the start of their turn, whenever they get pushed by forward momentum, they can choose to actually go an additional 2 squares forward, right? So go even faster in the direction they're facing. Or flip 180 and turn around instead of moving at all. So they're more in control of their speed, because this is like a high-octane, speed-based starfighter.
Or shout out to the Hammerhead, easily the best, most fun-to-design spaceship and the best feedback I got, because it is just a Fury in space. Because it's a ship that has melee abilities, because it has a ram built into it. It is a ship that is meant to be shoved into other ships, which is normally not the case. So the idea of, you are actively flying at full speed and getting into collisions with other ships, because that's what your ship is designed for, is very funny.
They have an effect that's sort of a ranged Knockback, kind of like the Elementalist, how they have a ranged Knockback, but they have like a ranged slide, that, in the flavor...because you have to think about how these things translate from the Draw Steel mechanics into being a spaceship, right? Like what does a Knockback maneuver look like on a spaceship? How are you shoving someone as a ship that doesn't want to come in contact? Like, how is your car shoving another car 3 squares back? That's kind of weird.
So for the Fury, I'm like, okay, well, it's going to be — or for the Hammerhead, this is like kind of the Fury analog. They need to Knockback, that's their maneuver. So I described it — and this is literally stolen from some shit I saw in a Star Trek episode, like, the night before — but they shoot tiny little missiles that latch onto the enemy ship that are like rocket thrusters that turn on and start pushing the ship in the wrong direction. So you just fire them out, they land on the enemy ship, and then you push them away in a direction that you want them to be. So it's a lot of just recontextualizing stuff like that, to keep the fun and engaging combat that we all know from Draw Steel with that shiny coat of paint.
Jon de Nor: We are sadly running out of time. There's so much fun stuff you've made here.
Jenny: I have made so much stuff. I'm sorry. (laughter)
Jon de Nor: (laughter) You know, this is just a good excuse to bring you back when you manage to release the solar supplement, and that'll just be another chance to talk even more about the stuff you've you've decided both here in Space Battles and whatever else you might cook up in the....
Jenny: The last thing I'll leave off of, as I'm working on Under the Black Flag now, and I'm starting to try to figure out how every hero on a single ship works. Look out in the future for a Space Battles supplement, You Have the Bridge, where actually I commit, and you're on one ship. So that's on the docket of things to do later.
Jon de Nor: I always ask my guests to bring some recommendation that they want the listeners to be aware of or check out. So what have you brought for our listeners?
Jenny: So I mulled this over so hard. Someone who shall not be named yanked Adventures of Tintin last time, or like the last episode that I listened to. Maybe I was upset a little bit. Because I heard Adventures of Tintin, I'm like, fuck, that's such a good recommendation. That movie's so good. But I went ahead and I had to shout this out because it is a really amazing game, a JRPG. I have stolen the soundtrack for it in almost every fantasy thing I've ever run, because the soundtrack is insane. If nothing else, just listen to the soundtrack of Octopath Traveler 1 and 2.
Jon de Nor: Oh!
Jenny: Octopath Traveler is a JRPG from Square Enix. It is centered around eight protagonists in a fantasy world. You create a party of four, but you can start as one and then go and pick up the rest along your journey. And each of them has their own unique story set in the world as they're going on, and like solving some stuff, right? One of my favorite characters from the first game, Cyrus Albright, is a scholar, he's like the mage type. And his adventure starts on his, like, campus that he teaches at, where some kerfuffle happens, and he notices that a book is missing from the school's library, and a very dangerous book at that. So he sets off on a journey to find out who stole it, and it leads him down this crazy rabbit hole of all sorts of stuff.
Or Olberic, the warrior, once the knight to a king of a kingdom that no longer exists, fell to a coup, now lives in isolation in a mountain town. But when brigands come and kidnap some of the villagers, he must once again pick up his sword, and in the fight with the brigands, he hears a name he has not heard since the coup of his king. And now he sets off on a journey to find his path of redemption for the kingdom he failed to protect.
And it's like, literally every single character's first chapter is the quintessential way to write a character backstory, because like that is the sickest shit ever. And like, this is fully an antithesis to Matt's video on What Are Backstories For?". Matt Colville? You're wrong. (laughter)
Jon de Nor: (laughter)
Jenny: Having a character with an incredibly lucrative backstory is the easiest way to not have to prep anything, ever, or come up with ideas yourself. "Oh, you're saying your family is this big crime syndicate that does all sorts of crazy stuff? Well, guess who just showed up! Guess what plot's happening now!" Creating stuff for your players, I think is the most fun part about DMing. Obviously, you know the Director is a player too, but all my fun is already done, because I've made the monsters, and I've made the world. So now I get to watch you guys play with it. And the best way to do that is to introduce the stuff that you wrote and turn it against you, right?
Liam O'Brien said this great thing in this talkback once about how Matt Mercer does things where, you know, Liam would go like, "Oh, yeah, you know, hey, I think it'd be cool if my character had this sort of thing." And then Matt Mercer goes, "Oh, cool, great, sweet." And then what he'll do is he'll take that thing like it's barbed wire, wrap it around a baseball bat, and then wait around a corner for three months and then hit you when you least expect it. (laughter)
Jon de Nor: (laughter)
Jenny: And that, to me, has always worked. I think some of the best moments I've had in TTRPGs are when I take advantage of my players' backstories and use them against them, because nothing engages a player more than, one, you taking something that they made and introducing it into the game you're playing, right? Like everyone, I think, puts maybe too much of creating stuff on the Director side, but the heroes are the heroes of the story, and the stuff that they create should be as important.
It's about telling a story together. You set the playing field, they set the players, and then it's your job to sort of weave those things together. And can I tell them to tell and run the story. Like, you're already doing half of the work you would be for writing a book, which I think is my favorite part about playing TTRPGs, because I am famously — I've tried writing stuff, I don't think my fiction is that great, but I think I suffer a lot with character, and like writing characters, and so TTRPGs is like, oh cool, I don't have to do that part. I just do worldbuilding, I make a couple NPCs with some, like, traits, and, you know, that's the least amount of bit I do. But even then, I think I struggle with running NPCs because that same reason. And then the players, you know, land, and I take their stuff and I run with it.
So Octopath Traveler does that amazingly, where like I said, like every character's first chapter sets them up on this crazy journey. And, now this is — and I say it should not be all the work on the GM. But this is a lot of work, and I don't recommend this, but it's how I do it, because Octopath Traveler is so good at this — all of the stories are seemingly unconnected until you get to the last chapter, where all of them sort of allude to this overarching plot, and then once you finish all eight of the stories, then you can unlock the secret ending and the true final boss of the game, where all of the character storylines like coalesce and converge, right?
Major spoilers for Octopath Traveler 1. The game is like 12 years old. I'm sorry. But that scholar, that book, was taken by someone who's looking to open a portal, right, to release this eldritch god. And that portal happens to lie in the ruins of the city that the warrior once protected. And that it was ransacked and sieged so they could get to the portal. And it becomes this big conspiracy where all of these character stories are intertwining, and it's just the most satisfying thing to do, and watch your players be like, "What the hell?" Like you will make your note-taker's day, when they are like, "Wait a minute..."
Or like, when you put a problem in front of your players, and then two players go, "Oh no, my backstory! Wait, what?!" when they don't realize that they're happening the same thing. I've had, like, God, I've literally had a player be like, "Oh yeah, I used to be part of this bandit group that did a bunch of bad stuff. We razed villages and did all sorts of stuff, but now I, like, I did something I regret and now I'm, you know, I'm on a path of redemption. I'm trying to redeem myself for that." And then I have another player that goes, "Yeah, my parents were killed in a bandit raid. They were dying when I was so young. And I'm trying to hunt down and find the bandit leader who killed them."
Jon de Nor: (laughter)
Jenny: And then I'm like, okay, so those are the same! You know, behind the scenes, just knit that little tapestry, tie it together, and then just wait for the day that the, you know, the veil breaks and these two players realize this.
So play Octopath Traveler. Those games have such an amazing soundtrack. They're so evocative. The music is...it should be studied in the lab. Each of the characters has their own unique theme, and those themes have a unique instrument that is that character's instrument. So when it is played in the score, that instrument follows them. It's sort of like in their little motif. And the battle music, whenever a battle begins, and we're in like that kind of battle cutscene where we're talking to the thing, we're about to fight, there's a theme that plays, that is sort of a chugging, repetitive loop, but it's sort of like that pre-battle amble, and it has the motifs of the characters' theme. It's unique to each of the characters.
So it's this like looping, like, for Cyrus Albright, right, his theme, you know, Cyrus the scholar, it is like a waltz, right? So it's like this three-step kind of pattern. Very like, fancy regent, right, the strings, and that sort of like three-step waltz is his pre-battle theme. And all of the pre-battle themes in the game perfectly transition into the battle music. They're seamless. There's no skip or like trait. The second you hit start, like you hit A and do the dialog option, the music will trail off, and then — I can't...I can describe it, but I cannot describe it until you hear it. But it perfectly transitions and bam, we're right into the main action theme. Even so, you might have not even noticed.
Jon de Nor: Wow.
Jenny: And this can be done with every single character's preamble battle theme, and it follows through into the second game. Like the second game only adds to this with more stuff. The soundtrack is the thing I praise the most, but also the way it sets up its characters is such a fun way to do your character in TTRPGs. I love that format a lot. They're a little grindy in the later sections. They are JRPGs, so be prepared. But they are so rewarding. I won't get into the mechanics, I've already talked a lot about what I like about Octopath Traveler, but the mechanics are so cool and so fun and engaging. So much so I want to do a Draw Steel/Octopath Traveler hack, but I'm already doing too many things, so don't let me do that. If you see me start talking about Octopath Traveler in the homebrewery server, shut me down. Stop. I got too much work to do.
Jon de Nor: Jenny, it has been a...it's been so much fun having you on, and both hearing about like, the decisions behind the design you've done, the stuff you've got coming up...I'm really looking forward to Across the Solar Expanse, the shit you're cooking with here, it's exactly my kind of...yeah. That's right up my alley.
Jenny: Yeah, I'm happy to hear it, it's been great. Thank you for having me on. I'm excited to keep making more stuff for this game. So I expect to be on here very soon. Again.
Jon de Nor: (laughter) Definitely.
Outro
Thank you so much for coming on Jenny. I'm not going to deny that I'm biased here. The stuff she makes is right up my alley and I think her designs are clever and easy to understand.
I want to thank Antan Karmola, Subharup Roy, and Ananam for submitting questions for Jenny.
If you want to be featured on Goblin Points, or know of someone else who should be, leave a comment on YouTube or Spotify, or send me an e-mail on tips@goblinpoints.com.
Links to everything, including this script can be found in the show notes, and on goblinpoints.com.
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Next episode is on the 25th. And speaking of prolific people in the community: I'm joined by Jonas Tintenseher! They've recently published College of Infinite Reflections shadow subclass, and they're in the credits of probably half the stuff I cover here on Goblin Points.
See you next time. Snakkes.