Intro
I'm joined by Aestus and SurfingBird, and we're talking Mythical Treasures. Imagine a weapon that not only grows in power the more you wield it, but it also brings your character on a personal journey of growth.
I'm Jon de Nor and this is Goblin Points.
Interview
Jon de Nor: Welcome to Goblin Points, Aestus and SurfingBird.
SurfingBird: Hey, Jon, lovely to be here.
Aestus: Hello, Jon. It's always a pleasure to talk to you. I am checking it off my bucket list. I finally got on a Goblin Points interview. I've been waiting for years to get an invite, so thank you. All I had to do was design something and then you would want to talk to me about it.
Jon de Nor: (laughter) We'll start with you, Aestus. Give us like a short introduction of who you are and also how you ended up in the Draw Steel community.
Aestus: Cool. Yeah. So to everyone listening, my name is Aestus. I have a YouTube channel, primarily, called AestusRPG. I used to be a pretty active interviewer of MCDM, back in the early access days, which I remember very fondly. I have interviews with Djordi, with James, with Dael. So yeah, you guys can go check those out.
Bbut I've really been trying to transition from doing interviews to doing design. And so I've got a I'll just say right now, if you go to my channel, what you'll see is I make periodical videos where I do in-depth analysis of each of the classes in the game, and if you watch those, I will update you on my current projects. And of course, we're going to talk about Mythic Treasures in this one. So yeah, that's me, Aestus.
How I got into the MCDM community. This is true — oh, I hear a lot of people say this, but I was a fan of Matt Colville back in 2016, and I know that I am because there was a video that he did that inspired me to make a D&D character, and I used the name of that D&D character and the year that I made it as one of my passwords for many of my accounts. So it's in my mind.
Jon de Nor: (laughter)
SurfingBird: You should not be saying that, what are you doing? (laughter)
Aestus: I don't use it anymore. I don't use it. Don't even try. Don't even try, everybody. But yes, I got into Matt's videos because I majored in history in undergrad, and I was really interested in the history of Dungeons and Dragons, and he used to do this really cool series that was called The History of D&D, One Fighter at a Time. And yeah, I just always followed him.
And when I heard he was making a tactical game — and by the way, at this time, my entire channel was dedicated to tactical computer RPGs, CRPGs — I just had to be a part of it. And I was watching from the sidelines. And when James started talking about the power roll, I was hooked. And I've been obsessed ever since.
Jon de Nor: And SurfingBird?
SurfingBird: Yes.
Jon de Nor: A reintroduction, maybe. And also how you ended up here in the community.
SurfingBird: Yeah, I'll make it shorter this time. I had a friend who I played a lot with, like online, and he introduced me to Draw Steel, and I really liked it as soon as I played it. And I've been like in the community about a year, maybe a bit more, so relatively new. And yeah, I really like the game, so I started designing for it.
In the past I was really into like making builds for 5e and stuff, and before that when I was a teen, D&D 3.5...and it looks like that passion kind of translated into designing stuff for me for Draw Steel, because I think there's something about the fact that there's not that much solo fun in just making builds for Draw Steel, at least for me, so that creativity gets channeled into creating stuff, which I found out is way more fun for me. So it's definitely like a new passion for me to design stuff.
So yeah, I designed a science class which is like this gish spellblade class, which we talked about last time. And then I discovered that I have an urge to design treasures for Draw Steel, which is how we got here.
Jon de Nor: Yes. And the reason why you're on this time, both of you, is because you're doing a product called Mythic Treasures, which features a lot of mythic treasures. So what's the what's the pitch for mythic treasures?
SurfingBird: Yeah, I hadn't practiced this, so this would be a good test to see if I can if I can improvise a pitch. Mythic treasures are narrative-driven treasures, which means they have an attached narrative arc to them. So you don't unlock the abilities only by getting to a certain level, you also have to fulfill certain beats, as we call them. Which was actually inspired by a review I watched of a game called Slugblaster on Quinns Quest. Different story, but it was inspired by that.
So they're narrative-driven treasures, but they're also more mechanically rich. So there are additional levels to them. So 3rd and 7th, you usually get heroic abilities as well. And additionally, because we gave them...basically, you can only have one mythic treasure. You can't have any other leveled treasures equipped. We also gave them a lot more power budget to play around with, so they're more powerful, which allows us to make the designs more intricate and to basically enable more complex and interactive gameplay patterns and tactical loops within the treasures. So they're both narrative, but they're also more gameplay-defining for the character that's wielding them. It really affects how you play your character is the intent.
Jon de Nor: You've been marketing it as, that it's almost like your second subclass.
SurfingBird: Yes, yeah.
Aestus: Yeah.
SurfingBird: I feel like that was maybe a bit of an unlock in my mind, and I think for Aestus as well, once we started thinking about mythic treasures as kind of like a second subclass, I think that gave us the leeway to do crazier shit, basically. Because once you look at it this way, you start thinking of like, "Okay, this isn't just a treasure, this is a whole fantasy that we're trying to evoke here." Just like a class is, right? So we have this whole fantasy we're trying to evoke, not just a piecemeal thing. And how do we evoke this fantasy to the best of our ability?
And that also gives us, like I said, the permission sort of to make this very gameplay-defining. And I think that's one of the coolest things about mythic treasures is like, you can kind of think of them sort of like a second subclass, sort of like multi-class, in that you can sort of mesh two fantasies together. So you have like the Censor fantasy, but then you have, let's say, Umbral Shroud, which is like the stealth item. So now you can sort of mesh those two together and you kind of get the fantasy of like an inquisitor.
Or maybe you have like a Conduit of one of the domains, like, of War. And you give it like the Prismacore Suit, which is like this Iron Man suit. And all of a sudden, I think you can kind of envision it, like, if you like 40K, kind of like a tech-priest, like the Omnissiah. Right? So there's so many, I think, creative combinations that really help create new fantasies once you combine these two things.
Aestus: Yeah. If I could add to that, the way I always like to talk about this is...I mean, this is kind of a "first principles" approach to treasures, and this is our own kind of attempt to build from first principles in the heroic fantasy genre. And we thought about literature. The examples I always give is like Thor from Marvel or Bilbo from The Hobbit. And if you imagine them in game terms, their treasures aren't just something that they found discarded, like Mjölnir for Thor is a big part of what he does, both in terms of combat, but also his narrative identity as a character.
And so for me, the goal for mythic treasures was to make both mechanically and narratively defining treasures where you feel like it really is a part of your character. And when you pick these treasures, you are opting in to something both mechanically and narratively. Yeah, so, the reason we restrict to just one is because we need the power budget, but also kind of the narrative room in these treasures that if you started mixing them, it would water down the concept, right?
Yeah, because we wanted the package to be...yeah, I don't know how to say it other than just identity-defining. If you pick one of these, you're going to be different than your typical Fury and your typical Conduit. It really will make you different, the way you play it, and the way you conceive of your character.
Jon de Nor: It's interesting because it feels almost a bit like the same, or the mechanical, or rather the fantasy part almost sounds a bit like kits where the kits are like, okay, this is the Duel Wielder because they got two blades and dual wield, or like the Cloak and Dagger, which is, you immediately imagine the sneaky character with the blade stabbing people in the back. But mythic treasures almost sound like, "Okay, what if we took the narrative idea of kits, but then added more mechanical stuff onto it, and also a story arc?" (laughter)
Because I've been looking at some of these treasures — you sent me a preview, which I very much appreciated — and I got to scroll through and look at some of these. And these story arcs, very much look like...they have like multiple beats, that it feels like you're supposed to hit them at different levels over the career of a hero, and it feels like they become an essential part of, like, who the character is or who the hero is more than just...like, there's always the backstory, like, "Oh, this was my father's sword, and he got this from his father. We've had it for generations." But these mythic treasures, it feels also like, "Yeah, it was my father's sword. But also, there's a whole, like, arc that I have to go through to be able to unlock all the secrets."
Aestus: Yeah, hopefully you can link the preview in the description, because one of the best ways to see what we're talking about here is just to look at...yeah, just to look at our preview designs. And you can kind of see what we're talking about. But yeah, again, I'll just bring up Mjölnir and Thor, right? The fact that Mjölnir can only be carried by the worthy, that is something we wanted in these treasures, that it's not just mechanical, it is also narrative.
And we think in a heroic fantasy, part of what defines narratively a hero is a kind of journey that is centered around virtue. Yeah, the arcs are supposed to represent that as best as we can, and it is kind of a kit design in the sense that what I love about kits in Draw Steel is they are generalized design. They're very abstract design, and then you fill it in with your own imagination. And we wanted to get that in the arcs. We give you suggestions for a kind of journey that a hero can take whenever they pick this treasure. And we want it to be inspirational for something in the player and the Director. It inspires ideas in their head, but ultimately it is kind of generalized design and that they have to fill in what the specifics of those arcs and those story beats are.
SurfingBird: Yeah. And I'll also say, I think for me as a player, in my experience of playing like RPGs, I think I always found it a bit hard to kind of think up a character arc, like a narrative arc for my character, and it wasn't something that I always like discussed with my Directors, right? And I think having this tool and having people already think about it for you makes it easier, I think, both for the Director and the player.
And that's also part of what we want to do here, is make it easier to have these arcs on your characters. And I just thought, I mean, this is something I thought I wanted to make for Draw Steel anyway, right? I was like, man, I want a beat system for characters. And then, kind of, it just clicked for me that, oh, what if I just combine like, I want to make better treasures, or at least treasures that fit better to my tastes. But I also want to do this, and then I just had this eureka moment of like, wy not do both at the same time? And I think it makes total sense for a heroic game to have those two ideas kind of coalesce together.
Jon de Nor: I kept thinking when going through this, because I was introducing some new players to Draw Steel recently, and one of them mentioned that the name and the story text of abilities helped them better imagine and describe what was happening during combat, because it was already kind of giving them an indication of what it looks like. And that sparked enough to kind of let them imagine it much easier. And I kind of got the same vibe with the story beats, where they look to be just enough that it kind of gets the spark going.
You're not necessarily — as you mentioned, Ben, I'm also a person that doesn't really...I struggl with making an arc, but when I read these, they were like, "Oh, yeah, I see where I'm going for my next beat," which helps me...it made me immediately imagine how that could happen.
SurfingBird: Yeah, that is very intentional that we kept these things. That is a design decision very early on that we had, of, we wanted to keep the beats, kind of like in the middle of like, we don't want to make them too specific, but we don't want to make it too vague. We wanted to have just enough guidance so that you feel like you have a direction, but you also have your say of how you make them happen and you fill in the gaps.
Aestus: Yeah, that's part of designing in TTRPgs that I get really excited about, is I feel that I am collaborating with the Director that buys the product, and I can make suggestions to him — to them — and it's their job to take those suggestions and really create a story and a world out of them. And yeah, it gets me really excited.
I mean, just to give an example, one of my favorite treasures that we've designed, just personally, is actually one of Ben's designs. It's called Monstrous Mutagen. And so this is a...it's a treasure that kind of fits into this archetype of like Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, but also like the Hulk, where you have a kind of dark passenger inside of you, and it comes out in times to save your life. But it is not a pretty thing when it reveals itself, right? Actually, Venom is a good example of this as well. There's a lot of, I think, examples in literature.
And so this monster emerges whenever you're dying, and it kind of takes over your body. And it's a polymorph treasure, it's like a transformation treasure. But then narratively, what this means is that you have to find a way of coping with that you have this monster inside of you. Like, how are you going to deal with that? Are you going to accept it? Are you going to reject it? Are you going to try to dominate it? Or does it dominate you? And our beats try to map out a story arc in those themes that allows you to answer those questions and make your own story out of it.
Jon de Nor: It's interesting you mentioned that specifically, because to some degree, it reminds me of the Elemental Inside complication, which was another kind of reference I felt when I read through the mythic treasures that they fee kind of like a combination between a kit and a complication, almost. (laughter) But that kind of also leads into the fact that some of these are basically almost like cursed weapons, which is something that isn't really featured in the core rules because of different design decisions. And I kind of applaud MCDM for kind of steering away from some of the more...interesting stuff that's come up in TTRPGs over the years. But I feel like third-party supplements, it's a perfect place to have more...I'm not going to call it questionable, that's bad. (laughter)
SurfingBird: Sinister, sinister, yeah.
Jon de Nor: Yes, exactly. More sinister-themed items or whatever it might be. Was there something that inspired you to include cursed items, basically, is what I call them? I'm not sure if you call them that.
SurfingBird: So yeah, so Monstrous Mutagen is cursed. It's like the keyword that we use, and it basically just says, you need to use the Find a Cure project if you want to get rid of it. And come to think of it, maybe Soul Eater should be that too. But it's currently the only cursed treasure. And the idea for me, well, it's twofold. One, I'm kind of like a closeted edgelord, and I really like...(laughter)
Jon de Nor: (laughter)
Aestus: (laughter)
SurfingBird: I really like edgy stuff, I can't lie. So there's a lot of like, more...yeah, it's not most of the treasures, but there's a good amount. And I think most of them are probably mine that are kind of more sinister and edgy. So that's one thing. I just think those types of things are cool.
But I also think they are iconic, right? I mean, like green, like the Hulk, or Venom, or Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. You can probably find a dozen other examples. Or, let's say Soul Eater. It's like a demon blade. It's kind of like a pact blade, and you have this demon who's sort of like a patron in a way, and you have to feed it souls if you want to use its powers and you want to progress. Like the beats actually require you to consume souls of things that you kill.
And that's intentionally morally fraught. And it brings to mind the narrative of like, okay, is it okay to do more questionable things, as you say, if it's for the purpose of good, because ultimately you are a hero? And is it okay to consume the souls of, like, these monsters that you're killing if it means you can be stronger and help the innocent? And I think those things are, to me, part and parcel of heroic narratives as well. It's not just, let me be a good person and kind of like a goody two-shoes. I think part of being heroic, in many media and literature, is kind of grappling with the darkness within, and and conquering it, and taming it. And I think those are just some of our treasures. But I feel like there's nothing that makes them not heroic. I think it's a totally natural fit.
Aestus: I think it's kind of natural when you're imagining a narrative arc for a hero, that there is a kind of vice that they fight against. It creates a kind of antagonist and internal moral antagonist within your character. And so there is something kind of natural where a lot of our treasures veer into that design space, because it's just a really fascinating design space to think about.
I think it's something that we're interested in. I remember in one of our design discussions, we were talking about this idea of...is survival selfish when the world depends on you, when you're a hero, right? Like, I mean, this is something...I'm fascinated by this idea. This is something I feel like I encounter in real life where, let's just say...I don't want to, like, doxx myself or anything, but I'll just say there's a time of my life when I was a little more independent, and now I'm in a time of my life where there are people that depend on me.
And when people depend on you, things that before might have seemed selfish, like getting a job that pays well, they stop seeming selfish, right? Because a job that pays well, it means something for other people, right? Similarly, when you're a hero, if...that's a really fascinating temptation to us, is when you're a hero, the...grabbing power might not be selfish. Or is it? And that's the sort of question that you get to wrestle with if you buy Mythic treasures and pick the very cool Soul Eater. Yeah.
Jon de Nor: (laughter) I was about to say, isn't that basically every other villain arc? I grabbed power because I'm the good one?
Aestus: Mhm. Yeah. And there are treasures that we've designed that are a little more good-coded, and there are treasures that we've designed that are, at least we aimed for, humorous, right? You know, have a little bit of humor in some of them as well. But definitely I think in this product, just that's where our headspace was at, is we were really interested in the kind of contrast of virtue and vice. Yeah.
SurfingBird: I will say, though, just for the record, I don't think most of our treasures explicitly have a sinister power source. Most of them, I would say, are probably either like neutral or good. But even in the good ones I think you'll find some grey areas. So we have like Saint's Scepter. And I should actually let Aestus talk about this one because he designed it.
Aestus: Yeah, I'm really proud of this one. Saint's Scepter is a kind of Conduit item, where you have a scepter of Saint Elowen the Innocent, who is a kind of saint of justice, and people who are falsely accused, and bringing justice to the world. And the sort of narrative themes of the treasure play on the idea of maybe the contrast between justice and mercy.
And Elowen's definitely on the justice side of things. And the treasure is about, you build up a resource called veneration when you knock enemies prone, causing them to kneel before your saint. And it's maybe...it's definitely like a holy treasure, but it is not...I didn't intend for it to be a naively nice treasure, let's say. You can decide for yourself whether it's good or not, but it's definitely not nice. If it's good, it's maybe a harsh side of good.
Jon de Nor: That kind of leads into some of the mechanical parts of the treasure, because the narrative beats, I really believe, is a fantastic addition to these complex weapons. But they also have, as you mentioned, a bigger power budget than the treasures you usually find in the core rules. You listed some of the design principles in the document that I got to see when I scrolled all the way to the bottom, tucked away. (laughter)
SurfingBird: You shouldn't have seen that. (laughter) We've been putting some stupid stuff there, I don't know.
Aestus: I actually just sent him a copy of our internal document. I didn't do an audit to make sure it was all clean. But I trust you, John. I trust you to keep our secrets.
Jon de Nor: Sure. We'll figure it out after. (laughter) But I read through the design principles, which I found really interesting. And one bullet point in the principles that I found interesting...you mentioned that effects are cooler than bonuses. Can you expand on that or elaborate a bit?
SurfingBird: I think fundamentally, what makes tactical games interesting and fun is making decisions, right? If you're not making decisions, it's not tactical, I think, by definition. So ultimately, when Aestus and I try to design a treasure, even if it does damage like straightforwardly, it just does damage, it has to be kind of like in a roundabout way. Or it just doesn't do damage at all, maybe just effects. Because we want these treasures to enrich the tactical space, to thicken the decision tree that you're faced with as a player. And we think that effects are more interesting than...like if we go to the total other end of the spectrum, like, +1 to damage, right? We have that as well, because it's like kind of part and parcel of leveled treasures.
But that type of thing, like, on a tier 3, you do extra damage, to us...it's not creating any decisions, right? At most it's like you're going to try maybe a little bit harder to get a double edge, right? But it's not really enriching your decision space. It's not really making you consider alternative paths or lines of what you're going to do.
So to us, effects, which are often, you know, they have more words than "deal damage". They change the decision space of your enemies, or they open up decision space for you or your allies. Those are things that are more interesting. And I think that's part of why, in Draw Steel, in the actual game, you almost have no abilities that just do damage, which I really love about Draw Steel.
Like all of, even like, simple abilities are all almost always like damage plus some kind of condition. And I think a lot of people's favorite abilities would probably be things that are even more wacky that probably have more text than usual. But they also do interesting things. So that was definitely a guiding principle, which is a part of, you could say, our guiding principle of, these treasures have to be tactical. We're trying as much as possible not to have that sort of design space of when you attack, you do extra damage, or when you attack, on a tier three, you do a condition...like, those things, they can be powerful, but I don't find them to be tactically interesting. That was something we tried really to steer into of like tactics and deepening them.
Aestus: Yeah, the way I think of it is actually Colvillian language. I think of...he uses this term, action-oriented design. And I like to contrast that with just, you know, flat statistical design. We're definitely aiming for action-oriented design. And I will say, I thought I had a pretty high standard, but working with Ben, Ben really has a gift for understanding tactical choices and design. And he pushes me over and over to reiterate items that I'm drafting, to really examine them from the perspective of a player making tactical choices. And yeah, I am expecting that to be a strength of our product.
Jon de Nor: You do mention in the text that you make a distinction between combat trinkets and utility trinkets, which is something the core rules does not do. And you mentioned that specifically too, that you're introducing a distinction here. Can you explain a bit what the intention behind that is?
SurfingBird: In the books — and I'll preface this by saying, I'm like obsessed with like balance — so maybe this is like just a me thing. But the book doesn't delineate between trinkets that are mostly for utility and mostly for combat. And that can create, in theory, a situation when one character has a bunch of utility trinkets and another character has a bunch of combat trinkets, and the latter character would have more combat power.
And it feels like, in play, to me, that utility trinkets are the party's treasure, whereas a combat trinket is your treasure. Because utility trinkets, you know, anyone can use them. Anyone can give ideas on how to use them. There's usually, you know, maybe you're the one using them, but everyone is pitching in and they're helping the whole party get through an obstacle. And with a combat trinket, it feels more personal. It's more yours. At least that's how I feel. And I think Aestus does too.
Aestus: Yeah.
SurfingBird: So yeah. So that was something we wanted to delineate because we think utility trinkets should not be under the same recommendations and limitations of trinkets. Like, the book basically recommends each character gets one trinket per echelon. We think that rule or guideline should be, each character gets one combat trinket per echelon. Because utility trinket, you can give out as much as you can, like candy, and it's probably, you're not going to break anything really. Like out-of-combat stuff, it's not like this strict mathematical balance, right? I mean, these utility trinkets aren't even mathematical in their essence.
Whereas for combat trinkets, they are, and you don't want to overdo them. So we wanted to create that distinction. And we also wanted to create that distinction because we mostly want to do combat trinkets for this product. We're doing some utility trinkets, we're trying to like cover some fantasies that are expected, I think, in D&D-adjacent games. Like we have this one that lets you like kind of grow trees out of the ground, which I love. And we're also, by the way, having...you just had Jenny [REDACTED] on your podcast, and she's actually designing a bunch of tickets for us.
Aestus: Yeah, she's a great designer.
SurfingBird: Yeah, I really love her works. So she was like working on her own, like kind of trinkets thing, and I was like, "Can I just buy these from you?" (laughter) And she was like, yeah, sure. So we're commissioning her for a bunch of trinkets too.
So yeah, anyway, we also want to do a bunch of combat trinkets rtly because these mythic treasures are kind of...you can't have more than one, right? And I think something that people probably, a lot of people like about leveled treasures is you can mix and match them. You kind of like that feeling of being geared all the way of like, I'm like, equipped to the gills, like a bunch of, like, I have magic armor and I have a magic weapon.
And here with mythic treasures, you might only have one of those, you might only have one mythic weapon, but you don't have a cool armor because the combat trinkets in the base game, they're not armors, they're not weapons, and they're not implements, they're other stuff. And we thought this would be a good opportunity to introduce trinkets that are armors and weapons and implements to kind of fill in the gap that's being left by you only being able to have one mythic treasure, one leveled treasure. And also we just think they're cool. They're a cool idea to have trinkets that aren't just things that, I guess, aren't weapons.
Aestus: I think the mix-and-match fun of combining this treasure with that is so core to any kind of reward system that we knew we had to support that type of fun. Even though your mythic treasure takes up all of your leveled treasure power budget. You only get one of them. And like I said, the reason why you can only get one mythic treasure is because that is what's necessary to capture this concept of a truly character=defining treasure.
But you know, just like Bilbo in The Hobbit, the ring of invisibility really defines what he can do, right? Like it's the main thing that makes him a burglar is that he has this ring, but he also has Sting. And in our version, our vision for treasures and Draw Steel, Sting would be a combat trinket, and that ring would be his mythic treasure. And when we did an audit of the trinkets in Draw Steel's Heroes book, we just realized that they weren't sufficient to get that, either the narrative aspect that you want, because sometimes you want a sword or armor, and they weren't sufficient to synergize with our mythic treasures to create that mix-and-match fun. So we just, we kind of knew we had to design our own trinkets.
But if I can say a little bit about utility trinkets as well, and about how they belong to the party, this is just an experience that I've had running a lot of tabletop RPGs, like the bag of holding that you get isn't just used by one player, right? The portable hole isn't. The hither-thither staff from Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves movie. Everyone uses that. Maybe one of the players operates it, but everyone uses it in their plans on how to do the heist.
Also, I find, with utility treasures, you can give it a humorous element, which is really important to a game. I stole this from like a YouTube short. I wish I could remember the creator so I could credit them, but it was a bagpipes of invisibility, where when you're playing the bagpipes, you're invisible. Everyone can hear you, but you're invisible. I gave that to my players. They loved it. It was hilarious. It would create hilarious moments. But you don't want that taking up someone's power budget to make their character tactically fun, right? So we had to separate them.
SurfingBird: I will also say we're going to have at least a hundred trinkets. It's called Mythic Treasures, but it's also going to have a shit-ton of of trinkets just because, yeah, we think they're fun and they're kind of way more easy to produce than mythic treasures. Designing mythic treasures is very hard. It takes a lot of effort just to get a first draft out. And then me and Aestus argue about it and how to improve it. And then we playtest it and then we argue some more. And it's because we're trying to craft as a very bespoke tactical experience and our standards are very high...it's a lot of work, and it's a lot of revisions and debating.
And yeah, I feel like me and Aestus, we have similar design principles, but we also differ in some places. And that actually very much improves the product because, I mean, I really believe that like debate enriches, right? By debating something and arguing about it, we expose each other's kind of, like, weak points, and we help refine what our thoughts are. Even if we don't disagree, ultimately, by arguing, we're refining what we think about a topic. And I think the disagreements between me and Aestus are really helping make both the treasures better and us, their designers.
Jon de Nor: That actually touches upon one thing that I found in the design notes, because in the trinkets design philosophy, one of the points is, "Ask: why is this a coat?" And it explains...and I want you to elaborate on that, but there's a comment here that says, "Note: this is something Aestus cares about mostly, so if you have questions, ask him." (laughter)
Aestus: Yeah, yeah. That was notes for our very talented partner Jenny on just sort of general designs that we have for the trinkets. Yeah, this is a hang-up that's maybe just me, and I was learning this. How do I explain that idea? How do I explain "Why is it a coat?"
SurfingBird: Give the example. Just give the direct example of how that came about.
Aestus: Yeah. I think she pitched a really cool trinket. I was a utility trinket. I believe it was called Coat of the Treasure-Hunter. So it's a coat where you wear it, and it helps you identify where treasures are. And yeah, it kind of pinpoints them on like an X on a map kind of thing. And then you go seek them out or something like that. I hope I'm doing it justice, it's been a while since I wrote that comment.
But to me the effect did not match that it was a coat. To me that had to be glasses, or something like that, right? Yeah, if you are making a magic set of bracers, then it has to do something that reflects the fact that it's bracers. And so how do I communicate that to our designers, as few words as possible? I just wrote, "Why is it a coat?" But yes, Ben and I disagreed on that direction. And in the end, he graciously allowed me to include my little hang-up there because it was something that was important to me, but is maybe not important to everybody.
Jon de Nor: I find it an interesting comment and I want to hear your thoughts behind it, where just, it's the last point in the design principles, which is "steal stuff from D&D."
SurfingBird: (laughter) Yeah, that was mostly about trinkets, because I think there are a lot of very iconic magic items in D&D, and I have no qualms about stealing them. I think, you know, there are certain things that are just iconic, and I think people will love to see. Yeah, that's it. I just think if there are cool designs out there, why not steal them?
Aestus: Yeah. And I will say, Ben's in really good company here because I had a really insightful interview with James Introcaso in the early days of Draw Steel, where we were talking about reward design and loot design. And one thing that he mentioned to me in that was that if you're making a game in this tradition, you have to have a bag of holding. And you don't have to call it a bag of holding, but you have to have it. And there's some things that are just iconic. And I think vanilla Draw Steel covers a lot of those really well, but we also wanted to do our best to give our take on those classics, yeah.
SurfingBird: Things that just weren't covered by the core book, which we think are still iconic and worth including. And, you know, it's worth mentioning. I mean, the base book of Draw Steel doesn't have that many trinkets. So I think we have a lot of design space yo play around with, both with utility trinkets and combat trinkets.
Jon de Nor: With the power that comes with these treasures...(laughter) I was about to say, there also comes great responsibility.
Aestus: Great responsibility.
SurfingBird: It does, yeah. (laughter)
Jon de Nor: (laughter)
Aestus: Just say it. That should be in our design principles.
SurfingBird: Yeah.
Jon de Nor: (laughter) With the power that comes with these treasures...I...my, not necessarily immediate thought, but my immediate thought as a Director is, "How is this going to affect balance? How is this going to affect the combat math that, in Draw Steel, actually kind of works?"
Aestus: That's a great question.
Jon de Nor: So what are your thoughts around that?
Aestus: Ben has thought about this a lot. Go for it, Ben.
SurfingBird: Yeah I thought about this a lot. And you know, as we said, one of the things that we had to do was we had to give these a bigger power budget than the core treasures, because we otherwise could not make these ideas come true. To really instantiate a certain fantasy, and to have enough mechanics to deepen the tactical experience, we just need more power budget to play around with.
And I thought about how these will be balanced against leveled treasures. And I ultimately came to the conclusion of I wanted them to have the roughly the same power as two leveled treasures. So that's like the benchmark for me. And I think for the most part, we're succeeding and we're playtesting things to match that benchmark. I think early on, they're probably...like until level 5, they're probably a bit stronger than two leveled treasures, but not in a way that skews encounter balance, from our testing, at least. And at 5th level, it just balances out. And actually at 9th, they're probably weaker than two leveled treasures.
And this actually touches upon how me and Aestus also perceive how treasures should act. We want them to be a big boost when you get them, to be really impactful. And we want to put all the coolest stuff early on. And we really, really wanted them, the full fantasy and the full tactical loop, so to speak, to be present from the get-go. We don't...like, for a lot of treasures in vanilla, it kind of feels like they don't do much at level 1. It's kind of ignorable, I would say. It's like a nice little bonus, it sometimes comes up, but it's very minor. Which makes sense, because they have the power budget of one treasure, right?
But because we have the power budget of two, we could do way bigger things. And we really wanted to make sure at level 1, you already have this kind of complete fantasy and a complete tactical loop. That was something that was very important to us. I think that was something that we kind of debated early on, and we had like, on first drafts, some of our first drafts had a big part of the tactical loop come in at level 5, and I argued hard, and I argued very much in favor of like pushing those features level 1 and just balancing it so it fits.
So yeah, ultimately we also include like recommendations in the book of like, if you're giving...if you're having a party that's mixed and some of them have mythic treasures, some of them have leveled treasures, you're going to want to make sure that by level 3, the character with leveled treasures already has two, because level 3 is also like a bit of a power bump for the mythic treasure as well.
And we're also making sure like the math is bound. So, you know, even though you're having all these extra effects, ultimately, like mathematically, you're not necessarily doing a whole lot more damage even though you're doing all these cool stuff. But yeah, I mean, I think from our testing at least, and this is what we're aiming for, it doesn't skew the balance in a very noticeable way. That's what we're aiming for.
Aestus: Yeah. And I will say it doesn't surprise me that you asked for this, Jon, because when you look at our treasures, and hopefully our viewers are looking at the preview that we can provide, I hope it's linked in the description. One of the first things you'll notice is that there's two whole extra levels in here, that you're getting stuff, right? At 3rd and 7th, you're just getting more stuff than if you did leveled treasures in...
SurfingBird: Usually heroics, at those levels.
Aestus: Yeah, but that's the deceptive part of the balancing, is that those extra levels that we're giving you are typically heroic abilities. And the thing about heroic abilities is they aren't an additive, like, they don't add to your power. What they add is options, right? So you can choose to spend your 5 HR on this ability, or you can choose to spend it on another. And if we balance our abilities so that they aren't more powerful than a similar-costing ability that's from your class, then you get a small power boost, but just because you have more flexibility in which ability that you choose.
But when you're just looking at it on the page, it seems like it's so much more powerful that I can do this now. But you can either do it, or one of your class abilities. And we are really, really obsessed, I will say, of not overshadowing what your class can do, because we still believe that is so important to the identity of your character as your class.
And then, yeah, the other kind of deceptive balancing thing is that, if you are using the treasure system in the Heroes book, you can have — I mean, it's recommended that you have two leveled treasures, but you can have up to three, right? I think it's, after you get over three, then there's that kind of thing that will happen.
SurfingBird: They wrest for control.
Jon de Nor: Yeah, yeah.
Aestus: Yeah, yeah. And I mean, if you're running three leveled treasures out of the Heroes book, you're probably going to be more powerful than someone that just gets one of our mythic treasures. And yeah, ultimately, that's our job. We have to make sure that you can run these. You can follow the encounter rules that Willy made in the Monsters book that are awesome, and still mostly craft balanced encounters with our treasures. So far in our playtests, that's been working out. I mean, we did just do a big overhaul where we had to push a lot of the early game power balance in our treasures towards the mid-game a little bit more, because of playtest feedback.
SurfingBird: Yeah, mostly like the numerical stuff. That's like the important thing. Like we had, let's say, Monstrous Mutagen and it made you do more damage, but at level 1, that can be a lot of damage. Like you have a +2 to melee damage, right? Pushing that to level 3 felt necessary because monster Stamina is so low at those levels that that +2 makes a lot of difference. But when you push it to level 3, all of a sudden, it's not that big a deal.
So it was mostly about pushing power, numerical power from level 1 to 3. And that's like a big thing you have to be attentive to, is, you need to not give too much numerical strength. And often if you give effects, as we said, that's both more interesting, but can also be more balanced than just giving extra damage. Because even if you get all these extra effects, ultimately the game is about reducing the monsters' Stamina before they reduce yours, and doing it as quickly as possible. And that is the ultimate win condition for most combats. You just want to kill the monsters, and as long as we don't supercharge like your crowd control abilities and let you totally disable monsters, and we don't give you too much strong numerical power, it's actually quite hard to break the balance of the game just because of how the scaling in it is built, which is to say, it's very well-built.
Aestus: So my recommendation to readers is when you look at our preview, you're going to get the impression that these are probably more powerful than they are. You should try it once, before you write it off. And that's why we made a preview. Give it a shot, and I think you'll see that we put a lot of thought into the balance.
Jon de Nor: We are closing in on the hour already, and I always ask my guests to bring some kind of recommendation that they want the listeners to either be aware of or check out. So I hope you've brought some good recommendations. We'll start with Aestus. What have you brought?
Aestus: This was hard for me because I feel like I only like things that other people find boring.
Jon de Nor: (laughter)
SurfingBird: (laughter)
Aestus: Anyways, I settled on a movie that your viewers have probably watched before, but I just want to draw their attention to it again. And it's the 1980s Conan the Barbarian starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. I just love this movie, and I've been thinking about a lot because it so it asked this question about the Riddle of Steel, which, as far as I could figure, is about what makes steel trustworthy, right? What gives steel its strength?
And there's a kind of progression in this movie about, the strength of steel is in the steel itself. But then the sword breaks and he progresses into the strength of steel being the muscle that wields it, and the skill of the person who wields the sword. And that's ultimately proven wrong. And then this movie ends with him thinking, and I think the answer that Conan comes to, is the strength of the steel is in the will, right? It's in the will to persevere. That's what made him powerful.
And yeah, I've been thinking about that in terms of design is how often in this project and others, where does talent come from? And it doesn't come from what you think. It comes in the will to write something bad and constantly iterate. And if you just persevere, you can polish something into a good product. I've just been thinking about it, and I always like to encourage designers, so that's hopefully a little bit of encouragement for you guys.
Jon de Nor: Wow, that...
SurfingBird: Man. I cannot beat that. I'm gonna sound so fucking stupid.
Jon de Nor: (laughter)
Aestus: You can move mine to the end, just edit it and move mine to the end.
SurfingBird: (laughter) Yeah, I mean mine is pretty banal, and it's also kind of cheating because I'm going to recommend something that I created. I'm going to recommend people to check out the Brewery. It's this server, it has like 700-something people, and it's turned out so much better than I expected. I could not expect it to flourish the way it did. We have so many amazing designers. We have so many people providing feedback to each other and refining their designs together, and so many playtests firing off every week with people, playtesting each other's stuff, giving very detailed feedback. And it's such a fertile ground, I feel, for Draw Steel design. And I'm just floored by it every time I stop to think about it, how incredible it grew.
And yeah, I think anyone who's interested in designing for Draw STeel should really check it out. And I'm not even, I'm not taking credit for it, to be clear. I think it's kind of like...it just happened, you know? We just have so many amazing designers, and it just happened that the community became as amazing as it is. And yeah, I just think it's, you know, it grew past what I imagined or what I even maybe intended. And it's just become like kind of its own thing. And yeah, I'm really happy that it exists. and I encourage people to check it out.
Jon de Nor: The Brewery has been really impressive. As someone who joined fairly recently, or at least I think so, it's really impressive how much activity there is, both in general, but also the amount of playtests really impressive. And it shows how much people care about making the stuff that they make good.
SurfingBird: Yes, for sure. I remember like at the beginning it was like just only me. I was coordinating a playtest every Saturday and then like bit by bit, people that weren't me were starting to coordinate playtests, to the point where now, you know, my playtests are a drop in the ocean, right? There's so many playtests going on, and it's great to see.
Aestus: So, Jon, we might be out of time for this, but there was a question I wanted to ask you. Is that all right?
Jon de Nor: Oh, okay, yeah. Go ahead.
Aestus: When you looked over our drafts so far, did you have a favorite? Did one stand out?
Jon de Nor: Ooh. I mean, this is this is a bit of a basic bitch answer. But I'm a sucker for Mjölnir. (laughter)
Aestus: Yeah, yeah, totally. Ben crushed it with that one. There were early drafts of that where I felt like, we're missing something, but I didn't say anything, and I let Ben work on it, and he crushed it with that. Yeah, you should explain it, Ben.
SurfingBird: Yeah, well, at the beginning, I was like, okay, Mjölnir. Thor flies with it, and he slams people around. Okay, I'll slap some flying on it, and kind of like, a take on like the Thundering imbuement, which lets you push people when you hit them. It was alright. But it's kind of emblematic of, you know, we said maybe we can get a bit a bit spicy or candid. It's kind of emblematic of what I don't really love about some of the treasures in the base book, is that, they give you some effects, which are good, but they're not necessarily interesting to play around with.
And so that was like my first draft of it, which in hindsight, I don't really like. And then I, you know, I applied our principles to it, which are, the treasures have to invoke tactical decisions, and they have to be interactive. And I ultimately went with a mechanic that I really like, of like, when you hit someone with this hammer, they become primed with electrical energy. And then when you next hit them — or not necessarily you, someone hits them — they discharge with a burst of damage, like a burst 1 around them.
You can set up like chain reactions this way, right? So you could prime a bunch of people, and then cause them to discharge, and they go and like, and this chain reaction of like all of them detonating. And yeah, I feel like that is, you know, that is an example of like how we wanted to make these designs interactive, right? Because now you're kind of thinking, "How do I set this up? Do I manipulate, do I use forced movement? Maybe my allies have forced movement. How do we bunch these monsters together? How do I hit the most people with this treasure so I prime the most people, and how do I set them up for chain reactions?"
And then after a playtest, a playtester told me — this is Jacons, the designer of the Knight — "I want some way to move people off-turn when they explode, because sometimes it's not that easy to set up these chain reactions." So I added this free triggered action that costs 1 HR. When someone explodes, you can kind of slide them a bit, so you can get them closer to other creatures before they detonate. And that also kind of like unlocked a very important piece of the design there.
So yeah, I mean, that is kind of emblematic of what we're doing, I think. We're trying to create really interesting choices and tactical considerations and how those things can hook into the existing character options in Draw Steel. Which is something we haven't talked about, but we really want these treasures to be something you can build around. So, you know, you have this treasure and now it makes you ask questions, okay, how do I build some forced movement into this build, for instance?
Maybe think, you know, whatever lets me group people together, maybe pull them together, maybe my teammates, maybe now they want to pick up more forced movement abilities, and so on and so forth. And this is kind of something we were very attentive to with all of our treasures is, how do we create these sort of hooks for your actual class build to interact with and to hook into these mechanical effects? And how do you kind of use that synergy to synthesize something that is greater than the sum of its parts by combining these elements?
Aestus: I got to say, when I sent you the draft document, I thought I should highlight one of these that I think Jon in particular would like. And as I looked over the list, I thought, you know, I don't know you that well as a player, but from the playtest we had, I thought, I don't know if we've designed like a really good Jon de Nor item.
Jon de Nor: (laughter)
Aestus: Which, to my mind...like when I think, when I play with you, you like to play time raider Talents, like, you like that timescape setting. And so correct me if I'm wrong about any of these assumptions, but I also felt like you like to play...like in the goblin playtest that we did, you like to play kind of larger-than-life characters, and you like to do the voices.
Jon de Nor: (laughter) Yes!
Aestus: And then you're also like a Doctor Who guy, I mean, from your background. This is probably — is this audio-only? People can't see your background?
Jon de Nor: Yeah, yeah.
Aestus: Well, he's he's in the TARDIS, guys. Right now, he is filming from the TARDIS. And so I, you know, you like that kind of timey-wimey mystery. And I was thinking about it last night. I might need to...I have one item left, and I was trying to brainstorm, like, could I do a John de Nor item that fits this? And this doesn't need to be in the video, but I had this pitch. I literally thought of this last night. I tried something similar to this with a friend of mine, but it didn't take for him.
But, so here's the idea. I called the treasure Enigma for now. And you can kind of imagine like a scene with it, where, okay, so you're playing your time raider Talent. It's an early hero adventure, and your first kind of nemesis is like a cult of goblins, because you're Goblin Points. And they follow this insane goblin prophet who they call the Jack of Clubs. And it culminates, around the time that you hit level 2, you beat them. And so the Jack of Clubs is down, but he's not dead. And he's just kind of, he's like laughing, and he's he's babbling about how he's seen it, like he can't die, he lives forever, he'll never die, you can't kill him.
And then your character, like an instinct, like the same way a cat learns how to pounce, you lock eyes with him, and his shrieks of laughter become shrieks of pain. And like you slurp up his psyche into your own mind. And now you have the Jack of Clubs in your own character's head, okay? And this is something that keeps happening to you. You keep absorbing people's egos into your own head, and then you can act them. You can act them if you want, right? Like this is, it's just something for a character actor like you to dig into, you can do the voices.
But mechanically I thought like, "Oh, this should be about stealing monsters' abilities. Like, maybe you could even use Malice to fuel some ability..." I'm just brainstorming at this point, but how did I do, Jon? Did I capture what you like to see as a character, or am I way off?
Jon de Nor: That actually sounds really fun. That's the most insane part is when I played with Willy for the complications thing, the complication I ended up with — I don't remember the name now, but the concept was that I was a product of Ajax's Body Banks, and when you pick the complication, you get to freely pick ancestry traits from all ancestries, because you're a patchwork of different ancestries. That's kind of like the fantasy, so you just get to freely pick between them to create one new amalgam of ancestries.
And when we played, an idea struck me that at different times the different ancestries impact the personality and the way the character speaks, with different levels of control. So my idea was that almost every time that I spoke, I changed my voice because it was a different part of the collective speaking. (laughter)
Aestus: Right, yeah. That's awesome.
Aestus: No, I — that's an idea I really like. I like this thought that a Director, or like a GM, they put so much time into their NPC's, right? Or the villains that you face. And, you know, they're going to give them a voice, and they're going to give them manners of speaking, and they're going to give them a personality. Well, what if you could hand that off to one of your players, and then they get to be that guy after they defeat him? And yeah, and I thought it could be centered around like, a narrative of mystery. That's why I called it Enigma. You're trying to figure out like, why is this happening to me? And I have some theories about why it's happening, but I don't know. Ben's going to veto, Ben might veto this later, but I'm kind of psyched about this.
Jon de Nor: (laughter)
SurfingBird: I already have so many objections. (laughter) As I often do.
Aestus: Yeah, this is how we work.
Jon de Nor: (laughter)
Aestus: This is how we work, yeah, yeah. But, so, it probably won't make it into the book. But yeah, it would be cool if it could. Yeah.
SurfingBird: We'll see. I do have one more thing I wanted to say, which we haven't touched upon, is a lot — the mythic treasures, somewhat uniquely, they don't have a specific subtype, like a weapon, that can only be used by that specific kit. Which I think some people probably won't like. So we are including like this sort of table of like, if you want to limit these treasures to a specific form, these are like their sort of "canon" forms. So you can use that.
But at base, they only have keywords which are either armor, weapon, or implement. And so that way, you know, maybe they have a form in the book, but that's not necessarily the form that treasure takes in your adventure, right? So maybe Stormcaller, the Mjölnir-like treasure like in your book is going to be illustrated as a hammer. And in the table it's going to be like this light weapon, probably. But that doesn't mean you have to use it that way in your adventure, which is why we explicitly didn't give it the light weapon tag. We just gave it a weapon tag.
And furthermore, we also for a lot of our treasures, we have weapon or implement, just because we want them to be both, if you want. It can be either/or, right, not both, because we think a lot of these treasures work as both. You know, some of them don't, and some of them are either only implement or only weapon, but a lot of them are both. So like Soul Eater, this soul-eating sword, there's nothing really about it that would make it not work as an implement as well. It would work just as well. So we want to give players and Directors that freedom of explicitly allowing them to reflavor and reskin these strategies however way you want, and our way to do that is to not have the keywords even be there, even though there is like this sort of implicit canon form.
Aestus: Yeah, more of a generalized design like you get in kits. You want to give them something that they can latch on to for their imagination, but you also want to have the freedom to imagine anything that they can.
SurfingBird: Yeah. And for the narratives as well, by the way, we also, we're explicitly saying, you know, if you want to change any of these beats, change them. If you want to ignore the beats, you can ignore them as well. We think it's less cool, but you can do that if you only like the tactical crunch aspect of it. And you know, you can change anything about the narrative. We think some of the treasures are very ripe for reflavoring, like the Monstrous Mutagen we talked about earlier. It's currently like, you know, it's more flavored as like this alchemical transformation, but I can imagine so many ways to reflavor it, right? Like, you could make it like Venom, like the Hulk. We really think that these treasures can be a lot of things.
Even Stormcaller, I could imagine being, like, this sort of tech-y treasure. Maybe it's like, you know, it's not lightning and thunder, it's like actual electricity, and you have this sort of high-tech weapon.
Aestus: Yeah, we have a lot of stuff like that.
SurfingBird: So yeah, that's also something. Yeah. So we really want to give players and Directors explicit freedom to like, do whatever they want with these treasures.
Jon de Nor: Alright! It's — we're way over time. (laughter)
Aestus: Yeah, sorry. That's my fault.
SurfingBird: (laughter) I'm trying to beat Jenny for the longest podcast on Goblin Points.
Jon de Nor: Ah! Jonas also talked about beating Jenny. (laughter)
SurfingBird: No, I mean...I don't know if we're there yet, but, you know, I can keep yapping forever, I mean...
Jon de Nor: That's my fear. (laughter)
Aestus: No, don't let us keep you from your family. This has been a blast, Jon. We really appreciate the opportunity to talk about it, but also just to hang out with you. It's really fun.
SurfingBird: Yeah.
Jon de Nor: Likewise. It's been a real pleasure having you both on. So thank you very much for coming on.
SurfingBird: Yeah. My pleasure. Sure.
Aestus: Yeah. Same for me. It's been awesome.
Outro
Thank you so much to both Aestus and SurfingBird for coming on. I really like the idea of thinking of these treausres as a cross between kits, for they narrative flavor, complications, for their character defining features and leveled treasures.
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.
You can support my work by becoming a Patreon member. Paying members get to submit questions to my upcoming guests here on Goblin Points. You also get access to premium features on Stawl. Stawl is a digital toolset for playing and running Draw Steel: digital hero sheets, encounter builder, monster look up, the complete rules text, and more. Such as the Stawl Supplement Index, a comprehensive list of supplements being published for Draw Steel, in one convenient place! Visit Stawl.app. S-T-A-W-L-dot-app.
Next episode is on the 25th. That's going to be the interview with Peter LaCara, who's writing The Withering War. An adventure where the heroes do like Aragorn and haul their asses all over the place to recruit allies against the impending horde.
See you next time. Snakkes.