Basic Mechanics

Player Safety

1. I have zero tolerance for intolerance, bigotry, or any form of discrimination.

2. We will warmly welcome and actively support all considerate players.

3. We will collaboratively establish Lines & Veils and agree on how to implement them in our game.

4. This game will strictly prohibit the following content:

   • Any form of harm to children

   • Sexual violence

   • Explicit physical intimacy

   • Non-consensual player-vs-player actions

About the Campaign

Magic runs everyday life. With enough schooling, anyone can make the lamps that light a city, work the relays that carry word across the sea, or draw clean water at a touch. Nearly everyone depends on it.

The world is settled on the coast and usually a little way inland. Past the settlements, the world is dangerous. The wild lands in the interior breed monsters, and the longer it is left wild, the worse they get. Garrisons have held the frontier for as long as anyone remembers, and they are good at it. But the monsters push a little harder every year, the settlements give a little ground, and no army can be everywhere.

Some monsters are past any soldier's reach. Against those, the world needs a rarer defender. Combat magic wakes in a person for reasons no one has ever explained, and no one can simply learn it. The ones it takes find each other over time, strangers who become a team. They fight the monsters no army can. You are those few.

The monsters are winning, slowly. The garrisons and the few hero teams in the world can no longer hold them, and in a few generations nothing will be left but monsters. Finding a new way to stop them is the work in front of you.

What to Expect

1. Relatively heavy worldbuilding. The more you engage, the deeper we will go.

2. Encounter balance that is approximately 50% combat, 35% montage, 15% negotiation.

3. Backstory resolution. If you build them wisely, over time, probably working with me, I can usually leverage backstory in ways you might not expect. Or appreciate. Consider yourself both invited and warned.

4. The opportunity to influence the world. This obviously occurs through your heroes' actions, but that's only part of it. You'll also have the opportunity to help build out the majority of the world that isn't already populated, if you're so inclined.

5. Downtime activities. The world will not move so fast that it prevents you from taking a moment to fix a road or make a sword or spend time with family. Or even just go fishing.

What We'll Avoid

Draw Steel is not your typical survival-based d20 game. We don't track torches and rations. We don’t worry about running out of spell components.

We probably will never see the following during this campaign:

• Rolling dice to answer key plot questions or dilemmas. For example, a die roll, even a very successful series of them, will never reveal conclusively whether a key NPC is truthful or lying. When it’s time to make a decision, you will need to draw your own conclusions based on the information you have available at the time.

• Demons and Devils. I don't think any of these exist in this world, at least not as generally defined. I may reskin them into something better aligned with the world's lore.

AI Usage

• This campaign uses AI for image generation. For example, all the icons you see on this campaign's site were initially generated by AI then modified by me.

• I sometimes use AI as a refinement tool during my creative process.

Next Steps

1. Read the House Rules and Hero Creation.

2. Browse the rest of the site to learn more about the campaign.

3. If interested, complete the Campaign Survey.