While some heroes are chasing glory, fighting tyrants and accomplishing epic deeds, others prefer to stay down to earth, in the muck, helping those in need. The common people have a name for these heroes: Ratcatchers.

Ratcatcher Magazine is a community content zine for MCDM's Draw Steel. It's designed to give up-and-coming third party DS developers a place to show off new creations, give advice, or even worldbuild or write fiction. But that's not all: Ratcatcher is designed to help you as the Director and creator.

All text in Ratcatcher Magazine is licensed under a license similar to the Draw Steel Creator License, meaning you can re-use it and republish it in your own creations. It's a community zine, with the emphasis on community. We want this to be a gift to you, to help support the community, while also drawing on its wealth of creative talent and skill to also uplift new creators and give them a voice.

Future issues of Ratcatcher will even have open submissions; details for this will be included in the final zine.

The zine is currently content complete and already done with layout, meaning we are just waiting for some art elements. Once funding from the Backerkit clears, we will hopefully be going to print and moving to shipping as soon as the books arrive.

Ratcatcher Magazine is an independent product published under the DRAW STEEL Creator License and is not affiliated with MCDM Productions, LLC. DRAW STEEL © 2024 MCDM Productions, LLC. 

This issue contains:

A collection of bizarre traps written in the style of grant rejection letter.  Each trap adds a creature to the battlefield after the trap is triggered.

A mimic that can challenge a level 1 party, evoking that old-school dungeon feel with a modern, action-oriented design. 

Which battlemaps are good for Draw Steel? What constitutes cover? How deep a hole do you need to dig to make sure your enemies can't reach you? Find the answers to these questions and some advice on how to make any map a Draw Steel map here.

A pair of new, plant-based ancestries for your heroes.

The elemental dancers of Avahndi; 1st echelon enemies which use formations and movement to evoke particular elements in communal spell casting.

The Wode is home to things far older than the human kingdoms that press against the treeline now.  Woe be to any adventurer now traveling too deep into the Wode today. There are places there even the elves dare not tread.

Ratcatchers Magazine will be an 8.5x5.5" (US digest size) 28-page zine, printed in black and white by Mixam in the USA or Canada and shipped from the United States. All copies will be shipped from the United States. Unless there is enormous demand, physical copies of this first print run will be limited to 200 copies. (If we are successful, we plan to reprint the first issue multiple times and offer it in future crowdfunders.)

Aside from our printing costs and recouping some initial costs, all proceeds from this and future Ratcatcher Magazine crowdfunders go toward the collaborators. We at Tidal Wave Games believe in paying creators fairly, so when the crowdfunder is successful, the creators are successful. It's because of them (and you!) that we get to make this, so it's only fair that they be paid well for their efforts. We want to be a place where people can get eyes on their work and be compensated fairly for it, without having to strike out on their own first. To do that, we need to build the network, and we can only do it with your help. 

We've got some simple pledge tiers set up for you:

There are no stretch goals, incentives, day-one buy in special trinkets or other complicated crowdfunding tricks. We want to make a book and send it to you. If we make more money, we all get to have pizza and buy Nintendo Switch 2s. 

We'll be charging for shipping separately after the campaign is finished. All packages come shipped via USPS through PirateShip. These are the estimated shipping rates we'll be using:

Tidal Wave Games is headed by Onslaught Six, a 30-something TTRPG developer and failed industrial musician. Though this is our first time crowdfunding on Backerkit, Tidal Wave Games has successfully ran and fulfilled five TTRPG zine Kickstarters since 2021 (with the sixth currently in progress). We've got plenty of experience handling printing and shipping for small-press TTRPG zines, so we expect this to go as quickly and smoothly as any of our previous ventures.

Contributors for Issue 01 include:

Sam McGurran (he/him) is a writer, editor and designer from Glasgow, Scotland. Since his introduction to TTRPGs, he's worked on dozens of projects; including Splinterverse Media’s Dragonlance Companion, Dream Realm Storytellers’ Silverplate setting, and VerseOnline’s Arclands. Sam is a long-time member of the MCDM community and became a playtest coordinator in 2024.  You can find Sam here or reach out directly at [email protected].

Félix Gauthier-Mamaril (he/him) has been a volunteer playtest coordinator for MCDM since 2023 and has been working as a freelance playtester and designer for a year, and currently writing adventures for Draw Steel. You can check out his bluesky at @silverbeak.bsky.social. He promises to start using it, he swears.

Aaron Flavius West (he/they) has been a volunteer playtest coordinator for MCDM since 2021, and when not inhabiting strange fantasy other-worlds, they work as an astrophysicist studying aurora on Earth and Jupiter. Their bluesky is @F1zz3r.bsky.social if you want to connect.

Chris Hopper (he/him) is a writer, designer, and accessibility consultant based outside Austin, TX. He's a recent contributor to MCDM's Draw Steel and Flee Mortals, and can be found credited in additional works across the TTRPG realms.

Spencer Hibnick (he/him) is a freelance designer and tester and is the senior contract tester for MCDM. When he’s not trying to shoehorn kobolds into perfectly respectable TTRPG projects, he works as a business analyst in Miami. He's not sure why he’s writing this autobiography in the third person. His portfolio, shop, newsletter, contact info, and a tiny sliver of his soul can be found at pestopublications.com.

Joel Russ (he/him) has been a volunteer MCDM playtest coordinator since 2022. Between making monsters, adventures, and other TTRPG materials, he competes in triathlons and other races. Otherwise, he's often found up a tree with a book. You can find his work at joelruss.carrd.co

Inge (she/they) is a freelance illustrator and concept artist, currently finishing her master's degree in Design of Games and Virtual Spaces. When not making art, or thinking about cool new projects, they usually browse internet looking at animal taxonomy or dinosaurs, and other extinct critters.

Ricardo Rivera (he/him) - usually going by 'Dojikaan' online - is a part-time illustrator with 10+ years' worth of experience working on creative projects. Considering he's also a community manager for a tabletop game publisher, he gets to spend most of his days working with lovely fantasy nonsense. What a life! You can find more of his work at dojikaan.carrd.co

Without you, we can't make Ratcatcher Magazine a reality. We want this project, and future issues, to be everything they can be, and by supporting financially and spreading the word, we'll be able to do that. Thanks for checking it out.

Stay gold,
--Onslaught