Draw Steel is a game about heroic characters fighting monsters, but sometimes a monster can be a hero too! Play as a vampire with this third-party class for Draw Steel RPG. Hunt or be hunted! Quench your thirst or go feral! Become an undead apex predator, relentlessly chasing your prey! Embrace the monster within or defy your desires and walk a noble path! Only you can decide if you will feed upon the innocent or the guilty!
Scions of Blood and Shadows: A Vampire Class for Draw Steel is exactly what it says on the tin - a third party (digital) supplement for MCDM Productions' Draw Steel RPG that introduces a new class to the game - A VAMPIRE! We are very excited to bring this class into the game! We've done a lot of preliminary work for this product already and are confident we can succeed. Actually, you can see our work for yourself! Below is a link for a preview version of the design for levels 1-4. You can already play it! It is already really fun! And flavorful!
We believe in this project so much, we've already contracted some people to work on it with us. You might know Spencer Hibnick AKA Pesto, one of the excellent MCDM testers. He is already testing our design and we are already revising based on his feedback! And if we fund, we will hire more people, more artists, more testers to make this project the best it can be!
Our design for the class is based on four things: mobility, damage, debuffing and FLAVOR. We focus on the fantasy of the class and want to provide you with possibilities to create any Vampire you can imagine. That's why we made the Vampire's subclass options modular: as part of your Bloodline, you actually pick two Blood Legacies to begin with and can mix and match their features and abilities! With 4 base subclasses, there are 6 combinations from the get-go and with more subclasses unlocked with stretch goals, the number of combations grows fast! There will be 10 combinations with 5 Blood Legacies and 15 with 6! As you can see, there will be many ways of using your class resource, Thirst!
We've previewed the class with some members of the community and this is what they had to say:
The Vampire captures the balance between the feral monster, hungry for blood, and the charming and enchanting noble. The abilities are a combination of stalking your prey, enchanting it, and ferociously attacking. And the double edged sword of Thirst is cool: More Thirst makes you a more dangerous hunter, but you also become less discerning about who's your prey.
- Jon de Nor (Goblin Points, Stawl)
This class is dripping with flavor. Every feature and ability reinforces the dual nature of the Vampire: a relentless predator who's nonetheless a slave to their own thirst. Mechanics-wise, the class offers a great push and pull, with plenty of interesting combinations and tactical options. Truly a great addition to the core classes!
- Caio Lente (The Dice Society)
An incredibly unique and flavorful take on the vampire fantasy! Rich with interesting mechanics and playstyles, this class is a great source of inspiration… and iron! Your thirst for blood is baked into the class in ways that promote satisfying gameplay and storytelling moments! I was surprised at the variety of abilities each subclass provides, all still tied back to the core fantasy. I can’t wait to drink goblin blood with this class!
- Cameron Baker (Rise Heroes Rise!)
Comprehensive and packed full of flavor, this class drips with crimson essence. Fulfill your dreams of enacting justice as a stalking creature of the night, or slake your thirst upon any that dare to cross you!
- Paul Ligorski (Heart Of Arcana)
We hope you like what you see and consider backing!
All the money we raise will go towards making the best version of this product. We will not profit from the gathered funds in any way. More money means more art and more testing, as our goal is to make this product as grisly beautiful and as well designed and balanced as possible. With more money we will hire more contractors to help us make this project the best it can be. And if we collect enough, we will start preliminary work on our next project, which, right now it seems like, will be yet another Draw Steel class!
Speaking of art, let me introduce you to our iconic Vampire, Irina!
Irina gets rid of the brigands raiding her father's lands. Illustration by Eryk Szczygieł (Typhon Art)
This is the kind of art we want for this project! We love what Eryk has done for us and we want more - this is exactly the reason we decided to do a crowdfunder! We plan to share some short stories about Irina during and after the crowdfunder, so that you can get to know her, so stay tuned!
We've also already done some work regarding this product's layout. Below you can see our preliminary design done for us by our wonderful contractor graphic and layout designer, Ida. We will keep iterating on the design more, but this is our current vision of what the book should look like inside. We might (and most likely will) adjust the layout based on how the final Draw Steel PDFs are going to look.
If you like what you see (the rules, the art, the layout) and believe in us, please help us create the best version of this product and consider backing at a higher pledge level!
We have A LOT of ideas for things we want to put into this project! Unfortunatelly, to make it happen, we need more funds that we will spend on additional art and testing. We will (hopefully!) reveal more stretch goals as we raise more money!
€3000 - Vampire Ancestry For people that would love to play a Vampire Summoner (Necromancer makes perfect sense!) or a Vampire Talent (or any other class really), we will design an ancestry!
€3500 - Custom Character Sheet + Pregen We will create a fillable character sheet tailor-made for a Vampire and also provide you with a pregenerated version of our iconic Vampire, Irina!
€4250 - Additional Blood Legacy (subclass option) - Fungal Lurker You are a host to parasitic fungi that prey upon both the dead and the living. Fungal spores float around you, poisoning your victims and dulling their senses as you sneak upon them.
€5000 - Additional Blood Legacy (subclass option) - Frigid Trapper Your heart is one made of ice and frost encroaches on anything you touch. You are a cold-blooded killer, trapping your victims in frigid snares, patiently waiting for them to bleed out or pass out from cold.
Playtest Material As we continue our work on this project, we will be providing our backers with playtest material. Backers with pledge levels of Vampire Scion and beyond will be getting alpha material, the same that we will be sending out to our testers. All backers, Vampire Neonate backers included, will be getting material that was already tested and revised. Some time after the revised material is released, we will send out surveys to collect your feedback regarding the material. Your feedback will help shape the product, as we will definitely be changing things that are unpopular. We want our backers to be satisfied with our work!
Final Release We estimate we will complete our work on this project and release it no later than in Q4 of 2025. We think that by the time Draw Steel core rulebooks will be out, we will have most of the design ready and in testing. Once Draw Steel is officially released, we might have to adjust the design to the final rules of the game. We don't want to rush the project, so we will let tests and revisions take as much time as is needed and reasonable. Still, we believe that by the end of the year we will be long done and you will be already enjoying playing your awesome vampires for some time.
Future If this project is successful enough, we are going to do more! More classes! We feel like we are fully capable of creating any type of RPG supplement for Draw Steel and we already have more ideas than we can reasonably make happen in one lifetime. A monster book? A setting guide? Adventures? We will see!
The risks involved with this project are minimal. This product will be a digital-only release (for now), so we will avoid all the problems related to printing and shipping. We have a competent cadre of professional contractors working with us and we are confident we are up to the task, especially with their help. If we run out of raised money, we are going to fund the finishing of this product ourselves!
One might think that designing for a system that's not even out yet is a challenge, but some of us are MCDM's Patreon supporters and thus we have access to the most recent publicly released ruleset, so it is not a problem for us.
This is our first TTRPG project and while we are new to this industry, we've all worked for many years on much bigger projects in the IT sector and we never failed to finish and ship them. Let this be our first success story in the TTRPG industry!
Triglav Games is a team of Polish TTRPG enthusiasts united by a purpose of creating high quality supplementary content for MCDM Productions' Draw Steel TTRPG. We've all fell in love with the game and want to support it now and in coming years. Our team consists of:
