This will be a short update, because we are pretty sure you will have plenty of reading ahead of you! At last this is the day we release the full version of the vampire class! It's been over a year since we started work on it, we've worked really hard, learnt so much, and we could not have been happier with the result! This has been a collective effort of so many great people and I want to thank everyone involved with the project. I feel like we've established valuable relationship with many Draw Steel community members and since this project has launched Triglav Games was joined by many amazing designers. Even though the vampires are now out and threatening the world with eternal darkness, we feel like the future of our team is very bright and we hope to bring you many amazing products in the future!
All backers and people who pre-ordered this product from the BackerKit pre-order store should receive an email regarding access to the version 1.0 file. We hope you will enjoy it and you will be drawing steel with many vampires at your tables!
At the very same time we've launched our online store! Check it out here! As could be expected, right now there is only one product there, but with time there will be more! If you know someone interested in getting the vampire, point them to our store, as it will be the only way to get the product for now!
If you find any problem with the file, feel free to let us know on our Discord server (https://discord.gg/tV6QSrU3n5) or message us at [email protected].
That's all for today! Thank you for your eternal support! Join our Discord server for early previews and spoilers! Cheers!
You've waited long enough, we know. Feels really bad it's not a full release yet, but here we are. The layout process takes a lot of time and energy, but we believe not rushing it is the correct way to go. That said, we made sure to have something released today and that's still a lot of content even if it's not a complete package! We are releasing two files through pledge manager today - the final manuscript containig the final text and rules for the product (very little changes compared to previous version, mostly editing and some balance changes) and a laid-out portion of the final product that contains: vampire lore, vampire fiction, vampire ancestry, vampire careers, vampire kits, vampire perks, vampire comlpications and the 1st echelon of the vampire class. It's around 60% of the final product. What's left to be laid-out is already in progress and, while we've learnt the lesson to maybe not say any dates out loud, we think the rest of the book will probably be released later this month.
We hope you will enjoy what you see today! You have all the rules and most of them are already pretty! For the whole manuscript to be pretty, wait just a little bit longer! Thank you so much for your support and understanding!
The Kiln is on fire!
Using this opportunity, I wanted to talk about our own GubDM's crowdfunder for his new class for Draw Steel - the Kiln! What is it? To use Gavin's words: "The kiln is a shaman-like martial warrior who gains power by burning special, hand-crafted wooden talismans. Mechanically, the class is designed to focus on mobility, command, and buffing your allies so they can do big damage. The class lets you use a martial kit, but features a lot of magic abilities."
Just look at this art!
If you are interested in the class, check it out here! I've played some games with a kiln in a party and I have to say, the class is literally fire! Hard to forget when my vampire censor did massive damage to an out-of-reach enemy thanks to the kiln's fire sword summon! Give it a look and maybe even consider backing the project, which is so close to unlocking its first stretch goal!
We have a Patreon now!
I was convinced that we should give having a Patreon a chance and so we did! You can check our Patreon out here! You can totally join for free and there will be some posts available to free members too, but there are two paid memberships that unlock access to Draw Steel designs we do for the Patreon. The 5$ tier let's you access the PDF with the design, but for the higher tier you also get a design-process writeup from whoever designed that month's paid thing.
That's all for today! Thank you for your support, patience and understanding! Join our Discord server for early previews and spoilers! Cheers!
Let me start with a slight bummer. As much as it pains me and the whole team, the layout process is taking a lot of time and the product is not yet ready for release. We REALLY wanted it to be done this year, but unfortunately the combination of us taking a lot of time to perfect the new layout and our layout artist being swamped with their day-job projects resulted in the Vampire Class taking a lot time getting laid out. Our update next month will probably be one announcing we unleashed the vampire curse upon the world!
Wait, "new layout"? Well, yes! You might remember that we launched our crowdfunder before Draw Steel was even out, so we didn't really know what the layout for the core game was going to look like. And when Draw Steel released, our layout for this product was... well, it was cool, but also felt out of place! Moreover, since then we've also had a campaign for Boggits of Kingsmire and people ADORED the DS-inspired layout we had for our frog dudes. It was a no-brainer to go back to layout-design and rework the vampire layout so that it's more in line with core Draw Steel books! Below you can see the new stuff (and the Vampire ancestry that's laid out and ready). Hope you like it!
New layout - part 1
New layout - part 2
You can see the laid out ancestry in full resolution here.
Wait, why is the ability blue? I am glad you asked! Some time ago, there was a survey in the Brewery, a Discord server for Draw Steel homebrew (hello!), asking about preferred color-coding for different ability types in the game, as part of a broader accessibility push among homebrew and third-party products. We've decided to join that movement to improve the accessibility of our product, so you'll see our main actions in red, our maneuvers in blue, and our triggers in green, among other small features like additional iconography!
Behold the cover!
We've already shown the cover for this book on our Discord server, but, naturally, we want you to see it too! It was done by the excellent Eryk Szczygieł (TyphonArt) that did most of art for this project. It depicts a group of slavic-themed heroes (including our iconic vampire hero) fighting a vampire lord, Viktor DImitrovich Rogov! We love the piece and hope you love it too!
Cover by Eryk Szczygieł
Vampire product preview
Thanks to the amazing Andy Aiken, you can now build a vampire hero in Forge Steel! In the Triglav Games sourcebook (where you can also find our Boggit ancestry), you will find levels 1-3 of the class with two out of five subclasses (bloodlines), some (not all) vampire perks, kits, and the vampire ancestry you saw earlier in this post. Hope you will have a lot of fun with it! We are thinking about releasing a free preview PDF with the same content later on.
Vampires in the Codex?
We've already talked with a really cool person that's working on the Codex, and they are willing to implement the Vampire stuff for us! We will most likely get to it once the Codex is officialy out! We don't yet know how we will tackle the associated costs of getting our bloodsuckers into the Codex, but we will definitely figure something out later on!
Thank you for your support, patience and understanding! We wish you happy holidays! See you next year! Join our Discord server for early previews and spoilers! Cheers!
Yesterday we've finished the design work on this project. Not just the class, ALL OF IT. We will give this a few days, proofread it a couple of times, do some editing, and then we will share the whole manuscript of the product with our alpha playtest backers for them to have some vampiric fun and maybe they will find something that needs fixing that we missed. A couple of weeks later we plan to share the manuscipt (with some more edits, probably) with all of our backers. This means we will be locking all orders and pre-orders SOON! Probably somewhere next week. You will still be able to pre-order the product for now, but once the final version is ready we will setup and open our own online store for selling it and the price will go up a little bit.
We are still waiting for some art, but we are starting to work on the layout of the product. We decided that the final layout of the book should be similar to the final Draw Steel corebooks layout, so a lot like the layout we presented for the Boggits of Kingsmire (see below), but we will try to make it look gothic at the same time. This is our first time laying out the whole product so we might be wrong about our estimate for how long this will take, but we will keep you updated and probably share finished sections of the book if need be. We still plan to release this product later this year.
Noxious Stalker bloodline vampire by Eryk Szczygieł (TyphonArt)
In the meantime,the crowdfunder for our second project is going strong! We've funded in under 1 day and we've already reached our first stretch goal! We are super excited to bring you all the amazing froggy and swampy things in the future! Check out the project and consider backing to help us reach our second stretch goal, which will allow us to design, test and order art for more swampy monsters!
Cover art by Wiktoria Skalska
As always, thank you so much for your support! Join our Discord server for early previews and spoilers! Cheers!
As I've recently announced, new version of the vampire, revised after latest round of testing, is now available for download for all backers! Inside you will find 3 subclasses (Noxious Stalker, Shrouded Lurker and Spore Bearer), Vampire Perks, Vampire Kits and Vampire Careers. Shrouded Lurker awaits one final design pass, so the things there might not be final, but Noxious Stalker and Spore Bearer are more or less complete and ready for release. So are the kits, perks and careers, though I will also have another look at them later on to be sure I am happy with everything. Okay, so what's still missing?
We have design ready for thematic treasure for the product (8 leveled items, 20 trinkets), the Vampire ancestry, titles and complications. We are still doing second-to-last design pass on the Charming Tormentor and Crimson Conductor bloodlines (subclasses), but we hope they will be ready for testing very soon (maybe next week?). Regarding testing, unfortunatelly Pesto is busy with his other work right now, so for one last, final test of level 10 Vampire we will have to wait some time. We will schedule it as soon as we can, do one final revision afterwards, and we will have the final manuscript version of the vampire ready! The plan is to release alpha playtest material in 2-3 weeks to people who pledged at applicable tiers and then, probably in November, release the final manuscript for all backers.
In the meantime we will start layout process for the parts of the book that are already final or close to final, to be able to get the product out as soon as we can, probably in December. We will keep you updated and will gladly show our progress with layout later on. For now, let me show you a near final character art for the Crimson Conductor subclass:
Crimson Conductor by Eryk Szczygieł
We expect there will be more blood on the final version of this piece! And now to another cool topic...
Boggits of Kingsmire: A Swampy Supplement for Draw Steel
Cover Art by Wiktoria Skalska
As we were done with more and more of the Vampire, we started discussions and work on our next project, which we revealed a few days ago to be Boggits of Kingsmire! As you can see, it has a very different vibe from the Vampire, and features a joyful ancestry of frog-people ready to fight for their swamps. The ancestry has already been tested and is really fun (so I was told by the testers!) and there will be plenty of other content in there too. To quote our teaser page:
This product contains (among others):
a new ancestry - Boggit (frog person)
new kits, including Angler and Spearfisher
new class options, including a Swamp Domain for Censors and Conduits, and new Stormwight Kits for Furies
swamp perks and titles
swamp treasure, including new leveled items and a lot of plant consumables
new downtime activities
plenty of new monsters, including a Boggit monster family
a gazetteer for the KIngsmire and surrounding region
quests (~5 Victories short adventures) to get you started playing in the region
