I am still alive, part 3

So, I did some in person gaming yesterday. In keeping with commentary about isolation, I drove 55 minutes to someone's house in chapel hill and played Draw Steel. First, that is a long ass drive. I am not saying it was not worth it, that is 3 gallons of gas and $20 in tolls, adding $35 on top of the time. Second, I am not sure Draw Steel is for me.

I get what it is trying to do. I just don't know that its end goals are what pushes my fun button.

It is VERY crunchy. Very 4E/video game type mechanics. Special named powers/skills. Push people here, pull people there, skill challenges renamed as montages. That makes it not beginner friendly. But we had a group of experienced players. However, most of them were new to Draw Steel. Which meant that they did not know how to use the rules. Given the complexity, that meant a lot of option paralysis. One combat took almost all the four hours we had allocated to the session.

So, suboptimal experience on that front. I knew two of the folks at the table, so also struggling to find the comfort/camaraderie that might be true with a group of long time friends.

I put those caveats on it so that I am reminded that the caveats may impact my impression of the system. But my first reaction is: underwhelmed.

My second reaction is: meh. I get that things will speed up when people are more familiar with their abilities, but even if that is optimized, there is still the initiative system which creates another decision loop, adding delay to the combat. So there are limits to how fast things will go.

And...even if it gets faster, what is the end result? Video game style combat sequences and a sense of this is 4E on steroids. I really did not like 4E so is it worthwhile to try to give it a second try on steroids? I dont know. If it was what my regulars were playing then maybe. If it is the only way to get in person gaming then maybe. But first impression is not favorable.

Addendum 4/22/26

I do think that this system with its focus on force push/pull and (what feels like to me) comic book style smashing foes into obstacles lends itself to some interesting dwarven forge set ups. Escarpments and elevation builds come to mind. Throw the bad guy off the cliff or ledge. Smash him into the walls. But again, to really get the feel for that, the table has to (well, the players) know the system...and the DM has to prep the terrain.

Additional thought. The quip about the origin of 4E was that a developer's partner watched a game and said something to the effect of "wow, you packed 15 minutes of fun into 4 hours" and that triggered the more dynamic/video game feel for 4E. I don't know if that is true, but it resonated with my Draw Steel experience. We got through 3 rounds of combat in basically three hours. That amounts to about 10 minutes of me acting on my turn and maybe another 2-3 where I was invoking my triggered reactions.

To be sure, gaming is not all about what you do in the game. It is also about the table chatter, catching up with friends, snacking, talking smack, reading rules, and a variety of other intangibles, but the 15 minutes of fun packed into 4 hours hit home as I reflected on the fact that I only had 3 turns in that time. This feels doubly ironic to me given that 4E was supposed to make things feel more dynamic and faster paced. But the reality of tracking all the status identifiers and modifiers and not knowing the rules and having option paralysis...fast paced it was not.