Play mod
Bonds of Steel - Year One's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Usability | #10 | 3.952 | 3.952 |
| Creativity | #10 | 4.143 | 4.143 |
| Enjoyment | #10 | 3.714 | 3.714 |
| Overall | #12 | 3.774 | 3.774 |
| Theme | #23 | 3.286 | 3.286 |
Ranked from 21 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
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My players have recently been asking if we can do something close to this concept, so this one's got me pondering. The wording and balance are a bit rough, but the idea is solidly grounded and the list of bonds and rewards gives a director a lot of inspiration to work with. Would love to see this further developed.
If I might help with ideas... this somewhat reminds me of Fabula Ultima. If you don't know of it, it's a JRPG-inspired system, very heroic in vibe like Draw Steel is. A big mechanic it uses for party relations is Bonds and assigning different emotions/dynamics to them. They gradually build up over time (as do their benefits) during downtime/campfire scenes. May be something worth looking into for possible inspiration.
Oh wow thanks, that sounds like it will help a lot with improving Bonds of Steel. One of the players of my DS group plays Fabula Ultima but has never told me about this. I want to use Bonds of Steel next session w that group so if i look into that system by then already it mighy a nice surprise for him :-D
Thank you so much for your feedback, suggestions to fix and cool ideas for more! It's my first time publishing smth and I am especially lucky thats it's in a community as supportive as this one!
Im much more experienced in 5e than Draw Steel so everyone is totally right with critizism about the balance between the rewards. I had to find line between the core abilities in Draw Steel that each give classes their own, unique identity and on the other hand finding something akin to tag team moves in Daggerheart that are more a "generic teamwork move, whatever, just narrate it in a cool way". The latter is VERY easy to use but has the potential problem of washing away differences between the classes and on top, being the obvious choice to pick.
For the "extended version" I was thinking of putting bonds back in that i had to cut, as well as a few more rewards that were a bit too underdeveloped.
I am especially happy you like the bonds! I created them by thinking of my many adventuring parties i had been part of or GMed for and thought of bonds that these heroes would have, so weirdly, that part of the pdf is almost tested even 😁
Really cool concept, love the art! You gave us a taste, and it left me wanting more; I would love to see this expanded upon. The storytelling it facilitates is great for any table. Personally, I would love a little more mechanics, but that is just my preference. I do think some of the abilities in rewards could use a couple of passes cause some of the wording is more complex than it could be and could be tightened up later on through playtesting. Overall great though!
Thank you! The art was done by my good friend NorthlyArt (https://www.instagram.com/northlyart/.
Yes indeed, I the mechanics part of the rewards definitely need some clean up language-wise, balacing and expansion.
That art piece is a delight! Real give a sense of theme and colour to the game this supplement can be used for.
Can't be critiqued, but well done.
A good blend of storytelling, group bonding, and with some fun abilities (I can see one of my players shouting: 'Throw him into my Fist!') there is some good design on show here, perfect for the right sort of table.
Thanks so much! I was looking for something that I would like at my own table. Draw Steel has some super evocative names for its abilities so I had to do the same. :-) Glad you like it!
I am a huge fan of this kind of collaborative and emergent storytelling, as evidenced by my own entry. Very well done. I wish DS had more stuff like this, but that just leaves a creative space for clever third party developers like yourself :)
I love these prompts! I definitely appreciate your disclaimer that it's a tool for groups that have been playing together already for some time. That being said, I think it could be a terrific tool to incorporate into Session 0 to assist in the generation of those bonds from the very jump of play.
I think this is how Daggerheart does it, yes. I think that is totally valuable too. The party knowing each other, at least partially, before the campaign starts is a classic trick to help getting the game going, so yes, it can be totally used for heroes that already know each other from stuff before the campaign!
I think as a draft this is amazing, but I would want to adjust/add some of the rewards. the code language for instance is just never going to get picked over coordinated attack. i dunno if throw him into my fist needs to be a trigger as written. the owlbear trench coat is fun, but extremely specific. I'm all for the tying of narrative to mechanics like this and wanna see as much of it in draw steel as possible. Would pay for a longer more polished list of rewards.
Yes, "Two Idiots in a Trenchcoat" is a bit too weak and specific in hindsight. It is inspired by the Dazzler perk so could use a similar boost.
The creation of the different rewards was tricky because of exactly what you wrote: Coordinated Attack is so good, why take anything else? So I had to walk a like between writing easy-to-use general abilities but then them being too strong through their ubiqituous use. Another goal I had given myself with these rewards was to create options for "martial" classes to do useful stuff outside of combat, like most caster classes can do.
I will think of more rewards snd see how I can make them strong(er) contenders for a choice of reward.
I really like this one. I like that it gives ways for both Directors or players to incorporate this into the their game. I like how the bonds suggest ones that would be good for different classes, types of players, and backstories. There's so many things that you could do with this, and I'm already thinking of fun additional bonds.
Very cute. I like porting over PBTA-adjacent bonds and tying them to a real mechanical consequence. The different bond type groups were also a really smart way of categorizing them rather than tying them to specific classes. I know space was a limit, but I bet you could spin this out into a whole thing where certain bonds/bond types tie directly into certain rewards, or even more specifically between you and the ally you bonded with, rather than working on all allies. The Code Language perk is also really fun!
honestly torn about if i would want them to be specific to the bonded ally and tying specific bonds to specific rewards. Added layers ought to be more straightforward. I would already consider turning these rewards into titles just to keep it within the DS framework. The exact system for determining the related bonds and rewards would be interesting to see. I almost imagine a reverse career. You'd probably have to come up with broad bond archetypes or party role archetype.
This is a great way to build roleplay at your table and encourage players to think about their characters as more than a series of abilities and power rolls.