Draw Steel Campaign Diary 1/8/2026
Started my first ever Draw Steel campaign this past month and it has been pretty fun so far.
The Pitch: "Garten was once known as a city of abundance and peace. Danger lies in its dark secluded corners to those unfamiliar with its streets, but it is also a cornucopia of community, culture, and creativity to those who seek such things. The tower containing the city’s market and local leaders, has sunken into the ruins the city was built atop, leaving Garten and its communities in disarray. In the Garten: Descend campaign, you’ll play as heroes who are reckoning with their newfound duty to assist those in need, bring order to chaos, and delve into the dungeon below."
The Vibes: Adventurous, Heroic, and Sometimes Spooky
The Touchstones: Delicious in Dungeon, Full Metal Alchemist, and Studio Ghibli's Castle in the Sky
The Party:
Calder, a machine man with newly gained sentience who worked as a city guard that was stationed in the Spire before it fell into the earth.
Hero, a goblin who performed in a traveling caravan that was now looking to make a name for herself as a hero.
Jin, a arrogant wode elf from a far off continent, seeking fame and followers in the city of Garten.
Sanlig, a dwarf accountant turned freelancer looking to help people for mysterious and unspecified reasons.
Below are some doodles of the player characters I made for them as Christmas gifts. Calder's reference sheet was originally going to just be a sketch but I decided to upgrade it to a proper reference sheet as a gift.
Needa do a chibi of Calder to properly complete the set... anyways!
Sessions 1 - 2: Humble Beginnings
These sessions functioned as a tutorial since this was my first time properly running Draw Steel as a GM, and their first time as players. The party started as strangers all traveling to the city of Garten. Nobody was connected to eachother yet, and I wanted to use these first two sessions as a way to organically introduce them to each other.
Their carriage was on its way across the country side only to be accosted by bandits at the crossroads of their destination. It took a sec for everyone to get adjusted to having to keep track of their heroic resources, but they managed to take down the bandits and tie them up. Instead of making a b-line for Garten they had to drop off their freshly caught thugs in this little village, Broadhurst (yes the one from the Delian Tomb if you played that).
The local lawman freaked out because he realized that the thugs the party caught were part of a larger group that had been threatening the city with violence for a while. The party decided to stick around and assist the village with the inevitable confrontation with the gang, they were playing heroes after all.
What followed as a comedy of errors. One of my players characters, Sanligh, is a Shadow with the Harlequin subclass meaning his fighting style was Mr. Magooing his way through combat, tripping people and making people hurt themselves "by accident". It was all a facade of course, but the way this subclass played allow him to deceive others of his true nature.
The group was able to make quick work of the bandits, I balanced it to be average difficulty cause it wasn't meant to be difficult, just a bigger combat that taught the players the systems. Anyways, they walked away from it having become aquaintences, saved the village, and walked away with +1 Renown as a reward. I flavored the Renown as a letter of recommendation from Broadhurst to the city of Garten.
The group then traveled to Garten and went their separate ways. They hardly knew eachother, and had lives to get back to or start in the city.
Sessions 3 - 4: The First Delve
Between sessions 2 and 3 there was a time skip. Three days into the arrival at Garten and some shit went down. Garten is a massive city with four major districts and then a great big spire in the center, known as Spire. It's basically a big ol' tower that has a huge market at the base, a prison below it, and then the city's government in the mid to upper levels. One day very suddenly it started to sink into the ground, nobody knows why. Everybody had a distant view of the disaster, but Calder was there and nearly died.
One month later, the city is in disarray. When Spire fell into the ground it shifted the earth around it, trapping the people within the Spire underground. Nobody knows if there are survivors, some people have gone delving into the underground seeking treasures.
Lore side note: Garten was founded atop the buried ruins of a lost kingdom. The ruins harbored treasure but were highly restricted by Garten's rulers due to safety concerns.
This is where the party comes in. The disaster relief effort, composed of the city watch, used the letter of recommendation in their offices to contact the individual party members (except Sanlig cause he kept his identity a secret so he went on his own volition).
"If you have received this letter, your name was found among our freelancer recommendations. We are seeking those able and willing to assist the Garten relief effort. We are but fifty people composed of former soldiers, city guards, and townsfolk each with the common goal of restoring order. If you are interested in investing in the commonwealth of the city we can promise food, shelter, possible financial reward, and guaranteed public recognition that will cement your name in the same breath as this once fair city.
If any of this interests you at all, we are preparing for our next operation within the next forty-eight hours. We can make contact on neutral ground in the shallows of Spire.
17. 7. 3402.
Signed and Sealed,
Captain Marcel Foster,
Leader of the Gardeners"
And so everybody met up, met Captain Foster, and got put on their first little job. One day ago, three freelancers were tasked with clearing out the shallows of the ruins because undead were said to be roaming the halls below. They were supposed to wait on a fourth to fill out their party, but went ahead anyways, most likely treasure hungry. The Gardeners hadn't heard back from them in a day and wanted to send another crew to check in on them.
And so the crew descended into the ruins below, starting off in Espoir's (the lost kingdom's name) tower dungeon. They fought their way through various undead, uncovered some lore about the guy who ruled the fallen kingdom, and found some loot from the previous party's camp including ingredients to make some items during their downtime. One of the freelancers that had gone down was already long dead, having gotten overwhelmed with zombies.
They found second freelancer barricaded behind crates, fighting off a horde of undead. The party was able to save him without a scratch on him. Lastly they found the third party member who was about to be ritualistically sacrificed by a necromancer (Death Acolyte).
This is where I made a mistake. When players in Draw Steel succeed in combat they gain a Victory which allows them to start off with more heroic resources to fuel their abilities in the following combats until they take a Respite (24 hr rest). I forgot to account for this so that third encounter was under tuned. The Encounter Value goes up when players have more Victories. Oopsy! They had fun but it definitely went a lot easier than I was hoping it would for that specific section. Sanlig finished combat by throwing a brick at the back of the Death Acolyte's head, who then proceeded to fall down a flight of stairs, knocked unconscious. Every undead that was still standing fell apart with their puppeteer now incapacitated.
Next up is going to be some downtime and then set up for their next quest set on the surface. These first couple sessions have been pretty linear to tutorialize them, but now that everyone has a feel for the game I'm going to open things up proper and give them more choices.
Overall, Draw Steel is pretty fun to GM. Prep can be as simple or complex as you want to be. It was easy to homebrew and reskin stuff for my setting, and my players feel bad ass with all the crazy things they get to do in combat. It feels like the game and enemies react more to player actions than in 5e, which gives this cinematic life to it.
tl;dr First couple sessions have gone well, I accidentally under tuned a combat but it didn't seem to bother the players. Keeping that in mind for the future. Looking forward to more, Draw Steel is awesome.