Draw Steel vs Swashbucklers of the 7 Skies

Compare Draw Steel and Swashbucklers of the 7 Skies side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, cost, and more.

	Draw Steel	Swashbucklers of the 7 Skies
Genre	Fantasy	Fantasy
Play Style	Tactical, Heroic, Combat-Heavy, Cinematic, Character Building, High-Fantasy, Grid-Based, Attacks Always Hit, Lore-Heavy	Tag-Based, Fiction-First, Cinematic, Pirates, Ship-Based, Heroic
Core Mechanic	Power Roll — roll 2d10 + characteristic and check which tier the result falls into: Tier 1 (11 or less), Tier 2 (12–16), or Tier 3 (17+). Every ability describes three outcomes by tier, so rolls always produce an effect — there are no whiffed turns. Edges and banes (+2/−2, or tier shift at double) modify rolls situationally. Each class builds a unique heroic resource during combat, unlocking increasingly powerful abilities as momentum builds. Victories earned from combat and noncombat challenges accumulate across encounters and convert to XP during respites.	Roll 2d6 and keep the best two, then add the Modifier of a relevant Forte — a descriptive Quality ranked from Poor (−2) to Master (+6) — and compare the total to a Difficulty Rank's Target Number. Players narrate their own successes and failures, and may invoke Techniques to add dice or a flat +1 even after seeing the roll. Combat is resolved as a Duel, with each side splitting a 3d6 pool between attack and defense and the winning margin lowering the loser's Forte Ranks as damage.
Dice	2d10	2d6 / 3d6
Complexity	High	Medium
Accessibility	Medium	Medium
Runnability	High	High
License	Draw Steel Creator License	Proprietary
Cost	$$$	$$
Publisher	MCDM Productions	Evil Hat Productions
Year	2025	2009
Best For	Groups who want deeply tactical, cinematic combat where every ability matters and no turn is wasted. Ideal for players who love build variety and dramatic, heroic battles.	Groups who want a swashbuckling campaign of sky-pirates and musketeers in an original floating-island world, are comfortable with a light narrative meta-currency, and want skyship battles that give four to six players distinct crew roles.
Highlights	Every turn offers multiple meaningful choices with no wasted turns thanks to tiered outcomes, nine classes each with a unique heroic resource and distinct tactical identity, forced movement and positioning are central to combat tactics, full negotiation subsystem with NPC interest and patience tracking for structured social encounters	Players earn Style Dice by narrating their actions with flair and by leaning into their character's Foibles, then spend them to add dice, recover from damage, or assert new facts, tying mechanical advantage directly to dramatic play. Character abilities are broad descriptive Fortes such as "Colronan Musketeer" or "Sha-Ku Ruqrider," so a single Forte covers every related action at the table instead of a skill list while rooting the character in the setting. Before play the group sets explicit dials for firearm lethality, level of magic, and tone, letting the same setting run as cape-and-sword intrigue or deadly piracy.
Considerations	Heroes start with many abilities and options even at level 1, creating a steeper initial learning curve. Significant tracking overhead during combat with heroic resources, victories, conditions, edges, and banes. Explicitly designed for heroic tactical fantasy — the rules do not support dungeon crawling, hex exploration, or survival gameplay	The Style Dice economy only drives play if the GM actively seeds and awards dice each session, and the genre-reward loop that powers the game stalls when it is left unmanaged. Starting koldun can take all seven Gifts cheaply and the magic stays deliberately open-ended, so it can overshadow other characters unless the GM sets the mysticism level beforehand. Skyship combat layers a multi-step crew sequence and a separate dice pool on top of personal combat, a sharp jump in table overhead from the otherwise light core.