How Ancestries Work in Draw Steel

 Like most "create your own character" fantasy RPGs, in Draw Steel, you pick one of several ancestries. This might include conventional choices like Humans, Orcs, Dwarves, or High Elves (though I'll note that the dwarves in Draw Steel are quite different from your standard ones, being actually more akin to the Earthen from World of Warcraft) to original creations like the Memonek (silicon-based humanoids who have a vaguely metallic quality) or the Time Raiders (four-armed travelers of the Timescape who have a very 1980s cyberpunk look to them).

All in all, there are twelve ancestries to choose from in the core rules (with more coming in a supplement they've announced). These are Devils (Draw Steel's devils are from the seven cities of hell, but are ultimately humanoids with free will who aren't inherently evil - more akin to tieflings from D&D), Dragon Knights (think Dragonborn), Dwarves, Wode Elves (wood elves, but really emphasizing a more animalistic appearance), High Elves, Hakaan (towering stone giant people, very roughly equivalent to D&D's Goliaths,) Humans, Memonek, Orcs, Polders (kind of the Halfling equivalent), Revenants (yes, undead folk), and Time Raiders.

Each ancestry comes with a few signature traits: for example, the Human, being so attuned to the mundane world, has Detect the Supernatural, which allows them to use a maneuver to sense supernatural objects and creatures nearby (yes, in Draw Steel, humans are natural magic-detectors).

However, in addition to these signature traits, you also get a number of "Ancestry Points." Different ancestries have either 3 or 2 of these points (I think those with more complex signature traits tend to have fewer points to spend). There are then several options for purchasable traits that you can spend those points on.

To continue our Human example, one trait is "Cant' Take Hold," and costs just one ancestry point. This allows you to ignore difficult terrain created by magic and also reduces any forced movement by magic or psionic abilities used against you by 1 square. "Staying Power" costs two ancestry points, and increases your maximum recoveries by 2 (a fun reference to ancient humans' endurance hunting technique, where we'd just follow a herd of animals until they were too exhausted to continue running from us. Human endurance is one of our non-intelligence physical advantages).

In other words, two characters of the same ancestry might have some very different features.

Every ancestry uses this system (in early development, this was originally I think specific to Dragon Knights,) so when you build your character, you can really look at which traits will complement your character concept as well as your build.

As an example, Hakaan, the stony half-giants, are already larger than most humanoids, having a size of 1L (while they still occupy the same space on a map of just one square, 1L means they're towering at like 10 feet tall). If you build a character focused a lot on forced movement, that's already going to let you move smaller creatures an extra square (with melee weapon abilities). But you can also purchase the Forceful trait, which increases the distance of all of your forced movement by another 1.

As a note, Revenants, being undead members of other ancestries, have an option to pick Previous Life, which allows you to effectively purchase traits from the ancestry you had in life (though you can't get the signature traits). There are also some Revenant-specific ones (I like Bloodless, which gives you immunity to the bleeding condition, making it very easy to continue fighting even if you're dying.)