Episode 2025.3 Published on 5 February 2025

The Launch Adventures, What Comes After Launch, and New Draw Steel Classes | January Roundup

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Intro

This is a bit of a weird one. Less than a week before the release of this episode, James basically posted what could've been the script for this episode in a post on Patreon. So in addition to news about the state of the Draw Steel core rules, and future products for Draw Steel, which was also outlined by James, I've got a bunch fantastic creations from the community.

Before we get into the full episode, I just want say, in light of the awful erasure that's happening in the US, where a lot of my audience is from, and which influences US allies' discourse. I just want to say: Trans people and all other members of the LGBTQ+ community. They may want to remove you from history and from daily life, but you've always been here, and you always will be, and you cannot be erased.

I'm Jon de Nor and this is Goblin Points.

Draw Steel

Most of the Draw Steel core rules are in editing. They're being gone through to make sure they make sense, are consistent and have as few typos as possible. The Monsters books is still in testing, so it's not gone to editing quite yet.

So far the team is on schedule to launch the game at the end of Q2 or Q3 of 2025. Let's say in about six months, give or take a month. That will be the launch of the final PDFs, while the physical books will be released a little later. Partially because printing stuff on paper takes time, especially when you want it done properly, and it gives the team time to correct minor issues discovered once the PDFs are out.

While the PDFs will launch on a set date, long time patrons of MCDM will get access to the PDFs as part of their patronage. That's people who have been subscribed for at least five months prior to the release of the individual PDFs. Note that the release of the PDFs to patrons will likely be before the game is launched, which means that signing up to the Patreon today is likely too late. Also note that five months of Patreon, is the same price as just bying the PDF.

Launch Products

But enough about the core rules, what else is coming for Draw Steel?

They're working on two adventures that will be released alongside the finished rules and monsters. Each of the adventures have a different strategy on how to introduce new players to Draw Steel.

The first adventure is an expanded version of the Delian Tomb. You might already know The Delian Tomb as the adventure Matt created live in one of his videos. The original design was meant to work as an easy introduction to Dungeons & Dragons, and the new version is basically serving the same purpose for new Draw Steel players.

The adventure will start easy on the players, letting them spend time to get to know their characters, how they work and how the different systems work. The adventure will still have the heroes save the daughter of the blacksmith from the goblins in the tomb, but there will also be a bit more happening around the tomb. Goblins raiding and terrorizing nearby settlements, for example.

The other adventure is a revised version of The Fall of Blackbottom. This is to a large degree the same adventure as was included in the first backer packet back in August. It will be expanded a bit too, though. There's going to be a new prologue, and a bit more time between the combat encounters. I suspect that parts of The Bay of Blackbottom adventure will be incorporated into The Fall of Blackbottom, as that serves as a prequel already.

This second adventure is aimed at players who are already familiar with Draw Steel, or who feel more comfortable jumping into the deep end with a new TTRPG. The Fall of Blackbottom jumps into the action much quicker and is meant for players who just want to start doing cool stuff.

Both of the adventures will have their own set of pre-generated characters players can start out with, if they don't want to go through character creation before getting started.

Future Products

But what comes after the launch of the game and the two adventures?

The first week back after the holidays had the design team meet in person at MCDM's offices and plan for the next two years of Draw Steel.

Early in Draw Steel's development, the idea seemed to be that the focus would be on a big box set, specifically the Vasloria Box Set. This seems to have fallen to the wayside in favor of multiple smaller products. According to Matt, they want to show that MCDM is serious about supporting Draw Steel, and that means they want to release multiple new products for the game in the first two years.

In the crowdfunder they only promised to set aside money to work on the Vasloria Box Set, and made no promises beyond that. I want to emphasize this, because they worded it like that because plans change, and it looks like that's become the case for the box set. I suspect it's not abandoned, because Matt and the team seem excited to expand on Valsoria. It's just been reprioritized.

Exactly what they plan to release in the next two years, we don't know yet. We have gotten some general categories of things they want to do, and a few specific examples of things they've already started working on. More details about what's planned in this first period will be announced with a new crowdfunder towards the end of the year. The crowdfunder will act as a gauge for how interested people are in the products they've planned, and as a way to fund the development of those products.

The Summoner

The first thing we actually know they're working on is the summoner class. Matt has already showed off them testing the summoner in a combat on stream. The concept of the summoner is that they summon minions. The pitch from Matt was the summoner should be able to control twelve minions and up to three squads of minions at first level.

The summoner uses minons as their heroic resource and most of their abilities are centered around using the minions to make an impact in combat. In addition to attacking with their minions, the summoner can cast some spells using their minons as the origin, and they can sacrifice their weaker minions to summon stronger minions. The summoner currently gets new minions at the start of every turn. that way they always have some minions to play off of.

The Beastheart

They're also planning a Draw Steel version of the beastheart. The beastheart was originally released of D&D 5e as a pet-companion-class. The design was always hampered a bit by the system it was made in, but with Draw Steel they feel the beastheart can really come into their own. They've nicknamed the project The Beastheart Unchained.

Other Products

In addition to those two specific products, they've also talked in the abstract about what other types of products they want to develop for Draw Steel. That includes more player options like even more classes, new treasures, perks, titles, kits, careers, downtime projects, and ancestries.

On the director side they want to publish monster bulding rules, drop-in encounters, montage tests and negotiations. They also want to republish the systems from Strongholds & Followers and Kingdoms & Warfare, including the warfare rules from the latter. It sounds like they want to publish the mechanics for free and then use those mechanics in adventures and other products.

They also want to support playing the game in-person by releasing a director's screen, dice, minis and other player aids.

Collaborations

Matt has also mentioned that MCDM is actively reaching out to possible partners to create products for Draw Steel. They seek out people or companies that have published what they consider interesting products for other RPGs and ask them if they're interested in working on something for Draw Steel.

It also sounds like these potential partners are offered to be part of the crowdfunder they'll be doing at the end of the year. Backers will be able to select these partnered product as part of their pledge, and the partner will get their share of the raised funds to work on their product.

Codex

Moving on to Codex. The developers have started implementing the rules in proper, now that the rules aren't changing from month to month. There have been statements both from the Codex developers and MCDM that they hope to have a test version of Codex for patrons soon-ish. No exact time, but it sounds like the first half of 2025.

The Codex does not have a release date set, and it's going to launch after the core rules. There's no word on pricing, other than they want Codex to be available to as many people as possible, and that you don't have to buy things twice. If you buy a product from MCDM, you won't have to pay for it again to have it available in Codex.

Djordice

By the time you're listening to this people who backed the djordice crowdfunder should have gotten a notification about providing payment for shipping of the dice. They're shipping out over 40,000 dice and they expect to start shipping the dice boxes on February 24th.

The Illrigger in Print?

The last piece of news is just a small notice that MCDM is looking at maybe launching a print version of the Illrigger. They've had some samples pages produced, at least. There is no word if it will happen, nor when it would release if it does.

From the Community

Here are some highlight creations from the MCDM community from January.

Atlas has created a slide deck with an overview of all the player options in Draw Steel. These are nicely put together slides with summaries of the classes, ancestries and what makes a hero.

Darren Lammers has updated their Emblazened character sheets for Draw Steel to support the new backer packet. These sheets are a wonderful alternative to the ones supplied in the backer packet.

Lord Durok, king of the mods, has published a blog post on how to recruit players to play Draw Steel. The post includes instructions on how to pitch the game, how to prep and even includes the resources explained in the post. There's a simple "adventure", characters, and a map provided.

jackpoll4100 has created a tool for using the Forge Steel character builder in Roll20. By opening both of them in your browser you can link them and have rolls made in Forge Steel show up in Roll20.

Mattelonian has made overhauled rules for respites in Draw Steel. The document include rules for doing work, hunting for rumors, pit fighting and much more.

PlainWhiteMan has created a web tool to look up the rules for Draw Steel. It's not a complete version of the rules, but rather a selection of the most important parts with deliberate presentations.

Solace, of Goblin Points interview fame, has published a comprehensive spreadsheet of how monsters are built. They've reverse engineered the amount of stamina and damage monsters do in the backer packet. Very handy if you want to homebrew your own monsters.

TBelmonst has published two subclasses for the elementalist class. The Ice mage which, believe it or not, focuses on ice based abilities, and the lightning mage which, and you're not going to believe this, focuses on lightning.

Virtue55 has created a Draw Steel Director's screen. The screen includes a bunch of useful rules to have within easy reach when running. Like rules for actions and maneuver on a turn in combat, rules for negotations and rollable tables for quick NPC generation.

Zetesofos has created the Magewright class. It's a Draw Steel edition of an artificer that tinkers on machines and infuses them with a bit of magic. They've also released three full pages of new perks, like the Cookie perk which let's you prepare a meal for your allies, to assist them in future tests.

Average Roll, Lavender_Gardens, and Rise Heroes Rise! are all streaming games of Draw Steel and the recording are available to view on YouTube for later viewing, or catching up.

Psiocratic Press has published a video where they build a monster for Drawl Steel.

sterling2063 has published videos from their campaign. Both campaign diaries, but also explanations on how they run mysteries in Draw Steel and how they created one of the encounters for their campaign.

And firend of the podcast, The Dice Society, has published their 14th episode of the podcast covering the current state of the core rules. And your's truly also received a shout out. Thank you. The Dice Society also published a video on YouTube where he builds a character using Forge Steel.

Links to everything in the episode description.

From Around the Web

As usual I've also included some links to MCDM stuff from outside our community. I want to particularly highlight d20play's interview with James at the end of the month. It even had a few pieces of new information. I should also mention that Polygon had Draw Steel as one of the most anticipated TTRPGs coming out in 2025.

Links to both and more in the episode description.

Outro

That's it for January. We're a bit between two interesting periods at the moment. The core rules are pretty much done and we're waiting for them to finish baking, and it's still a little while until we get details on what's coming next.

If you want to be featured on Goblin Points, or know of someone else who should be, leave a comment on YouTube or Spotify, or send me an e-mail on [email protected].

Links to the MCDM Discord server, the subreddits for MCDM and Draw Steel, the YouTube channels of Matt and MCDM, the complete link section, and this script is in the show notes. It's also on goblinpoints.com.

Next episode is on the 20th. This time im speaking with Iron Monocle, creator of Morladron. See you next time. Snakkes.

Links

From MCDM

From the Community

Draw Steel Homebrew

Draw Steel Media

From Around the Web