Episode 2025.5 Published on 5 March 2025

Rules Changes, Codex VTT News, and the First 3rd Party Crowdfunder | February Roundup

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Intro

MCDM is working on the core rules, the monsters, new classes and the Codex, but nothing is ready to be published yet. The community is of course ever flowing with great creations. In this episode I cover the known rule changes, the new classes and the news about the Codex.

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

Draw Steel

Rule Changes

Even though the Draw Steel core rules are in editing and layout, the design team is still making tweaks. The feedback from the playtest has guided some changes to the rules before they are done. Here are some of the changes that have been made.

  • Solo monsters now only have one action per turn. They were simply too powerful. It's possible to purchase extra actions using Malice.
  • The time raiders have three ancestry points to spend, instead of two, and the signature trait has been changed.
  • Polders have gotten a new trait, and they get to spend four ancestry points.
  • The censor and tactician can taunt creatures they've judged or marked, respectively.
  • They've fixed som overlapping shadow abilities.
  • The troubadour's Recast as another part is now Missed Cue and delays a monster's entrance into combat.
  • The winner of the initiative roll now get's to decide who goes first.
  • Bleeding does 1d6 + level damage.
  • They've closed some Null movement loops.
  • Minions now come in groups of four, instead of eight.
  • Some of the monster organizations have been renamed: band is now called horde, and troop is called elite.
  • Knockback now works on creatures your size, or equal to your might score, and smaller.
  • James mentioned there might be some tweaks to line area abilities, without getting specific.

New Classes

The design team is also working on two new classes. These won't be in the core rules, but will be released as their own products. It sounds like PDFs will be released, with the possibility of the classes maybe being included in a later physical product. The experiment with making a physical release of the Illrigger, will give an indication whether it's feasible with more smaller physical releases.

James also mentioned that patrons will be able to playtest the new classes once they reach a state of maturity where that's appropriate.

Summoner

The first class they're working on is the summoner. They summon loads of minions, and the point is that the summoner should mainly rely on their minions when in combat. Matt explained that if they give the summoner a bunch of powerful spells, players will use those instead, but that's not what the summoner is about. If players want to cast spells, there's the elementalist, or maybe the talent.

So far, they've spoken about four subclasses for the summoner:

  • Necromancer, which summons undead: skeleton, zombies, and the like.
  • Elemental summoner, which summons raw elemental powers into the world
  • Demon summoner, which summons demons from the Abyssal Waste. Demons in the Timescape are soulless and very primal, not like the devils, which are intelligent beings with souls.
  • Pixie summoner, which summons tiny fae creatures. Pixies in the Timescape are different from fairies, in that the pixies don't have souls, while fairies do.

The focus on whether the summoned creatures have a soul or not is that it shouldn't feel awkward or wrong to let the minions to be killed. The summoned minions are meant to be sacrificed in service of their summoner.

They've run multiple playtests with the summoner, and the results seems really promising so far.

Beastheart

The other class being worked on is of course the beastheart. James mentioned that the beastheart will have it's own rules for companion creatures. If other classes want an animal companion, they'll have to use the retainer rules in the monster book.

The Delian Two-mb

James is working on the new Delian Tomb adventure that will function as a way to introduce fresh Draw Steel players to the game. James mentioned that he's taking cues from the Pathfinder 2 starting adventure which introduces mechanics in the game a few at a time, to not overwhelm new players. The Pathfinder adventure also includes a sheet with instructions for the GM. If they're playing now, there's a guide to get started in 15 minutes. If they're playing in a few days, there's instructions on how to read the adventure and what to prepare.

It sounds like James wants to make the same thing possible for fresh Draw Steel players too. With this adventure in a starter set, it should be possible for new players to start a session in no time.

During the adventure, the heroes find themselves in a "hub" village they return to and hopefully connect with. The titular tomb can be delved multiple times by the heroes, over the course of the adventure. When the adventure ends, the world opens up, and it's possible to start a new adventure from there.

Omund's Land

All of the products that are currently being developed are set in Vasloria. It looks like what was previously referred to as the Vasloria box set, might take the form of the Omund's Land box set. Omund, or Good King Omund, was a ruler that united a large chunk of Vasloria. His reign was peaceful, and he's still remembered for it.

Vasloria in total is the size of Europe. Matt believes that's too much to cover in a single product. That size is to zoomed out to have anything useful for specific adventures and campaigns. Omund's Land is much more manageable. To get a sense of the size of Omund's Land, the map in Kingdoms & Warfare covered about 40% of Omund's Land.

Physical Release

The PDFs of the core rules and monsters are still on schedule to be released somewhere in the July, August time frame. The physical books will probably be a couple of months after that. Partly because they want to be able to make some last minute revisions before make the text permanent on paper. Some issue might be discovered after the release of the PDFs, and it'd be nice to sneak in a fix before the books goes to print. And print is the other part that makes the phsyical release a little later. It simply takes more time to get a print run going.

The Ajax edition of the game will take even more time to get ready. They've said that it'll be sent out to backers some time after the physical books. How long after, I suspect only time will tell.

In-person Play

There have been multiple questions to the team whether Draw Steel will be designed to be played in person. A fair point to ask with a dedicated VTT being built, and the team frequently using a virtual tabletop to playtest.

Not only are they intending for the game to be played in person, but most of the tester in the last survey playtested in person. James reiterated that in-person play is considered a main feature of the game.

Sheets

The character sheet that was released with the latest packet was great, but had some issues. They are being fixed, and the design team is considering whether they should make custom character sheets for each of the classes. These would be available for digital download, to be printed.

In addition to the character sheet, they're also working on sheets for the director. An encounter sheet for making running encounters easier. A negotiation sheet for running negotations, and a montage test sheet. We don't know any details about what they look like, but Willy was using an encounter sheet when running a recent playtest and noted that it made it easier to run the encounter.

Speaking of character sheets. I recently launched character sheets on Stawl. They are free form, so there's no limits on what kinds of titles, perks abilities or any other kind of homebrew you can add. The sheet also let's you keep track of stamina, surges, heroic resources, recoveries, and more.

You can check out the character sheets, and all the other Draw Steel tools at Stawl.app, that is S T A W L .app.

Codex

Some of the MCDM team went to visit DMHub, the developers of the Codex, this month. Now that the core rules are basically done, they can finally be properly implemented in the VTT.

The plan is to test the Codex in much the same way as they've done for Draw Steel. There's some initial testing with dedicated testers, then it becomes available to patrons, and finally backers of Draw Steel. The goal is that for every step, it becomes more stable and polished.

The Codex will be built in four stages, where each stage includes more and more features. The first release will include core, and combat rules and echelon 1 of the game. Release 2 and 3 includes echelon 2 and 3, more rules, and non-combat rules. Release 4 is planned to be the full release where everything is in.

Pricing

Once the Codex is publicly available, anyone will be able to purchase access. Access to the Codex is tied to products. So all players either have to be patrons or purchase the core rules to get access to the Codex. MCDM will also offer "party packs" with discounted copies of the rules for players.

They explain in a Patreon post that they have a lot of experience from the game industry and have seen what kind of terrible incentives free-to-play games create. To support development, developers of free to play games need to push players into constantly spending money. That's not something MCDM wants to do.

The good news, though, is that all player options will become available for free to all players, some time after release. When the summoner releases, it will be available to all patrons, or it can be purchased for immediate access by non-patrons, or non-patrons can wait for the summoner to become available for free. As long as you've purchased access to the Codex, all player options will become available, as long as you're willing to wait.

They'll do an update a few times each year, that will unlock new player options, that were previously only available for purchase.

Marketplace

They also want a marketplace for the Codex. With it, MCDM can publish new adventures, classes and ancestries and make them instantly playable. Established map and asset makers can make their creations available, and the community at large can publish creations for everyone to use.

While they want to support stuff that's been made especially to support the unique features of the Codex, they also want to make it easy for established map and asset makers to have their creations in the Codex. Djordi talked about making it possible for those creators to have their creations published in the Codex, with minimal changes in their publishing flow.

The marketplace won't be available at launch, and they'll start by working with a few trusted partners, before opening up publishing to more people.

Release

When is any of this becoming available? Nothing is set in stone yet. The only thing mentioned is that patrons should get access to Release 1 "in the coming months".

Djordice Crowdfunder

The Djordice is coming. Throughout the month Goeff, the general manager, have shared multiple picture of the bags with "just the dice", and the boxes for the individual heroes, and the Omund box. No reports on poeple getting their dice yet, but the fact that they're getting them delivered to the office, should mean things are moving along.

The Great Thaw of Gryzmithrak Spire

February saw the first crowdfunder for a Draw Steel product, produced outside of MCDM. The Great Thaw of Gryzmithrak Spire is an adventure for Draw Steel created by Andy Margolskee. In the adventure the heroes must take on an ancient evil to prevent an impending climate disaster.

As this episode releases, the crowdfunder is still going, if you want to get in on the action. The adventure is already fully funded, and then some, but you can still reserve a copy until March 13th.

From the Community

The MCDM community is as productive as ever. Here is some of what was released in the past month.

Heart of Arcana has published Chain of the Forgotten Ruby and Sword of the Kesshonic Key, two treasures to use in your Draw Steel game. They've also published an adventure: Tomb of the Crescent Moon, where a group of time raiders have escaped their prison, and aim to exact revenge and destruction.

Inge has published an art pack containing orcs and goblins. The illustrations are inspired by MCDM's designs, and the art can be used commercially, as long as credit is properly given.

Isangrimm has published Goodfield's Meadow. It's designed to be a starting village for new players and their heroes, and comes with pre-generated heroes, and NPCs with side quests.

Madness has published second echelon humans as monsters to fight. They are part of the Magical Kingdom Guarding Buerau, trained in the use of magic and steel.

Sam MacGurran has published a pyrokinetic subclass for the talent, focusing on fire powers.. This first version includes the first three levels of the subclass.

theLazyHero1220 has published Timepiece of Reversals, that let's the user travel back in time, but the strange timepiece has some wacky caveats.

The Friendly Orbit has released a series of podcast episodes where they play Draw Steel. They start off with an episode talking about the game, followed up by a three episode series where they play.

Aestus_RPG did an interview with Dael Kingsmill. They talk about mythology, TTRPGs, Draw Steel, and Dael's experience playing with Matt in the Dusk campaign.

Don't Shout Mimic continues their adventures, and they're outlined in the ongoing campaign diaries.

Rise Heroes Rise! has published multiple videos from their games. There's a danger room scenario where they use the Codex, a battle against Ajax, where the infamous 27 square push of Ajax happened, and the first episode of the series Rat Bastards.

sterling2063 has published a video where he covers how montage tests work in Draw Steel and give some nice context with how to visualize them.

The Dice Society has published their 15th episode. He goes into detail about the new classes, and also features a nice selection of creations from the community.

AmbyNavy has made a guide to run Draw Steel in FoundryVTT.

Cal has created an ability card tool. You can make cards for your abilities for easy reference.

JesterOC has created 3D printable status rings to use when playing with tokens in person.

plusmouse has created a custom character sheet that's also used by Forge Steel.

Seamus Finlayson has published an demo video of their two extensions for Owlbear Rodeo to make it easier to play Draw Steel.

Lastly, AxeLR8wasTaken has published two homebrew for D&D 5e: an Illrigger subclass, Frostweaver with an ice theme. That goes nicely with the Soulfrost: Blade of True Names, that they also published.

From Around the Web

I've also included a few links to MCDM being mentioned on the web. This time I'll recommend d20play's video where they play as tenth level heroes in The Ten Thousand Year Cataclysm.

Outro

That's everything for February! A lot of creations coming out of the community, but we're in a bit of a waiting period when it comes to stuff from MCDM. They're working on things, but nothing is being published just yet.

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 I'll be speaking with Andie Margolskee, a name you're now familiar with, the author of the crowdfunded adventure, The Thaw of Gryzmithrak Spire. See you next time. Snakkes.

Links

From MCDM

The Great Thaw of Gryzmithrak Spire

From the Community

Draw Steel Homebrew

Draw Steel Media

Draw Steel Tools

D&D 5e Homebrew

From Around the Web