Episode 2025.9 Published on 5 May 2025

Future Draw Steel Products, Djordice Are Shipping, Flee Mortals on Foundry | April Roundup

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Intro

The Delian Tomb is being tested by patrons, the layout for the core rules is nearing completion, and an adventure to run at conventions is in the works. Also, the dice from the crowdfunder is shipping, and Flee, Mortals! and Where Evil Lives is out on Foundry.

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

Draw Steel

The Delian Tomb

The Delian Tomb adventure is coming along and has been published on Patreon for patrons to test. MCDM has also sent out the feedback survey for the adventure. If you're a paying MCDM patron, you can download the adventure and send they survey to whomever plays in your game. As before, they don't have to be patrons to answer the survey.

The Conventure

In addition to the adventures they're already working on, MCDM is also working on what they currently call a "conventure". This adventure is made for people to run at conventions and game stores.

The inention is to make it a good adventure to run, when the director already is familiar with the game, but the players are not. The exact setting you'd be confronted with when running at a games convention, or for a random group of people at a game store.

They hope to make the adventure design modular, so that it's possible to adjust the length of the adventure based on how much time is available to run. I imagine a really simple way to do this would be to only include certain rooms of a dungeon, when you've got the time. Or you could move where the key to a door is: instead of it being at the end of a dedicated offshoot of the dungeon, it could be in the critical path the characters are already heading down.

There's no set release date for the conventure yet, but by the way the talk about it, they want it to be ready quite soon after release.

The Clounns

April first rolled around, and while the web has toned down most of the ridiculous pranks, Willy had a great one for patrons.

On april first he dropped a new ancestry, the Clounns; spelled C-L-O-U-N-N. These are not people dressed up as clowns, they're real clounns. The ancestry comes with some great purchased traits, like Tough Skin, because you're used to having insults thrown at you, and He Who Nose Joy, which let's you or your allies squeeze your red bulbous nose to make a saving throw.

In addition to the ancestry, there's also the kit Political Statement, which comes with the signature ability Pie Throw, which, will not surprise you, let's you throw pies at your foes. It doesn't do a lot of damage, but they become both taunted and embarrased.

And finally, the options include a new subclass for the troubadour: The Fool. If you're into making fools of your enemies, this is the subclass for you!

Warfare

At the beginning of the month, Matt wrote a big post on Patreon about how they want to design warfare for Draw Steel. While they like the design they did for 5e, they don't like the fact that you end up playing a completely different game when transition into warfare.

The redesigned system looks to much better integrate the warfare system with the rest of the game. They've mostly shared their initial thinking on what they want the warfare system to achieve, and how it should feel. The main goal is to not move away from the individual heroes, but stay with them as they make moves to change the outcome of the war.

If you're not on the Patreon, I recommend The Dice Society's latest episode, episode 17, which cover the current ideas for the warfare system in more detail than I do here. Link to the episode is in the links section.

The Layout

MCDM has started receiving prototypes of the layout of the core rules, and Matt showed off some of it on stream. The design is very minimalist, especially in comparison to how TTRPG books usually look. There's not much color, apart from the explcit art. White pages, with black text, and very clear headers. it certainly lives up to Matt's wish for it to be an easily legible reference manual, more than a book of prose.

The design isn't 100% final, but it sounded like they were very close to something they are happy with.

Now that they know how much space they have for the text, Matt's gone through and made sure there's not too much text for any of the ancestries. In addition to that, he's also rewritten the orc and dwarf ancestries completely. They were written very early in the Draw Steel design process, before the ancesty sections told a cohesive story. They were sticking out, like a sore thumb, and have now been changed to continue the story told in the other ancestry write-ups.

Initial Support

After the release, MCDM wants to show they're serious about Draw Steel being a flagship TTRPG. That's why they're already working on new player options, adventures and director supplements.

In addition to the two new classes, the summoner and the beastheart, and the new adventures, the conventure, the Delian Tomb, and the Fall of Blackbottom, they're also working on two new books.

One of the books is a smaller book, with ancestries only. It might be something like 16 ancestries, with full write-ups, purchased traits, art, info about the ancestry, and maybe something unique to the ancestry, like a title, or example NPCs.

Then there's the Encounters book. This is a bigger director supplement with lots of tools for directors. It'll include pregenerated NPCs, with negotiation stats, to easily drop them in if you need a noble, or merchant for the players to interact with. Premade montage tests for common scenarios, for example escaping a city, navigating a desert or other similar challenges.

They want to expand on the combat types mentioned in the core rules, where combat encounters can have other end goals than just defeating all the monsters. The book will include example combats where the combat is also a challenge or puzzle that needs to be figured out to win the combat.

And lastly it'll include delves. These are short dungeons that'll basically fit on a two-page spread. They're meant to be a bit generic to make them easy to drop in anywhere while playing. If you, as a director, need something to occupy the heroes for a little while, a delve is something you can drop in without basically any prep.

Draw Steel Actual Play

The design team at MCDM were all at the office in April, and while they were there, they also invited Dael Kingsmill. They sat down to play through an abbreviated version of the Delian Tomb, run by James. They ended up recording 18 hours of game footage, and the plan is to edit that down to "something watchable", and publish it near the release of the game.

The Codex

The developers of the Codex commented on platform supported. They said that Macs aren't very popular gaming machines, but they are pretty common among TTRPG players. They see Mac as an important platform to support with the Codex. They also has a desire to support Linux, but that's not a priority at first.

The Monstrous Bundle

Metamorphic Studios dropped what they call The Monstrous Bundle on the official Foundry store this month. The Mounstrous Bundle is a Flee, Mortals! and Where Evil Lives bundle, where all the monsters and lairs have been implemented in Foundry. The dungeons from Where Evil Lives even include the monsters, prepared, and hints about the traps and secrets for each room, right on the map. It's supposed to be ready to go without any prep.

Even if you have any previous versions of Flee, Mortals! or Where Evil Lives, you still need to purchase them anew for Foundry. You can't redeem your PDF, book, or D&D Beyond purchase for a free or discounted version on Foundry.

The Djordice

The Djordice has begun shipping. People in North America have already started receiving their orders.

The orders going to Australia have been shipped for distribution. They're all sent in a single shipment from the US, and then distributed from a central location in Australia.

The shipments to Europe have been a bit delayed, and we haven't gotten an update on when we can expect the dice over here too.

If you want something a bit more custom, than the dice provided in the Djordice crowdfunder, A-a-ron from the community has made multiple Draw Steel dice commisions. Among them a really nice set for The Dice Society. I've put a link to A-a-ron's Bluesky profile, where you can DM them for details.

From the Community

Time to bring you some highlights from the community.

Because I forgot to highlight this last month, I'm doing it first now. Cal has put together a repository of tools and resources for playing and running Draw Steel. It's of course called Heroic Resources. You can find links to Draw Steel modules for Roll20 and Foundry, alternative character sheets, director and player tools, and actual plays.

Shaeomar published The Great Rebirth in March, but it received an update in April, which gives me an excuse to highlight it. The Great Rebirth is a starting adventure for Draw Steel that aims to teach the players the different mechanics of the game, at a good pace. It's available for purchase on DriveThruRPG.

Jeff Steven Games has announced they're doing a Draw Steel crowdfunder for a collection of 50 legendary weapons. They say there's going to be color images for each weapon and have put up an example weapon, with accompanying art, designed by Spencer Hibnick a.k.a. Pesto Enthusiast. You can find the example weapon on the linked landing page for the crowdfunder. The campaign launches in about two months.

Draw Steel has a very simple approach when it comes to wealth. if you're looking for something that's a bit more fleshed out, without being an actual complete monetary system, I'd encourage a look at Seth Lang, a.k.a. IronMonocle's, Wealth Rules Additions. They expand on the existing wealth system, but stays compatible. Meaning you don't have to do any conversions to a new system.

And last but not least, I have to mention that The Dice Society published a new episode of their podcast. This is the episode I mentioned earlier, which goes more into detail about the ideas for the warfare system for Draw Steel. He also made a YouTube short about dragons, for the annual monster week on YouTube.

Links to all of these and even more community creations are linked in the links section of the episode description.

Outro

And that's all I have for April. Not much to say, other than that we're looking forward to the game being released.

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'm joined by Paul Ligorski, a.k.a. Heart of Arcana. He's published multiple adventures, both for other games, and for Draw Steel. Paying patrons have been able to suggest question for me to ask. By joining, you get to submit questions for my next guest.

See you next time. Snakkes.

Links

Dice

Draw Steel Warfare

The Monstrous Bundle

From MCDM

From the Community

Highlighted

Draw Steel Homebrew

Draw Steel Media

From the Web