Episode 2025.11 Published on 5 June 2025

Possible Draw Steel Release Date, Side Quest Adventures, and more Djordice | May Roundup

Or listen here:

... and many other places!
Jump to links ↓

Intro

Looks like we might be drawing steel in July, we know more about the adventures MCDM plans to release in the coming months, we got details on the beastheart class, there'll be more djordice, the third party vampire class got funded, The Dice Society interviewed James. And More!

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

Steel Will Be Drawn in July

Right at the end of the month Matt drops a bombshell over on BackerKit, revelaing the covers for the Heroes and the Monsters books (they look fantastic, by the way). Then he goes on to announce that the final PDFs are being released to internal testers in June, and that they're targeting July 17th as the final release.

Mark that down. If everything goes to plan, July 17th is the date for the release of the finished Draw Steel core rules in PDF form.

The next milestone is the physcial release. MCDM estimates shipping should start in August or September. To make that happen, something like 16 companies have to coordinate and don't delay anything. Fingers crossed.

Then the last part of the release is the Ajax Edition. Because of how much is going into that version, it'll start shipping after the normal hardcover books. I've heard they want that to happen before the end of the year, but it's a really complex weave of companies that all have to work in lockstep to make that happen, so don't be surprised if a delay should happen.

I want to emphasize that everyone gets the PDFs at the same time, it's only the physical products' shipping that's staggered.

Book Three

Some eagle-eyed community members noticed that Heroes is marked Book One, and Monsters is marked Book Two. The third book of the core rules will be the Encounters book. This is a director resource with lots of useful, pre-made content to drop into a session. This is when you just need something to drop in front of the heroes, when you prepared to zig, and the heroes zagged.

The content in Encounters is supposed to be specific, to make it easy to use in any situation. To borrow an example from Matt: The montage test section of Encounters, might include a swamp and it's unique challenges. It's not a set of generic challenges that might be useful when setting up a montage test for navigating through a dangerous area, like a desert, swamp, jungle or tundra.

By making it a specific swamp with it's unique challenges, you don't really have to do any prep to use it. As the director, you only need the heroes to show up at the swamp, and then use the montage test, more or less, as is.

The same goes for the NPCs in the book. They're specific NPCs with given names, predetermined motivations and pitfalls. Yeah, you might want to change the name and swap out on of the motivations, but the rest can be used as is. That's most of the work done for you. Drop in, no prep.

This philosophy also applies to the delves, small three-room dungeons. It'll be maps, with monsters and potential secrets. Specific dungeons, but they fit in almost anywhere.

Same goes for the last section of the book, the combat puzzles. These are puzzles the heroes need solve to win a combat encounter. It's not "include a trigger to step on, to release the trap" kind of advice. We've already got that - that's in the Monsters book. This is a specific puzzle you can look up one minutes before combat starts and just drop into the combat.

Regarding a potential release window, MCDM has said they expect it to happen in 2026.

Future Adventures

We already know MCDM is working the two starting adventures: the Delian Tomb for groups of players that are completely fresh to Draw Steel, and want a guided introduction to the game. And the Fall of Blackbottom, which is a more explosive start, where the players are expected to already know how Draw Steel works.

The release dates for these are still uncertain. The Delian Tomb is in testing with patrons, and there has been an expressed wish that it'd be ready when the core rules are released, but time will tell if it releases with the core rules, or soon after.

The Fall of Blackbottom will release after the Delian Tomb. The Delian Tomb is laying the groundwork for how Draw Steel adventures are written and laid out, so Fall of Blackbottom will naturally have to delay until those things are ready.

In addition, they're working on the "conventure", currently known as The Road to Broadhurst. This adventure is designed to be modular, where the director can add or remove section of the adventure to make it fit one, two, three, or four hours of playtime. This adventure comes with pregens for the players, because it's assumed the director knows how to play, but they players do not.

The Road to Broadhurst is actually available to test for patrons at the time this episode drops. If you end up playing the adventure, make sure to fill out the survey before the 16th of June.

A bit further out, there's a couple of shorter adventures. These are pretty linear, and doesn't include enough victories to level up. If I were to call them something, I'd call them side quests. There are two adventures being worked on: the tentatively named Wode Rage where there heroes are being chased through a wode by gnolls and need to stop them, and The Dark Heart of the Wood where they head into a forrest to hunt a thorn dragon.

For longer adventures, there's two in the works. In The Condemned you play as anti-heores that are sent on a suicide mission. You're fighting hordes of war dogs, as you make your way onto Ajax' Crysopolis to rescue someone, and then try to make your way out again. This is basically Suicide Squad, but Draw Steel.

The last one is a major adventure, that spans multiple levels, and features an epic story, and it's called Crack the Sun. It's so extensive that it has the potential to become it's own box set. It's currently slated to be included in the next planned crowdfunder at the end of the year.

The first adventures being worked on are mostly low level adventures, seeing as most groups are just starting out. But after having a nice selction of low level adventures, MCDM wants to start work on adventures where the heroes start at a higher level.

The Beastheart

Way back in February we got an update on the summoner, and this month we got some more details on the beastheart. The designer of the Draw Steel beastheart detailed how the class currently works. Remeber that there might be changes after it's gone through more testing.

The beastheart is the monster companion class in Draw Steel. You play as a hero who has a monster companion by your side. Your companion isn't some tame dog or domesticated animal, it's a wild beast. While you work closely together as a team, the wild nature of the beast always lurks under the surface.

The Draw Steel version of the beastheart is based on the D&D 5e version. That version was already very Draw Steel-like: the companion builds up ferocity, which it can then spent on feroucious attacks. But, if it builds up too much ferocity, it's wild nature takes hold, and the companion goes berserk.

This is kept for the Draw Steel version. The beastheart's heroic resource is ferocity, which builds up and makes the monster companion rampage if the ferocity goes too high. The beastheart has to spend ferocity to calm their companion down again.

They both act on the same turn, when in combat, but they share their action and maneuver. If one of them uses the action, then the other has to use the maneuver. They've added new maneuvers, for the beastheart specifically, that do damage, to deliver on the fantasy of attacking in unison with your companion. The stamina and movement are still individual, and tracked and used separately.

The subclasses of the beastheart expresses how they cooperate with their companion. The current subclasses are guardian, prowler, punisher, and skirmisher. The companions come with their own custom designed actions, triggers and maneuvers.

They're not sure how many companions will be included with the class, but it sounds like their aiming for having a solid selection. Everything from bears, wolves and hawks, to more fantastical creatures as basilisks, and gelatinous cubes.

The Codex

The Codex' UI will go through some changes before release. Some of that work has already started; they've changed the presentation of abilities, for example.

They've also implemented triggered actions, and triggered resource generation. When the trigger for your triggered actions happen in the game, the Codex will prompt you whether you want to use your triggered action. And it keeps track if you've spent your triggered action in this round.

When in combat, each class has some triggers which generate their heroic resource. For example, the elementalist gains one essence when someone takes elemental damage. The Codex recognizes when this happens, and adds the heroic resource automatically.

I've used the Codex multiple times the last month, and it's coming along nicely. MCDM is also getting ready to use in their internal playtests.

The general manager of MCDM also confirmed that they are still intending on including access to VTT with purchase of the core rules. They also want to sell the Codex on Steam, where you're effectively buying the core rules, and getting access to the VTT as part of the purchase.

They do reserve they right to reevaluate the pricing structure in the future, though. They don't know how much it will actually cost to run the Codex. This depends very much on how many people are actually using it. If it becomes unfeasible to run and maintain Codex with the intended price structure - they're going to change it.

More Dice

With people posting that they're receiving their Djordice, people have started contacting MCDM, asking whether it's possible to get a hold of more dice. According to the general manager, they're planning on doing another Dice crowdfunder in August. They also hinted that there might be some extra useful items for running in person, but they don't have any precise details yet. Things are still being worked out.

Mot's Miscellaneous

And here's a return of a section that hasn't showed up for a while. Small, rapid-fire new, not worthy of their own section: it's Mot's miscellaneous.

  • The current list of ancestries for the Ancestries book are Faries, Radenwights, Goblins, Shadow Elves, and Gnomes. The list is subject to change. Each ancestry will have extra info, like background, lore, saints, and/or magic items).
  • MCDM has hired someone to work on updated stronghold rules for Draw Steel. It's not a focus until after the core rules releases.
  • The starter set for Draw Steel has gotten the name The Start Here Box.

I recently released a new version of Stawl, the digital toolset for Draw Steel. In this update I've finally added monster malice, which will now show up alongside monster stat blocks. This makes it much easier to run combats.

Speaking of running combats. If you need to add some extra monsters in the heat of the battle, or the monsters bring out another battering ram, it's now possible to add monsters and terrain objects while running a combat encounter. Drop in some reinforcements, when the players are rolling too well.

And if you use Obsidian, Notion or a similar note taking app when preparing your session, it's now super easy to copy monsters, their malice, and terrain objects into your prep notes. There's a new button on all monster, malice, and terrain object stat blocks, which copies the whole stat block as markdown. The whole statblock, nicely formatted, straight into your notes.

Check out Stawl at stawl.app, that S-T-A-W-L dot app.

The Vampire Class Funded

At the beginning of the month, the Draw Steel community made a solid effort and got the Vampire class across the funding line. And right before the crowdfunding campaign ended, it got boosted across the first stretch goal too. That means Triglav Games will also make a vampire ancestry. They plan to release the vampire class in November.

From the Community

And now, some highlights from the community.

007Goldfish has published the Flockle ancestry, an ancestry of bird people. They claim to track their lineage back to the Sylvan Celestials. The ancestry comes with fiction, in style of Draw Steel ancestries, and some on-point ancestry traits.

Brad has published a monster faction called Molemen. These are basically what they sound like: subterranean creatures which attack the heroes from below. Through their malice features, they even acquire assistance from an Arrix. There's seven monsters, and malice features included.

Ricky has published a Satyr ancestry, the mythological creature from ancient Greece with goat's horns and legs, and a man's head and torso. The signature trait let's you choose how your presence affects the others, such as the relaxation mood, which makes enemies more likely to stop fighting and negotiate instead.

Greenfield Studios published a video going through how potencies work in Draw Steel. This is one of the game's mechanics that a lot of people find confusing when they start learning the game, and Brian makes sure to guide you through how it all works.

The Dice Society published an interview with James this month. It's a great listen where James talks about why they chose the four pillars heroic, cinematic, tactical, fantasy. The inspirations they had when designing Draw Steel, and how they want to introduce novel ideas, while still keeping some things familiar.

Links to everything can be found in the link section of the episode descrtiption.

From Around the Web

James guest hosted on the Mastering Dungeons podcast in May. He and Teos Abadía cover TTRPG new and they end talking a bit about Draw Steel too.

Link can be found in the link section.

Outro

That's it for May. While I am already playing Draw Steel, there's something special about getting the finished PDFs with all the art and everything presented nicely; and now we're nearly there. Can't wait!

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 speaking with Hannah Rose. She's currently the co-founder and managing editor for the quarterly zine Horizons, but she was also the managing editor of Arcadia for over ten issues. Paying patrons have had the oppertunity to submit questions for me to ask. Link to join the Patreon is in the show notes.

See you next time. Snakkes.

Links

From MCDM

The Vampire Class Funded

From the Community

Draw Steel Homebrew

Draw Steel Media

Draw Steel Tools

From the Web