Episode 2025.13 Published on 5 July 2025

Draw Steel Drops for Patrons, Playtest of the Summoner Class, and Crowdfunders Galore | June Roundup

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Intro

June has come and gone, and Draw Steel might be releasing in less than two weeks. But before that happens, I'll tell you about the release candidate of the rules, the updated Monsters manuscript, the summoner playtest and the fantastic community projects that are being published.

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

Draw Steel Release Candidate

Okay. The big news first. The near finished version of the Draw Steel Heroes book has been released to patrons. This is what MCDM calls a release candidate, which means that all the important work is done, and it's basically ready to go to print.

There are a few things missing from the PDF still. James actually provided a handy list in the Patreon post: The book has not gone through an accessibility pass; there's art that's missing and sometimes the same piece of art is used multiple times; there's inconcistent spacing in the layout in some places; there are no bookmarks to navigate, it's just a 400 page long PDF document; links aren't working yet, there's no table of contents, and more...

But! So much of the book is here. The colors, most of the art, the layout, the ability blocks. It's truly the first time you get to experience what they game will actually look like.

And speaking of what it looks like. I would like to... prepare for when you see the book. The pages of the book are most likely not what you're used to seeing. There's no intricate border along the edges, no gradients in the background of the pages, and no colorful headers and icons. The book is... pragmatic. It's black text on an off-white, cream background. And the art has crisp edges with a simple line to hint at a frame.

This is very different from what you might be used to. Personally, the design has grown on me, but it's not fully to my taste. I have however seen people on the Discord and Reddit mention that they like the clean design, without all the frills and distractions.

Matt has stated multiple times that he wants the rule book to look and, especially, be usable as a reference manual. It's not a book you sit down to read under a blanket, it's a tool to look up rules. That has produced a book that looks very different from other rule books in this space.

I think the best thing I can say is that, just as with the rest of the game, the design has a purpose and a goal it's trying to achieve. I think it's achieved that goal. And, as with Draw Steel, it'll turn some people off, and some will love it.

Fresh Monster Manuscript

Alongside the Heroes PDF, they also released the most up-to-date version of the Monsters manuscript. This has not gone through editing, or layout yet, so it looks the same as always.

Willy included a little note at the start of the document saying that there's still edits and updates missing for a lot of the monsters. That will be fixed as the book is getting to layout and editing. In the foreword, Willy explicitly mentions not to update any digital tools; and as the developer of Stawl, I feel a bit called out. Andy Aiken, who makes Forge Steel, and I will just have to wait a little longer.

The game is still on track to release on July 17th.

The Summoner

The second biggest news of the month is of course the release of the summoner preview. Willy dropped all ten levels of the summoner for patrons to try out.

It's not gone through editing, and it needs a lot more testing before it's ready. It's also gone through some changes since the post on the summoner from February. Back then, the minions were basically a heroic resource, but that has been changed now. You spend essence to spawn a horde of allies.

The class includes four subclasses, specializing in summoning different kinds of creatures: undead, demons, elementals, and fey.

If you want to see the summoner in action, Rise Heroes Rise is publishing videos of the summoner being tested at four different levels. Link can be found in the show notes.

The Blacksmith's Guild - Issue #1

Tabletop Nonsenseverse has published the first issue of their Draw Steel zine The Blacksmith's Guild. The issue features five articles from authors known in the Draw Steel community.

The first article is on sidekick retainers which are based on the player classes. The three included in the article is based on the tactician, the shadow and the elementalist. The sidekicks can be used as regular retainers that joins one of the heroes, but it's also suggested they can work as stand-ins for characters whose player is absent. If a player can't make the session, use one of these retainers in place of the player's regular character. Then the character can still contribute, but it's not as big a burden on the other players.

The issue also includes a detailed walkthrough on how to create your own ancestry for Draw Steel. It explains the theory on how to balance an ancestry, what makes a good signature trait, and how much traits should cost. Then it leads you through the process of creating a brand new ancestry: harpies from Axiom. Putting the theory into practice.

There's also a collection of seven new kits, a new monster faction of frost elves consisting of six new monsters, and a three-room dungeon delve called Lost Crypt of Dereldhur.

You can snag the issue on Tabletop Nonsenseverse's online storefront for $4.99.

Ratcatcher Magazine

If you listen to Goblin Points regularly, you'll already know about Ratcatcher Magazine from the previous episode where I interviewed Onslaught Six. I'm happy to say they've managed to not only fund the magazine, but also go way beyond that. That means there's more to go around to the contributors.

The magazine features articles from Spencer Hibnic a.k.a. Pesto Enthusiast, Sam McGurran, Félix Gauthier-Mamaril, Joel Russ, Aaron Flavius West a.k.a Mr F1zzer, and Chris Hopper. And there's art by Inge and Dojikaan. If you're active in the Draw Steel community, you'll probably recognize a few of these names.

The articles include topics such as living traps; monster stat blocks for mimics and elmental dancers, and creatures of the wode; a new flower folk and dryad ancestries. There's a lot of great stuff in here.

The campaign is now over, but it'll be possible to get a PDF of the magazine in the future. Onslaught Six also mentioned wanting to have a backlog of phsyical editions of the magazine available for purchase too.

The Vessel

ChaoticGoodra has announced they're launching a crowdfunder for their class called the Vessel.

The vessel has made a pact with a powerful being, and that being now uses you to enact their will onto the world. You powers differ based on the type of powerful being you made a deal with.

If you're really curious what the class is about, the landing page for the campaign has a link to the five first levels, as they currently are. The final release, should it be funded, will have a properly laid out PDF, and, of course, the remaining five levels.

Oh. You might've already seen this class under the name the Acolyte, but it was changed, to avoid clashing with a future MCDM products that might be named the Acolyte.

Raiders of Ivywatch

Look Out Behind You Studios, the company of GubDM, whom you may also know from the MCDM community, have just funded an adventure on BackerKit called Raiders of Ivywatch.

According to the campaign, the adventure is centered around the titular town of Ivywatch. The town is built around a statue that's rumored to seal away an evil force, but now Ajax and the hawklords have ruined the town, stolen the statue, and in their wake a gang of lizardfolk are attacking the village.

The adventure is to include more than ten combats, one to two negotiations, new titles and treasures, packed into over 20 hours of gameplay. It'll include maps for all the combats, with some of them even including variations for different times of the day.

The backer amount was $12. Hopefully they'll open for late pledges for those who didn't get the chance to back initially.

You Meet in an Ambush

The Dice Society has published a revamped version of their introductory adventure You Meet in an Ambush. The adventure is meant for players new to Draw Steel and introduces the main mechanics of Draw Steel one at a time.

The adventure actually works as a lead-in to the Fall of Blackbottom adventure being published by MCDM later this year, so you can go from a gentle start, getting used to the game, right into an adventure really showing off what makes Draw Steel fun to play.

You start out in a tavern, because of course you do, meeting an old acquaintance. From there things go from calmly helping out patrons in the tavern, to the heroes being ambushed and having to save themselves and the patrons from perishing in the tavern.

You can grab it for a $3 on Itch.io.

Class Retainers for Draw Steel

Solace, whom I interviewed back in September of 2024, has released a massive document with 26 new retainers.

While the Monsters book comes with some retainers already, Solace felt there was a need to represent the different classes as retainers. Well, with all the subclasses, that sums up to 26 different retainers, one for each subclass.

You can pay what you want for the document over on Itch.io.

Community Highlights

And now, a few highlights from the community.

Rise Heroes Rise has already played with the summoner class. They've recorded the session, where they play using the Codex, and published it on YouTube. If you want to see what the summoner is capable of in combat, that's one to check out. There are also more videos on the way, showing off the summoner at higher levels.

JesterOC published a blog post where they muse on the perception of the "no misses" in Draw Steel. Here's from the post: Looking over a number of Reddit posts, I keep seeing a recurring theme: people want uncertainty in their games, and they assume that when attacks "never miss," it means characters always achieve their desired results. I think JesterOC makes some good points in the rest of the post, which I'll let you read for yourself.

EZKL22 has created a set of cards to use when playing Draw Steel. There are cards with the list of things you can do on your turn, as a cheat sheet for players. The intention is to flip the card once you've taken your turn. There's also a similar card for triggered actions. There are cards for hero tokens and surges that the players take when they gan hero tokens and surges respectively. And lastly, there are condition cards to give players when conditions are applied to their character. These are really great!

Greenfield Studios is back, this time with a video explaining surges. How they work is pretty quickly explained, but they also include a detailed breakdown of which classes grant the most surges, and which subclass is the "Best-in-Surge". They also cover how different classes might focus on generating surges, while others mostly consume them. Teamwork makes the... damage go up.

Shadowhand Gaming has released a booklet of tongue-eaters. This is a faction of nine monsters, ready to feast on your tongue. It also includes a solo monster in the form of the Devourer. The booklet can be picked up for free by joining the free tier of Shadowhand Gaming's Patreon.

The Dice Society released a new episode of their podcast and did a live stream. In the podcast episode Caio talks about the summoner and the Heroes PDF that dropped right before he released the epsiode. Then he did a livestream on YouTube paging through the PDF, looking at the near finished layout and art.

From Around the Web

Now that Draw Steel is nearing release, other parts of the internet is starting to pay notice. From June, I want to particularly highlight the interview James did with Rascal News. If you're willing to spend the dollar, you can read the whole thing.

Outro

Well. Most of that episode was covering the stuff happening outside of MCDM. And I want that to be the case going forward. Especially after the game releases. I want Goblin Points to be a way for you to discover all the cool stuff that's being made for Draw Steel. MCDM has stated that they're eager for the community to contribute to the Draw Steel hobby, and I want Goblin Points to help those contributions be discovered! Goblin Points is of the community, with the community and for the community!

Puh... Almost got a bit, preachy there... ...Thank you for being a listener.

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 will actually be the episode featuring Hannah Rose. I apologize for the switcheroo in June. Paying patrons can usually submit questions for me to ask, but it's a bit late for that. But you can sign up for next time. Link is in the show notes.

See you next time. Snakkes.

Links

From MCDM

The Blacksmith's Guild - Issue #1

Ratcatcher Magazine

The Vessel

Raiders of Ivywatch

You Meet in an Ambush

Class Retainers for Draw Steel

From the Community

Draw Steel Homebrew

Draw Steel Media

Draw Steel Tools

From the Web