Episode 2025.15 Published on 5 August 2025

Draw Steel is Out!, The Delian Tomb is Fantastic, and 50 Leveled Weapons With Art | July Roundup

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Intro

It's here! It's finally here! Draw Steel is out! Next is the physical books. There's also the summoner and beastheart classes; the gnome, shadow elf and four more ancestries; an extended version of Fall of Blackbottom, a thorn dragon adventure, and a suicide mission adventure; and details on the Codex VTT. Then there's the crowdfunded weapons collection and kobold ancestry; and two other third-party adventures. And even that's not all! There's so much!

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

Draw Steel is Out!

The biggest news is of course that Draw Steel is finally out. The game is attracting quite a bit of attention and there are plenty of new folks coming into the community now that they're receiving emails telling them the final PDFs are ready. The books are being printed and will hopefully start shipping in a month or two.

In addition to the game's PDFs dropping, MCDM also dropped the Delian Tomb. This is the starter adventure that introduces new players to Draw Steel. It's designed to picked up and start playing immediately. The first act of the adventure has a gentle introduction to the game's mechanics, for both the director and the players. I want to emphasize this: the adventure does not require anyone in the group to read anything before playing. The director and the players learn the rules as they go through the adventure. You can, of course, prepare before running the adventure too, but that is not required.

The Delian Tomb is also a fun adventure if you're experienced players. It's a great adventure in general and a great way to get introduced to Draw Steel.

The Delian Tomb is only available as a PDF, but it only costs $10. That wil give you an adventure that's at least 30 hours long, with high quality maps, and a "basic rules" book. There are over 200 pages of Draw Steel in that one tiny package. It's a steal!

Road to Broadhurst was also released alongside the game. This is the "conventure", the adventure designed to be run at conventions or in game stores. It's designed to be a quick introduction to Draw Steel, where the director is already familiar with the game, and the players are fresh. The conventure is free to pick up from MCDM's website.

Future Draw Steel Products

MCDM has a whole bunch planned for future Draw Steel products. They outlined their plans to both patrons and backers of Draw Steel.

Player options

We already know about the two new classes: The summoner which summon hordes of minions to do their fighting for them. They'll be able to summon fey, undead, elementals and more. The summoner is apparently close to being done. The other class is of course the beastheart, the monster companion class; you fight alongside your monster companion. This is coming a bit further down the road, but is planned to release this year.

There are also more ancestries on the way. Six of them: goblins, gnomes, shadow elves, radenwights (rat folk), faeries, and a last one that's a dragonfly people. The last ancestry hasn't gotten a name yet.

The plan was to release these three products separately, but lately they've been wondering whether they should be released in a single product of player options. Still to be determined.

Adventures

MCDM also have multiple adventures in the making. The Fall of Blackbottom will be an expanded and improved version of the test adventure that was released with the playtest packet a year ago. This is also designed as a starter adventure, but for players and a director that are familiar with Draw Steel and wants to start in the middle of the action.

The Dark Heart of the Wood, a small adventure which is only maybe six victories: there's a thorn dragon that needs taking care of in the wood. This is a smaller problem for the heroes to fix along the way to something bigger. MCDM mentions calling these small adventures quests insternally, which is what I too called it in last news roundup. Or, techincally I called it a side quest, but who's counting?

Then there's the gnoll adventure, which hasn't gotten a name yet. The heroes find a town razed, and a band of gnolls roaming the area. There's a bloody trail leading towards a much larger town; now the heroes must step up.

The Condemned is an adventure where the heroes start in prison. Well, they're not really heroes. Anti-heroes at best. They're being executed for their past crimes, but get an offer, in the nick of time. Would they rather go on a suicide mission to the Crysopolis, Ajax' flying city, in exchange for their freedom? Is this suicide squad? Yes. Will it be cool? Surely.

All of these adventures are planned released this year. Hopefully before the crowdfunder in December.

Director Tools

MCDM is also planning something for the directors: the Encounters book. This is essentially the third, and last I think, book in the series of core Draw Steel books. It will contain resources to use when running Draw Steel. These are intended to be used in the spur of the moment.

Encounters contains four kinds of encounters:

  • Delves: Small three-room dungeons that can be deployed when you as a director need to occupy the heroes for a little while. There'll be a dungeon for each hero level.
  • Negotiations: A collection of ready to go NPCs with negotiation stats. These will be specific persons, fully realised, to make them easy to deploy in the moment. It'll be a named, specific guard captain, with specific motivations and pitfalls. Then you'll just swap out stuff if necessary.
  • Montages: Unique montages for specific situations. These will have specific challenges for each uniqe scenario. Once again, the thinking is that you'll be able to just drop this in to your session, and swap out details if necessary.
  • Heroic Tests: Examples of skill tests at easy, medium and hard difficulties, for most, maybe all, the skills in the Heroes book. They'll write outcomes for each of the results for each of the difficulties of the test. If you can't use the outcome raw, you'll probably be able to adapt to something appropriate quickly.

Then there's Crack the Sun, an epic campaign, split into five acts, where each act grant the heroes a level. Not much is known about the details yet, but, as the name kind of implies, the heroes will end up on the sun at the end of the campaign. There they'll have to stop the baddies from releasing the evil trapped within the glowing prison.

And lastly there's the Vasloria Box Set they promised to start development on. It's called Omund's Land. It will be a bit further out, maybe we'll see this next year? It'll be worked on in the background while Encounters and Crack the Sun are the focus.

Patrons

It's also worth mentioning that if you're a long standing patron of MCDM you'll get most of this for free. If you've been a patron for a number of consecutive months before the release of applicable products, you'll receive a code to download the product for free. This only applies to digital versions of the products.

So far patrons have received:

  • The Heroes book
  • The Monsters book
  • The Delian Tomb

Future products include:

  • The Summoner
  • The Beastheart
  • The Fall of Blackbottom
  • The Gnoll Adventure
  • The Condemned
  • The Dark Heart of the Wood
  • The six ancestries

The number of months required depends on the price of the product. Divide the retail price by 8 (the cost of being a patron), and you get the required number of months. You won't know the exact release date in advance, so you won't be able to predict when to sign up. This is meant as a benefit for loyal patrons.

Draw Steel in Stores

MCDM doesn't have a publisher, and they have no current plans of acquiring one. That means you won't see Draw Steel on any store shelves, unless the store has ordered the books from MCDM directly.

Shipping and storing books is expensive and many stores are hesitant to take in any stock. That's why MCDM has also developed a smaller cheaper product stores can order: The Goblin Dice box.

First sold at GenCon, this is a small dice box in the style of the small dice boxes from the Dicefunder last year. The box comes with three dice: two d20 with the number one through ten twice, and a d6 with the numbers one through three twice. Also included in the box is a QR code to download the Delian Tomb adventure.

This box is meant as a cheaper way to get Draw Steel into stores. The boxes are a lot cheaper, smaller and lighter than books, which hopefully makes them more attractive to stores. And when customers buy one, they get exactly what they need to get started playing Draw Steel.

The Codex

The Codex is the official VTT for Draw Steel, developed by DMHub in partnership with MCDM. They're currently in alpha testing and are working hard on getting the rules implemented. They hope to have a version ready to be tested by patrons by the end of the year. The patron test version will have first echelon implemented, to give people the chance to realy give it a go.

Once they've got that, they'll expand to higher echelons, and with more features. MCDM views the Codex as the digital tool for Draw Steel. It's more than a digital battle map. It has a built in character builder, map building tools, modding support, and custom monsters and classes.

The plans for monetizing the Codex was also reiterated. First, there's no plan to do a subscription to get access to the Codex. If you buy the core rules, you get access to Codex. That means, all players that are going to play in the Codex need to own the core rules to gain access. They do plan on having a "table pack", where you can get a discount on a pack of the core rules, to make it easier to get your whole group access to Codex. The price of the table pack has not yet been determined.

They wish to get to a point where they can have the Codex version of all their products ready when the product releases. So if you were to buy a new class when it releases, you'll get immediate access to the class in the Codex.

Also, for player options, like a class or an ancestry, they want to make them timed exclusives in the Codex. If you have access to the Codex, but skip buying the new class when it drops, it'll eventually become available for free in the Codex.

The end goal is to make the Codex the premium way to play Draw Steel digitally, and they hope that the pricing plans they've made will be able to support development of Codex. They are not willing to keep up development if it's not financially sustainable.

Tomb of the Crescent Moon

Paul Ligorski, a.k.a Heart of Arcana, has published a new version of his adventure Tomb of the Crescent Moon. There have been previous versions of this adventure, but it's now updated with the final layout, instead of the previous manuscript form.

The adventure takes place in a tomb inspired by the actual tombs fo the Valley of the Kings in Egypt. The adventure includes five new treasures, two new kits and two new monsters. It's possible to earn up to twelve victories in the adventure.

I'm a sucker for a good map, and Tomb of the Crescent Moon delivers. It has a fantastic high quality map of the whole tomb, neatly aligned to grid; no pillars half covering a square. And there seems to be plenty of objects to throw monsters into.

You can pick up the adventure for $4.99 on Itch.io.

Weapons of Legend

All the way back in April I reported that Jeff Stevens Games was launching a crowdfunder, and now it's here. They've launched Weapons of Legend, which includes a whopping 50 leveled weapons, each with their own color image!

If you pledge, you'll get the PDF with all the weapons and you can opt in to print codes for a printed version of the PDF, and the weapons printed on tarot size cards. Additionally, they're running a collaboration with Pesto Publications and their Kobold Ancestry crowdfunder. If you back both, you'll get two extra weapons.

The project has already blown through it's initial goal of $600, but there's still time to join. The campaign is going until August 22nd. Pledges start at $7.

The Kobold Ancestry - Powered by Draw Steel

And speaking of that Kobold Ancestry crowdfunder. Pesto Enthusiast, made the legendary kobolds in Flee Mortals, inspired by Roman legians. He's back under his Pesto Publications label with the The Kobold Ancestry crowdfunder.

If you want to play as a kobold hero in Draw Steel, this has got you covered. But, oh, there's more! The kobold gets four signature traits, instead of one. To get traits unique to your kobold, you need to earn them by pleasing great wyrms. There are ten sets of traits you can earn from the different wyrms.

There's also three new kits, one leveled weapon, and there's two more leveled treasure if you also back Weapons of Legend.

The project has already blown past it's $500 goal, and is running until August 25th. Pledges start at $7.50.

Raiders of Ivywatch—A Draw Steel Adventure

At the beginning of July, the Raiders of Ivywatch - A Draw Steel Adventure crowdfunding campaign was successfully funded. They almost doubled their goal of $480.

If you missed the crowdfunder, but are still interested in the adventure, you can head to campaign and pre-order the adventure for the discounted price still. The price is currently $12, but it looks like it'll increase to $18 once it's fully released.

The Blacksmith's Guild Issue #2

A new issue of the The Blacksmith's Guild is out. Issue 2 includes five articles from multiple known names in the Draw Steel community.

Tamwin has written up his Goblin Squad ancestry. If you want to play three goblins in a trenchcoat, this is it. Only it's actually five goblins. They can even spread out while in combat to cover more ground, but be a little more vulnerable, but they can't stray too much. Also; they're required to each have their own name.

Anna/Nathan Lee has contributed seven new leveled weapons, one for each of the seven elements. Each weapon comes with a helpful entry on how heroes should use the weapons to get the best utility, and a section to help the director challenge heroes wielding the same weapons.

Subharup Roy has written a short adventure for second echelon heroes. The adventure is set in Capitol and includes the beginnings of some political intrigue, and a sabotage mission.

Harmonic Hewell has written up a collection of six dynamic terrain objects to spice up your combats. They range from level two to seven, so they should be good for three echelons. They include something as simple as a false switch that explodes, to sticky bombs that latch on to the heroes.

And lastly, Paul Ligorski makes his second appearance in this Goblin Points episode with the Dawn Elves. Theses are passionate creatures that burn brightly for a short while. The monster band includes unique malice features and five new level three monsters.

Adventure Lookup

A few years back, Matt suggested there should be a way to look up adventures based on system, playtime, number of recommended players, etc. That exists, and there are currently four Draw Steel adventures listed. You can go to AdventureLookup.com to find an adventure to run.

Community Highlights

And now, some highlights from the community:

  • Iron Monocle's blog post on how to do ship to ship combat as a montage test.
  • A changelog with the changes from the December backer packet to the full release of Draw Steel by KJTailor.
  • Tintenseher's two-page Draw Steel cheat sheet to easily look up common rules.
  • Two videos from The Dice Society:
    • The first video is a livestream where he flips through the release candidate of the Monsters book.
    • The second video is a review of Draw Steel. While he's very happy with the game, there are few nitpicks. But that's to be expected. Nothing's perfect.
  • Rise Heroes Rise has published multiple videos featuring the summoner class as different levels, to show off how powerful they can become.
  • There's two video from Greenfield studios on how to make, and then to play, a good character.
  • sterling2063 has published two video too. The first covers how to create a character, and the second on how to get started with Draw Steel.

In addition to these highlights, there are a bunch of more links in the episode's links section.

From Around the Web

With the release of Draw Steel there is of course a ton of places covering it on the web. Three links I want to highlight are

  • Power Word Spill's video 17 Reasons You Should Try Draw Steel which gives a very nice introduction to the fun parts of the game
  • The Character Sheet's interview with James where he talks about the near finished version of the game;
  • and Total Party Thrill's review of the game. The episode is nearly three hours long, but I thought it was worth it.

More links can be found in the episode's links section.

Outro

July ended up being a crazy month, and August is probably not going to be any calmer. I'm guessing it's going to be even wilder once people get the time to look at the rules in detail, and once people start announcing new projects for the game.

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 tips@goblinpoints.com.

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. That's going to be my interview with James Introcaso. Yes. The James Introcaso. Paying patrons have been able submit questions for me to ask, and if you want that oppertunity with my next guest, link to join is in the show notes.

See you next time. Snakkes.

Links

From MCDM

Tomb of the Crescent Moon

Weapons of Legend

The Kobold Ancestry - Powered by Draw Steel

Raiders of Ivywatch—A Draw Steel Adventure

The Blacksmith's Guild Issue #2

Adventure Lookup

Community Highlights

From the Community

Draw Steel Homebrew

Draw Steel Media

From the Web