Episode 2025.21 Published on 5 November 2025

News: The Dungeon Delving TTRPG Crows, Jams of the Timescape Winners and the Summoner is Almost Ready | October Roundup

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Intro

We crowned the winners of the first ever Jams of the Timescape, James is testing the dungeon crawling TTRPG Crows, the boggits crowdfunder is doing well, there's a physical character journal, and the summoner is nearly ready.

I'm Sir Jon of Nor and this is Goblin Points.

Jams of the Timescape

All the way back at the beginning of October, The Dice Society and I announced the winners of the first volume of Jams of the Timescape. The judges spent a ton of time working their way through all the submissions, and Tintenseher, and dillbizzle came out on top. They've both received a full set of Draw Steel dice!

Tintenseher submitted Memories of the North Wind which features a set of treasures stolen from a cursed queen. Dillbizzle submitted Solgado's Master Chef Tools which features the lost tools for Solgado, which was used to create the greatest meal ever.

I highly encourage you to stop by the submissions page of the jam and check out all 39 submissions to the jam. While we only awarded two winners, there was a whole heap of great submissions.

Crows

James is currently working on a new dungeon crawling RPG called Crows. While he's been tinkering at it for a year, he's only really started to work on it recently. He's been playtesting versions of the game internally at MCDM, and he's brought the game for testing at gaming conventions.

Crows is a game about weak characters delving dungeons for gold. The gold is spent to improve the characters and hopefully make them survive longer. Crows is not a heroic game like Draw Steel, Crows is survival-horror, where a character's lifespan is short.

While James was testing two versions of dice mechanics, it looks like he's landed on a power roll inspired mechanic. You roll 2d10, with the tiered result, but instead of the characters having abilities, the outcomes are tied to the equipment the character's using. Also unlike Draw Steel's power roll, Crows might include null results, where a bad roll means you make no progress. But with combat being short and fast, the wait between doing something shouldn't be too long.

Crows will also include mishap tables, which describe what happens when characters critically fail. Unlike Draw Steel, Crows will punish the character for bad rolls. Rolling a natural one or two, will make the GM, called the ref, roll on the mishap table, which will produce a bad effect for the character. This can happen for both spell casters and weapon wielders. Possible outcomes on the mishap table are everything from the character hurting themself, or the enemies getting some frree damage in, to a portal opening up from the plane of hell, a large demonic hand reaching out, grabbing the character, and pulling them into hell. Forever. Never to be seen again.

Inspired by other games, like Shadowdark, which uses real world time to trigger events in the game world, Crows currently uses something called dungeon turns. One dungeon turn is 20 real time minutes, which are only paused when combat breaks out. At the end of each dungeon turn, consumables will wear off, the monsters in the dungeon might decide to ambush the characters, or other effects might occur. A lot of these effects will likely be determined by rolling on random tables, to generate events.

If the characters manage to make it out of the dungeon, they get back to the village. Once there they can spend the gold they've manged to collect. Gold is equivalent to XP, and can be spent to improve the character. There are no levels in Crows, instead the characters can invest in new skills. Think something akin to a skill tree, but it might not be an actual skill tree in the final game.

The skills will make the heroes better at more things. The numbers on the sheet might not increase much, but the number of things they can do, or do more competently will increase. This includes becoming more proficient with certain items, for example. Anyone can swing a sword, and anyone can cast a spell, given they have a spell book at hand. Buying skills, can make you better and more effective at swinging swords, or better at casting spells.

Also while in the village, the players can engage in crafting and other projects. This is to make the village bigger and more prosperous. A bigger and more prosperous village will attract more powerful NPCs, which might help the characters.

If a character survives long enough, they'll retire from dungeon delving. At that point, they'll become an NPC, living in the village. Those previous player characters will then become NPCs for future dungeon delvers to interact with.

And lastly, I want to mention a fun mechanic they're debating including for the game. They want the monsters to come without names; just images of the monster and a reference, like Monster A. During play, the ref shows the image of the monster to the players, and they name the monster based on what it looks like and what it does. The name they come up with, is the canonical name of the monster in their setting.

It's very early for Crows. Not only do we not know when they intend to release, we don't even know that it's going to be released at all. We'll just have to see what the future brings.

Draw Steel Books

More and more people are getting their Draw Steel books. I'm seeing people posting about getting their books on Discord and on Bluesky all the time. Now also people living in Europe.

They are sending hundreds of books every day, so you'll just have to wait while they work their way through all the orders.

The Ajax edition is still on track for starting shipment in November. Hopefully that mean people will start getting shipping notification really soon.

The Fall of Blackbottom

The Fall of Blackbottom is in layout, which is the final stage before it releases. The plan is to have the adventure out before the end of the year, but James hopes they'll get it out in November, before the big crowdfunder.

The Fall of Blackbottom is a first level adventure that starts with, a quite literal, boom! It's designed as an alternate starting point for a campaign, to The Delian Tomb. The Fall of Blackbottom assumes the players already know how the play Draw Steel, and the adventure isn't afraid of putting them into the deep end immediately.

Price for the adventure is not known at this point, but it will be provided to long standing patrons for free.

The Summoner

Speaking of things in layout. The summoner is also in layout, which means it probably isn't too long until we see the final version of that released too. Matt also did share a preview of the cover page for the summoner on stream recently. James hinted that the summoner might release before the crowdfunder in December too.

The summoner is a class that, summons minions! The different subclasses, called portfolios, lets you summon different kinds of minions: undead, fey, elementals, and demons. The summoner is designated as a master class, indicating that it's on the complex end of the class spectrum, and is recommended to more experienced Draw Steel players. But it's also the class that let's you summon in a bunch of walking boulders, and then subsequently crowd surf on them, basically across the whole map.

No word on price yet, but long standing patrons will receive the summoner for free.

Crack the Sun

Matt dropped a massive post on Patreon in October, outlining just about everything they know about Crack the Sun; MCDM's first big adventure for Draw Steel. This is a manifold jumping adventure starting at level three in Orden, and ending at level eight on the sun.

The post outlines how the heroes start off in Orden, but after encountering a mystical tree, they're transported to Equinox, the home manifold of the shadow elves. They encounter shenanigans, and meet Bloodlord Varrox. Varrox end up escaping back to Orden, and try to start a war there. There heroes need to gather allies for the coming fight against the hordes of Varrox.

Then there's a huge siege of Castle Dalrath, where the heroes help defend the castle against the assaulting hordes. This is also the chapter where MCDM intends to introduce warfare events. The warfare events are random events that trigger during encounters. The kind of events depend on which factions you managed to recruit before the siege: managed to recruit the elite archers of the wode elves? They might show up in the middle of a combat and rain down arrows on the enemy.

After the siege, the heroes travel back to Equinox. The shadow elves are trying to terraform Orden into Equinox. (Or maybe noxiform Orden. I don't know.) But while in in Equinox, the heroes discover an even greater threat. The sun of orden, a manifold or planet of it's own, is actually a prison. And the prisoner is about to break out. The heroes must travel to the sun to stop the certain calamity.

This is going to be a big adventure, both in length and scope, but also in physical form. Matt's been talking about making this a boxed adventure, with physical props, and maps, and everything.

December Crowdfunder

Crack the Sun is being crowdfunded in December. Also part of that crowdfunder is the Encounters book. This is the third book in the core rules series, which will contain tons of useful content for Directors.

Encounters will include 20 dungeon delves, small, three-room dungeons, with accompanying encounters and maps; 20 montage tests with suggested challenges and montage test outcomes; 20 NPCs with negotiation stats, that are designed to be easily adaptable to any kind of NPC; and example outcomes for skill tests, with outcomes for all three tiers for all three difficulties, for all 50+ skills. James estimates the number of examples at 175 skill test outcomes. And, they're considering adding some named monsters in the books - to fill out the existing monster bands in the Monsters book.

Crack the Sun and Encounters are the main features of the crowdfunder, but they've also mentioned they want to feature add-ons for their other products. Meaning you'll be able to buy the core rules, previously released products, or pre-order future products, at the same time as backing the crowdfunder.

The crowdfunder is set to launch sometime in December.

Beastheart

Releasing next year, is the beastheart. MCDM dropped a playtest version of the class to patrons at the beginning of the month.

The beastheart is the Draw Steel version of the 5e class of the same name, in which you have a pet companion that fights alongside you. The Draw Steel version of the class dials the original to eleven. The two act together on their turn, having to share the main action and maneuver between them, while still moving independently.

The class is looking really good. And I have to tell you about what's my favorite feature of the class. As the beastheart, you can rip open your chest, tear out your heart, and throw it up to ten squares, and as you do, the heart transforms into your companion. It doesn't matter where your companion was, they get teleported to where you throw your heart. It's so ridiculous and metal. And literal.

The best part is that your companion can almost do the same for you. By extending it's jaw, you can crawl out of it's mouth. You teleport from anywhere, and straight out of it's mouth.

If you want to see the beastheart in action, Rise Heroes Rise! have multiple videos featuring the beastheart.

Codex

That brings me to the Codex. It is progressing by leaps and bounds. They are currently working on getting act one of The Delian Tomb into the Codex. That way there's something concrete for new testers to try out. They're even implementing the tutorial progression for the heroes. That means the players unlock new parts of the heroes after each combat.

The Codex developers also announced that they've implemented all of first echelon for the classes. That means that all the classes should have all their features and abilities for level one through three implemented. They did mention that the elementalist needed som extra work, to function a hundred percent correctly.

The goal is to have a test version of the Codex available to all patrons before the end of the year.

Essentian Ancestry for Draw Steel

007goldfish successfully funded a crowdfunder back in September, and it's now available for purchase for those who didn't get a chance to back it originally.

Essentians are an elemental ancestry that let's you create characters that lean into one or multiple of the seven elements of the Timescape. You get two signature traits, and then a collection of 36 purchasable traits. They're divided into the different elements and you can mix and match between them.

Essentian ancestry is available on Itch for $7.

Dread Abbey by Look Out Behind You Studios

Look Out Behind You Studios released a spooky one-shot in time for Holloween. That's past now, but the one-shot still looks interesting. The heroes embody archetypes and must help an abbot to sanctify an abbey.

One thing I found intriguing is that it includes a twist on montage tests. The one found in the adventure tweaks the structure a bit, and changes the failure limit to how well you manage to keep the abbot alive.

You can pick up the adventure up for $5 on Itch.io.

Draw Steel Character Journal: Register your Epic Journey

Mendesloc has made a character journal designed for Draw Steel heroes. It's designed to keep track of your characters details, like characteristics, traits, class features and abilities. There's also an extensive section to keep notes in general, and notes on specific NPCs: allies, enemies, and monsters.

Astwook on Reddit gave the journal a review. They say they're a fan of character journals and think this is a pretty good one, and that it's clearly designed for Draw Steel. They give the journal a 4.5/5, and say the gripes they have with the journal is mostly personal preference.

You can get the journal for $9.99 on Amazon.

Fantastic Fletchery, Jeweling Gemstones, and Workable Woodcrafts by MrMattDollar

MrMattDollar is ever prolific. In October he published three separate supplements for Draw Steel.

Fantastic Fletchery is all about fletchery and arrows. It introduces special ammunition for bows. There's over 30 new consumable arrows with a wide specter for magical effects that upgrades your archery hero. That's in addition to the new kit, perks, title, and other archery related treasures.

Jeweling Gemstones introduces jewelry crafting. By combining the right kind of gemstones and jewelry, you're able to craft, as a downtime project, trinkets which you can imbue with magical or psionic effects. The supplement has over 30 modular traits across all four echelons to pick from. There's also a new title, a new perk, a new skill, and a new Prisma Corps Initiate retainer.

Workable Woodcrafts is, not unsurprisingly, about woodcraft. It introduces three new skills, an new title, leveled treasure, over 30 treasures that spans all four echelons of play and a new retainer. There's also the new Figured Familiar perk, which let's you create a familiar, by whittling one as a respite activity.

You can pick up each of these for $5 on Itch.io.

Get Ready for Snap Tray

Trenchworx, who's handled mini production for MCDM, ran a crowdfunder for something they call Snap Trays. These are 3D printed minis and figures that come on trays, where you snap the parts off the trays, and assemble them.

The crowdfunder successfully funded at over twice their goal. While the snap trays aren't available, the STL files for the models will be available from their website, with the iconic heroes from Draw Steel coming a bit later.

Boggits of Kingsmire - A Swampy Supplement for Draw Steel

The Boggits of Kingsmire has reached their funding goal, their first stretch goal, and is close to reaching their second stretch goal. There's still a week left to back. The next stretch goal is more monsters!

The product already includes the boggit ancestry; new kits; class options for censors, conduits, and furies; treasures; downtime activities; new monsters; a guide to Kingsmere, the setting; and a few quests, which are short adventures awarding a handful of victories.

You can back it on BackerKit, with pledges starting at €18.

Community Highlights

There are also some other creations from the community I want to highligh:

The Draw Steel encounter creator by Finn Warwind.
ThomBone's review of some of the entries to the Jams of the Timescape.
Rise Heroes Rise!'s live stream where he looked at homebrew for Draw Steel.
And the Lycanthropy subsystem from Shadowhand Gaming.

From Around the Web

If you are one to enjoy actual plays, there's good news. There's a whole slew of campaigns that have started up, now that the game's been out for a little while. But what I want to highlight, is Mastering Dungeons, with Téos Abadia and Shawn Merwin, which have been making their way through the Draw Steel core rules every week. They've done kits and complications, combat rules and are still going.

Outro

That's October. There's a lot brewing. I'm really looking forward to the crowdfunder in December. The encounters books sounds really useful, Crack the Sun sounds like a ton of fun, and the Codex is just getting better and better.

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 everything, including this script can be found in the show notes, and on goblinpoints.com.

If you want to support my work, you can become a Patreon supporter. As a paying member you can submit questions for upcoming guests. You also get access to premium features on Stawl. Stawl is digital tool set for playing and running Draw Steel: digital hero sheets, looking up monsters, or read the core rules. Go to Stawl.app. S-T-A-W-L-dot-app.

Next episode is on the 20th. This time I'm being joined by Jennifer Kretchmer. She worked on making the Draw Steel core rules more accessible, did the art descriptions, and actually did some innovations in the field of art descriptions for TTRPGs. Also, more incidentally, it's also the two-year anniversary of Goblin Points.

See you next time. Snakkes.