Episode 2026.16 Published on 5 June 2026

News: Crows RPG Playtest, Draw Steel in Top 30 on Foundry, Triglav's Big Crowdfunder | May Roundup

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Intro

Sharpen your beaks and clean your feathers, all crows are needed to scavenge the remains of a broken world. The Crows playtest is live and anyone can join in. Also the summoner is across the line, Triglav is doing their biggest crowdfunder yet and Draw Steel is top 30 on FoundryVTT.

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

Crows

The public playtest for Crows was released in May. Anyone is able to look up the announcement post Patreon and download the playtest version of the rules. There's also a feedback survey linked in the post which is open until the end of June for anyone to repsond about their experience reading or playing Crows.

The playtest packet comes with a welcome letter, which is the same text as in the Patreon post, a big chunk of the core rules, most of the rules for character creation and the village, a short adventure lasting between 3-6 hours depending on... a lot of things, apparently, a few monsters for the adventure (including wild animals, some blood monsters and The Ring Collector), inventory sheet, cards for all the items, art for the monsters, maps, and a few odds and ends.

It's a whole lot.

So far it seems Crows is pretty well received, even for the early state the game is in. People are reporting having fun while playing the game, even though there are a few rough edges here and there. James has also said people are providing good and valuable feedback and that he's already working on revisions to the rules based on what testers are saying.

Crows is a dungeon crawler that focuses on fragile player characters called crows which go scavenging old ruins and dungeons for treasure. The world is a dangerous place to travel, and the dungeons even more so. Fierce monsters and animals are about and the crows can only take a bit of damage before they succumb to their wounds.

If you play crows, expect player character death and prepare to roll new characters as your previous one tragically dies fighting a wolf on their way to an old library, reportedly containing treasure.

If the crow manages to survive the whole trip, and bring home some valuables, they earn XP for all the treasure they brought. And the treasure is the only thing granting XP in Crows. With that XP, the crows can level up and spend the XP on upgrades. Making themselves more hardy and more capable, to make it easier to survive the next trip outside the safe walls of their village.

They can spend their hard earned gold coins on equipment, upgrades to their equipment, or on the village. By investing in existing institutions or founding new ones, they expand what resources the village has to help them in their dangerous outings: better weapons, better upgrades, better equipment, better everything.

Crows is planned to have a crowdfunder late this summer to fund development of the game. It's planned to have a physical release in addition to a digital one. The physical version of the game is planned to come with cards with art of all the unknown monsters, inventory sheets to easily organize inventory, four booklets containing all the rules, and a few dungeons to start playing in.

The Summoner

Matt released a video about the summoner. He's been teasing this video for a few months, where he's been saying he wants to do a video about it to "get it over the line".

MCDM's strategy for their new classes is to release them into the Creator License once they've made enough money to pay for their own development. That happened immediately with the beastheart, but the summoner never got the same kind of traction.

Matt's been saying that a video about it will probably get the summoner over the line too. And so it has. Only a few days after the video went live, Matt shared that the summoner is now ready to go into the Creator License. They've not done so yet, but it sounded like it's happening soon.

What this means for players is that the summoner will be available on Forge Steel and other third party sources in the same way the core rules are and the beastheart.

Vasloria Map

MCDM has updated the Draw Steel resources page with a map over Vasloria. This is a newly commissioned map that is also going to be featured on the upcoming director screens they've been teasing.

You can find the map in the General Resources section on the Draw Steel Resources page.

Across the Solar Expanse

Jenny [REDACTED], recently interviewed here on Goblin Points, released Across the Solar Expanse in early May.

This 44 page supplement takes your game to the timescape. There are two new ancestries: the solars, and their darker counter-part the eclipse knights. There's a bunch of new treasures, over 30 new monsters for third echelon and a bit lore to get you started creating an intrigue adventure among the endless manifolds of the timescape.

Also, the art included in this is fantastic, much of it commissioned. Among my favorites are the stain glass pieces, especially the one with the dragon. They look so incredible.

You can pick up Across the Solar Expanse for $30 on Itch.

Weapons of Lore

Steve Jackson Games partnered up with Pesto Enthusiast to bring Weapons of Lore to Draw Steel. This is a collection of over 40 leveled weapons and over 40 leveled implements and other treasures.

This is the second time Steve Jackson Games brings their collections of goodies to Draw Steel, and this time Pesto Enthusiast has partnered with them to convert the items to Draw Steel as leveled treasures. Some of them even cursed.

Each of the 40+ weapons in the collection get their own piece of art.

They've doubled their funding goal, but by the time you're listening to this, it's too late to back. Hopefully they'll put up pre-orders. They expect to deliver Weapons of Lore in November this year.

The Knight

Jacons launched a crowdfunder for their Knight class and has beat their funding goal.

The Knight is intended to be a more classical fighter archetype, but brought to heroic proportions. You select personal heraldry to customize your emblem and the features of your class, you pick your fighting stance to change the way to fight your foes; and you get a companion at level 3: a noble steed, or an apprentice.

The crowdfunder has ended by the time you're listening to this, but they hope to release the finished Knight in September of this year.

Until the Last Villain Dies

Triglav Games has launched their third crowdfunder, this time doing an "MCDM": they're funding multiple products in a single crowdfunder, and it has turned out great for them. Beating their funding goal in 8 hours.

The Until the Last Villain Dies crowdfunder's main feature is the adventure by the same name. In the adventure you hunt down the dragon knights of the Dragon Phalanx that betrayed Good King Omund when Ajax came knocking.

Also in the crowdfunder is Rocks Fall! which introduces the concept of dynamic arenas. These are a cross between villain actions and dynamic terrain. During the combat, the combat area itself will foreshadow big events that happen later in the combat. It has over 30 arenas included, across multiple echelons of play.

Upper Worlds Beware is touted as a starter pack to get started running in the timescape. It brings new ancestries, new kits, new treasures, an enemy band and a first level quest to get you started.

There's a new separate ancestry called corvenwight, a crow person ancestry.

And lastly Grave Matter, a supplement all about skellingtons. It includes a new skeleton ancestry, new kits, new complications, spellgems (which are a new type of treasure granting access to magic) and a first level dungeon quest with new skeletal monsters.

Grave Matter also has my favorite piece of art from this crowdfunder: a skeleton with a gem mohawk!

You can still back Until the Last Villain Dies when this episode drops. Pledges start at €12 on BackerKit.

FoundryVTT Year in Review 2026

FoundryVTT released their yearly review of the platform. While there's a lot of interesting stuff to dive into, the most interesting part for us Steelers, is Draw Steel being the 27th most installed game system on Foundry.

Draw Steel is one of three new systems to enter the top 30 list, alongside Daggerheart and Cosmere. While Draw Steel ends up behind both of those games, I think 27th is an impressive position, considering how new the game is, and that the list includes at least 65 systems.

I send congratulations, salutations, and thanks to ChaosOS, with contributors, who has implented Draw Steel for Foundry. And to Metamorphic Studios for releasing licensed modules of Heroes, Monsters, The Delian Tomb and The Road to Broadhurst.

Reinforcements: Goblins

Pesto Publications has published Reinforcements: Goblins. This is a collection of second echelon goblins, for those times you want more goblins to threaten the heroes after they level up.

Reinforcements: Goblins is intended to only be the first in a series of monster bands where they level up some of the lower echelon monster bands. All of these bands are then intended to go into a full book of monsters. They've already got the next band in the works: humans.

People who purchase these preview packets will get credit towards buying the full book once it releases. The details of this are yet to be determined, according to the product page.

You can pick up Reinforcements: Goblins for $5 on Itch.

Mythic Treasures

Steel Echos has launched a crowdfunder called Mythic Treasures. This is a collection of treasures that take the place of regular leveled treasures, and almost become a second subclass for your hero.

The mythic treasures are more powerful than a single leveled treasure, they gain power more frequently, and they come with story beats. These story beats are important points in a hero's story and is directly linked to the mythic treasure the hero is wielding.

In addition to the 20 mythic treasures, with full art, the supplement also includes 60 (mostly) combat focused trinkets.

The crowdfunder is well on it's way to be funded, and you can still back it when this episode drops. Pledges for Mythic Treasures start at C$27.50 on BackerKit.

The Blacksmith's Guild Year 2

Tabletop Nonsenseverse successfully funded their Blacksmith's Guild crowdfunding campaign, blowing past their goal of CHF 400.

The money will go to funding the next year of issues of The Blacksmith's Guild, which is the next six issues, and help them fund their new ambitious project for the next year.

Each of the next six issue will feature the next chapter in The Glass Spark Adventure Path. This is an adventure that will span the whole of second echelon and bring the heroes on a journey through the timescape.

Issue 7 is already out and can be picked up from their online shop for $11.

Community Highlights

And here are some other community highlights from the past month:

  • Ananam of Triglav Games was interviewd by Aeastus_RPG
  • Aeastus_RPG also made a video explaining the reasoning behind creating a new kind of treasure systm for Draw Steel
  • Teos Abadia, currently lead developer on Crack the Sun, made a video on how to learn to play Crows in five rooms
  • Cora's released a Draw Steel module for FoundryVTT making it easier and more streamlined to target creatures
  • Crispy's Academy published their class guide for the troubadour
  • DMHub have been live streaming the implementation of the summoner in the Codex and they've released videos showing the new UI for editing abilities
  • Frederica Teather has been very busy, releasing a whole slew of videos in May. She's already passed a thousand subscribers, so you probably don't need me to tell you about her
  • Paul Ligorski released a new ancestry called argillum, in his supplement The Stewards of the Sleeping Lands
  • Rise Heroes Rise! have been releasing an actual play where they play through the adventure The Matter of an Overmind, authored by Dima Serbin (as previously featured on Goblin Points)
  • The Dice Society published a video showing off and explaining what gets him excited about Night Shift: Devil Division, the new game based on Draw Steel's rule set
  • Tidal Wave Games has announced they're soon launching a crowdfunding campaign for the third issue of Ratcatcher Magazine
  • And finally, Triglav Games published the barghests for their paying patrons

Blast From the Past

And now, a blast from the past as I dive back into old notes and scripts to see what was covered on Goblin Points in years past.

In May 2025 I shared that the vampire class had managed to fund at the eleventh hour. It was making slow progress, but some late backers managed to get it across the line in the nick of time.

Back in 2024, James and Matt revealed that they'd hired three new people at MCDM. Gertz joined as an executive producer, while Willy and Djordi were both coming on as designers to work on what at that point was only known as the MCDM RPG.

Outro

The big thing this month is of course the drop of the Crows playtest. While I know many that listen to Goblin Points are all about Draw Steel, I very deliberately didn't name the podcast anything directly referencing Draw Steel, for the eventuality when I wanted to cover other things about MCDM and the community. And here we are!

I'm running crows for a group of people and am having a bunch of fun doing it. I foresee Crows becoming part of my regular TTRPG diet, just as Draw Steel is. So if you're here for Draw Steel, you'll have to put up with a bit of Crows too.

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.

You can support my work by becoming a Patreon member. Paying members get to submit questions to my upcoming guests here on Goblin Points. You also get access to premium features on Stawl. Stawl is a digital toolset for playing and running Draw Steel: digital hero sheets, encounter builder, monster look up, the complete rules text, and more. Such as the Stawl Supplement Index, a comprehensive list of supplements being published for Draw Steel, in one convenient place! Visit Stawl.app. S-T-A-W-L-dot-app.

Next episode is on the 15th. That's the interview with Aestus and SurfingBird about their crowdfunder Mythic Treasures, magic items that are almost like a subclass, and bring a story arc to your hero.

See you next time. Snakkes.

Links

From MCDM

Across The Solar Expanse

Weapons of Lore

The Knight

Until the Last Villain Dies

FoundryVTT Year in Review

Reinforcements: Goblins

Mythic Treasures

The Blacksmith's Guild Year 2

Community Highlights

Draw Steel Homebrew

Draw Steel Media

Draw Steel Tools