Interviews

The Dice Society is back on! It's been a year since we last talked, and a lot has happened since then: the release of Draw Steel, Jams of the Timescape, You Meet in an Ambush, Hooked on Crafting and him writing for the Encounters book.

I'm joined by DimaJeydar. He initially popped up on my radar when he released a Ukrainian translation of the starter rules for Draw Steel. In the time since he's posted an update, published a starter adventure, and a fourth level adventure set in the timescape. This episode is all about translating: how do you preserve the emotion of a phrase, how do find the right word and how do you make carefully crafted multi-word names sound just as good in a completely different language and culture?

This episode I'm joined by Matheus Graef. If you've bought any product from MCDM in the past 5 years, you've seen his work: the mimic backpack retainer, the yumgrubs, the MCDM kobolds, radenwights, and the list goes on. He talks about being a TTRPG illustrator, his process and how it is to work with MCDM as an artist.

This episode features Sam McGurran and Subharup Roy. Sam's a playtest coordinator for MCDM and Shuv is the mastermind behind The Blacksmith's Guild. Together they're running a crowdfunder for A Refugee's Guide to Nomas, a setting set in a psionic city, with a lava river for a sky, and districts in a constant power struggle.

Paul Ligorski is back! He's currently running a very successful crowdfunder for his next big Draw Steel adventure: The Cave of Amber Tears. We talk about the inspiration behind the new adventure and about his process for designing adventures, both for Draw Steel and other TTRPGs.

This episode I'm joined by Jennifer Kretchmer. She's worked with all the usual suspects in the TTRPG business, but the MCDM community might know her from the 10 Candles video on Matt's channel, and more recently as the accessibility consultant on Draw Steel. The work she did on Draw Steel, actually broke new ground in the field of art descriptions.

Ananam of Triglav Games is back, as my first returning guest. The team at Triglav is about to finish up work on the Vampire class they crowdfunded earlier this year, and they're at this moment running their second crowdfunder called Boggits of Kingsmire. They're bringing the frogs and the swamp to Draw Steel in full force.

Tom Bloom is the designer of Lancer RPG, author of Kill Six Billion Demons, and self-proclaimed 4e sicko. Tom made some comments about Draw Steel on Bluesky, and I thought it would be interesting to hear his thoughts on Draw Steel, as a designer of a well-liked tactical RPG. We also talk about games not appologizing for their design, how testing makes games better, and how Draw Steel is not an appealing game.

James Introcaso. Lead designer of Draw Steel. Need I say more. I was really excited to have him on, and it was a delight. James talks about going to GenCon, the value of showing that the core rules aren't sacred, how the victory and respite system is core to the Draw Steel experience, and his adventure design philosophy.

This episode I'm joined by Hannah Rose. She's had a busy career and has worked on the Taldorei setting for Critical Role, worked on multiple Wizards of the Coast books, and maybe most famously in the MCDM community, been the managing editor for Arcadia. We talk about her new venture, the quarterly magazine Horizons, trying to maintain a viable freelance market in TTRPGs, and what ever Deathmatch Island is.

In this episode I speak with Onslaught Six. He's currently crowdfunding the community magazine Ratcatchers, which features articles from multiple people in the Draw Steel community. We do talk about the magazine, the permissive license they're publishing under, but we start off with the space cowboy RPG he designed, how to find the right game for the right play group, and the OSR megadungeon he recently published, Ruins of Castle Gygar.

My guest this time is Paul Ligorski, also known as Heart of Arcana. Paul has written quite a few advenuters, not only for Draw Steel, but for D&D 5e, Mausritter and Cypher. He also runs a local game night multiple times a month. We talk about writing adventures for different systems, which TTRPG systems work well for teaching new players, how interacting with gods is different in Draw Steel, and how watching Draw Steel being designed has made him reimagine what can be used for inspiration.

I'm joined by Ananam of Triglav Games. They are at the time of publishing this episode crowdfunding a vampire class for Draw Steel. It's an ambitious project and they've pulled out all the stops with professional art, playtesting and layout. In the interview we talk about how they're designing the vampire class, what it's like to designing classes for Draw Steel, and the decisions for the crowdfunder and what they've learned from it.

I'm visited by Andie Margolskee, the author of the first crowdfunded adventure for Draw Steel: The Great Thaw of Gryzmithrak Spire. We talk about the adventure, sure, but with Andie having designed adventures for multiple systems, we end up talking a bunch about what different systems are good at.

In this episode I'm joined by Iron Monocle. He's a serial creator of worlds and keeps a blog about his most recent one. We talk about how game rules influence assumptions in the world, about world building as a hobby, and how players can be a fantastic source and contributors of lore and ideas in your world.

Is the Draw Steel podcast universe going to implode? This episode, I have The Dice Society on! I really have to give him credit for taking so many of the questions without any preparation or warning, and I think he pulled it off really well. We had a great time talking and I hope you do as well when listening.

In this episode I'm joined by Dojikaan. You might know him from the art that he posts in the MCDM community, I know him from the awesome time raider portrait he did a while back. In the episode we talk about art in the MCDM community, the importance of official art for a product, and how fanart self-sustains communities.

Welcome to the one year anniversary episode! It's wild to me that it's already been a year. Seems only like yesterday I recorded the 90 second trailer, and the retrospective episode about MCDM. For the occasion, I've commissioned new theme music, and new art for the podcast. I'm really pleased with it, and I really hope you'll come to like too.

This episode I have the pleasure of having Solace on. You might know their name as one of the first people to publish homebrew for Draw Steel, once the creator license dropped. What they published was actually the first published adventure made for Draw Steel.

This time I'm talking to Tamwin. If you've hung out in the Draw Steel channels on Discord, you've probably seen his name a lot of times. I ask him about knowing the rules seemingly by heart, reverse engineering the kit math, and his experience running tactical test scenarios.

As promised in the last interview episode, this episode is the continuation of the conversation Ashley and me had. The conversation was recorded at the end of June, so we don't know about the play test packet yet, but we still had much to talk about.

This time I have the pleasure of having community member Ashley on the podcast. I was introduced to Ashley in a playtest we did together, and in the post-play chat I found her thoughts interesting. Today I get to share some of them with you!

In this special episode I'm trying something new. My goal has always been to make this podcast about the community for the community, and this is the first step in that direction. In this episode of Goblin Points I'm having a chat with TheNatureGM. I will leave the introduction to them, so without further ado, let's jump to my conversation with TheNatureGM.