Goblin Points

News: Crows Playtest, Encounter of the Week, Zine Galore | October Roundup

Jon de Nor — Thu, 05 Nov 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Intro</h1>
Crows public playtests are done, Codex is brimming with new features, multiple products from Triglav, more complications for you heroes and three new magazine issues.
I'm Jon de Nor and this is Goblin Points.

Crows</h1>
Playtest three dropped for Crows. James dropped right before heading off to Gamehole Con.
This new version made a change to how expertises work. Instead of having a set number of uses of an expertise, crows now have a stat called effort. They can spend one effort to use any expertise they have that is applicable to the roll they've made. The expertise still bumps the result of the roll by one tier.
This new effort system seems to work and James is keeping it. He said they'll bump the number of efforts crows start off with by one. The rate at which you gain new expertises will also slow down a bit, so you don't end up with a ton of expertises quickly.
There was also a new initiative system. Instead of side initiative with rerolling who goes first in every round, there's also fast and slow turns. You make a roll to determine who goes first, the side to go first can then opt to forgo their maneuver to take a fast turn before the other side get the same offer, to forgo their maneuver to take a fast turn. Then the winning side take slow turns, where anyone who didn't take a fast turn, takes a turn. Last, anyone who didn't take fast turns on the losing side takes slow turns.
According to the survey results for this playtest, people were basically split 50/50 on the new initiative system. James' decided to go back to the initial side initiative system, but leave the fast/slow turn system in as an alternate rule instead.
James also shared that crows no longer buy traits with XP. Instead they get to choose a new trait every time they level up. The traits are still connected though, so most traits still require you to buy a different trait first, before you can buy it.
Crafting has also changed alongside the trait change. Instead of being tied to expertises, it's now tied to traits and the number of traits a crow has in a relevant tree. To be able to craft the more powerful items, you'll need to invest into a trait tree quite heavily.
While Crows didn't refer to levels before, it still kinda had them, and it now just calls them that. Whenever a crow gets enough XP, it gains a level. That's when you might get more effort, might gain a new expertise, and be able to pick an extra trait. James also said it'll take more time to level up after the playtest.
The rules for Crows are actually nearing completion. The first book is done has already been sent to the editor. The other books are close to being done, and James says the game is still on schedule. The estimate he mentioned most recently is Summer next year. I assume that's going to be late Summer.

Codex</h1>
The Draw Steel Codex on Steam has received a bunch of updates in October. The first thing they rolled out was a new and improved experience for undoing actions during combat. Instead of having to press Ctrl-Z an uncertain number of times to get back to where you were, you now get a timeline of actions instead.
In the list you see the actions that have happened, with a button to jump back to that place in the timeline. That way you can easily undo what you did and have your main action and heroic resources, or movement restored.
As a nice touch, whenever you use this, the Codex plays a rewind effect for everyone to indicate what is happening.
They also showed off The Condemned adventure in the Codex and the special features they're implementing for it. Including custom controls for the director to control the war dog collars the heroes, errm... condemned wear in the adventure. They say they want some of those tools to become available to everyone making stuff in the Codex.
And they've integrated with 2-minute tabletop. So you're now able to get their maps directly in the Codex like you already can for Tehox and MCDM's maps.
Next they announced Encounter of the Week. Every week they intend to launch a new challenge. People can create a party of heroes to jump in and try to beat the encounter. Then you can have a go at a challenge alone, with your party of heroes, or together with a friend (or stranger) and their heroes. The encounter can have a combination of combats, negotiations and montage challenges.
These montage challenges are not entirely different from montage tests, but they present what are called opportunities and threats. You have to deal with the threats to avoid setbacks, and make use of the oppertunities to gain extra bonuses and rewards. It's designed by Ashley, the pixie queen, whom I actually had on as one of the first interviewees here on Goblin Points. Montage challenges takes montage tests and give them a bit of a bite.
As part of the Encounter of the Week, players get a screen showing a map of Blackbottom, with a few points of interest. There's an inn where the hereoes can spend time between challenges, a proving pit to test their mettle in test scenarios, the guild house where heroes can be created or recruited, the town hall where heroes can vote on future features and the cemetary where fallen heroes are immortalized.
Encounter of the Week is in early testing and is currently only available by opting in to the devbeta version of Draw Steel on Steam. There's a link to a YouTube video with instruction on how to opt in in the link section. When Encounter of the Week launches, which is supposed to be soon, all current progress will be reset.
The options available in Encounter of the Week are trimmed down a bit from what's available in the core books. Only abilities, perks, complications, etc with enough automation are available. Encounter of the Week also runs in strict mode, which means you can't break any of the rules. In normal mode, Draw Steel will inform you of the rules, but not enforce them. In strict mode it will also enforce the rules.
But while some core options are missing, third party supplements are supported. There are more and more third parties adding Codex support for their supplements, and some of them are automated enough to use in Encounter of the Week. That means you'll be able to try out new complications and classes, without having to create a new character in a campaign.
And if you want a nice roundup of those third party supplements, Faan of the DMHub team published a video showing off some of the things being implemented and where to find the stuff that's available for free.
The Blacksmith's Guild Issue #9</h1>
Tabletop Nonsenseverse published the ninth issue of The Blacksmith's Guild in October. It's a bi-monthly zine featuring articles written by community members.
This issue features:

Sulak by Brent Duncan, which features two new aquatic ancestries.</li>
The Gloomhollow Caverns by Gabe 'washburnking' Lopez, a first echelon five room dungeon with 6 new monster statblocks.</li>
Gloom Elementalist Subclass by Ben 'Zetesofos' Cornforth, a master of pereception and misdirection.</li>
In Desperate Times (The Glass Spark Chapter 3) by Robyn Hemlocke, the third of six installments of the adventure path currently being published in each issue.</li> </ul>
You can pick up The Blacksmith's Guild for $10 on Tabletop Nonsenseverse's shop, or become a Patreon member to get it as a subscription.
Oh, The Humanity! Vol 2</h1>
lebiro has published Oh, The Humanity! Vol 2. This is, as you may have sussed out, the second release in a series of monster booklets featuring human monsters.
This second issue focuses on second echelon, featuring 21 new statblocks of humans. These include minions, platoons, elites, leaders, two new mounts, a siege engine and a new solo. It also adds new malice features for second echelon humans.
You can pick up Oh, The Humanicy! Vol 2 for $9.99 on Itch.
The Mythical Press Issue #3</h1>
The Mythical Press has released Issue #3 of their mostly monthly magazine. This issue features the Witch of the Woods.
The zine features the witch herself, a solo, along with some of her lackeys, like an animated finger or an eye. There's also a read to go encounter, with a custom map, a negotiation template for the witch. There's also a curse requiring an NPC to complete and a new downtime project to break curses.
You can pick up The Mythical Press - Witch of the Woods as a member of The Mythical Press' Patreon. Memberships start at $7.50.
Xeric Badlands</h1>
Royal Highness Games published Xeric Badlands. They successfully crowdfunded Xeric Badlands back in May of this year.
The release features setting details about the aforementioned badlands, three new ancestries, new monsters, including solos, dynamic terrains and arenas, new retainers and custom battlemaps.
You can pick up Xeric Badlands for $20 on Itch.
Monster Manifest Volume 1</h1>
Jenny [REDACTED] has published Monster Manifest Volume 1. The first volume of a series intended to bring classic monsters from other TTRPGs to Draw Steel.
This first volume contains two nightmares, two owlbears (a solo, and a companion) and four different rust monsters. All of these monters are also implemented in the Codex, and a code is provided with purchase of the PDF.
You can pick up Monster Manifest Volume 1 on Itch for $10.
Ratcatcher Magazine Issue #3</h1>
Tidalwave Games released their third issue of Ratcatchers Magazine. Ratcatchers are funded through regular crowdfunders, but you're also able to pick up each issue after it releases.
Issue three of Ratcatcher Magazine include

Class Perks by Brian Schaab, class-specific perks to extend a class' abilities outside of combat.</li>
The Aviators of Kal-Aedrov by Miguel Corona Mas, an ancestry of sky dwarves.</li>
Rogues' Gallery by Sam Mannell, a cast of colorful antagonists.</li>
Carousing with the High Elves by Leo Hojnowski, new respite events and downtime projects tailored for a visit to a high elf court.</li>
But Who Lived to Tell the Tale? by Adam Hunt, a guide on how to share authorship between the director and the players.</li> </ul>
You can pick up Ratcatcher Magazine for $10 on Itch. And when you buy the issue, you get the full back catalog for free.
It's Complicated</h1>
Cameron Baker of Rise Heroes Rise! released It's Complicated, a collection of 100 new complications for heroes. The supplement was crowdfunded back in May.
You get a wide variety of new complications with accompanying art for some of them. You can be a body banks escapee, stitched together from a selection of ancestries, or a creature who's had one of their arms swapped out for a trio of tentacles. It also comes with a Codex module.
You can pick up It's Complicated for $25 on Itch.
Timescape from Triglav</h1>
Triglav Games went to the timescape in October. They funded Until the Last Villain Dies back in June, and they've started releasing the products that were funded.
This month we got the timescape themed products:

Where the Dead Ships Dwell, a first level quest set in the upper worlds of the timescape.</li>
Upper Worlds, Beware!, a starter kit to get started playing in the timescape, featuring new ancestries, careers, kits, treasures, titles, monsters, and a vehicle.</li> </ul>
Paying members of their Patreon received the second issue of Surge, Triglav's monthly supplement. This month featured the Pump-kin a fall and halloween themed monster band. The Pump-kin also has a Codex module.
And speaking of Codex modules. They also released an partial implementation of the Vampire class in the Codex. You can buy it from their online shop, and they have a long post explaining why it's only first echelon that's been implemented.
You can pick up Where the Dead Ships Dwell for €15, Upper Worlds, Beware! for €17, and the Vampire Codex module for €11 in the Triglav Games shop.
Community Highlights</h1>
And now some rapid fire updates from the community:

A group of Draw Steel third party familiars have banded together as Malice House and announced Sinister Solos, a book of bosses, their sinister titles and tempting treasures.</li>
Tabletop Nonsenseverse has announced A Fistful of Iridoss, an adventure spanning first to third level, with a wild west theme.</li>
Tier 3 Press, a collection of other know entities in the Draw Steel third party scene, has announced Ex Machina, a construct-themed collection of monsters, settings, class and subclasses.</li> </ul>
Blast From the Past</h1>
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 October of 24, patron received a new playtest packet of Draw Steel, and so much that we know from the game got introduced in that version:

Up until now, only the devil had a system where you buy ancestry features, that became the default for all clases now.</li>
The classes got their triggered heroic resource generation, in addition to the generation at the start of their turn.</li>
Surges was also introduced in this version, alongside shields. Now, shields didn't make it, mostly because the weren't much fun in play, but surges are still present.</li>
Potencies were also introduced as the way to negate effects using characteristics.</li>
Perks was added as a way to add out-of-combat features to heroes.</li>
And downtime activities.</li> </ul>
So much of the game we now know came into place in that playtest version. Up until then, it was mostly testing around making combat work correctly, with classes, monsters, abilities and everything being tweaked.
When they came up with surges, they also imagined shields as their natural counterpart. You could spend shields to negate damage. But that re-introduced null results, where attacks would en up doing nothing, and they slowed down play. They were only part of the game for a few weeks, between the patreon playtest and the backer playtest that was released a few weeks afterwords.
Outro</h1>
Incredibly busy month. Especially the Codex is turning out to be something wholly unique among VTTs. Both with the new quality of life upgrades, but especially with Encounter of the Week.
October also marked the month that we surpassed 200! supplements listed on the Stawl Supplement Index. That's 200 hundred products of features you can put in your games. That includes over 50 adventures and quests.
You can contact me via e-mail at tips@goblinpoints.com. Go to GoblinPoints.com</a> to find links and this episode in text.
Help me make this podcast by supporting me on Patreon. As a bonus you also get access to premium features on Stawl, the digital toolset to play and run Draw Steel. Check out Stawl.app</a>, S-T-A-W-L-dot-app. You can find a link to my Patreon in the episode description.
Next episode is on the 15th. That's going to be an interview with Zetesofos, designer of the magewright class, and currently working on Ex Machina, the construct themed supplement being crowdfunded soon.
See you next time. Snakkes.
Links</h1>
From MCDM</h2>

Crows Public Playtest 3 Is Happening Now! | MCDM Productions</a> on Patreon</li>
Crows Playtest Packet 3 is OUT!</a> on YouTube</li> </ul>
Codex</h2>

2 Minute Tabletop, Rival Ancestries, and a peek at the Condemned!</a> by DMHub</li>
3rd Party Content in the Codex!</a> by DMHub</li>
Codex Update -- Turn Rewind and Fast Map Switching!</a> by DMHub</li>
Encounter of the Week! - YouTube</a> by DMHub</li>
Encounter of the Week Authoring</a> by DMHub</li>
Matt Talks Codex!</a> by DMHub</li> </ul>
The Blacksmith's Guild Issue #9</h2>

The Blacksmith's Guild Issue #9</a> by Tabletop Nonsenseverse</li> </ul>
Oh, The Humanity! Vol 2</h2>

Oh, The Humanity! Vol 2 by lebiro</a> by lebiro</li> </ul>
The Mythical Press Issue #3</h2>

Issue 3: Witch of the Woods | The Mythical Press</a> by The Mythical Press</li> </ul>
Xeric Badlands</h2>

Xeric Badlands: Bestiary & Ancestries for Draw Steel by Royal Highness Games</a> by Royal Highness Games</li> </ul>
Monster Manifest Volume 1</h2>

Monster Manifest: Volume 1 | Classic Foes For Draw Steel by Jenny [REDACTED]</a> by Jenny [REDACTED]</li> </ul>
Ratcatcher Magazine Issue #3</h1>

Ratcatcher Magazine by Tidal Wave Games</a> by Tidalwave Games</li> </ul>
It's Complicated</h1>

It's Complicated: Heroic Origins for Draw Steel by riseheroesrise</a> by Rise Heroes Rise!</li> </ul>
Timescape from Triglav</h1>

Where the Dead Ships Dwell (PDF + Codex Module) – Triglav Games</a> by Triglav Games</li>
Upper Worlds, Beware! Timescape Starter for Draw Steel (PDF) – Triglav Games</a> by Triglav Games</li>
Surge #02: Pump-kin | Triglav Games on Patreon</a> by Triglav Games</li>
Scions of Blood and Shadows: A Vampire Class for Draw Steel (Codex)</a> by Triglav Games</li> </ul>
Community Highlights</h2>

I Ended My D&D Game to Prove It's Eeasy - YouTube</a> by Frederica Teather</li>
Sinister Solos: Bosses & More for DRAW STEEL</a> by Malice House</li>
A Fistful of Iridoss - a Draw Steel campaign</a> by Tabletop Nonsenseverse</li>
Get Ready for Ex Machina, the Cybernetic, the Stormrider, and more for DRAW STEEL</a> by Tier 3 Press</li> </ul>
Draw Steel Homebrew</h2>

DS Eberron Monsters - Google Drive</a> by ihatelolcats</li>
Draw Steel Ancestry: Bio-bot</a> by LightningLance2</li>
The Five: Prisoners of the Pentagonal Penitentiary | Sam McGurran</a> by Sam McGurran</li> </ul>
Draw Steel Media</h2>

I Ended My D&D Game to Prove It's Eeasy - YouTube</a> by Frederica Teather</li>
GenoRexis</a> by GenoRexis</li>
The Butcher: A Study in Effluence Campaign Diary 12</a> by Joe Auerbach</li>
James Introcaso on Crows, Draw Steel, and MCDM! Live from Gamehole Con!</a> by Mastering Dungeons</li>
Delian Tomb || Draw Steel - Part 4</a> by PaulW41</li>
It's Complicated is OUT! | Community Copies Abound!</a> by Rise Heroes Rise!</li>
Rise Heroes Rise!</a> by Rise Heroes Rise!</li>
Draw Steel: Dread Dreamers - Ep. 4</a> by SciFriDM</li>
Draw Steel Thoughts — Lazy RPG Talk Show</a> by The Party RPG Talk Show</li> </ul>
Draw Steel Tools</h2>

TheGenieOfTheCode/draw-steel-triggers</a> by Ady</li>
kenpoh01/draw-steel-4e-converter: Dnd 4e pdf monster converter</a> by kenpoh</li>
kenpoh01/draw-steel-adventure-pdf-journal-converter</a> by kenpoh</li> </ul>

Jeff Stevens: Threats of the Timescape And Being a Publisher | Interview

Jon de Nor — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Intro</h1>
I'm joined by Jeff Stevens of Jeff Stevens Games. He's a one-man-outfit writing and publishing materials for several games, including Draw Steel. Currently he's crowdfunding Threats of the Timescape, and has previously published Weapons of Lore and Weapons of Legend.
I'm Jon de Nor and this is Goblin Points.
Interview</h1>
Jon de Nor: Welcome to Goblin Points, Jeff Stevens!
Jeff Stevens: Yes, thanks, Jon! Thanks for having me.
Jon de Nor: We need an introduction of who you are, and also how you became aware of Draw Steel.
Jeff Stevens: I am Jeff Stevens. I own Jeff Stevens Games, which I started a few years back. And primarily I focused on writing 5e adventures. Published on the DMs Guild, doing some Kickstarters for those. Then I found Shadowda — no, then I found Draw Steel through Spencer Hibnick. Spencer is a playtester for MCDM, and he helped me write a couple of my 5e products, Weapons of Legend and Weapons of Lore. And Spencer said, "Hey, we've got these weapons and this artwork, and why don't we convert these to Draw Steel?" And I was like, sure, let's do it. And that's how I was introduced. You know, I knew of Draw Steel before that, but I hadn't, I didn't look into the rules really like that.
But Spencer had the idea, and we ran with it. And those two projects have been really good, I think they've been received well within the community, and they've been used at tables. They were a lot of fun to produce. I don't produce anything that I don't think will be fun or useful. I try not to. It's not a money grab for me. It's more or less, like, what is going to be useful for Directors and characters and the heroes, through any aspect of the publishing side.
But that's that's how I got into Draw Steel. And then I started getting into Shadowdark, because that is just a fun system to write for. Making the move from 5e to Shadowdark took a little time, because Shadowdark's writing is really concise, a little bit less descriptive, mechanics are more open for the GM to kind of interpret it on their own. But it's been really good, and a lot of fun, and a great community.
Jon de Nor: Have you found that any part of your existing...I don't know if we should take "community" or "customers"...have followed you across systems?
Jeff Stevens: There have been, yes, yeah. I don't know how many, though. I don't keep track of that. But I do know people who have who have purchased both Weapons of Legend for 5e and Draw Steel. And other people have moved from 5e to Shadowdark and then picked up some of my products that way too. So yeah, I think once you've got a consumer base or a fan base, however you want to say it, and they see you doing other things, if they're interested in the game, they're going to check it out.
Jon de Nor: Recently, you've — well, actually at the time of recording, it's just launched — the most recent crowdfunder you're doing for Draw Steel, which is &Threats of the Timescape*. Can you tell us a bit about what that is about?
Jeff Stevens: Yeah. So this was another project that someone pitched to me. Dan Kahn had this idea for this book of Draw Steel threats based on science-fiction, you know, statblocks or monsters. We decided to roll with it. And, you know, they're designed for 1st- and 2nd-echelon encounters. The ideas just kept growing. We have mechans, which are like mechs, Sunsworn, Voidcallers who deal with black holes...terrorariums, which are plant creatures that live in glass domes that terrorize the planets. And so much more. There's thermophages which are insectoid like creatures who live off heat. A couple of solo bosses and other things in development, like cosmic whales and stellar sharks. And some secret stuff behind the scenes here that we're still developing too.
Jon de Nor: Because I noticed on the BackerKit page, you provide some price estimate for the anticipated cost to print. And in the text you give estimates for anywhere between 30 and 80 pages.
Jeff Stevens: That's because you know, we're doing this the way Kickstarter was meant, or you know, crowdfunding was meant to be. It was meant to help creators basically create their project and to fund it. And so we've got some stretch goals on here that if we hit those goals, the page count is going to increase, you know. And we don't have layout completed. While most of the writing is completed and editing is underway, we are still commissioning art. Our artists can only do so much at a time, which is why we have 4 to 5 artists working on this project. You can't give one artist 50 creature statblocks to to do the art for and expect it to be done quickly and without their hand cramping or them just deciding that they don't want to do art anymore. You know, you don't you don't want to overwork your artists. So we've we've got five people working on this, possibly six. We may add more.
Yeah, that's why the supplement page count could increase. Because I'm using print codes, that allows me to set a base price, and then the backer receives a print code which they use through DriveThruRPG's print-on-demand services to print the supplement at cost, which allows me to give you a bigger discount. So if I'm offering a print code at $15 and the cost to print is like $6, that's 21 bucks for you to get the book, whereas I'm going to probably sell it for $27. So you're saving money off of that. The higher the page count goes, yes, you're going to pay more to print the book, but I'm also probably going to increase the retail price of it because it's a larger page count, and it costs more to produce, you know.
For this, I'm not writing. For Threats of the Timescape, I am the project manager, I am the owner of the IP, basically. I am hiring writers to write the content. And you know, we've got multiple people on here. Let me get to the list of names. So Dan Kahn, Spencer Hibnick, other writers who are contributing to Toni Winslow-Brill, Teos Abadia, Donald Schepis, Jonas — I'm going to ruin this — Tintese...
Jon de Nor: Tintenseher, yeah.
Jeff Stevens: Yeah, yeah. Which is a familiar name, I believe, with with one of the other companies. And Jacob Schwartz. You know, we may add other writers as we as we reach goals. All those people are getting paid to write for this. And I'm also paying artists, you know, for their work, and Sabriel Mastin who is doing the editing. You know, this is a pretty good team of developers here. They're getting paid to write and produce the content. And so, you know, we don't know exactly what the layout is going to look like until all this content is turned in. Which is why, again, for the varying page counts.
Jon de Nor: That makes a lot of sense. Yeah. And speaking of art. Because I've noticed, at least from Weapons of Lore and Weapons of Legend, there's a lot of art in your products, at least the ones I've seen for Draw Steel. Yeah. It sounds like this is continuing with Threats of the Timescape?
Jeff Stevens: Yeah. Well, I'm looking...I want to do a piece of art for each statblock.
Jon de Nor: (impressed laughter)
Jeff Stevens: So we're looking at 50 pieces of art, you know, for the base supplement. If we had stretch goals and we add on five more stat blocks, that's five more pieces of art. All of this, you know, it costs money, and I'm happy to pay people to do this. I don't use AI, or "super intelligence", but I prefer to call it artificial intelligence because it generates things. And that's just the term that we've been using for quite some time. But I don't use it. I understand other people do. I don't. I prefer to support human creators who are trying to live the same life I am, pursuing their dreams and, you know, trying to hold a career in the RPG industry.
Jon de Nor: Hear, hear. (chuckle) In the campaign, you're also listing, as a part of the pledges...what should we call it? Like digital versions of the product, for Forge Steel, the Codex, and Foundry. That's an impressive level of support.
Jeff Stevens: I reached out to several people. A couple of people reached out to me about, "Hey, I could create a Forge Steel version of this for you." I said, "Well, you know, what would that cost?" They gave the estimate, and I said, let's do it. You know, I want to provide this to as many people as possible and make it as useful as possible. Same thing with Codex. I had been...so Codex, I know, is really useful for Draw Steel Directors. And there's always been the want for more Codex material.
Now they don't have a marketplace yet, which is why Weapons of Lore and Weapons of Legend haven't been converted for that. But, you know, recent communication with them said there's a way to create and distribute like gift codes so that somebody can unlock that on Codex for them. And so that's what we're going to do with this. And eventually, hopefully, if MCDM or Codex gets a marketplace for the Draw Steel side of it, we'll put it up on the marketplace so that other people can get it. But, you know, as far as like continued sales of the Codex version, that might have to come through itch.io. I don't know yet. I'm still working that out. But we know that we're going to have the ability to give the rewards to the backers right now.
And the Foundry VTT, I did that for Weapons of Legend and Weapons of Lore. And those both went over really well. I think people enjoy those too, so. Yeah, all these different virtual tabletops, or digital tools, are things you just have to kind of consider when you're looking at things. Like, what do people want, what's going to make it, what's going to be useful for people? And so I'm excited to be able to offer all those options.
Jon de Nor: Yeah, it's really impressive. (laughter) Really impressive. Codex support is something that's only been recently offered by third parties, even. I think the first custom class dropped yesterday or the day before, maybe, for the Vampire class from Triglav. So you're on the bleeding edge. (laughter)
Jeff Stevens: Yeah. And actually, my Codex conversion specialist, they developed a sample on Codex. So if you're in the Draw Steel side of Codex, you can search for Sunsworn, and it should pull up the Sunsworn Absolute, which is kind of our free teaser for this. So anybody can do that and check it out.
Jon de Nor: I'm looking at the image from the BackerKit page. And it looks really cool to have it in the Codex. I play regularly in the Codex, so that's of real interest to me. But part of the reason that I wanted to have you on, and we spoke a bit about this before we started recording, is that you are a person that publishes across a lot of different systems. You mentioned 5e, I saw that you've published for both 5e and 5.5e, for Shadowdark, I saw some supplements for Pathfinder, and now also Draw Steel for the past year or so. What has been...what's what's like the reason you even started? Because it sounds like you started on 5e, on D&D, and then you decided to kind of branch out. What was the reason behind that?
Jeff Stevens: When I branched out...I'm getting my dates mixed up here. But I think the first thing I did that wasn't 5e or D&D was the Draw Steel Weapons of Legend. I think that's when Spencer came to me and said, hey, we've got all this, let's do this. And so I said, let's try it. And so, you know, I had somebody who knew that system, who could convert the weapons to another system, and that, like I said, that worked out very well. Then we did Weapons of Lore for 5e, which includes a lot of cursed stuff, and we converted that to Draw Steel. So there are cursed items within there. And both Weapons of Legend and Weapons of Lore are leveled weapon treasures, or...leveled weapon...leveled treasure...I'm getting my terms mixed up in my head now.
Jon de Nor: (laughter) They're leveled treasure, yes.
Jeff Stevens: Yes, leveled treasures. Which is what the original 5e versions were, and so we just converted them over, making adjustments to make it fit Draw Steel. That went well. And then I found Shadowdark and read that, and enjoyed it, and then started writing things for Shadowdark, which is...I think the first thing I did was Treasures from the Dark, which is similar to Weapons of Lore and Weapons of Legend. There are Shadowdark weapons that progress as the character gains levels or does certain things. And so, you know, they don't always have to go and find a new weapon if they perform an act or if they reach a certain level, it automatically increases with them, just like your leveled treasures in Draw Steel. So that's what we did for Shadowdark.
And then I had a lot of fun doing that so then I did Allies and Enemies, and I hired writers for that, to kind of create NPCs that you can drop in your game. And so I did that because I was primarily focused on 5e. I love...I grew up in the 80s, love D&D, that was my game, although I played like Champions, Shadowrun, all kinds of games. But that's always been my go-to. But then there are so many crowdfunding campaigns going on for that, and it just became a constant battle. And people get tired of seeing D&D ads on Facebook or whatever, or, you know, the Kickstarter, the promos, and I just wanted to branch out and try something different to see how it would go.
And it's done fairly well for me. It's a lot of work, maintaining three systems, or four systems, because of the Pathfinder side. I had someone else convert several of my adventures to Pathfinder and, you know, those have also done well and been received well. But yeah, trying to maintain that many, as well as working with like your VTT conversion specialists for Foundry, Roll20, Shard, Fantasy Grounds, now Codex and Forge Steel, there's a lot to maintain in the background and keep your head wrapped around all aspects of the systems and the back office details of all of this.
It's been a lot for one person basically. You know, I'm a sole owner of my company. I'm the sole employee. I contract writers or artists, cartographers and editors, to help me out. And I appreciate them greatly, because I wouldn't be here without them. And I really wouldn't be here without the support of consumers and customers who enjoy the products. So thank you to anyone who has ever purchased any of my products.
Jon de Nor: It sounds like you've mostly ended up in a in a publisher role. Is that right to assume or say?
Jeff Stevens: For probably half of my company, yes. I do still write and produce. I've done contract writing, or freelance writing, for like Kobold Press and Ghostfire Gaming. I do have a lot of ideas in my head, a lot of stories that I've started and stopped because another project came up or another idea happened, which I'd like to get back to those stories to finish them, because I, you know, I am a writer at heart. My mind is always coming up with stories or ideas or that type of thing.
And I have recently been thinking about, you know, 2027, and what that's going to do for my company. What do I want to focus on? And, you know, this past year, 2025, 2026, basically, I've been focusing on larger projects, you know, like Weapons of Lore, Threats of the Timescape. I've done several larger Kickstarters for Shadowdark. One of them was The Savage Arctic, which was basically a campaign setting with hex maps and all this, you know, new monsters and stuff.
Jon de Nor: (laughter) Wow.
Jeff Stevens: Yeah. So the larger projects eat up a lot of time and a lot of mental faculty. It's just, you know, you just think about, like, is this going to get turned in on time? When am I going to release this? I gott meet this deadline so I can get this PDF to the backers. You know, that kind of thing. Really, you have to think about, is the time investment worth it, as well as the money investment, based on the amount that I get back? So I might Kickstart something. It funds. I need to make a little bit more off of that in order to survive, because this is my full-time job, and some of those larger projects that take six months are going to eat up a lot of time and a lot of money.
Whereas if I could create a smaller product, like just an adventure or a 20-page book of some magic items or something like that, that I can produce on my own, except for the editing, layout, art...because I can't, I'm a horrible artist. When I send my briefs off to artists, I often send a stick figure with little arrows that say, this should be this, this should be this, or holding an ax or something. And so that's one skill that I don't have, that I wish I did. Because the more skills you have in this industry that you can apply to a product, like the layout, you know, the editing, the artwork, the basic knowledge of the product so that you can write it, the cheaper it is to produce. I think, you know, some of these companies who are able to write and do their own artwork have such a big advantage, compared to a company like mine where I can't do any of that on my own. You know, I could I could probably learn InDesign to learn my own layout, but when I'm talking about all the time that I'm spending doing other things within the project side, it's like, I don't have the time to do that.
And so 2027, I might try to cut things back a little bit as far as the large projects go. I say that, but I don't think that's going to happen, because, you know, we've already been we've already been discussing about another possible Threats of the Timescape. You know, this one is Scourges of Space. You know, we may look at a different type of a timescape environment that we might be able to write for. There's also been discussion about another weapons or leveled treasure book or implements book or something like that for Draw Steel. And I love these ideas, and it's so hard to say no to some projects, which is why I put a lot of things on the backburner that I'm just working on myself.
Jon de Nor: Right. I asked a bit about this before we started recording, but I want to ask it on — I was about to say "on record" — at least during the recording, because to me the it sounds like you ended up in the *Draw Steel& sphere almost by accident through Spencer. Because my initial thought would have been to branch out to Daggerheart, which seems like a much, or at least a bigger community, or a bigger customer base.
Jeff Stevens: Yeah. And I had considered that. I spoke with Alan Tucker, who did...I'm sorry, I can't remember the name of it right off the hand, Alan. I think it was like, Incredible Creatures for Daggerheart or something like that.
Jon de Nor: Sounds familiar, yes.
Jeff Stevens: Yeah. And that one did really well. And I spoke with Alan. Alan actually does a lot of my layout for my projects, and I'll be seeing him at Gamehole Con this week, actually, in Madison, Wisconsin. So if anybody's — I don't know when this goes out, but if anybody's at Gamehole Con, say hi. But, yeah, we were talking about Daggerheart. You know, I considered, like, creating a treasure book for Daggerheart based on the the images that I have for Weapons of Lore and Weapons of Legend. At the time, it just didn't seem like it fit right, you know, because Daggerheart was brand-new. The people I talked to said, "I don't think this is going to work."
But I may look at it again going forward. Because, you know, the game — all these games start with like the bare bones, the basic rules, okay. And then the community or home GMs come up with their own ideas for homebrew content and stuff and they say, "Okay, well this is a cool rule. I'm going to share this with people." And, you know, they might talk about it on social media or something. But you can expand on that and actually produce something that more people can find, or you can make, you know, some money off of, in order to feed other creative ideas and build off of that. Because a lot of the advances to several games are built off the community. It's ideas from others.
Jon de Nor: I noticed...I don't know if this is an intentional theme — I've been caught almost inventing themes for other people's creations before (laughter) — but in your supplements, when I look at the product page on your website, I feel like there's a underlying, like...I'm not sure if I should say, like, dark theme to your supplements? Is that something that just speaks to your taste or...?
Jeff Stevens: It does. Yeah. Mostly I am a big horror buff. I enjoy horror, I enjoy thriller, dark themes. That's the kind of writer I am. When I'm also writing stories, I'm kind of writing the supernatural stuff, or I'm kind of writing the horror, suspense, that kind of thing. I do have a several roleplay adventures like The Night of the Rise, which is one of my favorites ever to run at conventions, heavy in roleplay. In that adventure, the adventurers come across, or encounter a group — they're supposed to go take care of a bandit who has a toll booth set up and is making money off people going back and forth. And so one of the towns says, go take care of this bandit, and, you know, we'll reward you.
Well, they do that. It takes two days to get there. In the middle of the night, they're sleeping, and then they hear like words being said. They hear the bandit's name mentioned. And so it turns out that, usually — typically it involves some kind of confrontation with this other group that the adventurers are encountering during the night. And they're actually a group of traveling performers who have been hired to perform a play for the bandit during his birthday party. Prior to the interaction, they hear them rehearsing the play, their lines for the play, and one of them's like, "I say we kill them in their sleep!" And so, you know, "Oh, they're going to kill us!" You know?
Sometimes it involves the characters slashing through fake plate mail armor, or, you know, making somebody cry because the wizard is not a wizard or something like that, you know. And then they find the script and they find the contract, and so 90% of the time, the characters then take on the role of the performers, and they go in, they sneak into the bandit camp, they perform the play, and after the play, they get a private meeting with the bandit, in which case the ending has always been different no matter who's playing it. Like, I've had one group that coerced the bandit into living his dream and becoming a performer of his own, leaving the bandit camp and taking on, you know, the thespian role. I've had other people who have, like, killed him so that the second-in-command could then take over the bandit camp, and then he promises to leave if that happens. You know, there's so many ways that the ending can go, and I just run with it. I'm like, whatever the the characters and the players want to do is fine with me. You know, there's no right or wrong way to play that adventure.
But I love roleplay. I love interaction with characters and NPCs, which is also why I try, with a lot of my horror adventures, I really try to...it's not all combat. There's clues, you know, there's riddles, there's stories that unfold within there. And to me, that's what makes a good adventure, is first., you need a reason for them to be there, for the characters to be there. You need a hook, something that's going to draw them in. You need a reason for them to complete the adventure, and then you need to tell the story of what's going on within there. It just shouldn't just be a bunch of rooms that they encounter with no idea or no reason. There needs to be something that gives them a reason for being in each room, or something that tells more about the story of what occurred prior to them being there.
Jon de Nor: You mentioned that your familiarity with Draw Steel is somewhat limited with having Spencer doing most of the mechanical work or technical work around the products. But I was wondering, do you think those adventures would be suitable to convert to Draw Steel, too?
Jeff Stevens: That's what I want. I want to look into that. You know, like I mentioned, I'm not...I don't know, I'm not deep into the rules of Draw Steel. I have the PDFs. I'm more of a tactile reader. I want the books. I just haven't had a chance to get those yet. And I want to dig into it because I do enjoy the community of Draw Steel. I do enjoy what we've been creating, and I want to dig into it. And I do plan to write some threats for Threats of the Timescape. I've got several ideas. I just don't know which one I want to bring to the table. And the team there, Spencer and Dan both said, hey, we'll look it over for you, we'll help you create it, you know? But I want to try and do as much as I can.
But yes, I would love to write some adventures for Draw Steel. And I've read through the...is it The Delian Tomb? I've looked that over, and I just need to play more and experience more of Draw Steel before I can actually commit to doing that. But yes, I would definitely write something for Draw Steel.
Jon de Nor: I still have the product page open and there's a product here called something "Santa", and despite that it looks so dark! (laughter)
Jeff Stevens: Yeah. There's Something Wrong With Santa is what that is.
Jon de Nor: Oh, okay! (laughter)
Jeff Stevens: Yes. Yeah, and on the cover, Santa is a vampire.
Jeff Stevens: Yes. Santa has been bitten by a vampire, and his whole mission that Christmas is to convert souls, or instill fear into people, and then take them back to his vampire leader. You know, if they're happy and joyful, their blood doesn't taste as good. They're scared and frightened, their blood is better. So that's his whole thing. And so the characters go in and have to deal with Santa in vampire form.
Jon de Nor: Interesting. See, this is part of what makes me think that these adventures could work well in Draw Steel. Because from the core rules, or rather, the core rules kind of state in the introduction that the game expects the player characters to be heroes, to be heroic and have heroic motivations, and not necessarily be motivated by greed and treasure, but more by just doing the right thing. And when you introduce these horror aspects, I'm immediately thinking, well, these are ripe for heroes. (laughter)
Jeff Stevens: Yeah. That Something Wrong With Santa was just an idea I had. And I've also got another one called Figgy Pudding Steals Christmas. Which, Figgy Pudding is a thespian, a jester who runs around and steals all the presents, and has them locked up and demands a ransom in order to get the presents back so the children have presents in the morning. And during the final — and that's built like a puzzle adventure. There's little things within there that the characters have to do in order to make it to the next room.
Like they have to bake gingerbread cookies, and so, you know, there's skill checks in order to make the batter correct, and, you know, they put them in the oven. And when they put them in the oven, there's a beep, and the gingerbread cookies are gone. Where'd they go? We don't know. Well, they encounter the gingerbread cookies that they created later in the adventure, but they're giant gingerbread golems, and they're decorated, just like, you know, the gingerbread cookies that they created. And so that's a lot of fun.
And there's some questions that...the spinning pole with elf faces on stops and ask them questions, and there's really no right or wrong answer, but, you know, it just kind of kind of leads into roleplay on the character side, and that type of thing. And then last, in the final confrontation with Figgy Pudding, while she's up there with her Coal Smudge Gang, her minions are defending Figgy Pudding, and she's back there pulling presents out and smashing them on the ground. So children are losing presents the longer it takes to defeat Figgy Pudding and her gang. So yeah, it's a fun one to play.
Jon de Nor: Is there anything else you want to have mentioned about? Well, I guess specifically Threats of the Timescape.
Jeff Stevens: Four of the main threats are mentioned on the page and on the BackerKit page, you know. We give some details as to what they are. We're working on some other things, like, you know, thermaophages, the insect creatures that live off heat; the cosmic elementals, a science-fiction interpretation of the seven elementals of the timescape; cosmic whales and stellar sharks; and then Teos Abadia wrote a couple of solos for us, and we've got some other things in the background that we're working on, too, so I'm excited about it. And when you think about science-fiction monsters, there's all kinds of ideas because, you know, there's like Aliens, The Thing, you know, when you think about movies...I just watched Underwater last night, which is — I like that movie a lot. It's very Lovecraftian, I feel.
You know, you've just got all these different kinds of sci-fi creatures that you can create. And, you know, I'd love to be able to do more funding. A lot of that depends on the funding of the project.
Jon de Nor: Right. As add ons to the campaign, you're offering Weapons of Legend and Lore, the kobold ancestry, and the Humans and Goblind Reinforcements by Spencer. What's the thinking behind including these other products? Or, like — (laughter) in the simplest terms, why are they here?
Jeff Stevens: Why are they here? So there are several reasons to include add-ons. One, it increases your campaign funding, so you make a little bit more money off of it. Another is to reward backers, because a lot of these are reduced to a level that they aren't usually on sale for on DriveThruRPG or DMs Guild or whatever I'm selling them. You know, I try to aim for a 25% to a 35% reduction on most of the add-ons that we include on my Kickstarters and my BackerKit campaigns, something like that. So it's kind of like an extra reward for like, if someone were to come in here that didn't know about my other products, they can say, "Oh, this looks really cool. I'll pick this up at a discounted price too." So, you know, yes, it acts like a marketplace of some sort. But it's also a reward for somebody coming in and saying, "Hey, I'll back Threats of the Timescape. I'll also pick this up at a discount." It's a way to just add value.
Jon de Nor: I think some of these might have passed people by with...well, part of it is just the internet being incredibly big. (laughter)
Jeff Stevens: You know, and that's one of the things about, you know...I don't spend a ton of money on advertising. Some of these companies spend thousands, tens of thousands of dollars on advertising for like Facebook posts or Facebook advertising, Reddit advertising, you know, wherever you want to advertise, it costs that much money. They might double their amount, or triple or the amount that they invested, but I don't have that in my pocket to do. I don't have $10,000 sitting around to invest in an ad campaign. So I rely a lot on word of mouth, on people sharing the product, on people talking about, "Hey, Jeff Stevens just released this cool thing." I just can't sink that much money in, even $1000 or $2000, into an advertising campaign without knowing it's going to actually pay off.
Jon de Nor: Right, yeah.
Jeff Stevens: I can't just throw a thousand bucks at an advertising campaign and say, okay, if it doesn't bring any money, I'm alright. Because I'm a I'm a small company. Which is another reason why we, you know, we talked about the print options for Threats of the Timescape. I do print-on-demand. I do the print codes, meaning that I will not be shipping you a book, you will use that code to redeem it and purchase it for the same amount that it would cost me to purchase it and ship it to you. It's just that by you doing it, you're not paying up front for it. You can wait as long as you want to pay for that print version and then you also pay shipping and handling. So I'm not collecting all this money ahead of time, having to track it, you know, and then apply it to the purchases of those products and pay for shipping and everything like that.
And also, if I'm not using an overseas company or a larger company in the US to print the books, which a lot of companies do, you know, they'll order thousands of books and then they'll ship those individually to the backers — that typically involves, you know, extra containers and shipments to be shipped to several different locations, packing, packaging. It saves on that. So I feel like, you know, my use of print codes also saves the environment a little bit, because we're not using multiple transports. We're not having to repackage and package and repackage, you know, in order to get this to you. It ships directly to you with a print code.
And some companies like that, some don't. It works well for a small business. Now, if I ever became larger, you know, to where I knew I could invest that much money and provide, you know, something directly to the person, great. But this seems to be the quickest way, because, you know, when the print version of this is ready, it'll take me 2 to 3 weeks to get the proofs from DriveThruRPG. Once they're approved, I can ship out the codes.
If I were to do it from an overseas printer, that would take, you know, several weeks to several months to get that proof. Once I approve it, then they'd have to print the books, ship them to me, which could, you know, be a month to three months to six months, depending on everything. And then I'd have to then, you know, either send them to a distributor or package them myself. It's really so much quicker to just do the print codes with something like that, you know? And I'm also avoiding tariffs, you know, on things.
Jon de Nor: Ah, right, yeah.
Jeff Stevens: Because people can just print it. If you live in the UK, I think there's a printer in the UK, so you can just — I think it goes right from there. Yeah. Typically your turnaround time once you, once you enter that redemption code for the print side or the print version, it's like 2 to 3 weeks before it's in your hand, which is so much quicker, I think, for some of these instead of some of these other campaigns. But that's my business model. May not be the best, but it works for me.
Jon de Nor: Right. I always ask my guests to bring a recommendation, so I'm hoping you've brought us something to check out.
Jeff Stevens: I am really proud of The Savage Arctic for Shadowdark. That one just released a few weeks ago. I did the majority of the writing for that, but I did have several people contribute short adventures for it, for several locations that we put on the hex map. Just really proud of that, really proud of a lot of things that I've done as a collaboration or hired freelancers for. I just really enjoy being able to support other people with those projects.
I have a board game group also, that we play on Monday nights. We've played The Unconscious Mind two nights in a row, or two weeks in a row, now, That's a really heavy game, in my opinion. It's been a lot of fun. You're basically a psychiatrist trying to work people through some of their the troubles that they're having. I have not mastered it at all. I was in last place last night. (laughter) But my mind was on the Kickstarter or the BackerKit campaign for Threats of the Timescape launching today. So yeah, I was a little bit preoccupied.
Game-wise, or RPGs...what is it called? There is an RPG out there, I think it's on DriveThruRPG...The Quiet Year, is that what it's called? Basically, it's a prompt, and it's a prompt based on cards. It's a cooperative map-building game. And I've played it twice. Really loved it. Just a lot of fun because, you know, you draw a card that says this thing happens. So then you kind of have to describe it and then put it on the map. And you just need to get a big sheet of paper and you draw it on the map. And so then the next person gets a card, or somebody else, or you talk about it, you openly discuss it, and then you kind of say, well, how does this impact us, or our map? It's been a lot of fun to play.
Yeah, definitely. That's a great one. I mean, it has 11 reviews, 75 ratings, and it's like 4.7 out of 5 stars. Mithril best-seller, so that means it's pretty good. Pretty darn good. Yeah, a lot of fun. I really enjoyed it when we played it with our group. It is an in-person game instead of like an online game. But yeah, just a lot of fun.
Jon de Nor: Those are some solid recommendations. Thank you so much for coming on, Jeff. It's been interesting both to hear about your crowdfunder, but for me, also hearing about just how you run your business and the practice of working across I would say so many systems.
Jeff Stevens: Yeah, it's definitely, I'm glad I'm full-time with this and not trying to do this as a part-time job, having a full-time job. It's a struggle going full-time. I'm not going to say you're making a lot of money if you go into this. Some people do. Some people have outstanding Kickstarters or crowdfunding projects, you know, and they make a lot of money. Mine allow me to get by and work on the next project, you know? I'm hoping for that blockbuster that just allows me to, like, put so much effort into something. But yeah, it's not an easy job. If one were to do this or want to do this, I suggest somebody start small, like a small book of encounters or a small book of items or a short adventure.
And it doesn't have to be — you don't have to put a lot of money into it. You can just start out by putting it on DriveThruRPG or, doing a short crowdfunder for it, you know. And then learn the process, learn what you're missing out on, learn from the comments and discussions that people have about your projects, and then just keep building off of that until you have a solid foundation to do something larger. Because you don't want to invest a lot of money into something — you know, this project right now, I've already got $3000 invested in Threats of the Timescape. I estimate I need another $5000 to finish the layout, editing, artwork, and pay additional writers. That's eight grand, you know, that's eight grand for a book that I'm going to sell for like $19 for the PDF or $24 or $27 for the physical version. You know, my margins on this aren't very large.
I make a little bit of money off of it. But you know, because if I'm selling on Amazon, DriveThruRPG, or other places, they take a commission, they take a cut of it. So I don't make, you know, 100% of that income or that profit. And so, you know, you don't want to go and invest a whole bunch of money into your first project because you don't know how well it's going to do. Get your feet wet, you know, test the waters, see if you even enjoy doing it first before you get into something big.
Jon de Nor: Even more good advice and recommendations. (laughter) Again, thank you so much for coming on, Jeff.
Jeff Stevens: Yeah, certainly. Thank you for having me. It's been a pleasure.
Outro</h1>
Thank you so much for coming on Jeff. I loved the advice Jeff dropped in at the end of the interview. How he got started and how he recommends others get started if they want to start publishing.
I want to thank Tabletop Nonsenseverse for submitting questions for Jeff.
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</a>.
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 5th. That's the news roundup for October.
See you next time. Snakkes.
Links</h1>

Threats of the Timescape - Scourges of Space for Draw Steel - BackerKit</a></li>
The Quiet Year - Buried Without Ceremony</a></li>
Unconscious Mind | Board Game | BoardGameGeek</a></li>
The Savage Arctic - ShadowDark RPG - Jeff Stevens Games | ShadowDark RPG | DriveThruRPG</a></li> </ul>

Jenny [REDACTED]: Arcanist, the Draw Steel Wizard | Interview

Jon de Nor — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Intro</h1>
Jenny [REDACTED] is back! And we're talking wizards in Draw Steel! Specifically the Arcanist. The most wizard that ever wizarded — and they're doing it in Draw Steel. And then we talk classic fantasy monsters, also coming soon!
I'm Jon de Nor and this is Goblin Points.
Interview</h1>
Jon de Nor: Welcome, Jenny [REDACTED], to Goblin Points!
Jenny: Hi! Thanks for having me back.
Jon de Nor: Of course! It's a well known fact that I'm, fanboy of your designs. (laughter) But first...
Jenny: That's very kind.
Jon de Nor: Give us a introduction of who you are and how you ended up in the Draw Steel community.
Jenny: Hello, I'm Jenny [REDACTED]. You probably know who I am, but if you don't, you might know me from my projects, my timescape supplements Space Battles, and Across the Solar Expanse, all sorts of fun sci-fi/fantasy content there. I took 5th place in Jams of the Timescape #2 with my qua'ri ancestry, and I have been a pretty prevalent member of the Draw Steel community, I like to think, for the better part of the last year. I originally found Draw Steel because I was a big fan of Matt Colville's stuff and all of his 5e things. And I picked up Draw Steel just from being a patron. I didn't actually back the initial crowdfunder, because I wasn't really looking for a replacement for 5e until Draw Steel had come out. And then I was very much looking for a replacement for 5e, and it fell right into my lap. I fell in love with it. And I've been making content, like I said, for the past year. But, yeah, I'm here today to talk about some more stuff that I've made! (laughter)
Jon de Nor: Yeah! Let's just jump straight into the Arcanist. Is that how you pronounce it? (laughter)
Jenny: Yes. The Arcanist. You can say "Arcane-ist", but, you know, because arcane is the word. But "Arc-anist", I think, is...it sounds a bit better.
Jon de Nor: Fair! So the Arcanist — Arcanist? Yes, Jesus — is basically a wizard for Draw Steel?
Jenny: 100%. That is the fantasy I am going for. I think I can speak for a lot of people when they say that was something that took a little getting used to when the Draw Steel lineup was introduced, is that the Elementalist is really not a wizard-y kind of type. They're obviously a mage, like, I don't think I can argue that. But they're not the usual wizard fantasy that we've been used to in, obviously, things like Dungeons & Dragons, but also things like Pathfinder, and other similar games, like for fantasy roleplaying games. I think the Elementalist is a really big departure from that concept. It is its own thing.
Especially with the druidic kind of vibe to the Green Elementalist. I always feel like the Elementalist is more like a druid, having access to the four elements. I think of Keyleth of the Ashari from Critical Role, who in that campaign was a druid, but she had like the elemental forms that the druid gets in 5e, where you can become like a fire elemental, water elemental, like...Elementalist in my head is just so druid-coded that it just does not register as being like a wizard character. So that is one of my favorite fantasy concepts for like, I don't know, ever. So I really wanted to translate it into Draw Steel.
Jon de Nor: So you I'm, I'm just going to jump immediately onto page three of the preview, where there's an info box that says, this is a Draw Steel master class, which has been claimed by the Summoner and the Beastheart before. But what makes the Ar-cah-nist — Arcanist? Goddamn it! — the Arcanist a master class?
Jenny: I really put the master class tag on here, not because I think the Arcanist is doing anything mechanically unique and complicated, but what it is presenting is more complicated than what Draw Steel puts on you. I think if you've played Pathfinder at all, or if you've played a 5e wizard to a decent high level, the Arcanist will not feel like a master class to you. But, it is purely because, unlike other classes, the Arcanist gets access to more abilities than normal. But they have to manage which of the abilities they can use at a time by swapping out their prepared spells, as it were, in the middle of combat.
Jon de Nor: Lovely.
Jenny: So you kind of have to keep track of nearly twice as many abilities that other players do. And while obviously you can't use them all the time, so, you know, you can kind of tune out if that ability is just not important right now, you don't have to worry about it. But you always have to be thinking, should I swap right now? Is this other ability going to be more useful in this situation? It's a master class on paperwork alone. (laughter)
Jon de Nor: (laughter)
Jenny: And like bookkeeping. Because in order to truly play...like, if you play an Arcanist and you take your options and never swap anything in your entire gameplay, you will perform like under what the rest of your teammates are doing. The Arcanist is intentionally designed to have some power budget allocated to the fact that they can and should be swapping abilities to make sure they have something that is very appropriate for the situation.
Jenny: How many times have you walked into a solo boss fight and been like, well, my 5-cost Conflagration is useless because this is a solo fight? You know? My AoE ability is not very useful in the game where solos are a unique monster type, and very fun to fight, the AoE abilities just become immediately less useful. You can be like, well, guess what, I will use my resources, I will swap that ability out, and swap it for a strike. And now my 5-cost is much more useful. And you could say that is about as powerful as slapping a Judgement or a Mark on that same solo creature and giving it a permanent debuff for the rest of the fight. And getting all these free triggers and everything like that. So in the same way that other classes are strong by what they apply to the battlefield, the Arcanist is strong in what they can bring to the battlefield.
Jon de Nor: I was looking through the preview, and I got to the first section where it mentioned, so, here's the different schools of a wizard you can be, and depending on which schools you pick — because you pick two of the ten, is it?
Jenny: Yeah. There's ten.
Jon de Nor: Yeah. You pick two of them, and that kind of determines some of the features you get. And I thought, "Ah, that's a nice way...that's like how the Conduit makes subclasses." But then I get through the Arcane Path and, "Oh, no, actually, this is the subclass!" So I feel like you're doing both! (laughter)
Jenny: Yes, I'm doing a little bit of both. And there is a particular reason for this. If you'll notice, the Arcanist does not get the usual like enchantments or wards that a caster gets.
Jon de Nor: Yes, I noticed, yeah.
Jenny: Very similar to the way the Summoner works in that they don't get them either, because they're the Summoner and they do whatever they want. But instead, the Arcanist really — and I wanted to keep it this way because I think this is exactly how the 5e wizard feels, and literally is if you look at it — they barely get any core class features. All they get is just more spells. And that's like the driving force of what utility — like you think of a sorcerer, and you get all these like subclass features and then you get like new unique ways to use sorcery points or whatever. But a wizard, they have like their subclass features and then like nothing else. They get like Arcane Recovery or whatever, and a couple other things. But like their actual class is very thin.
And the Arcanist is the same way, where the class features that don't come from your Arcane Path or from your spell schools are very limited and few and far between. And where other classes just get Tactician features at certain levels, the Arcanist just gets a subclass feature instead. So like power-wise, they're not any stronger for having essentially three subclasses. But rather the build variety in a Arcanist is way higher, because where you would normally get basic class features, you get one of a myriad of options depending on the path you chose.
That prospect is really one of my core philosophies when designing the Arcanist is the idea of like, you can be like, you can be any kind of wizard. Just in that, with the two subclasses kind of creating where, like, you know, HR gain triggers and some of your features that you pick one up and get the other one later, just like the Conduit — the Conduit being the exact kind of thing I was trying to replicate with that, is they have so many different things that your Conduit and your God can represent, and I feel like the Arcanist went hand in hand with that idea and that phrasing.
Jon de Nor: As you mentioned, you both get the ability to swap out the spells — because you gain access to basically all of the spells or abilities for your school — but you've only access to a few of them at a time because of the prepared spell system, basically.
Jenny: Yes. So at level 1, the Arcanist gets the following options to choose from a list, basically. So you get to choose three signature abilities, of which, just like any other character, you can only use two at a time. But you can swap out which ones you have at the moment by using your main maneuver, I'll get to that in a second. You get one of two triggers, which are determined by your arcane — your magical schools, is what they're called. So Evocation, Abjuration, the classics, right? But with some also fun ones, like Chronomancy and Graviturgy. Those are very much inspired by Critical Role and their homebrew content for 5e.
You get access to...I think it's three grimoires. I wanna say three, and then you can only use two at a time. Grimoires are a pretty unique thing about the Arcanist, I really like them a lot. This preview doc I showed you doesn't have the most updated versions of them; mainly all the maneuvers have been changed, but the philosophy is still the same, where it is one out-of-combat ribbon ability feature that kind of plays on a classic wizard spell, and then a really simple maneuver — this is the chang that's most recently happened, this should be the version that everyone else is seeing — is that the first effect of the maneuver is essentially the exact same kind of power as the Elementalist's Practical Magic, one of the options.
It's like how the Elementalist has basically like three options on their one maneuver, the Arcanist has one of those options on a bunch of different maneuvers, and can kind of mix and match to create their own Practical Magic, like cool maneuvers they can use. Each of them will then have a spend to make them a bit more like impactful. But that baseline kind of idea is that they're about as strong as the Elementalist's Practical Magic.
The spell-like maneuver is like, I'll just read one off that I think is like a super big classic, which is Speak with Dead from the Grimoire of Death, right? The Necromancy grimoire. It is basically, it's just the, 1st-level Death domain feature where you can talk to someone that's dead. That feels like it's something that obviously a necromancer kind of character would do, someone who is attuned with dead people. But you also have some fun stuff, like Guidance from the Grimoire of Empowerment from the Enchantment school.
Enchantment, by the way, is something that I have actually pretty changed, flavor-wise, a lot. In 5e and other systems, Enchantment is usually seen as like the "mind control" magic, the like charm person, dominate person. And I think that's always been, like, kind of an icky spell school. It never feels good to be an Enchantment wizard. That feels like a really fucked-up thing to be. And so, in my mind, those types of effects that make you attack an ally, or see something else, or behave differently is filed under illusion. As I feel like, being like trickery rather than mind control is a lot more...it's easier to swallow.
And enchantment instead is taking on like the literal, one of the other root iterations of the word, which is enchanting as in, like, enchanting a weapon or a sword, but you are enchanting your allies and buffing them, so it's like a buff magical school. So the Enchantment school gets Guidance, which I know is not a wizard spell, but who cares? (laughter) It's fun. Guidance says you have a double edge on tests made to assist another hero's test. And when you're assisting a hero's test during a montage test, you can assist two heroes at once. So similar to, I think, like, Teamwork, where you can do your own check and then assist someone. But rather, if you dedicate your turn to assisting someone, you can assist two people.
And then with the double edge on the assist a test means that you'll never fuck it up, and you can't apply a bane. So you're more likely to help someone out. So, you know, you're casting a little Guidance. Let me help you out. Let me put some magic on there. And so all of the grimoires have a feature like that along with the maneuver. And you get access to three of them, two from your magical schools, and then you get to pick one of any. But you can only have two active at a time. Then you also get to pick two 3-costs and two 5-costs. Just like everyone else, you only get one 3-cost at a time, or one 5-cost at a time.
The main gimmick, and this is like the first thing I designed for the Arcanist. I knew this was going to be the gimmick and the premise, is the maneuver called Flash Recall. It allows you to swap a feature you have with one of the same type or base cost. So with it, you could swap a signature with a different signature, a grimoire with another grimoire, a 3-cost with another 3-cost, a 5-cost with another 5-cost, your trigger with your other trigger. It also lets you swap your supernatural perks. You can swap out one of yours with another one else, because those are also very spell-like features.
I think that kind of vibe — that might get some iteration and more limiters, I'm not entirely sure. That one hasn't been playtested too much, because it's such an adventure-focused thing, and a lot of the playtests we run are very combat-focused and like making sure things are balance wise. So when we get later-stage in Arcanist, that one's probably going to shift or change a little bit. As well as, I imagine this product will also contain many more supernatural perks for anyone to pick up.
But the idea is, like, you can swap a thing and then you can't swap that kind of thing until you gain at least 1 Victory. So if you swap a 3-cost, any 3-cost, with a 3-cost, you cannot swap your 3-cost again until you gain a Victory. So even as you level up and get like access to two different 5-costs at once, if you swap any 5-cost, you still can't swap another 5-cost. So, you know, there is a limit to this. This is also a maneuver to do this, but you can pay 1 of your focus, which is the Arcanist's Heroic Resource, to make it a free maneuver. So you can, if, like, the ability you're trying to swap to is a maneuver and you really need it right now, you can spend a little bit of focus, free maneuver, then use the maneuver as you want.
I've found so far in playtesting that this is very solid, because if you have an ability that is not useful when you walk into a fight, you can get rid of it, and you change to something that is useful. And what I find is that, realistically, there is no difference in you changing to a useful ability than is, if you just had that useful ability the whole time. With Draw Steel's like math and the way it's structured, it doesn't really matter if like...I guess, Draw Steel's math doesn't account for the fact that you could walk into a fight where one of your abilities just doesn't do anything. Like there are AoEs and stuff like that, and they do damage or whatever, but that doesn't mean that the game is drastically different if you fight a solo with that area ability. You're going to be probably as effective as you were before, because you have other things to lean on.
But if you are a single-targeting person, if you're playing a Censor, or playing Tactician, right, and you are very useful in that situation or useful in most situations, there's really no difference between those two people, I feel like, most of the time. Other than like, maybe you're going to shine a little bit more. It really doesn't matter that much. It's not like a game-breaking effect or thing to be like, "Well, I have just the thing!" Because that is the point of the class, is to say, I have just the thing. Whereas other classes can just be like, I have this thing and it just works and it does the thing it has to.
Right, the Troubadour gets to choose which of their routines they activate at the start of each combat. But that doesn't mean that, you know, they're incredibly powerful because they can just use any of these. Like, you know, the Virtuoso's not incredibly broken because they have 12, 16, whatever, however many when you get at 10th level, routines you can activate at the same time and already know which ones you need, right?
Jon de Nor: Yeah. It feels very wizard-y to be able to basically pull out the right spellbook at any time and go like, "Hey, I got just the thing for this!"
Jenny: Like the flipping frantically through a spellbook looking for just the right spell is my peak wizard fantasy. That is what being a wizard means to me, is like...because like, there's so many words for a spellcaster like that. There's mage, you know, arcanist, wizard, sorcerer, warlock, and all these random terms that we've come up with over the years for different fantasy bullshit. It's like, what do these terms actually mean? And if you're coming from d20 fantasy, you know that, oh, a warlock is specifically someone that's made a pact, or a sorcerer is someone who, you know, has magic from their own self or whatever. But those are d20 fantasy kind of things. Like, those words were interchangeable in the 80s or 70s, you know. Like that's why in OD&D, it's called the "magic user". (laughter) Like, that's just what the class is called. You're just the guy that uses magic.
All those words were interchangeable and didn't really mean anything. Because, like, Harry Potter is a sorcerer. And, like, sorry to bring up Harry Potter, I'm not that big of a fan, but like, he's like in the zeitgeist of like, "You're a wizard, Harry." That's the whole thing, right, is that he's a wizard, canonically. He's said that many times. But in what we see, he doesn't have a spellbook, he's not like learning — like he's learning words and stuff, but the way that works in that world is that he can just do magic, and he's one of the few people in the world, because other people just can't do magic. But these all these kids, these British children, they can all do magic.
And we would classify that with our d20 brains as being a sorcerer. So like, obviously these words don't mean anything because they're just, we made up and decided. So to me, when I'm making a class like this in Draw Steel, when we think about things like the Fury or the Censor, we're not — and there's also the reason this class just isn't called the "Wizard" — is because I get to decide what that means to me. Like, MCDM decided that being a "paladin" is being a Censor and being someone who casts their Judgement and wrath on their enemies, and constricts them, which is a very like — it's very sick, but it's very different from the noble knightly paladin who shall, you know, be truth and justice, like Superman-esque. Like, Superman is not a Censor.
So when making this class, I got to decide, okay, well, it's my class. I get to decide what the word wizard — or what I landed on, Arcanist — means. And I landed on Arcanist because one, I didn't want to just be the wizard, because I think Draw Steels got that track record of not being the generic, you know, store-brand name. And I landed on Arcanist because there's a couple of characters in fiction that use that term, Arcanist Allura Vysoren, also from Critical Role, big inspiration. I think that word is just really cool, but it also devotes the same kind of, I think etymology — not ent, ent is ant, it's bugs — etymology of Arcanist is it's like the words scientist or geologist, like someone who studies a thing. So Arcanist would be someone who studies magic, and study implies books and learning, and so I think that title is very fitting for someone who is all about the spellbooks and like that kind of.
Jon de Nor: Speaking of the d20 legacy, let's call it, of nomenclature; you didn't want to call it a wizard, but you still went with magical schools and a lot of like, the traditional schools of magic, like Abjuration, Conjuration, Divination, Transmutation. Were you ever considering doing just using other words for this, just for the sake of not being kind of associated with what they mean in d20 fantasy?
Jenny: So yes and no. No for the magical schools, because I think — one, I think a lot of the words that like 5e and stuff uses, they didn't invent, and like that word for that type of magic has been around for a really long time. Like illusion. That's just a word, you know? But also things like necromancy, right? And I have a friend, and I'm really blanking on who they are, but I know that a close friend of mine has a very learned opinion on the word necromancy and the word "mancy" being attached to everything. Because "mancy" means to like divine and see things, like see the future, through a specific act. So necromancy would be seeing the future through bones and dead things, like reading the bones. And that's what necromancy means. It does not mean you have control over undead people and stuff.
So some fantasy right around, like the 70s or whatever, just slapped that word onto the end of something, and then everyone did it with everything else. So I personally don't think those specific things attribute too hard to 5e that I'm fine keeping them. Because like Chronomancy is not something that 5e came up, that's just the word time and the word mancy, which is just magic gobbledygook. So like, I'm much more lenient with those.
In my original pass of this class that I started working on like a year ago, I was fruitful in not giving a shit. All of the signatures and abilities were just straight up 5e spell names, like all of them were. I didn't even try to think of something else. But in a recent pass I did last month, I went through all of the abilities and changed their names away from like, "This is a fucking 5e spell." Even if it's like, in like the SRD, everyone can use it, it's not copyrighted, you know, it's not using Mordenkainen or any specific wizard names, but even spells something like...one that I changed...well, I didn't end up using scorching ray, I came up with a different name for it in general. That's one of the earlier ones I did. The scorching ray-type ability in the Arcanist is called Splinter Flame. Which is just a really cool name that I came up with.
Jon de Nor: Ooh, I like that.
Jenny: I went through and I just did that with a bunch of other stuff. like I had thunderwave in there, but I changed it to Sound Quake. But you know, it's the same sort of thing.
Jon de Nor: (laughter) Oh, I love that. That's really good.
Jenny: But I kept some of them, because one, I think that 5e doesn't have a license on this fucking word. And two, they're just too iconic. Fireball, I think being the very clear one, they did not invent the fireball spell. That has been a thing for a long time. And Lightning Bolt is another one. And then Counterspell. Counterspell is like deliberately taken from 5e. It does appear in Daggerheart. There's a Counterspell card in Daggerheart, too. But I think for the same reasons, it is just so iconic of a thing to say that it is hard to let that one go. Magic Missile's another one, that's their free strike. Just because it's so like, that is also a classic wizardy thing.
But yeah, I separated the ability names because I think they could afford to be more Draw Steel. It just becomes more evocative, it's something cool. I also think that having the names be kind of simple and descriptive, like Fireball, what does it do? It's a giant ball of fire. Lightning Bolt, what does it do? Shoot a lightning bolt. Very descriptive, makes sense. It actually, in a lore perspective, makes sense for something like the Arcanist, who has presumably a book on these things, and scientists are famously bad at naming things.
Jon de Nor: (laughter)
Jenny: They'll pick some Latin bullshit like, you know, they'll see like a lizard that has a spiky tail or whatever, and it'll be like the, you know, spiky-a tail-io, whatever. Just incredibly not creative names and stuff. Whereas the Elementalist, who's again, I've said personally I think has more of like a druidic, primal, primordial sort of feel, has like, you know, Your Flesh, the Crucible, or Your Flesh, a Crucible, and you know, Behold the Mystery, all these like crazy, evocative, crazy words, I think it makes sense for something like the Elementalist. Where straightforward, to-the-point, abilities make sense for the Arcanist?
Jon de Nor: Yeah, totally. (laughter) I really enjoy some of these, translated names. I have the sense that you like the same kind of wordplay that I do. (laughter)
Jenny: Oh, for sure. I mean, I think, ironically, I think actually coming up with these ability names has been really hard. I'm actually really bad at coming up with, like, player things. I think we'll get into it in like a later section, but I'm much more of a monster creator person. One of the like the main things that inspired me to really like follow Matt Colville's stuff is like action-oriented monsters. But in 5e and those types of games, they'll be like "Claw Attack" or like whatever, you know, it'll be like, yeah, Claws or Rend that they've used now. But you get to Draw Steel and they've got like movie references and punchy titles, and you just get to be fun and wacky with it. And I think I took that in stride when it comes to my monster abilities, I'm always coming up with like, fun, evocative names.
But I find it really hard for some reason to just do player ones. I think that's why I just defaulted to the 5e spells when I first did it. I couldn't be bothered. But there are some fun ones. And also just like, coming up with new spells, I think like, not specifically trying to rip the entirety of the wizard's spell list into what you can do, has been a fun challenge, but also taking inspiration from maybe other games and stuff, or just thinking of, like, what would work here. I think one of those would be, the 3-focus Sharpen Steel, which is a maneuver. You target somebody, they gain temp Stamina and a surge. And I think it used to literally just be called, like, Empower or something really basic.
And Jonas, shout-out Jonas Tintenseher, worked with on a lot of stuff. I trust them very much. And they're a very good friend of mine, so, like, I had them, like, not proofread-proofread, but, like, read with me to go through things, and, like, one of their biggest comments was like, "All these names gotta go." (laughter)
Jon de Nor: (laughter)
Jenny: I'm also bad at writing flavor text for these abilities. Some of them I've come up with and like, have changed since then, but a lot of them were just like, describing what is very clearly what the spell does. Like it wasn't as bad, but it would be like, Thunder Wave: You create a thundering wave in front of you. (laughter) That's like what most of them were. And some of them still are. But there is a couple of them that I have kind of moved away from and tried to be a little bit more unique about.
Obviously, one of the classics and most best flavor texts in here is Fireball's, which is "You didn't ask how big the room was." Which is one of my favorite bits, because there is — Fireball was originally a lot different in my first iteration. It was a 7-cost, and all the budget for it was just being, a 5 cube that dealt damage. And it didn't do anything else, because that's what fireball is. But I got some feedback on it, just like from that prospect of, what does a fireball mean? And what should it be? And I looked at my design for Lightning Bolt, which is another challenging thing, especially when you're translating from a stinky poopoo game like 5e, where all of the attacks are just damage, save for half, and they don't do anything else. That just really doesn't slide in Draw Steel, they have to do something cool — is that Lightning Bolt, being a line that does lightning damage, I came up with the fact that if any of your allies are in the line, they gain a surge.
So now it becomes not only like, an AoE damage-dealing spell, but a buff, like, support, enchantment spell. And it's very strong if you especially if you get a lot of your allies in it. But if you get a lot of your allies in it, that means your allies are standing in a line, which is probably not a good idea. But it's always fun when there is, like, you get to just the right position where you can hit a good chunk of your allies and a good chunk of the enemies that they're fighting, and so it becomes a very Draw Steel ability, very tactical, very fun. Versus Fireball's original design, which is just "big".
And so I moved it back down to being a 5-cost. And the amount of feedback I got on Fireball, it kind of became like, what a wizard means, which is like, what is a fireball to you? Is it just a big area that does a bunch of damage, or does it set things on fire? Is it an explosion that, like, pushes things away? And so I said all of the above. So Fireball, it is budgeted as like just a 3-cost 3 cube within 10 that is a bit of damage, and then you choose one of, I think, four effects that make up the other budget to get it to a being a 5-cost. And so these effects kind of like make Fireball — ironically, as being the equivalent of "I swing my sword" for a wizard — a very tactical and useful spell. It's like a mini Arcanist in like the options it provides.
So the first option is that it does create the area to become a 5 cube. So very powerful, very big at level 5. However, it then targets all creatures and objects in the area, which means it also hits you and your allies. So it becomes a lot harder to place unless you just say fuck it, and then just hit your teammates. Or you can choose to have it deal just an extra 4 damage, and have it be like a really solid damage-dealing ability in that 3 cube. You can also instead choose to push each target 2 squares away from the center of the area. Classic explosion, right? Everyone goes flying. Or you can, with a potency, set enemies on fire. and they take, you know, fire over time damage.
Which, like mathematically, is technically less damage than had you just dealt the extra 4. But in situations where damage over time is more useful, like against fire-weak enemies, or enemies that just have damage weakness, it becomes then the better option. So again, it's got its place, like on paper, like it's just not as good as the other one, but in situations where it's good to set things on fire, like if you need to burn something down, that is something that actively sets things on fire, because it also hits objects, which is very Fireball. And then of course, the last thing is that if you crit when casting Fireball, all four of the modes get chosen, whether you want them to or not. So that means that it becomes a 5 cube and does all that other cool stuff, but then it also hits you and your teammates, even if you weren't trying to. I don't know if this is going to see the final version, I just think it's really funny. (laughter)
Jon de Nor: It has to stay in.
Jenny: It's like it's the equivalent of like a wild magic sorcerer casting fireball on themselves, as one of the options. Of just like, "Well, if I cast this, I gotta be really careful, because it could, you know, it's so wild and crazy." And I think it's just a very fun, wacky thing. And like, it would be a purely buff if the 5 cube hitting all of your allies wasn't one of the options. Because then it becomes like, well, if I crit, then I'm going to hit like all my teammates. And that also kind of hearkens back to like, "You didn't ask how big the room was. You just cast fireball." And unfortunately, I crit, and now it is as big as the room. So I'm very happy with that one.
There has been...like, the higher-level stuff, there's been the same — obviously the previous PDF is just the 1st level, but I have up to the 10th level, like, feature-complete, like everything's been written out. Now it just needs like, revision, design, testing, you know, trying to see, like, this is like, I just wrote some stuff down, maybe it works, maybe it doesn't. We need to test it out to find out. But I think, like, this 1st level, to me, is, like, nearly close to, like, done. It is a very solid amount. And the 1st echelon, as with most things, has gotten the most testing out of the entire Arcanist. So it's definitely been revised the most. There's been a lot of iterations on it.
Jon de Nor: One of the features of the Fireball, as you mentioned, is the recurring fire damage. And that kind of leads me into the beginning of the arc Arcanist, where you mentioned, expanded conditions and effects, where you introduce disoriented, safely, recurring damage, and cleanse. Could you give like a...what's the reason — well, first of all, what are they, and why include them?
Jenny: Yeah. So the expanded conditions, that are presented here are taken from the Brewery Expanded Glossary, which is like a community project of additional conditions, right? Draw Steel's a very condition-light game. And I think that is good for it, because a lot of the abilities that, if you wanted to include a new condition, you just put the description of the effect in the effect of the ability and you're good. Like the lightbenders, right? Dazzled isn't in the condition section, but like, lightbenders apply dazzled to you, and then it says what dazzled does. So you just do that.
But the community has found that a lot of these, there's a lot of effects and stuff that you do that are like so common that it might as well be good to just keyword them, and so that you save the space of describing what they are. And then just put a little blurb at the beginning, like I've done, a link to the greater PDF to look at everything, community notes on why certain things are the way they are, what the cost of like the budget of the ability is like how strong this condition is comparing it to others. Ben, right, SurfingBird, and I think Jacons is the other mind on it. Yes. They've done some great work. Triglav, as we'll get to, also uses quite a lot of these.
And it's pick-and-choose, like you don't have to use every single one. But that's what the blurb is pointing out, here are the ones that I'm using in this product. And then obviously you add the little asterisks in the effect text so that the person reading it can go, oh, that's one of the keyworded ones. That's why it doesn't explain what it is. And then the very good thing about putting it at the top is that if you command-F and look up the condition, it's the first thing that comes up.
Jon de Nor: Haha, nice.
Jenny: 'Cause it's at the top. So yeah. So the ones I have used so far, and I might use more, because I think this one is just talking about what's in this first section here, but, disoriented — the number here is outdated. It might get updated right now. This one's kind of going back and forth in the community. And that's always the thing is, like, as the community uses them, we get more playtesting of them and we get more opinions and things and things can change. But so disoriented is the dazzled effect. It limits your line of effect. We also see it in the lizardfolk, the bloodeye, has an effect that also limits your line of effect.
And so what it is basically, is it is the ranged version of slowed. Where slowed sets your speed to two, and so there's only so far you can move as a melee character, whereas disoriented sets your line of effect to — this one is 2, I think community has decided 3 is a bit more fair. And what that basically means is that as a ranged character, if you get slowed, if you're a ranged character, it does nothing to you, because you have a range of 10 on all your abilities or whatever, right? So it doesn't matter if you can only move 2 squares because you don't need to move at all. But if you're a melee character, it's debilitating. If enemies are not within those 2 squares, like you'll have to do a charge and then now you're just free striking, or you'll have to use some resources or effect to get rid of that slowed. Or someone will have to take a turn before you to heal you. It's a big deal when a melee character gets slowed. Even bigger deal if it's an enemy like a solo or something that gets slowed. It is very debilitating condition.
And so what disoriented is, is it's just the ranged version of that. It's just the same kind of like debilitating penalty as slowed but on more ranged options. It is very much strong on heroes. Like if a hero is disoriented, it is a bit more punishing than slowed, is what the community has found. Like you're limiting line of effect for like, healing and support abilities, and for like, Judgement and Mark. So there's a lot more things that it affects than just being slowed. But obviously when listed here in the Arcanist, it's referring to a player ability, putting it on the monsters, in which, you know, a ranged monster getting a little bit of a debuff, they don't have as many things going on that penalty is going to matter as much. So that's disoriented.
Recurring damage is very simple. It's just damage over time. Just all it is, is when it says recurring damage, a number, and then maybe a damage type — recurring fire 5 — that means the target takes the listed damage of the type at the start of each of their turns. While it, you know, save ends. It's a very straightforward, like, that's how that probably should work. And it's one of those effects that is just such a common thing to do that rather than explaining it every time, just putting it at the top makes it a lot easier. And it's versatile, so you could have like recurring cold, or whatever number, recurring poison. So rather than having a poisoned condition or a burning condition, you know, you just say recurring poison 3, and then now you're just taking poison damage like you're in Pokémon, slowly ticking.
Safely is a fun one. This one has come up a lot, and it actually technically exists in the core rules, with the Tactician's Out of Position. At the start of combat, the Tactician can choose a character and slide them a couple squares, and then that slide specifies that it can't be into damaging terrain or, like, used to slam them. It is purely a repositioning tool. So what the safely keyword means is you just append it to any forced movement, like safely slide or safely push, and all it means is that you can't damage them with that forced movement. So it is strictly a forced movement for repositioning, which is very fun.
I think forced movement in Draw Steel has been something that's like a really big, a really strong dynamic thing that the game does that a lot of other RPGs don't, but it sucks that the most rewarding thing you can do is to slam someone point blank into a wall without actually moving them any squares, and they just take a buttload of damage. And that's the best thing you can do, instead of actually repositioning them. So safely allows that. And then it means that abilities that use safe forced movement can be budgeted much lower because the damage of, forced movement is a big part of the budget. So I think the Arcanist is one ability that uses that one, very similar.
And then cleanse is a wording that is just honestly, it's literally just to save text, because there's so many effects in the game that say the target can end one effect on themselves that is ended by a saving throw or that ends at the end of their turn, which is like, we already got rid of the save. We created "save ends" to fix this giant problem, and then just decided not to do that for the describing of save-ends/end-of-turn. So cleanse — so you could say, "the target can cleanse an effect they are suffering" means that they can remove an effect that is ended by a saving throw or that ends at the end of their turn. So similarly, like the original, that doesn't mean they can end grabbed or prone. So it would specify like the target can cleanse an effect they're suffering, or stand up if they are prone. Again, just saves like ten words of text. Much cleaner.
It's stuff like that I think the community is really solid on coming up with and like agreeing on and then everyone kind of using it becoming the standard. It just benefits everybody. It's one of the things that I think the community really thrives on, and I'm really proud to be a part of such a blossoming homebrew community that this sort of like, these resources and these stuffs, these budget sheets and everything are just so accessible that it makes...I can focus on designing rather than the balance, or like, the nitty gritty things. It just helps to have such a big community, like, there's no other word to say than like a community, a group of people, friends who you can talk to and ask and iterate on stuff. It's just, it's really, it's unlike any community I've ever been a part of.
Jon de Nor: I also want to point out, you mentioned cleanse being about saving words. You also mentioned at the bottom of the box text that you also just say you deal R damage instead of the longer "You deal damage equal to your Reason score."
Jenny: Yeah. It's exactly the same thing, of like, we already have symbols that denote what that number is. Why don't we just use them? Like the conditions glossary and effects like, easily one of the best things, like if are a homebrew creator, you obviously don't need to use the conditions and stuff, but things like cleanse and things like using just the symbol, just helpful. It's just nice. It's just clean. It's efficient. I know, I think Triglav is doing it, and, MrMattDollar, who's doing the layout for the Arcanist, is doing it as well, but also just making save ends be "SE" because, we know what that stands for. It also just saves characters in the power roll. This is already a very complicated, rules-heavy game. It's not going to be Shadowdark where everything, again, fits on like two lines, like an index card. But the closest we get to that, I think, is a benefit for everybody.
Jon de Nor: Yeah. I also wanted to touch on something else you've been working on, to jump completely over to a different subject, because you've been working on a monster supplement?
Jenny: Yes. Monster Manifest is a supplement of classic fantasy monsters that don't appear in official materials too much, that I feel like are too iconic not to include. This actually started as a project I did in the MCDM server. I'm sure you can go dig up and find it, but it was basically a post, I called it Monster of the Day. And I would go to my miniature collection, pick out a mini of something I had that wasn't in Draw Steel, and make a statblock for it. And then I did that every day for, like, I think four weeks. And it was really fun. Because there's a lot of stuff that you think about and you're like, wow, it is weird that that isn't in Draw Steel. One of the ones from that original spread is a doppelganger, right? Or like a twig blight or a vine blight. I know we got some of those in, like, Dark Heart of the Wood, but, you know, like the classic stuff, there's things that weren't open yet.
And so it kind of started there of like, yeah, it would be really cool if these types of things were more prevalent. So I started working on Monster Manifest. It is a smaller collection because it's just easier to make these ways, but I plan to have more issues, more themes and stuff. So the first issue has three monster groups, that is the nightmare, the owlbear, and rust monsters.
Jon de Nor: You almost made them rhyme. (laughter)
Jenny: Almost. Yeah, yeah. So the nightmare obviously being the flaming devil horse, classic. I have a really cool mini from WizKids where the flames are semi-transparent and it's a really cool paint job. It looks super cool. I have a really — it's not extensive, as much as other people's, I think — but I have a really big miniature collection that I don't use. I don't play in person, ever. But if I ever did, you know, I would like to have, more statblocks for the minis I have. So I kind of kept with it.
There are two nightmares, the nightmare trailblazer and the nightmare phantasm. The trailblazer is like the classic flaming horse. It can fly. It's got some cool fiery abilities. It can stomp over people. And the phantasm is like a necrotic, like, undead horse, that's like the kind of thing you'd imagine a death knight or something riding. But nightmares, like, the whole vibe is like it is a mount, right? It is meant to be, some other cool bad guy is riding one. Like, maybe a vampire lord is riding the phantasm, or a hobgoblin is riding the trailblazer. Like that type of stuff, just like the visuals, that kind of mount, very cool.
The owlbears. There are two owlbears. First one is the owlbear solo, which is a level 1 solo monster. I felt that the owlbear should be a solo monster, because, answer honestly, when have you ever seen more than one owlbear that wasn't a baby?
Jon de Nor: (laughter) Touché.
Jenny: Like, it's always an owlbear mom and her baby cub. You're not running into a pack of owlbears. It's like, that's just like, you know, a flock, that's just not a thing. And there's a lot of monsters like that in classic fantasy, where it'd be weird to find more than one. I think the Monsters book does a really good job of separating, like, what are hordes, platoons, elites, and solos? Because if you think about hordes, it'd be like, yeah, there's a lot of them. Like, there's two per person usually, by the balance-wise, it makes sense. All the monsters that are hordes, it makes sense that they're hordes. Angulotls, bunch of frog guys. They're everywhere. Goblins, of course, goblins and kobolds. There's so many of them. That's like the point, is that there's so many. Undead, they're literal undead hordes. That makes so much sense. You're all like walking dead, there's a bunch of them clambering on to each other — running into a pack of twenty zombies is like, it's a lot, and it's kind of scary, but it is like a normal thing for that type of monster.
If you ran into a group of twenty orcs, you'd be like, oh my God, we are getting invaded. (laughter) Like, this is like a platoon in an army that is happening right now. Holy crap. Because like, take that and then be like, you ran into a room and there are twenty humans in here. You're like, oh my God, this is like a high school class of people that are here. Like, that is a weird amount of people to just run into. So I think it makes sense that those types of monsters are platoons.
And then same thing with elites. I think elites kind of get like, there's like a mixed bag. Animals, I think, is a good one, because like, I think elites cap out at like two or three, is like the most you'll ever see with an elite. Like maybe one, and it's like scary. Like ogres. That makes a lot of sense if there's one ogre, right? You know, they have a cave troll. Lord of the Rings, right? And Moria. Like, having one big scary guy. That makes a lot of sense.
And so I felt that, like, obviously animals statblocks are elites, but an owlbear, the logistics of it is like, there is no other place you are fighting an owlbear if it isn't the only thing you are fighting. Because no pack of goblins is just going to have an owlbear with them. That's a little weird. Like maybe if it was like a like a group of druids or something, they just have an owlbear companion, sure, that makes sense. Why not? But like, how often does like happen? And again, like I said, you're not running into a flock of owlbears. So two or three is just really weird. So I felt like there was nowhere better fitting than a solo monster.
Especially because, I think it fills the exact same role as, like, the ankheg, which turned into the arixx, which is one of those things, like you literally, you created — and I know it's because the ankheg appeared in action-oriented monsters — but you went with the ankheg over an owlbear, like, you know, serial numbers filed off for your, like, classic monster book? The owlbear's great. So level 1 solo monster. It is one of the most, like, clean playtests I've run of that monster. I ran the playtests and literally none of the players had any feedback. It was all just like, yeah, that was great. That was like, yeah, it felt awesome. Like, no notes, which was like weird. It was like the first time I run it and I had gotten there, I was like, "Sick." I playtested it one or two more times after that. And all it was just like, the rest of the design was just kind of cleaning up wording and stuff. It wasn't even any like, changing of too many things. So very proud with how that guy came out.
And then along with the owlbear solo monster, we also have the owlbear companion for the Beastheart, which is, I think, in my head, the one of two things that you do with an owlbear is you got mama, but you also got the baby, the owlbear companion. I think it's a classic. I definitely took a approach of like owlbears being jumpers and being really good at jumping, because it'd be weird if they could fly, but I think jumping is like a thing, like, yeah, that makes sense. You got the wingspan, kind of get a big takeoff. Leaping and pouncing on things I think makes a lot of sense. So that's sort of the idea with it there.
Additionally we also have the rust monsters, which were a challenge. Getting the design for these guys was pretty tough in a game where equipment doesn't matter.
Jon de Nor: Ah, yeah.
Jenny: The whole point of a rust monster is to wither away your armor and your weapons and make you have to go back to town and buy new stuff. It is such an OSR monster where like it attacks not your stats, you know, it attacks your inventory. Which is a very fun, just a fun concept for a monster, but not one that really translates well to Draw Steel. My inspiration for the rust monsters is that they are, like obviously very much insectoid, but they are also like ferrous metal eaters. So like the design concept for them, I took some swings in what it means to be a rust monster.
So you'll see in the art that I'm sending, there's three rust monsters, and the one in the middle is the rust monster hatchling, and it is the most, like, rust monster-looking thing. It's just a bug. Just a little guy. In the stat blocks, it's just a platoon, and the rest of them are elites as they're full adults. The one on the left here is the rust monster corroder, and basically, it's a much scarier-looking bug whose skin is covered in, like, a metallic, sort of rusty look. It's got the, like, coppery green of oxidizing copper, like the Statue of Liberty. So it's that rust-colored, kind of copper-covered, but with the greenish hues and tints over it. And the other one is the rust monster magnetist, and it's more of a gray, steel-covered rust monster that's kind of got like a stainless steel kind of look to it. And it has, and many of them do, have, like, psionic abilities, and its psionic abilities allow it to control metals like Magneto, and like lift with magnetism, but also like, fuck with magnetic poles and that type of stuff.
So the direction I took with the rust monsters is that rather than using their antennae to turn away non-magical metals and make them rust, is that they project psionic powers onto equipment that makes them more malleable and easier to digest and eat. So their stomachs have corrosive acids that can break down basically anything. But their teeth and jaws are meant for killing smaller things and defending themselves. They're not really meant for actually biting through the metals. So they use their psionics to make the metal softer and malleable, so it's easier to chew and eat them.
So rather than permanently rusting your equipment and making it bad, the rust monsters all just apply the rusted condition to you, which gives you a bane on weapon abilities. You have damage weakness as it's also affecting your armor. But for those that don't have armor, or don't like...it is covered by the fact that the psionic power is sort of my gimme for like, well, it's psionically affecting you, so you have damage weakness, you, wizard that's not wearing any armor. But also like the bane on the weapon abilities that don't have the magic or psionic ability keyword, to kind of specify that it's that.
But it also, a lot of the rust monsters' effects refer to having weapons and armor, which is purely a narrative choice. So, like if you're playing, let's say, I don't know, like a Shadow or something, you're Black Ash or even Caustic Alchemy, and you're, maybe flavor-wise, you're like a druidic character who's using nothing but, like, leaf blades or wooden staves or something. Maybe you're playing a Tactician who's got,Stick and Robe and you've got like, a bo staff, and you're not really wearing armor in the fiction of your character. Then the Director would be like, "Okay, well, I know what your character looks like. I know that you're not wearing metal weapons and armor, so these effects don't affect you. But the, Censor, who's wearing plate mail in their, like, Shining Armor kit is definitely metal weapons and armor, and they will be affected." So it's like it's a it's a case-by-case basis rather than any mechanical thing, because the mechanics aren't there.
These ones had, a couple revisions of getting rusted to feel like, landing on what rust should be, and the rusted condition is where it's at. Having the psionic feel also means that some of the abilities are easier to kind of flavor and go with, like messing with magnetism and repelling fluxes and stuff. It's been really fun. I'm very happy with where the rust monsters are. They're exactly the kind of elite band that the basilisks kind of fit in, where it's like, oh, yeah, this is going to be a really cool encounter using these guys.
I'm very happy with Monster Manifest Volume 1. And what I've managed to fit into it. I've got a lot of big plans for other volumes and stuff, but I'll have to see how much this one makes/how well it does if people like it. Along with Monster Manifest, I've said, the art is done by Rengeld, who I've worked with previously on projects like Across the Solar Expanse, and it's also worked on other DS projects like Hooked on Crafting. They're amazing. They're did all the art for the monsters in the book, they're also doing the art for the cover. And I haven't decided if I'm going to work with them for the second volume — if they will have me, I would definitely love to do that. But I also think that, like, doing the same thing, I was talking about with you previously, that I enjoy when projects have a specific art direction. I might choose to have another artist do the entire thing as well. And so every volume has its own little feel to it. But I also like working with them, so I might just do them again until I find someone who can do that sort of thing.
Yeah. Along with Volume 1, which hopefully should be out by the time this episode releases, along with that, there are also going to be — it comes included with tokens, for your use of your virtual tabletop choice, as well as a completely implemented Codex modules that are made by me, so you can drop them right in, perfect use at the table. They've been a lot of fun to implement and design. Obviously, I have done a lot of work in the Codex, a recent time making videos and all sorts of stuff and making things, working on the Arcanist's Codex module, alongside Vex, one of the Codex devs as well, helping me out with certain Lua scripts and things like that.
Providing more stuff for people to use in the Codex is also a goal of mine, because I just really love the product. I think it's an amazing software and I can't wait to see it grow and having more things to use on it. I think it's classic. It's really useful branching out how much is on there. So I'm really happy for Volume 1 to have that. I think it's...I'm really proud of it, and I hope all of you guys who have it or are going to go check it out, very much also enjoy it.
My plans for the second volume are going to be to focus on, like, lower-echelon solo monsters, because I think that's in the same philosophy of like, figuring out like, well, the owlbear is like one that you would only encounter alone. There are lots of other fantasy monsters that you would also only encounter alone. I ran some polls as well in the Draw Steel Brewery server for which ones I plan to include. So it's public knowledge, but we have things like the doppelganger recently made the cut, but also something like a red dragon. Just a classic red dragon, you know, on a pile of gold, hoard type thing, like the classic fantasy stuff. The red box. Like that type of enemy. Not a thorn dragon, not a crucible dragon, but just like a classic fantasy European dragon. Like, what does that kind of look like? And can something as, in quotation marks, as "simple" as that be super cool in Draw Steel? The answer is yes.
Jon de Nor: (laughter)
Jenny: But additionally, something like a gelatinous cube, is up on the design. That one's design is pretty much done. I'm a big fan of the gelatinous cube because I just think it's really funny. Just having a cube monster. I know there is, like, a lot of slimes in The Delian Tomb, we got a lot in Encounters as well as reprints. And there's, like, the gummy brick that the kobolds have, but I think, like, the classic gelatinous cube is an enemy that you really only fight one of. And so it fits the bill of like, yes, this could be a solo. And just the idea of like, we're fighting a giant cube, it's not like what kind of thing it is. The main gimmick of that monster is that it can only move in straight lines and can't move diagonally, so it has to move on like the grid. And the way I picture it moving is not snail-trailing around, it is like tipping itself over moving its square at a time.
Jon de Nor: (laughter)
Jenny: It's just going like plop, plop, plop, plop and then picking people up like a fucking boulder rolling down a hill. I'm very excited, to do that one and do that one further. One of the bigger ones, I think that it's kind of going to be like the showstopper for Volume 2 is the beholder. I'm calling it the eye tyrant, which is a term that it's very much used a lot with, but it's not one that, Wizards owns the copyrights to. And I think it's close enough. My fun bit of it, is like, MCDM already did the overmind. And I think the overmind is awesome. I've run with it, it's super cool, it's an awesome monster. But with the separate eyebeams and everything, it doesn't really have the exact same feeling as getting zapped by the singular beholder monster. So I'm going to try to tackle that specific design, but with the flavor and context of an overmind.
So the lure of the eye tyrant is that it's what happens when a singular one of an overmind's floating eyes drifts off on its own and, like, gains its own sentience and like mutates. And so that's why it has the eyestalks and not separate eyes, is because it was itself one of the separate eyes that has now become its own thing.
And I love introducing the lore bits and stuff like that. Like in the lore write-up for the owlbear, I mentioned that the wizards that created the Dragon Knights started with an owlbear.
Jon de Nor: Ahh, yeah.
Jenny: To like, oh yeah, like, you know, animal-y, kind of creating creatures thing. Because, you know, the classic lore of an owlbear is like, oh yeah, some wizard did it. So I just threw that in there. I love being able to tie these, you know, what you would consider, like, branded fucking Hasbro-ass WotC creatures, but slide them smoothly into the world of Orden and the timescape. I think it's fun.
Jon de Nor: I really enjoy these monsters, and the art, which looks — especially the magnetist which has, like this, Damascus...
Jenny: Yeah. The Damascus kind of steel pattern.
Jon de Nor: ...pattern going on in the scales. Yeah, yeah. So cool.
Jenny: Yeah. I think, Rengeld did an amazing job on the rust monsters, especially because, like, that was the biggest departure from the norm. Like, you look at the owlbear and it's really sick art, but like, that's an owlbear. It looks solid, it's pristine, and like, that's what you picture. That's what you picture when you look at a nightmare. But the rust monsters are one of those things where I had to take the leap of making these things interesting. Because in a game like 5e and others like it, they don't have the same tactical sort of intrigue that Draw Steel encounters do. And so they're like, here's a rust monster, and it's the one statblock. And it's also like, not very cool or like interesting. And it does like one neat thing and has an attack that it makes. But in Draw Steel, everything's got to have a gimmick, you know, everything needs to have a fun bit. And so I needed to come up with what that was for. The rust monsters. I'm very happy with the art.
There's like one more of this little group here that's not ready yet. But I love these types of monsters and putting more out there. I love supporting artists and getting art to do cool stuff. So hopefully this funds pretty well, and we get to do another one. I'm not crowdfunding it, so I'm paying for it out of pocket with some funds that I've gotten from just like my other projects and stuff like that. And I know everything always funnels back into just making more cool stuff for the community. So hopefully this does the same.
Jon de Nor: Hopefully. I hope so! We are closing in on the end; there's so much stuff, and I think we can reveal already that we've already decided that you're coming back soon because you've got so much on your plate.
Jenny: Very much so, very much so.
Jon de Nor: But I always end the interviews with a recommendation for my guests. So what have you brought for our listeners?
Jenny: So I have a couple, just some small things to rattle off. The first one is I didn't mention it in my previous interview, but, another entry in the Octopath series, which is Octopath Traveler 0. A bit of a different take, on, like the usual eight travelers. This time you make your own traveler, and have your own story, like you build up your town and, like, do stuff, but it's got the classic vibes. Music is back. Ugh, the soundtrack is baller. There's some tracks that are reused from the other games and stuff, but the new ones that are in it are just so good. It continues to just be the most epic source of JRPG music ever. So again, if you don't play Octopath Traveler 0, cool, go listen to the soundtrack, yyou will not be disappointed.
But my other main recommendation is a game that's really inspired me recently. I've been delving into it quite a lot, I'm near the end. I hadn't really heard of it too much. I think I heard of it when it came out, but I didn't really pick it up because I wasn't playing too many games then. But that is Avowed, by Obsidian Entertainment. Avowed is a third-person action RPG, fantasy RPG that takes place in their Pillars of Eternity setting. So, you know, Woedica, the gods, and, like, Deadfire, that's the archipelago. I literally actually, I didn't even know that before I started playing the game. I just saw like some good reviews on it, and I wanted something similar to Skyrim to delve into. And then I literally open up some note on the ground, like a few minutes in, and it's like "Pillars of Eternity". I'm like, oh, I know that game. And it describes what the actual Pillars of Eternity are, like the crystals that are around everywhere. I'm like, oh, that's what those are. And then I go a little bit further and I see, a note that's like, ah, Deadfire. I'm like, oh yeah, like Pillars of Eternity 2. And then I realize like, oh yeah, of course they're like actively talking about stuff.
So it's been super fun. The combat and the mechanics are really interesting. It really feels like a modern take on the Elder Scrolls format. Where you're like going around, doing quests, beating enemies, picking up loot, and getting new items and upgrading them. It's got fun skill trees. It's just really fun. And a lot of my design bits and things have been inspired by it. The story is cool. We've got some really familiar voice actors. Anjali Bhimani is the one I recognize the most, she's one of the companions in that game. She's super fun. The world is really interesting. The story's pretty up there. And it's just a fun one. It's just been a fun romp. I think anyone who's into fantasy RPGs would get a pretty good kick out of it.
And there's a lot of, like, build versatility, too. You can really do whatever you want. I've been going with like a mage build, but a DPS mage build. You can get a magic staff that while you hold it, you get bonuses to your mana and your spellcasting stuff, but it's also just like a physical weapon that you swing around. So like, I'm over here casting frost spells and raining down ice things. And then while all of my spells are on cooldown, I'm just like, beating face with the staff.
It's also a setting that has guns in it too. So for a while before I got to that, like I found a cool ice magic staff like what I'm using now, I just had a spellbook in one hand and a gun in the other. (laughter) Which is just like, I know Crows is out and stuff like that, and that's a game that has your hand slots are sort of like what's important. And like, that is a game that really much feels like that, where like, I can just be holding one thing but also have another thing on my other hand. And so just having like, yes, spellbook and gun, or like two guns, you know. It's really fun.
There's a lot of fun...like exploring has been super fun. Like, I don't know, I'm just having a good kick of it. I haven't played too many games in a while that aren't, like, live service, competitive FPS games that I'm usually playing. So it's been fun to just have like a story-based experience where I can just kind of like, turn my brain off a little bit and just, you know, kill goblins or whatever and get XP and get loot and stuff. It's been super duper fun.
Jon de Nor: Great recommendations. I've wanted to look into Avowed for so long, but I've never gotten around to it.
Jenny: Yeah, yeah. Like I said, I remember hearing about it when it came out, but I didn't really think about too much cause I wasn't playing games like that then.
Jon de Nor: I've just seen like a video of a bit of gameplay and I'm like, this is the game for me. (laughter)
Jenny: Yeah, it is really, really fun. Super addicting.
Jon de Nor: Well, thank you so much for coming on, Jenny. It's been a pleasure. It's so cool looking at the Arcanist, and I...I don't direct Draw Steel that much nowadays, but I do play a bit, and I'm gonna push Cameron to run some of these monsters because they look fun to fight.
Jenny: Oh, for sure. Yeah.
Jon de Nor: Thank you so much for coming on.
Jenny: Yeah. Thank you for having me. It's always great to be back, and I can't wait to be back again soon.
Outro</h1>
Such a blast to have Jenny back on. And soon again! We can't get through everything she's up to in a single interview!
I'm not usually one that looks for a wizard, but the Arcanist looks like so much fun. Fun spells, the way to juggle between them and the oppertunities to expand your repertoire of available spells. Sign me up!
Just as I record this outro, Jenny messaged me to say that the Arcanist is confirmed to be launching November 3rd on BackerKit.
I want to thank Tabletop Nonsenseverse, and tootallferne for submitting questions for Jenny. We didn't have time to get to them, but Jenny was kind enough to jump into the comments on Patreon and answer them directly.
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</a>.
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 25th. That's going to be an interview with Jeff Stevens of Jeff Stevens Games. Publisher of two treasure focused supplements for Draw Steel, soon to be crowdfunding a timescape themed supplement, and a many-time creator of supplements for D&D 5e and Shadowdark.
See you next time. Snakkes.
Links</h1>
The Arcanist - A Wizard Class For Draw Steel — Coming Soon - BackerKit</a></li>
Octopath Traveler 0 - Wikipedia</a></li>
Octopath Traveler Zero Soundtrack</li>
Avowed - Wikipedia</a></li> </ul>

News: Draw Steel Book 3 is Out, Big Codex Updates, Hooked on Crafting Releases | September Roundup

Jon de Nor — Mon, 05 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Intro</h1>
Codex prep just became much easier, Draw Steel Book 3 is out, Crows funded, Hooked on Crafting has hooks for crafting, more dragons are coming to Draw Steel, and Rats Attack!
I'm Jon de Nor and this is Goblin Points.
Crows</h1>
Crows funded! Over eight thousand people thought it an interesting idea and chipped in. That means that Crows is happening. The planned release for the game is next year. So we might be playing the final version in a year, already.
Well, actually. According to James, he hopes to have the rules more or less done quite soon. The second playtest period has just closed and James is now busy reading through all the feedback that was submitted. Once he's done that and revised to rules, there'll be a new playtest. He's hoping to have a new playtest ready this month!
We'll see. Seems awfully quick. He also mentioned that the playtest period will be a lot shorter next time. Probably a couple of weeks. James also said that the next playtest version will probably have all the rules in place. There'll probably be some tweaks and fixes to apply, still. And there's going to be a few more dungeons and points of interest, but the gameplay rules will be more or less done.
One last thing that needs to be mentioned is that the crowdfunder also hit it's stretch goal! That means MCDM will spend real money on having a proper implementation of Crows in the Codex. The Crowdex! Currently there's only a community system for Crows available. It implements some of the rules already, but needs polish to be properly usable.
To refresh people. Crows is a dungeon crawling RPG by MCDM set in a post-apocalyptic fantasy setting. You play as humans, called crows, who scour old ruins for treasure while avoiding death as best you can.
Encounters</h1>
The fun thing about the Crack the Sun crowdfunder is that it keeps giving: September marked the drop of the third core rule book for Draw Steel, called Encounters. A 300 page book is all about tools to make the game easier to run for directors.
The book is divided into five main sections, and it starts off with Delves. A delve is a short adventure location that grants a few victories an typically takes a few hours to play through. The director can run them with little to no prep, and they're perfect to drop in front of the heroes if the director needs to distract them for a little while.
The book features 20 delves, two for each level of play. Each of the delves come with maps, monsters, NPCs and everything else needed to run them.
Next are Montages. 23 to be exact. A wide variety of different montages with challenges and outcomes of the tests listed. Also easy to drop into the middle of a session when the director need to spice up some narration. There's everything from consecrating an area, escaping a prison or summoning a devil.
The Negotiations chapter has 20 NPCs, each with individual character portraits and social stat blocks listing their motivations and pitfalls. There's also topics which make them instantly more interested in hearing the heroes' arguments, suggestions on how to uncover the NPCs motivations and pitfalls, and suggested outcomes of the negotiation. The NPCs can be as generic as bartender or guard captain, easy to reflavor for many situations, or more specific like the canary. Who's a canary. Like. A bird.
Heroic Tests is the name of the fourth chapter. A chapter filled with example tests. At least three, sometimes four, example tests with suggested outcomes for all three tiers for every skill in the core game. We're talking 170 example tests. For each skill there's one example of an easy, a medium and a hard test, while some of the skills get an extra example. So if you need an example of a test to use Magic, they have four to get you started.
And last are the Dastards. Named monsters to bring out when you want to spice things up a bit. A bunch of new monsters from existing monster bands, but with names and unique abilities. Like Eat Eat Eat, the gnoll, who has the ability Gobbler, which makes them swallow the creature they're currently grappling.
If you didn't get Encounters in the crowdfunder, you can get it for $34.99 in MCDM's shop.
Director's Screen and Dice</h1>
As a quick addendum to this. MCDM has also started shipping phsyical rewards to some backers of Crack the Sun. Whether you're one of the lucky depends on what you backed in the crowdfunder. If your pledge did not include the Encounters book, you might've received a shipping confirmation already.
But if you didn't back the crowdfunder, you're now able to pick up an official Director's Screen in the MCDM shop. You're also able to order sets of Power Roll dice, a set of two 20-sided d10s and one d3.
The director screen is $20 a piece, and the dice is $20 for a set. Both is available in the MCDM Shop.
Dragon Crowdfunder</h1>
MCDM is gearing up for another crowdfunder in December. This is not going to be a big one like Crack the Sun, but something smaller, but I think just as interesting from the sounds of it.
They're planning to run a crowdfunder for a book on dragons. While the dragons found in Monsters are manifestations, the dragons in this new book are going to be gemstone dragons. The gemstone dragons are much more like the dragons people know from D&D.
In addition to the gemstone dragons the book will also likely feature draconians, not the dragon knights which are specific to King Omund's Dragon Phalanx, and lore about dragons in Orden.
Details are still sparse, but it sounds like this will be PDF only. Colville mentioned the possibility of a softcover book, but nothing for certain.
Power Roll Magazine</h1>
That kinda leads me into the next top which is Power Roll Magazine. The previous idea was to fund articles about Draw Steel through a crowdfunder, but that's now scrapped in favor of the dragon book.
Instead the articles are now going to be released as part of Power Roll Magazine, a new Patreon exclusive quarterly magazine. Each issue will feature three articles with some player options, director features and a bit of lore.
Colville said this would be a place to release more subclasses, such as the "missing" ones from elementalist. They also want to experiment with a new take on treasures. Both of which are easier to do in something smaller and less demanding format such as a magazine.
We'll probably see the first release of Power Roll magazine in the first half of next year.
Hooked on Crafting</h1>
The Dice Society dropped Hooked on Crafting this month. If you need something to inspire you when your players suddenly ask you where they can find the required components to craft something — Hooked on Crafting is for you.
The book has adventure hooks for all the treasure featured in Heroes. Negotiations, combats, montage tests and where to find them. Small bits of lore to get you going. It's the seed you need to create a little outing for the heroes in your game.
You can pick up Hooked on Crafting for $15 on Itch.
Rocks Fall!</h1>
Triglav Games has already started dropping products from their Until the Last Villain Dies crowdfunder a few months ago. They released Rocks Fall!
Rocks Fall! is a supplement featuring 32 arenas that change and develop during combat. They are in a way dynamic terrains, but for the whole battle map. To put it in Triglav's words: dynamic terrain objects, as found in the core rules are props, while dynamic arenas are the whole theater.
You can pick up Rocks Fall! for €17 on Triglav Games' shop.
Bone Fairies</h1>
Shadowhand Gaming released their Monsters of the Month. This time it's the Bone Fairies. So called for their calcium based diet consisting of bones, nails and teeth.
The supplement contains seven new second echelon monsters, including a solo, two new dynamic terrain objects and an encounter.
You can pick up the Bone Fairies as a paying member of Shadowhand Gaming's Patreon.
Codex</h1>
Big updates to the Codex in September. First they show off the Body Banks. This is a way to build monsters using a web interface that look like the official thing. But it also supports automatically adding those monsters to the Codex. And if the text in the statblock is recognized by the Codex, it'll automatically automate that part of the statblock: stuff like damage, potencies, conditions and a bunch more.
Then they introduced the new map library. They've partnered with Tehox maps, making their maps available directly inside the Codex. They provide some free maps, but if you're a patron of Tehox you can connect the Codex to your Patreon account and have all the maps from Tehox available.
While the maps are currently just flat images, the community can share enhancements they make to the maps. After adding elevation, walls, and terrain to the maps, people can share those enhancements with the rest of the community. When downloading a map, you can select one of the contributed enhancements to have them automatically applied to the map.
The Codex also handles elevation better now. With the improved jump implementation it's easier to understand how far and where you can jump. It also takes elevation and ledges into account when calculating line of sight, making it possible to stay out of sight on top higher ground.
They've also started implementing adventures in the Codex. They've made Dark Heart of the Wood and Red Road available to purchase for $9.99 directly inside the Codex. And unlike the other PDFs made available in the Codex, you can also download the adventures from the Codex to you machine.
The adventures also come implemented in the Codex, with map notes, encounters ready to go and, in some cases, extra tools for running combat.
Eight Iconic Items</h1>
Psiocratic Press has released a neat little supplement nominatively called Eight Iconic items.
Within you'll find, not surprisingly, eight treasure items: two leveled treasures and six trinkets across three echelons of play. These are staples of fantasy role playing games, like Broom of Flying and Vorpal Sword.
You can pick up Eight Iconic Items for $5 on Itch.
Rats Attack!</h1>
Brainy Rat Games has released Rats Attack! They crowdfunded the rodent themed supplement back in May and it's now out, in all it's ratty glory.
They call it a monster and adventure pack. It includes 15 unique rat monsters, with tokens for all of them, and 2 delves, short adventures worth a few victories for the heroes. Rats Attack! also includes a few treasures and titles.
If you didn't get in on the crowdfunder, you can pick up Rats Attack! for $15 on Itch.
The Knight</h1>
Jacons has released the Knight, a chivalric class insipred by romance and samurai films of the 1950's.
The knight includes three subclasses:

Arcanist, using elemental offensive magic,</li>
Bannerlord, flying a battle banner and leading the charge,</li>
and Knave, who uses deceoption and manipulation on the battle field.</li> </ul>
You can pick up the Knight on Itch for $15.
Community Highlights</h1>
And now some rapid fire updates from the community:

Paul Ligorski announced the Codex implementation of The Cave of Amber Tears.</li>
Jeff Stevens Games announced the crowdfunder Threats of the Timescape, a timescape themed supplement.</li>
Jenny [REDACTED] has been publishing videos showing how to implement monsters and more in the Codex.</li>
Minhajul Hoq published a video update showing progress on the Draw Steel video game they're workin on.</li>
Rise Heroes Rise! have been streaming and publishing videos from their Crows actual play.</li>
Tabletop Nonsenseverse published the first version of their rules for Astrovoyage, a powered by Draw Steel space TTRPG.</li>
Triglav Games has announced the crowdfunder Sagas of Steel, the Collective Class & more.</li> </ul>
Blast From the Past</h1>
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.
As we zoom back to September 2024, we're in the final nine months of Draw Steel releasing, and Colville announces a big change: they're dropping caster kits. Up until then, casters had access to kits, much the martials, but while the martial kits capture the fantasies of fighting styles, the caster kits didn't. And instead of forcing the issue, they decided to roll the kit bonuses into class features instead.
T'was also the month of the War Dogs. In a huge post on Patreon, the designers introduced the War Dogs, the new original monster band for Draw Steel. They explain some of the lore behind them, what inspired their design and what role they fill in the game: being the enemy the players know it's always morally good to kill.
Outro</h1>
Big month, September. Between Crows funding, Encounters releasing, and the big updates to Codex. Maybe especially for The Dice Society: he wrote two of the delves in Encounters and he finally finished Hooked on Crafting, the latter which lists among it's contributors, your's truly.
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</a>.
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 an interview with Jenny [REDACTED]. She's as prolific as always, now even working on her own TTRPG, because of course she is.
See you next time. Snakkes.
Links</h1>
From MCDM</h2>

Crows: Fortune or Death</a> on BackerKit</li>
Draw Steel: Crack the Sun Project Update: Encounters, Codex Adventures, and Shipping Timelines</a> on BackerKit</li>
Draw Steel Encounters - Hardcover & PDF</a> on MCDM Shop</li>
Incoming! Draw Steel: Encounters is Here | MCDM Productions</a> on Patreon</li>
New spells for Crows</a> on Patreon</li>
Crows takes a Village</a> on YouTube</li> </ul>
Hooked on Crafting</h2>

Hooked on Crafting — Powered by Draw Steel by The Dice Society</a> by The Dice Society</li> </ul>
Rocks Fall!</h2>

Rocks Fall! Dynamic Arenas for Draw Steel (PDF)</a> by Triglav Games</li> </ul>
Bone Fairies</h2>

Monsters of the Month: Bone Fairies | Shadowhand Gaming</a> by Shadowhand Gaming</li> </ul>
Codex</h2>

Monster Manager - Draw Steel Codex</a> by DMHub</li>
The Body Banks!</a> by DMHub</li>
Adventures! Maps! New Content in the Codex Available Now!</a> by DMHub</li>
Jumping!</a> by DMHub</li>
Maps!!!</a> by DMHub</li> </ul>
Eight Iconic Items</h2>

Eight Iconic Items for Draw Steel by Psiocratic Press</a> by Psiocratic Press</li> </ul>
Rats Attack!</h2>

Rats Attack! by Brainy Rat Games</a> by Brainy Rat Games</li> </ul>
The Knight</h2>

The Knight by Jacons</a> by Jacons</li> </ul>
Community Highlights</h2>

Codex Implementation!</a> by Heart of Arcana</li>
Threats of the Timescape - Scourges of Space for Draw Steel</a> by Jeff Stevens Games</li>
How To Implement A Homebrew Monster In The Codex</a> by Jenny [REDACTED]</li>
Minhajul Hoq</a> by Minhajul Hoq</li>
An Abandoned Windmill and Necromancers! | CROWS Actual Play</a> by Rise Heroes Rise!</li>
Astrovoyage - A Spacefaring Pulp Adventure RPG</a> by Tabletop Nonsenseverse</li>
Get Ready for Sagas of Steel, the Collective Class, & more for Draw Steel</a> by Triglav Games</li> </ul>
Draw Steel Homebrew</h2>

The Felldane: A Ferocious Catfolk Ancestry for Draw Steel | Sam McGurran</a> by Sam McGurran</li> </ul>
Draw Steel Media</h2>

PaulW41</a> by</li>
The Joy of Miniatures Painting 21 - Wyvern</a> by Bobholder Ross</li>
CROWS Actual Play First Timers Explore the BLOOD LIBRARY!</a> by d20play</li>
How Fast is it to Make a Draw Steel Character in Foundry VTT</a> by Eran Arbel</li>
CROWS RPG | Once Upon A Game</a> by EricVulgaris</li>
CROWS RPG | Once Upon A Game</a> by EricVulgaris</li>
Divine Retribution: A Study in Effluence Campaign Diary 10</a> by Joe Auerbach</li>
Letters from Sinum 1: A Study in Effluence Campaign Diary 11</a> by Joe Auerbach</li>
Perty Nerdy</a> by Perty Nerdy</li>
Perty Nerdy</a> by Perty Nerdy</li>
Perty Nerdy</a> by Perty Nerdy</li>
Draw Steel: The Plague of Behdmeten session 24</a> by RamblesMC</li>
Take Your First Steps into the Psionic City | Sam McGurran</a> by Sam McGurran & Tabletop Nonsenseverse</li>
Crows: Fortune or Death - Pilgrimage of the Damned pt. 2 | Tales From the Backlog</a> by Shadows of Archonia</li>
Crows: Fortune or Death - Pilgrimage of the Damned pt. 1 | Tales From the Backlog - YouTube</a> by Shadows of Arconia</li>
Free Preview 3: Witch of the Woods | The Mythical Press</a> by The Mythical Press</li>
The Crows' Gambit | Immersive Actual Play | Crows RPG</a> by Zonalar</li> </ul>
Draw Steel Tools</h2>

Steel Bridge by Extrada</a> by Extrada</li>
Condensed Tac Panel for Draw Steel Codex</a> by thc1967</li>
Hero Audit for the Draw Steel Codex</a> by thc1967</li>
thc1967</a> by thc1967</li>
TheGenieOfTheCode/draw-steel-battle-log: Foundry VTT module for Draw Steel that organizes the chat log by turn, round and fight, and makes the chat cards match the dark theme.</a> by TheGenieOfTheCode</li>
TheGenieOfTheCode/draw-steel-death-tracker: Handles defeat in Draw Steel combat for Foundry VTT.</a> by TheGenieOfTheCode</li>
Draw Steel Hero Importer</a> by Zach Hall</li> </ul>

Aestus & Ryan: Enshrined: Red of Tooth and Claw | Interview

Jon de Nor — Fri, 25 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Intro</h1>
I'm joined by Aestus and Ryan (a.ka. 4D Pixels) of Headwind Studios. They're making an adventure, potion crafting rules and a gazetteer for the swamp region, and the monsters that live there, of the Enshrined setting.
I'm Jon de Nor and this is Goblin Points.
Interview</h1>
Jon de Nor: Welcome to Goblin Points, Aestus and Ryan!
Aestus: Jon, thanks for having us.
Ryan: Awesome to be here.
Jon de Nor: So! Aestus, you've been on before, but still, it's always someone's first episode. So give us a short introduction of who you are and how you ended up in the Draw Steel community.
Aestus: Of course, yeah, awesome. Well, yeah. Thanks again. I'm delighted to be back to a Goblin Points interview. This interview series, this podcast, to me, is like an institution in the community. So thank you so much for running it, and thanks for having me back on. Introduction! Right, so I am Aestus, I go by Aestus online. I am a freelance designer who works primarily in Draw Steel. I'm also known for my YouTube channel, Aestus_RPG. I was pretty popular back when Baldur's Gate 3 was new. I covered Baldur's Gate 3 for years. The Pillars of Eternity series, people will know me from that. And now, of course, I make Draw Steel videos.
And, oh, you guys...a Draw Steel audience might know me from being one half of the Mythic Treasures product. Mythic Treasures was a successful Draw Steel crowdfunder treasure book. I think we were either third- or fourth-highest grossing Draw Steel crowdfunder. So thank you. I'm sure the interview you did with us was a big part of that, Jon, so thanks to your audience for supporting us. You guys will be happy to know we are wrapping design...we're on track to wrap design this month, and it goes to layout next month. So, yeah, that's Aestus.
Jon de Nor: Excellent. And Ryan?
Ryan: Hi, I'm Ryan, otherwise known online as 4D Pixels. I am an avid consumer and designer of games, whether...whatever form, shape, or type, they come in. And currently I have been working for the last few years as the lead designer for Enshrined. I'm very excited to get to talk a little bit more about the project that we've been working very passionately on for the last few years. So thanks for having us.
Jon de Nor: Yeah. I have to ask, Ryan, because you're mainly a 5e guy, as I understand it...how did you become aware of Draw Steel?
Ryan: Yeah, no, absolutely. Well, that's going to be through the amazing, praise and introduction from Aestus over here. He has some ties going back early with our team and very early development. And when I started on the project, actually a little later than him, it had been some time since he had worked with us. We moved on with a 5e project, and after solidifying our initial funding for it and our successful Kickstarter, we kind of took a step back to, you know, count our ducks and figure out how we wanted to go forward with development.
And that's when, we, you know, were able to talk to Aestus again for the first time and...you know, wanted to see if he wanted to help us out, as he had been some of the original brains behind the world board that we had originally kind of set down. I wanted to see if, you know, he was kind of back in country from being gone for a long time. And so I wanted to see if he wanted to help us with some of his original, like, ideas that he had laid forth that kind of became the foundation of Enshrined. And so, you know, we kind of got the ball rolling, talking about the 5e lore.
And then he kind of was like, "Hey, there's this other system that I've been really interested in," from his perspective. And like, you know, kind of we went back and talking forth about it, and he kind of started singing the praises of Draw Steel and what it brings to the table that, you know, 5e lacks in some ways. And I think that a lot of those bits kind of resonated with me and our, you know, project lead already. Things that we find that, you know, 5e could, you know, put a little more focus on in some ways. I know there's some rules in Draw Steel that, sometimes, our...the other people in the studio almost like, take for granted that 5e doesn't have, especially when it comes to combat.
And so it kind of just kind of felt natural to segue once we understood the Draw Steel system a little bit more like, "Hey, this brings a lot of stuff that, you know, 5e could spend a little more focus on." And we figured if we, you know, spent a little more time learning Draw Steel and getting into the system, it might actually help us design better encounters for 5e as well. So that kind of became part of our process is you know, some things 5e does in ways that we like and some things Draw Steel does. And let's see if we can kind of marry them in a way that makes both of them better.
Jon de Nor: You've already led directly into kind of what we're here for, in Enshrined: Red of Tooth and Claw. What's the elevator pitch for this?
Aestus: I'm so excited to talk about this product. It's extremely cool. So, yes, Red of Tooth and Claw is the book that we're going to be talking about in this interview. It will be going to crowdfunding soon. But it is part of the Enshrined setting/world. Enshrined is a primarily D&D 5e setting project done by Headwind Studios. Ryan is our lead designer on that project. It is a mythic horror setting book. So how would you describe mythic horror? Maybe you can take that part.
Ryan: Yeah, absolutely. Mythic horror, for me, lies somewhere adjacent to traditional horror and like eldritch and cosmic things. The touchstone that I always use, is The Witcher 3, sort of. Or even just the Witcher world in general, but specifically, I think the games stride more into mythic. And for me, that's really, while there's a lot of folklore inspiration there, a lot of the horror comes down to like somewhere between myths and otherworldly eldritch things. And it really comes back to the grounding of how the actual creatures of the world, the horrible monstrosities, how you interact with them.
In eldritch and cosmic horror things, like true Eldritch, you tend to stray towards things that almost are completely incomprehensible. And as such, like if you dig deeper into it, there isn't necessarily logic or reason behind it. Whereas, you know, in folk horror, it's, you know, in a similar vein, like a lot of it's just like, "And then because the witch cursed him, he is now a werewolf!" And that's scary. And so there's, you know, like one step of reason behind it, but it's, you know, scary bedtime stories on the folk horror side of things.
Mythic horror for me is somewhere with like, another step of reason behind it. It's the, "There's a horrible monster. These are the tracks it leaves behind. These are the potions that could help you against it. You know, these are the stories that people have told about it. And now I'm going to, you know, try and learn about my foe." And then you go to fight it. And it is some horrible, borderline eldritch abomination brought together by curses, magic, or the other. But then there's a layer of depth because it's not just some entity, it's an entity made of pieces. It has claws, it has tendons, it has weaknesses, it has things that it might be immune to.
And, you know, that kind of depth there is where I put mythic horror. It's not just the things that go bump in the night, it's the things that go bump in the night and do specific things and have specific tie-ins to the world, and people know about them. They can write them down. And that's where I tried to push Enshrined, partly from a design perspective, is that kind of depth of the world that, you know...we do have a lot of eldritch in our world. We do push towards eldritch as much as possible. But we don't want the whole world to be eldritch. If the whole world is eldritch, nothing is eldritch, because there's nothing alien about a world where everything is alien. So it starts at that base of like this mythic horror of, you know, grounded, sensible things. And then the deeper you go, the further it gets from reality, the more into the other you stride.
Aestus: Yeah, that's a great way to put it. I was going to say something like, if you're familiar with Lovecraftian horror, it's very similar to that feeling. But Lovecraft wrote in a time where scientific advancement and scientific discovery was a big theme of his writing. So it's a very early modern kind of horror, Lovecraftian horror. We take a lot of the Lovecraftian eldritchness, and we locate it in a more medieval and even earlier vibe, and sort of spirit and setting to it.
So, yeah, Red of Tooth and Claw is a mythic horror part of Enshrined, but in particular, this book focuses on a kind of jungle swamp biome. A big part of what we're offering here is a kind of ecosystem that you can plug into your Draw Steel world. We love designing environments, and we love environmental storytelling, and we're going to be doing more like this, but this one is like a jungle swamp setting.
And, like Ryan said, it is actually...a lot of it goes back to years and years ago, at the early parts of this project, writing that I submitted to the company, drawing from my experience of actually growing up in a tropical jungle country. And the kind of...yeah, I was trying to find eldritch fears from my childhood and put those into the stories. And now we built a D&D setting and a Draw Steel setting around it. And...yeah. That's not an elevator pitch! You said to give you an elevator pitch — (laughter)
Jon de Nor: (laughter)
Ryan: (laughter) Well, you know. I think we might've gotten a little excited.
Aestus: We're really excited about this.
Jon de Nor: I appreciate the deeper explanation, though, to kind of place it. Because I don't think it's a very well known, like, genre, if that's the right word. So even though it's a long elevator ride, I appreciated it. So this started life as a 5e setting, and it sounds like there's been previous products set in the setting for 5e, but that this new one is the first that does both, basically? Both Draw Steel and 5e.
Ryan: Yeah, that was generally...we started as a 5e project, and we had a successful Kickstarter about a year ago, now. That was our general sort of goal, originally when we set out, was to make this a full world compendium, essentially, for the world of Enshrined. And so, you know, that's everything down from the pantheon to the, you know, the world map, the adventures that are set in it, the ecosystems that live in the world, the peoples, the custom races.
And a core part of that, originally, was the biomes and the ecosystems. We wanted to build up our world to feel like these creatures live here. They exist. They eat each other, they get eaten. That became kind of a core part of our design philosophy was, you know, if we can build, you know, the environment up from the ground as something that's very, like has a lot of depth and believability, then the people kind of don't just feel like they're just placed on top of it. They become part of the world. And that, you know, through that, we can tell better stories. We can, you know, make something that you can kind of truly sink your teeth into.
And especially because, while we enjoy 5e as a system, it's not made for an eldritch horror game. It's definitely, there are other systems for that. But we thought that we could kind of bridge that gap in a way where if you believe, you know, if everything around you is believable and grounded in this, like, you know, from the ground up setting, then the horror kind of comes a little more naturally. If you're able to suspend disbelief, if the logic behind the horrible monstrosities doesn't set you up as a Saturday morning cartoon villain because the whole world believes it, then it's a little easier to kind of lose yourself into it.
That was kind of our core design there. And so when we took this kind of ground-up approach from the ecosystems, and we wanted to try and build up our world, we actually just started early on and decided that when we were set out to, start working on our crowdfunding goal of making this whole world ecosystem,instead of starting by just broad-scoping everything, we decided to just take a step back and start designing ecosystem by ecosystem and build them up as cohesive, essentially parts. And so we started with this sort of jungle-like swamp and said, okay, you know, like, what's the bottom of the food chain here? What's the environment look like? Let's build it up into this kind of whole system in and of itself.
And we decided that, hey, you know, this might work as its own kind of standalone, essentially. Like, if you could just take this and put it into your own world if you wanted to, while we're still working on the rest of Enshrined. So we decided, for our backers, let's just give them this section, this module of Enshrined, and then that kind of turned into, well, you know, maybe more people are interested. And we started getting kind of more and more people that would just kind of come by and just kind of be interested in what we were doing.
And so like, hey, what if we kind of take this and we take the Draw Steel expertise that Aestus kind of brought in early in our design experience, in our design process, and kind of package this as a, you know, a section of Enshrined that you can play at your table now for 5e and Draw Steel? Because like, you know, Aestus brought a lot of energy and excitement for Draw Steel and quickly infected us with it as well. And so, we thought that, hey, like, we don't see anything like this in the Draw Steel world. We have this sort of this module, this kind of chunk of Enshrined for this horrifying swamp that is, you know, kind of ready to go from a 5e perspective. Why don't we kind of bring it into the Draw Steel world? We think it's something that we don't see a lot of over there as far as this kind of setting in Draw Steel. And so we're hoping that, you know, other people can kind of see what we saw there and get excited about it, because we are.
Aestus: The original 5e Enshrined project was a crowdfunder, like Ryan said, about a year ago, very successful, that funded the entire setting book. But we have progressed by breaking that into smaller sections, which we are crowdfunding individually for those smaller sections. And the people that funded the overall book get those smaller sections already. They've already bought it as far as we're concerned. But we wanted each of the smaller projects to also get their own crowdfunding.
So the crowdfunder for Red of Tooth and Claw is one of the smaller ones. But I say small, it's actually going to include quite a bit. It has an adventure in there. It has lots of new monsters that you can fight, but also just like environmental...what we call "minor creatures" that give the ecosystem color and a logic to it. There is rules for crafting. There is a new subclass for the Fury that's going to be in here. And there's going to be some new titles that are more eldritch kind of titles that have to do with your psychology and mimicking that kind of Lovecraftian madness, psychological element. So yeah, there's going to be a lot in there.
Jon de Nor: Designing a product for both 5e and Draw Steel...I can see a lot of overlap. These are fantastic heroic fantasy games, but there are also very clear differences, I think. This having started, like its original DNA is from 5e, and now bringing in Draw Steel into that mix...is there something that has kind of rubbed off from Draw Steel into the design of the whole?
Aestus: Yeah, I think so. One of one of the really cool ways that we went about this project was particularly...we have a real focus on encounter design. This is something that we feel like, in 5e, can be pushed further. And then in Draw Steel, I guess we saw a palette with all of these tactical systems in Draw Steel, a color palette to construct really fun and interesting encounters. So we put a lot of effort into that. And for many of the encounters that will be in the adventure of this product, they actually began as a Draw Steel encounters.
So, me as the primary Draw Steel designer, I would take the notes for the adventure writer, turn those notes into a Draw Steel encounter, including a map, which I would draft myself, designed around the principles of Draw Steel, things like forced movement and height and flanking and stuff like that. Then, I would run that for Ryan, RD, the other design leadm in Draw Steel, we would test it in Draw Steel. And then they would convert that into 5e, and then I would take the 5e encounter that they made, and I would use that to tweak my Draw Steel.
So there was a lot of back and forth. I would say there's definitely some Draw Steel DNA, especially in the encounter design of the D&D product. And there's also, of course, a lot of D&D DNA in the Draw Steel conversion that you're going to be getting.
Jon de Nor: How's that been on your side, Ryan? Incorporating the influence from Draw Steel.
Ryan: Yeah, no, I think from the 5e side of things, it's in some ways been very helpful, because...it's an observation that I've always had while playing 5e for the past ten or so years, I've always kind of felt like some of the encounters and the maps...well, sometimes when running the game, I just say, "Oh, yeah, no, this looks like a 5e encounter." But then taking a step back to actually design them on myself, I always found that sometimes the maps and the way encounters are designed could have more depth to them.
And, a lot of our studio at Enshrined here have a background in video game development. It's where a lot of us met, actually, was, you know, a while ago, going to college for video game development, and a lot of us spent some time in the industry in our own right before eventually kind of coming back on this for the original inspiration for this Enshrined project. And taking our knowledge from video game development — and I definitely have a passion for level design — taking that into 5e, there's some things that just, as far as like...
You know, a big thing that Aestus mentioned is like the designing maps in the encounters around like pushing people, shoving people, breaking things down, elevation, flanking...things like this that sometimes you use in 5e, but it's not necessarily a given at any point. If you see that happen in 5e, it's more the exception. And that's like more player-driven more than anything. And so that was one thing where it's like, when we sat down to kind of...we really wanted these encounters to stand out. We wanted to bring our sort of passion for game design into this. And so that was something where, you know, at certain points, we almost felt like, you know, 5e was missing something or like there was a piece of the puzzle missing.
And so then when Aestus came in and introduced us to Draw Steel and this kind of more tactical approach to combat, to some degree, it kind of got the juices flowing on the 5e side of like, okay, let's...you know, the first two or so maps, when we set out to make about, you know, five or six encounters for this module. And the first two maps, Aestus started for us, and then we kind of saw what he had there and ran with it on our own side. And so we wanted all these maps and all these encounters set up to be unique, have their own interesting goals and objectives, and really take advantage of verticality and different movement paths for the players and enemies, and just the sort of dynamicism that 5e often — even the best-designed encounter might, you know, slow down into people standing around the monsters and slashing at them. Whereas Draw Steel just natively has a little bit more push and shove and movement around the field.
And so, that was something where I was just like, what can we do to not only make our maps sort of incentivize moving around and taking the high ground and pushing monsters off of ledge and into objects...but also just like, what can we do to make the players want to interact with the creatures in a different way? Something that Draw Steel sort of just supports a little more natively. Whereas on 5e, it might be up to the players' initiative to sort of instigate some of that. And that was sort of like our main thing, was the encounters of Draw Steel and how we can kind of bring that into 5e.
Jon de Nor: You mentioned before we started recording, a monster specifically that was originally designed for 5e, but that you, Aestus, had a bit of a struggle to convert it to Draw Steel. The umbral stalker, was that it? Prowler?
Aestus: Umbral prowler, close. Yeah, the umbral prowler, one of...I mean, there's so many cool monsters that are going to be in this book, but I think working on the umbral prowler was one of my favorite experiences. This is a monster that Ryan drafted in 5e. It's designed around a kind of hit-and-run encounter, where the umbral prowler attacks and it weakens its preys, and it runs away and kind of stalks them for the rest of the day. And if there's a moment where they're ever weak and it can get in there and take one of them to eat, it's going to do that.
I found, in some of my early drafts, our testers and reviewers on the Draw Steel side of things were feeling like this kind of design didn't fit into Draw Steel very much, because in Draw Steel, there's a very thick line between combat and non-combat, right? This one, it needs a thinner line, right? Because, you know, you initiate combat with this monster when you can maybe sense it tracking you, and then it attacks, but just for a round, and it's going to run away. And then it's going to go back to tracking you again. And it might enter in a completely separate encounter, right? You could be battling something else later. And if it sees that you're weak, it's going to try to get in there.
So yeah. But working on the umbral prowler was extremely cool. And actually it was a great moment of me seeing the virtues of the whole team at Headwind Studios and the Enshrined project. Because I actually ran a playtest for Ryan of the umbral prowler in Draw Steel, and after that playtest, he gave me probably the best design note I've ever gotten in my career as a designer, where he said, "This was fun, but right now the monster is feeling like a final boss, and it should just be trying to steal a snack."
Jon de Nor: (laughter)
Aestus: And I like wrote in bold in my notebook, like, steal a snack, like double underlined. I knew instantly how I had to change it. But yeah, I'm really happy with the product that we ended up with on the umbral prowler. There's still some things, maybe in clarity that I'd like to edit on it, but the flow of the combat is really, really cool. And I think it ended up translating into Draw Steel really well.
Jon de Nor: It sometimes feels like you could just take the 5e monster and kind of make the...add some pushes and slides to the abilities, and there you go. You got a Draw Steel monster. (laughter) But I think it speaks well about the design of the monster if it's actually kind of a challenge to migrate it over to Draw Steel. To me, that sounds like it's a fun monster in 5e, and maybe an even funner monster in Draw Steel. (laughter)
Aestus: Well, everything's more fun and Draw Steel, I gotta say. (laughter)
Jon de Nor: Of course, of course.
Aestus: Yeah. I mean, I think people will see, if you support the project and play it, a lot of love and effort went into designing this one. Yeah.
Jon de Nor: You did mention previously that you also have a focus on crafting. And the preview stuff you sent me also includes a bit about the what you're trying to capture with crafting. Yeah.
Aestus: So the crafting system was designed for 5e originally, and converting it into Draw Steel was something we weren't even originally sure we wanted to do, because Draw Steel already has a crafting system. You know, why make something that competes with it? But on the Draw Steel side of things, what we kind of landed on was, crafting in Draw Steel is very lock-and-key design, right? Where, if I want this potion, I kill this monster, harvest it, you know, that kind of thing, or I do this kind of quest.
But what I'm trying to say is, one ingredient outputs to one craftable thing, right? So if you get X ingredient, you can always make Y craft with that. And there's no branching or diverging from there. And we felt that actually kind of...to me, I'll just say it for myself. I think it's kind of a less heroic way to do crafting. Like if you build a Draw Steel character around crafting, I kind of felt like you should be a crafting genius, you know? You want that Tony Stark feeling where what you can do, no one else in the world can do. Because you're not just any normal alchemist, you're a heroic alchemist, right?
And to get that feeling, we wanted a system that incentivized a feel like, it portrayed a feeling of improvisation, creativity, innovation. And those were really the key words that we had going in. And yeah, Ryan was the one who really pushed for that. So, Ryan, can you describe the system more and the way it functions?
Ryan: And I think you kind of, you know, hit on a lot of the stuff that me and RD were talking about during the original concepting phase for our crafting system. Because it went through many different iterations of us trying to kind of hone in on exactly the feeling we were trying to capture, and we're pretty happy with where we got it, and looking forward to kind of incorporating it more into our own games, even outside of the world of Enshrined, because we designed it to kind of, you know, fit in into any world, if you want it to. So even in my own home games, I'm planning on using it in the future, because we've always had players, or DMs that kind of want to allow you to craft things, but the rules in Draw Steel and 5e both felt limiting in their own ways.
L3ong before we even began designing for Draw Steel, we had set out with a goal in mind to not make a crafting system where one ingredient makes one item. Where, you know, you don't get the basilisk tooth and turn it into the basilisk-tooth sword. Like that's just not what we wanted to do. We find that's, you know, internally, we always referred to it as just a different type of currency. Like it's not really crafting something interesting, it's just, you know, a different name for gold pieces that are required for the sword. And the gold piece happens to come from about the basilisk.
And so we set out, you know, before even getting into Draw Steel, to design something that was as far from that as we could reasonably go. And so then when we sat down to do the Draw Steel version of it, it was kind of like, "Huh, how are we gonna fit this together in here, how are we going to do that a little bit?" While we had some misgivings...not misgivings, but concerns at first about like, will it, you know, "Can we get this to fit into Draw Steel? Like, will it be worth it?" We decided to kind of push forward because, from the ground up, it kind of ties into our philosophy of the world of Enshrined a lot, which is, you know, this sort of believable ecosystem. And so a lot of our plants of the world, and our creatures, they're designed from the ground up with the anticipation of you trying to scavenge from them, trying to harvest from them. Everything in the world, fundamentally, is made out of components that you can use in the crafting system to make fundamentally anything you want.
And it's a very open-ended crafting system. You can go to some of our, you know, our trees and our plants and our animals, take parts of them and use them in ways — some of them more magical than others, some of them more abstracted and cursed than others, as...you know, if we built — even the tendons of our umbral prowler, for example, who has a mighty jump and such strong legs — if we built that with just a little bit of unsettlingness in even the root parts of them that you might want to use to craft your own stalking longbow, that kind of builds out the horror of the world that we were trying to create.
And so that was kind our driving force, is that this crafting system is kind of a core part of our world, as far as like...essentially more of a focus on survival and doing what you can, because the world is trying to eat you. And what are you going to do? You're going to survive it. You are going to take the pieces it gives you and turn it against the world. So we kind of broke it down into a material class system where different components in the crafting — like, so you get a component from killing a creature or harvesting a plant, and then that component can like...let's say, if you kill an umbral prowler, which is a very powerful and forceful beast in its own right, and it also has, you know, venom glands that it uses to weaken you. And so you might get some aspects of this creature that contain magical or even just, like, powerful mundane properties that could be used to fortify your body, much in the same way that it is a very strong creature. Or you might get some that might help you do some elemental damage, like, you know, acid, for example.
But you can take those and incorporate them to anything you want. You could put them in your armory, put them in your weapons. You can make potions out of them, because our crafting system is, you know, not limited to just alchemy for crafting items or crafting armor or crafting trinkets. It's like it's all, these components are used for crafting everything. And so whether you want to be an alchemist, whether you want to be just a local village medicine person, whether you want to be a heroic adventurer who's forged his entire armor set and armament from the slain foes of his enemies, you can.
But also just kind of tying it back to the world as well, it's like these are the same — like, if you go to a medicine person in the village, they're using roots from the local area. They're using the kidneys of lesser feathered pygmy wyverns to sort of, you know, craft their healing potions. And that's kind of like where we kind of built that up. And so we wanted to try and modify it to fit into the existing Draw Steel system in a way that helps the world still feel complete and like, kind of grounded in that way while still respecting the sort of heritage of the Draw Steel system that we, you know, weren't as like sure it would work originally. And I think Aestus did a really good job on that front of kind of making it, blending it with Draw Steel in a good way.
Aestus: Yeah, just a little note — the Draw Steel conversion is definitely more focused on alchemy rather than item crafting than the 5e rules are. I am working, actually, on more treasure crafting than consumables crafting, plugging that in. But for reasons, just because of the differences of the two system, it felt like the alchemy side of things needed more of an emphasis in the Draw Steel. So I just wanted to make sure everyone was aware of that.
But yeah, I think, if you're used to very crunchy rules in Draw Steel, this is more of a lighter touch. In a lot of ways, it's like help and guidelines for homebrewing a lot of your own stuff. And we felt like that was necessary to get that innovation and improvisation feel. But yeah, I'm really glad Ryan also emphasized this feeling of mastering your environment to us. That was really important. And I think there is a tendency for people to see survival as not being particularly heroic, but mastering your environment is heroic. That high level of competency where you're able to take and use the things around you, that is heroic to us, yeah.
Jon de Nor: What I wanted to ask you about is the art that's in the preview. That was in the thing that you sent me. Oh, it's named the vertical slice, actually, in the file name. Because especially some of the monsters in here look really good. Where's the inspiration for these creatures coming from, and also, who drew them? (laughter)
Aestus: Ryan, take it away on this.
Ryan: Yeah, I'd love to talk about that. The inspiration for sort of the feeling of them in many ways comes from the absolutely psychotic brains of our studio. And that is, you know, so our studio lead RD, he's sort of in charge of narrative design and direction. And at the end of the day, he makes the final decision on the art. And so, me and him will sit down when we first draft out a creature and kind of go over how it fits into the world, what it does, how you how you fight it, or how you don't fight it, and et cetera, and kind of build that up.
And then once we have an understanding of what this creature is — where it fits into the world and the ecosystem, where on the predator food chain it lies, essentially — and we're kind of comfortable from a narrative direction that where this creature fits into our book, we then go to our amazing artist Sabba, essentially give him an outline for the terrible things that we've come up with and say, "Hey, like, what do you think of this? Do you have any questions? Do you have any ideas?" And sometimes he'll ask us what our intent is for some of the stuff, but often he just kind of looks at our writeup and then comes back with like a handful of truly terrifying designs from the back of the psyche.
And we love him so much for it, because we can just kind of give him a vague outline of something we want, and he'll say, "I have an idea." Which often is concerning, because we don't feel we've given him enough information. And then he comes back with something that is like really awesome. And he's a really incredible artist that we've, you know, gotten to work with. All of us at the studio have a background in art to some degree. You'll notice from the file name, the vertical slice is because at one point we were all game design artists. And so that is, you know, kind of a core bit for us.
And so as a very artist-heavy studio — from one direction or another, I'm definitely more of a technical artist than some of the other people here, whereas, you know, Sabba is an amazing 2D artist, and the person who very meticulously named the files is more of a 2D designer — from the ground up, we really wanted the art to be a core part of our game. And that's, you know, something always strikes joy at our tables, when we're running the game, or playing the game, and you get to show cool art with the group. Whether it's the new monster that you get to fight and there's an awesome picture of it, whether it's the new environment that you step into and the DM has something, like a picture to immerse yourself in it. That's something that, whenever there's those little nuggets, and whenever I'm running a game, I'm always excited to share those bits with my players.
And so we really wanted to kind of make art a very important part of this book. Yeah, all this, all the creatures kind of go through this process of, you know, narrative design into 2D concept. We kind of document the whole 2D design and art process in our Discord server. So the community gets to see live, when we're coming up with the design for a new creature, and the various steps it goes through. And then before arriving on the final product, and that's kind of one of our things. Every creature in the book is going to have an illustration. And we try to the best of our ability to make them as impactful as possible. And that's kind of just one of our hard things. It's like, yeah, we don't...if there's going to be a creature, it's going to have something to represent it. And it also really builds out the world.
So there's, you know, probably...let's see, 20=some=odd illustrated...no, probably more than that, somewhere between — I don't remember the full count, but, off the top of my head, but somewhere between 20 and 30 illustrated creatures in Red of Tooth and Claw, to varying degrees. Some of those are what we call minor creatures, which just kind of build out the world a bit more. They have crafting elements to them. They are the prey that other things feed on. They are the things that might, you know, harm a party when they're not looking, but they're not inherently combat creatures. And then there's the other half of them is, you know, things like the prowler, things like the genius loci, which is one of our biggest and scariest. And yeah, all of those are, you know, we approach the art with about as much attention and love and care as we can, because it is very core to our studio philosophy.
Aestus: And I mean, to be frank, this — both the volume and the caliber of art that are in this project is something that you cannot get in a typical Draw Steel product without taking a loss, right? Draw Steel products just don't fund with enough money at this point. We're just too early on, our audience is too small. So it's a really — you can see it as one of the virtues of doing a product like this, which is both 5e and Draw Steel is, we can use...you know, if we make a monster in 5e and convert it to Draw Steel, we still have those art assets with the 5e budgets.
So it's really — and I mean, from a less like, practical money side of thing, I just got to say, it's one of the coolest parts about doing a project like this. I wrote a short story, you know, when I was an undergraduate, almost ten years ago now, that became the building block of this world. And to see an artist of Sabba's caliber, to see those words that I wrote ten years ago filter through his imagination, and you get the ashleaf tree, which is this — it's one of the core parts of our ecosystem, it's this tyrant canopy tree that blocks the light because it absorbs all that light and it turns into this bioluminescent sap. And there's so many more things that are like that. Yeah, Sabba is really cool. We should link, in the finished version of this video, we should link his Artstation or whatever his portfolio is, in the description.
Jon de Nor: Oh, yeah.
Aestus: Yeah, it's really cool to work with him. He's Italian, and I don't know if you are a history buff, but Italian artists are kind of a big deal. (laughter)
Jon de Nor: (laughter)
Ryan: Yeah. (laughter) Might have heard of a few of them.
Jon de Nor: I do also notice, at the end of the document there's a section about the crafting, and there's one — currently just a line illustration of a very enthusiastic kobold, I think. Holding a flask with something that's smoking. I wish that will be colored in the final product, because it's my favorite piece. (laughter)
Aestus: Oh, we got a request! We'll pass that on. No promises, but that would be really cool.
Jon de Nor: I don't know. There's just something about it that's just so...yeah. My favorite piece.
Ryan: Yeah, I'm glad. I think that's also...with some of those illustrations, especially just the kind of things that, you know, help build out the feeling of immersion in like the crafting system, for example. We kind of just let our artists at it and just say, hey, you know, here's what's on the page. Do whatever, you know, do whatever you're going to find fun here. And that's, you know, some of the stuff you came up with was stuff like that kobold. And I'm glad that you had as much fun with it as you did.
Jon de Nor: Yeah. (laughter) It just, I don't know, he just looks so happy and intrigued about what he's created.
Ryan: Yeah. (laughter)
Jon de Nor: There's also another piece, right? Just like a page earlier. It's like a traveling trunk, but it's like, lots of drawers and shelves and everything, and you kind of unpack it to get almost like a small apothecary.
Aestus: Yeah. I think of it like a tackle box, but for potions.
Jon de Nor: For alchemists. (laughter)
Ryan: Yeah, absolutely.
Jon de Nor: I'm really impressed with the art that's already in here, and...I can only imagine what the rest of the thing will look like.
Aestus: It's going to look fantastic, yeah. He's...I mean, that's a given with Sabba. And there are other talented artists that we work with. Our artist that does our battlemaps is really amazing as well. Yeah, I think you're going to see something that looks beautiful and is maybe a little different than a typical Draw Steel product.
Jon de Nor: I mean, after seeing what the Cave of Amber Tears product became, with its very distinct art style, I feel like there's space for something that looks a bit different. I have to ask, the cover image, which is...it kind of looks like a tree. Is that the tree that you spoke of, or is that something unrelated?
Ryan: Yes and no. I'll put it that way. It definitely shares some DNA, with the lightmass tree that...or, sorry, not the lightmass tree, the ashleaf tree. That was an early prototype name. (laughter) A little glimpse behind the curtain on that one. The ashleaf tree, it definitely shares some DNA. Specifically on the cover. That is a forest that has, sort of succumbed to the corruption of, the god Mung. So at that point, it is no longer just a naturally tree. It has sort of become a little more overgrown, a little more, let's say, infused with a bit of a savagery. Mung's the god that sort of features as part of this Red of Tooth and Claw module, because he is the god of the hunt and survival and finding the strength in yourself to overcome everything through force. =
And so, areas of his influence, the trees aren't as passive as they are in the rest of the world. They might overtake things a little more forcefully. As you can see, the cover is almost an idol of Mung, if you will. And the trees are even starting to overtake that, and sort of grasp out for things in the world, whether they be living or not.
Aestus: This might be a good time to talk about one of the themes of this particular product, the Red of Tooth and Claw book, which is kind of the idea of hunger and starvation as like a...exploring the kind of existential eldritch horror elements of hunger and starvation. And, yeah, so Mung, our in-universe god of the hunt and hunger and "eat or be eaten", those themes feature in this book quite a bit. And I mentioned earlier that there is a subclass for the Fury that we've designed for this product. And testing it has been really fun. And it is the Primal Maw fury. And so it channels — because in Draw Steel, Furies all channel some kind of primordial force. And this is the primordial force of "eat or be eaten". And it has a lot of animal themes to it, but it also has this, just the idea of hunger as a driving force is this theme we try to get in the subclass, and it's really the theme of the whole book.
Jon de Nor: We're closing in on the end, sadly, of the interview, and I always ask my guests to bring some kind of recommendation. So what have you brought us? We'll start with Aestus.
Aestus: Okay! I thought I'd talk about a game I've been playing. Because it's a small game, I'd love to see more people play it. It is an auto battler game called Flawed Tactics. I think it was designed by a solo designer. And it's their first game. I was shown it by a friend. I'm really big into auto battlers, like auto chess games? I'm pretty good at them. And so my friend wanted my insight into this game, and I got addicted. So yeah, Flawed Tactics. The core thing that makes it different from other auto battlers is it has a dynamic pricing system on the units that's kind of like a stock market. So the more times a unit gets used, the more expensive it will be to buy it in your game. And so there are some units that are really strong, but if everyone thinks they're strong, they might get too expensive and not worth investing in anymore. So it has like a stock market element to it, which is pretty cool. So yeah, Flawed Tactics. Check it out, guys, especially if you like auto battlers.
Jon de Nor: An interesting recommendation. Ryan, what have you brought?
Ryan: Yeah, no, absolutely. This one was hard for me because I get obsessed about so many different things. I'll say though, the list has almost changed daily. A few, a couple of things come to mind immediately. The first one is something that I've always had, enjoyment through for the world of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games. But recently, you know, went through again because of something that we're working on for part of our world building in Enshrined is Roadside Picnic, the book that inspired the original world of S.T.A.L.K.E.R.. That's something that I can kind of like...the more I go through it, the more I've been kind of enjoying it and have been pulling parts of it to inspire the more eldritch sides of our world. And we almost — we had a talk with Aestus yesterday, and we kind of brought that up again. It's almost required reading for the next phases of development. And that's something that I've always had an appreciation for the world of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. And so kind of returning to the roots of Roadside Picnic has kind of sparked some new things in my imagination.
But I'd be remiss not to include, The Blood of Dawnwalker, the game that just came out last week, has been my obsession ever since it dropped. And that one, it returns to a lot of the roots that I love in the world of The Witcher, in terms of the game, but it brings a decidedly cosmic and horror side of it that pairs very nicely with what I've been working on in the day for Enshrined. And then I fill my nights with The Blood of Dawnwalker.
Jon de Nor: Thank you so much, both of you, for coming on. Enshrined looks really interesting. And I'm a sucker for good art. And there is a ton of it, and I hope, more to come.
Aestus: Oh, yeah.
Ryan: Yes, absolutely. Never a dull day.
Jon de Nor: Wonderful. Thank you so much for coming on.
Aestus: Well, thanks, Jon. It's been a blast, as always. Yeah, hopefully you'll have us on again for the next Enshrined project, too.
Ryan: Would love to see that. It was awesome being here. Thanks for having us.
Outro</h1>
Thank you so much Aestus and Ryan for coming on. If you're listening to this as it drops, the crowdfunder will be live in a few days. It sounds like they've spent a lot of time making the combat encounters especially fun, well worth it for any Draw Steel director.
I want to thank FoxTrick for submitting questions for Aeastus & Ryan.
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</a>.
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 5th. That's the roundup for the month of September.
See you next time. Snakkes.
Links</h1>

Flawed Tactics on Steam</a></li>
Roadside Picnic - Wikipedia</a></li>
The Blood of Dawnwalker – A Dark Fantasy Narrative Sandbox RPG</a></li> </ul>

YouGMJay: The VTT, the System and the Mechanics

Jon de Nor — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Intro</h1>
I'll be honest: this one's for me. I really wanted an excuse to hang out and chat with Jay, so I've invited him to Goblin Points for just that. We talk about the Codex as a tool, Draw Steel as a system and what TTRPG systems bring to social encounters.
I'm Jon de Nor and this is Goblin Points.
Interview</h1>
Jon de Nor: Welcome to Goblin Points, Jay!
Jay: Hello, it's me, Jay, your GM! I use he/them!
Jon de Nor: Wow.
Jay: And this time, it's your show! (laughter)
Jon de Nor: (laughter) This is reminding me of watching your YouTube videos. Tell us a bit about yourself. and also how you ended up in the Draw Steel community.
Jay: Yeah, I mean, I have been a long-time tabletop RPG player. I got started back in 3.5, in my very first year of college. My cousin came up to me, he sat down next to me, he's like, "Hey, me and my friends are going to play Dungeons and Dragons tonight. You want to play?" And I said, "You can't talk about D&D in public!" (laughter) I was like, "What are you doing? We're in polite society! This is rule Alabama, they'll kill you for this!" (laughter)
But then I showed up to his D&D game, and he handed me the DMG and said, "Oh, by the way, do you want to DM?" And I was like, "What does that mean?" And he's like, "Don't worry. Any time a rule comes up, I'll just tell you what to do. And you just tell the story." And I'm like, "Okay!" (laughter)
Jon de Nor: Wow.
Jay: And that was my first experience with Dungeons and Dragons. I came in right at the tail end of Third Edition. And then Fourth Edition came out. I was the only guy in my group who liked it. I loved Fourth Edition. It took four hours to play a combat, but I liked combat, so it was fine. (laughter) And then, yeah, I've been playing D&D ever since. I was a big fan of Running the Game, which Matt Coalville did on YouTube, obviously. And so when I heard he was making an RPG, I got very excited. But I was always very, very picky with RPGs. So actually for a long time, I refused to know anything about Draw Steel. I was like, I'm going to hate it. I'm going to hate it. I'm going to hate it. I just know I'm going to hate it. I hate every RPG besides D&D for whatever weird reason.
And then it came out and it came out at a very fortuitous moment because I hated 5.5. So I was ready for a change in my life. And so when Draw Steel came out, it was like the perfect game for me. I was so excited.
Jon de Nor: What I know you from initially is your videos talking about the Codex. That's when I first became aware of you, and how much you love the Codex. (laughter)
Jay: I love the Codex more than anybody on God's green Earth. (laughter) If Codex has one fan left, I'm it. If Codex has no fans left, I died. (laughter)
Jon de Nor: What's your VTT journey been like, and what's made Codex the best experience that you've had?
Jay: Well, I always played on Roll20 originally because it was good enough. And then people would not shut up about Foundry. They badgered me into using Foundry. And so I got Foundry working, I paid $5 a month for a server so I could play Foundry online, and then I used it for like six months, had nonstop trouble with it, and had to ditch it almost immediately. And then I had to move everything back into Roll20
And I think like, there were two problems with Foundry that were really persistent. Number one is that it was really resource-intensive. So, I have a player who lived in South Africa at the time, and they had a very limited computer with very mediocre internet, and Foundry just destroyed their machine. And then the other thing that was a constant problem was Foundry had access issues, I guess because I was using that server-hosting site or whatever. I constantly had uptime issues. And if I wasn't in the game, my players couldn't be in the game, which also is annoying.
And so yeah, I got out of Foundry pretty quick, and then I eventually found out about Draw Steel. Really fell in love with it. They launched Codex in early beta. I got in during the beta, and I started trying it out with my players, and it's just so clever. It's so smart. I mean, everything about it works really well. It automates a lot of the sort of more challenging parts of things like keeping track of banes and edges. And I wouldn't trust the software to do that, usually, because when people say they're going to automate that kind of stuff, it's usually a total crapshoot whether or not it actually works or picks up the things that are going on.
But with Draw Steel, 80% of the time, I think it just does it. And then like the other 20%, I might have to finesse it a little bit. But finessing it is usually as easy as just like, unclicking the buttons and then just manually clicking the double edge button I want to actually apply to this roll. And sometimes we're wrong and it's right and we are just overriding it because we think it should work another way. But regardless, yeah, it just works. And I'm constantly impressed by it. I think it's one of the best pieces of VTT software that has ever come out with a TTRPG.
And I think one of the things that is kind of interesting about it is that 4e had the promise of a VTT at launch that fell through. And so it's kind of interesting that a spiritual successor to Fourth Edition has an actually working VTT. And that's half of what makes it so fun to play. I think that it would be a lot slower to run Draw Steel without the, I don't think it would be less fun, but I think it would be slower. And so, yeah, I'm in favor of anything that makes the game a little more fast, a little more dynamic.
Jon de Nor: Do you give any credence to people that say, like, having the VTT be so, I would say competent, at the rules, that it's kind of removing the TTRPG part of the game?
Jay: I definitely have heard that opinion. I think that like, at the end of the day, the TTRPG part of the game is the parts that are happening moment to moment, mostly outside of combat, where you're engaging in the setting, in the world, in each other, and you're investing in the roleplay, in the scenes, in the back-and-forth of character interactions. Rolling dice when it's important, and then following along that throughline. I think that those are the most important moments. And the VTT kind of gets out of the way for all of that. It's not too intrusive on that front.
In combat, like, we're not playing a narrative RPG, we are playing a turn-based, tactical RPG. We want crunchy, systemic combat, and crunchy, systemic combat is complicated. And so having a tool that offloads some of that mental overhead and allows you to just be focusing on the turn-by-turn decision making...I think it doesn't take away, it adds, because now you...I've actually seen people be like, "Oh, I don't want to deal with this spell. It's going to make them do so many saving throws, and I don't want to have to bother with all that. Like, let's just do this one and hit this guy and be done." And you don't have to do that in this VTT because the VTT is going to handle all your saving throws, all your end-of-turn effects, all that stuff automatically. So you can just use the best ability that's the most interesting at any given moment. And you don't have to worry too much about it.
And I think also, for people who have difficulty remembering what's on their character sheet, it's nice to have that little bar at the bottom that they can click and see, "These are my actions. Okay. I can just pick one of these four things. Let's just quickly survey them and then get right into it." And so I've actually noticed players who have struggled with rules in 5e struggle a lot less in Codex. And it's not because they suddenly got better at reading, it's because the Codex is helping them so much. And I'm just...yeah, I think it's really sweet.
Jon de Nor: After falling in love with the Codex, you ended up making a few videos and recently, just last week, I think, when we record this, you made like, "One year of Playing Draw Steel in the Codex." What motivated you to kind of start making those videos?
Jay: You reminded me I had a YouTube channel, so... (laughter) No, I've actually been making YouTube channel videos for a while, on and off. I had a really, like, in-depth series I worked really hard on called Edition Tours, where I went through the various editions of the game with my friend Ailoth, and they drew...basically, I would be their GM and take them through character creation. They would create a character in each edition of the game, and we would go through the books together and make a character, and then we'd come back after the fact and we'd record our feelings about that character creation process.
And so we'd go over like, how did it go? What were the difficulties? What were the easy parts? Were there any parts of this character creation process that impressed you? Were there parts that really frustrated you? And yeah, we did basically every edition of D&D. And then I would do my, like, 8th-grade book report essay on that edition of D&D, where I would basically read off a bunch of facts and people who worked on that edition and tell the story of D*D through the various editions.
And, yeah, so I made that series, which I was very proud of, and I made a bunch of, really funny parody videos where I was sort of lightly jabbing at other D&D content creators, sort of making fun of the idea of making content around D&D, because I found it pretty funny. (laughter) Those did way better than the one I worked hard on. (laughter)
Jon de Nor: Oh, no!
Jay: Listen, it's just the way life goes. And yeah, every so often when...like, when 5.5 would come out, me and my friend Air would make videos about 5.5 because we had a lot of opinions about 5.5. And we were both very positive on it at first, until it came out. We would just talk through the changes they were proposing, and things we liked and didn't like. And then after it came out, we had a couple of videos about the final version and how we felt about it.
And that's kind of how my YouTube channel runs. I don't make content regularly. I make it when I have things to say. And so when Draw Steel came out, I made a bunch of videos about Draw Steel because I had a lot of gut reactions and thoughts and interesting things I was noting for the first time about the system. And so I made a bunch of videos about that. And when 5.5 came out, it's the same thing. And when 5e, I first started playing for a while, it was the same thing.
Yeah, I'm not a consistent creator, but I make stuff when I have something I think is interesting to say, or when there's a compelling conversation to have with my good friend Air. Who also, by the way, when you invited me on the show, I told him and he's like, "Wow, I didn't get an invite?" I was like, "Ah, man, no shot! I barely got on, man!" (laughter) And my name's on the channel!
Jon de Nor: Oh, now I feel bad. I should...(laughter)
Jay: (laughter) No, it's okay. He needs to go down a peg or two. (laughter)
Jon de Nor: (laughter)
Jay: We got to keep him humble, keep him hungry. (laughter)
Jon de Nor: Now that you're an experienced Codex user, is there something you're missing in the Codex?
Jay: Oh, I've told them this, actually. I went into their Discord the other day and I was like, compliment sandwich. Really loving the Codex. But, monsters, man, monster statblocks have got to improve on the Codex. The way that they're laid out right now is the same as character sheets. And I think that is the wrong way to lay out a monster statblock. When I'm running six different monsters, especially kind of complicated Draw Steel monsters, I need to, at a glance, be able to tell, does this thing have a reaction? Does this thing have a passive effect, like an AoE effect that's constantly going on? Does this thing have, you know, riders to its abilities that I need to be aware of?
Right now, it's not super obvious. So, I've told them this, and they said, yes, we're we're going to do a full rework of the monster statblocks at some point. It's definitely on our radar. We're just trying to get other stuff implemented first. Like for right now, I think a lot of monsters aren't even fully implemented. Like they have a tier ranking of how implemented something is, gold, silver, bronze. And there's a lot of high-difficulty monsters that are still bronze. They're still getting the like low-level stuff fully sorted out. I think like literally last update, they finished the thorn dragon, which is a pretty important low-level monster. And it was really funny too, because they fully implemented the week after I used it in a combat. So am I cursed? I don't know. Are they watching me through my Codex account? Maybe. (laughter)
Jon de Nor: Do you get to play much Draw Steel? On the other side of the screen, as it were.
Jay: I don't think I...I have played a couple of playtests back when me and Air were first getting into it. He ran a couple of one-shots for it. Mainly he ran like combat, like battle rooms, one-shots, where he would just throw monsters at us over and over until we died, just to stress-test how much we could handle. But, like, other than that, no, I've never actually gotten the chance to play.
But that's not shocking. My playgroup tends to...I tend to be the one who introduces them to new things. And then after they've been introduced to it for a while, they will come back to me and run for me. Like right now, I'm playing in a campaign of 5e D&D, or 5.5 D&D, with a player from my playgroup I've played with for a long time, but that group has actually never even touched Draw Steel yet. Because that campaign has been running for a while, and so they've never had the chance to actually play Draw Steel.
So I suspect in the future a player will run it for me. But for now, I'm teaching them Draw Steel so that they can later...I'm raising my children so they can someday house me in my old age.
Jon de Nor: (laughter) You're actually one of the lucky ones, having a group with other GMs. And you kind of rotate who's running them?
Jay: So for the most part, I am the eternal GM. My name is YourGMJay, after all. I do not begrudge the eternal GM. People are like, "Oh, are you a forever GM?" And I'm like, "Yes! (Positive), okay, that's an enthusiastic yes!" I love being a GM. I'm a little bit of a control freak. So I love being the GM and I don't begrudge it at all. But I do kindly have some players who are very creative people, very entertaining people, very funny people who, you know, want to try their hands at running campaigns.
And so what we'll do is we'll get to the end of a campaign, and then I'll want a little time to build up the next campaign. So I'll say, hey, for the next 3 to 6 months, you want to run a mini campaign? Like, "mini", 3 to 6 months is not mini, but...3 to 6 months, you want to run a campaign, and then I'll take over after that? And they'll say, "Sure, yeah, yeah, that'd be great, I'd love to run for a little while." And so they will play, and sometimes, they even run in my own setting, which is crazy. (laughter) I'm living the dream over here.
Jon de Nor:(laughter) We talked a bit about this before we started recording, and I almost want to touch upon it again. If you were in charge of MCDM specifically, this patron asks, what products would you want to create for Draw Steel next?
Jay: Oh, I'd love to see a bundle of perks. I think perks are one of the underutilized aspects of character creation right now. I'm a big fan of big fat feat lists. I love them, give me as many feats as possible. So I'm definitely in favor of getting more perks.
Obviously, monsters are always useful. They have released a lot of monsters since the game came out, thanks to the adventures they're running all have custom monsters in them. But yeah, I'd love to have more monsters to use. They're always helpful. I'd like medium-tier magic items as well. Some of the legendary stuff is a little intense to give away, I'm a little scared. But I'd love to have some medium-tier items. The equivalent of a +1 sword, right? Something I can give away fairly thoughtlessly without worrying too much about the destruction of my campaign happening because I gave it out. Just because I love to give out that stuff.
I recently had a player who uses growth potions. They've been brewing them between combats, and they use them in combat, and they're just devastating. They're so powerful, actually. And it's good that they made them, because they would have died without them. (laughter) I did not balance that encounter correctly. I gave them way too hard of a thorn dragon fight, but the giant growth potion allowed the Censor to have, like, 100 and something hit points at level 3, which allowed them to tank a lot of dragon damage, which was very good for the rest of the party.
So, yeah, I'd love to see more potions like that. And I think, like, items like those and potions and perks are great ways to give out-of-combat utility to players as well, in a game that doesn't have a ton of that on the character sheet. So, yeah, I'd love all those things.
Jon de Nor: Out-of-combat utility...I guess, perks, or like utility spells, as we probably would call them in D&D...do you feel do you feel that's lacking in Draw Steel as it is now?
Jay: It's tough because obviously they have to make all the abilities that you pick as you level up equivalent to other abilities that other classes get and that you get within that same class. So to give something that's purely out-of-combat utility, that would eat up one of your four combat options, would be really tricky. But I do feel that like, one of the most magical moments you can have in a game of Dungeons and Dragons, for example, is when a player thinks of a clever way to use a spell that maybe wasn't the intention of the spell when they made it. But like you enjoy, and they enjoy, and it makes you excited. Or even a spell that is intended to be used, but they just happen to have the perfect spell at the perfect moment, right?
So, a great example of that. I had a bunch of players who were backed up to a cliff's edge, and they were about to be like, attacked by a group of enemies and have to fight a battle on the edge of the cliff. And he's like, "Everybody, trust me, just jump off the cliff," and everybody's like, "Okay!" And then they jumped off the cliff, and then he cast feather fall, and it's like, "Oh, you actually had that spell? Oh my God, that's perfect, wonderful, thank you! You saved us from a combat!...Which we would have enjoyed doing. But whatever!"
But yeah, I think like having those abilities that can have that amazing out-of-combat utility are great. And I think like, perks are perfect place for that in the character sheet in Draw Steel. I think that's by design. A lot of the perks as they exist now are utility spells from D&D. Like there's a find familiar perk. There's a speak which plants perk — or, speak with objects perk. So there's a lot of, like, perks that already simulate that. And I think that, like, if we had more perks, it would feel less like there are fewer out-of-combat options for players.
And I think, like, you can do some of that with the abilities in the game. Like I've had a great one in a recent session where there was a locked door. And it was a pocket door. There was no lock on it. It was a sliding stone slab in a pocket, so they couldn't, like, easily pick it or crowbar it out. So they were like, "Oh, God, how do I get this door open?" And then they use Bones of the Earth, which creates pillars of stone out of the ground. And they just summoned it under the door. And so a pillar of earth came up under the door, smashed the door out of its socket, and then they just summoned it back down into the ground and walked through the hole they'd made.
And that was a great example of one of the abilities being used outside of combat. And I'd love if they'd give more options like that, abilities that are primarily designed for combat, but had some out-of-combat utility as well, would be kind of cool. Just because I feel like that's one of the things that you do kind of lose out on by not having a spell system.
Jon de Nor: I know that during the development of Draw Steel, they talked about maybe having magic items or treasures kind of fill that gap, of the "missing", in quotes, utility spells. Do you think that's something that's possible?
Jay: Oh, yeah. I meant, I think...I don't think they have done that yet, but I think that they could very easily do that in the future. I think that if you look at Crows, right, almost all of the character features are items that you find and can use. So they obviously have this in their minds where like a character is defined largely by what they wear, as much as what they get upon level-up. And Matt Colville's talked about this in a ton of videos and a ton of streams about how the old-school style of progression was less about leveling up and getting your next class feature, and more about finding that really cool sword in the dungeon that unlocks all these new abilities for your character.
And I think that they could definitely do stuff like that, you know, a feather that turns into a pair of wings and lets you fly would offer a lot of flexibility for how characters can respond to certain situations. You know, a jug that shoots water out of the spout has famously done incredible things in D&D campaigns. People wodn't stop talking about what a rod that you click and it stays in place can accomplish. (laughter) So, you know, there's definitely the possibility for magic items to open up incredible avenues of like, character expression.
I don't necessarily know that they've already done that. I think that there's room for improvement there. So maybe if I was thinking about like one product that would really change the game, a big Book of magic items could be one suggestion. Magic items and perks. (laughter) I think those are the two things I would really want to see more of.
Jon de Nor: Player rewards. That's what's needed.
Jay: Yeah, yeah. Oh, titles are awesome too. I think that they have such a good thing with complications and titles. I think both of those are so cool and great ways to express character when you're making your character in Draw Steel. I don't think I've ever had a player who's read the complications list and walked away without saying, like, "Holy crap! Is it okay if I take these? Like, am I allowed to have this?!" And it's like, "Yeah, man, go for it!" (laughter) There's an infernal contract, and then a second one that's like, an infernal contract, but bad. (laughter) It's so funny.
Jon de Nor: (laughter) I really think the complications is...it was almost like, I'm not sure I should call it a sleeper hit, but it was one of the first thing that I saw people, like latch on to when they, look through the book is like, these complications are amazing.
Jay: Yeah. Because you don't expect such a really character-, narrative-focused thing to be in a tactical RPG, really, right? You kind of almost expect...it's almost like, it's like a system, it's like a mechanic that escaped from a narrative RPG and sneaked in here. (laughter) But I love it. And I think, like, Draw Steel actually sneakily has a ton of narrative options that you get to pick. I mean, I think perks are that. I think complications are that. I think the career paths are a lot more interesting than backgrounds were in 5e and continue to be in 5.5. I mean, don't even get me started on 5.5 backgrounds. (laughter)
Jon de Nor: Speaking of it being unexpected to have these almost narrative options in a tactical game, I remember seeing a lot of people talking about negotiations and how they were like malplaced in Draw Steel as a tactical game. And here are like these, this whole subsystem for social interaction. Have you had any chance to use negotiations? And, if so, how did you find them? (laughter)
Jay: Yeah, it's a good question. I think, like, I definitely had my doubts as well. I've always been kind of the opinion that social stuff is...the best thing an RPG can do with social stuff is to get out of the way. I always felt this about D&D, like, I was like, oh, the social rules in D&D are perfect because there are none, and I don't need them. I just want to be able to talk to my players and they talk back to me, and then we figure it out. And in a situation where chance comes or, like, where they're really trying to persuade somebody to do something they don't necessarily want to do, we put the dice in and we resolve that tension, and then we move forward.
And that's always been my feeling, but I like a negotiation in the very specific context of...I almost think about it like, it's the boss fight of social encounters. A negotiation is the boss fight of a social encounter. It is when a social moment has been built up in the campaign to such a level of importance that it needs to feel dramatic and epic and earned in order to fully pay off. And then you bring out the negotiation rules. And now, suddenly, there is that sense of like mechanical payoff to a social encounter.
And then it also really rewards those players who took a class like Troubadour, right, who gets a couple of special abilities that do key off of negotiations. And then you get, there are a couple of perks as well, that key off of negotiation. So you do want to have some of them in there, because if players are going to get abilities that key off of these mechanics, you ought to reward them and pay it off. But like, I really like it in that context of, like, the boss fight of social encounters.
I had a really good negotiation where the players were trying to convince a group of druids who were on the fence about helping them in a fight against another army, and they were basically of the opinion, like, if we just hang back in our forest, nobody's going to come bother us. If we get involved, we incentivize them to come hurt us. So like, you're going to really have to work hard to get us in this fight. And the players had a bunch of good arguments, and they appealed to their motivations, and they did everything right, and they managed to convince the druids to come help. And because of that, the whole shape and texture of the fight that they were in changed. Which is great! When you have those dramatic moments...I think it would become really annoying if you were to do it for every big social conversation. But I think as like, again, the boss fight of social encounters, I think it's awesome. And I think it's really effective.
Jon de Nor: That's so refreshing to hear. As someone who's...I have a love for the negotiation system. I don't think it's perfect, but I love the intentions behind it. How did your players find the negotiation system? Because I feel like often the players are just as...not rebellious, but, like, just as...they receive it just as poorly as a lot of Directors do, I feel.
Jay: I think when you come to a subsystem like that, I think players are like small animals. They get frightened easily. If you show fear, they'll show fear. So if you approach a system and you're like, "Oh, guys, there's these rules for negotiations, I was thinking maybe we could use them..." You're like, "Okay, guys, we're going to do a negotiation. Some of you have character abilities that rely off this. So, you know, be looking at those. Make sure you understand how they work. This is the objective of a negotiation. This is how you proceed in a negotiation. These are the tools at your disposal. Go." I think, like, yeah, players will get on board. My players certainly did. I don't know about yours, but my players got on board once I just approached them with it. And like, you know, you treat it like any other part of the game. This is a part of the game.
And especially because, again, I'm using it as the boss fight of social encounters, it felt appropriate to have its own system because it was such an important moment in the campaign that had been built up to across multiple sessions. Yeah, at that point, it felt suitably dramatic to have its own rules. And I've used it a couple times since then. Yeah, I'm not going to go through all the situations, but yeah, I've used it a couple of times and always it has worked pretty well. And my players at this point, like, they asked me, you know, "Hey, I got this feature that lets me do a thing in negotiations. When's the next negotiation, GM? Let me use my feature!" And so I'm like, "Okay, okay, don't worry. It's coming up."
Jon de Nor: Have you had any chance to look at, or interest, I guess, at looking at Crows?
Jay: I have looked at Crows. I personally I recently watched a Daði video, Mystic Arts, and they were talking about how they were always kind of turned off by the high lethality of these campaigns. And I feel basically the same way as what they said. High lethality of OSR games kind of has negative interest for me because I'm really invested in characters and big overarching stories and big epic fantasy. But Crows, I think, strikes a more interesting middle ground than a lot of these games. I think it is more survivable than a lot of these games. I think a lot of these games are literally like, one hit and you die. Whereas in Crows it's a little more like, two hits and you die, (laughter) so there's a chance to run.
No, but I think Crows definitely has more that interests me. Additionally, it's on the Codex, which is always a selling points for me. (laughter) But I think about campaigns like...sometimes, I'm thinking up a campaign idea and I'm like, "Wow, you know, Draw Steel does not suit this campaign idea. The characters in Draw Steel are too powerful to make sense for this kind of lower, grittier..." You know, I think basically every D&D campaign I had that started between level 1 and 3, I can't really do in, Draw Steel. Draw Steel starts at level 5, effectively. A level 1 character in Draw Steel is a level 5 D&D character, basically.
And so I find that there are times where I'm like, chafing against, like, you know, I don't want my heroes to be able to take out a crowd of twenty guys at level 1. That feels like they are already quite into the realm of superheroics. And so in those situations, I could see myself maybe starting with, like, a Crows campaign for a little while and then evolving into a Draw Steel campaign at a certain point where they cross a threshold and now suddenly they've gained these superheroic abilities. Or I could see myself...recently I had the idea of running a Gumshoe campaign, for, like, the opening arc of a campaign in Gumshoe, and then switching to Draw Steel after a certain event where they basically would have gained superpowers effectively.
But yeah, I definitely need a game for those moments when I want there to be lower heroics and lower stakes. I don't necessarily know that Crows is that game, because it is so intensely focused on the dungeon delve specifically. But I appreciate that they are offering something in that realm. And I am curious to see how it turns out. It might be one of those situations...I didn't believe I would like Draw Steel before I played it, either. So it might be one of those situations where I get in there and I play it, and I'm like, "Oh, this is actually the greatest thing I've ever played. And now it's my whole personality." (laughter)
Jon de Nor: (laughter) Part of the reason I bring up Crows in the first place is because it does away with basically any tests for social interaction, and it only explains in like a info box that if you really need to make a social test, just make it a Mind test. But try to avoid that, just let the roleplay handle all of the social interactions. And if there is like, negotiation or like a bartering situation that needs to happen, just do it as naturally as possible. And I was wondering, how does that feel to you, mentioning that you like D&D because it basically has no social rules?
Jay: Well, I still am a strong believer in letting the dice tell the story, so I think that there would be...I think I would have a little bit of difficulty with that. I know that in a system like Gumshoe, you have basically your investigation skills and then your general skills. And your investigation skills, you don't actually roll those. If you have an investigation skill that's relevant to a check, you just get the clue. So for example, if you come across a set of bones and you're an archaeologist, you just get the clue, because you are the person who knows about bones, ancient dinosaur bones. And so you just get the clue.
And it's similar, like, if you're a medicine, you know, a doctor, right? You have an investigation skill for medicine. Then if you come across a crime scene where you want to see, like, cause of death, you just get that clue, because you have the proficiency in it. And if you don't have the proficiency, you don't get the clue. So it's all about basically what kind of character you made, and that determines whether or not you get information.
So I really like no-roll systems that just get out of your way in roleplay situations, especially social ones, to an extent. But I would worry with the way that Crows is currently set up, that there would be a lot of like...I mean, Crows wants to be in the dungeon, fighting monsters. It doesn't want to be your general-purpose RPG. It has set its intentions very clearly. And for that reason...I'm not a person who likes to run long dungeons for my whole campaign. I like to run in a town and have NPCs and have political intrigue going on, and I want to have all that stuff kind of happening. And so for that, I want social checks.
But I think you could definitely do something along the lines of using Gumshoe's example. If you have the background of an alchemist, then if there's anything you come across that alchemy would solve, just give them that information. If you have the background of a witch, if you come across anything like magical, then just give them that information. And that could be a solution for it as well.
But that gets into the realm of homebrew. It's not core in the system, as the system currently exists. Like I think I would chafe against it a little bit. I might end up introducing a fourth stat. (laughter) I don't know, but yeah, I would just use a different system than Crows for my low-level stuff. But we'll see. Who knows? Maybe I'll get in there and I'll be like, "Oh, actually, this makes complete sense, I was wrong! I have to go record another podcast! Someone get Jon de Nor on the phone!" (laughter)
Jon de Nor: (laughter) I think, at least for me — I've only played the new Crows rules once, last Thursday, and we ended up in a situation where one of the players wanted to barter and negotiate a better price while selling some of the gear that they had acquired. And in the village rules, it basically says that, well, at a given prosperity, the village merchants are only willing to buy the stuff you want to sell for a certain percentage of its original value. The...(laughter) the negotiation tactic was so inspired that I decided that actually, this would actually work. And I just ended up, like, bumping the percentage by one tier, because it's in like a ladder system.
Jay: I think that's very in the spirit of an OSR game ,though.
Jon de Nor: Yeah. And it felt like...because the village part is very, like, heavily mechanical, like it's all just numbersm, and it's all spreadsheets, basically, with the town, which I find interesting.
Jay: That's fascinating for you to say, because first of all, how could you say something so controversial, yet so true, but also — (laughter)
Jon de Nor: (laughter)
Jay: — it's fascinating for you to say that because I feel like what they are going for with the village is so narrative RPG. But the manifestation of it is so mechanical. RPG. (laughter) And that's fascinating. The tension that MCDM constantly feels between mechanics and narrative, right? Like I think that MCDM is a crunchy company. They are a crunchy game company, and so they cannot help themselves a little bit crunching it up, even in the narrative sector of their game.
And also like, basically their...the village is your upgrade hub for your, roguelike RPG, right? It's where you come back and when your character dies, they get to start in a slightly better position than the character before them because you upgraded the town, and therefore they get a few things off of that town being better. And so in that sense, it is there to serve a very mechanical purpose. It is your meta progression in the roguelike RPG of the dungeon, right?
Jon de Nor: Yeah.
Jay: Which is cool because old OSR games didn't have a meta progression. You just started over every time. You're back to level 1, and there you go. And then some GMs would be like, actually screw that, you start at the same level as the lowest-level member of the party, and then that'll make everything a little bit more balanced. But that's not even in the spirit of old OSR. I won't allow it in my house.
Jon de Nor: (laughter)
Jay: Yeah, no, I like the meta progression currency. I think like Daði said it in their video, that it was like, it was nice to know that your character mattered. Like that they meant something in the long run, right? The character is buried in the cemetery of this town, and you can go and pray at that cemetery and gain a blessing from that character who's dead, right? Like that gives you a sense of continuity and that everything you're doing is relevant, that I think in Shadowdark, you don't get, when you just die on turn two for no reason, because your ally decided that instead of walling a hallway, they'd go out into the middle of a room, get completely surrounded by skeletons, and get beaten to death. But then they escaped, and you died trying to save them, because Saving Private Ryan rules apply, apparently?! (laughter) I'm not bitter, you're bitter! (definitely not bitter laughter)
Jon de Nor: (laughter) I always ask my guests to bring some kind of recommendation when they come on. You said you'd bring something, so now I'm very curious. What have you brought as a recommendation to our listeners?
Jay: So I think one of the greatest resources that a GM can have at their disposal is a good supply of tokens and a good supply of maps. And so I think the greatest solution to both of those problems is 2-Minute Tabletop and 2-Minute Tools, which is a subsidiary thing that they run.
Jon de Nor: Okay.
Jay: 2-Minute Tabletop is a great...they provide their maps free of charge on their website. You can just go in and download them. It's like pay what you want, but you can pay zero if you want. Obviously, you should give them a dollar, they deserve it. But they also have tokens, and a full token editor, too. And you can customize the colors of your tokens, which is how I got a green chicken in the middle of my session last week, uploaded it without my GM's knowledge, and then dropped it on to the battlemap. You, too can surprise your GM with a green chicken if you use 2-Minute Tools!
No, I just think it's awesome because, like, the ability to color-edit the tokens means that, for Draw Steel specifically, you can create groups of different colors to make them a little visually distinct. It's really nice. So I gave all my goblins of one group a red hat and all my goblins of another group a blue hat and all my goblins of the third set a green hat. And then it was easy to tell them apart when I was running them in combat. And yeah, I use the token editor and the color editor all the time. Sometimes the token will not be quite right for what you want it to be, but you can go in and color-edit it until it's good enough. Yeah, I use 2-Minute Tools all the time. 2-Minute Tabletop all the time. They're one of my favorite providers of tokens and battlemaps.
I know everybody's caught on Cze and Peku lately, but, you know, I'm here for the OGs who were here before D&D was cool, okay? 2-Minute Tabletop had me when nobody had me. (laughter) Like, Chessex, you know? Chessex was making dice for us back before it was cool and profitable to make dice. (laughter)
Jon de Nor: It has been really fun to have you on, Jay.
Jay: (laughter) Thank you very much. I love yappin'. Listen, you give me an excuse to talk for an hour, I'll happily take it. (laughter)
Jon de Nor: We almost had to...I had to remind myself to start recording at some point because we...(laughter)
Jay: Yeah, we had a great conversation! I had some very hot takes about Daggerheart! Tune into my aftershow podcast for that. (laughter)
Jon de Nor: (laughter) But thank you so much for coming on. It has been really fun.
Jay: Absolutely. Happy to be here.
Outro</h1>
Thank you so much for coming on Jay. Jay has the kind of personality that always perks me up. They bring extra energy into the room and suffuse the room and the people there with it, lifting everyone's spirit.
I want to thank Faan and FoxTrick for submitting questions for Jay.
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</a>.
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 25th. I'm talking with Auestus and Ryan (4D Pixels) about the upcoming crowdfunder by Headwind Studios.
Also! Remember to visit JonDeNor.com/lunar-umbra</a> to get your set of the power roll dice set I'm crowdfunding. When this episode drops, there's still a few days left. Visit JonDeNor.com</a> to find the link.
See you next time. Snakkes.
Links</h1>

2-Minute Tabletop | Hand-Drawn TTRPG Resources</a></li>
YourGMJay - YouTube</a></li> </ul>
00:00:00 - Intro 00:00:42 - Interview 00:43:25 - Outro

News: Crows Crowdfunder Success, Dice Crowdfunder, Jams of the Timescape 3 | August Roundup

Jon de Nor — Sat, 05 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Intro</h1>
Crows has a successful crowdfunder, I try to crowdfund power roll dice, Jams of the Timescape Volume 3 has a winner, the Codex can import encounters from Stawl, the Kiln was released and Riam's Tears dropped.
I'm Jon de Nor and this is Goblin Points.
Lunar Umbra</h1>
Gotta start right off the bat with my power roll dice crowdfunder: Lunar Umbra! We're currently about half way, with a little over two weeks left.
If you want some proper Djordice to play Draw Steel, Night Shift: Devil Division or Crows with, these are the dice for you! 20-sided d10s numbered 1–10 twice, and combined d3 and d6s number 1–6 with markings for d3 results.
The dice are manufactured by Q Workshop in Poland. They've been making dice for a couple of decades, and I've been very happy with dice they've made before.
You can grab a set of dice for €19, that is two Djordice, two d3/6s and a dice bag to keep them in. If you're paying patron of mine, and you've signed up for BackerKit and Patreon with the same email address, you can get one set for €16, as a thank you. And if you're a real dice goblin, you can pick up five sets with a €10 discount.
You can find the link to the BackerKit in the episode description, or just go to JonDeNor.com/lunar-umbra</a>.
Jams of the Timescape</h1>
The Dice Society and I just finished up the third Jams of the Timescape game jam for Draw Steel. The theme was a bit more open-ended this time around: One Year of Draw Steel, in honor of Draw Steel's one year anniversary. Entrants in the jam were free to make any kind of supplement that referenced the theme in some way.
Now that the jam is over, I want to congratulate the winner Archifex. They submitted One Year Later - Long-term Timeskip Rules for Draw Steel. The supplement introduces a way to do a time skip with mechanical benefits. Each player select something akin to a downtime project, but where progress is measured in seasons. These can be anything from building strongholds, working on actual downtime projects, improve your abilities, or any of the other 8 activities.
The runner-ups was last jam's winner, Dima Serbin, with Bake or Break - A Cooking Encounter; and the Eon Dragon by Font of Victories.
This will not be the last Jams of the Timescape, so if you want to try your hand at creating something for Draw Steel, I highly encourage you to join next time. During the submission period, an active community springs up in our Discord server, where everyone wants everyone else to succeed.
Crows Crowdfunder</h1>
And speaking of succeeding. The Crows crowdfunder is going really well. It funded in less than two days and is well on it's way to reach it's only stretch goal: The Crowdex.
The funding goal for the Crows crowdfunder was $650k, a high ask, but a realistic one. That makes the game a certainty. Next up is the stretch goal: a Codex implementation of Crows.
There is already a "community system" for Crows in the Codex, something slapped together by a couple of the Codex developers in their spare time. But by reaching the stretch goal, MCDM will sink actual developer resources into supporting Crows in the Codex.
You can get the digital starter adventure for $10, while a full digital version is $40. If you're a paying member of MCDM Patreon, you can swing by their Patreon and get a link to a special offer where you get the digital starter set for $1.
Crack the Sun Act 3 Playtest</h1>
According to Paul Hughes, the man in charge of Draw Steel at MCDM, when I interviewed him, Crack the Sun is still on schedule. He did also say that was the case at the time of recording, and that it could change as soon as we hung up.
Something that speaks in his favor though is MCDM dropping the playtest for the third act of Crack the Sun to paying patrons this month. Last we heard, act three is not supposed to release until March next year, so the fact that it's in playtesting now seems like a good sign.
And just as a quick update; the current schedule for the release of Crack the Sun is

November: Crack the Sun Act 1 (Black Friday)</li>
Jan 2027: Crack the Sun Act 2</li>
March 2027: Crack the Sun Act 3</li>
May 2027: Crack the Sun Act 4</li>
July 2027: Crack the Sun Act 5 ...with the hardcovers and box sets and everything releasing in the latter half of next year.</li> </ul> MCDM Support Forum</h1>
MCDM has also been soft launching a new support forum. A forum of the classic web. It's not supposed to be a place for the community to hang out, but a way for players to ask questions about MCDM's products.
Having a place online where you can get solid answers about the games and their lore is nice, especially considering these answers will be searchable. A lot of the information that's currently known is held hostage behind Discords walls. Having this information in a more accessible place is nice.
You can find the forum at forums.mcdmproductions.com</a>.
Stawl Import in the Codex</h1>
This is big news for me. In a recent update to the Codex, they've added support to import combat encounters from Stawl, directly into the Codex!
If you build an encounter in Stawl, you can export it as a data file. Then you create a combat encounter in Codex and import that data file. Codex does not use the monster detail from the encounter, only the monster names, initiative groups, etc, and not the details of the monsters. So if you're using custom monsters, they won't work unless you've also added them to the Codex.
Big thanks to Haezan, one of the contract developers on the Codex, for implementing this.
Surge Announcement</h1>
And speaking of the Codex. Triglav Games announced that they're launching a new endeavour called Surge. Every month, starting in September, they aim to bring two pages of laid-out, playtested and arted Draw Steel design to paying members of their patreon.
Not only that, but what they design will also be implemented in the Codex at launch. You only need to connect your Patreon account to the Codex, and the extra material will become available as a module immediately.
The first edition of Surge will feature the tempest dragon, which seems to channel electric powers. You can join Triglav Games' Patreon starting at $5.
They also released the alassa ancestry, an ancestry of eel folk. This is to be the last release of it's kind for Patreon supporters, with it being replaced by Surge.
The Kiln</h1>
Look Out Behind You Studios has released the kiln, a shaman-like martial warrior who burns wooden talismans to empower themself. Different types of wood give you different powers, all granted by the undermind.
In addition to ten levels and three subclasses, you get four kits, ten perks, seven treasures, a rival, and two retainers.
You can pick up the kiln from Triglav Games' web shop for €18.
Seeking the Secret Flame</h1>
Look Out Behind You Studios also released a small adventure called Seeking the Secret Flame. It's designed for two to seven first or second level heroes, with specific notes on how to tune it for first level heroes.
The people of the town Alden are coming on dire times. Most of the harvest has been ruined and the local church is being attacked by aggressive roots. The heroes must find the sources of these evil doings.
You can pick up Seeking the Secret Flame for €6 on Triglav Games' web shop.
Kronoborus</h1>
Shadowhand Gaming has released Kronoborus, the second monster booklet in their series of monthly booklets. The Kronoborus are a psionic serpentfolk. They serve their god, Kronopresh the devourer, and seek to destroy any who stand in the way of Kronopresh' wishes.
The booklet contains 23 monster statblocks across the regular serpentfolk and their psionic counterparts. It also includes an encounter with a map where the heroes come up against an acolyte for Kronopresh.
You can pick up the Kronoborus booklet as a member of Shadowhand Gaming's Patreon. Membership costs $5 a month.
Timescape Tracts</h1>
Hypnos has released the first issue of Timescape Tracts. The zine is themed as the chronicle of a Black Company inspired band called The Host.
This first issue includes two complications, three kits (each with an iconic character), two first echelon treasures and a giant hunched toad ancestry called bufopods.
Hypnos are also looking for contributors for future issues of the zine.
You can pick up Timescape Tracts issue 1 for $2 on itch.
Riam's Tears</h1>
Sam McGurran, Subharup Roy, Dojikaan, and Inge released Riam's Tears. This will hopefully be the first of a series of gazetteers for Nomas.
You might remember Nomas from the crowdfunder last year. While that sadly didn't fund, the people behind the crowdfunder didn't give up on their project. Now they're back with only a part of the city of Nomas, the district of Riam's Tears.
In it's 31 pages, Riam's Tears introduces you to the factions and locations in the district, and with a map over the district showing the important locations. There's also new monsters related to the district, and a new ancestry native to it.
Alongside the gazetteer, you also receive a director's guide to the city of Nomas. This has some more details on the city-wide politics and how the city functions.
You can pick up Riam's Tears for $16 on Tabletop Nonsenseverse's web shop.
Rockgawp</h1>
Brandon Crilly has released an ancestry called Rockgawp. They come from goblins who travelled to the stars long ago, and settled on ore rich asteroids floating in the timescape. They've build vast tunnel networks inside their asteroids, and honed their skills as mechanical tinkerers, inventors and machinists.
You can pick up the Rockgawp ancestry for pay-what-you-want on Itch.io.
Community Highlights</h1>
And now some rapid fire updates from the community:

Aah! Books has announced the crowdfunder for their magus class.</li>
Dima Serbin released Hugran's March, a starting area for any fantasy campaign.</li>
DMHub has announced a bunch of stuff in August:

Max Hamm's tokens are available to use directly in the Codex</li>
The new dynamic terrain features for lava, foilage and more</li>
The new user interface</li>
Better support for retainers</li>
Shadow elves being available to test</li>
Improved respite controls</li> </ul> </li>
Elephant Machine has posted three articles on designing dungeons and enemies for Crows.</li>
Frederica Teather published a video on the things you can't learn by watching others play</li>
Paul Ligorski launched their crowdfunder for The Court of Dawn and Flame, a fey plane supplement</li>
Jeff Steven’s Games has announced a crowdfunder for their upcoming timescape supplement Threats of the Timescape</li>
Jenny [REDACTED] released videos on how to quickly prep maps, encounters and tokens in the codex</li>
Jonas Tintenseher launched a crowdfunder for their lithomantic fury subclass, the Earthwarden</li>
Minhajul Hoq released a 10 minute video showing off progress on their Draw Steel video game</li>
Rise Heroes Rise! has started live streaming their games, sometimes I'm also on there</li>
sciguymjm has put up a web page for their Draw Steel game Ironwrought</li>
Slightly Reckless Games has opened for pre-orders for Night Shift: Devil Division</li>
thousand_embers (Joshua A. Brooks) successfully funded their Bravo class</li>
And lastly, Zee Bashew published an Animated Spellbook video recounting a funny encounter he had while playing Crows.</li> </ul>
Blast From the Past</h1>
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.
Back in August of 2024, backers of the MCDM RPG got the first playtest packet with a game that resembles the final version. It was also the first thing to be published under the Creator License. Matt had been talking about the kind of license they wanted for months, and we finally got to see how open the game would be.
August was also the month of the first published adventure for Draw Steel. WitnessTTRPG published Wrath of the Iresouls, a year before the game was ready. I know they updated that adventure later to align with the updated rules. And I had WitnessTTRPG on Goblin Points talking about the adventure.
And lastly, August was also the month the final roster of classes was nailed down. There had been some discussions of whether the summoner should be in the core rules, but they decided on the talent instead. The summoner would use the minion rules, and they weren't done yet. The summoner design would be too delayed by that to be done in time.
Outro</h1>
I'm super happy to see the Crows crowdfunder going well. It's not going to reach Draw Steel levels of success, but I think it's having a solid success of it's own. And I also encourage you to check out the Kiln. The art and layout of that PDF is fantastic.
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</a>.
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.
Don't forget to get your power roll dice in my crowdfunder. Visit jondenor.com</a> to get to the campaign.
Next episode is on the 15th. That's going to be a chat with YourGMJay, whom you might know from his YouTube videos. The next Goblin Panel is on the 8th, tune in for discussions and comentary.
See you next time. Snakkes.
Links</h1>
Lunar Umbra</h2>

Lunar Umbra on BackerKit</a> by Jon de Nor</li> </ul>
Jams of the Timescape: Volume 3</h2>

Making a Zine for DRAW STEEL</a> by Archifex Art</li>
Bake or Break — A Cooking Encounter for Draw Steel by Dima Serbin</a> by Dima Serbin</li>
Eon Dragon by Font of Victories, chaoticgoodra, Tintenseher (they/them), Adventure Fourth</a> by Font of Victories</li>
Submissions to JotT #3: One Year of Draw Steel</a> by Jams of the Timescape</li> </ul>
From MCDM</h2>

Crows: Fortune or Death</a> on BackerKit</li>
Crows: Fortune or Death Project Update: We're Funded! Time To Talk About the Future</a> on BackerKit</li>
MCDM Forums</a> on MCDM Forums</li>
James Introcaso on Crows, MCDM, & Blood-Shooting Lizards</a> on Michael Ghelfi Studios</li>
Crack the Sun Act 3: Patreon Playtest | MCDM Productions</a> on Patreon</li>
Crows Crowdfunder and Playtest 2 Are Live! | MCDM Productions</a> on Patreon</li>
Crows: Fortune or Death - Crowdfunding Launch Party</a> on YouTube</li>
Crows: Funding Fortune or Death</a> on YouTube</li>
how big is Matt's dice collection? - YouTube</a> on YouTube</li> </ul>
Stawl Import in the Codex</h2>

Import Encounters from Stawl!</a> by DMHub</li> </ul>
Surge Announcement</h2>

Surge Announcement (coming September!) | Triglav Games</a> by Triglav Games</li>
2026 August Content for Supporters - Alassa Ancestry | Triglav Games</a> by Triglav Games</li> </ul>
The Kiln</h2>

The Kiln: A Fiery Class for Draw Steel (PDF)</a> by Look Out Behind You Studios</li> </ul>
Seeking the Secret Flame</h2>

Seeking the Secret Flame (PDF)</a> by Look Out Behind You Studios</li> </ul>
Kronoborus</h2>

Monsters of the Month: Kronoborus | Shadowhand Gaming</a> by Shadowhand Gaming</li> </ul>
Timescape Tracts</h2>

Timescape Tracts Issue 1 by Hypnos</a> by Hypnos</li> </ul>
Riam's Tears</h2>

Riam's Tears (A Nomas District - #1)</a> by Tabletop Nonsenseverse</li>
The Director's Guide to Nomas</a> by Tabletop Nonsenseverse</li> </ul>
Rockgawp</h2>

Liminal Ancestries: Rockgawp by Brandon Crilly - Author and Games Writer</a> by Brandon Crilly</li> </ul>
Community Highlights</h2>

The Magus - Draw Steel Wizard Class, Adventure and More!</a> by Aah! Books</li>
Hugran's March — Your Starting Area by Dima Serbin</a> by Dima Serbin</li>
Drawing Steel! Max Hamm's token art in the Codex</a> by DMHub</li>
Lava, Foliage, and More -- Dynamic Terrain Objects in the Codex!</a> by DMHub</li>
Our new experimental user interface</a> by DMHub</li>
Respites!</a> by DMHub</li>
Shadow Elves!</a> by DMHub</li>
User Interface Customization in the Codex</a> by DMHub</li>
Retainers in the Draw Steel Codex</a> by DMHub</li>
Draw Steel Wiki - Rules, Character Builder</a> by Draw Steel RPG Wiki</li>
[Crows Enemy Design] - Horrible Monsters for MCDM's Dungeon Crawler — Elephant Machine</a> by Elephant Machine</li>
[Crows Level Design] - Tactical Arenas for MCDM's Dungeon Crawler — Elephant Machine</a> by Elephant Machine</li>
[Draw Steel Quest] - Woe Below the Willow-Tree — Elephant Machine</a> by Elephant Machine</li>
The Side of D&D "Actual Plays" Can't Teach You.</a> by Frederica Teather</li>
The Court of Dawn and Flame - a new realm for Draw Steel!</a> by Heart of Arcana</li>
Threats of the Timescape - Scourges of Space</a> by Jeff Steven’s Games</li>
How To Make Pop Out Avatar Tokens In Draw Steel Codex</a> by Jenny [REDACTED]</li>
Jenny Redacted</a> by Jenny [REDACTED]</li>
Adding Bridges To Your Maps In Draw Steel Codex</a> by Jenny Redacted</li>
How To Use The Encounter Builder In Draw Steel Codex</a> by Jenny Redacted</li>
Get Ready for The Earthwarden — A Lithomantic Fury Subclass for DRAW STEEL</a> by Jonas Tintenseher</li>
Look Ma, I'm in the Codex | Max Hamm</a> by Max Hamm</li>
Draw Steel Prototype Video 8/28/2026</a> by Minhajul Hoq</li>
Rise Heroes Rise!</a> by Rise Heroes Rise!</li>
Ironwrought</a> by sciguymjm</li>
Pre-order Night Shift: Devil Division on BackerKit</a> by Slightly Reckless Games</li>
The Murder · a murder of crows</a> by TeakPK</li>
The Bravo - A Stylish Action Class for Draw Steel</a> by thousand_embers (Joshua A. Brooks)</li>
Animated Spellbook: CROWS (not d&d) - YouTube</a> by Zee Bashew</li> </ul>
Draw Steel Media</h2>

Draw Steel Campaign Diary 2</a> by Adamar</li>
Crows Passes $795,000 With Dungeons That Fight Back</a> by Backseat Game</li>
MCDM's New RPG 'Crows' Blends Fantasy, Survival Horror, And... Inventory Management - Bell of Lost Souls</a> by Bells of Lost Souls</li>
The Joy of Miniatures Painting 18 - Boneclaw</a> by Bobholder Ross</li>
Creating a Draw Steel Adventure from Scratch</a> by Chris Rendon</li>
CROWS Actual Play EXPLORING CORNATH Ruined Tower</a> by d20play</li>
Draw Steel Actual Play THE DARK HEART OF THE WOOD Grimstone Wood</a> by d20play</li>
The Delian Tomb: First time running Draw Steel!</a> by Derik Moore</li>
A Dramatic Reversal!</a> by DMHub</li>
RPG Crowdfunding News – Crows, Cypher, Monsters of Rend World, and...</a> by EN World</li>
Draw Steel! - Obsidia - Session 23</a> by GamingGoldy</li>
How To Use The Encounter Builder In Draw Steel Codex</a> by Jenny [REDACTED]</li>
Draw Steel: A Matter of Time Ep 3 - A Ship Under Siege</a> by Jim Ryan</li>
The D&D Killer I always Dreamed of</a> by Kephales</li>
The D&D Killer I always Dreamed of</a> by Kephales</li>
The Delian Tomb on the Codex Pt 9 | Draw Steel</a> by Milestone Play</li>
Watch</a> by Mystic Arts</li>
The Cave of Amber Tears | Session 1 | Draw Steel Live Play</a> by Rise Heroes Rise!</li>
The Condemned | Adventure Deep Dive</a> by Rise Heroes Rise!</li>
The Condemned | Adventure Deep Dive</a> by Rise Heroes Rise!</li>
The Condemned | Draw Steel Actual Play</a> by Rise Heroes Rise!</li>
Draw Steel Heroes Flip-through</a> by Ron Talks Tabletop</li>
Draw Steel Flips D&D’s Most Boring Mechanic (w/James Introcaso)</a> by Short Rest Studios</li>
Short Rest Studios</a> by Short Rest Studios</li>
James Introcaso talks Crows - MCDM's post apocalyptic dungeon crawler!</a> by shortreststudios</li>
(Crowdfund Quest) Crows: Fortune or Death</a> by Tabletop Sentinel</li>
MCDM's New TTRPG, Crows: Fortune or Death, Brings Dungeon Crawling Terror | TechRaptor</a> by TechRaptor</li>
How To Build Your Character In MCDM's Crows: Fortune or Death!</a> by The Character Sheet</li>
Watch</a> by The Character Sheet</li>
The Distant Horizon</a> by The Distant Horizon</li>
Draw Steel Episode 4: Post Mortem</a> by Tiny Table</li>
Tiny Table</a> by Tiny Table</li>
Wizardhood2003</a> by Wizardhood2003</li>
A year with Codex and Draw Steel</a> by YourGMJay</li> </ul>
Draw Steel Tools</h2>

Anvil VTT</a> by Anvil</li>
Balhaunis — Crows Village Map</a> by FlimtotheFlam</li>
Macros for running Delian Tomb in roll20</a> by Kill It With Fire!</li> </ul>

The Mythical Press: The New Monthly Monster Magazine | Interview

Jon de Nor — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Intro</h1>
I'm joined by Finn Brodie, the one-man-band behind The Mythical Press, a monthly magazine for Draw Steel. How does he intend to keep up pace, what can we look forward to and tell us more about the Rotterhund and the 2-in-1 siren.
I'm Jon de Nor and this is Goblin Points.
Interview</h1>
Jon de Nor: Welcome to Goblin Points, Finn Brodie!
Finn Brodie: Hi! Thanks for having me.
Jon de Nor: Let's hear a introduction about yourself, and also how you came into the Matt Colville/MCDM community.
Finn Brodie: This is the Mythical Press. I am the Mythical Press, I guess. I am the writer, the illustrator, and designer for everything. So everything you see in my magazines is purely me. I also have, I do wanna give a shoutout to my friends at Lychen. They've created a small band, at Lychen, and I want to do more folk music. And so they've been doing some music for me, which I'm hoping to release at a later date. So I also want to shut them out as well.
But, yeah, the Mythical Press is, we're in month two now, and the support from the MCDM community has been incredible. So just a segue into where I fit in all that as well is, I've been watching Matt Colville since, I think, his first year. I was very early on. I started playing D&D pretty much when 5e first came out and there was this perfect sort of world where I was first or second year of university, and I probably should have been doing more studying, but I discovered D&D. Critical Role had just came out and I'd started watching that.
I discovered Matt Colville from, I think...oh, I'm so I'm not sure. I just happened upon him and then just started watching videos and then, yeah, I was hooked. And going through like the early days of Campaign 1 for Critical Role, and I would go and watch Matt Colville's videos, and I'd spend hours writing stories and yeah, it was...and then Stranger Things came out as well. And yeah. So, I was really, when D&D was exploding, I was there. But I guess I don't...I haven't been...I haven't made it such a big part of my life until very recently when I was like...I got back into drawing during lockdown, and I was...
I didn't know that I wanted to be an illustrator. I enjoyed writing, but I'd always been a drawer, and that was my passion, is drawing and artwork and that kind of stuff. But the...I put it away for like so many years. And then during lockdown, I came back into it because I was playing more and I was playing twice a week, which is unheard of nowadays. And just seeing, and just, you know...I'd be running games and having these amazing moments from my friends and then just these images burned in my head, and I was like, "I need to get it down." And as soon as I started drawing all these images and these creatures and that kind of stuff, it's just reignited the spark within me and I realized I should have been doing it the whole time.
Yeah. So, and then that kind of evolved from there, and the past six years was just wanting to, yeah, create more stuff. And I'd created monsters all the time for my friends. I'm very used to breaking things and designing monsters, and I had my own thought processes about how monsters should be designed and how they should look, and being disappointed in 5e creatures, and then thinking I can make this better. I think I can make this more interesting.
And then, yeah, just evolved and evolved and evolved. And so I saw making D&D creatures. So the Mythical Press is actually not new for Draw Steel. I was actually doing the exact same thing for D&D for a good six to...maybe eight months, I think. But I just got nowhere. There was no, I was you know, I was posting like fairly regularly every month, a new creature was coming out. and it looked quite similar to what my magazines are now, but there was just no appetite for it, I guess. I would get a few, like, a few people coming through and looking at that kind of stuff and maybe some would become a member. But really there was nothing.
And then Draw Steel came out a few months after I'd released Mythical Press for D&D. And it was Flee, Mortals that pushed me to make Mythical Press, because I thought, you know, Flee, Mortals did amazingly, there's clearly an appetite here, a desire for people who want more tactical monsters, and something with a little more grit and something for them to like chew on as DMs.
But when it came down to and there was no interest, I kind of thought, well, if all the people — and then Draw Steel obviously was doing amazingly — there a tiny little part of me that thought, "Well, if everybody who liked Flee, Mortals...I think probably have just come over to Draw Steel, I imagine. Then that's clearly where my audience are. Those people who want to see that's what they are." And I was already inside Draw Steel. Like I backed it, what, three years ago, now? I'd backed it before I even made the first Mythical Press and then yeah, it came out.
And then I kind of stayed away from it. I didn't want to really delve into it until I got my, the book, since I know, like, the early playtest stuff was coming out, and people were reading that and talked about it, but I largely stayed away from it until I got the physical books. We were playing a campaign for the Fallout TTRPG with my friends, and that came to a natural close. And then we were all chomping at the bit to play Draw Steel, and I was really excited to play Draw Steel.
And then as soon as that happened, we were all hooked on that, and that's when I started...that's when I closed the Mythical Press's chapter with D&D and just thought, it's much easier, in a way, to make stuff, make creatures and interesting mechanics around creatures, for Draw Steel than it is for D&D. Which is one thing that really surprised me actually, because I used to find my ideas for the creatures would overreach D&D's mechanics, I guess. Like, if I wanted to...let's say I did a dragon or something, some sort of creature like that. I thought, you know, a cool chase scene down a mountain. You know, you've just stolen one of its treasure and you escape down the mountain while it's chasing you. That could be a really cool thing.
I would have to invent montage tests and rules for that to happen. I can't just give you, I can't just use the template that Draw Steel has for their montage tests and be like, and do it for mine. I had to create the rules myself. And that was draining and took ages. And it wasn't very fun. But then, as soon as I came to Draw Steel, I'm like, well, the montage tests are just there. And all the books come with, like the encounter books for the different stories come with tactics pages on how to basically do a fight with each creature. And I was like, right, I can use that as a template and riff off of that and make it my own and make it more interesting and do it for my creatures.
It was just like they were...square peg in a round hole with D&D. And then when it came to Draw Steel, it just fit perfectly, Which is, it makes sense because it was Matt Colville and Flee, Mortals, that kind of stuff, that pushed me to make this kind of stuff, and then the game that they made for themselves is the one that just fits naturally.
So yeah. And then once I released it, Mythical Press for Draw Steel, I wanted to really get into tune, and meet the community, I guess, which is not something I've really done before. I never got into the D&D community. I was just playing with my friends and that was it. But since this became much more serious for me than just the game I played once a week...yeah, it's been, I've started recognizing names now, and people are commenting, and I know them, and they commented before, and this person is a member and sees me in the comments and that kind of stuff, or liking this, and it feels much more of a community rather than just an empty theater with about five people that I was trying to shelter. It feels more like a more enclosed room, but a full room rather than just trying to shout into an empty theater. So it's been a wonderful experience, the past two months. And I'm hoping for more.
Jon de Nor: And speaking of past two months, because you've been you've set a pace of one magazine a month, which is, I would say, very ambitious. Are you confident you're going to be able to keep up with that pace?
Finn Brodie: So it's...it is once a month. But with three breaks a year.
Jon de Nor: Okay, but still though! (laughter)
Finn Brodie: Yeah, it is...I have set a pace. But I've also made, I'm also working four months ahead. So I'm currently working on November's release, and then we'll be having December break, which means that when I start work on the creature after that, which should be done in September, I'm working on January's. So I'm very much working ahead of myself, which is what's, when I stopped doing D&D creatures, I basically spent four months making content, so that when I when I was ready to release, I'm working ahead of myself. I'm not chasing my tail constantly. And the break every three months really does stagger it quite nicely for me.
I find each one typically takes around 3 to 4 weeks to make. So it's basically one a month. And then with a month break. So as long as I don't fall behind, it should be...I feel confident that I'm working at a nice pace. The month breaks are purely because, you know, unforeseen things can happen. Like, we're having a break for, September because I'm moving, which is a stressful time. I don't want to add to stress and feel like I need to rush out something. I also don't want to, you know, if I try and rush something, then the content's not gonna...I feel like it will tell.
So yeah. And I feel like the base design for each magazine is, I think, can be thrown together quite quickly. I usually, I spend a bit of time sort of getting some ideas together, and references, and I'll watch some things and that'll give me some more ideas. And now I can basically just vomit out all the words and every idea, and I'll just have these massive brainstorms, and I find from there, it all just flows very quickly
But I will, I also intersperse it with...some creatures, I feel, deserve more content, and other creatures are just something you just want to just hack and slash at and they're just great for one big fight, and that's their purpose. And then some creatures, like the witch that will be coming out in October, has a lot more content surround it than the rotterhund or the siren. There's no montage test; there wasn't one in my head that came to me that I felt would be a good fit. So I just didn't include it. But there are negotiations. There's a whole page for negotiations with a witch.
Jon de Nor: Makes sense. (laughter)
Finn Brodie: Exactly, yeah. I don't want to force a montage test where I don't feel like there is one. But a negotiation can replace that and work perfectly. So, you know, it's the information on, like, what she might want and what she might be able to give. Which I think — with negotiations, I've also listened to the feedback from the community about how some things in Draw Steel are lacking. Which is absolutely fine. Like, we all love this game, but it's not a perfect game.
Jon de Nor: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Finn Brodie: But there's this room to grow there. So I'm excited, I'm really excited for the witch. I don't want to speak too much about it, but I've been working with some friends that I think are gonna, kind of...should maybe change negotiations a little bit, and get people thinking about how they could apply similar things to every creature, potentially with a negotiation. It made sense to me when I was making a witch that a negotiation with a creature like that should feel meaningfully different.
In the same way you imagine, like, negotiation with a dragon, you know, in the books, there's a bit for negotiating with the dragon, that says you can swap this out with a king or something like that. And that doesn't feel right to me. It doesn't feel like you could be able to swap out a negotiation with a dragon with a king. A negotiation with a dragon should feel like you're negotiating with a dragon.
So I imagine, like in The Hobbit, where, you know, Smaug's eyes come over Bilbo and he starts sweating profusely and he gets the shakes. I feel like that should be a thing in negotiating with a dragon. You know, you lose Recoveries for like, how long you for...for each negotiation you make, its always like, fall on you. That kind of makes it feel like you're negotiating with a dragon. So I've had that mindset going into it. So hopefully that comes across, and hopefully I make more in the future.
Jon de Nor: I'm very intrigued now by the witch.
Finn Brodie: Yeah. I'm really excited for it to come out. I think there's a there's a lot that I'm working with there, and it probably...I'm confident people will find a lot to love there. But I'm also happy that it's almost like a...not a first draft in a way, but it's definitely stuff that maybe we haven't seen that much from Draw Steel yet. So I'm excited to get some feedback from that from the community. And then do more of that in the future after having listened to them. So yeah, I'm very excited.
Jon de Nor: I'm a sucker for negotiations. I love the idea and...but the implementation in the core rules doesn't live up to my ideas necessarily. (laughter) But I feel like they are incorrectly maligned by parts of the community. I think they have a lot of potential. I just think they need a bit longer in the oven. So now I'm really looking forward to the witch, because I've also looked at a supplement recently called Speak Carefully, which kind of tries to do a mix of stuff with negotiations. And there's also, The Withering War, which also leans heavily on negotiations, according to the author. I feel like I'm...(laughter)...I'm getting all these treats now.
Finn Brodie: I want more.
Jon de Nor: Yeah! (laughter)
Finn Brodie: The first negotiations my players, and I ever had. It was kind of like...it was odd. It felt like we were doing something wrong, but then it all, like, suddenly clicked with all of us at the same time. And the rest was just a blast. And we had such fun with our first negotiation.
But then naturally, we did more negotiations and I start to see what the cracks are. And I thought, okay, there's there's a sense of like...my players aren't dumb. They've been playing TTRPGs with me for about ten years now. And we've played quite a few as well. So they know how to...they know how a game is played. and they know that they can maybe win it in a certain way. And that's kind of what I don't like with negotiations. There's a sense of, "I can win this." Like, the devil character knows they can ask a question every single time, and they'll probably get a likely answer because they're very good at it. As in, ask them what they want, and potentially get one of their motivations, or learn what one of their pitfalls are. And there's a sense of game in that.
So yeah, that's that's where I get into the sense of like, some creatures should be able to, you know...like the players have ways of interacting with negotiations, but monsters don't. And I feel like that's unfair. (laughter) So I'm intrigued for monsters to have their own abilities and their own traits that work within negotiations. I can imagine there are some creatures that are quite impatient. And might grow more angry the more you ask them what they want. So it just forces the players to think a little bit more rather than just be like, slamming the "What do you want?" button.
So yeah. I've got ideas and I'm excited to implement them a little bit more. The witch is like the first draft of that, I think. So I'm excited to see what people think. And maybe I can do better in the future, or if people start using that for themselves and thinking for themselves about how other creatures would have, similar traits. But yeah, I'm excited.
Jon de Nor: And speaking of creatures, let's jump back to the first issue, the rotterhund.
Finn Brodie: Yeah, I mean, there's...the rotterhund came to me in a fever dream. (laughter) And the name I just plucked out of...I literally think I dreamed it up at one point, but it's stuck in my head. But, like, big black hounds are rife in old folklore. And that's the kind of stories that I'm really interested in. And I'm excited to bring that to Draw Steel. That kind of, like, Scandinavian or Old English or Celtic folklore. The rotterhund is based off of like, a Welsh creature and also the barghest. So it's one of those...it fits into that same category of "large black hound", but an original take on it as well.
Jon de Nor: My immediate thought went to the Hounds of Baskerville for some reason.
Finn Brodie: Yeah, there's that as well. That's on me. It's like, large black hounds are a thing for typically European English folklore, it's definitely a thing. So I was really excited, and that's my own creation. So I was excited to for that to be my debut feature, I guess.
Jon de Nor: It feels very mythological immediately with the...I wrote down "baby-snatching theme". It sounds a bit horrible, but you also have a content warning on the first page, second page about, about there being, like, infanticide, and there might be a sensitive topic to some. Which I appreciate, but it also makes it feel very...to me, it immediately feels very, like, Brothers Grimm kind of a fairy tale, where...which often are very grotesque, and the modern versions, retellings, are much more sanitized.
Finn Brodie: Definitely. Very watered down, very kid-friendly, instead of being strictly kid-unfriendly. (laughter) But yeah, it was one of those things where I saw that Draw Steel also had content warnings for their stuff. And my initial response was not to include a content warning. It wasn't like — not that my initial thought was to omit it. It's just I didn't think about it. But when I thought, when I had a deeper thought about it...you know, you don't know what people's backstories are. I don't want my creatures to come across...like, my creatures are rooted in quite dark fantasy. But that doesn't mean that that has to be a dark fantasy creature. I feel like it can just be a large black hound that is aggressive, and that'll be absolutely fine.
But also, if people ever wanted a darker take for their tales, which is a very classic fairy tale thing, it can also fit that door perfectly. I don't want to, I would hate to read through that and think, "Oh, this is a really cool monster," and then read about it snatching children and then be like, "Eh, it's not my bag, I'll stop reading."
Jon de Nor: Yeah, yeah.
Finn Brodie: That's sad. I would hate for someone to be reading my magazines and see that. So, something I'll be thinking about going forward is just, does this creature have a very strong sense, or part of its story, do something where I feel like it really does need a content warning? And it's, I more and more lean more towards dark fantasy stuff. It's the old Celtic, the European folktales are pretty gnarly. They're not...they're pretty gruesome. And I really enjoy that, and a lot of people do, but it's not for everyone. And I know that. Don't want to put people off unnecessarily.
Jon de Nor: I think also the cover image of the rotterhund is fantastic. And it just, it immediately evoked like the right kind of vibe with how dark it is and the...just the, like the parts of the hound being like, the innards being exposed, and the chaos of the legs. (laughter)
Finn Brodie: Yeah, the legs were to anyone who's an artist out there, the composition for all six legs was difficult. It was difficult to not make it look like they're just everywhere. But no, I'm really happy with it. It was, I really...the style I want to go for the Mythical Press covers is that classic heavy metal magazine.
Jon de Nor: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Finn Brodie: Like the old Frazettas and that kind of that, Boris Vallejo. But with probably less naked women. So, a more modern-friendly version. Yeah, so that's what inspired the images. And also that was one of the things I changed from D&D, of, I kind of put it...down with a little bit of a "illustrator tries to make his way in the world" tangent: I was trying to treat every cover, when I was doing Mythical Press for D&D, like a portfolio piece. And I was putting a lot of work into it, and I'm quite proud of them. I learned a lot. I can do that. I know I can do better now, but only because I've made mistakes with them. And I spent a lot of time with them. And I now know I can do my artwork to a higher length to those higher standards.
But the covers took like three weeks, right? It's just not tenable. I could have done it sooner, but I also work part time through all this time. I also change up just the style of my covers, where I want to throw everything at the wall and make them really like awesome, and eye-catching, and very heavy metal. But they also need to be simple. And I need to not get carried away. I want to throw literally everything at the wall. It just needs to stand...yeah, it's very much like I need to not treat every piece like it's gonna go sit in my portfolio. Every single piece should just be a fun and awesome cover that takes me a week to make, without having to...
So yeah, that's another sort of thing that's giving me the confidence to be, I think I can manage a monthly magazine because I made all the mistakes with the first iteration of Mythical Press. And stressing myself out unnecessarily, and each magazine would take two weeks to write and then two and a half weeks, up to three weeks, to make the cover for. And as soon as it gets past that one-month mark, I know I'm now dealing with time I don't have. So I really trimmed everything down to get to a stage where I can feel like this is doable within 3 to 4 weeks.
Jon de Nor: I also wanted to talk about one part of the design of the rotterhund, because...you call it a dirge hound. like it's commonly known as a dirge hound. And it has this dirge mechanic where it starts getting louder and louder the further into combat you go. Where...? To me, it almost read like...like, Malice is like the Heroic Resource of the Director, but the dirge points that you've added to the rotterhund almost feels like a Heroic Resource for the rotterhund specifically, where there are certain triggers that makes it build up more and more of these dirge points, which then translates into more powerful attacks. Or at least...yeah.
Finn Brodie: Yeah. I think it gains 1 at the start of each turn, and then it has different Malice features that also give it more dirge points, or give its dirge, like, the next time people hear it, it weakens them or something like that. But I'm not really sure where the idea of the dirge came from. Draw Steel just has...designing for it is so open-ended. I feel like I can just add in something like dirge points and it feels normal and natural and intuitive.
But yeah, it was, it was really a sense of...I wanted players to, again, think more. It's not just a case of, you know, you know, the big tanks go in and start harrying it. It's like, well, it also hits very hard. And if I start my turn right next to it, I'll be taking a chunk more damage. So it plays really interesting. It's almost like this thing of, get in close, but then also, I don't want to be next to it, so I need to leave and get away from it. And so it plays really interestingly. And I would love to hear if anyone has stories, if they've used it in their game, stories about it because, it's a really fun monster.
I guess that also leads me on to the Director's Cut for the higher tier, where I get to like, expand on the monsters a little bit more. So I think the dirge for the base version of the rotterhund, they just built up dirge points, and it just progresses throughout the fight. But for the Director's Cut, it builds more, it gets more dirge points off its turn, but the players have a way to interact with it. If they hit it really hard, it might knock the rotterhund off its dirge and it decreases the dirge points. And there's an element of...but it really relies on the Director telegraphing that to the players. Or even just flat out telling them this is how it works.
And then they get to feel like their decisions within the fight matter, you know. And I think that's really that's really important for TTRPGs and just battles in general, like the players should feel like their ideas and their tactics, whether they work or if they roll a little bit lower and it doesn't happen, they feel like their decisions matter. So that was that was a really fun thing to extrapolate on, was to create that side of it.
And that's really what I like, for my monsters to feel like the players have some kind of agency, like, what they do to the creatures matters. Like with the siren, they can kill its lure. They knock out a part of it, and the siren is bleeding. So there's a there's a tactical element to, you know, which one of them do you target first?
Jon de Nor: I really like that part of the siren design where the lure comes as a companion, almost, to the siren. But they need to stay adjacent to the siren at all times. And as you mentioned both, if you kill the lure first, you make the siren bleeding, but also, if you try to push the lure away, they also take damage because it's not like physically possible for them to separate like that.
Finn Brodie: Yes, yeah. That was really fun. It is quite a chunk of text, but I feel like it's one of those times where you read once and you've got the idea. It's pretty intuitive. But there is a really fun element of, everyone knows what siren is, so I was really excited to sort of bring this idea of like it's, you know, there's more to the siren lurking beneath the surface. And that was another really fun idea that I ran with.
But yeah, that design was really interesting and fun and...yeah, I didn't want to, I didn't want people to feel like, you know, if I force move the lure away from the siren, that nothing happens. Again, it should feel like they have agency and, you know, maybe it happens once and they see what happens and how they both take damage, and then the Null player just starts doing Knockback on the lure as much as possible.
Yeah. So it's just fun. I want my monsters to be fun. I want them to be interesting, and memorable, and...interesting. Fun.
Jon de Nor: I was really pleasantly surprised, when reading the second issue with the siren and the lure, that it wasn't all going to be solo monsters, because that was what I imagined initially, when you announced the magazine that, well, there's going to be one monster a month. Well, that's clearly going to be a solo. And it was for the first month. (laughter) But then for the second issue, you immediately went to an elite, and the lure as a horde, I think. So you created a very different encounter with those. And I really appreciated that it wasn't just, oops, all solos. (laughter)
Finn Brodie: Yeah! I mean, there is, I would like to see more solo monsters. And they are super fun. But I feel like if I only do solo monsters, it's very limiting. I'm limiting myself. But then it creates such a certain idea of, you know, it's a conversation I had to have with myself because, do I do also the monsters, or, you know, you think about...wyverns are a good example. You would think that wyverns might be like a solo monster, but there's two versions of it. If I don't want a creature to be a solo, do I then have to include two versions of it to make people feel like they're actually having enough content?
So it's something that I'm going to be...I'm going to take each monster on its own, and decide whether I think it's, you know, it needs to be a solo monster, or I can get two variations from it. So I think a lot of them will end up being solo monsters. But I do have ideas in the future about that weren't all there weren't always that.
Jon de Nor: I also wanted to mention, because before the monster statblocks, you do include, like, a bit of...well, both a backstory, or like some context for the monster itself, and you also include story hooks for the Director, like, why would the heroes end up fighting the sirens, for example? And you have some small hooks the Director can kind of get inspired by.
Finn Brodie: Yeah, I...it just it feels intuitive, like why would a monster magazine about a monster not include...? They don't have to be...I kind of toyed with the idea of how big or in-depth they need to be. And I tend towrad the solution that people enjoy writing their own stories. I don't think I need to give them any more than just like an idea that maybe they didn't have, a different way to think about it. Even if it just jolts a story out of their heads and they immediately start writing. I want to give people the tools to make their own fun. I don't want to do it for them or hold their hands, because people don't want that.
I think, from...the general consensus is that a majority of people don't play pre-made stories. I think that a lot of people probably did The Delian Tomb, but I think a lot of people just make their own stories. I did it. The Delian Tomb, I think, is the second pre-made story I've ever run in any TTRPG in ten years. Working through the book was a new experience for me.
So yeah, I don't want to take it off of them. I just want to give them the tools to do it themselves. And it's just a little, like a quick bullet point, a story idea they haven't thought of and it jolts, you know, it gets the creative juices flowing, that's a win for me.
Jon de Nor: And speaking of creative...juices, I guess...(laughter)...something that you include for both of the monsters is both a battlemap, but not just...because you mentioned in the text that Draw Steel, almost more than a lot of other TTRPGs, need good battlemaps. And you include both a battlemap, but also interesting features on those battlemaps, where not only like there is elevation, which I think is essential, but also like, other features of the terrain that you mention in the text for the map.
Finn Brodie: The creatures, it's their lair. It's their home. There should be elements of it that work for them, and then maybe some elements will work against them. So it's just more fun. I feel like a...it's like when you're in a video game and you're playing through an open world and you're exploring, and you're like, "Oh, I wonder if this area does this?"And you go over and it doesn't. Someone didn't cook quite hard enough here.
So I think it would be sad to create a map for a monster and not have it have these other features. Even me, when I'm making the maps, when I'm drawing them, it's fun for me to be like, "Oh, I could include some sharks in the water here." And then I can just create some small quick rule that's just...it's just fun. Yeah, so it's just more...again, it's...fun. And that's really what I'm aiming for with these creatures.
And also...I guess, the foundation of the Mythical Press is built on my disappointment for D&D's monsters. I think Fizban's Treasury of Dragons was the first one for me where I was super excited for the book, I bought the book, expecting to find all these monsters, all these dragons are super interesting. And they were just bland and boring and watered down. And I was like, not what I envisioned a book about dragons would be.
So I want to put in the effort. And basically, everything within my magazines is what I wish I had. If I saw that there was a magazine for Draw Steel and I was making monsters, what would I want to see in that? I feel like if I had a map, but with no annotations about it or any kind of useful tips or tools or ways to make it more interesting, that would be a loss. So it's important to me that the monsters and their lair feel like one coherent thing, rather than just the monsters and a random map. It should feel like this map was made for this monster.
Jon de Nor: That is so very often missing from, like, I feel, monsters in general, but with Draw Steel, as you mentioned, with good maps being so important, I think, for a better combat feel...I was really impressed with...
Finn Brodie: Well, thank you.
Jon de Nor: With both the maps and the art and just how much there is for each of the monsters. I mean, for the rotterhund, you even have like a companion for...
Finn Brodie: Yeah, that wsd my...(laughter)...the companion was a later addition to the rotterhund. But I was telling my friend about it — and my friend is, Lychen is his band, so he's making music for Mythical Press. But I was telling him about it, and what I'd created, and he was like, "Oh, that's really cool. Can you have one as like a pet?"
Jon de Nor: (laughter)
Finn Brodie: And I was like...the Beastheert has just come out. And I was like, "I've got to now, haven't I? I can't not now. I need...the rotterhund deserves to have a companion." So it was a later edition, but one that, as soon as he said that, I was like, yeah, it really needs one. And that's kind of where my ideas for the creatures come from. It's like, what does this creature deserve to make it feel mean and impactful and interesting? You know, like, a montage test to find the sirens — which I did not plan come out around The Odyssey.
Jon de Nor: (laughter) Oh, I didn't think of that! That's so good!
Finn Brodie: I'm not...I didn't plan it. If people thought I did, I'm very appreciative that they think I'm that clever. But yeah, it was just a happy coincidence. But, you know, it's that classic thing of being on the ship, and the sirens, and trying to find them through the mist, or hearing them through the mist. So that was, like, immediately, they deserve a montage test that does exactly that. And the rotterhund, like, similarly. And then the witch doesn't have a montage test, because there wasn't one that came to mind where I was like, the witch feels like she needs a montage test. But she definitely feels like she needed some rules for negotiation.
So each monster has...what comes with it is what I feel they deserve. And yeah, so that's basically my thought process when I created each one.
Jon de Nor: I really appreciate both having, like, a framework, but also being flexible about, tweaking or bending the framework when it needs to be bent to make it feel more...yeah.
Finn Brodie: Yeah, exactly. If my idea for each magazine is that it has to have a montage test, then I start thinking, "Okay, I'm doing this witch. I don't have an idea for a montage test. I need to come up with an idea." Rather than the idea just being there, and I'm like, "Well, I need to do this."
Jon de Nor: Yeah, yeah.
Finn Brodie: Because I feel like that will show in the design, and it will feel forced. And I want to respect players and not have to feel like I'm just I'm giving them something because I feel like they...it should...like, I did the montage test for the last one, this one needs one as well. But they were all...and sometimes I think a little bit more about the ideas, but as soon as I have an idea that I'm really happy with, and I get like hungry to make it, then I know I'm onto a winner, there. So yeah, I'm excited to play around with more, really.
Jon de Nor: And the last thing that I noted down that you make for each of the months, or at least so far, for the two we've seen, is a title for killing them, for like, here's the reward of taking one of them down.
Finn Brodie: Exactly, yeah. I mean, I want...my content is mainly for Directors, I guess, because I've always been the gamer and I've always been the GM, the DM, the Director. It's just in my blood to write and tell stories. And I love it. But I don't also want my content to only be for Directors. It's rather limiting. As a business, it's limiting for Mythical Press.
So yeah. But I'm happy to be the champion for Directors, who love monsters. The Mythical Press is a love letter to everyone who enjoys including my creatures in their stories, that are interesting, that...it's, Mythical Press is for you people, for those people.
But yeah, obviously, the players are...you know, you can't you can't...there are some games that do, like, you can just play a one-player TTRPG. But Draw Steel's not one of them. And so I also want to give them, you know, the players a reward for killing the creatures, and have that also be like a fun thing. What I like about titles as well is, you can kind of...it's almost like an item in a way. I've been playing around with that a little more. Like one of the options for the siren, for the title, was that they make a skin from its hide. And then the players get to have fun being like, imagining their, you know, imagining their players with a cape made from this, you know, sea serpent skin, that gives them some sort of benefits. And that's really fun as well. I feel like that's...players will enjoy that. And Directors will enjoy giving their players that. So yeah, it's fun.
Jon de Nor: I want to ask you one last question that I...or rather, I'm curious about what your ambitions are with the Mythical Press. Like how...is it a goal for you to make it like a part-time gig, or even more than that? Or is it like, is it your side project? (laughter)
Finn Brodie: The Mythical Press is, I hope I'll be doing it for years, and...my hope is that it can take over my part-time job, and I get to do it full-time. That is my hope. And the support so far in the past two months has been incredible. And it makes me feel like I'm on the right path for that. So I'm definitely gonna be providing more, but I definitely have plans for the Mythical Press to get bigger and better. I think it's going to keep to a monthly, like, nine releases a year. That will be that what it's largely going to be, but I do have ideas for other products to make, like books, and larger PDFs, where maybe there's like an archetype of creature that kind of deserves, rather than just have...again, it comes back to what this creature I feel like deserves. If there's a certain archetype of creature that maybe we haven't seen much in Draw Steel, I feel like there's a big opening there.
Yeah, if there's hunger there and people really want to see, like, more this kind of stuff, or I know that I want to see this kind of stuff in Draw Steel...if that archetype can't be put into one magazine, it was a thought I had of whether I have like issues where, for the next three months, it's just this archetype, and it's different versions.
Jon de Nor: Oh!
Finn Brodie: Yeah. And I might have ideas for some creatures that I think will fit that better. But then there are other types of creatures where I'm like, I feel like you want one big book with just everything you need, if you're like, I want this kind of creature in Draw Steel. And this one product from Mythical Press is the one-stop shop for...you don't need anything else. This is it.
So, I've got some very early ideas. And I'm beginning to make, like, the frameworks of how I'm putting them together. I think they'll probably be going to BackerKit rather than just Patreon, as larger products that I can work on. That basically transition...is my transitional period from the Mythical Press being a part-time love, to being...my full-time, you know, love.
Jon de Nor: (laughter)
Finn Brodie: (laughter) So, yeah, I don't want to give away too much. But if there's...I feel like if there's a certain kind of creature that anyone out there is like, I really want to see this creature in Draw Steel, then that's my kind of thought of, I don't want people to have to have, like, sift through multiple issues to like, piece together everything they need for this one creature, one kind of creature. I'd much rather create one book where they can be like, I need this one thing for all of that.
And I might include things in the future where it's just extrapolations off of that, and maybe I'll release them as bundles so they have them all in one place, but...I'm struggling whether I would give way too much or say anything. I'm scared that I'll utter the word of the creature on my mind, and then someone will steal my idea, and I won't be able to do it! (laughter) I'm gonna go for it, I'm gonna go for it. There's no particular timeline. I would love to be able to release it — not release it, but at least, release it on BackerKit next year. But I do have a whole idea for basically dinosaurs in Draw Steel.
Jon de Nor: Oh, yeah.
Finn Brodie: Which we, I think, in Look Out!, there are some, but I've got some ideas about how I can make that really, really fun. And, yeah, I'm excited. I'm excited for that to be my first big project, rather than the smaller projects. I can work on it throughout the year, if it succeeded, and then release it when it's ready. So yeah, I'm really excited for the next year. I'm really excited for 2027 for Mythical Press. I think it's gonna be...I think I'm going to have a lot of fun. I think people are gonna really enjoy what I release.
And also, on top of that, one of the things I wanted to talk about is also. in the month breaks we have, so after every three issues I'll have a month break. But I'm basically spending that month off with a poll, basically, for people to vote on for the next creatures that get to come out. As I said, the Mythical Press is, you know, my love letter to all the Directors and storytellers out there who want to include interesting creatures. I want them to have some type of agency over what they get to see. So I'll be, in December, I'll be holding a poll for March's release in 2027. I'm really excited for that, because I feel like that's going to be like a, almost like a community-chosen creature. And that's going to be really fun. I'm really excited for that.
Jon de Nor: We are closing in on the hour, and I always ask my guests to bring some kind of recommendation, or recommendations, to the listeners. So what have you brought?
Finn Brodie: I've been reading recently. I just rereading Robin Hobb's sagas. But it's books that I really enjoy. I read them when I was a teenager. And I can roughly remember what happened, but I'm now rereading them, and they are...I went from reading a couple of books that were a bit hard to chew through — so there were like a 300-page book, and I was taking far too long to read 300 pages — and then I've read 300 pages in about a week. I've chewed through her books, and they're amazing. So, Robin Hobb is a fantastic author, great storyteller. Yeah, so, if anyone's currently wanting a new book to read, jump on that, because they're fantastic.
Jon de Nor: An unknown recommendation for my part, but, I'll make sure to look into it because I'm looking for books to read. (laughter)
Finn Brodie: Yeah, and honestly, they're fantastic, they're good.
Jon de Nor: It has been a delight to have you on. I'm really excited about the upcoming issues of the Mythical Press, because the first two issues have really given me a taste for more.
Finn Brodie: Yeah, that's kind of what I wanted. I feel like they're both strong in their own right, but they're definitely, like, stepping stones to larger stuff. And, the witch I think, has been my most ambitious project yet. So I'm really excited for that. I don't want to overshadow the wode hag in Draw Steel, which is a really fun monster. It didn't really quite scratch the itch of the witch that...I'm a poet and I didn't know it.
Yeah, it didn't really scratch the itch of what I like to see from those kind of creatures. So my imagining of the witch is more in line with, like the Crones from The Witcher III, or Robert Eggers's The VVitch. Those kind of, more so, gritty, grounded, scary version of the witch, that's kind of what I've been in mind towards. So I don't want to — I feel like they can work in a vacuum, and work together almost, and feel like they can fit in their own category nicely without you having to choose which one you want to use.
Jon de Nor: I'm very much looking forward to it. (laughter)
Jon de Nor: Thank you so much for coming on, Finn. It's it's been great.
Finn Brodie: This has been incredible. Thank you so much.
Outro</h1>
Thank you so much for coming on Finn. I've really been enjoying the first two issues, and especially the siren. I think the design for the siren looks really interesting, and it invites the players to think tactically different.
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</a>.
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.
Also, if you're listening to this when the episode drops, my crowdfunder for power roll dice, called Lunar Umbra, just went live. If you want some proper 20-sided d10s and useful d3/6s, check it out on BackerKit</a>. Link is in the description and on GoblinPoints.com</a>.
Next episode is on the 5th. That's the new episode for August, all that's new in one place.
See you next time. Snakkes.
Links</h1>

The Mythical Press — A Guild dedicated to the discovery of monsters and their lairs. | Patreon</a></li>
Robin Hobb bibliography - Wikipedia</a></li> </ul>

Paul Hughes: The Man in Charge of Draw Steel | Interview

Jon de Nor — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Intro</h1>
It's the man with the plan, for Draw Steel. Paul Hughes is on Goblin Points talking about Draw Steel, what the future will bring, how it's going with Crack the Sun, and what the signs of a healthy Draw Steel game and community is.
I'm Jon de Nor and this is Goblin Points.
Interview</h1>
Jon de Nor: Welcome to Goblin Points, Paul Hughes!
Paul Hughes: Hey, how are you doing?
Jon de Nor: So for those who — I don't know, I feel like everyone should know who you are. But for those who might not know who you are, tell us a bit about yourself, and I'm also interested in knowing how you became aware of either Matt Colville and MCDM general.
Paul Hughes: Okay, so I am...and I'm going to try to think of what my title is. I think it might be Line Editor, or Line Lead, for Draw Steel. That's basically the person who spends half their time developing Draw Steel and half their time looking at spreadsheets, versus the other Draw Steel developers who just get to develop all day. And I came up through the ranks of freelancers at MCDM, working on the core books, working on Flee, Mortals, et cetera. And before that, I've been doing lots of freelance RPG writing for a bunch of years, and I find myself very lucky to have, like, the best job in the industry. So here we are!
I've always been really interested in monster design. And so it was sort of impossible to not be aware of, Matt Colville's take on monster design for 5e. And it, you know, sort of was...it's a great take, and was sort of in alignment with the way I treated...solo monsters, I've always been really interested in narratively, and sometimes you just want to fight one bad guy and you want them to be super cool. And how can we build out the technology to do that? Because at the time, when Matt Colville was primarily doing his advice for 5e, and when I was primarily writing for 5e, the technology wasn't fully baked out to make legendary creatures as cool as they could be. So I think we both spent a lot of time on, how can we publish a monster that as cool as the ones that we run in our home game?
Jon de Nor: Ah, okay, yeah.
Paul Hughes: So, yeah, you know, I was sort of a watcher and an enjoyer of Matt Colville's stuff, and followed the Kickstarters, and was always happy to see big numbers on Kickstarters because it's such a sign of the health of the industry. Which I was really invested in both because — primarily because, it's awesome that people are playing this game, and secondarily because I was like, you know, I really would like to work in this field. And so I want there to be some money floating around so that that can make it happen.
Jon de Nor: Yeah, speaking of monsters...because I almost know you as the monster guy. (laughter)
Paul Hughes: Right? Yeah, I've done a lot of stuff with 5e. I've done a lot of, sort of, "What if I put all the monster stats into spreadsheets and figure out averages and stuff?" It's one of the one of the ways in which my desire to save myself work always buys myself a lot of work, because I'm always like...I want to run monsters on the fly. I don't want to just be stuck with what another designer did. So in order to do that, I think I should reverse-engineer how monsters work and do all these calculations so that I can, you know, I can spend...I can spend 100 hours so that I can save 5 hours of game prep.
Which is, I don't know why I ever thought it was a good idea, but it ended up with me putting a lot of stuff on my blog about how I thought 5e monsters were designed. And before that, I'd also done 4e monsters back in the, you know, the 4e days, and taking that here. And I've also...sort of like, another 5e guy who also does this is Sly Flourish, Mike Shea, we've sort of independently worked on reverse-engineering monster design and have come to a lot of the same conclusions, which makes me very excited. And we've sort of collaborated on stuff like that.
And this, I believe, was sort of influential, in some ways, on Draw Steel as it was being developed. And Draw Steel takes a kind of a similar, very mathy approach to building monsters. Which I appreciate, because I think you have to do the math, because you're going to be throwing a dart and it's going to be hitting somewhere on the target. And if you do the math, you know where that is and can control it.
Jon de Nor: There have been teasers that at some point, MCDM might publish the monster math, the math behind the monsters, in more detail than it is already in the Monsters book. And I've had patrons ask about this, because the homebrew community is very...they have reverse-engineered a lot of the math, but they — what they actually want is like the —
Paul Hughes: Like, "Is there a spreadsheet we could have?"
Jon de Nor: Yeah, basically. (laughter)
Paul Hughes: Yeah, totally. I would love to share it. And I think it's very likely that we'll be able to. Whenever I ask — and, you know, I've worked here for a very short time — whenever I'm like, "Am I allowed to say this?" The answer's always like, "Yeah." Matt in particular is very, has a philosophy which is very much into transparency. There's no idea that we should have, sort of like, trade secrets, or anything like that. So I think we want to do it.
I think we want to look at it and clean it up and make sure it's in the most usable form, because sometimes, when you're messing around with something, you've got a lot of assumptions and you sort of have to train people and be like, "Well, you know, this number here, we ignore. And this is number is wrong, so we don't really use that." So, we would just want to clean it up. But I think we can make that available.
Jon de Nor: Yeah, I know there are a lot of people that would really appreciate seeing — I think both for use, but also for, I think, fixing what they imagine being wrong with the monster design.
Paul Hughes: Right, yeah. Well, I mean, there's so many open questions, like, do minions have the right amount of Stamina? Do they do the right amount of damage? You know, how about solos? How can they be cooler? You know, how many, so many experiments you can do. And it's so much work, as I know from my own history, to reverse-engineer something when it would be a lot easier to be like, "Hey, could you like, can you just, like, put me in the little — can you hit the share tab and just sort of, you know, put me in there so I can just poke around in your Google Docs or your Google Sheets and so on?" So I'd love to share that. As a part of a general, sort of, let's open up and share the rules a little bit more.
And also, as a project that would be great to get started is let's do some errata, let's fix some rules, let's take a look at the most-often reported pain points. And, you know, start making fixes, because the game is recent and because it's had such a large volume of products that have come out since it came out, we haven't had the time that we would like to do that, but it's always number one in the list. Until some emergency comes up and bumps it down.
Jon de Nor: (laughter)
Paul Hughes: But I really want emergencies to stop coming up so it can actually get to about the top of the list, and I can publish my 75% done, you know, errata list, that just needs a little more work with some of the amazing community members who I'm sort of collaborating with on that.
Jon de Nor: So you're actually asking for feedback from specific community members that might have some input on...at least what they've seen?
Paul Hughes: Yeah, that's right. So, in the Discord, there's a couple of really great, you know, like rules questions channels, and stuff like that. With some, you know, absolutely fantastic people in there who answer a lot of questions. And I've reached out to some of them, as a kind of a brain trust for..."You guys know the ins and outs of these rules better than I do. And I don't want to say something that's dumb. So can you sort of check me here?" And I'd sort of like to expand that relationship more, so that the game ownership can expand out to the community a little more.
Jon de Nor: My biggest moment was, when looking at the rules, was realizing that the example in the hiding rules where you hide from a dragon, according to the rules as written, you can't actually hide that way. (laughter)
Paul Hughes: The hiding rules is rough. And this is like, part of a long tradition of RPGs. It's like, the storied history of games where the hiding rules are rough is, it's a noble ancestry. The different confusions and pain points that come around hiding, sneaking, invisibility, darkness...the way these things are handled requires so much careful, word-by-word reading of the rules and trying to interpret, "What was the intent here?" That is one of the things that we really would like to clean up. I need to consult those every time and look at them.
Jon de Nor: Yeah. It's so strange though, because it feels like, especially like hiding, it seems so intuitive in real life, like, you know, when you're hiding. But making that work in the rules, and especially a game like Draw Steel where it actually kind of matters when you're actually hiding...(laughter)
Paul Hughes: Right?
Jon de Nor: Makes it really...yeah. It's such a weird dichotomy that something that seems so simple is so difficult to express in a good way when it comes to writing.
Paul Hughes: Yeah. I mean, so that narratively, like, "I hide from the bad guy, and I sneak up, and then I stab 'em" is so narratively simple. But once you get onto a map, there are so many questions that come up. And Draw Steel, I think has some great sort of pieces, in terms of, you don't have to be hiding when you stab the guy. You have to have been hiding recently in order to stab the guy and do extra damage. And all those things are great pieces, and I think we're a couple of errata away from it being pretty solid. We just got to A) write the errata, and B) an underrated part of errata is playtesting it, because it's very easy to, as with software, put out a patch for a problem, and now you have two problems.
Jon de Nor: The errata, how invasive are they?
Paul Hughes: Yeah, that's a good question.
Jon de Nor: Like because, in theory, you could just do like — the first errata was basically just like, oh, there are some typos and there are some ambiguous meanings that if we just add like a comma here and a couple of words here, it kind of straightens out and it reads a lot better. But from what I've been hearing, Matt mentioned on stream, he's been mentioning more like balancing patches, basically. Is that going to be part of the errata that you're working on now, or is that something you want to save for something I don't know, bigger, like Draw Steel Revised" something.
Paul Hughes: Right. I mean, there's a huge continuum between editorial stuff versus, like, a revised version of Draw Steel. Right now, I am more interested in things that don't work, things that are unclear or things that are not the intent of the authors, fixing them. I think that would be the first sort of errata pass. And you know how errata is. It's not like there's a new errata every, you know, twice a week. It always takes a while to get out. So the first pass or two is going to take a while.
Eventually we're going to have more data, too, which says these things are overpowered, these things are underpowered. But there are some things that sort of put the brakes on a kind of like, MMO-style balancing. That would be fun in a lot of ways, but A) you don't want to be making too many changes too rapidly to something which is, essentially at its heart, a paper product, because you're leaving a lot of people behind. Even if you get to the point where a third to a half of people are playing online, and even if it was 75% of the people playing online, you don't want to have an underclass of people who have to be scribbling in their books every couple of weeks.
Secondly, I much prefer "Let's boost underpowered things" than "Let's nerf overpowered things" because one is a feels-good and one is a feels-bad. Yeah. So it's like it's not that fun when you find out like, "Oh, my Censor thing is now much weaker." Like, oh, well, that's too bad. Like, I'm level 8 and I'm having a lot of fun. Versus, "Hey, we boosted this one ability," and now, instead of it never crossing my mind that I would want to use this — "Hey, I want to try that out!"
So that would be sort of the first pass of balancing that I would want to do. But for me, that's not really on the horizon of stuff I want to get out immediately. I just want the game to work, and be clear, and get the read-as-written and the read-as-intended to align. And balancing and updating is next, after that.
Jon de Nor: That, I think, makes a lot of sense.
Paul Hughes: Yeah. Also, the game's so new, you know? And you don't want to...you want to wait for consensus to kind of settle because it can be really easy in the first six months or so for people to be like, you know, this is really underpowered. And then the meta changes for no apparent reason, when someone sort of figures out, wait, actually this is, this is overpowered. So you don't want to overcorrect too much, too fast, I think.
And also, one more thing — because it's not a competitive game where you need to have ultra balance because people are fighting each other, but a cooperative game, there...you're not really robbing people of fun if one of their abilities is 96% as effective as someone else. Whereas if this were a PvP game, it would be a different story.
Jon de Nor: Yeah. Speaking of balancing, almost, you worked on the Beastheart class. And — "worked on". You made the Beastheart class. (laughter) I think that's a more fair description. Then you worked on the core rules, too, I believe?
Paul Hughes: I did, I worked on a lot of pieces of the core rules. I think that I sort of...I'm not necessarily a very good writer, but I'm a fast writer. So when deadlines came up, I was often, "Hey, Paul, could you write something for us in, like, 36 hours?" Like, yeah, sure, I could do that. So I ended up working on a lot of pieces. But sort of the older, like, the most-cooked stuff, like the core classes, I wasn't super involved with.
Jon de Nor: I ask because I was wondering, is there any, anything you feel is important to know if you want to design something for Draw Steel? And I think this comes with, partly from like a third-party perspective. Like, how do you make something work well with Draw Steel? And what makes it feel like it's part of Draw Steel?
Paul Hughes: It's a great question, and I'm sort of learning as I go. The Summoner and the Beastheart classes are interesting because they're sort of labeled, as, you know, expert classes. And there's an expectation that we hope they don't slow things down too much, but these are things that you should do after you've sort of mastered the rules. I actually think it is easier to write classes and features like that than it is to write simple classes and features.
So I would say as a third-party designer, A) follow your ideas. Often, your first draft is going to be very complicated. But the most important part of creating is iterating. And as you iterate, often what happens is things become simpler and simpler. And I think writing first drafts is more fun, and iterating and testing is often less fun. But stick to those pieces. As a third-party designer, one of the big luxuries you have, and advantages you have, is you have time to iterate. So make the most of that time. You don't need to be worrying about a product schedule. You are making the coolest thing you can.
So test in your group, play a game, try it in your weekly game. And this is also something that we're trying to do internally. One of the things that I would really like to do is, we have a lot of testing in the process. What if we had more testing? You know, it's like, what if we had more time set aside in our developers' time for weekly games? What if we encouraged and paid freelancers more for testing on their own? And what if we put more time into the schedule for various pieces of, you know, sort of getting feedback and testing?
I would love it if we put out 80% as much stuff, and it was 20% better. You know, in general. As a rule, let's do that every year. And I think that's where the team's head's at is, let's...we've got the basics out. Now, let's iterate.
Jon de Nor: Yeah. I have to say, the first year of Draw Steel, and especially this, like latter half of the first year, has been really busy with releases from MCDM for the game. I mean, compared to, Daggerheart, which just released like the first proper supplement for the game over a year after it released. It's a very strange contrast between the two strategies where, I don't know, it feels like Draw Steel came out, and then it was like, we need to get more stuff out immediately. And then it starts with the Summoner. And then we get like two adventures, three adventures, and another class. It's an interesting contrast between the two games, which came out very close to each other.
Paul Hughes: Yeah. I think, a lot of it comes down to, what do you consider the core of the game to be? And I think for Draw Steel, there's an idea that the core of the game should include adventures, because it's not just, "Here's a book, go and do what you want with it." It's, "Let's make a bunch of stuff for you to play with and get that out to you." And it's not necessarily a promise, "Hey, we're going to, every year, we're going to do a crowdfunder where we have eight new products."
I don't think that anybody needs eight new products every year from one company, but let's get at least one of everything out as soon as possible. You know, let's get, you know, we've got a couple of different adventure sizes. So, you know, we have the idea of, we have a delve, which is a couple of, you know, a little short couple of combats, versus an adventure or a campaign. Let's get an example of one of all these out. Let's get an example of what, you know, what you used to call a splatbook, like, a thing with a bunch of new ancestries, one of those out. Let's get out all the stuff that we wish we could have fit in the core book about how to use tests as soon as we can, so that all of the tools are out and public. And then once that's the case, we can slow down, versus, all the tools are in the core book.
And neither is right or wrong, but I think that's kind of the internal thinking, is, we want to...we have all these good ideas. We really want to share them as quickly as we can. And that'll, you know, every company is guided by, like, the presiding genius of the company. And for us, you know, Matt Colville is such a generous person in terms of ideas, as you can tell from the amount that he streams, the amount that he interacts, the amount that he shares his ideas. He is just a guy who wants to share all the cool stuff he can as quickly as he can. And so we follow his lead.
Jon de Nor: Speaking of the crowdfunders, they've been going very well so far. (laughter) And they have for years for MCDM's part. But what do you think is like a good indication, or like, what's the barometer for a healthy Draw Steel, and a healthy community around Draw Steel?
Paul Hughes: I would say part of it is having third-party crowdfunders that are in, like, at least six figures would be great. You know, having like a good supply of them. And we have quite a few that are very successful. Because I think the idea of having a really solid community is that it's not just one person coming in saying, here's, you know, "We're going to spoon-feed you stuff." It's having a lot of people who are able to share their ideas, because that's how we all think of roleplaying games. Because we're we're all from the background of, we like to play games, and now we like to...we can't stop ourselves from designing for those games. And if somebody pays us to do it, great. But, like, honestly, we would do it for free.
And, you know, so we just sort of, think that's what a healthy community looks like is where everybody has the ability to do that. Internally, obviously, it would be great if MCDM's crowdfunders kept on doing multi-million dollars so that we can keep the lights on. But the game's success, I think, the barometer is how many crowdfunders, and other ways of selling products besides crowdfunders, are there? How cool are the ideas? And are people doing well enough that they want to keep going with them?
Jon de Nor: As...this might be — I'm going to ask it just in case you have an answer, because of course people are curious about, Crack the Sun. And I've had a question submitted, by someone wondering if there is like a revised timeline, because the last timeline we got was back in February, I think. That was one of your...no, was it your post?
Paul Hughes: I think it might have been, yeah.
Jon de Nor: Yeah.
Paul Hughes: That might have been sort of like one of my first posts, when we got together for one of the in-person meetings, and I was sort of keeping notes on that. We are trying like heck to hit those timelines.
Jon de Nor: (laughter) Okay.
Paul Hughes: And so...I don't guarantee that it's not going to be changed in the future.
Jon de Nor: (laughter) That's fair.
Paul Hughes: But right now, we are just on pace, but not ahead of schedule, for hitting those timelines. And it does mean, you know, everybody is sort of pitching in and working on this. It's a massive project doing, you know, sort of five books at once. A very different scale than anything I've ever worked on. I generally work on one book at once, or two books at once. Not only is it a firehose in terms of just the amount of words, but the testing schedule to get all the pieces to a point where people are happy with them, and everything is working, means that it is bigger than anything I've worked on in these, in both of these dimensions, number of words and amount of testing. Because I've never worked in an environment that took testing as seriously as this one.
But, you know, you're squaring the amount of work, you're not doubling the amount of work, when you do that. So it is monumental. So we've got Teos, we've got me, we've got Willy and Djordi, and we're pulling in..."Hey, James, I know you have this Crows game that you're working on, but can we just pick your brain a little bit here?" You know, I'm jumping on a call with Matt, like, multiple times a week, wasting his time when he should be working on other stuff. So it is something where I would never want to say, "I promise we're not going to...the schedule is not going to slip." But I'm proud to say the schedule has not yet slipped.
Jon de Nor: Wow. That is impressive considering the amount of work that has to go into all of this.
Paul Hughes: Yeah. Yeah, there are so many things where it's like, oh, you know, I love to make this change in Act 1. It does mean that there are cascading changes through Acts 2 through 5.
Jon de Nor: Right, yeah.
Paul Hughes: And, oh, that does mean we have to retest everything.
Jon de Nor: Just so I remember correctly, because the schedule is for the PDF releases, because the physical release is for like, when everything's done, isn't it?
Paul Hughes: Yes, that's right. The PDF releases are I think, I believe, going to be one by one. And I don't remember the dates offhand. I don't have the spreadsheets open, but...now I could just immediately get off the call and look and be like, "Whoops! We bumped everything by a month, I forgot!" And if so, well, I'll be like, I guess we could put that in the comments down below.
Jon de Nor: Yeah. (laughter) That's part of the...that's just how it is.
Paul Hughes: Yeah.
Jon de Nor: The MCDM patron account asked, what's the coolest moment in Crack the Sun that no one knows about yet?
Paul Hughes: (laughter)
Jon de Nor: I feel like this is your — you're now allowed to spoil something from Crack the Sun. (laughter)
Paul Hughes: Well, it depends on — I mean, somebody knows about everything. I know about a lot of stuff. Now, when you talk about the patrons, the patrons have seen Act 1, Act 2, and they haven't seen Act 3 yet, I believe. But I could be wrong, because there's also the...there's a pretty big pool of playtesters who have seen Act 3. So not counting Act 1 and Act 2, I'm going to try to channel Matt and spoil something. Act...can I go all the way to Act 4?
Willy has been doing developmental editing on Act 4, and in it, you visit a shadow elf city that is cool as hell.
Jon de Nor: Oh, okay.
Paul Hughes: So let's see if I get in trouble for that announcement.
Jon de Nor: (laughter)
Paul Hughes: The design ideas for this city — the art is going to be really cool. And I think it's going to be pretty different from...you know, it's not meant Menzoberranzan or however that's pronounced. It's its own thing, and I think it's going to be cool.
Jon de Nor: Wow. Oh no, I shouldn't have asked. Now — (laughter)
Paul Hughes: (laughter) But you'll have to wait a long time for...you know.
Jon de Nor: Yeah...(sigh of elven yearning).
Paul Hughes: Act 4, unfortunately, is not the first one that's going to come out.
Jon de Nor: Who would have thought? (laughter)
Paul Hughes: Time is linear, and that is one of the big problems with time.
Jon de Nor: With Crack the Sun, Teos has been, kind of, hired to work as a...I don't know what his title is. Coordinator? Or, like, Lead Developer?
Paul Hughes: Yeah, manager, coordinator, I'm not really...I also don't, I'm so bad with titles. I'm like, what is my title?
Jon de Nor: (laughter) But that kind of means — and each, if I remember correctly, from what I've heard, each part of Crack the Sun had, like, a main author.
Paul Hughes: Yes. That's right.
Jon de Nor: How do you make sure...or what information and what kind of main points you give to, like, contractors to make them submit work that is Draw Steel-like?
Paul Hughes: I mean, one of the hard things is, there's five different authors, and this is a single story. So how do you make those snap together? Well, it's easy, as long as you don't change your outline at any point. (laughter) I just made you do a spit take
Jon de Nor: (laughter)
Paul Hughes: Of course, we did make a lot of changes. Unfortunately, we keep on having ideas where we're like, "Ah...unfortunately, this is cooler." Or, this is actually the...you know, sometimes you just have an idea, you're like, "Oh, it turns out this is correct." And so that does mean we do make cascading changes across the adventure. And so that means a lot of work for Teos, for me. And it's going to mean a lot of work for the editors as we get into editing to make sure everything fits together.
And it's hard for the authors, because you're getting a snapshot in time of where the adventure is and working off that. So, you know, the difference between what you have in an outline for something that's in Act 1 and then the way it ends up in Act 5 are going to mean that, at some point, when we get it back from the authors, we do a dev pass, where we make a bunch of changes. Not because anything is wrong with the author's version, you know, which are great. But because we end up knowing stuff about the other four chapters that they didn't know and often didn't exist at the time when we had the initial meetings with them. And that's the chaos of doing a big project.
Jon de Nor: How is it working...I feel like most contractors in the TTRPG business have probably worked on some kind of 5e supplement at some point. How much does other games designs' affect what people, or like contractors, submit? And how much — I don't know what to call it, like, coaching? — do you have to do to make it more Draw Steel?
Paul Hughes: How 5e is is stuff by authors who haven't written for Draw Steel for very long, which is everybody? Yeah. And it's very much so. And it's a back-and forth-conversation, because no one's written for Draw Steel for more than a year or two. And a lot of people, myself and a lot of people on the team, and a lot of contractors have worked on D&D for a long time in some form, often longer even than 5e.
The games are very different in the — especially when it gets to combat encounters — in the requirements. So there is a, usually, when you're working with sort of a new author who comes from 5e, a period of, let's work together and figure out exactly what a Draw Steel encounter looks like. And I think the easiest way to do that is to play games with the others.
And that's something that I'd like to do more. I believe that so much of development of a game is playing the game. So...and when I was working on the Beastheart and when I was working on Condemned, one of the important things for me was, let me get on Zoom or something with the devs and let's do some testing, and let's play. And I want to keep that rolling as we make new products and as we work on Crack the Sun. Let's make sure we've played through all this stuff and been...because the stuff that you get from your testers is stuff they learn from playing, and incredibly useful, but it's secondhand.
So you're like, "Well, do I believe it though? I really believe in my beautiful pet idea that I came up with, even though people said it's not working." And the cure for that is playing it yourself. And then you're like, "Yep, they were right. This doesn't work." So I think we need to have more of that before, after, and during other forms of testing. Everything that we send out, it would be great if we all had the experience of, "Yeah, we played this and it was awesome." And it doesn't leave until we feel that way.
Jon de Nor: Speaking of pets...
Paul Hughes: Yes!
Jon de Nor: As the designer of the Beastheart.
Paul Hughes: Oh, this is a this is a beautiful segue.
Jon de Nor: (laughter) What's your favorite companion?
Paul Hughes: (sigh of deep contemplation) You know, I think in the introduction I was like, I really like the condor best, but...you know, I've played a couple now, and I think I'm a very basic person, and I think I really like the wolf.
Jon de Nor: Oh!
Paul Hughes: And it's not even like a mechanical...oh, you know what though? I really like the panther, too. These are both extremely basic. A panther is maybe the most basic answer you can have for a ranger-type class. Especially if you're coming from 5e and you've read, the works of one R.A. Salvatore. But the fun thing about the panther is jumping around, you know? And kind of surprising the Director when you're like, "Okay, yeah, I jump up onto that 4-square thing, and then I'm going to jump down on the other side of the wall, and I'm gonna bite your guy who's hiding behind the wall here."
It's really fun when a game...when you write rules by ignoring existing rules, rather than by building new ones. It's like, "Your petty rules of how high, where I have to look up how high I can jump based on, you know, how good my roll was, that doesn't apply to me. I just jump straight up."
Jon de Nor: That's an interesting design space.
Paul Hughes: Yeah, the space of removing rules, what can I ignore? I think that's an especially useful lens for, when you're looking at, what can my character do when they level up? What no longer applies to me? You know, at some point, death starts to apply to me less, you know? And at some point, any kind of logistics applies to me less. Not that Draw Steel really has as much logistics as other games like D&D do, but, you know, just, what systems can I ignore? They're not for me anymore, as I become more like a demigod.
Jon de Nor: I see some of the designs coming out of the, Brewery, especially when it comes to classes. And some of it is really impressive, and especially like the new stuff that they bring into the game. And I'm very much of the opinion that Draw Steel is both a game that kind of encourages to have like a very strong flavor, where, don't be afraid to kind of make your thing...don't make it bland. (laughter)
Paul Hughes: Right. Be specific.
Jon de Nor: Yeah. Be specific.
Paul Hughes: Don't be like, I'm going to write this, it's a generalist, and it can be used to express 20 different ideas. Let's see what one idea looks like if you push it a little further.
Jon de Nor: Yeah, yeah. I just spoke with the designer of the Twofold class, which is a class designed for two players to play together.
Paul Hughes: Yeah, cool as heck.
Jon de Nor: And that's such a cool concept, but — and he was very honest, about, both in the text of the class itself, but also during the interview, that this class is not for everyone. If you don't like having to coordinate constantly with someone else, don't play this class. (laughter) And I feel the core rules of Draw Steel kind of encourage that kind of design, to push this specific thing to as far as you can go, And I like third-party classes, kind of pushing those limits, like the Gunslinger bringing basically gunpowder into Draw Steel. Does it belong in the core rules? I don't think so, but it very much belongs with the Gunslinger, which I would happily have in a game.
Paul Hughes: I mean, I think everyone loves that class. You know, it's such a great class. And I think that there's a ton of room for things that are not for everybody. Draw Steel is in the enviable position of not having to be for everybody, which means it can have a strong point of view on a lot of things. And I think that this is a golden age of roleplaying that we're in right now, because we now have room for a lot of games that aren't for everybody, because there are other games out there.
And in the third-party space, that's even more true, because the scale is such that you don't need to design for the entire audience. You have to find your audience, who likes your stuff. So we're the...I think MCDM is in that position, and as a third-party person, you should embrace that position. It's such a great place to be.
Jon de Nor: But I also like that the core rules are also not afraid to break the pattern for some things as simple as, for the Talent, they can be strained. So all the heroic resources work the same except for the Talent's one, which can go into the negative. And I just like that the core rules says, yeah, that's fine, you could do that.
And then you see, like, the Huntsman class that uses the epic resource you're supposed to get at level 10, you get that a 1st level instead, because they use it as a parallel thing instead. And it's like, immediately, you say that's okay. And that's both like a green flag for the designers, but also for, especially, Directors, looking at, "Wait, they're doing strange things with heroic resources in this class! But, well, actually, it's kind of like the Talent anyways, so it's not that different." (laughter) So I feel like that's breaking Directors out of the mold.
Paul Hughes: Right? It's really easy to try to develop stuff by filling in boxes in a grid, and it's great when the design breaks out of that. Like the Huntsman, where you're like, this is...there's nothing else that does this. Or, like, you know, currently there's no other class that does this. Or the Talent. And that's one of the great places for third-party stuff where, you can have a person who's dedicated job it is to make sure this class works, because they're the author of the class. And that means that you can go really high in how polished that gets. And you don't need to have a huge budget to do it. You do need to have time, and that's like, honestly, that is a budget. You know, that's a limited budget for everybody.
Jon de Nor: I especially think the Beastheart...those are two creatures sharing some of the resources. And while it's not part of core, it is an MCDM class. And it's also become, I think, a very beloved class. I see people always speak highly of it, like, it's fun to play, and Directors think it's cool to have a Beasthaert in the party, which I think is...that means that must be good design, if both players and Directors like it. (laughter)
Paul Hughes: That's great.
Jon de Nor: TBut it also brings stuff like the Twofold, which takes that even further, where they can have basically a shared Stamina pool between them, which I think is a bit too crazy for maybe like a core or like an MCDM class. But I love that third-parties are willing to even try that.
Paul Hughes: Right. And I did test that, also. (laughter) I was like, "Can I just do one Stamina pool? Would that be cool?" I ended up not doing it. But it's good to try. At some point I was like, you know, it's really tough, like you get hit with an axe, and then your wolf is 20 feet away and your wolf drops dead. Just narratively, I couldn't get there. But let's do the experiment.
Jon de Nor: The way the Twofold does it is, I think it's the 2nd-level feature, where, at the beginning of combat, you can redistribute Stamina between the two, as a pre-combat thing. So it's only then, but it allows you to be out of Recoveries and still make sure that you don't die at the first hit. (laughter)
Paul Hughes: Right. Yeah, what's worse than being out of recoveries and.
Jon de Nor: In Draw Steel, not much. (laughter)
Paul Hughes: Yeah, not much. It's a tough one.
Jon de Nor: There is something so intense, and I always find this interesting when people that don't play Draw Steel...when they see, "Oh, you always do damage? How is that any fun?" And that's until you're out of Recoveries and you're basically at zero Stamina, I'm like, "Hngh, okay, I can't actually be hit. And they always hit, so I need to do something!" (laughter)
Paul Hughes: Right. Well, the other thing about like, "You always do damage, how can that be fun?" Like, Final Fantasy's done okay.
Jon de Nor: There is something so intense, and I always find this interesting when people that don't play Draw Steel...when they see, "Oh, you always do damage? How is that any fun?" And that's until you're out of Recoveries and you're basically at zero Stamina, I'm like, "Hngh, okay, I can't actually be hit. And they always hit, so I need to do something!" (laughter)
Paul Hughes: You know? It's pretty fun to do damage. So that is one, you know, sort of like...it's not super common in RPGs, but there is a lot of room at looking at other media and seeing what's cool there, too. And, you know, you don't want to be, accused of being too video gamey, which is something that's been leveled against other systems, and no doubt against Draw Steel. And, you know, RPGs are better than video games, in my opinion.
But I think it just makes sense to have a broad look at what you can draw from video games and books and, you know, different media. And sometimes you can see something works, and so let's give it a try. And I say that with having...again, not being here when they were designing the core pieces of the game. And so I don't have an insight on what they were thinking.
Jon de Nor: Before we started recording, we talked a bit about monster design, and I mentioned the very minimal monsters in Nimble. And at some point, they did toy with very minimal monsters in Draw Steel, for like a month or something during development. And I've always felt a loss that that didn't come to pass, because that's...I really like the idea of having an easy way to kind of put a lot of monsters onto the field without too much like bookkeeping on my end, as a Director.
Paul Hughes: Yeah. I love that because I love doing a lot of stuff on the fly and, being very reactive to what the players want to do. If they do something crazy and stir up trouble in the city and they get a faction mad at them, it's great to be able to just throw a bunch of bad guys down that you did not plan on putting down without preparing beforehand. So anything that makes it easier to do that makes it easier to invent an encounter during a game instead of before a game, I'm all for, and I'd like to see us make more tools that make that possible.
Jon de Nor: That would be very cool.
Paul Hughes: Yeah. I mean, that's my dream, is to have the beautifully tuned...and you know, it could be more tuned, but I think Draw Steel is beautifully tuned in a lot of ways. Having that combined with the kind of, we can go anywhere, we could do anything, you know, sort of open world feeling, I think would just be fantastic. And I think we can get there.
Jon de Nor: The last question I want to ask you, and we've kind of touched upon this a few times, but if you had like...what's one thing you would like to do for Draw Steel? It could be like, a new thing, something you designed, or maybe a change, I don't know, but what would be one thing you wanted to do for Draw Steel, if you had unlimited, like, time, budget, and no constraints?
Paul Hughes: Besides the things that I've mentioned, these are the things that I want to have as a Director myself. Toolkits that empower me to react to what the players do and allow players to really go off the rails and do something completely unexpected is just a blast for me. It's a kind of Director that I am, and I want to have tools that make it less intimidating for that to happen. And that's something that comes with maturity with the game. It's usually not available in sort of like, you know, the first round. And I'd like that to be something that we build out in future products. Because part of me, part of the joy is like, "Oh, this was a big surprise. I did not expect the players to do this."
Jon de Nor: Do you think the upcoming Encounters book is, like, a first step on that kind of journey?
Paul Hughes: Yes! It has a lot of the tools that allow that. So one of the big challenges besides combat is, what exactly is the difficulty in attempting this when I'm trying to do something crazy? If I'm trying, "Oh, there's a, you know what, there's a ship over there. Can we steal it?" Like, what does that look like? So having systems of, "Here's a new montage test that we could use." Or just, what exactly can we do with Sneak versus Hide? You know, "What would a really hard test look like for trying to convince people that I'm the new first mate of the ship, and I should be allowed to, you know, set sail?"
So just those tools, I think, allow things to go in crazy directions. And then you've also got...it made sense to the players to go off-course; I need a little bit of, I need to throw them a new adventure, and I don't have anything prepared. So can I throw in one of these delves? Having a bunch of things like that are super useful.
And then the other thing is, who is the bad guy here? You know, if I'm coming up with a new sort of metaplot on the fly that I didn't expect to be coming out, coming out with what can I show the players that they've never seen before? And a lot of that is going to be like, here's a new personality. Here's a guy who has new combat moves that they've never seen. They're fighting goblins...what does a badass goblin look like? And you can do that with dastards.
So I think these are a lot of the building blocks of, "I want to put together something pretty quickly, a new adventure..." are good for me because I really don't like...as I've said before, I will put in a lot of work to avoid doing the work of prepping for a campaign.
Jon de Nor: If you just make enough...
Paul Hughes: Exactly. I will write 400 words, you know, so that I can have a book I can flip through so I don't need to spend 10 minutes, you know, prepping. Which is a pretty backwards way to prepare, but unfortunately, it's how my brain works.
Jon de Nor: We're closing in on the end of the interview, and I always ask my guests to bring some kind of recommendation or recommendations. So what have you brought for our listeners?
Paul Hughes: I think I asked before if anybody had recommended this. There's a book, a novel, Gideon the Ninth, which is one of my favorite...I don't know if it's sci-fi or fantasy novels.
Jon de Nor: Good question. (laughter)
Paul Hughes: And my usual pitch for this book is "lesbian necromancers in space." And it's, you know, it's got sort of like a magic system, a crazy world, mystery, a lot of dueling and stuff like that. All the ingredients that should be in every book, and are the reason I never got through a bunch of Charles Dickens books, because there was just not nearly enough skeletons in them.
Jon de Nor: (laughter)
Paul Hughes: But my pitch as a game designer for this book is, if you think of a generic fantasy novel, you think of something where you've got basically classes. You've got like, this guy is like a fighty type, this guy's a wizard type, this guy's a thief type. And then you can get more specific like that. Like you could have a book where everybody is a different kind of wizard. And now it's like, "Alright, now you have my attention. That's cool. How are we going to differentiate all these different wizards and make them cool?"
Gideon the Ninth is a book where you said, "Okay, what if we have a whole bunch of characters and they're all necromancer wizards?" So we're just taking one specific subset of wizards and like, can we come up with eight different kinds of them? And I'm like, this seems like this is going to be a really interesting design project. And amazingly, sticks the landing. And at the end of the book, you're like, "Wow, I totally get it. I totally remember all eight different types of necromancers. This one does the skeleton stuff. This one does the talking-to-the-dead stuff. This one does the resurrection stuff."
So I think it's a worldbuilding master class. And also, in a way, it's a character-class-building master class in a book, in a novel. So give it a try. It's not for everyone. But as we said before, not everything has to be for everyone. And that's one of the great things about coming up with something with a unique point of view. So that's something I love to see.
Jon de Nor: I've read the first three books, I think.
Paul Hughes: And then the problem is, with this series, we're starting to get into George R.R. Martin land, because it's supposed to be a four-book series. Three of them come out, and it's been a while. And there's a lot of great fantasy series which is one book short of the whole thing. And you hope it doesn't end up that way. It's, you know, the Locke Lamora books, and...
Jon de Nor: Yes, I read those too. *(laughter)
Paul Hughes: Yep, and you're like, "Oh, man, when's the last one coming out? That's going to be cool, I bet." The Patrick Rothfusses of the world and...you know. If one had a magic power, and it was, "make authors excited to do the last book of their series," that wouldn't be so bad. That would be a pretty good magic power. But I also...you give them a break, you know, you work on your fantasy series for ten years or so and you're like, I want to do something different. That's their right, too.
Jon de Nor: Yeah. Paul, it has been...it's been fantastic to have you on. It's so interesting and so illuminating in so many ways. (laughter)
Paul Hughes: (laughter) We'll find out if I illuminated too much about Act 4 of Crack the Sun. But it's been a pleasure. I would love to be on again. This has been really fun talking to you.
Jon de Nor: Thank you so much for coming on. Thank you so much.
Paul Hughes: Yeah. Any time.
Outro</h1>
Thank you so much for coming on Paul. And thank for that little scoop into the fourth act of Crack the Sun. The feeling I was left with after talking to Paul was that Draw Steel is in good hands. It sounds like Paul has thought about how to make sure Draw Steel can be improved in smaller and larger ways, without alienating the community or confusing players.
I want to thank FoxTrick, Shane Richardson, someone at MCDM, and tootallferne for submitting questions for Paul.
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</a>.
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 25th. That's going to be the interview with Finn Brodie, the person behind Mythical Press, the monthly Draw Steel zine featuring monsters and more.
See you next time. Snakkes.
Links</h1>

Gideon the Ninth - Wikipedia</a></li> </ul>

News: Draw Steel is 1 Year, Crowdfunder for Djordice, new Jams of the Timescape | July Roundup

Jon de Nor — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Intro</h1>
Happy Birthday Draw Steel! It's been a whole year already. Also, I'm crowdfunding Djordice, there's a new Jams of the Timescape, Crows is soon going to crowdfunding and two big adventures released.
I'm Jon de Nor and this is Goblin Points.
Lunar Umbra</h1>
This is exciting for me. I'm going to launch a crowdfunder in August. And I know you'll like this one, becaue it features physical products.
While 2d10 is nice dice math, it's an inferior rolling experience to d20s. That's why you need Djordice: 20-sided d10s! D20s but numbered one through 10 twice.
The dice set I'm crowdfunding is for people playing games using the power roll. It features two Djordice, and two d6s. The d6s are numbered one through six as usual, but also markings for d3 results. Making them combined d3s and d6s! You also get a cotton dice bag to keep the dice in.
I'm calling the set Lunar Umbra. It's my name for the design. These are custom ordered and won't be available after the crowdfunder has completed. Assuming it funds in the first place.
Use the link in the episode description to visit the pre-launch page, where you can sign up to get notified when the campaign goes live. And, as an extra treat if you're a paying patron, you're eligible for one set of the dice at a discounted price.
Check out the Lunar Umbra campaign on BackerKit.
Jams of the Timescape</h1>
The Dice Society and I – we're so back! We've got another Jams of the Timescape going! And for volume three the theme is one year of Draw Steel.
Unless you've been living under a rock, it's already been one year since Draw Steel released and we're celebrating by running a jam on it's birthday.
For the next two weeks anyone, including you dear listener, is able to join and submit your idea for a Draw Steel supplement. It doesn't have to be perfect, and it doesn't have to be polished, it just have to be created with joy.
In this jam we're not setting any restriction on what kind of supplement it should be. It could be a kit, an ancestry, a combat scenario or a group of NPCs. Just make it fit the theme in some way, and you're golden.
Join the jam on Itch to be able to submit, and swing by the Discord server to have fun creating with other creative people in the community. We encourage collaboration, and people in the Discord are very open to help and provide feedback.
Join us, have fun, and celebrate a year of drawing steel!
Crows</h1>
Crows has been getting some major changes since the last playtest. In addition to the changes in the to the travel rules I covered in last month's news episode, there have also been major changes to how characters work.
Characters now start with their characteristics at plus two, plus one and zero. Or they can choose an alternate set of plus two, plus two and minus one. This makes it easier to roll above tier one. A lot of the issues people had with the previous playtest basically boiled down to rolling too low too often. Having crows rolling higher will hopefully alleviate some of those issues.
Skills are also gone from the game now. They've been replaced by expertises. The expertises are all named the same as the skills were, but the function differently. Instead of providing a bonus to the roll, they now increase the outcome of a power roll by a tier. When a crow starts out, each expertise only has one use, but as they gain XP they can upgrade them to have multiple uses. A crow regains all their expertise uses after taking a rest, while not resting in the miasma.
The boned condition has also been removed. Instead, Crows now uses edges and banes, the same way Draw Steel does. Single edges and banes grant plus two and minus two to the roll, respectively. While double edges and banes increase or decrease the tier, respectively.
Crows' belts can now hold four items instead of two. This is mainly to make archer builds more fair, as the quiver consumes one of the slots. It's also less likelyhood of hitting allies while shooting into a melee. When rolling a tier 1 for a ranged attack, instead of automatically hitting an adjecent creature, there's a roll to determine whether anyone else is hit.
And speaking of bad outcomes. Instead of the ref keeping track of a chaos count, it's been replaced with a die roll. Whenever a spell is cast and a player rolls a tier one result, the ref rolls a die to determine whether a backlash happens.
James also talked about a new institution you can build in your town: the beacon. It clears adjacent hexes of the miasma, making it easier to travel near your town. The beacon's a tower with a flame on top. By paying the keeper, you can walk into the flame and be instantly transported to a hex cleared of miasma by the beacon.
Crows is dungeon crawler TTRPG with some overland travel, and the crowdfunder is planned for the latter half of August. Oh, and the biggest pledge, the complete edition with all the stuff in the crowdfunder, is called the Goat Edition.
The Condemned</h1>
The Condemned adventure released in July. This is the third adventure from the crowdfunder to release. The adventure is a bit different from your normal affair. Instead of being an adventure in your current campaign, The Condemned is meant to be played as a seperate, isolated adventure.
You play as people sentenced to death, but at the last moment you get the opportunity to save your life. By going on an extremely dangerous mission to the Crysopolis, Ajax' flying city. The danger of dying is high, and you're considered exposable.
You are encouraged to use one of the many pregens included in the adventure, and while they do include instruction to create your own condemned to match the others, I really like the ones included in the adventure. They're built with interesting options, and they have a bit of backstory making them interesting to play.
You can pick up The Condemned for $24.99 on the MCDM Shop.
Codex</h1>
The Codex team launched the in-game shop in July. Currently, there are five dice cosmetics up for sale: sunmetal dice, sea between stars dice, soulkiller dice, terran steel dice, and blood metal dice.
In addition to each having their own visual style, they also come with visual effects and their own sound when rolling the dice. They do actually look quite nice.
These cosmetics are intended to be a way to supplement development costs. Instead of locking game content behind paywall, as it were, the hope is that sales of the Codex, combined with sales of cosmetics is enough to support most of the development of the codex.
Along the dice shop, the Codex developers also announced you're now able to mark modules as premium. That means that they're not available to everyone, and module authors can lock the module behind a key they then distribute to buyers of the module.
Finally; it looks like they're working on a web interface for the Codex. The site doesn't have many features at the moment, and looks to be mostly a shell, but the menu options already added hints at a complete web solution that integrates with the Codex directly.
Reinforcements: Humans</h1>
Spencer Hibnik, aka pesto_enthusiast, has released the second volume in their Reinforcements series. These volumes aims to bring first echelon monster bands to higher echelons of play. And this time, it's the humans getting a level... I guess, an echelon up.
Reinforcement: Humans brings 14 new human statblocks for second echelon. All themed around watch positions. In addition to the statblocks, there are also new malice features that go along with the echeloned up humans.
And as, maybe a first?, it also comes with instruction on how to add the monster band to your Stawl account.
You can pick up Reinforcements: Humans on Itch.io for $5.
Twofold Class</h1>
speep released the twofold class. This is a class where to players at the table decide not only to play the same class, but their abilities constantly ping off each other, making them work more closely together.
I recently released an interview with speep where he talks about the class and how it functions at the table. And he's very open about the fact that it might not be for everyone. It does require the two players to actively strategize togehter and almost constantly work together to be effective in combat. But if you are one of those players - this class will be awesome.
You can pick up the twofold class for $20 on Itch.
Cave of Amber Tears</h1>
Paul Ligorski, also known as Heart of Arcana, just released Cave of Amber Tears. Paul crowdfunded the adventure last fall and it's finally released for anyone to pick up.
Cave of Amber Tears takes place in a norse-inspired setting and features elves, undead and larger beasties. It's designed for first-level heroes and grants ten to 13 victories. There are more than 20 new monsters, new complications and new treasure.
The adventure also features beautfily unique layout and really wonderful artwork that's both distinct and feels very fitting to a norse setting.
If you're quick, you can pick up Cave of Amber Tears for a 40% discount at $9.59 on Itch.
Keep on the Road to War</h1>
Aah! Books has released Keep on the Road to War, and adventure by Leo Hojnowski. The adventure is inspired by The Red Hand of Doom and tasks the heroes with protecting the town of Omund's Ferry.
The adventure is designed for third level heroes and award enough victories for them to level up. The adventure is set in Orden and brings details to Western Vasloria.
You can pick up Keep on the Road to War for $16 on Itch.
The Violet Heart</h1>
Chris Rendon has published The Violet Heart, a quest for first-level heroes, granting 9 victories in total.
The adventure have the heroes come in the town of Tern's defense as a group of psionic kobolds try to raze it. In the aftermath, it's noticed that someone has disappeared during the attack, and the heroes now need to figure out what's going on.
You can pick up The Violet Heart for $12 on Itch.
Nightmare Scenario</h1>
Font of Victory released Nightmare Scenario, a dream-themed supplement for Draw Steel. Nightmare Scenario was successfully funded back in January.
The supplement includes 10 new monsters, a new ancestry, a new domain, treasure, titles, dynamic terrain and dynamic arenas. In addition to the PDF, it also comes with tokens to use in a VTT, and a Forge Steel sourcebook.
You can pick up Nightmare Scenario for $15 on Itch.
Speak Carefully</h1>
Fernando Miguel "Ritehunter" Lofranco has released Speak Carefully, a toolkit for making negotiations and social encounters more interesting.
It includes curveballs that create unexpected twists, diplomatic styles to create varied negotiations, negotiation tactics for NPCs, pregen negotiators and new treasures, titles, perks and downtime projects.
You can pick up Speak Carefully for $15 on RPG Trader.
Community Highlights</h1>
And now some rapid fire updates from the community:

Adam (AdamantAce) released a preview of their upcoming Magus class.</li>
DMHub released a new wall feature in the Codex, making it easier to create thick wall with abilities and for creatures to climb on.</li>
Frederica Teather have been releasing a lot of good "becoming a better director" videos this month.</li>
Joshua A. Brooks launched their campaign for the bravo class.</li>
Kerpow published a video about Drawn Armory a tool they've made for Draw Steel encoutners</li>
Kormael has announced the launch of their crowdfunder for Whispers of Darkness & Power, a supplement to bring corruption to your campaign.</li>
The 1.1 release of the Draw Steel Foundry system is out</li>
Minhajul Hoq published a video showing off a prototype for their video game using Draw Steel rules</li>
NamelessYoungy has released updated ability cards, which are a nice way to organize your abilities if you play in person.</li>
Power Word Spill published a video showing off features from the Codex that he likes, as a sponsored video for MCDM</li>
Rise Heroes Rise! is releasing their playthrough of the Condemned.</li>
RogueSigyn released a map pack with accompanying encounters designed by Richard Fisher.</li>
Sciguymjm announced that they're bringing their video game Ironwrought to Steam Early Access, another game using Draw Steel rules for combat.</li>
Seamus released Rings Initiative, a add-on for Owlbear Rodeo to make it easier to run combats with combatant groups.</li>
Shadowhand Gaming released their Scorched supplement of fire loving hell worshippers.</li>
Tabletop Nonsenseverse announced pre-orders for their upcoming Director's Guide to Nomas and Riam's Tears setting guide.</li> </ul>
Blast From the Past</h1>
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.
Way back in 2024, July brought a highly anticipated update and announcement: the name of the game! The MCDM RPG officially got the name Draw Steel. Another big update was that movement became it's own thing you could do on your turn. Up until then you had to spend your maneuver to move, like you do in Crows now.
Also , because the rules were in flux, the Codex team worked on supporting featuers. July 2024 is the first time they showed of the elevation tools, featuring 2.5D effects.
Outro</h1>
So happy birthday to Draw Steel. And join Jams of the Timescape: Volume 3 - One Year of Draw Steel. The Dice Society even made a cake!
I'm also really looking forward to the new Crows playtest and the crowdfunder. It's going to be fun!
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</a>.
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.
You can see me and some friends on the 11th on Goblin Panel, the monthly stream where we talk about Draw Steel and Crows, and have a look at what's been published for the games in the past month. Next episode of Goblin Points is on the 15th. That's going to be the interview with Paul Hughes, the person in charge of Draw Steel at MCDM.
Don't forget to use the link in the episode descritpion to sign up for the Lunar Umbra crowdfunder launch.
See you next time. Snakkes.
Links</h1>
From MCDM</h2>

The Condemned - Adventure for Draw Steel - PDF</a> on MCDM Shop</li>
Crack the Sun Act 1 - Patreon Playtest | MCDM Productions</a> on Patreon</li>
Crack The Sun Act 2: Patreon Playtest | MCDM Productions</a> on Patreon</li>
Crows: Updated Travel Rules | MCDM Productions</a> on Patreon</li>
The Black Rock Gol of Urland | MCDM Productions</a> on Patreon</li>
The Heliox of Sola Helios</a> on Patreon</li>
What's Changing in the Next Crows Playtest | MCDM Productions</a> on Patreon</li>
17 Reasons You Should Try The Draw Steel VTT</a> on YouTube</li>
Crows: Is it OSR?</a> on YouTube</li>
Dungeon Advice: Puzzling Out Puzzles</a> on YouTube</li>
Dungeon Advice: Puzzling Out Puzzles</a> on YouTube</li>
Keep RPG Puzzles in the Game You're Playing! #jamesintrocaso #mcdm #crowsrpg</a> on YouTube</li>
Keep RPG Puzzles in the Game You're Playing! #jamesintrocaso #mcdm #crowsrpg</a> on YouTube</li>
10 Years on YouTube</a> on YouTube</li>
Draw Steel Codex: New Dice available in Store!</a> by DMHub</li>
draw-steel-companion</a> by Draw Steel Companion</li> </ul>
Lunar Umbra</h2>

Lunar Umbra - A Limited Edition Power Roll Dice Set — Coming Soon - BackerKit</a></li> </ul>
Jams of the Timescape</h2>

JotT #3: One Year of Draw Steel - itch.io</a></li>
Discord</a></li> </ul>
Reinforcements: Humans</h2>

Reinforcements: Humans by Pesto Publications</a> by Pesto Publications</li> </ul>
The Twofold Class</h2>

The Twofold Class — Powered by Draw Steel by speep</a> by speep</li> </ul>
The Cave of Amber Tears</h2>

The Cave of Amber Tears - a new adventure for Draw Steel! by Heart of Arcana</a> by Heart of Arcana</li>
The Cave of Amber Discounts</a> by Paul Ligorski</li> </ul>
Keep on the Road to War</h2>

Keep on the Road to War (3rd Level Draw Steel Adventure) by Aah! Books</a> by Aah! Books</li> </ul>
The Violet Heart</h2>

The Violet Heart: A 1st Level Quest for Draw Steel by Chris Rendon</a> by Chris Rendon</li> </ul>
Nightmare Scenario</h2>

Nightmare Scenario by Font of Victories, chaoticgoodra, Adventure Fourth, Tintenseher (they/them)</a> by Font of Victories, chaoticgoodra, Adventure Fourth, Tintenseher (they/them)</li> </ul>
Speak Carefully</h2>

Speak Carefully on RPG Trader</a> by Fernando Miguel "Ritehunter" Lofranco</li> </ul>
Community Highlights</h2>

Magus Preview for Discord</a> by Adam (AdamantAce)</li>
Walls, Verticality, and the Codex</a> by DMHub</li>
7 Difficult Draw Steel Lessons I Wish I Knew Earlier</a> by Frederica Teather</li>
Overprepping: 7 Habits I Thought Were Normal.</a> by Frederica Teather</li>
Saving Their 2 Year Draw Steel Campaign in 18 Minutes.</a> by Frederica Teather</li>
11 minutes of brutally honest GM advice</a> by Fredericia Teater</li>
Stylish Action for the Heroes of Draw Steel</a> by Joshua A. Brooks</li>
My tool for Draw Steel encounters</a> by Kerpow</li>
Get Ready for Whispers of Darkness & Power</a> by Kormael</li>
Pre launch</a> by Kormael</li>
Release Version 1.1.0 · MetaMorphic-Digital/draw-steel</a> by Metamorphic Digital</li>
Draw Steel Video Game Prototype</a> by Minhajul Hoq</li>
Draw Steel Ability Cards v2.0 released!</a> by NamelessYoungy</li>
17 Reasons You Should Try The Draw Steel VTT</a> by Power Word Spill and MCDM</li>
RHR Presents: The Condemned Trailer | Coming July 31st</a> by Rise Heroes Rise!</li>
Map and encounter pack by RogueSigyn</a> by RogueSigyn</li>
Ironwrought on Steam</a> by Sciguymjm</li>
Rings Initiaitive | Seamus</a> by Seamus</li>
Monsters of the Month I: Scorched | Shadowhand Gaming</a> by Shadowhand Gaming</li>
Nomas: The Psionic City of the World Below</a> by Tabletop Nonsenseverse</li>
2026 July Content for Supporters - New Retainers</a> by Triglav Games</li> </ul>
Draw Steel Homebrew</h2>

The Avian v1.0 - Preview.pdf</a> by dnkmnk</li>
Push Forward Games</a> by Push Forward Games</li>
Elementalist: Water Specialization | Sam McGurran</a> by Sam McGurran</li>
Weaver Encounter Draft | Shadowhand Gaming</a> by Shadowhand Gaming</li>
Simple Strongholds</a> by tombombodil</li>
College of the Third Eye (v2.1)</a> by Zetesofos</li> </ul>
Draw Steel Media</h2>

Draw Steel Campaign Diary 1 #drawsteel #ttrpg</a> by Adamar</li>
The Joy of Miniatures Painting 17 - Roper</a> by Bobholder Ross</li>
The Joy of Miniatures Painting 16 - Gretta the Griffon</a> by BobholderRoss</li>
Draw Steel Actual Play THE RED ROAD Session 1 - YouTube</a> by d20play</li>
Draw Steel Actual Play THE RED ROAD Session 1 of 2</a> by d20play</li>
How Fast Was That Turn!? DRAW STEEL</a> by d20play</li>
Token Macros Make Games FAST #d20play #roll20 #drawsteel</a> by d20play</li>
Draw Steel Codex - Elevation, Wall Height, and You!</a> by Epizarwin</li>
Draw Steel! - Obsidia - Session 16</a> by GamingGoldy</li>
Draw Steel! - Obsidia - Session 18</a> by GamingGoldy</li>
Draw Steel! - Obsidia - Session 19</a> by GamingGoldy</li>
Draw Steel! - Obsidia - Session 20</a> by GamingGoldy</li>
Draw Steel! - Obsidia - Session 21</a> by GamingGoldy</li>
My Favorite Thing About Draw Steel</a> by Greenfield Studios</li>
No Attack Roll in Draw Steel!</a> by headlesshammerhead</li>
Prepping Draw Steel: Angels in the Outhouse - YouTube</a> by Joe Auerbach</li>
The Angel of Wings: A Study in Effluence Campaign Diary 9</a> by Joe Auerbach</li>
Delian Tomb on the Codex Part 7 | Draw Steel</a> by Milestone Play</li>
The Delian Tomb on the Codex Pt 8 | Draw Steel</a> by Milestone Play</li>
Watch</a> by Milestone Play</li>
Draw Steel Beastheart Guide</a> by NetherBovine</li>
Draw Steel: The Plague of Behdmeten session 19</a> by RamblesMC</li>
Stitched Whiplash Art Preview</a> by Shadowhand Gaming</li>
Draw Steel - A Pact Made In Amber - Episode 18</a> by The Distant Horizon</li>
Draw Steel | The Adventure Continues! | w/ @theravencaller</a> by Tiny Talescapes</li>
Introducing the FREE Android Ancestry for Draw Steel!</a> by Toasty's Tabletop and Toasthammer</li>
🤖 Sentinel AI | Tower Defense & Scroll Heists | !chat | Draw Steel Ep. 19: Shrine of the Amber</a> by Wizardhood2003</li> </ul>

Links</h1>

Threats of the Timescape - Scourges of Space for Draw Steel - BackerKit</a></li>
The Quiet Year - Buried Without Ceremony</a></li>
Unconscious Mind | Board Game | BoardGameGeek</a></li>
The Savage Arctic - ShadowDark RPG - Jeff Stevens Games | ShadowDark RPG | DriveThruRPG</a></li> </ul>

Links</h1>
The Arcanist - A Wizard Class For Draw Steel — Coming Soon - BackerKit</a></li>
Octopath Traveler 0 - Wikipedia</a></li>
Octopath Traveler Zero Soundtrack</li>
Avowed - Wikipedia</a></li> </ul>

Links</h1>

Flawed Tactics on Steam</a></li>
Roadside Picnic - Wikipedia</a></li>
The Blood of Dawnwalker – A Dark Fantasy Narrative Sandbox RPG</a></li> </ul>

Links</h1>

2-Minute Tabletop | Hand-Drawn TTRPG Resources</a></li>
YourGMJay - YouTube</a></li> </ul>
00:00:00 - Intro 00:00:42 - Interview 00:43:25 - Outro</p>

Draw Steel Tools</h2>

Anvil VTT</a> by Anvil</li>
Balhaunis — Crows Village Map</a> by FlimtotheFlam</li>
Macros for running Delian Tomb in roll20</a> by Kill It With Fire!</li> </ul>

Links</h1>

The Mythical Press — A Guild dedicated to the discovery of monsters and their lairs. | Patreon</a></li>
Robin Hobb bibliography - Wikipedia</a></li> </ul>

Links</h1>

Gideon the Ninth - Wikipedia</a></li> </ul>

Goblin Points

News: Crows Playtest, Encounter of the Week, Zine Galore | October Roundup

Intro</h1>
Crows public playtests are done, Codex is brimming with new features, multiple products from Triglav, more complications for you heroes and three new magazine issues.</p>
I'm Jon de Nor and this is Goblin Points.</p>

Draw Steel Tools</h2>

TheGenieOfTheCode/draw-steel-triggers</a> by Ady</li>
kenpoh01/draw-steel-4e-converter: Dnd 4e pdf monster converter</a> by kenpoh</li>
kenpoh01/draw-steel-adventure-pdf-journal-converter</a> by kenpoh</li> </ul>

Jeff Stevens: Threats of the Timescape And Being a Publisher | Interview

Jenny [REDACTED]: Arcanist, the Draw Steel Wizard | Interview

Intro</h1>
Jenny [REDACTED] is back! And we're talking wizards in Draw Steel! Specifically the Arcanist. The most wizard that ever wizarded — and they're doing it in Draw Steel. And then we talk classic fantasy monsters, also coming soon!</p>
I'm Jon de Nor and this is Goblin Points.</p>

News: Draw Steel Book 3 is Out, Big Codex Updates, Hooked on Crafting Releases | September Roundup

Intro</h1>
Codex prep just became much easier, Draw Steel Book 3 is out, Crows funded, Hooked on Crafting has hooks for crafting, more dragons are coming to Draw Steel, and Rats Attack!</p>
I'm Jon de Nor and this is Goblin Points.</p>

Aestus & Ryan: Enshrined: Red of Tooth and Claw | Interview

Intro</h1>
I'm joined by Aestus and Ryan (a.ka. 4D Pixels) of Headwind Studios. They're making an adventure, potion crafting rules and a gazetteer for the swamp region, and the monsters that live there, of the Enshrined setting.</p>
I'm Jon de Nor and this is Goblin Points.</p>

YouGMJay: The VTT, the System and the Mechanics

News: Crows Crowdfunder Success, Dice Crowdfunder, Jams of the Timescape 3 | August Roundup

Intro</h1>
Crows has a successful crowdfunder, I try to crowdfund power roll dice, Jams of the Timescape Volume 3 has a winner, the Codex can import encounters from Stawl, the Kiln was released and Riam's Tears dropped.</p>
I'm Jon de Nor and this is Goblin Points.</p>

The Mythical Press: The New Monthly Monster Magazine | Interview

Intro</h1>
I'm joined by Finn Brodie, the one-man-band behind The Mythical Press, a monthly magazine for Draw Steel. How does he intend to keep up pace, what can we look forward to and tell us more about the Rotterhund and the 2-in-1 siren.</p>
I'm Jon de Nor and this is Goblin Points.</p>

Paul Hughes: The Man in Charge of Draw Steel | Interview

Intro</h1>
It's the man with the plan, for Draw Steel. Paul Hughes is on Goblin Points talking about Draw Steel, what the future will bring, how it's going with Crack the Sun, and what the signs of a healthy Draw Steel game and community is.</p>
I'm Jon de Nor and this is Goblin Points.</p>

News: Draw Steel is 1 Year, Crowdfunder for Djordice, new Jams of the Timescape | July Roundup

Intro</h1>
Happy Birthday Draw Steel! It's been a whole year already. Also, I'm crowdfunding Djordice, there's a new Jams of the Timescape, Crows is soon going to crowdfunding and two big adventures released.</p>
I'm Jon de Nor and this is Goblin Points.</p>

Goblin Points

News: Crows Playtest, Encounter of the Week, Zine Galore | October Roundup

Intro</h1> Crows public playtests are done, Codex is brimming with new features, multiple products from Triglav, more complications for you heroes and three new magazine issues.</p> I'm Jon de Nor and this is Goblin Points.</p>

Jeff Stevens: Threats of the Timescape And Being a Publisher | Interview

Jenny [REDACTED]: Arcanist, the Draw Steel Wizard | Interview

Intro</h1> Jenny [REDACTED] is back! And we're talking wizards in Draw Steel! Specifically the Arcanist. The most wizard that ever wizarded — and they're doing it in Draw Steel. And then we talk classic fantasy monsters, also coming soon!</p> I'm Jon de Nor and this is Goblin Points.</p>

News: Draw Steel Book 3 is Out, Big Codex Updates, Hooked on Crafting Releases | September Roundup

Intro</h1> Codex prep just became much easier, Draw Steel Book 3 is out, Crows funded, Hooked on Crafting has hooks for crafting, more dragons are coming to Draw Steel, and Rats Attack!</p> I'm Jon de Nor and this is Goblin Points.</p>

The Knight</h1> Jacons has released the Knight, a chivalric class insipred by romance and samurai films of the 1950's.</p> The knight includes three subclasses:</p>

Community Highlights</h1> And now some rapid fire updates from the community:</p>

Aestus & Ryan: Enshrined: Red of Tooth and Claw | Interview

Intro</h1> I'm joined by Aestus and Ryan (a.ka. 4D Pixels) of Headwind Studios. They're making an adventure, potion crafting rules and a gazetteer for the swamp region, and the monsters that live there, of the Enshrined setting.</p> I'm Jon de Nor and this is Goblin Points.</p>

YouGMJay: The VTT, the System and the Mechanics

News: Crows Crowdfunder Success, Dice Crowdfunder, Jams of the Timescape 3 | August Roundup

Intro</h1> Crows has a successful crowdfunder, I try to crowdfund power roll dice, Jams of the Timescape Volume 3 has a winner, the Codex can import encounters from Stawl, the Kiln was released and Riam's Tears dropped.</p> I'm Jon de Nor and this is Goblin Points.</p>

Community Highlights</h1> And now some rapid fire updates from the community:</p>

The Mythical Press: The New Monthly Monster Magazine | Interview

Intro</h1> I'm joined by Finn Brodie, the one-man-band behind The Mythical Press, a monthly magazine for Draw Steel. How does he intend to keep up pace, what can we look forward to and tell us more about the Rotterhund and the 2-in-1 siren.</p> I'm Jon de Nor and this is Goblin Points.</p>

Paul Hughes: The Man in Charge of Draw Steel | Interview

Intro</h1> It's the man with the plan, for Draw Steel. Paul Hughes is on Goblin Points talking about Draw Steel, what the future will bring, how it's going with Crack the Sun, and what the signs of a healthy Draw Steel game and community is.</p> I'm Jon de Nor and this is Goblin Points.</p>

News: Draw Steel is 1 Year, Crowdfunder for Djordice, new Jams of the Timescape | July Roundup

Intro</h1> Happy Birthday Draw Steel! It's been a whole year already. Also, I'm crowdfunding Djordice, there's a new Jams of the Timescape, Crows is soon going to crowdfunding and two big adventures released.</p> I'm Jon de Nor and this is Goblin Points.</p>

Intro</h1>
Crows public playtests are done, Codex is brimming with new features, multiple products from Triglav, more complications for you heroes and three new magazine issues.</p>
I'm Jon de Nor and this is Goblin Points.</p>

Intro</h1>
Jenny [REDACTED] is back! And we're talking wizards in Draw Steel! Specifically the Arcanist. The most wizard that ever wizarded — and they're doing it in Draw Steel. And then we talk classic fantasy monsters, also coming soon!</p>
I'm Jon de Nor and this is Goblin Points.</p>

Intro</h1>
Codex prep just became much easier, Draw Steel Book 3 is out, Crows funded, Hooked on Crafting has hooks for crafting, more dragons are coming to Draw Steel, and Rats Attack!</p>
I'm Jon de Nor and this is Goblin Points.</p>

Intro</h1>
I'm joined by Aestus and Ryan (a.ka. 4D Pixels) of Headwind Studios. They're making an adventure, potion crafting rules and a gazetteer for the swamp region, and the monsters that live there, of the Enshrined setting.</p>
I'm Jon de Nor and this is Goblin Points.</p>

Intro</h1>
Crows has a successful crowdfunder, I try to crowdfund power roll dice, Jams of the Timescape Volume 3 has a winner, the Codex can import encounters from Stawl, the Kiln was released and Riam's Tears dropped.</p>
I'm Jon de Nor and this is Goblin Points.</p>

Intro</h1>
I'm joined by Finn Brodie, the one-man-band behind The Mythical Press, a monthly magazine for Draw Steel. How does he intend to keep up pace, what can we look forward to and tell us more about the Rotterhund and the 2-in-1 siren.</p>
I'm Jon de Nor and this is Goblin Points.</p>

Intro</h1>
It's the man with the plan, for Draw Steel. Paul Hughes is on Goblin Points talking about Draw Steel, what the future will bring, how it's going with Crack the Sun, and what the signs of a healthy Draw Steel game and community is.</p>
I'm Jon de Nor and this is Goblin Points.</p>

Intro</h1>
Happy Birthday Draw Steel! It's been a whole year already. Also, I'm crowdfunding Djordice, there's a new Jams of the Timescape, Crows is soon going to crowdfunding and two big adventures released.</p>
I'm Jon de Nor and this is Goblin Points.</p>