Dark Heart of the Wood Patreon Playtest

The feedback period for this playtest has now ended. You can still use the adventure below.

Hey folks! We are pleased to bring you a playtest for the first official adventure made for 2nd-level heroes in Draw Steel. Behold Dark Heart of the Wood. Here's a quick description from the adventure's interior, written by the designer, Sam Mannell!

Dark Heart of the Wood is an adventure for Draw Steel for 2nd-level heroes. The player characters are already local heroes—they might have a reputation for helping small villages or overlooked neighborhoods in a city, but they’re unlikely to be well-known outside of the region they’ve begun their story in.

This is intended to be a monster-of-the-week-style adventure: A memorable, early stepping-stone in the heroes’ career. You should be able to run it in one or two sessions. The players may not even know they’ve stumbled into the beginning of a new adventure until you reveal its name!

Byre is a small village in the barony of Dalrath. It lies along a well-used road between Broadhurst and Dalrath Keep. This road winds up from the south through an unusually fertile valley, which has long been protected by a high-elf sage named Whisper of Sunset Over the Frost.

Byre’s people have been blessed with good harvests for many years, but recently, drought and famine have been reported in the area.

What’s more, merchants have stopped passing through the valley in the last month. “Carts don’t make it out the other end anymore,” they say. None of them know why, and none of them want to find out.

A rough draft of the adventure is attached to the bottom of this post! We want you to play it and let us know what you think.

The best way to get us your feedback is through the following survey:

https://forms.gle/i5FQUfoQ8SNVi3o87

The survey is now closed. Thanks for your feedback!

As a heads up, this hasn't yet been through editing. You'll likely find some typos and wording that could be a little more clear. You don't need to give us feedback on that. We have editors who will do it for us! You just let us know how it plays at your table and if it's fun or not.

Discord and Reddit

If you want to find a group to playtest or want to chat about the adventure, head on over to the MCDM Discord. You can also explore the Draw Steel subreddit to discuss the game! Be sure to link your Patreon and Discord accounts so you can also chat about the content with our other Patrons.

Thank you all so much for supporting MCDM and Draw Steel!

—James