Character Queue is an ongoing series where we dive deep into our pregenerated characters that we made as part of our introduction to our BEOWULF:Age of Heroes roleplaying game. We were fortunate enough to fund sculpting and casting these characters, so not only do they appear in character sheet form but as professional miniatures as well.

Our character today is The Wolf-child.

“She just stared at us. The wolves beside her waited patiently. I got the sense that she must be deciding something and if it went poorly they would attack. The bird on her shoulder also stared silently at us. Finally, she lunged forward and grabbed the meat from my hand. It took all I had to not flinch.“

With the release of the Handimonsters Annual this week, we asked Jacob about some of the design inspirations behind the monsters, especially the connections between monsters. This week, he talks about some of the more subtle, earlier connections. Next week he’ll dive into the bigget categories like Dungeon Constructs and the Wildfolk.

I came up at the tail end of 1st Edition (D&D) and most of my later high school and college gaming was squarely in the days of 2nd Edition. This was the high days of Settings and, though we more often played in our homebrew world, it seemed like each of us collected at least one setting (one friend collected Dark Sun, another loved Planescape, etc.) and we all shared the ideas around. My setting of choice was Ravenloft. I loved the Gothic horror stuff, especially when it was time for the Halloween one-shot each year, the limits of the demi-dimension and the ‘easy to enter, hard to leave’ aspect.

Character Queue is an ongoing series where we dive deep into our pregenerated characters that we made as part of our introduction to our BEOWULF:Age of Heroes roleplaying game. We were fortunate enough to fund sculpting and casting these characters, so not only do they appear in character sheet form but as professional miniatures as well.

Our character today is Ibn Uthman.

“We have travelled far across the sea, through the storm, having heard that your kingdom is beset by woes. My name is Ibn Uthman, a traveller in these lands. I would speak with your lord and find out more of your troubles” – Jon Hodgson (from the backer playthrough of the Serpent of Glennreddin)

Once a trader and writer, Ibn Uthman was exiled from the lands of his birth for using his prodigious ability with words most unwisely: a tangled financial dispute with a Northern King means that returning to Baghdad and his old life is no longer an option for Ibn Uthman. Resolved to explore the North, Ibn Uthman has found himself far from home.

Telling a tale or two seemed to please the people of these freezing Northlands, and they enjoy his melodious, strange-sounding voice, and his songs from afar. His ability to spin a story has grown with the miles he’s travelled. 

Uthman is faithful to the One God, though his version seems somewhat different to those of the Northerners.

Available as a single STL file or as part of the precast miniatures set.

Play as Ibn Uthman in The Hermit’s Sanctuary, our ENnie-nominated introductory scenario for BEOWULF: Age of Heroes, available for free (PDF version) or in print!

Here’s the latest news from over at the a|state campaign! Late pledges are still available for a short time.

Editing continues, art-making continues, as does work on the accessories. Layout of completed chapters also continues – there’s a whole of continuing going on!

Let’s have a look at some new art from Paul. Always a treat, and we can’t wait to see these in situ.

Playmats

The play mat has gone through several iterations since the campaign ended. The initial version we showed was a barebones mock-up, which has now had much more attention from our graphic designer Paul Bourne.

We’ve been through a couple of versions, just making sure we’re really happy with how it all prints on neoprene. As you can imagine, printing on neoprene, with its fabric weave texture is a little different than printing on paper.

We now have the final version.

We’ve decided to stitch the edges. We don’t really need to – unstitched mats work just fine, but it does look so good! Little bit more expensive for us, but it’ll be a lovely thing when you get it.

Coins

The design process for these was very straight forward and have been done for a while. We just got these photos from Campaign Coins of real actual metal coins, and we should get out hands on these first few very soon. I’m very happy with how these look. They’re 30mm across, so the a set of four should be a solid handful, as well as being appropriately portable for playing The Three Coins.

Compass

This one proved a little more tricky to get right in the final stages of pre-production. We’ve elected to update the design – the cracks behind the City sigil presented a small risk of not working out quite how we wanted. So we’ve added a background design like the one on the coins.

 I think it looks great! And there’s zero risk of anything looking odd. Just like the coins we just got these photos of the real thing. I can’t wait to own one – great work as ever from our friends at Campaign Coins.

Summary

So in summary excellent progress all round. We’re slightly behind schedule on editing due to the surprise arrival of BEOWULF books in the US, which has taken up some team time in processing those. But nothing I’m concerned about. I’m monitoring that closely and if we need to bring in some extra help we will do.

In terms of PDF delivery, I would prefer not to force the team into a crunch to beat the impending Christmas break, which they all deverve to enjoy without being worn ragged ahead of time. Given that I’m satisfied with some very high quality work and great progress towards our goals, I think it’s likely to be a new year delivery for the PDF.  I’m sure we’d all rather get it right than do it fast.

Late pledges

Late pledges are due to close this week. We might opt to keep them open a little longer. We’ll see!

a|state second edition