Author: Jon Hodgson

The first BEOWULF annual will soon be available to pre-order tomorrow (Thursday 3rd Feb) and all orders come with a free PDF!

This 64 page, full colour softcover book collects together all the written content from the first 8 digital packs for BEOWULF Age of Heroes. 

You’ll find new monsters, articles on building characters, new Followers, useful treasures, magical weapons, an example of combat, a sword name generator, things to see at sea, and more!

It will be available in PDF, and if you have already bought Digital Packs 1 to 8 on the day of release, you’ll get the PDF free.

What’s not included

We’ve been selective in what’s in the Annual, focusing on the written gaming content. There are things from the Digital Packs that are not included. 

We haven’t added all the battle maps and tokens from the digital packs, since they don’t seem very useful printed in a US-letter-sized book. 

The print and play story cards from pack eight aren’t in there either – again they don’t seem very useful printed in a book.  No one wants 11 pages of cards to cut out of a book!

There’s no Digital Pack video content included, nor any of the form-fillable PDF character, follower or monster sheets. 

And of course the atmospheric background music doesn’t print so well.

This means the digital packs are still well worth your time at the great price of just $2.99 each. Even if you grab the collected Annual!

Find out more about BEOWULF Age of Heroes for 5th Edition here.

To celebrate the release of Digital Pack Eight, heres 8 things about BEOWULF:

1: BEOWULF is an ENnie-award nominated setting and set of additional rules for 5e. 

2: It’s aimed at making 5e shine for one player and one GM.

3: The player takes on the role of the Hero class in the myths of the “dark ages”.

4: There are 6 subclasses, one for each ability score. So there are Strength Heroes, Dexterity Heroes, Charisma Heroes and so on.  

5: Lone Heroes are bolstered by Followers – NPCs that work a little bit like spells, coming into the spotlight when they perform an action and then retreating into the background. 

6: Digital Packs are packages of additional content for the game, including new material in PDF, music, useful VTT assets, new monsters, beautiful battle maps and more. 

7: There is a whole series of adventures for BEOWULF Age of Heroes available in PDF.

8: You can start your Hero’s story for FREE with the full-length ENnie-Nominated Hermit’s Sanctuary adventure. 

On the Blog

If you missed any of our recent blog articles here’s the links:

• Jon talks accessories – we love them, but you don’t need them.
• Jacob gives Ham Anfeald and The Wolf Child the spotlight in Character Queue
• We took a look at Hadrian of Canterbury in celebration of MLK Day
• Handimonster Themes – Jacob takes a look at how we theme our 5e monsters.

BEOWULF Digital Pack Eight Out Now

BEOWULF Digital Packs bring you fresh material monthly for your BEOWULF Age of Heroes games. In this eighth Digital Pack of bonus content for BEOWULF: Age of Heroes, we bring you:

• A deck of 44 print and play Story Cards to inspire your adventures and NPCs, complete with instructions
• 2 battle maps
• A set of VTT tokens
• A PDF about Boundary Ghosts
• A PDF adventure “Fragment” featuring a Boundary Ghost
• 2 new music tracks 

Grab it now!

Handimonsters Annual Arrives

The first Handimonsters Annuals arrived, and preorders went out – individually to the UK, and en masse to the US. They should arrive in the US next week, and be sent on to you. We’d originally planned to also print in the US, but (slightly bizarre?) changes to pricing on that specific size of book with our US printer meant a change of plan. Still, it’s barely a couple of days difference, so all good!

The Annual gathers together a year’s worth of Handimonsters into a lovely softcover book. You can also grab it in PDF too!

You can order your copy now.

Newsletter exclusive: BEOWULF Art Book

In our email newsletter this week we’ll take an exclusive look at the contents of the BEOWULF art book. You can subscribe to the newsletter here:

Upcoming

Releasing in the near future we have The Triple Serpent for BEOWULF Age of Heroes, and the BEOWULF Annual! We’ll have more news on those soon.

This Monday’s Handimonster is Barrow Moss, the first of our Scenery Monsters that bring a new twist to background monsters that don’t quite need their own stat block, but still make adventures more fun to run and challenging to play!

And lastly and perhaps most excitingly, we’ll have Hellenistika news too! We have a whole chapter on hand!

We love a good accessory here at Handiwork Games. Whether it’s battle mats and minis, fancy dice or metal inspiration tokens we can’t deny our commitment to feeling fancy in our hobby time.

But something we always keep in mind when making our games is that not everyone gets to splash out on all the bells and whistles. So we’re committed to making games that can be played just as effectively without the fancy stuff.

The inspiration mat and tokens from BEOWULF are fine examples of this. While we love the feeling we get from playing with the fancy versions, we began developing those tools with far more basic implements. And the BEOWULF inspiration pool that powers duet play in 5e works just fine with a piece of paper and some buttons (or in the above example a flower, an acorn and a groovy beach pebble. Cozy style!). Indeed, that’s how they began, long before we considered (admittedly incredibly beautiful, weighty and atmospheric) metal tokens and neoprene play mats.

And of course there’s a nice halfway house available as part of The Hermit’s Sanctuary in the form of a printable inspiration pool and tokens you can cut out and stick to board or coins.

Likewise, our heroic-sized Q-Workshop BEOWULF dice are a lovely thing to hold and roll, but you don’t need them to play – three (or even two) different coloured D20s work perfectly well.

Of course this all stems back to Bang and Twang, where the game comes with everything you need to play, but if you want to get fancy you can get a lovely set of metal coins to play with.

With all that in mind it seemed worthwhile taking a moment to mention if you’re playing any of our games with stuff you’ve made yourself, we’d really love to see it. And if you’re just using pencils and paper, you’re playing the real thing too.

What do you think? Let us know on Discord, Twitter or Facebook.

Today’s the official observance of Martin Luther King Jr in the United States and to celebrate the occasion we thought we’d take a look at a famous person of colour from the period of BEOWULF Age of Heroes.

Hadrian or Adrian of Canterbury was a prominent North African scholar, born in 637CE who came to England in roughly 669 (after some adventures in Frankia). He had travelled from Rome with his friend Theodore of Tarsus, in modern-day Turkey. Hadrian was sent on this journey by the Pope to accompany Theodore who was taking up the archbishopric of Canterbury.

Hadrian became Abbot of the monastery of Saints Peter and Paul in Canterbury, and set about instituting a new respect for learning and study, paving the way for the importance of Canterbury in the Christian Church.

Not only was Hadrian of Libya well versed in religious matters, but he was a prominent scientist and teacher, who travelled all over the islands of what is now the United Kingdom, teaching those he met.

A hundred years (or thereabouts) later, King Alfred references Hadrian as a wise and learned man, and he sought to emulate him in furthering his own quest for education and learning.

After his death, Hadrian became a saint, and we’re not long past his feast day of January the 9th.

Check out more Hadrian facts at wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrian_of_Canterbury (and naturally in the spirit of Hadrian of Canterbury, find a book or two about him!)

Happy MLK day!

Hello! Happy New Year! We hope you managed to get a peaceful break over the festive season. We’re back at work and are all hard at it making the very finest books and accessories for your gaming table. It’s all happening this week, so let’s get into it!

Handimonsters Annual is out!

The Handimonsters Annual 2022 is out now in PDF and for pre-order in print! Collecting a year’s worth of unique 5e monsters from www.handimonsters.com, this US Letter-sized, full colour softcover is on the webstore right now for pre-order, or in PDF at DrivethruRPG. It’s a gorgeous book.

The Triple Serpent

The next adventure release for BEOWULF Age of Heroes is the final one unlocked by our mighty Kickstarter backers. Written by the Uber-talented Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan, The Triple Serpent takes our Hero to Ireland, where they must unravel the mystery of the serpent troubling a local hall and church.

This week we unveiled the cover, and Jon gave us the low-down on painting it in a blog post here.

Poster Prints

Thanks to the success of the Whale Road poster, we’ve decided to make prints a regular thing. We have 3 initial designs with which to tempt you in A3 size – the BEOWULF cover, and “The Valley Hall” by Jon Hodgson, and “The Abandoned Shipyard” by Paul Bourne from the forthcoming a|state. We have a mix of numbered open edition and limited edition prints. We’ll let you know when you can grab them!

a|state Coins and Compass

Recently on the blog, we took a look at the amazing a|state compass and coins made by our friends at Campaign Coins. These aren’t just beautiful accessories – they’re used in the games of a|state and The Three Coins. Learn more in the blog post.

While we finish up editing and layout of the a|state second edition PDF, late pledges remain open. But not for much longer! Grab a late pledge now!

Ralph’s art book

Last year Handiwork Games helped our friend Ralph Horsley make and kickstart his art book. We’re currently weathering the storms of global logistics in the time of Omicron, but books are on their way to our UK fulfilment partners right now. We’ll have a bunch of copies for sale in our webstore in the coming months. Keep your eyes peeled – it’s a very finely crafted book full of absolute delights for any fan of fantasy art!

BEOWULF Art Book

The BEOWULF art book is out! Pre-ordered copies are winging their way to customers, if they haven’t already arrived! We put this together as a thank you for our US backers, who’ve been incredibly patient with getting their books last, thanks to the global shipping excitement of last year. And of course it’d be a shame if we didn’t share it with everyone.

This cute little square book is packed with our favourite art from BEOWULF, along with analysis and behind the scenes commentary on each piece. Grab yours and get a free PDF version right now. Or just grab the PDF.

What’s this?

Something brand new just arrived at Handiwork HQ. Could it be something to do with the fabled companion game to the Forest Dragon Farmer? Could we be on the brink of uncovering the secrets of the Pie Man?

Links

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Join us on Discord, just point your browser at www.discord.me/handiworkgamers and that will generate you an invite. Sometimes you have to cut and paste for the bot to do its magic. Say hello to everyone and find channels for all your favourite releases.

And if you do social media, then give us a follow:

Twitter @GamesHandiwork

Facebook @HandiworkGames

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Here at a Handiwork Games we love an accessory, and we pride ourselves on creating very beautiful things that enhance your (and our) gaming life. We’re also careful to make sure they are all entirely optional, our fancy kit is all easily replaced by things you already own. 

Just before the festive period we were delighted to receive these samples of our a|state coins and compass ahead of the main production run. As ever our friends at Campaign Coins have outdone themselves with the sheer quality of these metal alloy tokens. 

Deigned by a|state co-creator Paul Bourne, the compass is styled as an in-world artefact. Denizens of The City might well have one of these in their pocket to help orient themselves amongst the canals and back alleys. It’s a truly attractive souvenir of the campaign, and a piece of The City, the setting of a|state.

As part of our Kickstarter for BEOWULF Age of Heroes our mighty backers unlocked a series of PDF adventures. The very last of these is The Triple Serpent by Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan, and we’re finishing up production of that adventure right now – it should be released this month!

Jon has been painting the cover to this adventure, and he takes up the story with this look at the process.

Handiwork Games is proud to announce the release of the inaugural Handimonsters Annual in both print format (64 full colour pages with heavyweight full colour perfect-bound cover) and PDF. The book collects dozens of monsters that were originally developed as part of the Handimonsters Patreon (www.handimonsters.com).

Development and design of the monsters is led by the amazing Jacob Rodgers (Adventures in Middle-earth, BEOWULF Age of Heroes, Ruins of Symbaroum and many more), whose work for 5e games has earned many award nominations and several victories. He has been ably assisted by Jon Hodgson (Adventures in Middle-earth, BEOWULF Age of Heroes, The One Ring Roleplaying Game and many more) and other guest designers.

The tremendous art for Handimonsters is provided by the incredible Scott Purdy (BEOWULF Age of Heroes, Dungeons and Dragons, Pathfinder and many more) and the stunning Jon Hodgson (Dungeons and Dragons, The One Ring Roleplaying Game, Warhammer Historical and many more). Layout is done by the prodigious Paul Bourne (a|state, BEOWULF Age of Heroes, The One Ring Roleplaying Game and many more).

The first Handimonsters Annual collects dozens of monsters with challenge ratings from 1/4 (the subterranean knackers) to 20 (the majestic Dragon of Dreams). Each monster is a unique and fresh creation and this is the first time they’ve ever been collected together in a single volume. They are available for purchase at the following links:

https://handiwork.games/product/handimonsters-annual-2022-free-pdf

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/383231/Handimonsters-Annual-2022?affiliate_id=267183

Handimonsters Annual 2022 + free PDF

A beautiful 64 page, full colour softcover book, filled with a year’s worth of monsters from Handimonsters.

£12.99

Shop now

Hello! Jon here.
Just a very brief, slightly exhausted blog post to say a huge thank you for all your amazing support throughout 2021. We’re all slowing down and stopping work over the next couple of days. Jacob is finishing up BEOWULF backer dispatch right now. Scott’s been finishing up some client work, Paul’s been hard at work on a|state (late pledges close very soon!), and I’ve just made BEOWULF Digital Pack Seven live.
Grab that as a wee Christmas present to yourself. You deserve it.

Our webshop will remain open over the festive period, but orders will be processed weekly until the New Year. We’ll pop a notice on the store to this effect.

We’ll be back with a crowd funding campaign for a print collection of BEOWULF Adventures, we’ll have the Handimonsters Annual and the BEOWULF Annuals out, we’ll be delivering a|state in PDF and thereafter print (gosh what a book that will be!). We’ll be unleashing The Forest Dragon Farmer on the world, as well as a couple of things we’re not ready to talk about yet.

Thanks again for all your support, while it’s ben a very tough year for everyone, we feel very lucky to be able to do what we do, and blessed to have such a great community growing around us. We hope you have a very safe and restful festive season, however you’re choosing to celebrate. And here’s to a hopeful New Year.

Take Care!
Jon