It seems like a busy week for enjoying content around our games!
The latest Yes Indie’d podcast features Paul Beakley, and he has some very kind things to say about a|state: “It is in my opinion the best Forged in the Dark game out right now”.
The a|state chat begins at 43:54, but Paul is a very interesting guy to listen to, so we highly recommend the whole thing. And if you missed his deep dive on a|state, be sure to check that out!
And stay tuned, Maskwitches fans, we’ll have some exciting news for anyone attending UK Games Expo in less than 3 weeks’ time! (And yes we are exhibiting at Expo, even if the UK Games Expo site thinks otherwise. You’ll find us right next to our friends Nightfall Games.)
KING BEOWULF is a major expansion for BEOWULF: Age of Heroes that provides resources for higher level play, including a realm management system that allows your Hero to become the ruler of their own land, manage events that occur in their realm, and negotiate or wage war with other rival realms.
Jacob back once again to talk about KING BEOWULF, and a major part of this expansion for Age of Heroes: realm management!
From the earliest days of the project, one expectation of higher level play was a chance to establish your own home-base, a stronghold that you could invest in and improve, as something to do with all that newly discovered treasure from adventures undertaken in the most dangerous parts of the setting.
So having a chance to become a ruler, manage a realm, develop it, and deal with threats that it may face is a big part of KING BEOWULF, and the reason for its name. And, like Beowulf in the poem, a chance to become a ring-giver and a wise ruler might likely be the ambition of a Player, especially in a duet game.
KING BEOWULF provides support for multiple players and even multiple gamemasters, though we anticipate that a lot of KING BEOWULF games will be a natural extension of a duet Age of Heroes game.
We love to get reviews of our work – it’s massively important, as getting word out about our games is tough when there are just so many other games!
The word of a trusted reviewer is so much more meaningful than anything we can say. We think a|state is a brilliant setting, and a really good implementation of Forged in the Dark. We’re standing on the shoulders of giants in so many respects.
When a review like this one from the mighty Paul Beakley comes in, we’re delighted. We hope you enjoy reading it.
KING BEOWULF is a major expansion for BEOWULF: Age of Heroes that provides resources for higher level play, including a realm management system that allows your Hero to become the ruler of their own land, manage events that occur in their realm, and negotiate or wage war with other rival realms.
We’ve enjoyed using these very clear wooden dice so much in our Maskwitches game that we’ve sourced a small stock for our webstore. They’re 15mm across and come in a cotton pouch.
KING BEOWULF is a major expansion for BEOWULF: Age of Heroes that provides resources for higher level play, including a realm management system that allows your Hero to become the ruler of their own land, manage events that occur in their realm, and negotiate or wage war with other rival realms.
Jacob back again, with another development blog. I’m still working on the warfare development journal but wanted to spend a little time today talking about our new monsters.
This bundle supports Direct Relief, a charity providing protective gear and critical care medications to health workers around the world, especially targeting Covid 19. Certainly an important and worthy cause.
The Bundle is only active for a short time, so get it while you can!
KING BEOWULF in a major expansion for BEOWULF: Age of Heroes that provides resources for higher level play, including a realm management system that allows your Hero to become the ruler of their own land, manage events that occur in their realm, and negotiate or wage war with other rival realms.
Jacob with a KING BEOWULF development journal entry here. So the process is still ongoing but there are a few steps I can share with you. A key component of the supplement is that it allows your higher level BEOWULF Heroes to step into leadership roles and that requires defining some terms so that we can talk about the rules for such things. Things, of course, are still in development, and these could change before final publication but this is the state of terminology at present.
First, we have determined that ‘realm’ is the term we will use for the overall thing that your ruler is in charge of. It avoids gendered terms like ‘king’ or ‘queen’ and appears in many translations of the poem. It covers areas of different sizes and can scale in grandeur as your ruler’s lands also gain in size, gifts (more on that in a bit) and wealth.
Next, we use the term ‘scir’ for the chunks of the realm that are broken out into different administrative areas. The term comes from the Old English word and it was quite the journey to land on this term. We are happy with it, as it makes the process of determining events, taxes (more on this in a future blog because the migration era saw some interesting practices and development), warfare, and other processes easier.
Your ruler is aided by Advisors. Like the Followers that aid the Hero during an adventure, Advisors provide capabilities and advice for your ruler during a realm turn. And just like Followers, each Advisor has a series of tags, defining certain gifts and burdens that make them unique.
Speaking of tags, each scir also has a number of tags, providing gifts and burdens for that area. A particular scir might have gifts that allow it to produce more military, naval, or financial resources for your realm or it might have burdens that must be dealt with before your people can make full use of the scir and its natural resources.
For our next journal entry, we will talk more about warfare, including the crowfield, various units and muster lists. See you soon!
