Category: Roleplaying Games

Hello – Jon here.

The three questions we get asked whenever we talk about BEOWULF are why two players, why 5e, why Beowulf?

Let’s talk about it!

So the duet play feature at the heart of BEOWULF Age of Heroes is really the driver behind everything we’ve added to the 5e rules. And the reason we decided to develop a duet play mode is tied up with the other two aspects – looking back it’s a bit of a tangled knot!

So, why 5e? This gets asked even more now we’re also doing a|state with Forged in the Dark. Why are we even in that over-populated, “uncool” 5e space? Primarily, believe it or not, because we just like it! (We like a lot of different stuff!) 

Having all worked extensively on Adventures in Middle-earth in our previous jobs, and through that to some degree rediscovered “the world’s favourite roleplaying game”, we wanted to go further and do even more with it, and the team were very keen to get back to that system.

Speaking for myself, I find 5e is a collection of quite clever parts, which can be modded tremendously easily. I love stuff like inspiration and advantage – I think they’re really smart. And sure, game historians out there will know that 5e isn’t the first rules system to use these things. But all wrapped up together with a bunch of core assumptions already dealt with? It’s a really interesting space to play in. 

And hey, I get it that for some people there are sacred cows within that game set up which are just too unpalatable. That’s ok! But I think it’s a fun ruleset to play around with, and it’s by and large very easy to play, and very easy to get a game together.

Talking of which, this is one of the big drivers behind the choice to make BEOWULF duet – one player and one GM. The look of delight on so many playtester’s faces when they realised they need only find one other person in order to run a campaign was proof we were onto something good. We’ve all struggled to schedule a game, and being able to call one other person and fix a time to play is really powerful.

There’s also a less obvious benefit – you can run the same adventure for several players. So if you have a group of players, BEOWULF makes an excellent pick up game if you can’t run your usual session. Each time you run it is different, but as GM you get more and more familiar with the material, and it gets better and better. There’s a lower cost to generating those good times, given the ease of re-running BEOWULF adventures.

And of course, BEOWULF also works for group play. Everything we built onto 5e to make duet play simple lifts right out.

So why BEOWULF at all? Right at the beginning of Handiwork Games we sat down and chatted about what we’d like to make. The idea of an early medieval/low fantasy/dark ages setting just kept coming up. It’s an era I find really fascinating, and have been interested it most of my life. There’s detail there if you want to study, and it’s readily available at your local library or bookshop. But equally it works as “dark ages-flavoured” heroic fantasy, without any need to read anything.  

I don’t like to harp on too much about other games we’ve worked on and that are clearly other people’s babies, but it’s key to the existence of BEOULF –  working on a Tolkien RPG for the best part of a decade, and being a key player in imbuing it with that dark ages flavour, you inevitably find your way to Beowulf, and I wound up having a lot of knowledge that couldn’t easily be used in a Third Age Middle-earth setting. It had to come out somewhere!

I also think my art style which, however weird I feel about saying it, was a big tick in the plus column of things we had to work with at the birth of Handiwork Games. My style, and the style that Scot Purdy brings, work well for these subjects.

And from a different angle, if you cook it down in game terms, the lone hero who seeks out monsters and slays them, fits together with the 5e rules in a really interesting way. Making that inevitable combat a real set piece, and the unashamed climax of an adventure is just cool.

Somewhat surprisingly, the poem prompted us to bring a level of mechanical focus on social interaction and investigation to 5e. The poem has a lot to say about how people and life are affected by interactions with the various monsters, and that was important to bring to the table. I’m really proud of those sections of the game that bring huge mechanical support to interacting with NPCs to unravel the mystery of the Monster.

BEOWULF Age of Heroes for 5e is available now* from selected UK and EU stockists, and from our webstore. It is also available with a range of adventures and additional digital content at DrivethruRPG.

*Please note that BEOWULF stock for US backers is currently being shipped. Once caught up with this process we will have more information about US shops and direct orders.

We’ve seen a lot of excitement around our upcoming RPG projects – Ken Hite’s Hellenistika and BEOWULF. Today we present our first designer diary for BEOWULF!

Our designer diaries will be irregular updates on how things are progressing behind the scenes, what we’re working on, the challenges we’re facing and so on.

BEOWULF DESIGNER DIARY 1

About the story of Beowulf
For those that don’t know, Beowulf is one of the oldest recorded stories in Western literature. As such it’s right at the root of a lot of the kind of heroic stories we enjoy. In terms of events it’s very simple – Beowulf, a hero of the Geats, a people living in Southern Sweden, hears tell of problems in Denmark. A wonderful meadhall, Heorot, has been built there, but it’s been largely abandoned due to the malign influence of Grendel– a monster who has been killing the inhabitants. Beowulf being a heroic type resolves to slay the hellspawn of the haunted hall. And he does. After figuring out the monster’s weakness he abandons his traditional war-gear, wrestling the creature and ripping its arm off. Poor old Grendel limps off to die.

But things aren’t over. The victory comes with consequences! Grendel’s Mother presents another monstrous threat to happy life in Denmark. Never being one to shy away from great deeds Beowulf must also figure out how to defeat this new adversary. Which of course he does!

Time travels on, and Beowulf becomes a King of his people. Word comes to his meadhall that a great dragon has awoken after its hoard is disturbed by a thief… We won’t spoil the ending if you haven’t read it. But we strongly recommend that you do. Both Seamus Heaney and JRR Tolkien have made marvellous translations of Beowulf, and they’re well worth your time.

In addition to the heroic events and inevitable battling, there’s a lot of exciting “meta” stuff in the way the tale was recorded, and the accompanying glimpses we get into cultural details of Anglo-Saxon life. We love it!

BEOWULF the RPG setting

Taking our enthusiasm for Beowulf the Anglo-Saxon poem as our inspiration, we set out to make an exciting setting and set of additional/amended rules for 5^thEdition. 

The world of Anglo-Saxon stories is something we’re all really interested in from a historical and fictional standpoint. We love the style of the stories, the way the world looks and feels, the arms and armour and so on. BEOWULF will feature all the feel, but it isn’t intended as strictly a historical treatise. It’s a strongly-flavoured “story book” world of heroic tales.

Heroes in BEOWULF will sail across a story book version of the world of roughly the 5^thto 11^thcenturies, solving mysteries and ridding kingdoms of monsters, just like Beowulf in the original tale.

Duet Play
The first “rules thing” we wanted to offer was really high quality duet play for 5^thEdition. None of us have quite the time we’d like to play RPGs, and by making a great set of rules for just two people we can really help with that. So it is that BEOWULF is designed primarily for one gamesmaster and one player. 

That in turn led us to develop a really strong structure for duet play for both the player and the GM: we’ve been analysing what having just one player means for the 5^thEdition rules, as well as the social side of play. The results of that work all come together really nicely in BEOWULF as a setting and ruleset. 

Followers

The Beowulf of the story is a singular hero, just as the rules are for a single player, but Beowulf is not entirely alone in the story. Like so many heroes of legend he has his followers with him, occasionally chipping in to help when relevant to the story. (This is also true of Achilles’ Myrmidons, Jason’s Argonauts, Gilgamesh’s Enkidu and so on)

So with BEOWULF we are creating a special set of rules for the actions of a hero’s followers. And as far as we can tell it’s rather unique! Just like in the story of Beowulf, followers are on hand when you need them, but there’s no need to track them as if they were full non-player characters. They’re there when it matters, and they’re in the background when they don’t. 

Followers support the hero, and a hero will need to recruit help along the way as he or she tries to figure out any mystery he or she encounters.

Play beyond the session
Followers in BEOWULF also offer some unique additional features. We’re really keen to offer the chance to actively “play” betweensessions – The gamesmaster always has opportunities for fun in creating adventures, but in BEOWULF the playertoo can invest some time in enjoyable and rewarding game activity on their own between sessions. 

The exploits of followers becomes the focus between games, and that mechanically feeds into the next session. 

Challenges
Recently, we’ve spent a lotof time discussing what it means to lose a follower, and precisely how we want to pitch that. As something you’ll be invested in, and something more than a simple resource, we want the loss of a treasured follower to matter. The interactions with your band of followers matter. But we don’t want it to hobble your character mechanically beyond reason when a follower parts company with your hero. Indeed, we want the loss of valued followers to happen as part of the story of your hero.

We’re finding the balance between the loss of a follower being akin to the loss of a favourite magic item in a regular 5e game, or the loss of a whole level in a more old school game. Those are loose analogies, but they give you an idea of what we’re wrestling. The answer we’ve come up with relates to our core maxim when making BEOWULF – that you can lose in the short term to gain in the long term – and we’ll have more about that in a future diary.

Whither Multiplayer?
The way we’ve put BEOWULF together means that if you do want to play with a group you can! If you wish to assemble a team of heroes from across the world that have to come together to battle a threat too great for one hero you can totally do that! Followers fade much further into the background, and the group of heroes comes to the fore, replacing the need for followers to support their hero.

What’s next?
We’re finishing up our current round of rules polishing, and once that’s done we’ll be reaching out for more playtesters. That call will go out via the Handiwork Games newsletter, so be sure to sign up! You can find details on our website at www.handiwork.games