Throughout the development of the new editions of Cold City and Hot War we’ve been releasing Reports – free PDFs showcasing some of the design work that’s gone into the games, some inspirational reading, and articles about the Cold War and possibilities of nuclear war in the 1960s. It’s great reading and entirely free. The first seven Reports are collected here.
We’ve just released Report Eight, which contains the run down of the core mechanic of the games, as well as some additional info about Hidden Agendas and Trust. Grab yours free here.
5 years ago this week we released our first RPG title – The Hermit’s Sanctuary for BEOWULF Age of Heroes. It remains free, and you can download it here. You can get a print version here.
This week we’re taking a look at The Hermit’s Sanctuary with some reminiscences and new spotlights cast on its wealth of free bounty!
Let’s start at the beginning.
Why did we make The Hermit’s Sanctuary?
There’s an obvious reason: getting attention to a new thing is hard, and giving something to people for free is an easy way to show them what you’re doing.
We were also confident that, to the right audience, this was a really high quality thing. It’s not just another setting for 5e, nor is it just another allegedly “norse” setting that has no research behind it. It’s a set of additional rules that fundamentally change and structure the way you play 5e. And the research is solid. It’s not your typical “ren-faire dnd in clothes from HBO’s Vikings” effort. This is a game made by people with decades of experience in researching this period for games. With a commitment to exploring something of the mindsets of that era underpinning a load of monster-slaying good times.
At its heart, BEOWULF still makes use 5e, and that’s both accessible and easy for a lot of people to play. (Don’t @ me, it’s a massive game with a huge audience.) But BEOWULF does some cool extra stuff, and we wanted to show that.
Getting people to cast their eyes over that cool stuff is a lot easier if you show it to them, and let them play it for themselves, rather than just tell them about it. It’s why most of our titles have some kind of sampler, intro scenario of free thing you can enjoy. We’re happy to show you what we’re up to.
We also knew that there’s a danger with “QuickStarts” where you gut your own game to emphasise the quick part. We didn’t want to do that. So The Hermit’s Sanctuary has everything you need to play.
It was a risky strategy on some ways. We’re giving you everything you need to play BEOWULF. But it was a calculated risk. Showing off our ideas and the way we present them, the art, the production values? It was worth taking that gamble.
And it paid off! The Hermit’s Sanctuary was nominated for two ENnies, and BEOWULF itself also got an ENnie nomination. The subsequent crowd funder was a success, and BEOWULF remains a great seller for us. Thanks Hermit’s Sanctuary! You’ve done us proud!
There’s also a less obvious reason, and we’ll talk about that tomorrow.
New Cold City Hot War art drop! Paul Bourne is once again showing us that we’re glad we don’t live in the 196os of Hot War. Swinging London this is not. Maybe swinging from a lamp post after stealing food from the wrong people?
When it comes to resolving conflicts in Cold City and Hot War, both the players and the GM have access to groups of dice to roll, and they gamble on how many to use in a given conflict.
The GM’s dice pool is drawn from groups representing different thematic elements of the setting. The players help allocate dice into the groups at the start of play.
The players build dice pools based on the things on their character sheet.
The things drawn upon to add dice to a pool are put at risk in a conflict.
It’s the full campaign video for Cold City Hot War! We launch TOMORROW!
You might have seen the short trailer for Cold City Hot War in black and white. But which is best? We are literally arguing about this. Full colour or black and white? Let us know on Facebook or Bluesky.
This article was original posted in February 2024. We’re in the process of moving the Making Maskwitches blog here to our own site, and thought it would be fun to revisit them in the order they were made, a year ago in 2024. You can browse all the entries as they appear with this tag:
Let’s talk about some practical behind the scenes stuff. I have some more to say about the philosophy and meaning of the Maskwitches project, but today has been a building day.
I finally caved and invested some money in some proper photography lights this week. I’ve now got a couple of LED panels. Not the most expensive, but also not the cheapest. I spent a couple of hundred pounds. The array of choice is wild – you can easily spend thousands on lights.
We’re moving the Making Maskwitches blog from its current provider back to our own blog. And we thought, why not just rerun the fun and post each article as it’s moved?
You’ll eventually be able to browse all of the Making Maskwitches entries using this tag:
First up, it’s back to the start today and the heady days of:
FEB 17, 2024
MAKING MASKWITCHES
Who is this?
My name is Jon Hodgson. I’ve been working on the tabletop games and print media industry for 25 years. I’ve also worked in TV and film, and spend many years as a props maker.
The Maskwitches mask generator has been updated with a load of new components making its results even more varied and versatile! Free to use, and fun to just play around with, the mask generator lets you recombine lots of different elements to make masks for your witch character. With a bit of Blue Peter level craft knowhow, you can even print them out and use them as props at the gaming table!
Also brand new today is the Witch Generator. This web app takes the tables within the Maskwitches book and automates them, creating characters at a click of a button. We’ve focused on utility here, with the text easy to copy and paste to edit as you see fit.
But I mean, I think the the Cold War era has obviously appeared in a lot of, a lot of games of different kinds, but I don’t think it’s been as much of a setting as a period in games as, as you would expect it to be. There have been a lot of games, but I think, I mean, because gaming is dominated by fantasy and science fiction, you know, that’s a given. So yes, I think it’s an area of interest to me.
I’m now a Cold War historian and, it was great to be doing games that kind of bring in elements of that history and of the period that I kind of research and going to write about.
I think it’s quite exciting. Like the sort of espionage model is it’s not under-used. You know, we could list out loads and loads of spy games and so on.
But it’s something that really appeals to me in kind of the genre as a whole in wider media is you can’t just storm in killing folks, you know, you can’t. That game, that great game stuff where nobody wants to break cover, nobody wants to reveal anything. And if you do, you kind of lose, right? As soon as you take a definitive action.
You know, the Soviet Union has planned for all of these outcomes, right? It’s that stuff. So you’ve just got to play this really, really canny game. I love that. I think it’s really next level stuff. Really good.
I mean, the thing is about a lot… I’m not disparaging any espionage style games, but, I mean, a lot of games are about, say, espionage in the Cold War era.
They’re not actually about any of the themes and ideas and stuff to do with that. They’re just a game with a list of Cold War era guns, right? You know, there’s, you know, they don’t have the the Cold War and secrecy and trust and tension and hidden agendas aren’t embedded in the game. They’re not driving play and Cold City and Hot War are the opposite of that.
All of these things are embedded into the way the game plays and the mechanics of the games themselves.
Really good. I really, I really want these games. We better fund on the old Kickstarter because I really want to play it like from the book that we’re making. Fingers crossed.
