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

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!

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

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

So Inspiration is key component of BEOWULF: Age of Heroes. Jon and Jacob both love the 5e inspiration mechanic, but find that the core rules don’t make full use of the mechanic. BEOWULF seeks to change that, and provide — ahem — inspiration for new ways to use the mechanic.

The Hero’s Adventure

BEOWULF is primarily designed for duet (one player, one gamemaster) adventuring and we suppose that our Hero is keen to receive omens and wise words before chasing after a nigh-undefeatable Monster. This process creates the Portent, a scrap of Anglo-Saxon poetry that might become important over the course of the adventure. The Portent also fills the Inspiration Pool – there are four components to the Portent and with each component, an Inspiration Token is placed either in the Hero section, the Follower section, or the Monster section of the Pool.

One More Inspiration Token

There are five tokens in the set, four for the Portent and the Inspiration Pool, one for the Hero themselves. In BEOWULF, there are many ways to earn Inspiration and several ways to spend it. One of the most effective ways ties into Advantage. In the game, heroes are either aligned with the Old Ways, the traditional set of gods that are known by many names across the Two Seas of northern Europe and their foretellings of epic wars against the Monsters; or the Church, a new set of beliefs spreading from southern Europe and bringing the promises of freedom, literacy, and personal salvation. When you select your Alignment Die and you’re rolling with Advantage, you receive Inspiration. As long as your faith prevails, you can use this feature over and over.

At the Moment of Need

So what do you do with those Inspiration tokens in the pool? Well, when it’s a dramatically appropriate time, you can use the token to give Inspiration to the appropriate type of character. For example, the player might draw a token from the Follower pool to give a Follower advantage on a check or attack, or to activate a special Gift. The GM might draw a token from the Monster pool to activate a special feature belonging to the Monster or just to give it advantage on an important attack or skill roll.