BEOWULF. a|state. Maskwitches. Cold City:Hot War. FiveEvil
They’re back! In this episode of History in Games, Games in History, actual Dr Malcolm Craig and absolutely-not-a-Dr, Jon Hodgson discuss personal history and memory. For about 5 minutes before heading into the weeds really hard as usual.
Both Malcolm and Jon with be at UK Games Expo this coming weekend! Swing by Hall One, Booth 1-122. Malcolm will be there on Saturday, Jon is there all three days.
Welcome to Friday! Progress is constantly happening as we close in on going to print with the next wave of Jon Hodgson Backdrop Books. In the latest monthly kickstarter update we shared a montage of the completed Fantasy Ruins and Tunnels book. Check it out, along with some sample shots with some of the new backdrops, and a cool Bad Squiddo Shieldmaiden figure.
There’s still time to place your pre-order for any of the new backdrop books here.
We were very pleased to recently take delivery of the new edition of The Meat Spoiler for Maskwitches. We’ll be holding these until we have the print run of the main Maskwitches corebook on hand, and we’re waiting on the kickstarter funds to print those. In the meantime you can secure a copy with a pre-order here.
To celebrate the release of Maskwitches of Forgotten Doggerland Redux Edition we will be bringing a very small number of special UK Games Expo Variant cover editions to… UK Games Expo at the end of the month.
As detailed on the campaign page (It’s right at the end if you missed it, but it is there!) we want to celebrate the new edition at the UK’s largest weekend gaming event with some advanced special copies. The “print run” (it’s a very small number to term “a run”!) arrived today and they look great.
Find us in Hall One at stand 1-122, with our friends at Nightfall Games and Hansor Publishing.
If you’re really hurting to get one of these advance copies, we will reserve some for folks who can’t get to UK Games Expo. Just drop us a line via email and we can sort out putting one by for you .
In this free issue, author Malcolm Craig talks object art, and West Germany and the Cold War.
It’s UK Games Expo at the end of this month!
We’ll be in Hall One, at stand 1-122. Once again we’re delighted to be sharing space with our friends at Nightfall Games and Hansor Publishing. Check out where we are on the newly launched interactive map at the UKGE website
We’ll have a bunch of cool stuff at the show!
• We’ll be launching Maskwitches with an extremely limited edition, UKGE cover edition of the game (Seriously, we have very few of these!)
• We’ll have a lovely little print book of the Cold City/Hot War reports 1-6 (what’s that you say? Report 6 isn’t out yet? It will be tomorrow!)
• We’ll have copies of The Burn in print, the latest Silver Road setting.
And! You’ll be able to grab a mini JH backdrop for your miniatures photography!
Of course we’ll have all your favourite Handiwork titles too – a|state, BEOWULF, Silver Road and (almost) all their various accessories. See you there?
The print copies of The Burn are here! Pre-ordered copies are all packed up and ready to go. You can order your copy here on our website, or add one on during the final hour of the Maskwitches Redux kickstarter campaign – but you don’t have long to do that! Although backers get a free PDF Maskwitches adventure and a whole witch pouch of other goodies!
It’s a beautiful book.
In this rules-light story telling game you take the role of the Maskwitches, tasked with protecting the hunter gatherer people of the land that now lies under the North Sea – Doggerland – from evil spirits that arise when things go wrong or when there’s disharmony in the community. There’s loads to see and read at the campaign page. Check it out!
For The Silver Road setting book The Burn, I knew we would need something different.
The locations in the book are real – albeit seen through the eyes of memory and a kind of folkish magical realism.
The wee folk who you play seemed really the crux of the whole thing. And of course coming out of finishing up the Maskwitches Redux, models and sets were on my mind. But in this case the sets were life size – the real places along the Polmont Burn, just moments from my door, and coincidentally where the author Malcolm played as a child.
It seemed like a good idea to build some figures and I have wanted to do this for a while. The pre-made figures I used for Maskwitches have their advantages, but also many limitations.
I already had some armature wire on hand – it’s thick, but very flexible metal wire that bends easily but stays where you put it. It’s easy to cut, despite being several millimetres thick. I enjoy working with it.
Maskwitches of Forgotten Doggerland heads back to kickstarter next week. We’ve remade all the imagery in the book to be completely human-made, and we’ve expanded the book.
The work is all done, as you can see in the video – the book is complete and ready to print, and we’re really excited to get Maskwitches titles back in production. If that is we can fund the initial print run!
That’s not a dead cert, so please do give the campaign a follow, and if you like what you see tell some friends and encourage them to get involved too!
The Redux Edition is longer than the first version, coming in at 168 pages (rather than 144) and there are some new sections.
• There’s a piece that gives you a load of things your witches know, as prompts to help them decide what to do. Not every group needs this, but it’s a bit of extra help if inspiration is thin on the ground.
• There’s a section to generate how your witch remembers becoming a witch. Whether or not this is strictly factual is entirely up to you.
• There’s a suggested optional mechanic if your group really, really must track injuries, This uses your shared masks as a pool of resources which can take damage and be repaired.
• And there’s a new optional mechanic for should it happen at the table that players just cannot work out any way to use your masks or amulets to approach an obstacle.
Follow along with all the backstage, behind the scenes, making of stuff here:
