In today’s KING BEOWULF update, we talk about The Saga of King Hrolf Kraki. A huge influence on KING BEOWULF. In this instance the Penguin Classics Edition, translated by Jesse L Byock.
Let’s take a look at The Saga of King Hrolf Kraki!
This book was a big influence on the development of KING BEOWULF. I pulled it off the shelf at just the right time to turbo-charge where KING BEOWULF needed to go, and what it needed to address as a book. I had a lot of unformed questions, and King Hrolf was there to answer.
A few people have asked questions about this topic, and there are some heroes in the sorry tale which I would like to highlight. It also feels like a story that should be told definitively and in one place. So without further ado, the whole sorry tale of our missing Twin Seas pallet, in detail, for your reading pleasure. And once this story is told here, we can point to this post without having to retell the story. ever. again.
We’ve been remiss in not updating the blog! It’s all going on over at the KING BEOWULF kickstarter! We funded in just 2 hours, and we’ve been smashing through stretch goals ever since! The campaign is currently way over £14,000!
And check out this lovely graphics describing what happens in each season in a Kingdom game:
In KING BEOWULF you’ll found your kingdom, learning (or choosing) what class it has, you’ll raise a hall which gives it a background, you’ll recruit advisors who act as skills. And your kingdom enjoys a new ability score – Prosperity – made up from your Scires (pronounced “shires”), and each season you’ll get to choose what to do with the fruits of your people’s labour. Come winter you’ll need to prove that you’ve been a wise ruler as you pay out from your ring hoard to see your people through the cold months.
Read more in our free 4 page preview:
Sign up to be notified when the campaign goes live so you can get in early!
As you build your kingdom in KING BEOWULF you might well want a visual aid to help you. You might draw a map showing your various scires and their prosperity. You might download one of our maps, (should we fund on kickstarter!)
Or! You might want one of our KING BEOWULF map kits, which will be an add-on at the campaign. These sets will be printed in full colour, on 3mm MDF, laser cut into a beautiful set of tiles. Each tile represents a portion of your kingdom, and has a token slot which represents the prosperity of that particular scir (pronounced “shire” but with an older spelling).
We’ve chosen a really interesting shape that makes a strongly thematic map that you can build up in play. At the end of a session, just take a photo with your phone, and put the pieces away for next time!
Check out the prototype in progress, with bonus Jon waffling:
Find out more about KING BEOWULF here. Sign up to be notified of the campaign launch here. Learn more about BEOWULF here.
(Sign ups are open right now for the KING BEOWULF campaign, which launches on Tuesday 17th October)
When we first set about seriously nailing the aims of BEOWULF Age of Heroes, several themes came out:
To solve a problem for 5e players. We all liked 5e, but we knew “just another 5e book” wasn’t an option for us. It needed to identify something that players struggle with, and provide a solution. For BEOWULF, that’s duet play: the ability to have a satisfying 5e gaming session with one GM and one player. The delight in the voices of playtesters when they realised they need only find one other player to get a BEOWULF game going will stick with us forever!
We also wanted to make use of what we were good at: adapting source material, knowing a bunch about the early medieval period and the deep influences we learned about working on Tolkien games, as well as an aptitude for the kind of art Jon is known for.
KING BEOWULF is no different in this regard. We wanted to identify a problem and present an elegant solution, one which allows players to have more fun, and be more creative than ever before.
So we’re all hard at work on what is basically “Phase 2” (Or is it 3? Maybe it’s 3?) of Handiwork Games. We have a ton of great new books coming down the pipe – KING BEOWULF, FiveEvil, Maskwitches 2, a new title for a|state, The Burn for The Silver Road, some weird thing Jon is working on, and this, as yet unrevealed title.
Any guesses? (We have mentioned we’re doing this, but not very loudly just yet… and this is only half of the thing.)
Hope you’re getting some gaming done this weekend!
It’s National Poetry Day! Many of our BEOWULF Age of Heroes titles have poems penned by talented poet and story teller Dave Oliver of Rattlebox Theatre. Here are all of the poems from The Trials of the Twin Seas.
The commercial licence was something we offered during the Kickstarter campaign, and due to the runaway success of the project we’ve taken a little bit of time to hone the wording and make sure it’s the plain English, easy to understand document we wanted it to be.
KING BEOWULF is a supplement for BEOWULF Age of Heroes 5e. It provides rules for your characters to step up from being a wandering, monster-slaying Hero to become a Ruler with their own mythic early-medieval kingdom.
It’ll be a hardcover, full colour book, just like BEOWULF Age of Heroes, and The Trials of the Twin Seas. We’re looking at around 176 pages, but it’s very likely to go over that in both production (every single book we’ve ever made has gone over our estimates, and that’s unlikely to change), and if we’re lucky to unlock some stretch goals on the campaign we’ll add more content to it.
BEOWULF Age of Heroes is an ENnie-nominated setting and rules addition for 5e. It presents rules for play with one player and one GM – “duet play” in the half-remembered story-world of the Early Medieval period. It’s a book packed with setting, rules, monsters, generative tables and more! It’s won critical and popular acclaim for its rules additions like the Portent, the Inspiration Pool, Followers and the Alignment Die. Check out the free pdf introductory scenario The Hermit’s Sanctuary here.
Can I use KING BEOWULF for other 5e settings?
Yes! The rules in KING BEOWULF can be used for any setting. There are of course some setting-specific terms used, and we always weave our rules into the setting – in this case the myths and stories of the Early Medieval setting of BEOWULF. Nonetheless, this is easily adapted to suit your chosen setting, and then you’re good to use KB to run a kingdom anywhere. Just like BEOWULF Age of Heroes, it’s a goldmine of ideas. Arguably the main “thing” KING BEOWULF is giving you is the structure and processes to run a kingdom through the year in a way that’s easy and fun to do.
Do I need BEOWULF Age of Heroes to make use of KING BEOWULF?
It would certainly be useful if you want to play in the Age of Heroes, and build up a Hero character in duet play prior to making the switch to Ruler. But if you’re just looking for ideas to mine for your own setting, then there’s plenty here to dig into without BEOWULF Age of Heroes.
Of course we will have a bundle of all the BEOWULF titles available as part of the kickstarter both in print and in PDF. (And we want to warn everyone that mail ordering 3 hardcover books can get quite pricey, so if you’re excited for BEOWULF, consider grabbing the currently released books right now!)
Running a kingdom? Is this going to have a lot of book keeping?
Our primary goals in development were two-fold: to keep book-keeping to a minimum, and to use systems you’re already familiar with. Rather than track massively detailed aspects of a kingdom, we’ve cooked things down to a manageable and flavourful model, which is easy to grasp, and which won’t require you learn a whole new set of rules.
KING BEOWULF presents the idea of your kingdom as a character in its own right. It has a class, ability scores, skills, gains XP, and a new ability score, Prosperity. All of which means you’ll be using rules you’re already familiar with, at an entirely new scale. You’ll be recording some things you go, but no more than your average 5e character.
The process of creating your kingdom takes the form of a special adventure which both fills in your Kingdom sheet, as well as providing the in-game bridge to this new type of play. You’ll play through the process of discovering with what kind of kingdom you’ll start your rule.
Are there mass battle rules?
Yes! With some options on how you choose to tackle battles. By default, you’ll creating the story of the battle with a series of skill checks, leveraging your various advisors and aspects of your kingdom that help you in a battle. There are additionally other options too for more direct combat between kingdoms.
Can we use KING BEOWULF for our multi-player game or is it only for duet play?
You can totally use KING BEOWULF for multiplayer games, and there’s a section in the book about that, just as there is in BEOWULF Age of Heroes. You’ll have several options on how to approach it, whether your players share rulership, or one player is the overall ruler with the others taking prominent roles within the kingdom.
What’s actually in the KING BEOWULF book?
Rules for:
Founding/inheriting/conquering a kingdom and thereby filling out your Kingdom sheet
Everything needed to create your Kingdom as a character – classes, levels, XP, skills in the form of advisors and more!
Building your Meadhall
Running your kingdom through each year, with four seasonal festivals
Expanding and developing your kingdom with loads of creative details to describe its nature and improvement
Things that happen to your kingdom
Gathering information in the state of the world around your kingdom
Trading
Raiding
Exploring
How your neighbours react to your decisions and actions with actions of their own
Monsters at a scale to truly threaten your kingdom
Kingdom adventures
Plus lots of advice:
For GMs and players on making the switch from wandering Hero to Ruler with power and responsibilities.
Naming your kingdom
For creating and running kingdom adventures
There’s loads more details to explore – this book has been a long time in development!
What is “a kingdom adventure?”
When you’re playing regular 5e, your character moves through a series of locations and events. With a kingdom adventure, a series of events move through the location of your kingdom. It’s a different way to play and an exciting twist on a regular adventure.
Development of this idea has been a truly fascinating task – taking the norms of a 5e adventure and what your character does, and scaling it up to allow a scenario structure that allows events to move through your kingdom. It’s been really interesting, and we hope you really enjoy reading the results of the develpment process.
If my Hero character becomes a Ruler can I still do regular adventures?
Yes! You can still head out in your ship like you always did. There might be a cost to your kingdom if you’re away too long though!
The book contains a lot of help and guidance about when events require the Kingdom sheet and when your character might step in and take a personal interest, and use their own character sheet. Mostly this is a matter of scale and scope. Some things just can’t be handled by a lone Hero.
How far along is the project in terms of completion?
All the rules and procedures are designed and tested. A large proportion of the final text is written, but not all. We have a lot of art made, but want to make more.
We’re now at the point where it’s time to seek your help finding the rest of the book. As you may have heard, we were hit with some serious setbacks during our last BEOWULF campaign, when all the books for US backers, along with a bunch of other books, were stolen. That’s still being investigated by law enforcement, but it’s been a tough blow to endure. We replaced all the books and resent them to US backers at our own expense. Usually we reinvest everything beyond our wages back into the next book’s development. That’s proved very tough this time around, so we need your help!
When will the book come out?
If we’re lucky enough to fund, we’re aiming to have the PDF done in the first quarter of 2024, to give ourselves plenty of time to finish it and polish it. As ever we want to make a glorious celebration of art and meticulously researched gaming content. So we’re giving ourselves time to do it.
The book will then need to be printed, and hopefully delivered in the first half of 2024. Which sounds like the distant future, but in fact is scarily close!
