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We’re running a mini-kickstarter to fund a print run of a book of backdrops to use with your minis and models. Jon has painted quite the collection of these, and while there are two sets available at DrivethruRPG, we think it’d be a great idea to make a book of them, so you don’t need to print them at home.

Here’s the low down in a sneak peek at the Campaign Video:

Sign up to be notified of the launch – the campaign is just 7 days long, so don’t miss out!:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jonhodgsonmaptiles2/jon-hodgson-maps-backgrounds-book

This week has flown by, as we got the 2023 BEOWULF Annual ready to go, unpacked the returning stock, and caught up on our studio work. But last weekend was UK Games Expo in Birmingham. And what a show! Despite the train strikes, (up the workers, give ’em hell) people turned out in droves, and the venue was packed. It’s really nice to get out and about again, and always a pleasure to meet our customers in person.

Jon and Malcolm were on booth duties for the weekend, and we were right next door to our friends at Nightfall Games, Word Forge Games, Hansor Publishing and Dice Sports in a loosely-defined conglomerate presence! We were on the same size mini-booth as last year, but we really need to go bigger! We have too much stuff now!

Jon arrived from Scotland early evening on Thursday, and by 9pm we were all set up to go.

Friday saw Malcolm and Jon deliver a panel on Games in History and History in Games. This was well-attended, and we enjoyed some really good questions from the floor. It’s always terrifying when an audience member begins a question with “I’m a medievalist…” but everyone was so kind, and a really good discussion was had. I’ve said to many people in attendance that it’s always hard to know if your anecdotes and experiences of making games with historical themes are interesting or not. But apparently we gave good account of ourselves. Malcolm (or should we say Professor Craig?)’s current research project is about what we can learn about attitudes to the Cold War through the medium of post-apocalyptic roleplaying games, and there’s some truly fascinating stuff coming to light. It’s really satisfying to see our hobby being taken seriously as an art form and social document.

We’re not sure if a recording was made – still trying to find out – we’ll let you know!

By the end of Friday we had to send out for more copies of BEOWULF Age of Heroes – it’s really cool that despite being our very first book, it’s still a great seller at shows. The “5e for two players” angle really works, and it was an insta-buy for loads of our customers. Welcome, if this is your first time to our site having found us at Expo!

It’s always lovely to catch up with industry pals at shows, and this year’s expo was no exception. Of course we don’t always remember to get photos, but Annie from Bad Squiddo did! Bad Squiddo make an amazing range of 28mm figures of women from a broad range of eras, including the early medieval period, perfect for BEOWULF!

Jon managed approximately 2 minutes away from the booth to say the briefest of helloes to Fenris Games, who kindly let us use some of their models in the new artwork edition of The Silver Road.

Our brand new mini-catalogues went really well, and loads of those are now out in the world! We’re very happy with the way those show off what we do in a really convenient format. And don’t worry, Handiwork-superfans – all mail orders come with a catalogue now too!

On Sunday we caught up with some HIGH LEVEL SUPER MEETINGS, and we will hopefully have some very exciting announcements to come in the next few months.

The pallet of books for our US backers of The Trials of the Twin Seas has been lost. While we await the insurance pay-out, we’ve promised a thank you to our patient backers who have been so supportive of our trials and tribulations.

So we’ve had another book printed – The Twin Seas GMs Companion – and there will be a copy in every US Backer’s parcel. We just took delivery of these cute little books, and wanted to share.

Each has 30 pages, and features all the NPCs, maps and significant projects from the 6 Trials of the Twin Seas adventures.

In terms of timeline we’re a little at the mercy of the claim assessors. We’ll continue to keep backers updated.

We’ll be at UK Games Expo this coming weekend, and one of the exciting things we’ll have on our booth is the limited edition Uk Games Expo Maskwitches Variant Cover.

We have extremely limited stock of these, but we’ve made a small number available on our webstore for those who can’t make it to Birmingham UK next weekend. We notified our newsletter subscribers first, and they’ve grabbed them at a rate of knots. There’s only one left!

Grab the last one here:

Jon here.
BEOWULF Age of Heroes is set in the early medieval period. Specifically it’s about the people of the later era remembering the Migration Era. So very roughly speaking the idea is that we have people in 800 to 1000 CE remembering their “half-remembered ancestor-time” of perhaps 500CE.

Awesome helmet by Wyrmwick Creations

This gives us a huge canvas to play with – the storytellers don’t have access to archaeology or comprehensive histories of the times 5 centuries before.

We built this in with full knowledge that it lets us, and more importantly you, be very playful with historical influences, mixing up eras, timelines and historical events however you please. As long as they have the right flavour, then they fit. It’s why you’ll find Dane Axes (a weapon from the end of the early medieval era) alongside much earlier weapons. But they’re cool, and we like them, and they fit.

We did of course do our homework, researching the right flavour of weapons and equipment for this period of history. Which brings us to our Friday story.

The Francisca is a throwing axe, associated with the Franks – the people who live in what is modern day France. When we were writing BEOWULF Age of Heroes we wanted to evoke a period and people who lived in and around the Baltic and North Seas, but who fictionally had had no contact with the Romans, like their imagined ancestors in modern day Denmark and Northern Germany.

So we felt the word “Francisca” was just a bit too Latin-y, being strongly evocative of Franciscan monks and so on. We pondered.

And then I found myself in the national museum of Helsinki, being kindly shown around by my hosts when I was lucky enough to be a guest at Ropecon in 2019.

This was something of a pilgrimage for me. I knew there was an Ulfberht sword in the museum, and I really had to see the ceiling murals by Aleksi Gallen-Kallela.

Aleksi Gallen-Kallela painted scenes from the Finnish National Epic, the Kalevala – which was a huge influence on Tolkien. These paintings are remarkably modern, and amazingly beautiful.

I’d made an informal study of Ulfberht swords in the Helsinki area. There were 32 known finds of this kind of sword in that region (last time I looked, which was a few years ago now!). Ulfberht swords are the Mercedes Benz of the early medieval era – pricey status symbols forged in the Rhineland and exported all over Europe to be hilted locally. 32 such blades seems far more than there should be if the traditionally told history of Finland was to be believed. But that’s another story… it was an absolute treat to see one in the flesh, in Finland.

Of course the National Museum of Helsinki was full of other amazing finds from the Migration period. One such artefact was a Francisca throwing axe. Here’s a bad cellphone camera photo:

And check it out: it’s spelled “Franksika”! The perfect solution! It sounds so much more rugged and “northern” than the latin Francisca.

And that’s why you’ll find the Francisca spelled Fransiska in BEOWULF Age of Heroes.

This weekend was Carronade, in our home town of Falkirk.
Run by Falkirk District Wargames Club, Carronade is something of a hidden gem in the convention calendar, and we love exhibiting. Lots of people, loads of participation games, and lots of traders. It’s a great place to catch up with friends from across Scotland and the North of England.

This year we had a 12 foot booth, rather than our previous 6 – space at Carronade is always at a premium, but the organisers were kind enough to find us that extra bit of space this year! And we needed it!

Carronade is a Wargames show, so we always moderate our expectations as mostly a role-playing game publisher. But surprisingly, the big seller of the show for us was Maskwitches of Forgotten Doggerland. Our new Maskwitches banner sure is an eye-catcher, and people were interested to learn more about this weird-sounding game. And of course we were happy to tell them all about it.

Carronade also provided us with a dry un fro UK Games Expo in 3 weeks time. And our brand-new catalogues proved their worth. We’ve always had flyers on the booth to take away, but these mini-booklets are really attractive! You’ll know if you order from our web store you get flyers and stickers – well now you’ll get one of our catalogues. Nice.

Another great Carronade, another great year, and it was good to be back. We’re already looking forward to next year!

This weekend just passed was Conpulsion in Edinburgh, and it’s a show we’ve been involved in, in one way or another, for the best part of 20 years. It’s almost our local convention (Carronade in Falkirk qualifies for that honour), and we really like attending and supporting it.

(Look at all that stuff!) Photo credit: Gregor Hutton)

This year’s show was very enjoyable, with a great mix of loads of people and a really relaxed atmosphere. The trade hall is always on the modest size, and with our continual growth of books we were pretty much the biggest stall there. It’s always a treat to see old friends, especially now that the Covid lockdowns have ended, and it’s equally lovely to meet new people, and we certainly did both.

Highlights of the show:
Very early on an attendee was overheard saying to his friend “I just got Maskwitches of Forgotten Doggerland” and his pal veritably shrieked “what the f*** is that?!?!?” which made our weekend.

The charity auction raised over £3000 for a really good cause facing a lot of challenges in the current climate. We were delighted that the three signed books we donated went for very good sums.

(Brian Nisbet doing a marvellous job of overseeing the auction)

Each year at Conpulsion the Banquo Award for the Spirit of Scottish Gaming is awarded. We were delighted that Handiwork friend and contributor to a|state, Tanya Floaker was this year’s worthy recipient. Well deserved, congrats Tanya!

And as crass as it is to talk about right after such heartwarming anecdotes, we sold a lot of books! a|state, Handimonsters Annuals and Maskwitches all proved popular, and The Forest Dragon and Bang and Twang still very much hold their own. BEOWULF dice and tokens are always a favourite at shows too.

See you next year, Edinburgh!

There are just a handful of hours remaining to back the kickstarter for Wayne Reynolds’ RPG Saints Sketchbook! The campaign has been successful beyond all expectation.