BEOWULF. a|state. Maskwitches. Cold City:Hot War. FiveEvil
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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?
Cold City and Hot War are live now on Kickstarter!
Let’s talk a bit about the core mechanic.
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.
Continue reading “Cold City Hot War Conflict Resolution”Good morning! It’s 50% off Maskwitches PDFs this weekend (March 1st and 2nd) via the links in our newsletter.
Don’t forget to sign up so you don’t miss future deals like this one! https://handiwork.games/newsletter
Hello! Let’s have a FiveEvil update!
We were especially impressed with the opening chapter of FiveEvil as we were editing it.
It contains this really amazing set of muscular and compact guidance on playing the game, the horror genre, and safety tools. Morgue has done a brilliant job on it.
We didn’t think it was the right thing to just flow these thoughts into 2 columns – they’d get lost, and each piece is really powerfully written and deserved a bit more. We want the reader to slow down and take each one in, and to be able to track back, reread and reflect on them. They really are important.
So we’ve laid out the first chapter in a slightly more involved way, and we thought you might like to see a couple of sample spreads. The underlying art isn’t quite final yet, but it shows where it’s going. There’s more to each of these sections than is shown here, but you get the idea hopefully.
The crowdfunding campaign for the new editions of Cold City and Hot War launches on Tuesday 4th March.
Sign up to be notified when the campaign kicks off so you don’t miss it right here.
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
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.
