Announcing the Inaugural international Bang & Twang World Cup!
This prestigious event is being held for the very first time in Perth, Scotland, coincidentally in the very same venue as Tabletop Scotland 2019! Amazing!
Anyone who plays a demo of Bang & Twang is automatically entered into the Bang & Twang World Cup, and their score will be recorded. The highest score on Saturday will win a prize and a much-coveted certificate.
And on Sunday we’re delighted to be hosting the SECOND international Bang & Twang World Cup! Again, every demo game will have its score recorded and a winner will be crowned at the end of the day.
All contenders will get a “I’m a contender” sticker to wear with pride.
Please note: Bang & Twang produces a limited range of scores and so there may be a need for a tie-break event, or the international judging committee may rule on the winner. Their decision is as final as it is arbitrary. But a kid will probably win it.
Common sense and fair play dictates only one entry per person is allowed in the Bang & Twang World Cups.
The world described in Beowulf is one of long ago, written down somewhere around 800AD, that harked back to an even earlier mythic time.
Scholarly opinions differ about many aspects within that original Beowulf text – the old fashioned or traditional view is that it is an ancient “pagan” tale given a Christian gloss.
More recent theories suggest it was produced for pay by clerics working for Christians of Nordic heritage who paid for such flattering tales of their ancestors. Others yet suggest the deeds of Beowulf were an allegory of Christ: We know that Beowulf was read by Anglo-Saxon Christian clerics in a religious context, since their contemporaries complained about it in surviving written sources.
But there is little doubt that an older pagan world wrestled with the newer Christian faith within the text.
And so it is that the game BEOWULF includes both monotheistic, Christian and polytheistic Pagan* characters. And indeed, those whose philosophical allegiances lie somewhere in between.
We’ve taken up an idea most clearly expressed by JRR Tolkien in his seminal essay “The Critics and the Monsters”, that Beowulf attempts to encompass two competing world views:
The older, more melancholic, Nordic pagan tradition believed that the world was doomed to be devoured by monsters, and all a hero could do was hope to be remembered in tales after a glorious death. Personal strength, honour, and heroism in defeat were pagan ideals.
This contrasted with the more hopeful message of Christianity. That with the help of the Christian god, monsters could be ultimately defeated. This was a new and radical idea, which was heroic in a different way.
These two philosophies can both be attractive to the heroes of BEOWULF, the game. And our mechanics reflect this.
In BEOWULF, 5e alignment is replaced with the alignment of a hero’s faith, whether it is Pagan, Christian or something in between: for example, at one time the Anglo-Saxon King of Kent was known to keep both a Christian and a Pagan altar in his place of worship, and indeed the famous Sutton Hoo ship burial is full of both Christian and Pagan artefacts.
We’ve taken great pains to avoid the obvious cliches around this topic – the neo-pagan ideas that spring from the hippy movement and Victorian Romanticism, and the cliches arising from later stages of sword-point Christian conversion and much later obsession with hellfire and damnation.
We’ve really focused on what we regard as a more interesting time that predates both these cliches. Our focus is about understanding these two philosophies and why people believed them, all in the service of heroic, storybook tales for your character.
Mechanically, Pagans in BEOWULF can expect a boost when things are going wrong, and there is a chance to exercise awesome doomed heroism. Conversely, heroes of a Christian persuasion benefit from their positive attempts to overcome the dark, and the communal nature of early Christianity.
Where and how each faith gains inspiration is different, and built to reflect their nature. Playing the same scenario as a Pagan, a Christian, or someone who’s faith is pragmatically undecided will give a different feel, and a different result. And we hope you’ll want to try out all the options.
We’ve tied our alignment to the advantage and disadvantage mechanics, in what we think is a really integrated way, giving each type of character a different feel in play. In BEOWULF generally, inspiration plays a much larger part than the typical 5e game, and really drives heroic play.
Religion is, of course, an important and sensitive topic in the real world. In our game, and all faiths are depicted as “storybook” versions of real-world religions, with the purpose of creating great mythical characters that feel like those we find in the poem Beowulf, both Pagan and Christian.
And so, you may choose to play a traditional pagan hero who is testing their personal strength and doing their best to win a famed and glorious death worthy of being remembered in song.
Or perhaps a muscular Christian traveller bringing light to the dark places of a mythical Northern Europe, battling the Children of Cain with their bare hands?
But the world of BEOWULF is a tangled one. Sometimes Christians will find themselves in places of great Pagan power and vice versa, and they may not be able to rely on… well, anything.
Our design team are neither Christians nor Pagans, but have been greatly inspired by the dualistic spirit of this fascinating poem, and how it reflects the tangle of changing faiths in the mythic world of long ago.
Through careful research and a firm belief in giving you the tools to create your own adventures faithful to the spirit of Beowulf, we really hope you’ll enjoy the mythical and story book world we’re creating for one player and one GM, using Fifth edition.
*we recognise that the term “Pagan” can carry negative connotations, and indeed was originally a term of disparagement. We use it here as an atmospheric and thematic term, and without any inferred judgement on historical or contemporary faiths.
We’re very proud to launch our latest range of dice trays, produced with our friends All Rolled Up and Patriot Games. This collection of seven designs features the gorgeous iconography of BEOWULF made by Handiwork Games’ graphic designer Paul Bourne. These all look absolutely fantastic!
Be aware they are only available in small quantities right now. So if you want one, get in quick!
Not only will the Scarred Lands Creature Collection for 5th Edition be chock full of the best monsters from the history of the Creature Collection. It’ll also have an appendix of “encounter packs” like this one. These will offer a location with battle map and suggested foes to drop into your campaign! We’ve redacted some spoiler info from this sample, The Temple of the Stars, just in case you play it!
The Creature Collection will hit Kickstarter very soon!
Something you might have spotted is the icons on the edge of each page. We’ve added these to make the Creature Collection as useful and as easy to use as possible.
Using these means we can keep the entire Collection alphabetised, so if you know the name of the creature you want, you’ll be able to find it easily.
If however you want some suggestions for suitable Challenge Ratings, or creatures that inhabit specific terrain? Then that’s where the page-edge icons can help!
The original monster book is back! In this free preview you can get a glimpse into the world of Scarred Lands, and the adversaries that await!
Onyx Path and Handiwork Games are bringing the very best of the various Creature Collections for 3rd Edition to 5e with all new art and fully converted text.
About Scarred Lands:
This is a world shaped by gods and monsters, and only the greatest of heroes can expect to be counted among them. The most populous continent of Scarn, Ghelspad, plays host to vast unexplored regions, hides unsolved riddles from ancient cultures, and taunts adventures with the promise of undiscovered riches hidden among the ruins of older civilizations.
Yet the myths of the Scarred Lands are relatively recent events. The effects of the Titanswar still ripple through the world, and the heroines and villains of many of these stories are part of living memory, if not still living.
This weekend we’re at UK Games Expo in Birmingham! We’ll be demoing and selling Forest Dragon Card Games from our compact and bijou corner of booth 1-361. Hope to see you there!
