Each day during our current Kickstarter campaign to print Trials of the Twin Seas, we’ll share updates here.

---

Hello! Welcome new backers!

It’s going alright eh? 🙂

So this morning UK time we broke through our first stretch goal – all print books will get a spot UV design on the front (and we’ll probably pick out some other bits and bobs to make shiny too). If you’ve never seen spot UV on a book take a look at this video. 

It’s quite hard to replicate in 2d, but here’s an artist’s impression of what the book might look like.

And here’s a look at the design we’re planning to add:

Coming Up…

Coming up next, and we’re closing in on this one fast, we’d like to commission Dave Oliver of www.rattleboxtheatre.com to write us three poems for the book. You might have seen his work in the free intro adventure to BEOWULF The Hermit’s Sanctuary. It’s very good stuff, and I think it’ll really add to the overall magic of the book.

Would you like to help?

Over at the backer discord I’ve mentioned just how helpful your shares of the campaign, or discussion of the adventures, or BEOWULF Age of Heroes, truly are. It really, really helps us carry the word to people who are unaware of BEOWULF and this campaign. Thank you in advance for any shares you can give us, or conversations you can start in your own RPG circles. We’ll keep updating and promoting across the internet, but nothing beats word of mouth. 

Book Club

Today’s book is:

The Meadhall by Stephen Pollington

This is a book which I wish I’d picked up much earlier in the process of creating BEOWULF Age of Heroes. It really sums up so much of what we gleaned from a wide variety of sources about the importance of the Meadhall in historical Anglo-Saxon culture, and focuses it in one place. Pollington’s work in general is very good, and well worth your time. 

The text is well referenced and pleasingly digestible despite it’s level of rigour.

Like many academic style books this is a Lightning Source print-on-demand title, so is of a relatively basic production quality. But that’s splitting hairs – the text is excellent, and all the diagrams and illustrations are very crisp.

The Meadhall by Stephen Pollington is published by Anglo Saxon Books ISBN 9781898281542

Discord

Don’t forget to swing by the discord for a chat! We have a nice friendly community and it’s not too fast moving, so it’s easy to join in. If you’d like to join up, point your browser at www.discord.me/handiworkgamers Give Jacob or me a shout out when you land that you’re a Twin Seas backer, and he’ll give you the keys to the super secret awesome backer channel.

Thanks as ever for your support. Let’s see how far we can take this one!

---

The Trials of the Twin Seas is now fully funded and unlocking stretch goals on Kickstarter:

We’ll be sharing updates from our kickstarter Trials of the Twin Seas for BEOWULF Age of Heroes here, occasionally adapted to be as up to date as possible.

Update One: YOU DID IT

[Jon speaking]
It never ceases to amaze me when a project funds. I know that for many folks Kickstarter has become the norm, or even a bit hum-drum. But for me, the magic is all still here. We’re going to print a book! it’s going to be so lovely!

THANK YOU, and thank you for being here early. Later backers can read this, and know they also have our heartfelt thanks. But YOU get early thanks, you glorious early adopters. We really appreciate your support on day one.

I guess this means we need to talk about stretch goals? The next stop is Spot UV on the cover, to match the BEOWULF core book.

And beyond that we’d love to add some poems by Dave Oliver of Rattlebox Theatre to the book. You may have seen his amazing work in our free introductory adventure for BEOWULF, The Hermit’s Sanctuary.

Add Ons

I wanted to dive right into a key point of this campaign. We have a ton of add ons available. A lot of them are things we have already made, which are useful for BEOWULF in general, including the core setting book.

But in amongst those things are some new stuff, and I dont want you to miss it.

(and hey – I want to be clear – we don’t expect you to grab everything, or indeed anything!  But I want to be super sure you don’t miss anything you might actually want and enjoy.)

So fresh for this campaign, alongside the main Twin Seas book are:

Beowulf Story Cards in print. We have these all proofed, and Jacob has a copy and I have a copy. (Although mine has… issues… as ver 1.0)   We thought this was an ideal opportunity to get those in bulk and allow everyone who wants a printed deck to get one!  You can read how they work here.

There’s also the new and exclusive Twin Seas Inspiration Mat – the prior design from our first campaign is all but sold out, so a new one seemed in order!   

The Twin Seas Dice Tray is much the same situation – the previous campaign tray is sold out. If you have one take care of it! It’s more precious than a monkey NFT (is it? Maybe? I dont know)  

And the Twin Seas Art Book is another new thing for this campaign.

There’s a bunch of stuff that has been released between our last campaign and this one – we like to keep BEOWULF well supported. I’d draw your attention in particular to the BEOWULF Annual and Art Book. They’re cool.

Book Club

If you backed our last campaign you’ll hopefully remember I like to use updates to make some reccomendations for inspirational reading. And this campaign will continue the tradition. 

Our first book club entry for this campaign is:

The Word Hord, Daily Life in Old English by Hana Videen

This is one of those books that’s a pleasure to just dip in and out of. And there’s loads of inspiration for the Old English mindset and world, which is always a help when it comes to writing your own BEOWULF adventures, or just running NPCs.

Presented as a very portable but portly little hardcover, The Word Hord is just packed with fascinating info into historical Anglo-Saxon life. Each section examines an aspect of life and language and gives you lots of historical and cultural info, alongside a bunch of Old English words. I really enjoyed this one.

The Word Hord, Daily Life in Old English by Hana Videen, is published by Profile Books, ISBN 9781788166102

Discord

Don’t forget to swing by the discord for a chat! We have a nice friendly community and it’s not too fast moving, so it’s easy to join in. If you’d like to join up, point your browser at www.discord.me/handiworkgamers Give Jacob or me a shout out when you land that you’re a Twin Seas backer, and he’ll give you the keys to the super secret awesome backer channel. 

THANKS

Right that’s it for now. Thank you once again for joining us on this voyage into ADVENTURE (oh my days how brilliant was that voice over on the video? Owen Staton. Time Between Times Storytelling – look him up.)

---

The Trials of the Twin Seas is now fully funded and unlocking stretch goals on Kickstarter:

Gareth Hanrahan wrote The Triple Serpent, one of the BEOWULF: Age of Heroes adventures featured in Trials of the Twin Seas. We’re going to ask him a few questions about that process.

Continue reading “Writer Interview: Gareth Hanrahan”

Elaine Lithgow wrote Seven Stones, one of the BEOWULF: Age of Heroes adventures featured in Trials of the Twin Seas. We’re going to ask her a few questions about that process.

Continue reading “Writer Interview: Elaine Lithgow”

The Adventure Overview series takes a look at the various adventures we’ve released for BEOWULF: Age of Heroes. We don’t spoil the adventure but we do tell you a little bit about the adventure setup and its themes.

Continue reading “Adventure Overview: Ear of Stone”