Blog

It’s newsletter day! We’ve got updates for you on recent conventions, Handimonsters, A|State and BEOWULF, along with some general news about our website. Let’s get into it:

BEOWULF: Age of Heroes

Following the release of Ear of Stone last week, Digital Pack 4 is available to buy now. It includes a discussion of BEOWULF combat, inspirational material for character creation, three new music tracks and two brand new battle maps in a variety of formats. See the BEOWULF shop for all of our offerings.

We are hard at work getting The Triple Serpent by Gar Hanrahan ready for release. It should be with backers this month, with a Monster that’s just right for Halloween time! And we have some bigger projects in progress that we will be ready to talk about soon.

A|State

Work continues on integrating all of the new material into the existing text and making sure it all plays nice together.

If you didn’t see it last week, our first print proof for the Three Coins arrived. Check it out here.

Handimonsters

We released the Spry One, another of our Wildfolk Handimonsters this week. Next week, the first minions of the Lord of Autumn arrive:

Visit www.handimonsters.com to sign up today. You’ll gain access to our entire backcatalogue of 5e monsters and receive a new monster every monday!

Convention News

Handiwork Games sponsored Albacon 2021 and as part of our sponsorship Jacob volunteered to run a couple sessions of BEOWULF. Read his report here.

Jon’s report from Caronnade on the previous weekend is here.

Website News

We’re doing some autumn cleaning on our website and you may notice a few things get moved around or combined together. We hope this makes things easier to find, and gives you a more streamlined experience!

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This last weekend was Albacon, an online gaming convention. While based in Scotland, it garnered international attention and players from all over the globe. As a sponsor of the con, we at Handiwork Games decided to run some sessions of BEOWULF: Age of Heroes. Jacob volunteered for this. Here’s his report:

Of course, BEOWULF is primarily designed as a single player game. But it’s awfully hard to show the game off to folks if you have only one player a session. So I took our own advice on multiple players. We had up to three players per session and each Hero had only two Followers. I was on the schedule for one game Saturday evening and one on Sunday evening.

Before the game began, the Saturday players selected their Heroes and Followers. We would be playing with Alys, Bald Eadig, and Waelfwulf. We opened with a quick safety talk and soon enough, the Heroes heard of a serpent causing trouble in Britain and sailed that way. They encountered a few challenges along the way that didn’t cause any lasting harm, met the king Cynfarch, the priest Prydderch, and the princess Ceridwyn. Bald Eadig found a kindred soul in Prydderch and the priest assisted them in starting their adventure.

I won’t say much more about the adventure for fear of spoiling it, but the Heroes dealt with their challenges very judiciously and were ultimately successful in their quest.

Sunday’s Game was also full but early in the day I got word from one of the convention organisers that a player would not be able to make it and another player, though having bought a ticket, had not completed registration yet. Things seemed a bit iffy, but, of course, BEOWULF can run with just a single player as easily as three, so there was no need to cancel yet. However, as the time drew nearer, my one player that I was in contact with indicated that after two full days of gaming, an 8pm – Midnight games was looking less and less appealing with each passing hour. When no one else showed up, we decided not to proceed. Of course Penumbra (the charity of choice this year) still received the ticket proceeds so all was well.

All-in-all, I had fun and was very happy to show off BEOWULF: Age of Heroes at Albacon. Hopefully we will be able to attend next year as well — easily done if it remains virtual, but if it turns into a physical convention then I might need to fly over to Scotland for the weekend.

If you want to learn more about BEOWULF: Age of Heroes and all of our accessories for the game, visit our shop.

It’s been such a long time since we’ve exhibited at an event – we’ve been living under various forms of Covid restriction for almost as long as we’ve been a company! Last weekend was Carronade, and our first trip out in a very long time.

We were satisfied that the Carronade organisers had things set up safely, we’re double vaxxed, and masks were worn all day, so we were happy to attend.

Carronade is our local show, but it’s surprisingly large, filling 3 gym halls and various other rooms in a local high school. It’s primarily a wargaming event, and features loads of participation and exhibition games along with tons of traders.

Handiwork Games exhibited at Carronade back in 2019, back when we had The Forest Dragon, Bang & Twang, and a handful of dice trays on offer. These days we have over 100 different products on sale, so this weekend was a nice opportunity to take stock of just how far we’ve come! Covid meant stalls had to remain at 2019 size, so we were back on a 6 foot table. (For comparison, at the last Tabletop Scotland, we had three 8 foot tables!) We weren’t able to bring everything, but we tried to fit in as much as we could. Map Tiles were a notable victim of the lack of space, but we managed to get a few in!

Before the day, I had decided we would be content if we had a day out, got to set up the booth, and met some other traders. I had zero expectation of sales, because who can predict anything anymore?

Such measured expectations were profoundly blown out of the water as the show opened and we sold a lot of stuff! Over the morning we had really good sales, with a consistently busy stall, and lots of compliments about the effort we’d put in to present things, which was really kind. Trade and traffic then noticeably slowed through the day. I think people came early, got what they wanted, and went home, which in these covid times is entirely reasonable.

Carronade has very easy trading hours of 10am until 4pm, so we were all done mid afternoon. It was a thoroughly enjoyable show, it was great to see a bunch of old friends from the Scottish gaming scene, reconnect with some of our fellow traders, and make new friendships. Nothing quite compares with face to face contact with you, the gaming public, and it was lovely to be out and about again!

Thanks to everyone who chatted and shopped with us, and a huge thanks to the Carronade organisers. We’re very much looking forward to next year!