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It’s that time of the week – it’s Paul’s Pick! Paul Bourne is our graphic designer, and he sees every piece of art that goes into a Handiwork game. Each week he’s selecting a piece of art to share with you. Ligdraca by Scott Purdy for the Beowulf: Age of Heroes, the monsters chapter.

“Fire dragons are some of the most fearsome foes in the Lands Between the Two Seas, their ability to fly, breathe fire and terrible physical strength means that only Heroes can oppose them.”

Happy Larry’s Bar & Grill by Paul Bourne for the Strange Little Girl vs. Cheesed Off supplement for a|state. Easily identifiable by its gaudy celeste-green sign, this is a food and drink joint that is “safe ground” for local people to have meetings, settle disputes and share tittle-tattle. The sign on the door reads “No fighting, no drugs, no weirdos.”.

We’re doing a new thing over on all our social media: we’ve asked everyone in the team to come up with things they want to shine a spotlight on. It might be a piece of art, like today, or it might be some thoughts on an aspects of one of our games, their rules or setting, or a story from their development. There’s loads of interesting stuff in the can already, so look out for the various team member’s posts!

Paul’s Art Pick is what our graphic designer and layout artists Paul Bourne has decided to do. Paul sees every piece of art we make as he lays out all our books. So he’s ideally placed to choose some interesting ones to share. Today’s pick is one he’s made himself which thoroughly establishes his credentials as a brilliant artist in his own right!

Find out more about a|state here.

We’re now in the process of closing down our X formerly known as Twitter account, since it’s no longer somewhere we’re happy to be. If you currently follow us there, be sure to give us a follow somewhere else so you don’t miss out!

You can follow us on:
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In 2022, artist and writer Jon Hodgson wrote and published a game called Maskwitches of Forgotten Doggerland. It was, in part, an experiment exploring the capabilities of an early version of so-called “AI” image generation.

Later that same year, he decided to stop using AI entirely, having grown increasingly uncomfortable with the way machine learning systems revealed their nature and application.

In 2024, Jon decided to make an ambitious new edition with entirely new, handmade artwork involving props, models, sets, and a smoke machine. The “Redux” edition is out now in PDF, with print copies currently shipping from Handiwork Games.

Today sees the release of the book Making Maskwitches, which presents a collection of the artist’s essays and accounts around the making of this new edition, lavishly illustrated with behind the scenes photographs.

It is available now in PDF, and a print version is available to pre-order on the Handiwork Games web store. The print edition is at print now.

“A game that feels like a conjuring – a curious and compelling artefact. It is strange in the best possible way, a genuine work of art from the prose to the mechanics to art.”

Gareth Hanrahan, author of The Black Iron Legacy Series, The Lands Of The Firstborn Trilogy, The Eyes Of The Stone Thief, The Darkening Of Mirkwood

“Maskwitches was one of the most immersive, emotional and dramatic games I ever ran.” – Royston Harwood, Maskwitches playtester

As well as a bunch of our titles being reduced in the Christmas in July sale at DrivethruRPG, we’ve also switched The Silver Road core rules to Pay What You Want!

The Silver Road is the experimental, minimalist storytelling game that powers Maskwitches, In Spoons, The Burn and more upcoming titles. While Maskwitches is a standalone game which includes these rules, you’ll need them to make the most of The Burn and In Spoons, In Knives. And now they’re just that bit more accessible.

Grab your copy today for however much you choose to pay.

And listen, if you’re struggling financially, don’t hesitate to grab a free one. We tend to find the folks who don’t have any money feel worst about getting something without paying. But we’re telling you it’s ok, ok?

Of course, the print book is available on our web store. If you try it and love it, consider a print book.

The foundries never stop pounding out knives to send all around the world. The finest tables are dressed with shining silverware from the dirtiest town on god’s good earth. The shipyards grow great hulks from iron skeletons like whales rotting backwards in an endless cacophony of rivets. 

Great burning spark-breathed canyons of fire drawing our wire for the colonies and steel plates for the ships and needles for record players. Day after day spent in pouring and brazing and casting and smelting. 

But at night the streets are alive with jazz music and young people fighting and dancing. Knives and heels flick in the moonlight. Lipstick and blood.

There are paydays and so there are bookies. There is duty owing on whisky and tobacco and cocaine and so there is smuggling. Betting on horses and dogs and cocks. Betting on which cockroach will climb the wall and which young man can batter the other the hardest. 

The steam hammers and greed and lust and rage go round and round up and down without end. 

In Spoons, In Knives takes us to an imagined 1930s, and the heart of Britain’s industrial centres – be they Birmingham, Sheffield, or Glasgow.

The Silver Road creates settings and stories through play, and everyone around the table has the power to shape the reality within the story. And so setting sourcebooks like In Spoons, In Knives present a grab bag of useful and inspiring setting “stuff”. We’ve organised these entries into groups of 6, so that any section can be used with dice rolls to randomly add detail and flavour to your story.

You’ll find ideas for characters, stories, details from within the turbulent world of 1930s industrial Britain. Will you play as a group of musicians, poets, orphans, foundry workers, nurses or a mix of unexpected companions thrown together by circumstance? 

In Spoons, In Knives also contains an optional new “rule” (“rule” is a strange word for such a minimal game – “suggested procedure?”) for foreshadowing the next scene with the results of your dice rolls in the current scene. This allows the GM to do even less work during the game, and shares the organisational creative burden even wider.

This being a release for The Silver Road, this isn’t a dry history source book. All our Silver Road settings contain an element of surrealism. The new edition of the book will be the same 21cm square format as The Silver Road, and they will sit together beautifully on your shelf.

In Spoons, In Knives Redux Edition is out now in PDF with print and PDF pre-orders now open.

“Just picked up Handiwork Games latest master work. Silver Road was a great piece of work and they’ve followed it up with another masterpiece. ‘In Spoons, In Knives’ deals with the industrial UK in the 30’s. The art in both of these is incredibly evocative and I could hear the drop hammers pounding away as I skimmed through Spoons. Having worked in a foundry in my late teens I can feel the heat of the molten iron in the ladle when paging through the book. I highly recommend both Silver Road and In Spoons, In Knives to people who enjoy story telling aspects of roleplaying. If you’d like to do Peaky Blinders or Call the Midwife then In Spoons, In Knives this is the rpg to do that sort of game.”

– Nigel Clarke

As part of the production of BEOWULF Age of Heroes, we wanted to both test out our ideas of how single player 5e could work, as well as giving everyone a chance to play it for themselves. And so we made The Hermit’s Sanctuary.

It’s a full-length adventure and at the last count it’s been downloaded 8000 times! It was nominated for two ENnie Awards on release (Best Electronic Book and Best Free Book), and you can grab your copy completely free exclusively at DrivethruRPG. It comes complete with pre-generated characters, battle maps and VTT tokens.

The best way to learn more is to grab the PDF for yourself. And why not treat yourself to the print book?

We’re taking a look back through the games and accessories we make in (roughly) chronological order! Today it’s Bang & Twang. 

This card game was the follow up to The Forest Dragon and is a much faster-paced game, with more competition between players. While it’s still wholesome stuff for folk of all ages, there’s a lot more “game” content in Bang & Twang. 

In the game, you take the role of folk musicians in the world of The Forest Dragon, duelling to keep up with the tune. 

At the heart of the game are 3 “riff cards” which on your turn can be individually flipped to show “Bang” or “Twang”. If you can match a sequence card from your 2 or 3 card hand, you can “bank it” for points at the end of the game. Other special tune cards allow you to make sneaky moves like stealing cards from your opponent’s banks. 

The game comes with 6 different sets of tune cards that change up gameplay. You can even play with more than one set of special cards for a longer more intense game once you get the hang of it.

You can download the rules and learn more about the game here. Or pick up a copy right now here.

Cold City and Hot War, the classic British RPGs of trust and betrayal against a backdrop of alternate Cold War history are coming back! We’re offering a series of free reports about the new editions, and the 7th one is out now!

We’ve had a bit of a rest from social media and blogging, but let’s get back into it with a wander through the things we make at Handiwork games! Beginning where we began with The Forest Dragon.

If you’d like to learn more about who we are, head on over to https://handiwork.games/about-us

There’s loads to see here on our website, so feel free to have a wander around. And be sure to sign up to our newsletter to get the latest news! https://handiwork.games/newsletter

While we’re now better known for our roleplaying games we started our journey with The Forest Dragon games – The Forest Dragon by Rory Age 9 and The Forest Dragon Bang and Twang. Let’s look at The Forest Dragon first.

The Forest Dragon is a game of exploring the forest, pushing your luck to find more forest treasure while trying to avoid the monsters who will take your stuff. The current edition also comes with the Quest givers Expansion – complete the Quest Givers quests and you’ll win more points at the end of the game!

Designed by Rory who was 9 when the game came out – although he was even younger when he designed it! – The Forest Dragon has been an enduring classic for us, and is enjoyed around the world!

• Will you meet the Forest Dragon? 

• Will you have a sword in your hand when you do? 

• Will you find a Golden Coins, a Witch Bottle, or just some Acorns? 

• Will you encounter an Adder Crow, the Bandit King, or a Hungry Ghost? 

• How far into the forest dare you go? And what even is Ghost Milk? (honestly I don’t know, and I’ve asked)

In The Forest Dragon you will create a fantasy world from cards, and then explore it.