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Jon here!

So social media (follow us on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook) tells me it’s a year since we launched BEOWULF Age of Heroes on Kickstarter.

Right now, all my attention is on shipping books, and if you’re following the world of international games shipping you’ll be aware that’s quite a challenge. But it’s important to look up from our daily trials and see the wider picture.

BEOWULF was one of our very first projects as a company. We assembled a small team, and pondered what we were best at, and what we wanted to make. We knew we all loved that mythic early medieval/migration era stuff. And we knew we loved 5e, and felt we could provide something that brought both together.

We’ve spent a lot of time trying to remember exactly how the idea of a single Hero in 5e came about – which is silly because we could just look back at the Discord logs. But let’s keep to the appropriately mythic story that its origin is a mysterious one, but absolutely a stroke of inspiration (weak pun intended).

Playing with one player and one GM, with a system lots of people already know, modified to shine for just two, makes gaming really easy to arrange. And we made a game that you can pick up and put down with minimal effort. You can run a campaign, one on one, for your whole gaming group and get huge value from the scenarios, and continue them with whoever is available when the squad can’t all meet up. It’s really smart.

It’s amazing to think back a year, and remember wondering how we would get on. Would anyone back us? Were we barking up the wrong tree entirely? I’m happy to say that with over a thousand backers/late pledgers and pre-orderers we were not. And hey, with their support we made miniatures, beautiful tokens and accessories, and now even a dice set from Q Workshop, no less. There’s a wealth of adventure material available now in PDF. I was just hoping that we could make a book with a bit more art than we could really afford.

At the risk of utter cliche, it’s been an amazing ride to this point, and while the story is far from over we’ve made so many friends along the way I consider it to be an unmitigated success so far. We have a lovely community of BEOWULF players, we have enjoyed working with so many new friends and partners, who have been staggeringly supportive and kind, and I really couldn’t have asked for more. And it’s incredible to think that it’s all down to the support of you – gamers.

It all turned out alright. I’M NOT CRYING YOU’RE CRYING!

And now back to getting those books shipped!

Hello! Jon speaking.

I saw a thing doing the rounds on the internet over the weekend and was moved to write something about what we get up to hereabouts at Handiwork.

It’s worth mentioning before getting into it that I’m a man-flavour human, with the combination of specific experiences and limitations of perspective that come with that. 

So I’m a bit of a simpleton. If you ask me who our games are for I’ll gleefully tell you “Everyone!” And I mean it. 

But, of course life isn’t quite that simple. We all carry various prejudices, (and here I’ve had to Google synonyms for “blind spots” in order not to use ablist language. Learning, trying etc) and areas that might help inclusion that we’re less aware of. 

I’m am also aware that good intentions are not enough. It’s rare to find a person who does harm deliberately, and there are many reasons to remain ignorant of how your work comes across. 

But I want Handiwork Games to try a bit harder than that. 

So it was with interest that I saw the Aloy meme doing the rounds at exactly the same time as we coincidentally released a montage of art from Elaine Lithgow’s scenario for BEOWULF: Age of Heroes, ‘Seven Stones’.  (It’s at the top of this post.)

The connection to a woman archer with red hair was enough to tweak my brain. It was good to see we’re among the kind of publisher the person in the tweet/meme dislikes (or perhaps… wait it’ll take too long to unpack it if the tweet is trolling for effect. Hopefully you know what I mean).

We don’t aim to make sexy characters. Sometimes, as part of a scenario, a character may of course be attractive, if that’s an appropriate part of the story. We’re not in any way morally against creating attractive characters. But we are aware that “attractiveness” is a very broad church. If we consider it as narrowly as the above tweet purports to do, then we’re sending a built-in message about who our games are for, and what they’re about. 

Now, of course, it would be foolish to pretend that we don’t this inadvertently anyway. The title of the game “BEOWULF” sets out a certain stall. I hope we’ve succeeded in making a thoughtful and inclusive approach to that subject matter. But all artistic creation can come with with baggage, and we make the same amount of mistakes and missteps as anyone else. It’s why, as creators, we need constant discussion and to have our ears open. 

The NPC in our artwork is Murrin, a character who challenges the Hero in something of a True Grit style. She’s not taken in by flashy heroics, and she’s travelled a long way to get help for her people. She doesn’t suffer fools, and she’s a great character to play at the table. She provides a critical voice that really adds something to a BEOWULF game. Murrin is certainly not there to be lusted after by a subset of the audience.

Because, as mentioned, I like characters like Murrin. Because she reflects something of the world I see around me. She’s real, and she broadens the scope and appeal of what we do. 

And, all respect to Elaine who created her – it’s a great adventure, please do check it out – it’s not really such  a new or threatening idea to have a young woman NPC who isn’t there to appeal to the specific sexuality of the player. Or at least it shouldn’t be a novel idea in 2021. But the conversation caused by the Aloy meme means it still seems important to talk about this topic. 

Like I’ve said, I’m a simpleton. I don’t have a big agenda beyond wanting the largest number of people to feel like they want to play our games. Because that just seems fair. So if you saw the Aloy meme and rolled your eyes, then we’re right there with you. 

Seven Stones is out now for BEOWULF backers, and releases to the general public tomorrow.
Learn more about BEOWULF Age of Heroes, 5e for one player and one GM here.