BEOWULF: Age of Heroes is a new setting for one player and one GM for 5e. In this article we take a look at one of the changes we’ve made to base 5e- alignment.
Beowulf the poem is a study in contrasts when it comes to religion. Its visions of meadhalls, monsters, sea creatures and dragons remind us of pagan legends and make us think of great adventure novels. But Beowulf is given to thanking the Christian God for his good fortune and the poet tells us that Grendel (and his mother) are the kindred of Cain. So the poem blends both the Church and the Old Ways into a seamless whole.
Beowulf! A story as old as literature itself! Monsters! A hoard of dragon-guarded gold! Ancient magic swords! The very roots of fantasy adventure!
Beowulf! A lone hero leads their band to do battle against an ancient evil. In the game Beowulf: Age of Heroes YOU are the hero.
In this series of articles we’re taking a look at how we’ve adapted Beowulf to a 5e adventure setting with unique new rules, classes, and backgrounds. In this article we check out “The Portent”.
Every Hero in BEOWULF: Age of Heroes is human, from somewhere among the many lands that surround the Whale Road. They may be from nearby, Baltic-born and stern as the sea. They may be from strange lands to the south, with strange speech and tales no one has ever heard before. Each Hero comes to a life of adventure by a different path. Their background represents both their lineage and their life experience.
First and foremost, every Hero has access to the same Ability bonuses as any other. Adding such modifiers allows you to customise your character but is not dependent on where they were born or what they look like. Similarly, you can roll on a table (or pick) a special quirk (benefit) that is personal to you. You make some other choices, such as your age, alignment and languages and every Hero gets to start with a Feat. You then choose a background, and start building a story of how your Hero came to be. We posit the existence of a Trader’s Tongue that the folk of the North Sea and Baltic use when making deals that has loan words from a variety of languages, so that everyone can understand one another.
BEOWULF: Age of Heroes is designed primarily as a duet game, with one gamemaster and one player. Thus when it came time to design the classes, we quickly resolved that the idea of class roles was something that wouldn’t quite work. It was okay for a player to choose a focus for their Hero’s class, because Followers (non-player characters that accompany the character and are able to temporarily aid them) can help support the player in weak areas. But every character needed to have a certain measure of toughness and some ability at combat. We decided to create just a single class, the Hero class, and use 5e’s subclasses to allow a player to choose a focus for their Hero. We ended up with six different subclasses. Each based around an Ability score.
BEOWULF: Age of Heroes is a roleplaying game inspired by the ancient epic poem Beowulf.
As gamers and designers reading and enjoying the poem, we quickly realised it focused on Beowulf’s struggles against the various Monsters he faced and his relationships with the folk that he met, such as Unferth, who was at first critical of the hero but then gave him his magical sword to hunt Grendel’s mother, and Wiglaf, his loyal follower.
The first edition of a|state was released in 2004 by Contested Ground Studios with writing by Malcolm Craig and art by Paul Bourne. It was widely praised for its setting and presentation and was a very ambitious game for a young Scottish studio. It became a cult hit, with players all over the world.
a|state invited players to The City – a sprawling, apparently endless, futuristic dystopia, where the repressive rich enjoy lives filled with technology and comfort, and the poor… do not. The game’s action centres around trying to eke out an existence in this bleak vision of an alternate world.
With influences from JG Ballard, Upton Sinclair, the films of Jean-Pierre Jeunet and the movie Dark City, a|state presented a uniquely fascinating world to explore through play.
Mire End, Dreamingspires, The Trench, Burningfell, Fogwarren, and Calculus Tor all provided unique and evocative locations for Ghostfighters and Lostfinders to discover.
Never entirely satisfied with the original game system, Malcolm moved on to create other games like Cold City and Hot War, which had rules truer to his design intentions. Pursuing an academic career, Malcolm decided to retire from the pressures of the RPG industry.
a|state slipped from view, but never from memory.
Fast forward to 2019 and a chance encounter at Tabletop Scotland. A discussion about using Forged in the Dark rules for a new edition of a|state made it a tantalising possibility. Could it be done?
It turns out that it could!
With Paul Bourne already working for Handiwork Games, and Malcolm prepared to lend a hand on this new edition, we’re delighted to also be joined by Gregor Hutton and Morgan Davie, both of whom have a long association with a|state, and many impressive gaming credits under their own belts.
In the Second Edition of a|state you and your friends will define a corner of The City, and set about defending it and making it a better place to live. We’ve fine-tuned the Forged in the Dark rules to fit the themes and tone of a|state and The City.
And with a complete scenario laid out and illustrated, we’re now ready to start recruiting playtesters! We’re looking for some groups who are familiar with Forged in the Dark games, willing to give our play test scenario, Nicely, Done a go.
If you’d like to try it, please email us at jon@handiwork.games with the subject line “Playtesting a|state”
We’ve released two digital map tile sets today! Water Tiles and Linking Tiles 2.
Digital Map Tiles are an easy and effective way to build complex maps for VTT adventures in a fraction of the time it would take to create them from scratch. With no limit on how many times you can use a given tile, the possibilities are almost endless. And with Linking Tiles allowing sets to be joined together, your VTT adventures will never be the same again!
Each set contains fuzzy-edged pngs, gridded jpegs and plain jpegs, all intended for VTT use.
Gridded tiles have 6 squares per side
Each tile is 1000px across in full colour
Linking Tiles 2
These tiles allow you to link different sets together, in a variety of combinations.
These tiles provide links between Cavern, Dungeon, Heathland, Forest, Mountain Pass, Backstreets, Water, Evil Forest, Hillfort and Desert.
And between Utopian Scifi and Dystopian Scifi They’re really useful tiles that add a ton of value to other sets.
Once all our backers have their physical tiles we’ll be making the print versions available!
Expanding on a feature from the Wave One Extra Detail tiles, this set gives you loads of options for lakes, rivers and streams, or even the sea. You can build islands, and shorelines, and includes a bunch of water tiles to create open water. This set is perfect to mix up your wilderness adventures. The Water Set connects to the Heathland Tiles.
Evil Forest Digital Tiles are now live on DrivethruRPG! This digital set contains files for both gridded and ungridded tiles, as well as “fuzzy-edged” .png tiles.
Currently available as digital files, the physical versions will be made available as soon as all our Kickstarter backers have received their tiles!
Digital Map Tiles are an easy and effective way to build complex maps for VTT adventures in a fraction of the time it would take to create them from scratch. With no limit on how many times you can use a given tile, the possibilities are almost endless. And with Linking Tiles allowing sets to be joined together, your VTT adventures will never be the same again!
Each set contains fuzzy-edged pngs, gridded jpegs and plain jpegs, all intended for VTT use.
Gridded tiles have 6 squares per side
Each tile is 1000px across in full colour
Please note these files are intended for Virtual Table Top, on-screen use, and as such, they are not suitable for home printing.
Our Backstreet Digital Tiles are now live on DrivethruRPG! This digital set contains files for both gridded and ungridded tiles, as well as “fuzzy-edged” .png tiles.
