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This weekend was Carronade, in our home town of Falkirk.
Run by Falkirk District Wargames Club, Carronade is something of a hidden gem in the convention calendar, and we love exhibiting. Lots of people, loads of participation games, and lots of traders. It’s a great place to catch up with friends from across Scotland and the North of England.

This year we had a 12 foot booth, rather than our previous 6 – space at Carronade is always at a premium, but the organisers were kind enough to find us that extra bit of space this year! And we needed it!

Carronade is a Wargames show, so we always moderate our expectations as mostly a role-playing game publisher. But surprisingly, the big seller of the show for us was Maskwitches of Forgotten Doggerland. Our new Maskwitches banner sure is an eye-catcher, and people were interested to learn more about this weird-sounding game. And of course we were happy to tell them all about it.

Carronade also provided us with a dry un fro UK Games Expo in 3 weeks time. And our brand-new catalogues proved their worth. We’ve always had flyers on the booth to take away, but these mini-booklets are really attractive! You’ll know if you order from our web store you get flyers and stickers – well now you’ll get one of our catalogues. Nice.

Another great Carronade, another great year, and it was good to be back. We’re already looking forward to next year!

This weekend just passed was Conpulsion in Edinburgh, and it’s a show we’ve been involved in, in one way or another, for the best part of 20 years. It’s almost our local convention (Carronade in Falkirk qualifies for that honour), and we really like attending and supporting it.

(Look at all that stuff!) Photo credit: Gregor Hutton)

This year’s show was very enjoyable, with a great mix of loads of people and a really relaxed atmosphere. The trade hall is always on the modest size, and with our continual growth of books we were pretty much the biggest stall there. It’s always a treat to see old friends, especially now that the Covid lockdowns have ended, and it’s equally lovely to meet new people, and we certainly did both.

Highlights of the show:
Very early on an attendee was overheard saying to his friend “I just got Maskwitches of Forgotten Doggerland” and his pal veritably shrieked “what the f*** is that?!?!?” which made our weekend.

The charity auction raised over £3000 for a really good cause facing a lot of challenges in the current climate. We were delighted that the three signed books we donated went for very good sums.

(Brian Nisbet doing a marvellous job of overseeing the auction)

Each year at Conpulsion the Banquo Award for the Spirit of Scottish Gaming is awarded. We were delighted that Handiwork friend and contributor to a|state, Tanya Floaker was this year’s worthy recipient. Well deserved, congrats Tanya!

And as crass as it is to talk about right after such heartwarming anecdotes, we sold a lot of books! a|state, Handimonsters Annuals and Maskwitches all proved popular, and The Forest Dragon and Bang and Twang still very much hold their own. BEOWULF dice and tokens are always a favourite at shows too.

See you next year, Edinburgh!

There are just a handful of hours remaining to back the kickstarter for Wayne Reynolds’ RPG Saints Sketchbook! The campaign has been successful beyond all expectation.

Over the course of the 3 week campaign we’ve unlocked a ribbon bookmark, printed endpapers and over the weekend a beautiful dust jacket for all standard books. It’s going to be a wonderful book to own.

Each double page spread features a drawing of a saint in the mode of an RPG character, with a facing page casting light on Wayne’s thoughts about the creation of the drawing, the character of the saint, and the decisions he made in drawing them.

Only one stretch goal remains – if the campaign can reach this final goal, then w unlock an Add-On of an alternate cover – the black cover.

Back now before the campaign ends on Tuesday April 4th, at 6pm UK time.

We’ve just finished artwork creation for a new version of The Silver Road story game. As we announced last year, we’re moving away from the use of Midjourney in our projects – in short, we liked the beta version of Midjourney in early 2022, when it was a highly weird and experimental thing. It’s now something very different indeed, and we’d rather head in other directions.

So let’s take a look at that new direction!

The new edition of The Silver Road is full of images which share the dream-like quality of the original, but which are all made with a combination of original photos, sets, models, some digital painting and Photoshop know-how.

If you already have the PDF of The Silver Road you’ll get the updated version free as an update to the DrivethruRPG title. And we’ll be launching the new print edition soon! We have small stock of the previous edition, and once that’s sold it won’t be reprinted. If you’d like one, the time to grab it is now!

The campaign to raise funds to create a beautiful hardcover book of Wayne Reynolds’ RPG Saints project is going really well. There are only a handful of stretch goals for this project, given that we started with a very complete, and high end book. But there are a couple of things we can still add to the book!

Find out more about the campaign here. The crowdfunding ends on April the 4th.

The follow up game to Maskwitches of Forgotten Doggerland is now in development. This sees the timeline move forward to the building of Stonehenge in the neolithic, at the end of an age long struggle.

Can the Witches, now in concert with the spirits, prevent the building of this stone monument which will end their powers, and their way of life? Find out more about the first part of this series of tabletop storytelling games here.

Check back for more details as they emerge!

We just took delivery of the first print run of Handimonsters Annual 2023! We’re very happy with how it looks, and we’ll be sending out all your pre-ordered copies tomorrow. (We can’t catch the post today!)

About Handimonsters Annual 2023