king beowulf

6th April 20236th April 2023

Realm Management in KING BEOWULF: Development Journal 5

KING BEOWULF is a major expansion for BEOWULF: Age of Heroes that provides resources for higher level play, including a realm management system that allows your Hero to become the ruler of their own land, manage events that occur in their realm, and negotiate or wage war with other rival realms.

Jacob back once again to talk about KING BEOWULF, and a major part of this expansion for Age of Heroes: realm management!

From the earliest days of the project, one expectation of higher level play was a chance to establish your own home-base, a stronghold that you could invest in and improve, as something to do with all that newly discovered treasure from adventures undertaken in the most dangerous parts of the setting.

So having a chance to become a ruler, manage a realm, develop it, and deal with threats that it may face is a big part of KING BEOWULF, and the reason for its name. And, like Beowulf in the poem, a chance to become a ring-giver and a wise ruler might likely be the ambition of a Player, especially in a duet game.

KING BEOWULF provides support for multiple players and even multiple gamemasters, though we anticipate that a lot of KING BEOWULF games will be a natural extension of a duet Age of Heroes game.

9th February 20232nd March 2023

KING BEOWULF Development Journal 3

20th January 202316th February 2023

KING BEOWULF Development Journal (2)

About KING BEOWULF

Jacob back again, with another development blog. I’m still working on the warfare development journal but wanted to spend a little time today talking about our new monsters.

10th January 202316th February 2023

KING BEOWULF Development Journal

About KING BEOWULF

KING BEOWULF in a major expansion for BEOWULF: Age of Heroes that provides resources for higher level play, including a realm management system that allows your Hero to become the ruler of their own land, manage events that occur in their realm, and negotiate or wage war with other rival realms.

Jacob with a KING BEOWULF development journal entry here. So the process is still ongoing but there are a few steps I can share with you. A key component of the supplement is that it allows your higher level BEOWULF Heroes to step into leadership roles and that requires defining some terms so that we can talk about the rules for such things. Things, of course, are still in development, and these could change before final publication but this is the state of terminology at present.

First, we have determined that ‘realm’ is the term we will use for the overall thing that your ruler is in charge of. It avoids gendered terms like ‘king’ or ‘queen’ and appears in many translations of the poem. It covers areas of different sizes and can scale in grandeur as your ruler’s lands also gain in size, gifts (more on that in a bit) and wealth.

Next, we use the term ‘scir’ for the chunks of the realm that are broken out into different administrative areas. The term comes from the Old English word and it was quite the journey to land on this term. We are happy with it, as it makes the process of determining events, taxes (more on this in a future blog because the migration era saw some interesting practices and development), warfare, and other processes easier.

Your ruler is aided by Advisors. Like the Followers that aid the Hero during an adventure, Advisors provide capabilities and advice for your ruler during a realm turn. And just like Followers, each Advisor has a series of tags, defining certain gifts and burdens that make them unique.

Speaking of tags, each scir also has a number of tags, providing gifts and burdens for that area. A particular scir might have gifts that allow it to produce more military, naval, or financial resources for your realm or it might have burdens that must be dealt with before your people can make full use of the scir and its natural resources.

For our next journal entry, we will talk more about warfare, including the crowfield, various units and muster lists. See you soon!

14th December 202216th February 2023

KING BEOWULF Table of Contents

Here’s an exclusive first look at the table of contents for KING BEOWULF, by Jacob Rodgers.

This is a work in progress, and subject to change. And of course you’ll see we haven’t slotted in page numbers yet. That’s still to come. Click the image to enlarge:

About KING BEOWULF

“Then Beowulf came as king this broad
realm to wield; and he ruled it well
fifty winters, a wise old prince,
warding his land, until One began
in the dark of night, a Dragon, to rage.

KING BEOWULF is the high level, realm ruling supplement for BEOWULF: Age of Heroes. Penned by BEOWULF co-creator Jacob Rodgers, in KING BEOWULF your Hero will move beyond the role of wandering mender of wrongs, and you’ll establish your own realm, just like the older Beowulf of the poem. Rather than followers you’ll gather advisors, build alliances, battle even bigger monsters, and resolve threats to your kingdom!