Hey! We’re working on a mask generator for #Maskwitches of Forgotten Doggerland. You’ll be able to generate and print out your own set of masks, built at random from interlocking parts. Check out the work in progress:
The hardcovers of Maskwitches and Pine Pitch Black are here! We have *almost* everything to start dispatch for a bunch of backers/pre-order customers. That’ll kick off next month!
Find out more about Maskwitches, the storytelling game of the psychedelic Mesolithic here.
“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.
We were excited this weekend to take delivery of a ton of boxes containing the softcover print run of Maskwitches of Forgotten Doggerland Redux Edition. We were less excited to move them from the spot the massive load of books were dropped off to the office, but them’s the breaks! We’re delighted to have them here. Next up: we’re awaiting the hardcovers and Pine Pitch Black!
There’s still time to pre-order your copy, and get the PDF free.
You may have seen that we recently released The Burn, a charmingly unique setting for The Silver Road.
Penned by Scottish RPG design legend Malcolm Craig (a|state, Cold City, Hot War), The Burn is all about childhood memory and folklore, specifically local to Malcom as he was growing up in Polmont, Scotland. It just so happens that the Handiwork HQ is in the very same district of Falkirk, so Jon was able to shoot all the photographs that illustrate the game in the very same locations that “Wee Malcolm” haunted as a child.
Not so long ago Malcolm was in the area, and we took a tour of some of those sites, book in hand, and here we present the photo story of heading back to The Burn.
We also discussed The Burn as part of our latest History in Games, Games in History podcast:
The locations in the book are real – albeit seen through the eyes of memory and a kind of folkish magical realism.
The wee folk who you play seemed really the crux of the whole thing. And of course coming out of finishing up the Maskwitches Redux, models and sets were on my mind. But in this case the sets were life size – the real places along the Polmont Burn, just moments from my door, and coincidentally where the author Malcolm played as a child.
It seemed like a good idea to build some figures and I have wanted to do this for a while. The pre-made figures I used for Maskwitches have their advantages, but also many limitations.
I already had some armature wire on hand – it’s thick, but very flexible metal wire that bends easily but stays where you put it. It’s easy to cut, despite being several millimetres thick. I enjoy working with it.
The new edition of The Silver Road is out now in both PDF and print! The stock of print books arrived today and look great!
If you already purchased the PDF you have the new edition waiting for you in your DrivethruRPG library at no extra cost.
About The Silver Road
The Silver Road is a minimalist storytelling game for three to five players, including a Game Mediator. Written by Jon Hodgson and illustrated by Jon Hodgson with Paul Bourne.
When playing The Silver Road, you and some friends can get together and tell stories.
This is an unashamedly minimalist story telling roleplaying game. It has a “breathtakingly simple” core mechanic that is applied any time there’s uncertainty about what happens next.
In discovering, exploring and journeying deep into a painting cave, Maskwitches may win secrets from the painted stories they make together. They may also gain both the understanding of new amulets and the knowledge of how to make new masks. They may also break masks and amulets. Their amulets and masks may be transformed.
Placing stilled thoughts and frozen rhythms into the very guts of the earth. Paintings are sight which stays. Fixing ideas to walls with ochre and pitch and resin allows those ideas to become both stronger and weaker. Vision halted, captured, and placed into the forever darkness. Secret signs hidden deep in the earth where seeds grow and bodies rot. The source of the past and the future growing outwards like roots spreading and dividing.
Stories told in paint here in the secret places deep under the ground are true, where the past and the future are connected and the painters and the painted become one.
Unseen designs carved into the winding ice tunnels of the great ice walls are melting. The thoughts stored there released forever. The rivers are too full of old songs. Spirits rise. An eel mask or a spider mask for the dark seeing and sinuous weaving of grace in dark places. Navigating the sunless red insides of the earth. Emerging from the stone birth canal reborn.
In Maskwitches of Forgotten Doggerland, the witches are defined by their masks. They begin the story with two masks, each of which allows them to do a thing well. The witches can trade masks among their number as needed, making them highly fluid and otherworldly as characters.
You’d be forgiven for wondering, as the sharp-minded person you are, if the things the witches are good at are defined solely by their masks, and they can swap masks with one another, who then are they? What is their inner character? Who is the person under the mask?
There are three possible answers.
The first is that that is something you will discover through play. How did your character become a Maskwitch? What was their training and what events shaped them into the person they are in this story?
The second is that the witches entirely believe in a self-creation story that we see in many so-called “shamanic” (see the reader’s notes in Maskwitches of Forgotten Doggerland for more on our approach to the difficulties surrounding the terms shaman and shamanism) or, more appropriately, “folkloric” tales. That they were created when a normal person was visited by a spirit, often in the form of a bird, which removed and substituted their eyes and possibly bones and internal organs with magical replacements, usually made from a material like copper or flint. This often happens at the bottom of the sea or a lake. Or at the peak of an unscalable witchmountain. Whoever they were before is forgotten, like a snake leaves behind its skin each year, or an elk leaves behind its antlers. A witch might have their own tale of this kind, they believe it, and for all intents and purposes it is true.
Or perhaps the secret truth is that the maskwitches themselves are as “real” as the spirits they are fighting. The spirits embody the problems of the community and must be dealt with ritualistically to resolve them. The witches are the personification of the community’s desire to heal. They are not people at all. ThIs does not stop a maskwitch from acting exactly like a real person, with feelings, hopes for the future, and relationships with the past. They are made from the very stuff of humanity: a care for others and an ambition for things to be better. Exploring this can make for deeply affecting tales.
Maskwitches of Forgotten Doggerland is a standalone storytelling RPG coming to Kickstarter as a week-long campaign this month. Sign up to be notified and don’t miss out!
We took delivery of a prototype Maskwitches book. In this video Jon takes a look through the prototype which we filled with full page Doggerland art, in advance of the final text being ready. And after a lot of rambling about the various aspects of this setting and the art we’ve been making, there’s a surprise delivery!
You can sign up to be notified of the launch of the Maskwitches campaign here:
While the game is a psychedelic fantasy version of the mesolithic (Middle Stone Age) period, it never hurts to put things in historical context. And so here is a section from the forthcoming book, detailing historical timeline of events before and after the setting of the game.
You can also add this 7 page preview to your DrivethruRPG library by downloading it here.
Maskwitches of Forgotten Doggerland is about to go into layout. We anticipate a mini-kickstarter for the print book this month.
Maskwitches BundleOriginal price was: £95.95.£89.99Current price is: £89.99.
Maskwitches of Forgotten Doggerland Redux Edition Soft Cover + Free PDF£24.99
The Meat Spoiler Redux + Free PDF£12.99
