The Burn

This week sees the release of The Burn setting for The Silver Road. 

Take the role of the Wee Folk who live up and down the Burn – a stream in Scotland – as they battle the evil spirits of pollution and litter. 

Inspired by children’s literature such as the Borribles and the Borrowers, with a touch of The Machine Gunners, The Burn was devised and written by Malcolm Craig (a|state, Cold City, Hot War), with Silver Road development and art by Jon Hodgson (The One Ring, Dungeons & Dragons). 

The Burn is intended as a sister game to Maskwitches of Forgotten Doggerland, using some of the same themes and mechanics in an entirely different setting, with a more open structure.

The Burn was a stretch goal from the original Maskwitches of Forgotten Doggerland campaign, and will be initially delivered free of charge to all original Maskwitches backers. shortly afterwards it will go on general sale exclusively at DrivethruRPG.

Jon Hodgson:

“It’s taken a while to get our ambitious and unique new approach to illustration for The Silver Road just right, and I’m so excited to be able to share this one with everyone. I think it’s a really fresh take on game illustration, and for people who already know Maskwitches The Burn is an interesting twist on some of those themes and structures. 

The setting is a burn (that’s the Scots word for a stream) close to where I live and Handiwork Games is based. Which, entirely coincidentally, is also where the setting’s author Malcolm Craig grew up. 

It’s a unique project, looking into both ends of the telescope, with Malcolm’s childhood memories combining with exploration of the same locations decades later. The characters are all fictional (or are they?) but the places are all real.”

The Burn has seen a delay in release as we moved to an entirely hand-made method of making art for Silver Road titles. 

In 2022 we’d experimented with early versions of so-called AI image generation, but at the end of that year we decided this didn’t align with our values, and so left that behind. It’s taken a while to get the wheels in line on our ambitious new methods, which produce imagery quite unlike anything else we see in tabletop games. We hope you enjoy this fresh approach to visuals. 

(We will of course still be making paintings for BEOWULF and Five Evil, and making remarkable CG for a|state, Cold City and Hot War. We like to keep things fresh and varied!)

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If you missed the original Maskwitches of Forgotten Doggerland, the all human art Redux Edition comes to Kickstarter for one week in May.  Sign up to be notified of the launch here.