A beautiful full-colour hardback book collecting all the published BEOWULF Age of Heroes 5e adventures.
Latest Updates from Our Project:
Digital Pack 14 is heading your way!
5 months ago
– Fri, Dec 08, 2023 at 09:16:22 AM
Hello!
Digital Pack 14 is on its way to your in-box. It's an Old Ways Special.
This pack contains:
An article about some of what we know about historical pre-christian beliefs
Three sample Old Ways sacred locations
Three NPCs dedicated to the Old Ways
3 VTT tokens for NPCs
Two location maps to use in your own adventure
I'm quite sad that this is the final Digital Pack that will come free to you as a backer of The Trials of the Twin Seas. It feels like the end of an era! But there's more to come.
The BEOWULF campaign which your pledges unlocked is very much still a thing - its development has been on hold due to the... well, the Trials of the Twin Seas (by which I mean the loss of the pallet which I'm sure we're all sick of hearing about) but we fully intend to deliver you the first 5 parts of the campaign. (It may yet become a five part campaign so that you have the whole thing. That wasn't the initial plan but plans can change!)
I'm currently kicking about the idea of doing things a little bit differently for that one, and sharing an outline first, then fleshing out each adventure in the campaign as we resolve it, through a series of useful and holistic incarnations, so rather than you getting it piece by piece as a series of finished adventures, you'll get a single, multipart title which develops and grows over time, getting more and more definitive, growing from a sketch to the full fledged symphony of monster-slaying adventure with all the bells and whistles.
I'll make no secret of the fact this would let us get you something meaningful and useful, and indeed useable, much more quickly and directly, and we will feel like honour is being served in a more effective way than writing each part, editing it, illustrating it, laying it out, sending it to you and so on.
I will of course keep you in the loop on those decisisons as we move onto that project in earnest in the new year.
Take care! And enjoy Digital Pack 14,
Jon and the team
KING BEOWULF final 24 hours!
6 months ago
– Mon, Nov 06, 2023 at 11:40:29 AM
Just another quick heads up - I have just today received a handful of returned parcels from US backers - some were returned as no longer at this address, others without a reason given. I’ll be in touch with those 4 backers via email this week. We will of course persist until your rewards are delivered!
Thank you!
Jon
US dispatch complete, KING BEOWULF Opens for sign ups
8 months ago
– Fri, Sep 08, 2023 at 09:02:00 AM
Hello!
US Dispatch
Good news! All parcels heading to the US are now either en route or in the case of the final dozen, are booked to start their journeys on Monday. Our coin hoard is now all but empty, (I am a little bit worried, truth be told) but 'tis done! We kept our oaths and have dispatched what we said we would deliver! I would go lie down but:
Digital rewards will of course continue as they are completed! We have a wealth of material coming for the next digital pack. And the campaign will start to see some movement soon too - with all the other hassles that have been going on, I consciously chose to save that until we could give it the attention it deserves - there's no point in putting out something half-baked for BEOWULF. We take it all really too seriously. :)
Books with Drawings
These are now underway, and will go out next week. Thank you for your patience while we resolved this theft issue.
KING BEOWULF
We're now ready to take sign ups for KING BEOWULF, the kingdom stweardship supplement, where your Hero ascends to the treasure-seat and becomes a Ruler! I don't want to bombard you with info about this book, but it's a good one, packed with stuff for players and GMs alike!
You can sign up to be notified when the project goes live here (or click the image above. I anticipate it will go live this very month.
I realise for some of you this might seem a little premature, given that your rewards only just hit the mail: A greater number of folks have been incredibly patient while we prepared this next book, and we're all bursting to get on with it!
Happily the extra time we've been afforded by the theft of the US rewards has meant the book will be quite something!
(Helmet shown by Wyrmwick Creations. There's a recreation of the Fuller Brooch also shown in the photo above this one by Glitterbeard's Viking Crafts.)
The Twin Seas GM's Companion
Since all of them are now on the way to US backers, we'll be making The Trials of the Twin Seas GM's Companion available to everyone else. You'll find it, along with all the other fine accessories for BEOWULF at the Handiwork Games store. Anything you pick up does help us get over the theft of the original US rewards, which has caused us real and lasting harm.
But hey! We can't end on a sour note! Come and chat with us at the Handiwork discord! If you’d like to join up, point your browser at www.discord.me/handiworkgamers. Give us a shout that you're a Twin Seas backer and you'll be upgraded to see the Twin Seas backer channel. And even if you're not a backer you're still very welcome!
And now I am off for a lie down. Have a great weekend!
Jon and the Handiwork Team
August Update - US SHIPPING, PALLET THEFT, KING BEOWULF
8 months ago
– Thu, Aug 24, 2023 at 07:38:29 AM
Hello!
For US backers
So we're almost complete in terms of US parcel being dispatched. We're about 75% there right now. I have some math to do on whether it's better/faster/more efficient to dispatch a bunch of the BEOWULF Age of Heroes books from Jacob in the US, who has a stack ready to go, or if it's better to stick to one parcel per backer and send from the UK. Naturally we want to make sure we get that right for everyone - there’s a balance of cost to speed to complexity involved.
Literally robbed
There are two main reasons for this update - the first is that I wanted to let everyone know that we recently discovered that the lost pallet was actually stolen.
This is a real blow for us - the stock is on sale right now on eBay. Law enforcement is involved, but I don't hold out much hope for that actually helping us. But hopefully they will be shut down. It was real blow, personally, to discover the books weren't just lost, but were actually taken, and are now being sold in direct competition to our own store.
(And of course these books are being sold before you have your copies in the US)
I'm extremely angry, but if I'm honest it was just really, really depressing. I've worked so hard to make up the lost funds, and it feels like such a slap in the face to all of us.
But hey. We're almost there. I wanted you to know what was going on from me, in case the press release I just sent out gets picked up.
I figured it was worth letting people know what was going on in a wider context, as we’ve just launched the free intro PDF to KING BEOWULF, our next major BEOWULF release. We won’t bring that to Kickstarter until all the US parcels have been dispatched - that’s really important to me. But if the theft makes for story that people might want to read, then so be it - we will use that to reach more people.
I know some of you are getting frustrated as parcels are arriving with fellow backers and you are still waiting. I totally get it. I don’t want things to be this way either - it isn’t the deal we made when you backed our book. We are working on this as fast as humanly possible, and as funds allow. I think it’s hard to explain just how much extra work and cost in involved when this was all paid for and done, and now needs to be done over from scratch from zero funds. We’re just not a big enough operation to soak that with any speed sadly, as you are no doubt aware by now!
We have also provided a free PDF adventure and a whole new book for everyone waiting by way of apology. This has been very, very difficult to survive if I’m honest, and there are plenty of companies out there that would have simply declared those books lost and made it your problem. I won’t do that, but please, if you can be patient with me for just a bit longer we will get you those books. Blurgh I hate having to ask this again.
HAPPIER THINGS
Let’s talk a bit about KING BEOWULF! Despite all of these trials, we haven’t stopped working on new material and KING BEOWULF is shaping up really well. We’ve actually been able to use the extra time these delays have afforded us to do a lot more development work than we planned and KING BEOWULF is the main beneficiary of that.
(In thephoto above there's a helmet by Wyrmwick Creations and a Fuller brooch by Glitterbeard Viking Crafts, both used by kind permission!)
TABLETOP SCOTLAND
We're off to Tabletop Scotland this weekend. Swing by the booth if you're there! And do say hello if you're a backer or customer. We love meeting folks, and i have this weird thing where I do actually remember people's names from parcels and backer lists, and it's lovely to put faces to those names!
That's it for now!
Jon & the Handiwork Hearthguard
Twin Seas US shipping update - good news at last!
9 months ago
– Thu, Jul 20, 2023 at 04:34:14 AM
Hello!
At last we have good news!
Not so long ago we came to a private deal with the UK wing of the logistics company helping us with Twin Seas, so that we don’t have to wait on the insurers who are not keen to pay out on the claim (?!?!?) I am very grateful to Mark Rapson of GMS for his help with this. You are a good man, Mark Rapson.
As I’ve mentioned before, these delays have cost us dearly, so it’s not been quite as simple as “get cash, send books”. We’ve needed to recoup more than just the manufacturing cost of the books themselves. But the good news, and the salient point for our US backers, is that we’re there.
I’ve been packing books all week, and they will start to head across the Atlantic from today. At last!
To be 100% clear: Nothing will occur instantly - books will still have to make it to you, and that will take 2-4 weeks. By default, They won't be sent tracked, since that will cost more than double the price of shipping for many of your parcels, and we just can't soak that. My apologies here - I wish plan A had worked, and we were sending tracked parcels from within the US, but this way makes the best sense.
Hopefully the included Twin Seas GM's Companion will amelioriate some of that disappointment (and indeed the free PDF of the Serpent of Glinnredin, which I sent out a long time ago now). The GM's Companion is pretty cool:
The first batch to go are to backers who pledged for just the Twin Seas book. This is the largest group by far, and I have all your pledges packed right now. I will then move on to the slightly more complex sets or rewards. We may in the end split some of those deliveries between stock of BEOWULF Age of Heroes we have in the US already, and some items coming from the UK. We will be sure to communicate that with a delivery note in the parcels to minimise confusion.
Books with sketches for folks all over the world
I’m working on these. They have been sadly delayed by our pallet woes, but I’ll get on it as soon as hunanly possible. I haven't wanted to rush them out the door, since you've kindly paid for a good sketch, not any old thing I can rush out when beset by other issues.
That's it for now! I will get right back to it, and let's get this thing done!
