Stretch Goal Down! Wait what? New Stretch Goals!
about 2 years ago – Mon, Apr 11, 2022 at 09:22:17 AM

Hello! 

I hope you had a nice weekend!

You could be forgiven for being confused by the title - how did we break another stretch goal? 

Well, we've been taking a look at what we want to add to the book, and our trajectory. When we launched, we planned our goals in line with the way BEOWULF Age of Heroes went, and we're not on the same path as that book - which is no huge surprise, that was a core book, this is a supplement. But we had to use what data we had to begin with. We didnt want to risk blazing through loads of goals too fast, so we set our bar at a sensible, sustainable level. 

Now we know where we're at, we've done some restructuring. And it's good news!

We know what we really want to include in this book, so we've made sure we'll get there, and get you plenty of material to play with! And the sums all add up, even if my brain is now very tired!

So we now have a poem for each adventure! That's awesome I love using kickstarter to support poetry, and making it an active thing, as part of a game! Good job all!

Next up we get to what we all want - extra material for the book, expanding each adventure with useful flowcharts, dramatis personae, reference sheets, ideas for extra encounters, GM advice and all that good stuff. Each will make the book a bit longer, which will be great! Let's see what we can do. Bring a friend! Start a conversation online about BEOWULF, or Beowulf. Play the Hermit's Sanctuary and let folks know! Loads of stuff to do to get us that fat book we all deserve! :)

And hey - thank you again for all your amazing support. It's been great.

Book Club

While written history tells us the Jewish people first came to England with William the Conqueror in 1066, our game spans the length and breadth of the Twin Seas, so there's no reason not to be inspired by more than just strictly Early English stories. I picked up this one while researching The Radhanites for Pregenerated Characters 3, which needs to include the third people "of the book" so we have the full complement. (It's a work in progress!)

Having recently discovered a little bit of Jewish heritage myself, this is of especial interest - I have a son coincidentally called Ben, and a great (great?) grandad called Banjaman, which is awesome. WHO KNEW?

Jewish Folk Tales In Britain and Ireland is eye-opening in it's mixture of folk tales and history. I'll leave it to you to discover it, but it's a mixture of wise and heartbreaking, alongside some very common folk tale motifs, and recognisible story stylings, which is interesting in itself. There are other tales which are in less recognisable formats to me. There is certianly plenty here to inspire folkloric characters and events in your games. 

This one is another beautifully presented high end book - no print on demand here. It's a lovely little tome, with some very beautiful illustrations. If you're looking to widen the scope of your inspiration this is no bad place to start.

Jewish Folk Tales in Britain and Ireland is edited by Liz Berg, and published by The History Press, ISBN 9780750991438

That's it for today! 

Jon, Jacob and the Handiwork Heorot Hearthguard

£12,000 down!
about 2 years ago – Fri, Apr 08, 2022 at 02:41:44 PM

Hello! And welcome new backers!

It looks like you've done it again! Another stretch goal down! That's unlocked an additional chunk of content for the digital pack, which everyone at a reward level gets. 

The Digital Packs unlocked in this campaign are entirely new content for BEOWULF Age of Heroes. Our previous digital packs have included battle maps, PDF articles and additional rules, inspirational material, new Monsters and Followers, and even background music. Expect more of that kind of thing!

Coming up

Now we're well into "funded" territory, let's talk a but more about future stretch goals. It's sensible to keep focused on the next one, but there's no reason not to talk about future plans if we're lucky enough to keep finding new backers and raising those pledges.

Intially we want to add material to the Twin Seas book, and make sure that's the best it can be, and complete. So upcoming we'll have a few more additions to that - more poems so that there's one for each adventure, and then additional material for each adventure. We want to add things like flowcharts, dramatis personae sections with pronounciation guides, and even some additional scenes and notes for running the adventures. 

We're not going to overdo that - we'll expand each adventure as part of these goals if we reach them, but we want to deliver this book nice and quickly - the adventures are already really good, and completely done! It seems silly to add too much and end up doing loads of development work. I see it more as a polish and a useful expansion rather than huge additions.

Beyond that we'd like to unlock some additional new PDF adventures, from a mix of new authors and some familiar friends, but this time as a structured campaign. The Twin Seas of course can be played as a campaign, (I know I did!) but we want our next set to be specifically structured as a single story arc in episodes, with linking material and some special rules to facilitate a BEOWULF campaign. I'm sure if we all give the campaign a good share on social media (and a huge thank you to everyone who is already doing this!) forums, reddit and discords, we can get way into loads of bonus material! 

Book Club

Today's book is The Elder Gods: The Otherworld of Early England by Stephen Pollington

I'm cheating here by highlighting another Pollington book, but if you are looking to invest in quality reference material for BEOWULF Pollington's work is probably the best place to start.

I really appreciate the way Pollington deals with the subject matter from an evidence-based approach, and acknowledges just how little evidence there is for so-called pagan worship in the early medieval period. Despite this, or perhaps because of it, he dives deeply into what we do know, with a thorough analysis of the available evidence. 

One danger when researching this era is accidentally ending up with a new age work, which isn't about rigourous historical study, but presents a much more modern, unreferenced idea of belief in the past. This is not one of those works, and is very useful for BEOWULF games, if you decide to go the historical research route. (The game works without any of that, and it's been created to avoid the need to do loads of dry reading - it is first and foremost an adventure game!)

Another digital press effort, and I do feel a little sad that these books deserve better than the misprinted cover I received - but if using print on demand keeps these books in print, then so be it. And these aren't picture books, so we can and should forgive a great deal. Highly recommended.

The Elder Gods: The Otherworld of Early England by Stephen Pollington, published by Anglo Saxon Books, ISBN 9781898281641

Discord

Don't forget to swing by the discord for a chat! We have a nice friendly community and it’s not too fast moving, so it’s easy to join in. If you’d like to join up, point your browser at www.discord.me/handiworkgamers Give Jacob or me a shout out when you land that you're a Twin Seas backer, and he'll give you the keys to the super secret awesome backer channel.

That's it for now! Thank you so much for all your support! See you on Discord!

Jon, Jacob and the Handiwork Hearthguard.

Poems are in!
about 2 years ago – Thu, Apr 07, 2022 at 08:15:13 AM

Hello, and welcome, new backers! Thanks for joining us!

Well - there goes another stretch goal! I've spoken to Dave our poet, and he's going to start composing some poems for the book! And since we broke through that goal we've made excellent progress to the next! Thank you!

Next up we're going to add a chunk of content to the Digital Pack. Everyone backing at a reward level is already entitled to one Digital Pack, and if we can reach £12,000 everyone will get two packs.

You can check out what a Digital Pack looks like over at DrivethruRPG if you haven't seen them before.

Campaign Coins BEOWULF Streamed Games

Our friends at Campaign Coins ran two of our adventures on Twitch, and you can catch up with them on Youtube. Mark is a great GM and his players loved it.

Here's Alex as Blaedswith in Horror at Herrogate:

And here's Jackson as Bald Eadig:

They're great fun to watch, and will certainly give you a good idea of what to expect!

Campaign Coins non-coincidentally made our amazing BEOWULF inspiration tokens and BEOWULF compass. These are really weighty pieces of kit and well worth your time.

If you'd like some, you can add these on when you click "manage pledge".

Book Club

Today's book is: The Galloway Hoard by Martin Goldberg and Mary Davis.

Now, this is billed as "Viking-age Treasure" and that's not wrong. But a bunch of the artifacts in the Hoard are of Anglo-Saxon make rather than Scandinavian/Viking. And even better, a load of them are from far-flung places, demonstrating trade links and travel in this era. The hoard was buried in Galloway, sometime in the second half of the 9th Century - so late in the period that BEOWULF covers, but relevant nonetheless. This is an extremely handsome book, with very high production values as you would expect from a National Museums of Scotland publication.

I was lucky enough to see the hoard when it was on display in Edinburgh, and it's a really fascinating collection of objects, many of which would make excellent treasures for an adventure. 

I was particularly taken by these brooches - the design is quite unusual.

If you cant grab the book, you can explore the hoard in detail at the NMS website: https://www.nms.ac.uk/explore-our-collections/stories/scottish-history-and-archaeology/galloway-hoard/

The Galloway Hoard by Martin Goldberg and Mary Davis, published by National Museums Scotland ISBN 9781910682401

Discord

Don't forget to swing by the discord for a chat! We have a nice friendly community and it’s not too fast moving, so it’s easy to join in. If you’d like to join up, point your browser at www.discord.me/handiworkgamers Give Jacob or me a shout out when you land that you're a Twin Seas backer, and he'll give you the keys to the super secret awesome backer channel.

Thanks as ever for your support. Let's get that Digital Pack expansion and yay for free stuff!

Jon, Jacob and the Handiwork Team

Stretch goal down - Spot UV!
about 2 years ago – Wed, Apr 06, 2022 at 07:56:41 AM

Hello! Welcome new backers!

It's going alright eh? :)

So this morning UK time we broke through our first stretch goal - all print books will get a spot UV design on the front (and we'll probably pick out some other bits and bobs to make shiny too). If you've never seen spot UV on a book take a look at this video. 

It's quite hard to replicate in 2d, but here's an artist's impression of what the book might look like.

And here's a look at the design we're planning to add:

Coming Up...

Coming up next, and we're closing in on this one fast, we'd like to commission Dave Oliver of www.rattleboxtheatre.com to write us three poems for the book. You might have seen his work in the free intro adventure to BEOWULF The Hermit's Sanctuary. It's very good stuff, and I think it'll really add to the overall magic of the book.

Would you like to help?

Over at the backer discord I've mentioned just how helpful your shares of the campaign, or discussion of the adventures, or BEOWULF Age of Heroes, truly are. It really, really helps us carry the word to people who are unaware of BEOWULF and this campaign. Thank you in advance for any shares you can give us, or conversations you can start in your own RPG circles. We'll keep updating and promoting across the internet, but nothing beats word of mouth. 

Book Club

Today's book is:

The Meadhall by Stephen Pollington

This is a book which I wish I'd picked up much earlier in the process of creating BEOWULF Age of Heroes. It really sums up so much of what we gleaned from a wide variety of sources about the importance of the Meadhall in historical Anglo-Saxon culture, and focuses it in one place. Pollington's work in general is very good, and well worth your time. 

The text is well referenced and pleasingly digestible despite it's level of rigour.

Like many academic style books this is a Lightning Source print-on-demand title, so is of a relatively basic production quality. But that's splitting hairs - the text is excellent, and all the diagrams and illustrations are very crisp.

The Meadhall by Stephen Pollington is published by Anglo Saxon Books ISBN 9781898281542

Discord

Don't forget to swing by the discord for a chat! We have a nice friendly community and it’s not too fast moving, so it’s easy to join in. If you’d like to join up, point your browser at www.discord.me/handiworkgamers Give Jacob or me a shout out when you land that you're a Twin Seas backer, and he'll give you the keys to the super secret awesome backer channel.

Thanks as ever for your support. Let's see how far we can take this one!

Jon, Jacob and the Handiwork Team 

Funded! You did it!
about 2 years ago – Tue, Apr 05, 2022 at 02:12:35 PM

Well now.

The length of this update might suggest it was written ahead of time. The stuff after this opening bit was. Thought it might come in handy at some point. But this first bit is fresh from the keyboard.

It never ceases to amaze me when a project funds. I know that for many folks Kickstarter has become the norm, or even a bit hum-drum. But for me, the magic is all still here. We're going to print a book! it's going to be so lovely!

THANK YOU, and thank you for being here early. Later backers can read this, and know they also have our heartfelt thanks. But YOU get early thanks, you glorious early adopters. We really appreciate your support on day one.

I guess this means we need to talk about stretch goals? We have some, they're all planned out, and limited in number to make sure we can deliver this book to you in a timely fashion!  I'll get the first few up in a few moments.

Add Ons

I wanted to dive right into a key point of this campaign. We have a ton of add ons available. A lot of them are thinks we have already made, which are useful for BEOWULF in general, including the core setting book.

But in amongst those things are some new stuff, and I dont want you to miss it.

If you want physical add ons you have to pledge at a physical pledge level in order to be shown them by Kickstarter. Once you have a physical pledge made, you can hit the "manage my pledge" button (or equivalent - these things do get updated sporadically!) and then add on some extras if you'd like to.

Later, in the pledge manager things will be a bit more flexible, and PDF-only backers will be able to get physical stuff. But those late pledges won't unlock KS stretch goals. And we love unlocking a ton of free stuff. So if you want to charge up your pledge with credit for later you can do that too. Entirely your call.

(and hey - I want to be clear - we don't expect you to grab everything, or indeed anything!  But I want to be super sure you don't miss anything you might actually want and enjoy.)

So fresh for this campaign, alongside the main Twin Seas book are:

Beowulf Story Cards in print. We have these all proofed, and Jacob has a copy and I have a copy. (Although mine has… issues... as ver 1.0)   We thought this was an ideal opportunity to get those in bulk and allow everyone who wants a printed deck to get one!  You can read how they work here.

There’s also the new and exclusive Twin Seas Inspiration Mat - the prior design from our first campaign is all but sold out, so a new one seemed in order!   

The Twin Seas Dice Tray is much the same situation - the previous campaign tray is sold out. If you have one take care of it! It's more precious than a monkey NFT (is it? Maybe? I dont know)  

And the Twin Seas Art Book is another new thing for this campaign.

There's a bunch of stuff that has been released between our last campaign and this one - we like to keep BEOWULF well supported. I'd draw your attention in particular to the BEOWULF Annual and Art Book. They're cool.

Book Club

If you backed our last campaign you'll hopefully remember I like to use updates to make some reccomendations for inspirational reading. And this campaign will continue the tradition. 

Our first book club entry for this campaign is:

The Word Hord, Daily Life in Old English by Hana Videen

This is one of those books that's a pleasure to just dip in and out of. And there's loads of inspiration for the Old English mindset and world, which is always a help when it comes to writing your own BEOWULF adventures, or just running NPCs.

Presented as a very portable but portly little hardcover, The Word Hord is just packed with fascinating info into historical Anglo-Saxon life. Each section examines an aspect of life and language and gives you lots of historical and cultural info, alongside a bunch of Old English words. I really enjoyed this one.

The Word Hord, Daily Life in Old English by Hana Videen, is published by Profile Books, ISBN 9781788166102

Discord

Don't forget to swing by the discord for a chat! We have a nice friendly community and it’s not too fast moving, so it’s easy to join in. If you’d like to join up, point your browser at www.discord.me/handiworkgamers Give Jacob or me a shout out when you land that you're a Twin Seas backer, and he'll give you the keys to the super secret awesome backer channel. 

THANKS

Right that's it for now. Thank you once again for joining us on this voyage into ADVENTURE (oh my days how brilliant was that voice over on the video? Owen Staton. Time Between Times Storytelling - look him up.)

Jon, Jacob and the Handiwork Meadhall Hearthguard Famsquad