Old Men Running The World

Tag: Handiwork Games

  • THREEDOM: Beowulf: Age Of Heroes

    Jim, Kieron and The Mysterious Third (Chris) have a regular group. We’re forever GMs, and play short campaigns where two are forever GMs no more. This is Threedom, and these our our stories. This time we report on Beowulf: Age Of Heroes.

    Kieron: I’m smiling at your notes for this chat, Jim. “Oh no, we played 5E! Sort of.” The ‘sort of’ is carrying a lot of weight. Handiwork games seem to be folks really who are interested in bending 5E significantly, and there’s a lot of that here. As the basic intro Beowulf is set in the world of the Anglo-Saxon poems about a Danish hero who kicks the ass of a monster, and then its mum and then has a bad time with a Dragon (though kicks its ass on the way out). The game’s got a lot in, but its core thing is as a duet game – one GM, one player. That’s about all I knew going in – Warped 5E, literary-historical-setting, duet game. Is that a fair description?

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  • Hot Under The Collar For The Cold War: Dr Malcolm Craig on his classic RPGs redone for 2025

    Jim’s note: this was actually in the last TEETH RPG newsletter, but I figured I would cross-post because the Kickstarter has now gone live and it looks fantastic. Malcolm Craig is an erudite creator and has plenty to say. If you missed this before, go read!

    Malcolm Craig is a senior lecturer of American history at Liverpool John Moores, but his interest in both the Cold War and in RPGs runs much further back. Now, nearly twenty years on from his original indie releases of Cold War RPGs, he’s releasing a new edition. Having been intrigued by this prospect when we talked the Jon Handiwork a few newsletters ago, we were glad to find that Malcolm was also up for a little chat.

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