Handiwork Games debuts with two 5e titles

Handiwork Games is a new tabletop publisher from the former creative director of Cubicle 7. Based in Scotland, Jon Hodgson helped shape the Tolkien art on The One Ring RPG and very many of Cubicle 7’s other projects. He departed the company early 2018, ran a successful Kickstarter for The Forest Dragon Bang & Twang, recruited hundreds into his Patreon and has now, finally, announced Handiwork Games.

Handiwork Games have announced Hellenistika a 5e ancient Greek setting and BEOWULF also for 5e. We know most about Hellenistika so let’s dig into that first.

Hellenistika

Kenneth Hite, a prolific game designer with creds on Star Trek Roleplaying Game, GURPs Infinite Worlds, Trail of Cthulhu and Night’s Black Agents will be working with Hodgson on Hellenistika.

The strapline for this RPG setting is;

Live Fast – Love Well – Leave A Good-Looking Mosiac

The 5e game will offer up new classes, playable species and setting specific rules for this fantasy version of ancient Greece.

The website contains this press release snippet about the game.

• Beautiful youths pilot bronze kolossoi suits against sky-ship armadas!
• Parthian monster trainers compete for gold and glory in Babylon!
• Crazed rival inventors build super-weapons in Byzantion and Syracuse!
• The uncanny super-mind within the Library of Alexandria sends its shadow agents in search of lost secrets!
• A full campaign setting for adventures compatible with the Fifth Edition of the world’s most popular fantasy roleplaying game, featuring sleek rules for the fortunes of love and war, and for the favor of the gods.
• Customized setting-enhanced builds for standard Fifth Edition species and classes, plus new species and new classes for Hellenistic heroes
• Seven wondrous dungeons, 24 new monsters, 36 thrilling cities


The text from the official announcement about Hellenistika says;

From the Pillars of Herakles in the West to the Silken Cities of the East, from the isle of Hyperborea in the North to the Mountains of the Moon in the South, the world spreads before you, alive with gods and marvels.

The Great Conqueror lies dead and mummified in Alexandria, leaving the world to scheming kings and greedy cities … and to you, if you can seize it. Ancient magics lurk in Babylonian ziggurats and Egyptian pyramids. Carve your names into history with your weapons and your wits, and beat your fellow wonder-makers and mercenaries in the games of treasure, wine, and love.

Adventure across the “good parts version” of the Hellenistic Age, a time of swords and scrolls, heroes and cults, war elephants and deadly Amazons, griffins and dragons, piles of gold and robot guardians, super-ships and death-machines – and that’s before we put our fantastic spin on history!

The game is due out in 2019.

BEOWULF

This 5e setting has been designed with duet play in mind. That’s one GM and one player which is a fairly rare set-up in traditional tabletop RPGs.

The game is also due out 2019 but we’ve been told less about it. We know there will be new and adapted rules suitable for the lone heroics of the Beowulf theme. There will be mountain exploration, mystery-solving and some monster-slaying too.