Beowulf was one of the two D&D 5e settings announced at the launch of Jon Hodgson’s Handiwork Games.
Since then, Handiwork has been busy with two Kickstarted and very popular sets of map titles, the Creature Collection for Scarred Lands.
BEOWULF: The Hermit’s Sanctuary is on DriveThruRPG now, for free.
What makes Beowulf a little different from other D&D 5e settings and rules adaptations is that it’s designed for duet play. In other words; one GM and one player. Handiwork has tweaked the mechanics to suit.
While the setting is based on one of the oldest known stories from Europe, the game doesn’t require advanced knowledge to play.
Hodgson told press;
We’ve been working on BEOWULF for over a year now, and now after the months of hard work and testing it has really come together, delivering the play experience we want to capture. And so now we have decided to share! We’re really keen to bring BEOWULF to a wider audience to see how you get on with it. And now seems like a perfect time to be playing in a small group.
In BEOWULF you play a Hero, which is a new class we’ve created especially for 5e, with subclasses for each ability score. You’re accompanied by a band of followers, who make up for the absence of other player characters. You travel mythic,’ dark age’ Europe, hunting down monsters, uncovering their weaknesses, and slaying them!
We’ve worked hard on creating a set of modified 5e rules that give you the ability to really enjoy a one player adventure and that brings tons of setting-flavour. The best way to showcase what we’ve built was to let you play, and so we’ve released the Hermit’s Sanctuary.”
The full-colour download includes;
- a complete, 52-page adventure for one GM and one Player
- optional poster-sized PDF battle maps for all locations
- optional VTT-friendly battle maps for Virtual Tabletops
- 4 pre-generated characters
- printable accessories: inspiration tokens and inspiration pool
- blank character sheet
- rules reminder sheet
- handy adventure flowcharts
We’re expecting a Kickstarter for the full Beowulf game soon. Soon-ish, Kickstarter activity is down as household budgets move from games to rations to last the peak of the Covid-19 outbreak, and Geek Native is aware of several publishers delaying launch. Handiwork has given no date for Beowulf to be bound to and so we predict the campaign will launch within the quarter.
You can download BEOWULF: The Hermit’s Sanctuary here.
Let us know what you think in the comment section below.
