BEOWULF. a|state. Maskwitches. Cold City:Hot War. FiveEvil
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We’ve collected all the poems commissioned for our various BEOWULF titles from poet, performer and puppeteer Dave Oliver into a single volume.
We’ll be making it available in PDF and print preorder soon. It’ll be a lovely book of poems, novel-sized, and illustrated in full colour with art from the game books.
The second PDF scenario for FiveEvil is out now!
It’s the early 90s, and while London is booming, you’re struggling. But good news. You’ve got a job which will save your family-run asbestos removal company. It’s a rapid turnaround government contract under the streets of London. What could possibly wrong? Oh no. Everything.
Glasshouse is a 27 page, bookmarked PDF with 5 pre-generated characters.
It’s the early 90s, and while London is booming, you’re struggling. But good news. You’ve got a job which will save your family-run asbestos removal company. It’s a rapid turnaround government contract under the streets of London. What could possibly wrong? Oh no. Everything. A PDF scenario for FiveEvil by Malcolm Craig. Coming soon.
We’ve just made 2 new books available to pre-order! The stock is with us right now, and dispatch will start next week:
World War Ruins and More Skies!
More Skies features the exemplary digital art of Paul Bourne, and gives you 32 skies of various kinds. Along with the more painterly Skies book this gives you huge variety of options to put behind any scene.
World War Ruins was previously exclusive to the Bad Squiddo Resistance Kickstarter, but time has come to make it available on our store too! 32 paintings of ruined cities from something that looks like the 20th Century. This one is great for World War One, Two, even Three, along with all your sci-fi grimdark settings.
We’re excited to reveal the first print supplement for FiveEvil: Netherworlds.
Down into the basement to confront the nightmare man…
Creeping into the sewers to face the laughing killer…
Sneaking into the carnival to find the missing girl …
It’s the moment of supreme dread: when you muster your courage and step into the horror’s ultimate domain: the netherworld. A place of enormous danger and continual threat, where you will be pushed to the limit and never able to lower your guard.
Can you survive? Can you conquer what waits here for you?
This book shows you how to bring netherworlds into your FiveEvil games. Learn how to design netherworlds that can give your players nightmares, and find out how to run them for maximum terror.
Don’t let the realms of horror you imagine turn into tedious dungeon adventures at the table. Use these techniques to harness the full terrifying power of netherworlds, and lead your players places they will never forget.
Contents:
• Why netherworlds are special. A discussion of how to make exploration
scenarios work well for the horror genre.
• Complete guide to netherworld design. A fully detailed step-by-step guide to
designing a netherworld, from a scary basement to an entire country overrun by
horror. Develop its purpose and identify denizens, special qualities, and random
encounters.
• Exploration round by round. A procedure to follow that handles everything you
need to manage when your characters venture into a netherworld.
• Ready-to-use netherworlds. Discover a twisting sewer, a ruined space
colony, a city under the spell of nightmare, and more horrific environments. Each
netherworld is fully described using the rules in this book, and comes with
extensive advice on how to build your own scenario around it and which horror
suits the netherworld as the ultimate threat.
• Campaign scenario “A Lament”. A short campaign in duet mode, or easily
adapted for a group. Your Dad married someone you’ve never met, and moved to
a town you’ve never heard of, and then you found out he’s really sick. That’ why
you’re here, in this weird town in the mountains, trying to work out what’s what.
First, you’ll make sure he’s okay; and then the real work starts. This place has
secrets, and you aren’t going to leave without finding out what they are.
FiveEvil: Netherworlds is written by Morgan Davie, illustrated by Scot Purdy and Jon Hodgson. We’ll have more information about the release date soon.
We love a straight-forward tool at Handiwork Games (make of that what you will) and we’re delighted to be able to share with you the FiveEvil Character keeper.
Simply head to the link, make a copy, and edit away to your wicked heart’s content.
You can also grab pre-made characters for the first scenario in the book, Wakefield House, in the same format here.
Backer copies of FiveEvil are arriving with our UK backers, and heading out to everyone else right now.
You can pre-order your print copy of FiveEvil here, or get the PDF – currently in the Halloween Sale at DrivethruRPG here.
With the release of Cold City in PDF and physical preorder, let’s take a look at the core mechanic in Cold City and Hot War, and talk a bit about what’s changed from the first edition.
When it comes to resolving conflicts in Cold City and Hot War, both the players and the GM have access to groups of ten-sided dice to roll, and they gamble on how many to use in a given conflict.
Continue reading “Mechanics in Cold City and Hot War”
Theseus Protocol for FiveEvil is out now in PDF.
This first horror scenario takes us into space with Gar Hanrahan. Can you survive waking up on a ship full of randos? Probably not, let’s be honest.
The first PDF scenario for FiveEvil, Theseus Protocol by the mighty Gar Hanrahan (Moria, The Dracula Dossier, Eyes of the Stone Theif) starts off as an ‘alien monsters have infested your spaceship’ bug hunt, which is second only to the dungeon as familiar territory for a roleplaying game.
However, instead of a unified team or crew, the characters are a mismatched bunch of recently defrosted colonists; their skills and specialities are not especially suited to dealing with alien horrors.
Later, the tone of horror shifts, moving from mere survival in the face of alien horrors to something colder and more cosmic.
Ultimately, it’s about being cut off and adrift in a vast and uncaring universe. Fun!
FiveEvil is a standalone horror roleplaying game from Handiwork Games, the fiendish minds behind BEOWULF Age of Heroes, a|state second edition and Maskwitches of Forgotten Doggerland.
FiveEvil has been carefully crafted to evoke the horror genre by cleverly twisting up the fifth edition ruleset. FiveEvil subverts fifth edition play to defy expectations and concentrate the horror.
By taking the rules you know and fiendishly mutating them, FiveEvil creates a truly intense and unsettling horror gaming experience. This book is also packed with advice and ideas on how to create the very best horror gaming sessions.
The primary setting focus is modern day horror, inspired by the work of Stephen King, and moody, character-driven horror films like The Ritual, The Descent and Jacob’s Ladder, alongside mini-series like Midnight Mass by Mike Flanagan, and the scariest of Twin Peaks episodes.
Rather than seeking out evil in order to vanquish it, or investigating clues to uncover malign influence, your characters in FiveEvil are regular people trapped in a terrifying situation. You will attempt to survive and escape.
FiveEvil was created and written by Morgan Davie, features art by Scott Purdy and Jon Hodgson, and boasts graphic design and layout by Paul Bourne.
This standalone core book contains all the rules you need to create characters and play the game, as well as five sample adventures to show you how best to run FiveEvil, with tons of customisability and replay value.
As a horror game, FiveEvil contains mature themes and is suggested for adult readers.