An RPG designed for a GM with just one player: Beowulf – Age of Heroes comes to 5e

Handiwork Games have today released their duet play 5e setting. In other words, it’s a 5e-based RPG especially designed for those times when only two people are playing; one of whom is the GM and the other the player.

The setting is one of the oldest recorded stories in Europe; it’s the Old English epic poem Beowulf. Handiwork Games have had considerable success at bringing Jon Hodgson’s art talent to the masses with cardboard battle maps, and so the campaign already likely has a loyal fan-base to speak to. You can check it out for yourself at the project page.

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In case you don’t know the story of Beowulf; here’s the summary. A mighty hero fells a monster. Then the monster’s actual mother turns up and is as angry and upset as you would imagine. Then there’s a dragon.

The game introduces the Hero class, the Defeated condition and downtime rules.

There’s a free to download adventure already available for the game. You can grab The Hermit’s Sanctury from DriveThruRPG right now. It’s been available since April, and after 11 reviews it has a strong 4.5/5 star rating.

A pledge of £15 will get you Beowulf Age of Heroes as a PDF, the digital content pack, access to the Discord and Beowulf channel.

The digital pack includes content generators, battle maps, VTT tokens and pre-generated characters. It’ll likely be boosted by content that doesn’t quite make the book.

A pledge of £36 will get you the physical rulebook as well as the PDF. Or, if you like your physical Kickstarter projects to be a bit special, £100 will get you the deluxe edition of the rulebook.

Beowulf minis

There is already a Beowulf catalogue (Dropbox link) of add-ons and accessories. These are ready to go, Handiwork just needs to know how many they’re going to order.

Including in these accessories are Beowulf minis from Richard Dickens of Cold War Miniatures. You don’t need them to play the duet game, but they sure look nice and work exceptionally well with Handiwork’s battle maps.

The sculpting is done, the masters are ready for moulding, and the minis will be 28mm scale and cast in white metal.

Alternatively, you can buy the STL files for £4 each.

There are a bunch of other accessories that are worth checking out if you’re tempted by the project.