A couple of recommended titles for Cold War knowledge (with mini reviews) and a short essay addressing the question "Why make changes?"

This is another example of excellent work by the Beowulf Age of Heroes team.

There are 2 cool maps and write-up on the Temples for the "Old Ways", alongside a bit more on mead-halls. Three sample "Old Ways" NPCs are varied and ready to slot into your adventures. Finally 6 solid pages on old-ways, including bibliography for further optional reading, significantly expands the information in the CRB. Of course VTT support is included. All in all a great pack!

This is a real neat start to a series of reports on new editions of Cold City and Hot War.

The layout is spectacular as we've come to expect from Handiwork. The first page is a brief essay covering what the RPGs were and what to expect in this series of reports. A full page of art follows, well-executed and horrifying. The remainder is an essay on the economic destruction of Europe following WW2 and the Marshall Plan in the following years, bringing the timeline to 1948. A short bibliography for further reading is included.

I have no knowledge of the original releases of Cold City and Hot War, but the approach here looks very original and promising. Hot War is far from my interest but Cold City might be the ticket for me. I'll be getting these reports as they are published.

Beowulf: Age of Heroes gets my highest recommendation. This take on duet play combined with the subject matter is what brought me to 5E finally. The art and atmosphere is very evocative: almost every page-spread has an icon, landscape, or illustration, and bits of Anglo-Saxon style alliterative verse are sprinkled throughout. The take on the period is a truly historically-informed one: no horned helms or maids wearing the merest scraps of mail and nothing else here. The authors are fans of the period and 5E and boy does it show. The undefeated condition is really thematic and innovative. Reducing character options to a single bespoke class, the hero (obviously) seems restrictive but is again very thematic and includes many different "flavors" of hero to try. Followers help to create more interesting situations for your party of one and can do a lot to shore up some of your PC's weaknesses. The sections on equipment, war gear, treasures, and ships all help to flesh out your world for the setting. The rule about always having access to a spear in combat is a stroke of genius. The Bestiary has 13 different appropriate kinds of enemies for the world. There's an adventure included too featuring ogres. Now that the line has matured with many additional adventures, digital packs, and other content what you have here is the core of an entire system of RPG that has much to offer players wanting to explore Northern Europe an England either in a historic setting or especially the heroic age that perhaps never was. Handiwork Games is just an impressive outfit: a small, dedicated, and passionate team with customer service second to none. RECOMMEND

An amazing free product. This is the Beowulf: Age of Heroes "starter set." It includes a great duet-play adventure with a branching story and many ways of "solving" the adventure. Also printable maps (in a variety of formats), VTT tokens and maps, several pregens, and separate documents with inspiration on halls, characters, and previews of other material in the line.

Great art and a flavor, and little fluff despite the size. A fantastic way to explore what Beowulf: Age of Heroes has to offer. This title brought me to 5E. RECOMMEND

This is a neat preview of what Handiwork has planned for the upcoming King Beowulf supplement. No new rules here just an overview of what kinds of additions to look forward too. I think it's great that the Kingdom is being treated like a charater in and of itself complete with attribute scores, XP, a level, background, character sheet, etc.

Looking forward to the supplement!

This digital pack is the best so far, IMO. Yes there are maps (good ones), music, and tokens (those nifty icons by Paul Bourne). There's also a neat "fragment" on Boundary Ghosts (7pp.: notes on the new kind of monster, a variety of motivations, a sample boundary ghost, and the 'fragment' itself: "a new kind of material for BEOWULF, which present a monster’s backstory, and a collection of information which you can use to make your own adventure"; this is more than a seed/plot hook and less than an adventure).

The real neat thing here though is the Story Cards. This set of 44 cards (with 3pp instructions and hints) allows for instant backgrounds, plot hooks/adventure seeds, and added depth using this simple deck. I think this is a real asset to players and GMs alike.

I'm very happy to see the written material for the Beowulf Digital Packs in one file (easier to keep track of than 8+). The new content is extremely useful in providing examples to stimulate one's imagination. The tables are great and can be used to create plot hooks by themselves. The new followers are interesting (a pig? a talking head?) and ideas I'd never have come up with. Your mileage may vary with the new monsters but they differ in type, size, difficulty, environment (one for a voyage/ocean encounter), powers/attacks, etc. and some have tips for running them at different levels or as Undefeatable (or not).

All in all a great collection of stuff, I'm thinking about a print copy.

This pack is just great. The followers are really cool and give some wild ideas for creating your own (an actual talking head!!!!! Jon didn't make him look like David Byrne though). The maps are cool, I especially like the barrow map. The skeleton king is a cool enemy with inspiring art (I'd love to port him over to The One Ring).

Of course the music and tokens are here, too.

Another solid pack of material. The tokens are a great set of PC/NPC portraits, the 3 map variants allow for some flexibility (I particularly like the ship one), the music is solid and the larger follower card is a nice thing to have. Two pdfs are included (Voyage Experiences and Weapons of Note). 'Voyage Experiences' is a set of 3 d12 tables for possible events on a journey. Each result is a short paragraph description of an event. It's a solid set of plot hooks for new adventures or easy to use doc to add a bit of detail to a part of the session that is sometimes 'screen-wiped' or hand-waved. Similarly 'Weapons of Note' is a collection of four ready made legendary weapons (each on a full page, half illustrations, half description), with backgrounds and stat-blocks, which can serve as the basis of an adventure, or inspiration for new weapons. The introductory comments suggest it was cut from the core rulebook to keep the rules streamlined, I'm happy it was released here!

The customary tokens, maps (VTT, poster, and print at home formats), and music are all present here. The pdf on landing sites and harbors is short but full of tables of activities and conditions that the crew and hero are doing or experiencing. Again the material is inspirational and great for GMs and players alike. The "True Stories and Songs" table is rather thorough and quite frankly could easily function as a plot hook generator as well. The Cald-Geist has a unique look and seems to be able to be played in a rather creepy and threatening sort of way OR could be played for laughs, too. As always much of the material is system agnostic and can be ported to any system with ease.

More tokens, maps, and music! The beautiful maps are split up for printing at home (for the first time in this series of packs). The two additions are "useful": "Useful treasures" includes 15 unaligned magical treasures. They give some solid inspiration for new ideas (and are often fun and/or amusing to boot). The Sword Name Generator has 7 tables to roll on and like the treasure document, provides some solid inspiration for new (or old) weapons (and a lot of useful adjectives for describing weapons). This could easily be used for any kind of weapon (or even treasures or gifts)

This is a solid pack. The map is great! The music, tokens, and video tutorial are helpful. The article on reskinning follower gifts/abilities gives a number of examples for reskinning a single gift for many different kinds of followers, making a mechanic flavourful for any kind of follower (and so telling a more engaging story). The method can be applied to any gift, it's an inspiring read for GMs (or players) that need a little push of creativity. The new foe, the Merefixa is a shark. It includes options for making it undefeatable, increasing it's Challenge rating, Upgrading it to a "Monster", and several options for Burdens and Gifts. A great sea monster for voyage battles!

There's some solid content here: music tracks, VTT stuff (tokens and maps), a video tutorial, printable maps.

The document on fetch quests has some great suggestions (and cautions for how to make effective quests and sessions that aren't too linear, or repetitive, and have consequences). There aren't any tables but there are a lot of suggestions/lists for options at different stages that you could easily roll on. A few examples are included. The background art is great, I especially like the spread on 5-6, reminds me of Ulmo and Tuor.

I was excited to get an art book with Hodgson's work (I'm a big fan of TOR 1e), but even better than the art is, as another reviewer noted, the commentaries on the pieces and process itself. This was a great surprise and the content (22 pieces with commentary) is top notch. Bourne, Purdy, and Pospisil are featured as well. Definitely a recommend for fans of the style or the line of products!