My name is Andrew Shields. I am a game designer in the American Midwest. I have built many games over the years, but Axes and Anvils is by far my biggest commercial release. I also write speculative fiction, including six novels set in the Blades in the Dark setting, supported by a Patreon.

shields-andrew@outlook.com

Here is some background to quickly understand Axes and Anvils.

The Role of the Clan. Axes and Anvils is easy to engage for campaign play, open table, or both. In the earliest days of the table top role playing hobby, a mega-dungeon was the “tent pole” of a campaign. If the DM kept a mega-dungeon ready to go, then anyone who wanted to play a character exploring it could quickly whip up a character and jump in. Axes and Anvils turns that idea inside-out. Instead of assuming an enduring danger site that continually lures in new explorers, Axes and Anvils has a dwarven clan that all the characters have agreed to serve. Therefore, anyone who wants to try the game out can quickly make a character and join in to try it out without having to study rules and make an ongoing time commitment first. Experience is in the form of Ledger, where characters report back to the clan and are granted resources and training as a reward for their service.

Shared World Building. Players love to contribute ideas to the game world, but they also love to explore the setting to see what secrets it hides. Axes and Anvils balances these ideas by encouraging players to collaborate to come up with elements of the clan history and territory, while leaving the rest of the world for the GM to fill in. Right away, the players build the clan together, developing its history and circumstances. The game has ways for players to contribute to developing the legendry, tributary settlements, neighbors, and leaders over time. As the players focus on what they think is cool, they are also telling the GM what they want to see in the game! The GM can riff off these shared development processes to make adventures, sites, characters, monsters, and treasure keyed to what the players enjoy.

Flexible Worldbuilding.  Sometimes players are not in the spirit of the current campaign when they engage in world building or share a strange mission together (playing without a GM). At the end of each of these efforts, the players involved can decide if the story they made this time out was history (it happened), legend (based on real events), or myth (a story in the clan that is understood as fiction). In this way, the community of players using a clan can have flexibility to do what they want to without obligating the whole community to treat their wilder inventions as canon. Still, any intriguing details might get recycled into the canon by an enterprising GM later on.

Open Table. As long as there is a central record of the clan, its adventures, and the developed history and background, multiple GMs can run games for the clan. The central record can be the Clan Book (both physical and .pdf versions are available) or a web site, or some other method. Players and their characters do not have to be present for every session if the game is focused in clan territory or in locations where characters can join and depart. Multiple GMs can continue elaborating on the setting and its background and circumstances. Players can have a stable of characters, or focus on one. Some players may show up for everything, others may visit, and many may attend as they are able, without disrupting the campaign. Character advancement increases the breadth of capacity more than the depth of power, so veteran and rookie characters can adventure together.

Accessible. The game rules are fairly simple. Characters can be crafted in minutes using either the rulebook or the starter deck. The quickstart is free, and it allows players to jump in with minimal preparation, making characters on the spot and using a couple reference pages to play. The basic rulebook can support endless campaigns and adventure. The Under the Mountain GM book has the basic rulebook in the front with the same page numbers for ease of reference, then contains many tools for world building in collaboration with the players. As long as one player has purchased the inexpensive basic rule book, a game group can play for years.

Easy to run NPCs. The GM uses a single d12. Monsters hit automatically for fixed damage, unless characters “defend” against them, and damage is shrugged off by characters rolling an armor rating. Monster behavior can be informed by a d12 roll on a simple behavior chart, triggering special attacks or retreats. The monsters have a combat rating used as a difficulty to defend against them, and some special abilities the GM can use. Also, opponents are in “warbands” in the book, minimizing the amount of flipping through the book to reference multiple opponents in an encounter.  For allies, NPCs can be assigned to assist characters rather than acting independently, giving the characters advantages through teamwork and letting players roll the dice for these efforts. Alternatively, NPCs can be treated like opponents, in that they have fixed combat ratings and damage and abilities, and behavior triggered by a d12 roll. Not only does this structure make running NPCs easy for a GM, it makes the process of running “strange missions” without a GM (described in the Under the Mountain book) much simpler.

Easy to run characters. Each character has a name, clan, guiding saying, and name weapon that are chosen without rules crunch. The mechanics of the character are a combat role, a primary skill, and a secondary skill. The combat role provides stats for battle, and the skills are a general body of knowledge that can be interpreted in play; if the skill would help, you use the skill’s odds on a d12 roll. From that foundation, players can add advances over time, making characters that are simple or complex as they prefer. Dwarven stubbornness is expressed as Resolve, allowing boosts on rolls. Combat roles come with special abilities, many of them increasing the effectiveness of other characters; combat is a team sport. These simple focal points allow for rapid generation of characters with a lot of flavor beyond combat skill.

Customizable setting elements. There are four flavors of magic available (alchemy, worship of the Gods of Ur, energy manipulation, and runecraft). Guns are also part of the default setting. However, a group of players can choose to disallow any of these elements, making for a customizable setting. The simplicity of the design encourages game groups to customize their own rune sets, potions, and special abilities to make the game their own.

Game development history. I was inspired by Mike Nystul’s vision for a game about dwarves that focused on teamwork and “we over me” and an open table, so when the project faltered I got on board and acquired the rights to finish and release it. The Stoneshadow default location was built out of input from high-level backers who were keen to shape the world of Axes and Anvils.

In conclusion. Axes and Anvils is designed with a lot of flexibility and room for players to put their stamp on it. The soul of the game aims to inspire enthusiasm rather than define limits. Like a tool, the rule system relies on the skill of those wielding it to make judgement calls and lean into the strengths of its design. Role playing games are inescapably social, and Axes and Anvils aims to make the most of teamwork for both players and characters. Come join us, and add another clan to the nation!