BEEFY SHOTGUN WIZARDS

In Beefy Shotgun Wizards you’re out of spells, but you aren’t out of shells. Take control of a magic user who never skips leg day. Slaughter dog soldiers, entropy knights, and pigmen. Use hirelings as human shields and loot anything that isn’t bolted down. Heavy on action and light on rules, blast your way through dungeons using a d6 dice pool and a Jenga tower.

Check out the free QUICKSHOT! You know, a try before you buy kinda thing.

Gameplay

Need a break from d20-based systems? Tired of tracking endless hit points and monitoring how many pounds you're carrying in your rucksack? Do you believe initiative is for cowards? Then we have the game for you!

Beefy Shotgun Wizards is a d6 dice-pool system that lets you mow down hordes of monsters like it's going out of style. An innovative damage system lets you track damage that actually means something, whether you're losing a hand or throwing a hireling in front of you to block a hit. Instead of tallying torches or checking a clock, you use a Jenga tower to add a tactile element to dungeon crawling that brings real, physical tension to the game.

Do you like weird tables and weirder monsters? Well hot damn, do we have you covered. From sharpened 10 foot poles to super chainsaws, flying death orbs, and the coveted doom shotgun, roll a fist full of d6s to see what oddities you'll find. Just make sure the Brain-in-a-Jar-in-a-Death Machine is dead first...

You're still here? F@$cking awesome, read on!

What's inside?

I got nothing to hide; here’s the table of contents with brief descriptions. There’s also badass art by Daniel Harila Carlsen all over the goddamn place.

Core Game Mechanics
Learn the simple core mechanics of BSW, including the d6 dice pools, Tower Pull system (spoiler alert, it’s a Jenga tower), and “d6-ing it” (meeting or beating an arbitrary number). That’s pretty much it; you can basically run the game with this description and context clues.

Phases of the Game
“You Meet in a Gym”: Who is your wizard, what school of magic do they study, what machine are they working out on? Answer the important questions in this quick, fun way to kick off a session.

Light It Up: You’re in the middle of the dungeon with no spells. How the f@#k did you get here? Earn iron (BSW’s meta currency) while you tell tales of your exploits.

The Crawl: The bulk of the game. Slaughter your way through tides of enemies and loot anything that isn’t bolted down. It isn’t over until the tower falls or you kill the boss of the dungeon. 

Revelry: Sell your loot, tell tall tales, and bestow a wizardly title (and stat bonus) upon the mage who completed the most badass feat of muscularity.

Violence in Depth
RP is great, but you’re here to kill things. Take a deep dive (err, shallow dive) into what passes for BSW’s combat system. Learn the difference between a hit, damage, and an injury, how to use your dungeon wretches as human shields, and why shotguns are inherently superior.

Seriously though, BSW’s damage system is fast, flexible, and offers you multiple ways to get f#%ked up by all the creepy crawlies you meet. Tired of tracking abstract hit points? Well, we kinda do a little of that, but there’s other stuff, too!

Resting
A true misnomer, you aren’t resting so much as gassing up your muscles, stealing whatever you can find in the room, and replacing the stump of your wrist with that chainsaw you found. But yeah, there are some mechanics. I guess.

Loot
You want gear that’s more than just mechanics? Well, grab a stack of orcish erotica and a sack of pointy metal d4s and come with me. Learn how to sacrifice items for added effects, discover what keywords you’re looking for to push your character’s potential to the max, and contemplate how you’ll use a chain and sharpened ten-foot pole to fix that busted-up leg of yours.

Dungeon Wretches
This covers basic hirelings, backup apprentices, sneaky familiars, and mounts. From animated chainsaws and demon-horses to awakened graphing calculators and razor scooters, we have you covered. Just make sure you give them a name; otherwise they’ll get sad and wander away.

Advanced Rules
Oh, you don’t want a self-contained dungeon experience that lasts exactly three hours? Fine, here are some more rules. Oh, you want to level up? Fine, and I guess your wretches can do more stuff now.

The World of Beefy Shotgun Wizards
You thought this setting was just vibes? You didn’t think we had it in us to come up with a deep, fully developed and logically consistent universe where ’roided-out wizards use shotguns to fight pigmen with crossbows? Well, umm, let us get back to you on that one. At least this section has cool art.

Enemies
The greatest collection of legally distinct creatures to kill that you could possibly imagine. Pigmen, ogre incels, nine-eyed freaks, trolls who hide behind keyboards, brain-sucking cephalopods, fascist vampires, dog soldiers, brains-in-jars-in-death-machines, this section has it all. Learn about the different enemy types, like minions, brutes, sadists, and more. Witness the not-at-all-balanced epic bosses that will make you question our grasp of basic probability. 

Running Dungeons
Want to know how I design 4 page scenarios that can be run in 3 hours with brand new players? Well too f&$king bad, that’s what this section does.

Dungeon Crawls
Witness the glory of multiple con-tested dungeons including the Demon-Mine of the Nine-Eyed Freak, Starwreck of the Brain-Sucking Cephalopod, Murder the Anti-Mage, and more! Will I even bother testing In the Mountain Keep of Dwayne Rockjohnson? Only time will tell…

Table of Tables
You want more than 1,296 bonkers items, from bottle caps to the doom shotgun? Is my joke item “the rod of mundane missile” not obvious enough (it’s a rocket launcher)? Did I fight my editor about having a Gideon’s Bible versus a Gideons’ Bible? Are you curious about how many different synonyms for “ammunition” I could find? Well then this is your section.

Tables include low-level loot, semi-useful items, legendary gear, premium loot, sci-fi items, cyberpunk gear, grimdark loot, and more! Tables on tables on tables!

Rewards

• $1 Supporter: Give because you support the project (but, I mean, come on, pick a real support level).
• $1 Retailer Pledge: If you're a retailer interested in bulk purchases, select this option and we'll be in touch (Wizard's pinky promise).
• $15 Beefy Shotgun Wizards in the Matrix: What it says on the tin.
• $40 Beefy Shotgun Wizards Standard Edition: Again, I'm trying to find ways to make this interesting, but we'll send you the book and let you download the PDF too. Offered during the Kickstarter at a 12% discount over retail pricing!
• $90 Special Edition featuring art by Nohr: Get this special, limited edition by legendary indie RPG artist and MÖRK BORG co-creator, Johan Nohr. It's badass, grimdark, and won't be around for long. Offered during the Kickstarter at a 10% discount over retail pricing! Includes a sick zine for converting BSW for MÖRK BORG!
• $220 Collector's Edition: Hand bound, risograph printed, limited to twenty. PLEASE NOTE: this reward level will only be fulfilled if we hit the stretch goal. 
• $340 All the Wizards: All three editions of Beefy Shotgun Wizards. The Standard, the Special featuring Johan Nohr cover art, and the Collector hand-bound and riso printed.
• SPECIAL TREAT: If you purchased a QuickShot version of the rules at a convention, let us know with your pledge for a special treat.

And who knows, maybe we'll throw in some tasteful stickers...

Stretch goals

• $10,000: Special Edition cover by Johan Nohr unlocked
• $11,500: Guest Dungeon by Brian Shutter and Łukasz Kowalczuk unlocked
• $13,000: Guest Dungeon # 2 unlocked
• $14,500: Guest Dungeon # 3 unlocked
• $16,000: Guest Dungeon # 4 unlocked
• $18,000: Collector Edition unlocked

Shipping costs

These are preliminary estimates and provided as examples; your specific shipping costs will be calculated based on your actual order. Fulfillment won't happen until Q3 2027, and quite a bit can occur between now and then to impact shipping costs. Keep in mind these can go up or down (the latter, we hope down). Shipping will be charged later via some pledge manager. Local taxes, import fees, VAT, etc. etc. are your responsibility. 

Single book: US $7-10, ROW $15-20 
Two or more items: US $10-15, ROW $20-40 

Who we are

Peter Drummond (writing and layout) wrote a very stupid set of homebrew rules inspired by dumb wizard jokes and an attempt to recapture the magic of throwing fistfuls of dice playing wargames in the late '90s. Somehow that turned into this. If you find him at a Wisconsin-based gaming convention and he isn't currently or about to run a game, he will run Beefy Shotgun Wizards for you. This is an (ill-advised) promise. 

Daniel Harila Carlsen (illustrations) is a coffee- and sugar-fueled machine who spews out ink, graphic design, and occasionally adventure modules. He’s an educated graphic designer and self-taught illustrator and has spent most of his time (and income) on independent publishing, music, and art. Daniel has previously written and illustrated Duginthroat Divided, Black Antlers, and The Curious Creeps in Crimson Creek. He’s happily married and lives in Oslo, Norway.

Walton Wood (editing and proofreading) is a seasoned editor of TTRPG manuals and supplements. He has several dozen titles to his credit, including books from Exalted Funeral, Games Omnivorous, Stockholm Kartell, and many other small presses and indie publishers. He is the founder of Ex Libris RPG, a cofounding worker-owner of Bogfolk, and blogs at Liber Ludorum. He holds a PhD from the University of Florida and is a professor of composition at Newlane University.

Hammer & Hatchet is the twisted love child (b. November 30, 2024) of Walton “the Hammer” Wood and Rugose “the Hatchet” Kohn. It is stupid games for smart people. Commitment to the worst possible ideas. Pure chewing satisfaction! H&H leverages Rugose and Walt’s peculiar expertise and uncompromising quest for the highest standards of art, writing, and production values to deliver experiences that are all gas, no brakes. We’ve never even heard of brakes. We don’t know what they are. Made by humans, for humans, fuck AI. 

AIn't Art

This is one-hundred-percent made by yoked humans. Hand to god, they are all swole. Understand that computers were involved in the process, but not any sort of AI or LLM. The entire assembled team is anti-AI and refuses to use those tools for creative work of any kind. We will shotgun blast that garbage on sight and do leg-presses and curls with the shattered remains.