Press The Beast

Wolves Upon the Coast: Battle for Rhus & Campaign Thoughts

The party has completed their first major goal in our Wolves Upon the Coast campaign. We've had 5 major sessions, and 2 duet sessions, and a lot has happened. So much so that I will not be able to summarize everything. I feel it's a good time for a brief recap, and for me to share some thoughts I have about the campaign.

After liberating themselves from slavery the party stole their master's ship and dubbed it Freedom. Stranded with no land in sight, they wandered until they found the isle of Rhus. The isle was beleaguered by mermen who sought to demolish all of Rhus. The two princesses, Sophia and Louise, who ruled in the stead of king Mauritz offered Sophia's hand to any brave enough to break the merfolk blockade and gather reinforcements. Stigandyr accepted this offer and, after a stunning victory, the party broke free from Rhus and found themselves in Hwicce.

There they travelled to the land of Albann to find the city of Jork in the kingdom of Hwicce. The party learned that a giant named Thrasir had been stealing musician from the great hall of Jork every month, threatening to destroy the city if the King did not provide. No music rung in those halls, and so the party promised to defeat Thrasir in exchange for an army.

Albinus, a Christian and scholar, set out with a small group to investigate the giant's whereabouts. When they found the giant, Albinus' companions ran away while he opted to speak with the giant. Sadly, they did not share a common tongue. The giant forced Albinus to sing until nightfall. Our hero managed to escape the rope the giant sought to hold him with and looked through a huge sack holding the monster's possessions. Inside, he found a tub filled with a noxious smelling sludge. Albinus surmised that this must be poison, and attempted to splash it on the face of the giant. Thrasir awoke, dashed Albinus' brains against the beach, and then died himself from poison within the hour.

Stigandyr and the party found the body of the giant and their friend a few days later. They brought the head of the giant back and were hailed as heroes. Albinus was deemed a saint and his body was interred in Jork's largest church. Now with 100 men and 5 additional ships, the party set off to Rhus.

Thorgo, meanwhile, left the group and opted to stay on Albann. He journeyed with just one companion to find a hermit who supposedly knew magic. He met with Math the hermit, and was directed to travel by boat two days to the west to meet with Enid the Witch and become her apprentice. Thus, Thorgo has begun studying witchcraft. But first he must learn Brythonic, so that he can speak to his teacher!

The Freedom led the fleet across the sea toward Rhus. However, a new island had appeared adjacent to Rhus, separated by only a mile. After a brief investigation, they sailed down this newly created channel and reached Trecht, the last surviving fortress. Stigandyr, having successfully brought an army to Rhus, married Princess Sophia.

Curious (and worried) about this new island, the party gathered up an elite group and left for the isle. The party did not know how long it would be until the merfolk invaded. They also did not know they would spend about ten or so days on this island, climb an entire mountain, and become stranded without their boat in an ancient, desolate city. They only escaped the isle thanks to Robert suicidally swimming across a mile long channel during a raging storm. By the time the party returned, Trecht was already destroyed. Despite losing the fort, however, the force from Jork was able to beat back the Merfolk. Stuck on the island due to a storm, the Jork army began to steal the food, drink, and treasure of Rhus. When the party returned it was all devastation.

WOLF PACK AWOOOOOOOOO!!!

Many entire stories and characters have been left out. This may be the fastest paced campaign I've run for a few reasons: my own tendencies as referee lean toward a fast game, all of my players are very experienced and proactively get what they want out of the game, and Wolves is just a very, very dense hexcrawl. There are monsters, political entanglements, adventure hooks, and unknowable mysteries each a stone throw apart. It's lots of fun, maybe the most fun I've had running a campaign!

For the mass battle at Rhus, I used an adaptation of the Rules Cyclopedia War Machine rules. The original rules calculate the strength of armies in a haggard manner which doesn't take into account tangible game elements. For example: how many weeks of training has this army had this year? What is the ration of officer to soldier? These kinds of questions are totally unanswered by Wolves and, frankly, most RPG adventures. Instead, I mostly just calculate army power based on unit type. Light foot, heavy foot, medium horseman, archer, etc etc. This allows me to figure the strength of armies based on elements actually present in the crawl, and makes the exploration game interoperable with the war machine rules.

The actual results of the battle were textured and fun to interpret. I used the tactics and results systems from Rules Cyclopedia basically unchanged, and can recommend them for this sort of abstract battle. Rhus won a pyrrhic victory, and the party seems set on abandoning the island (Including their new king, Stigandyr).

The adventures of Albinus and Thorgo described above were both resolved during duet sessions. Running these short sessions takes little effort and feels like it greatly broadens the world and adds a picaresque flair to the game. These were both done via voice calls on Discord, but they could also be resolved via play-by-post. I'd recommend players and referees try to work out such sessions where time and interest permit.

The "Rhus Arc" was really sweet, and we have some great things coming in the future. Stigandyr is retiring due, in part it seems, to a crippled arm earned on that cursed wandering isle and Wulfhram has been deemed a successor. Valthiofr, Bob, and some of the others have all converted to Christianity and seem to be interested in creating a cult centred on Albinus, their former comrade. Thorgo is on an extended Wizard quest, which will entail lots of downtime and the occasional favour; he is tasked to track down a bizarre wolf-man who roams the Weald once he learns Brythonic.

I'm very excited for this group to seize their fate and carve their next path!

WOLVES SYSTEM:

Wolves Upon the Coast has a neat little OD&D hack baked inside the hex crawl campaign. I pretty firmly believe that system doesn't matter--play matters. The strength and weakness of Wolves as a system is that it demands play. While OD&D has gaps, Wolves is a gap.

An example is hunger and fatigue. Wolves has no built in rules for hunger/fatigue, and these things have come up constantly. As it is, though, it also doesn't matter. Players understand they shouldn't just starve and go on forced marches willy-nilly, and so I haven't felt a burning need to solidify my rulings on the issue.

As a result, we've basically been slowly developing our own rules on the basis of need. I think this is really cool! And while I can understand why some people might criticize the game on this basis I really, really don't care that much. Most people (I hope) are fully capable of making their own decisions and making the game work for them.

Here are some gaps or bits of friction which will be addressed at this moment or in the near future:

Here are some larger things I'm working on to help structure play:

DOWNTIME:

I am now embarking on the task of creating downtime rules. In the past, I've had very casual downtime systems with no formal procedures which worked well enough for proactive players but left others behind. I am in the process of adapting Errant's downtime rules to Wolves (almost done c:) with the goals of helping scaffold adjudication on my end and hopefully give my players some ideas of what they could do. The main things that need to be adjusted are costs (Money is not the "engine" of Wolves like it is in Errant) and things related to magic which are very different in Wolves. After one Downtime session with Thorgo, it seems to be working though I think the odds of success are a little bit low. Easy to adjust if we come to see it as an issue.

There are two reasons I really like downtime. First, it means the game doesn't have a bizarre mad dash quality. Second, it encourages the picaresque kind of play I really enjoy. After a month of downtime characters can move around, new trouble can brew, relationships can change, characters can pursue their own goals more independently, etc. Ideally, by campaign's end, at least a few years will have passed!

FACTIONS:

I'll be making a Faction list and give them the opportunity to take actions during downtime with procedures based on Mausritter/Errant. These systems give factions a number of resources/assets which can be used to purse these goals. These are usually described by simple descriptor (Like, Gold Supply, or whatever) and I will do that. But I will also again rely on military force because it is the main datapoint other than population about any given settlement.

To do this, I'll create a basic point system to calculate the strength of an army (I.e, footman = 1 point, armoured footman = 1.25, etc) and have something like 50 points equal 1 Army Power. Each army power grants an asset, which can be used to further faction aims. This means the faction and war machine systems can link together, using the old Chainmail troop types as their basis.

ALLIES/ENEMIS: This doesn't need formalized rules, but I will be recording the major NPCs and their relationships to the players. These will likely shift overtime, and I'm excited to see how it goes.

Thanks for reading!!!!!!