Hello and welcome to the Weekly Scroll Podcast.
My name is Ryan. And I'm a fan of games with
incredibly sparse rules. And today we are going to be
going over Wolfwald from Pellegrico of Lost Pages.
Wolf Wald is an RPG set in a world of mythic Anglo-Saxon
tales where you play as a wolf's head, an outcast adventurer
trying to regain a place in society.
This is a fun one. This is.
Yeah.
Will you hold up the box set one more time 'cause I actually
don't have the box set, although now I'm.
Like, oh, no, I, I will, I'll actually go through the entire
down camera because I have it set up today.
So we'll be, we'll be, we'll be going through that.
So yes, this is, this is a box set.
This is a box set. It is five scenes that amounts
to 250 pages ish. So we're gonna we're gonna we're
gonna try to not screw around and actually jump right into it
today, but we're also going to try to make this episode a
little bit, I don't know, more dialed and we took notes
actually and by we. He means him.
And we're going to try to kind of read through things a little
bit easier, a little bit more effectively, maybe not get so
tied up on rural stuff. You can just reach yourself and
give you the game more. So this is the first time trying
that. We'll see how successful it is.
We're we're 16 minutes in with the pre stream.
So we'll see what we what we get when we're doing.
So unless we have anything crazy to go over, I can switch to the
down Cam. We can actually talk about the
yeah. I got, I got nothing early
major. I mean, where I think we're,
we're both mentally gearing up for Zine Quest next month, but.
Yeah, which we're not. We're, you know, we did enough
last year. We did enough every every year
for the past several. But yeah, let's go do let's do
hit that down Cam. Yeah, let's hit this down, Cam.
So yeah, here we go. Look at those.
Look at those hands. So this is Wolf Walt for you,
for all of you out there in podcast land, I highly recommend
checking this out on the stream right now.
You can also just go check it out on the Lost Pages website.
But how beautiful is this box? So it's a white box, it fit,
it's holding, there are 5A5 zenes inside and it comes with a
cloth map, which is wonderful. But let's talk about the box
first. So it has the logo, it says wolf
old in red and above that I assume in some in a runic
language in red that also says wolf old.
There's this fantastic black 3 headed wolf logo, icon logo and
at the bottom it says L Reynoldson.
It's got the I logo for lost pages and then it says lost
pages. One of the other things I love
about the box, the before we even get into the box is on all
four corners of the box. It has like the Runic logo, the
I and lost pages. So however you put it on your
shelf, you'll be able to see it. And one thing that I really love
is a lot of books from parts of Europe do a weird thing where on
the spine it it aims that way. So if you lay in flat, it's
upside down. This doesn't it's great.
And, and actually, if you take the lid off the box, on the
inside edge of the bottom box, there's even more stuff.
So on one of the edges is the little drawings of little
illustrations of a wolf howling, starting to run and then running
towards a deer all along one side.
On one side there are these four like ocean creatures, you know,
like like Loch Ness kind of things coming up out of the
water, water Dragons and, and things.
On the other side there are these 4 kind of goblin troll ask
figures on one side and then there's a necromancer or three
skeletons with run running towards them on the other and on
the top it says to Russ with a. Shining 1 you mean?
A shining one. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And that is all before we even get into the box.
And This Is Us getting into the box.
So starting with there is a beautiful cloth map.
We'll go over the map in the actual review.
You get that with a digital version of this and then you get
5 zenes. We're going to go over why that
fucking is amazing and I love it so much, but we're getting 5
zenes in here. We get wolf's heads, we get
magic, we get campaigns, we get monsters, and we get people.
Five different zenes in here. They're all wonderful, they're
beautifully laid out. They're all roughly like 45 to
60 ish pages. They're stunning.
It's very reminiscent of the cover of the box.
It look exactly like the cover of the box.
It just has volume one of five booklets and then the name
Wolf's Heads on volume 1. Otherwise it's the same.
All white on the back too. And then it has the lost Pages
logo. It's gorgeous.
And then on the back of the box you get all sorts of info about
the game Wolf walled. You get, you know, wolf does a
role-playing game that blah blah blah.
You get a list of a breakdown of all 5 booklets.
You get like the map in small on the back.
It's great, It's great. And then two more illustrations,
this giant and and a dragon on the back.
The so the box is gorgeous. It's lush, it's nice, it's
thick, it doesn't feel cheap by any stretch of the imagination.
The printing on it, the color is super vibrant and really, really
nice. All said and done, it's a
gorgeous freaking box set and I love it.
And again, the attention, the details in the box edges, both
on the lid and the box itself. Love it so much.
It's fantastic. What do you, what do you think?
What do you think of that, buddy?
I mean, I, I loved it. I mean, as a product and box
set, it's great. Yeah, yeah.
And I mean, again, you know what we do here on the show when you
do as much product review as we do game review.
That's why we generally wait to have physical products in our
hands, because listen, games are great, but actually owning them
and then being nice is also nice too.
So everything Las pages does is always to the nines.
So this is one that the absolutely, absolutely does
that. So let's let's kick over to the
regular review here. Now I I set that camera up nice
this time. I was very happy that it looked
you. Did a great job buddy, good job.
Close that up. I'm going to turn off my my
extra light here and we're going to get into this and we'll get
into the notes. So wolf walled.
So we're looking at volume one. Let me actually so the PDFs do
not come with the cover attached, which is fine, but you
they. It's a choice.
Yeah, but you do get all of the covers as other PDFs to look at.
So just through the cover of one up right there, so you can see
that it's front and back. So if you if you print it out,
you can just print the cover. It is my assumption, which is
which is neat. So that's number one, but we'll
go back to Wolfwald 1 Volume 1, Wolf's Heads, a lost pages book,
issue extra numero. I believe when I talked to Paulo
previously, they said that for those that collect all of the
lost pages books, the magic books get numbers and the non
magic books get these extra numerals.
So if you look at some of the previous stuff that they've put
out, you'll see some are issue 1, issue 2, issue 3, issue 8,
you know, etcetera, etcetera. So designed by Lee Ronson,
development of a Palo Greco. This is early medieval
literature expert, which was I mean this is a game about like
early medieval Anglo-Saxon era. So it's nice to have that expert
on That's Allison Kalila. Editing also by Allison Kalila,
cover art by Katie Walklin, interior art by Stefano Accordi
and cartography by Ross Nicholson.
First printing summer 2023. Great.
So we get to a small table of contents, which is great,
except, you know, Yep thing, yeah, it's not hyperlinked.
Of course we're going to complain about that, right?
That's us. Also, I will say in the first
book, it also has no bookmarks, so there's no real way to
navigate the book and it is a 60 page book.
So that kind of sucks a little bit.
A little bit. Yeah, it is.
It's kind of, I mean in the yeah, the sections are pretty
large in this book. I guess I I kind of see why they
didn't bookmark it, but you know.
Yeah. You know, I don't see why they
did at all, but. You bookmarked our notes page
for this. Yeah, yeah.
So before we get into the book, let's talk about it a little bit
again. This is Wolf.
All this is from Paulo Greco of Lost Pages.
It is a TRBG set in a mythic Anglo-Saxon.
I'm going to move my notes my notes over here.
It is set in a mythic Anglo-Saxon.
Bro. If I could read my own notes,
that'd be great. Let's start from the top.
Hello Wolf Heads from this is Wolfwald from Polygraph of Lost
Pages. It's a teacher RPG set in a
world of mythic Anglo-Saxon tales where the players are
wolf's heads, outcast outlaws and outsiders trying to regain a
place in society. And this was originally on
Kickstarter. It funded March 22nd 2022 with
559 backers for 17,806 lbs which comes out to about 21,673
buckaroos so that's neat. Like yeah honestly should have
funded for more. Not going to lie.
This game slap super. This is cool.
Yeah. Yeah, same.
I mean, it's, it's a fantastic game.
I'm a big fan. What are your?
What are your initial takes before we get too deep into
here? I think for someone like me,
this is an amazing game, yeah. Yeah, yeah.
We'll talk about what that means here shortly because we
definitely have opinions on what what you mean by that.
So let's just get into the book. So in the table of contents, you
have a couple of sections. You have the Game of Wolfold,
you have wolf old characters, wolf old gear, and then a couple
of appendices, the Anglo-Saxon names and the English old
English pronunciation notes, which is great.
I want to roll to that right off the bat.
Get to page 52 here. It is really dope that this is
in here. They have a whole section here
where it basically says the following tables are tended for
use with Wolfwald and OSC. No, no no, that's not what I
want. That's OSC tables.
Old English pronunciations. They are presented here for
textual flavor in the game. But damn it's hard.
Anyone that knows anything about linguistics like diphthongs and
and and and and and accents and things if it's not your native
tongue or hard. So they basically say here that,
sure, go ahead and try if you want.
It's mostly for flavor, but pretty much everything also has
like when it says Dwargos, it also says dwarfs.
So you can just use dwarfs for your table.
That's totally fine. If you want to throw in a couple
of of the Old English kind of words every now and then just
for the flavor, go for it. But regardless, there is a whole
section here on how to pronounce vowels, diphthongs, consonants,
all sorts of stuff. And that's great that that's in
here. I love that, but that is here.
So if you do want to attempt to try to speak a little bit more
to the language, that's great. So getting into the game of
Wolfold itself. So basically this beginning
part, I'll read a little bit at the top and then we'll go over a
bit to a Thagan. The Wolfpack is a little more
than a tool, a weapon to be wielded and wielded ruthlessly.
He cares a little for the members.
As individuals, they're expendable, ignoble outlaws to
whom he owes no real and no real loyalty.
That thinking care is only what they can do for him.
And what a Wolf Pack can do is threaten, beat, rob, murder,
assassinate and terrorize his enemies.
Yeah, great. So basically this section here
talks about the setting of Wolf Old and the setting is based on
parts of our earth and its history.
But it is not our Earth, it is its own thing and it's
specifically set in a time like the early Middle Ages, like
sometimes called the Dark Ages, especially pre Christianized
Germanic cultures of the early medieval English and migration
periods of Europe between CE400 and CE700.
It does say though that like mini fantasy settings and wolf,
all the myth and magic that was superstition on in Earth's
history is real, if rare. And it is a world of men, kings,
Queens, Lords, warriors, serfs and slaves.
That is the world that we are in.
There's other kindred in the world, but we're going to go
over those, so we don't really need to talk about it here.
What type of game is Will Fall? This is this is this is this is
where we're going to have our first discussion.
So what type of what type of game is it?
The PCs are outsiders and outlaws known as wolf's heads.
That's what you as a players are.
You are outsiders and outlaws. You are outside the law, which
means anyone can harm or kill you without fear of retaliation.
So this is a perilous life full of fear and mistrust.
Basically, in this world, it's very small, it's very community
based, it's very local and the law is very rigid.
And the people that have very specific places within society
and you as a wolf head, as an outcast, as an outlaw, you are
outside of that system completely.
And it is very rigid system. People know that you are outside
of it. So they can literally just run
up to you, stab you in the throat and walk away.
And people would just like, ah, fuck that guy.
And they're totally fine with that.
That works, right? That's this game.
And that's what you are, right? And then so, so, so Wolfwald
assumes you've grown tired of being lone wolf's heads and
abandoned together in service of a noble warrior, a noble warrior
Lord, which is a Thagon, which is what I said before.
It's capital TH e.g. N and you form what is called a
Wolf Pack. You are a dire weapon to be
wielded ruthlessly, and then under that Lord's protection,
you are safe in their territory. You were given food, shelter,
coin, gifts, and those gifts bestow honor on you.
And as you accomplish greater and greater things, you can
actually start to shirk off that dishonor and reclaim a place in
society, potentially eventually being a warrior Lord yourself.
And one thing that I do like about one of the sections here
is that it says a Wolf Pack is a unique thing.
It is singular, is one off is an elite force.
So there are not a a shit load of wolf packs running around.
You are the Wolf Pack. If maybe there's one in the
future, it might be some Lord saw your Wolf Pack and was like,
that's dope. I want my own group of killers.
And then they're there. But you're singular.
You are this elite kind of Black Ops Suicide Squad of Anglo-Saxon
dark ages we got. Harley Quinn and you know, me
and my Bros, we call ourselves the Wolf Pack.
You know what I'm saying? Yeah.
Yeah, get. It I had a comment, I might save
it. Actually, I'll save it.
We'll get there, right? So so the next section is
Adventurers in Wolfwald so. I do have one one comment.
Is it beggin or is it thane? Oh, I let's let's go to the Old
English. I would love it to be Thane talk
of the. Jeep, I think it's Thane like a
sword. It sounds better and that's like
a lower. As a lower level Lord that would
serve like a another hired of the Lord.
Essentially there's always a bigger Lord.
You know none. None bigger than Jesus though,
right? Right.
It does say the alternate spelling of fame.
Thank God, because then Fagin was just, yeah, fame.
You're thank you. Yeah.
So it's a thane, and that sounds way better.
Yeah, this is the part right here.
It says Wolfwald carry out what in modern world would be the
equivalent of Black Ops covert military organizations.
We're getting into the adventures and Wolfwald, I had
skipped ahead of myself a little bit.
So the adventures are meant to be these Black Ops covert
military missions in the They're not.
It's not wilderness exploration. It's not dungeon delving.
It specifically says like that is not the game that you're
playing. You're not worried about those
kind of things. You're not worried about
hoarding coins or magical treasures.
You're not doing any of that stuff.
You are given a mission, you're expected to execute that
mission, you get the mission objective, you execute the plan,
you deal with the aftermath and consequences and you get
rewarded or admonished and that's it.
I and I love that. I love that I've I mean, in this
world, you obviously could expand and play a little bit
more of an open world setting, right?
But I really like that wolf old is very focused in on Nope, you
are again, Suicide Squad black op operatives.
You are like, go assassinate that guy.
And here's the stuff that you need for it.
And if you do it, you'll get a reward and you go, cool, we're
going to go do that and we're going to come back and we're
going to get a reward and that's it.
I really like the hyper focus of that.
I really do too. I, I think it is, and a lot of
this game kind of leans into this style of it.
Like it really reinforces this as the you don't worry about
those things like the gold, all that that's taken care of.
You are literally just finish a mission and be rewarded by your
Lord, by the Lord you know by the theme.
You know, and I, I really like that it, it simplifies a game
quite a bit to not have to worry about inventory and things like
that, which which is interesting.
Again, you could just throw that into the setting because the
setting on its own is incredibly interesting, But you don't have
to if you're playing wolf's heads, but you can honestly just
have a whole thing. We're just like, we're not
playing wolf's head. We're actually being the elves
in the woods or we're actually, you know, like working on
everything you could, but I would play it.
I would, I would play what's here.
I I like this kind of like Black Ops.
I would. Absolutely play what's here.
I really want to play this. Yeah, it's, it's cool.
So playing the game that says that these rules are yours.
This is the part I meant, where we're going to have our first
kind of like, let's talk about this a bit.
So the core rules will be familiar to anyone that played
the TSR era D&D or any retro clones and assumes that you have
at least a basic familiarity with those styles of games and
role-playing games in general. Whether you call them OSR,
whether you call that like anything BX, anything that can
use the original couple editions of DND as its lineage, old
school based games, right? It expects there to be for you
to have an understanding of that.
And the name is written in such a way I I believe I I'm stolen
this lingo from from Aaron King if I remember correctly.
But. There's one O 1 games, there's
2O one games and 31 is in like school, right?
Like retro classes and then more advanced classes.
This is not a one O 1. This is not.
Definitely not. There's basically not a rule set
in this. It literally says, yeah, it
says. It assumes.
It literally says. It assumes that you have a
familiarity with BX and then you're only given the things you
need that are a little bit different in here to build on
what you know about BX, right? It says it offers a alternative
campaign style and even if the rules contain guidance on how to
play Wolf Old, it's not the other true way to play it.
You can keep or make whatever you want.
Basically it says bring the rules to the table on the
website. It actually says if you go to
the actual shop page for it, there's a section here that says
it's designed to be broadly compatible and played with BXOSC
and all other clones, and it's not a retro clone.
You bring your own rules. You don't need yet another
booklet explaining how to roll the hit save or find a secret
door. I here's the thing I like that
I've said over and over again. I, I, I personally think a game
design for everybody is a game design for nobody.
I really like games that are hyper focused either on its
intent or on or and I and I love games that are like, hey, this
ain't a beginner game. This and it's not going to be
your first game. You know, you're not going to
find some weird esoteric, borderline FKR LARP game that's
going to have like a what is a role-playing game section.
Like it's not that and I'm so fine with that.
Not every game is an intro game and not every game is for
everybody, and that's totally fine.
Every piece of media is like that.
You don't hop into a music genre and immediately go to the
weirdest, freakiest, deepest, darkest versions of that music,
right? There are bands in every genre
that kind of get you into it, that are kind of like starters
that are a little bit closer to mainstream that push you in
those directions. And and that same thing works
with tabletop role-playing games.
There are games designed to get you into the game.
Things like Mouse Twitter, which are fantastic games, but are
definitely one O 1 games for people that have never played
before. They can easily pick that up.
This not only is not that it says straight off the bat, it's
not that, but it also says in a very nice way it says, Which
isn't to say Wolfwald is in any way complex, expert, advanced,
or somehow superior. It isn't.
It's just written with the expectation that you're not new
to the hobby. I'm so fine with that.
It's a waste sometime of 3 or 4 pages to write up like what is a
role-playing game? What is role-playing?
This is the duty play right? For games that clearly newer
players aren't going to play. I personally think that's fine
because it's not written any type of like vindictive like
elitist way. Like this isn't for you, It's
just like this is this is a just a more advanced game.
Like if you've played a bunch of BX you'll get it and if you
haven't you won't. What are your thoughts?
Yeah, I mean, this is earlier I was like, this is a game that's
definitely like for me because I'm so familiar.
Like I read this and I was like, this is amazing.
Like I'd be down to play this immediately.
But yeah, I think I would be shocked if anyone found this as
their first game. And I would be even more shocked
if they tried to run it as their first game.
It's that's definitely not who this is for.
And you know, I like, like you just said, like we often say,
like I like when a game is made for, for someone, you know,
like, and, and I just happen to really like this one because I'm
the person it was made for. Yeah, I mean, you're obsessed
with the world spot on the coast, and I feel like this very
adjacent. Yeah, and I'm, I'm slowly
building an OSE campaign right now and you know, I, I dig this
shit. Actually there's OSD rules for
this, but. Which which is dope.
There's a whole scene we'll get to at the end.
I will say so the counterpoint to that though, because even
though I I fuck with this, I fuck with the decision to do
this. I'm a big fan.
I don't think someone could pick this up and just play because
there are literally there aren't rules.
There is no explanation of like how to roll the hit like there
it like it never even says in this game anywhere ever.
D20 roll over. You know what I mean?
It. Explains magic as AD 20 roll
under, but it it literally does not tell you how to swing a
sword like anywhere in this, which is fine.
Again, it it tells you right off it's BX, you go, OK, D20 roll
over, right, right. So you couldn't pick this up and
play it as your first game. But I think someone who really
wanted to play this, I think it would be a good idea to be like,
oh, wait, So what? So let me go read some BX then
like and there's BXRPG or like any fucking retro clone, like
you just go get, you know, OD and D or or mole Bay or whatever
you want to read and then hop into this.
But I will say the counter argument the devil's had to get
to this is that that does create a small barrier to play, right?
Like so that person that does really want to play this but
hasn't played a game yet is going to have to go do their
research before they can go play this.
So there is a small barrier there, which again is is the
point. But but this whole section here
where it talks about that like it that it's not for beginners
basically like it expects some level of understanding of how to
play. It's 6 lines.
And in those six lines, I also think you could have written
like this assumes a basic understanding of BX.
And if you don't have that, that means D20 rollover for this like
this is stats is like I think you could easily do in six lines
like extremely basic rundown of BX and someone could hop in to
do that, I think. It would probably end up being
more than six lines, but not by like a wild amount.
You know, I do think you could put a brief thing here, but you
know, I mean, I'm always interested in that.
Like Watt has talked about this before the the the intersection
and I don't know if it was on the show, if we were just
chatting, but the intersection of like, like art and the
product, you know, like as a product that you want to get in
the hands of as many people as possible in a very like
capitalistic way. Like yes, this is a barrier, but
as like a like an art piece game, you know that also other
weird intersection. Like I get it, you know, Yeah, I
know I'm I'm a fan. I think there are definitely
people this won't be for, and maybe that will hurt how many
people end up playing this game, but this game is not made for
those people unless they get deeper in any way.
And that's, and that's the entire point.
I think I, I love this. I think it's the absolute
correct choice to just be like, hey, this isn't a beginner game.
Once you learn some BX come back and and just the idea that like
it's just written with an expectation, you know what
you're talking about, which saves me 30 pages of writing a
fucking rule. So that's already been written
1000 times, you know, but it's and it's lost pages too.
I mean, they're right up there with like games, omnivorous and,
and a couple others that are more of like, like kind of like
an art house publisher. You know, they do what they do
what they, yeah, they do what they want to fucking do the way
they want to fucking do it, with much less of a worry about the
capitalist aspect of it, and are successful because of how well
they do that thing, not successful because they're
specifically trying to, like, maximize market profits.
Trying to pander to the lowest common denominator like.
No, they're, they wanted to make a thing and they fucking make a
thing and I love the fuck out of that.
I'm a big fan of this, so yeah, good call.
I really like it. So moving forward, Wolfwold has
three levels, which I really like.
There is the basically Wolf's heads, the heroes, and then the
Wolf Lords. But there is obviously some Old
English for it. Are we going to butcher the
whole way? Wolfa, Chiffod, Hilde, Wolf and
Wolf Drayton? The the Wolf's heads are your
starters. It's zero to 3999 XP.
They're basically your beginner wolf's heads.
The people that you started with that are seen as outlaws that
would be haunted without the things protection.
The Hilda wolf or the heroes are 4000 to 31,999 SP.
They're still technically outlaws but have gained some
respect and renown and are seen as loyal warriors.
They might even attract the attention of their things
Elderman and could end up working for them.
So you could get your boss's boss checking you out, which
would which be be cool. And then the last 1, the wolf
Drayton, the wolf Lord. They have earned a place of
respect in society and any warrior would be glad to serve
with or under them. They may be of service to the
king or even put their Elderman on the throne to be king.
There's a a box here which I love.
It says the and I also love the boxes.
We'll get to talk about layout in just a second, but it says
that this concept is based on Dave Arneson's veteran hero
superhero from Blackmore, and that you can just use milestone
leveling if you don't want to track XP.
So once you feel like they've gained enough respect to bump up
to the hero, the Hilda Wolf, you can just let them do that.
And once you think that they've got to Wolf Lord, you can let
them do that. That's what I would do.
I fucking have never liked tracking XP.
The second I learned about milestone leveling is what I've
almost always used. What about you?
I wide widely preferred milestone leveling, but I also
do enjoy gold for XP just because I, I think that's
incredibly easy to track, like, you know how much gold you got,
you know, but for the most part, yeah, I, I mean, I run milestone
at my own table, so. Yeah.
I mean, I like gold for XP, but obviously in this game we've
already talked about like we don't worry about gold there
there. Isn't that so?
Which is fine. I mean, I think this is great.
And yeah, I mean, I'm fine with also I think that there is like
an XP layout for like when you should get there, but also the
openness of being like, but if they do something like really
great and maybe like XP wise are not there, but like economically
in stories, they are there to be like more recognized.
And yeah, just fucking let them do it, you know?
I'd let them have it, you know? Yeah, just fucking let them have
it, guys. Come on.
I really like that. Speaking about gold, we have a
whole section here. The next big section is XP is
your experience and treasure. So there's a whole list here of
basically the cost or or the XP that you get for the rewards
that you get. So it's.
Kind of an inverse of like the regular.
Like instead of turning in gold to get experience points,
instead you finish your quest and your Lord gifts you with
things and that thing. Those things give you XP, which
is a super cool flip on the model.
Yeah, gained gifts, rewards are XP, right?
And you don't, you don't get XP for combat or for treasure found
or looted. Combat has its own reward,
survival, as does treasure. The more you have, the more
power and influence you can buy. So you can't have treasure.
You can have gold and coin and things like that.
But here's the thing, if you have a million gold, right and
you're a wolf head, that doesn't mean shit because everyone
fucking hates you and you're some outlaw out like outcast
from society. What the fuck are you going to
do with it? You know, because you're going
to be like, here's a million gold.
People are going to be like, I don't give a fuck fuck, you know
what I mean? Like, so it it there definitely
comes a point where your respect in society and the amount of
gold you have are eventually going to like get to a point
where it's actually useful. I also like this because I
always really love the idea of like.
I'm thinking more like Norse, but like all like northern
European, like old school warriors at least.
I'm like terrible novels that I've read always like adorned
with things, you know, they always have like arm bands and
rings and like they'll have gold, like gold rings spun into
their beards. And if you play a game where you
turn in that gold for XP, your characters aren't incentivized
to hold on those things like decorate their character, make
them look like accomplished ears.
But in this game, though, of course, I mean they might sell
the Bunny isn't as valuable as this in those systems.
So they will have these things doing and they'll go in with
their gold rings and their arm bands and their earrings and
like, look like experienced warriors.
Yeah, yeah. Well, not only that.
Well, not only that, because a lot of that's not going to be
treasure that they looted from something, they're going to have
that like gold arm band because their Lord gave them that
because they assassinated that fucking guy.
So it's not just that it's a cool gold arm band worth a bunch
of money. It's a reward and a symbol from
your Lord of their favor, which is fucking dope as hell.
Big fan. Big fan, yeah.
That's fine, I guess. All right, nice big full page
piece of art here of a little of a pupper, a pup looking at just
chests of treasure in a room that's got a bunch of other
treasure and stuff in it. I like that there's a full page
piece of art here. We haven't talked about the land
a little bit before we get into the characters and stuff.
This will be chapter 2. Let's talk about a little bit.
I really like the spread of the of the layout.
So let's go to a page that has all the things that I want to
talk about. So let's view this in A2 page
view. So on every page spread you get
on the even page, the left sided page, there is a cool page
border in the top, like across the top and top left of the
page, which has these, you know, Anglo Saxony, you know, knots
and and leaves and and things like that, which is really dope.
There's some rooms across the top and then at the top right of
the odd page, the opposite side it gives you, it says chapter 1,
the game of Wolf Vault. So it gives you each chapter.
And I think even with when you're in the chapter, it gives
you chapter sections. So the next chapter when we go
to characters, it'll say characters at the top, but then
when you hit the warriors, it'll say warriors.
When you get skirmishers, it'll say skirmishers.
And it's just a great super clean layout.
I also love they that they don't do like 2 column, you know, it's
it's it's full page. It's got nice sized margins.
The font's nice and big. It's super readable.
All of the headers are big font separated.
Like it's just very spacious. Like that's one thing that I
love about the five Zine thing. And let me rant about that for
just a minute. Give me like 30 seconds.
This is absolutely 1,000,000% my preferred way to get and read a
book. I think when you have a box set
full of five themes that equal 250 pages versus one giant book
that's 250 pages. First of all, it's so much
easier to parse the information. Well, it's already partially
parsed for you, you know. And, and that's the thing, and,
and here when you one thing that we see when we read a lot of
these bigger books is that when you have that information, even
if you said chapter 1 is, is the game, Chapter 2 is the
characters. For some reason people be like,
oh, but I have 250 pages. Let me take a little bit of that
info and put it over here. Let me take a little bit of info
and put it over here. They, they, the info kind of has
this like bleed into the rest of the book.
So you like, you'll randomly go into like chapter 8 and be like,
oh, here's something else for your character, right?
I just couldn't fit it back in that other chapter or whatever.
Like that is frustrating, you know, 11 book that I think is a
good example of that. We won't harp on it too much.
You'll know what I'm talking about is His Majesty the worm.
I think that that would have been a much more successful book
as 5 Zenes, what it originally had been kind of laid out with
on each page because so much of the information kind of got
spread over so many different sections.
And again, great game. I just think as a product that
would have been more successful in this format and not only
that, the this format lets me go, OK, I just want to read the
characters right now. Let me just take let me just
take this one Zine and sit and chill and read this and take
this to the table and do whatever.
And not have to lug around a giant 250 page book and flip
through a bunch of pages to try to figure out what I'm talking
about and make sure that everything I'm 1 is only in just
this one chapter and not in this other chapter and this other
chapter too. I just think it it it focuses in
the attention. It focuses in the just what you
need when you need it into these separate things.
And I'm I'm this is absolutely 1,000,000%.
My preferred thing is to break things up.
Like I love the fault of Arne collected book or whatever, but
I will always prefer it as the three or four zenes as opposed
to the whole book together. Well, I don't have 3 or 4 zenes,
so I'm taking the whole book together on that one.
Yeah, I really enjoy this as well.
I mean, I like have slowly been working, like I said earlier on
an OSC thing, my one on the run for my table.
And so I have like the box sets which are all divided up the
same way, you know, they're not the single tones and they're
spread out. And like I really only refer to
the things that I need to when I need to.
And I don't know, for me personally, and this is like a
completely meaningless statement, I love having that
like several different like scenes or books, they're all one
thing spread out and like looking through things as I need
it. You know, if it's a very
satisfying way, it's like, you know, the, the wizard that his
his desk with all these scrolls laid out, like referencing them.
It's a very satisfying way to work on stuff you know I.
Just want the information when I want it and I think it's much
more table friendly to have it that way as well.
Yeah, I completely agree. But also even just the way that
I personally absorb information, that's why I read in pages, not
spreads. And I actually like it zoomed in
like this because I can break down a couple paragraphs at a
time and my brain can absorb that more.
When I pick up a giant 250 page book that I open up, you know,
into a full 2 page thing and it's 8 1/2 by, there's so much
information that my brain is like trying to track all of it
at once. I just want to be able to focus
in on one little thing. And the format of this,
specifically the A5 individual Zenes with nice size, font, big
margins, everything super well separated, I don't know, I felt
like this was such an easy book to read and absorb.
I just love it. I think it's extremely
successful in that way. I've glided through this one in
because it's just it's easy to intake.
Yeah, yeah. OK, so that was a rant getting
into chapter 2. So there are 5 zenes in this,
technically six with OSC. We are going to hit all of them,
but we're going to breathe through some of the later ones.
So I think 1 is going to be the one we spend the most time on.
We'll spend an OK amount of time on two, and then we're going to
breeze through the rest. But I do want to hit all 5 S
moving into Wolfwald characters, right?
So real quick and dirty because guess what?
There's really aren't any rules here.
You have attribute scores, there are 6 stats, Guess what?
They're exactly what the fuck you think they.
Are. Yeah, Strength, Intelligence,
Wisdom, Constitution decks, Charisma.
That's it, right? You roll 36 to for each of them.
And once you have made those roles, it's pretty obvious where
you're going to fall. Wolfwold characters do have
what's called a prime attribute, which is most important
attribute for that class. So if you have a class, it'll
tell you in the class and we'll go over that in a little bit,
like which one is a prime attribute.
So you can have say your say your prime attribute for your
character is dex and your Dex is your lowest thing you can do
that. You absolutely can pick one that
is not the maximized thing. Absolutely.
You're just not going to get the same kind of bonuses for for
what you're going to do for it, which makes sense for, you know,
the classes is what you do. So if what you're doing is
supposed to be fast and you're a fast person to make sense that
it it blends together and then and then clarify this with me.
So you're it says. Prime attributes give a
character as a modifier. Depending on the prime
attributes score the modifier. The other modifiers are not
applied. So that that means that when I
go to my character that's dex based, I give my modifier, you
know, for all the things it tells me for prime attribute,
but that means only one score. There's a modifier list
underneath there. It says three to five is -2 six
to eight is -1 nine to 12 is nil. 13 to 15 is +16 to 18 is
+2. So the only score that gets a
modifier is your prime attribute, and that's it.
That is how I read that as well. I like that, I'm a fan.
You only having to track 1 modifiers that have 6 modifiers
is so nice. Yeah, I, yeah, I completely
agree. I mean, yeah, I mean, I am not
always the biggest fan of like derived modifiers from stats,
even though I just said I'm playing an OSE thing and I play
games like that. So it is nice to like really
boil it down to like, here's the important one.
And then as we go through, it's going to be like, here's where
you apply it for each character is a very clean and easy.
I mean, if you had the right group, you can pick this up and
play it very quickly, you know? Yeah.
Well, and not only that too, the modifier list is for those that
might have only played 5. E is a much more, is a wider,
smaller thing, right? So it goes from three to five is
a -, 2 and 1618 is a + 2, which in D&D it go, it goes to like in
5, E goes to -3 and +3. And I don't even know if it goes
all the way down to three, doesn't it stop like after 8?
It just like stops doing a thing?
I don't fucking know anymore. I mean if you if you have a. 20
in a stat and 5E it's a + 5. It's a + 5, yeah, every every
two gives you plus one, right? As opposed to this one where
it's much more like every three gives you plus one and 9:00 to
12:00 is 0. So I like that it's a smaller
modifier. It's less of AI mean you know 5E
is a power game for a reason. Yeah, I mean, you're not.
This isn't medieval superheroes so.
Right, Yeah, even it's it's medieval Suicide Squad.
We've talked about this. So next section is hit points.
So hit points are an abstract measure of harm from combat,
disease, etcetera. They're determined by hit dice.
For those familiar with BX and what hit dice are.
But hit dice are, if you know 5, you know what hit dice are too.
But it you, you simply roll the number of hit dice for your
class and level to determine your HP.
And defeat doesn't automatically mean death.
It depends on the situation and the foe.
So if it's intelligent foe, the GM might be like, well, you're
captured instead. So hitting zero isn't
necessarily dead, right? It means bad stuff, potentially
fatal, the GM decides and everything like that.
Yeah, I thought it was cool. I mean, this is like, I don't
want to say it's like a more narratively driven game.
That's not the term I'm looking for.
But the context of the situations you get sent in, like
obviously this game is and we'll get into it is built for like a
a campaign play of this, like Wolf's head group.
And so it does make a lot more sense for instead of like 0
being instant death like in a lot of old school games, it is
for you to have these situations that like narratively might
change, like the context, the situation changes what would
make sense. And I think that's baked into
the rules and said out loud and Savage being like something left
up to the GM for like, yeah, Zero is dead no matter what,
buddy. That's what the rules say.
Fuck you. Yeah, fuck you buddy.
I lost my phone. It's in here somewhere.
I'll put it in a second. No, I just did a find my phone
beep beep. Oh I don't know, somehow it
landed on the floor over here. Must have thrown it.
Stop. Throwing.
Stuff all right. That's what I figured so anyway,
Next up Gildor magic power. So this explains the power
table. It's interesting.
I will say when we get to the magic section that this table is
here instead of in the other one.
But it I mean I don't mind it because if you got some magic,
you would have seen this already.
So and I think a lot of the book does that where like it doesn't
necessarily re explain like it gives you the rule later, but it
doesn't give you the kind of breakdown that's written here.
So what I mean by that, for those listening, it's Gildor.
I'll call it that. With my terrible Gelder.
We're going to say Gelder. OK, yeah, that makes much more
sense. The Gelder is a measure of magic
power and skill. It's the sum of the castor's
level plus their prime attribute.
And this level applies to a number of things like saves and
and resisting and things like this.
So what it says here is the the Dorg Fate Weaver is level plus
Wisdom modifier. The elf scene spell singers is
level plus Charisma modifier, the erd erd word erd word
shining ones is level plus wisdom, and then the rattling
witches is level plus int. So you got dwarves and humans
using wisdom, you got elves using charisma, and you got
barbarian kind of people. Yeah.
The other people human. The others, yeah, yeah, using
Ant. So 2 Wisdom, 2 Charisma and an
Ant. It's interesting and it makes
sense. I I think Charisma is great for
elf. We'll get into that more in
magic. Most of their stuff is through
singing. So I think Charisma is a great
is a great application for that. And then we talked about, yeah,
there's a very circumstance for that.
Well, there's a whole book on magic.
We're not going to get too deep into that.
And then there are four Kindred. We can cruise through those a
little bit. Basically, they're all for our
humans. Some are just more magical,
insular, or savage than others. The what?
How would you say this? The arid word there are the Urd
or the Urd or. Sorry, I was looking up.
There's a there's a character in here that I'm pretty sure makes
a TH sound that we've been reading through.
And I was right. It does make a TH sound.
It's like looks like the little almost like AD will cross
through the top part of the D It's it's wreathling or rathling
or something like that. That's a TH.
So it's earth word Erathrod. Erathrod the humans, the regular
ass fucking humans. They rule the land of Wolfall
and call themselves a quote UN quote men and they call all
other 3 El pod foreigners. So big shock that the men call
everyone that's not a man a foreigner.
It's like. Within that, the outlanders
right are also like humans, correct?
So they're also. Everyone is human.
Everyone is human, but yes, they're closer to humans, but
they're like they they live more in like the Moors and stuff.
We'll get we'll, we'll get over. Let's talk about it and again
what I like about this the whole way through is it gives you the
Anglo-Saxon name, but then it also gives you a name that's
easier and you can use if you want.
So first up is the elves, right? So elves are wild and savage
forest folk deep in ancient Woodlands.
They are slight and short. They are head shorter than a
men. They are Raven black hair, fine
angular beard features and bright Gray eyes and nut brown
skin. They shun things crafted by men.
They dress in animal skins. It is it is taboo for them to
use anything of metal. So they use weapons of
stonewood, Flint, antler, things like that.
Their long bows are stronger than men's long bows.
And their their main kind of thing is that they bond with
ageless tree spirits. Right.
But if you're APC, you are what's called, I want to say a,
a, a fag. The phage, the fae or the doomed
is what it's called. Your tree spirit died.
Yeah. Yeah.
So you are doomed to die a mortal death.
And you are not necessarily. You're not an outcast from the
elves, but your grief and sorrow is so deep that you kind of
drive yourself away from the tribe.
Yeah, which is sad. Sad emo elf self exiles.
Yeah, I, I like that. I like that.
There's an oh, you're a true spirit died peace.
You know, a fan of that. The Next up is the dwarves or
the dwarves. Dwarves.
There is a, there is a page here of the, of a dwarf man, dwarf
woman in like the centipede down the middle.
Again, everyone is human, right? But these are just a clan that
are closer to dwarves, so they are mountain clams.
They are a head shorter than men.
They're broad, stout, and muscular.
They're pale skinned with jet black hair and eyes, and they
favor long forked beards. Little is known save the wealth
of their minds and the brilliance of their metal craft.
One man is allowed to set foot in the clan mountains, which is
how they conduct their trade with the Men.
And many men, many men, they the tribes fight and die for the
hills bordering the clan mountains and the rich trade
that the land controls. So people will literally fight
wars to be close to the mountains so they can be the one
that gets to trade with the dwarfs.
Which is cool, but the PCs? I do like this part.
I was going to say I do like this part the the PCs for this
group. You're you're disgraced, but
like you'll never tell a man why what you did to disgrace
yourself. Yeah, yeah, exactly that.
And then the one thing that is known is that to return home a
certain death usually by an unwar like shameful means like
strangulation. So if you haven't guessed now
for the PCs or don't forget your wolf said your outcasts for all
four kindred. It's giving you what the kindred
are like and then what the PCs are like because what, what is
an outcast for each of these kindred, which is great.
I love it. There is a thing, There is a
thing when we get to the OSC book that I think is great.
That is weird. That's not in this book.
I don't know if we should talk about it at the end.
Maybe we'll talk about the end of the kindred section.
Next up is the ertorod, the, the men of Earth, the quote UN
quote, the man. So these are tall and rangy with
Ruddy complexions, bright grayer blue eyes, straw colored hair,
both men and women flavoring, favoring plates, like plates in
their hair, not like dishes. You know they're proud of
warlike people, fearless, cunning, wise in both rule and
counsel. That's what they fucking tell
people. But actually they're
treacherous, brutal, ruthlessly greedy, and they grasp for
power. That's about fucking right to
me. They claim descent from the gods
so they can boast that they rule the earth.
But they fucking don't, right? They're just like we are
descended from the gods, so it's ours.
And the rest of you are foreigners and our land.
Come on, come on. There are five peoples within
the the men of Earth. They are the Gits, the Juton,
the Sizons, the Angles and the Frisco.
And the PCs are, Wolf said. Like you're, that's just your,
you are, that is the primary quote UN quote primary society,
right? So you are wolf heads within the
society. So thanes and all that kind of
stuff are, are, are men of Earth, right?
And then you get to the wraithlings, the outlanders,
right? So this is yeah, of all of the
foreigners, quote UN quote. These are especially despised.
They're tall and wiry, with green eyes and coppery red or
jet black hair. I believe it is race links
though by the way. I just, I mean that's.
Like as we're going through, I'm actually scrolling down and
double checking out the pronunciations.
Yeah. I mean, that's good.
So especially so. They lack in craft and art.
Whatever they lack in craft and art, they make up for and
bestial fear, fierceness and ignoble treachery.
They inhabit wild lands, the hills, Moors and marshes
bordering the good manly farm lands, and the PCs would be
considered well there to more tornadoes.
They're blood feeders right? They escape from the homeland
until they can gain enough power to return and take revenge on
their enemies, reclaim their honor, or simply return without
fear of reprisal for their crimes.
So basically you get the the the manly men that are descended
from gods and therefore a claim right to rule everything and
call everyone else fucking foreigners, even though I'm sure
people were on that land before them.
And then you've got elves, dwarves, and what amounts to
these like kind of Outlander, like quote, UN quote, savages,
kind of like the well, listen. Man, all I had to say is if God
tells you that you this piece of land belongs to you, you have
the right to commit whatever war crimes you want to.
So I mean. Clearly, right?
I mean, that's the way the world has worked so far, OK.
Or has been allowed to by those in power.
Let's say that the wolf world classes recursion through the
book. We're about halfway through the
first book because, man, we're going to get to a lot of stuff.
We're making great time. I personally think we are.
I think we're, we're chilling. So there's three basically
there's three archetypes in the classes.
You got warrior, Skirmishers, or Wizards, and in each of the
kindred you have three of those. So there are 12 total classes.
So we're going to chunk through a huge section of this book
because we're only going to talk about one of those, but there
are 12 for each. I'll list them, but there are a
couple other things that each class gets.
Every class gets the criticals and fumbles.
So on a Nat 20 or a Nat 1, you get a crit success or crit fail
and it doesn't. Modifiers don't matter and
Wizards might flip or roll under spells, so for a lot of the
saves and stuff, Wizards you're you're you're casting or saving
by rolling under instead. And if you get a Nat 20 or not
one, it doesn't matter what your modifiers are.
You fail or succeed. There's also a heroic effort.
This is one anything could have been worded a little
differently. Now a feat or of arms or skills
that automatically succeeds once per adventure.
You can try heroic feats again, but they're subject to regular
role. So I'm going to actually read it
a little bit and we can talk about how like it kind of is a
little bit weird. So it says a heroic feat.
A heroic effort represents a feat of arms or special skill
that members of a word class can succeed can succeed once per
adventure. So auto succeed right?
Note that this does not mean that they can only attempt the
heroic effort once per adventure, or that only each
class associated with a particular skill or feat can
attempt it. But these other attempts will be
in doubt and subject to whatever role or check the rough redeems
necessary to succeed. The heroic effort will always
succeed without a role. So first of all, heroic effort
is capitalized in one place, it's not capitalized in another.
And basically it says like you can do it once auto succeeding
and you can try it as many times as you want, but like roll for
it after that. That's fine, I get it.
I feel like the wording is maybe just like a little bit confusing
because it's like 8 lines to say that you know?
Yeah, it's not as smooth as it could be.
Yeah. It's fine, but I will say I had
to read it like I had to read it two or three times to be like,
OK, no, this is what it's saying, you know, so the
classes. Yeah, there are classes.
Yeah. So I will say right off the bat,
there are no character sheets that I was able to find.
Were you able to find a character sheet?
I did not see when I was going through this, but I did not look
for a source online so. I well there should be a primary
source. I think that not not having a
character sheet is a huge mess, partially because you can parse
a lot of information from character sheets that to clarify
some rules stuff, you know what I mean?
Like I don't see why you wouldn't.
When we get to the magic section, there are some things
that basically equate to caster character sheets.
So I don't understand why there aren't any here.
But the breakdown of what a class looks like then, then
we'll we'll pick one to go over. You can pick which whichever 1
you want here. But basically the way a
character sheet goes over is there's Lord at the top in a in
a Gray box. And then beneath that, there is
an explanation of the class. Beneath that is the stats.
So level HD attack, save AC and initiative attacks.
Right beneath that you get your criticals, your fumbles and your
heroic effort. The heroic effort that you get
per class, right. So that's saying that this one's
called true strike. You can do true strike as many
times as you want, but once per adventure, you just auto succeed
at it, which makes sense. And like that totally makes
sense again. And then for every single page,
let's see if it actually it should do this two page view.
Yeah, so I'll two page view this.
You get that on one page. On the opposite page, you get a
huge piece of art for that. And then underneath that piece
of art, you get your starting equipment.
Great fucking spread for characters I love.
I also love any game lets me open the book and in one spreads
the all the information for a thing that I'm looking at like
characters. Yeah, they're great.
So the 12 characters. Under Warriors, you get an elf
wood guard, you get a dwarf shield bearer, you get Men of
Earth shield Maiden. And then you get the Rathling
Battle Strong. Under Skirmishers you have an
elf shooter, a dwarf Death dealer, a Man of Earth spear
terror, and a Rathling Bowman. And under Wizards you get elf
spell singer, dwarf, Fate Weaver, Men of Earth, Shining
One, and then a Rathling Wicca or a Rathling Witch.
So which which one do you want to look at?
We'll go through one. I don't know how to really.
I mean, I don't, I don't know. I mean.
They're all the first ones, Yeah, the first one's a good
one. I think it's a good breakdown.
The Warriors are kind of a good mix.
I I agree, let's you do one of the warriors you pick, don't
maybe pick, I don't know one of them.
OK, Oh, we should go over we should go over the the dwarf
that. Prune.
Fate Weaver, you know. Oh, I was definitely which?
Which one do you think that I would absolutely pick if I was
picking it for me? Oh, I don't know.
OK wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait.
Of the 12 class. Oh fuck abso fucking lutely.
Who? If you had to pick one of the 12
classes, which one are you starting with?
Either that one or the the fate Weaver.
Yeah, the weird.
Yeah, I would. I would rock out a shining one
hardcore or I would probably go with I like the dwarf Death
Dealer is really interesting too.
But the the wolf guard is pretty straightforward.
So we'll run down through 1 wolf Guard and then we'll skip all
this. So it says before your spiritual
it dies. Beat before your spiritual it.
There you go. Before your tree spirit died,
you were one of the elven wood guard tasked with protecting the
great forest. Now in your sorrow and doom, you
roam the lands of men doing the only thing that still makes
sense to you, fighting and killing.
So the the wood guards rely on speed and finesse.
The prime attribute is dexterity, which means that you
add that to which which they apply as an attack bonus and to
AC. They gain a class bonus to AC.
And initiative, representing their special fighting style.
And they're so fast that they make additional attacks each
round. So in the stat block for it,
it's the level 1-2 and three L of one.
They have 1D6 HD. At 2 is 46, at 3 is 86.
The attack is plus 1 + 3 + 6. The saves are 181511 AC
initiative is plus 1 + 2 + 3 and the attack says 2-3 and four for
each level. So at Level 3 man 4 attacks is
crazy. You're fast as fuck.
I'm fast as fuck boy. You're fast as fuck boy.
So the critical is a dazzling strike.
On a crit you dazzle your enemy and make another attack with the
+3 to hit. The fumble is an impulsive
maneuver. If you fumble, you acted so
rashly you maneuvered yourself into difficulty and your
opponent has advantage with a free attack, and then your
heroic strike is the true strike.
You summon up all your effort and deliver a blow so fast and
accurate that it bypasses armor and attack an enemy as if they
were unarmored. If they hit, they may choose
where the blow lands. The head or heart is a killing
blow. The Lego arms are mutilating
blows and the victim can save to resist death and mutilation.
That's dope. Surpass all armor and go for a
kill shot. Can I can I ask a question about
that? So is the thing that auto hits
right at. Least once per adventure.
OK, so I you would just roll damage for that and you would
well when it says? Ignore armor.
Yeah, so or so. No armor soak, no nothing.
Armor is your AC though, yeah, this is a, this is a BX, right?
A clone essentially, right. It's assuming that you're going
to use like some BX rules, right?
So armor isn't damaged so. Well, no.
Well, yeah, you're right. I know that I read last night
was like wait if it's an auto hit why would it matter?
Because if I hit you with armor is a damage soaking in this
style of game as far as I know. Well, so so so so here's the
thing. The true strike auto succeeds
once and then rolls every other time.
So. Saying the next the next time
you try to do it, you got to roll.
Yeah, and and then when you roll, you don't have to roll to
bypass the armor. You would just roll against like
a nine. They're unarmored, right?
So probably let me see. There's no reason to to
differentiate that way. Like clearly it auto hits, you
would go right to it and for when you need it.
These are the rules for. Roll for this ability you ignore
armor. Yeah.
There's just no reason, I think, to separate it that way.
Like it clearly, I mean, I think.
I think it's a little clunky with it being like, yeah, you
auto hit and then immediately being like, yeah, so ignore
armor. It's like they auto hit.
I think obviously when I sit down the table I would figure
out to do exactly what you did, but it's weird to just not put
like, Oh yeah, if you roll for this, use ignore armor.
Yeah, I mean, I absolutely hear what you're saying.
I think in the way that the rest of the book is written in the
context, especially with the amount of effort they put in
writing above it, that you only do it once, but you can try
again and you roll and you roll. I think there's not really a
reason to take the time to differentiate for when you do
and when you don't because the assumption would be when you're
rolling, this is it. But if not, you're just auto
hitting and moving on. I I, I hear what you're saying,
though. I don't.
I think within the context of the way the rest of it's written
where it's only explaining what you understand, it makes sense.
But you're right, like if it if this was more of like an intro
book or would need a little bit more explanation.
But the problem is, I think if you did that for this one, you'd
have to do it for all 12 classes.
You'd have to be like if you did that, if you did that, if you
did that, or you could just do a little box here that says this
is for when you have to roll, not the auto success, but that
is literally on the page above it.
Not for us to scroll through the rest of the heroic abilities
that the warriors have, but I did try to look for another
example of this in them and I didn't really.
All the other ones are like, they just do the thing right or
like once per adventure or whatever and you can obviously
rolling afterwards. It's the only one where the
wording is just like, huh, it doesn't matter, it's not that
big of a deal. I'm not trying to hang up the
whole episode now. No, Yeah, but like, for example,
like, you know, heroic effort for challenge for the shield
maiden, they can challenge any photo single combat and they
will accept. After all, no one wants to be
someone. They must also accept any terms.
There's not really like a there's not even a role.
There's like nothing to succeed at.
Like, how would you succeed or not succeed at that?
You're right. The thing is the for that one, I
would just make a call on what you're going to roll again
afterwards to, to do so. You know, I mean, I would just
figure it out in the moment. But that one's just, it's the
only one that Mike, you just could add the word if to just
this one. You really need to change
anything else. Well, I mean, when we go down to
the Rathling battle strong, there's this.
With one wild swing of their two handed weapon, they are able to
hit all nearby foes, dealing one to six damage modifiers each.
I guess you would auto hit every one of them and then if you you
would have to roll to to hit all of them after you can just
target all of them. Yeah, yeah, I hear.
I hear what you're saying. I definitely think that is
written in such a way to assume that you understand, which I'm
fine with. I like the idea of like writing
that because you're not dumb, you know?
But but I. Am dumb.
But valid point, valid point we got there.
So that is heroic effort. And then again, full page piece
of art and then starting equipment.
So it's written, you know, such a way where you're going to have
to go to the equipment page and and read what it is because it
says it's a hurt sex gay bulge and 186 farthings bold.
Yeah, bold. So anyway, so that's also.
It's it's SEAX. The dagger is Sax.
Sax OK, yeah. Oh, and they have the little
they have little sax in their their hands.
It's like a bladed little dagger thing, which is dope.
So so that's that's a whole character.
It's it's pretty straightforward.
It's pretty easy. I do wish it was a fucking
character sheet. I'm not gonna lie.
I do also get a character. Sheet I mean this.
I guess it's the character sheet and you can take notes on it,
but like that's. What I was thinking, you have a
little piece of paper that you write just like a blank sheet of
paper. You.
Would print this out and and
flip it over and write on the back though your equipment and
stuff like that. But like I am shocked that
there's not even just a basic character sheet like Swipers.
You know, Swipers was like super straightforward, mostly places
to write notes. I'm shocked that there's not
just like a nice branded Wolf Ward character sheet.
Anyway, so that is the classes. There are 12 of them.
That is what 1 looks like. We are going to jump way down.
There's only like 2-3 sections left in this book and then we'll
breeze through the rest of them. So we're going to go all the way
down to Wolfwald gear, which will be a quick run through.
So Wolfwald gear. So we start with wealth and
money. So basically it says land is the
greatest measure of wealth. There's a silver standard called
the sulfur opponent, which is like the silver # usually in the
form of an ingot worth in a modern terms about $7000.
So one ingot is for $7000. It's a the core basis of all,
you know, everything there is gold and stuff like that, but
it's all based on a silver standard.
I love silver standards. I fucking hate gold standards.
Four types of smaller coinage. There are shillings, silver
pennies, farthings, and then there's like half pennies and
stuff like that. It's what it sounds like.
Yeah, there are. And there's a whole little
breakdown of that and it breaks it down on the the page how much
each is worth. So 1 LB is 50 shillings is 250
pennies is 1000. But like farthings, yeah.
So resources and mundane equipment.
So there is no focus on resource management in this game.
Claps. Claps in the trot.
Yeah, it says that. Not in the way that dungeon
delves and wilderness campaigns might have.
This doesn't. These are more like military
missions. Gear, food and lodging are
provided by your Lord, so you don't need to really worry about
that stuff. And we've already talked about
the fact that loot can be a thing, but it's not too big and
that the rewards you get for completing the mission are more
important. It's kind of an.
Award stay prayed up y'all. Yeah, yeah, you know, do.
You know I'm quoting when I say that.
Yeah, stay prayed up. Yeah, Mark Wahlberg.
Oh, Marky, Mark the technological.
Level. Right, the technological level
in Wolfwald is equivalent to Northern European before the
Roman conquest. Buildings are wooden, single
story and usually a thatched or Pete roofs.
Bridges are wooden, and other than a battering ram, there are
no siege engines. Glass is rare, and cups and
crockery are made of player wood.
There are no stone buildings, concrete or advanced engineering
to speak of, but the people excel in metallurgy, the forging
of iron and steel weapons and tools, and the more refined
skills of the artisans that make exquisite jewelry.
That's kind of what things are. So getting into weapons, there's
a whole list. There's weapons for each
kindred. So this first one here is the
weapons of men. You get the there's a chart here
says mainly weapon damage and value.
And it gives you the old English name for the knife, CNI FE1D3.
It's worth 2 pennies. But below that, I do really like
that they gave you all the old English because again, they say
we give you the vocab if you want to use it.
But beneath that it gives a breakdown of what every weapon
is. So the knife is an ordinary
everyday tool most likely to be used for eating, hunting and
whittling than combat. So it's it's a pocket knife,
right? And what we talked about before
the, would you call it the sacks?
Sacks, yeah. A large dagger designed for
combat. Their distinctive shape is
easily recognizable, possessing a single sharp edge and a slight
point. The hilt is often made of horn
or wood or combination. So breakdown of the damage and
damage goes from it looks like D3 all the way up to I believe
there might be some D twelves in here and D3 obviously D 6 1/2.
We'll we'll, we'll see. So there's a breakdown for every
weapon. Oh, we'll see.
There are some in here like the the Gebrid axe, which I assume
is like a great, it's a hand axe that do have variations for
criticals. So with the crit, the axe
cleaves the foe skulls. And then it says like if you
have a helmet, this happens. If you don't have a helmet, this
happen. If you have a crit, that
happens. So it's really cool.
I really like that the weapons you carry are dictating some of
your abilities that you can do with them as opposed to me
personally. It's that's so much cleaner than
having to like, pick and like anytime you have a weapon, you
do that. No, just this one weapon gets
this one extra thing, and I love that.
Yeah, it's, you know, adding on to your not like, not
necessarily class through equipment because there are
classes in this, although the classes are incredibly stripped
down. They're very lightweight.
But this is definitely adding those extra bits on and they
feel a little bit easier to manage because they're like
attached to a weapon and not like a million abilities my
character has. Exactly.
I don't know. Why I like it, I prefer that.
I think Cobalt Press when I was actually still doing 5 E stuff,
they had did a really good job of adding like weapon feats in
that were per weapon not per like feet you had to eventually
get and I really, really like that.
I thought that was a much better way of handling it, range
weapons for people's. I did say off to the side here
on my notes that they changed the order of the kindred for
some reason. I think in most of the time it's
been like elf, dwarf, man Rathling and and this one they
went like man and then I think he goes to like dwarf or
whatever. Not that it fucking matters.
You're reading it's a man Rathling, elf dwarf.
Not that it fucking matters. You're going to read it all kind
of an order anyway, but it's interesting that they like flip
the order a couple of times. I assume maybe by like like
page, you know, like what fit on the pages weapons for Rathlings
that also only go up to D10. You get range weapons for
wraithlings, weapons for the elves still only go to D10 and
then range weapons which is like 1 bow and then weapons for the
dwarves. The men quote, UN quote, Men
have the biggest array of weapons and then it kind of like
goes down from there like the the weapons for the dwarves or
there's three of them and then they have like 2 range weapons
and that's it. But you guys call dragon eggs?
Yeah, the dragon eggs are pretty dope.
I do want to talk about the dragon eggs a little bit.
So for the most part they they don't go too in depth for each
of the ones. So I will say there are no lower
bits kind of for the for the for the men and the wraithlings.
But in the elf and the dwarf section, there are little kind
of like lower bit at the top. There's like a little paragraph.
It says we already talked about the the elves of strong taboos
against metal and the dwarves. It talks about kind of the first
kind of part where it really digs into their worship of
Dragons, which we'll get into a little bit more in the Kinch,
the worship Dragons. They use draconic imagery on
everything. So all the weapons are like
that, and all the weapons are incredibly balanced and sharp,
and non dwarves find them difficult to use.
So you get a -, 1 to hit, but the sharpness of their blades
grants a + 2 to hit. So if you're a dwarf you get a
+2. If you're a anybody else you get
a + 1 basically because you get a -, 1 before you get a + 2.
So that's pretty cool. The dragon eggs that Hunter had
talked about, which are interesting, are the ultimate
Dwarg death dealer weapon right? They're basically 6 pack of eggs
that death dealers carry with them that are filled with
alchemical recipes. They're basically like Raven
eggs that have been hollowed out and filled with with chemicals.
Yeah, well, bomb. Yeah, well, bombs.
So there are strong taboos about how they're used and even how
they look. So they're painted and filled
with specific things and then sealed.
So they carry six of them. There are three Gray ones, 2
green ones and a black one. The Gray ones when shattered
create a thick Gray smoke, so especially a smoke bomb obscures
vision. The green one shatters, not
loose, a cloud of noxious gas that blinds and chokes everybody
in a 30 foot cloud. And then the black 1 releases
black spores in a cloud and it's full of toxins and anyone call
it within a 10 foot radius must save or die.
Pretty good, pretty good. I think the.
Death Dealer starts with three eggs.
You can carry a Max of 6. But they start with three.
Yeah, and I think the taboos surround them are like they have
to follow the Geneva Convention, you know?
Yeah, no. Schools mean everybody does,
right? Everyone does.
Everyone does that. And I love that white phosphorus
egg, you know. So then we get to armor and
stuff and we're basically done with book one.
So the interesting thing about armor, what's listed here with
no explanation, which again is the way the entire book is
written, there is a list of the from unarmored all the way up to
what basically is like full plate armor.
And there is in parentheses. There's outside of parentheses
or brackets and inside brackets, and the out brackets are
ascending armor and the in brackets are descending armor.
So it goes 9 up to +7. And then the unarmored Feco kind
of descending goes from 10 to -7 so it goes 10 and then -1 -, 2
-, 1 -, 1 -, 2 - 7. And then there's a breakdown of
what all of the yeah, there's a breakdown about all the armor
are. And then we get to, and maybe
I'm a fucking dumbass. I did pull out my BX stuff.
I did pull out some old editions.
I did Google armor to make sure I'm not a fucking idiot.
I think these are backwards. So we get the helmets and
Shields. So helmets are listed and
Shields are listed, but the outside bracket number is now a
minus and the inside bracket number is now a plus, which
doesn't make sense to me because if I add a helmet, right, I'm
using a sending armor outside. So it's like say that I have the
base, like deer height is plus one and then I add a helmet.
So then I -, 1 off my AC. That doesn't make sense.
I should plus one to my AC for ascending again, right?
Right. And then with the shield, same
thing. They they, they kind of flipped
the outer brackets are minus, but with faco it's descending.
So the more I have, the lower the number should be.
So in the brackets it's now plus one.
So you'd be minus -1 but now plus one.
So you'd basically be unarmored if you had deer hide plus a
helmet. So I think, I think this is
wrong. I think they flipped this
incorrectly. I.
Think you're right? If if it's following the same
path as what's directly above it, which is my assumption that
they should be. So I think that the AC of
helmets and Shields is flipped. So if you're reading this, I
would suggest, unless I'm completely wrong and so I'm
going to go fuck myself. I believe that the bracket
what's in and outside of the bracket for the AC of helmets
and Shields is incorrectly flipped.
But you have them, you have Shields and you have helmets and
stuff like that. So I really like that.
So the Max kind of armor I guess you could possibly get is the
full suit of armor, right? And then you could throw on the
war helm. So you're at +7.
I'm talking about Ace ending +7 and then +2.
So you're at +9 armor and then throw on the the Dwerger's
dragon scale shield at a + 4. So you're at a nice solid plus
13 armor. You probably can't move.
You're basically you're. Still heavy?
You're stuck in one place. Yeah, you're, yeah, you're a
space Marine without the the nuclear fusion battery pack.
So you're stuck. But listen, you're a turtle.
You're you're turtling. So that's great.
And then that's that's pretty much the game for book 1.
You get Appendix A is an entire list of Anglo-Saxon names, which
is cool. Appendix B is the Old English
pronunciation, as we talked about before.
And then and then Appendix C is a table for old school
essentials and some other games. So you get whole class tables
for level HD. They go saves AC initiative
attacks for all 12 classes, which is dope.
And then some empty pages there is.
And then so let's just jump over to Old school Z now.
We'll we'll knock that off of our list.
So yeah, because. There's like nothing I really
want to talk about. There's only one thing I want to
talk because it's basically everything we just talked about
but for OSC except so this is APDF.
This is APDF only. It says in the box that you'll
get everything in the box but then APDF version of the game
for OSC, which is cool. It also it only comes in a
spreads version. There's no page versions.
Yeah, I was interested about that.
Of everything, it's the only one that's in spreads and.
It's probably, I mean, it's just PDF only, maybe it's for print
purposes or something, I don't know.
But it's all exactly the same, except there's an extra appendix
in here that I think is amazing, and I don't understand why it's
not in the other book. So this one is called.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, This is.
I'm going to zoom in. Let's zoom in.
OOP 400 is too much. OOP 10 is too little.
Let's zoom to 150. So.
There's a whole section here on why are you a wolf's head,
right? And it literally breaks down for
elves. There is the death of the tree
for the dwarves. It's truth or love.
It literally tells you the two ways that you're outcast.
In the first book it says no one's ever going to know, but
then it breaks down the two ways here.
For the for the skin, like for the for the men, for the
necromancer dudes. It give me one second.
Skin lag. There we go.
Skin lag. Yeah, for the skin laga it says
it talks about the path to necromancy, but then it also has
a whole breakdown of like 1D6 for the men of the earth for
like what you could have done and then for the wraithlings
it's a 1D6 for what you could have done.
It's a great fucking spread that literally is basically roll
tables or explanations for why you are a wolf's head, but it is
only in the OSE scene. My only thought, my only
possible explanation for this is maybe they wrote this after they
had already gone to print with the other stuff because my God,
this should be in the first one. And there's been room for him.
Yeah, there's even room for it because if you go to, I guess
the last page is empty. You could.
No. Yeah, the last two pages in in
the book are blank. And that's for anyone that
doesn't understand why there's blank pages in books.
Books have to be written in in multiples of four.
Oh, no, there's not. It's just the back cover.
But honestly throw that shit in there for the next one or make
it. I mean I guess if you buy any
part of it, it's readily available.
But that that is a huge thing that if you do that you could
easily miss be like I don't really need the OSC version yet,
but please go read Appendix CI. Think it is an amazing resource
of information for character creation that that really
explains why you are. It's literally called like why
are you a wolf set or whatever. So like I'm in the wrong one.
Appendix C of the OSC version. Why are you a wolf set?
Fantastic, really great read it, it's cool.
I do like the elf one. It's just like, you know, the
other elves, they're just not comfortable being around a
treeless motherfucker, you know? Yeah, yeah.
And you're just so you're such a sad boy that that's just it.
So we're going to run through the.
I think we're making good time. We're at like like an hour and
20 minutes and we have four more books to cover, but we're going
to cruise to them pretty quickly.
We can talk about how much we want to actually go over magic.
I can run through this super fast if you want.
So this is a cover for book 2 magic.
It's got a different cover. It's got like I believe like a
cauldron in the front and then there's a skull and the head of
a blade and then a really interesting design on the top of
it. It says volume two O 5 booklets.
It says magic. So do you want me to cruise your
magic? Do you want to cruise your
magic? Is there a partial magic that
you? I mean I will say that the the
immediate first magic class, the Dwargus.
Bait Weaver. OK, well then.
Let me let's let's. Cruise to that and we'll talk
about that one a little bit more and then just run through the
other one. So basically wolf Walt magic.
It says that magic is rare and dangerous, something to be
feared. Magic users are unwelcome in any
village or meat haul. They're feared by superstitious
peasants, mistrusted by warriors, and only the power of
the Lord they serve will protect them.
But for sorcerers, even that may not be enough.
Players who choose to play casters and wolf all need to be
cautious around MPCS, and it can expect a cold response from
most. It talked about the guilder
which gives like a quick like one or two lines of again it's
equal to level plus primary stat but it doesn't have that table
like was in character one. I honestly think you could just
flip those two because I don't. I mean, yeah, no, here's the
thing. You already saw it in the other
one. This is explaining magic, not
how to make a character. So I think this is this is cool.
It tells you it's it's and it gives you like, why you're going
to use it. It applies to all saves against
magic and some other circumstances.
And then we get to the the rune fate weaving.
So in order for this to work, the dwarves contemplate the true
meaning of runes and then use the understanding of those runes
to change fate and shape reality.
And they, the dwarves know that men who use rooms stole them
from the dwarves, but dwarves kind of don't really care
because they stole them from Dragons.
So that's, that's kind of what it is.
There are 24 rooms and three sets called eights, three sets
of eight called eights, their families.
There's first, second and third eight, and then the level of the
word webers. The the base of the Fate Weavers
dictates the maximum number of rooms they can may they can use
in combination and also contributes to their room
casting role. And once a Fate Weaver has used
a room, they cannot use it again until they've used all their
other rooms. And then each room has a sphere
of influence. And some rooms can be reversed
or cast in different ways. So before I get into like how it
all works and stuff like what drew you specifically to the the
the rune magic? Oh, I love the open
interpretation of it. Like the runes all have like a
kind of group of things that they symbolize and you can hit
the reverse with them too. So it could be opposite or I
think there's one of the things not quite reversed, but I just
like the ability for your magic to be so open format.
You know, you can like, yeah, I'm using the Thor, I think.
I think the example is in one of these somewhere is the thorn
room to room to put a wall of thorns to block the enemies.
But just being like, you have a word.
How do you like use that word? Yeah, yeah.
Big fan of that. You know what this reminds me
of? Like completely.
This is Acid Major's magic. Yeah, I mean, that's why, that's
probably why I like it, because you've a, you have a word that
describes the baseline. How do you use that that word as
like to expand the pond, you know?
Yeah, and and then you can use the inverse, which acid mate
just does doesn't have specifically like 12 symbols and
you can like and have like the push and pull or whatever you
know there are. 8 opposing yeah there.
You go, yeah, yeah, this when? As soon as I saw the reverse
one, I was like, oh, this sounds so much like acid mages.
Yeah, you're right. The openness of it is cool.
As you grow, you can add more runes together to create like a
whole new different effect. And it's really open to
interpretation, very open format and you're very imaginative.
And if you feel boxed in when you play a caster that you're
like, I have fucking fireball and that's the spell, This is
not that. And I love that.
Yeah, it's really great. Well, like you said, it said
level dictates maximum number of runes that can be used in
combination. So by Level 3 you can actually
put 3 runes together to put like, you know, whichever 3 and
interpret the three together to create a thing which is so
interesting, so interesting. Like this is definitely for
people that like that very abstract magic.
It's cool. So you have to do a room casting
role, it's 1D20 roll under with wisdom plus any penalties.
It works or it fails. That's it. 3 levels are decided
by the GM. The levels of difficulty for how
they're going to use it, that's determined by the GM, but the
player decides how they're going to be used.
Saving throws are a thing. And then there is a whole the
three uses of the rooms. There are three different ways
they can be used. There's casting where you
contemplate a room for an hour, any less takes a penalty.
But then you can just do the thing that you want with the
room. There is a warding and binding
where you actually you place a rune on something, inscribe it
on something, it takes 4 hours. And a casting role you make is
when it's activated. So that's kind of what you
talked about, the thorn bridge. You can attack a thorn bridge on
something, when they run over it, it'll pop up and that's when
you make your casting role to determine whether it works or
not. And then the last thing is
inscription, and that is permanent takes.
It's permanent. It takes a day to contemplate
and a day to perform, requires a casting role.
And then that rune is now permanently Forsaken.
It's gone from your rune list. And the only way to get it back
is to like permanently destroy, burn, just like absolutely get
rid of whatever you put it on. So if you put that description
on a rock, you have to crush the rock, burn the rocks, spread the
ashes, you know what I mean? Throw it in the river, do
whatever and then you'll get access to that that run back.
Like I said, saving throws, they're a thing.
They exist. And then there's a whole section
here on the on the runes and their meanings.
So there's literally breaking down all 24 runes by 8, just a
couple right off the top. There's cattle strength, sharp
mouth, Rd. torch, gift, hail, need spear.
So lots of really interesting stuff.
And then for each one, do you want to pick one room and just
talk about like? That's yeah.
Let's talk about cattle. It's an interesting one.
Right cattle. Feel.
That's the first one. So yeah.
Feel cattle, it relates to
wealth, cattle herds, property, winning land, possessions, luck,
abundance, energy, protecting wealth.
And then the reverse on it is greed, cowardice, stupidity,
poverty, avarice, enmity over money.
So wealth, greed, ownership, like the ability to influence
these things all in this room. I think it's a really
interesting one. Yeah, and I like that.
So basically for those that can't see, there's a picture of
the actual room and then it says Feo cattle, and then it says
relates to everything he said in reverse Everything forever for
all 24, for all 24, the world building in this section just by
explaining what the runes like are relating to and reverse to.
Fantastic. Really, really love it a lot.
Once again, book 2 is not hyperlinked or bookmarked, so
we're going to do a lot of scrolling.
So if you don't like scrolling, that sucks for you.
Quick run through of the elf spell singer.
So basically they use chants and singing to both gain and use
magic. Each song takes one round or a
minute out of combat. The magic effect it takes effect
in the next round. Except glamour, which starts to
work as soon as the victim hears it.
And in order to use it, they have to be able to sing.
So if your tongue is cut out or you can't breathe or anything
like that, you can't use fucking magic, right?
Well, if you use a bad singer. I mean, you can still use magic,
people just won't like the way it sounds I guess.
My assumption is, well, everybody can sing, right?
Everyone has a. Song in their heart, right?
Yeah, No, everyone. Can sing.
You just have to get to. You just have to learn pitches
and all that kind of shit. And the sound that works for
you. Yeah.
Do we want to harmonize? Wait, come on.
Come in. OK.
All right. Anyway, so elf spell singing.
OK. Yeah.
So there's three forms. They're shape shifting.
Or you have to actually coax animals to you, have them teach
you their secrets and then you can turn into them and you can
shape shift for Gelder times for Gelder hours and you select a
Gelder bonus number of animals forms per level.
The next is glamour. It's used to manipulate people.
Victims can save to resist, but can't attempt again for one to
three days if you fail to glamour somebody.
Or I guess if you do. And then you can glamour number
of people and times per level, and then the victim after your
glamour can try to save to remember what happened while
they were glamoured. The last one is the songs of the
forest. You're basically singing at
trees and the trees teach you their songs, right?
And at each level you learn a gelder number of songs that can
be sung once per day, but you don't pick them.
The GM rolls because the trees pick the song that they teach
you. It's interesting, if the GM ever
rolls the song twice, you can choose either have them roll
again, or if you already have it and they roll it again, you can
then sing that song twice a day if you want, which is cool.
Yeah. And then there's a breakdown of
every song. It's a, it's AD 10 list of
songs. So Song of Memories, Forest of
Fear, Cloak of Leaves, Trial of the Tree.
So it's a breakdown of all of those and it gives you all of
them in order here. So this is what you imagine.
The song of storm, the song of time.
You know, Princess Zelda's lullaby?
Right, Yeah, yeah. Links Awakening.
So the forbidden path of the skin licka.
This is the Necromancy of the Shining Ones.
It is most reviled, feared, and taboo sorcery and Wolfwold
players must roll 1D20 under the character's charisma to avoid an
overly negative reaction from NPCS.
So, and once they learn that you're a necromancer, you have
to roll for them not to freak the fuck out on you.
No, it's. Cool dude, don't worry the the
whole corpse thing, it's not even like my main thing, don't
worry about it. Yeah, reduce, reuse, recycle,
you know what I mean? Like it's, it's fine.
Well, they weren't. Using their corpse anymore, you
know? No.
Well, yeah, so there are three realms of power and all require
you to call a phantom from the underworld and trap it in your
body and use its power with a Calling the Dead roll.
Obviously this is my shit. This is so my shit.
It's crazy, right? I'm an edgelord trash person.
That is true, and that's fine by me.
I've been saying it for years. Yeah, I've, I've been saying it
for years. I don't hide it.
Listen, I'm stunted. So we'll go over all three of
those power types in a bit. But part of that there is taint
and corruption that comes from this as well.
So something that's different from the other forms of magic.
So anytime that you attempt to someone a phantom, whether it's
successful or not, you accrue a point of taint.
And if if you ever roll under your current taint, you gain
corruption, grow, grow up. And if you're.
If the. If the taint ever reaches 20,
you take 2 rolls on the table before it resets to 0 because
after you get corruption you were set to 0, but if you ever
hit 20 you do 2 and then reset it to 0.
So there's a crazy amount of of corruption you can get here.
Spectral sin use whites hand. They're basically all minuses,
just stats. So spectral sin use is a
permanent -1 to your strength. Spectral chill is a permanent -1
to your con and they're accumulative, so if you roll the
same thing multiple times you can.
If you get spectral stenu 3 times as -3 to strength that's
crazy. It's.
Brutal. I mean the effects you do get
for this one, through briefly reading through them previously,
I'm like, oh you guys are pretty cool stuff though.
Yeah, they're pretty tight. Yeah, they're tight, tight,
tight. There is definitely fatigued
though. So you do get fatigued as part
of your casting, and we'll go over that in a little bit.
So the use of the powers can cause you to be fatigued.
If your fatigue exceeds your current HP, you collapse and
lose 1 HP permanently. You can recover one fatigue per
turn as long as you do nothing, nothing more strenuous than
walking. So fatigue can come on quickly
and then leave quickly. But if it stacks too high, if it
ever gets higher than your current HP, you permanently lose
an HPI. Love that.
I don't know why it's so clean and interesting.
It's just like, I don't know, I, I could describe it to you in a
way that we have ACPR machine, but it wouldn't make sense to
anyone that doesn't use like the specific type of monitor that we
use when we're doing CPR on a person.
But like you basically can like build up and build up and build
up. And I love the idea that if you
ever build up enough to hit that HP, even though it like fades
really quickly, you just collapse and lose 1 permanent
and have to do it all over and over again.
I don't know, it's super clean and super interesting and super
fivy. I don't know why I love this
rule so much. It's really great.
So three types of necromancer powers.
You've got the call of fear, and this is when you summon a
hideous phantom that takes on its gas and you take on its
ghastly form and appear to your enemies as half rotted specter
that shines with dazzling eldritch light.
That sucks for you, I mean. I love that that you you don't
summon like a specter to it's that you take on the I mean, you
do some of specter, but you take on it's like.
You. Know.
Yeah, yeah, we're not. Going to go over fatigue for
every one of them. We'll we'll work for this first
one so it instant. The power can be used instantly
as long as you have a coin stained with the blood of a
traitor in one hand and a Rowan wand in the other.
The power cost 1 taint and one fatigue, plus an additional
point of fatigue for each round it is maintained.
And it can be maintained for gelder number of rounds.
So if your AP gets low, you automatically start with a point
of taint and a point of fatigue, and then for every round it
builds on that fatigue. So yeah.
And you can protect your allies by giving them an amulet made
from the finger bones of innocent children.
Very good. Yeah, Don't forget.
You're fucked up, don't forget. To bleed on your Rowan wand
sometime too. Yeah, don't forget your finger
bones of innocent children. Yeah, don't forget those guys.
I'm going to get all ghastly. I love the sometimes I feel
like, yeah, I love necromancy. I love proxy fighting and law
stuff because I love minions and stuff.
But so a lot of times necromancy doesn't always feel as dark as
it really is. This one does.
They're really like, fucking no. It's fucked up.
Yeah, yeah, this shit's fucked up.
Call the underworld. So the most potent of the three
powers you call an evil instruct a phantom from the underworld
and take on its form to use its powers to smite enemies.
So you actually the the phantom summoned to fight has a number
of HD in powers equal to Gelder with base.
So you you you summon it in and then are using it to fight with.
So it's like a force within you on the first round in to summon
this thing, you use a knife that is pierced the heart of an
adulterer. You cut yourself, dripping the
blood onto your Robin wand. That's what it says, OK.
There you go, and the next round you do your role to call the
dead, to take the form of the phantom.
So you have to do a whole round where you're bleeding yourself
with a knife Pierce that pierced the heart of an adulterer.
Yeah, and there are 8 different phantoms that you can summon
into yourself, Bone Shard shredder, Eldritch lightning,
ghostly glide, funeral pyre, skeletal skin, grave bound,
shining shade, and death touch. So bone Shard shredder for
example, it bestows the gift of deadly bone claws, granting plus
one to hit and one D 6 + 2 damage.
For each additional time this power is rolled, increase the
bonus to hit by 1 and damage by +2.
Boy, that can. That can.
That can get pretty beefy pretty quick.
But the taint and fatigue and curd is equal to the number of
powers of the phantom. Each phantom's powers are
determined by rolling 1D8 per power.
So like you can get fatigue and and and stuff super fast at this
one. And then the final super fucked
up one. And then there's a breakdown of
all eight of those. The final super fucked up one is
called the call of kinship. It appears that the shade of a
dead friend or family member of the victim and it requires the
skull of a murderer to be hidden where I can see the victim for a
day so the malign phantoms of the on the world can observe the
victim and take on the form of their dead relatives.
Isn't so unbelievably evil. Like I often play as necromancer
because I'm like not really that evil in practice but this one's
like oh this is straight up fucked up evil shit bro gear up
everyone hates you. Yeah, all of these are super
fucked up and evil and I, I fucking love Paolo.
Like I love, if you've read any of the old, the, the previous,
like magic stuff, there's some fucked up shit in there and I
really, really enjoy it. The last part of this is
creating orcnas. Orcnas, basically, these are if
once you've reached Level 3 of the necromancer powers, you can
create undead warriors by replacing a vital part of a
fresh corpse. Like the eyes are hard or
something with something vile like maggots or, or a nest of
rats or something. And then they can rise up and
serve you until they're slain or you or you get them to go back
to true death with a drop of blood spilled onto onto your
ruined wand. Yeah.
So for each one created, you lose 3 points of charisma.
Yeah. And you can create as many as
you want until your charisma is reduced to three.
Yeah, and only get your charisma.
Yeah, and only get your charisma back when you, when they, when
they, when they die, when you, when they're two dead, right.
But charisma isn't your casting. So just fucking do it.
But that just means that everyone can see like your your
roles for MPCS and shit are super low and stuff like that.
Was it Christmas not the casting for.
No, I'm pretty sure that the only charisma 1 was the spell
singer. You're right.
Yes, you're right. No, you're you're totally
correct. Yeah, real quick though, the
witchcraft, the Wicca craft. So these are the Wrathling
witches? Well, hold on, that's AC after
an I, which implies that's pronounced by chapter by church,
although I would say that's definitely Wicca, but her the
pronunciation guide AC after an I or E is ACH.
So, you know, whatever. Yeah, so so witch witchcraft.
That's what I'm thinking. Yeah, witchcraft, so rattling
witches, they learn the craft slowly and carefully on the
tutelage of tribes, Crohn's, but some of the young ones run away
and learn from foul spawn familiars.
So that's what we talked about here.
So there's you can learn as many.
So learning the craft and paying the price, there's always a
price for for learning these kind of crafts.
So you can learn as many elements as you want, but you
sacrifice a part of your spirit for each with permanent losses
attributes in HP. So each time a witch learns an
element of craft, including at generation, the referee rules
1D6 and permanently reduces the world attribute by 1.
So strength, wisdom, constitution, wisdom decks and
hit points. So it's not the six that you
have, it's the six listed here which list Wisdom twice.
Yeah. And and your HP.
Yeah, it definitely can be pretty brutal.
Yeah, absolutely. And then you get into the
familiars, which is how you do stuff.
So the familiars take on the form of small animals associated
with death, the knight or carrion, like crows, Ravens,
owls, lizards, things like that. And there are 9 elements to the
craft. Maybe we'll pick one, but they
are the 9. Herb charm, curses, the green
candle, scrying amulet, crafting potions, poisons, venoms and the
puppet and the thorn. We're actually not going to go
over those by the fucking book. We're going to go a little
faster here. The Wolfwald magic items.
So basically I really like this part.
So Paula wrote that the they're presented in the form of fairy
tales, folklore, and myths. And the GM's are encouraged to
create their own magic items with stories and histories
unique to their own tables and campaigns.
So when you go through a magic item, it literally is like a
multi page folklore story of why that item is and what it is.
And then gives you a little bit of of things like like its
current location, the owner, things like that.
Really, really, really interesting way to do magic
items. And then the last section is the
again, it would be great if this is hyperlinks I'm going to is
the gods and religions of Wolfwald.
So there is no priest class in the game, right?
But there are priests that exist in the world.
And there's this weird, IE this is another section that's
written in a way that like is slightly confusing to me.
So it says there are no clerics, blah blah.
In other words, there are no gods in Wolfwall the RPG, but in
Wolfwall the setting, not only the gods are real.
I think that's typo there. Not only are the gods real, but
everyone believes in them. The gods may not exist, but the
priesthood does, and the power of the wheel is real enough.
It contradicts itself like three times in there.
I'm so confused, but I'm going to be honest.
Actually, the moment I was reading this, I saw clerics and
priests. I was like, cool, I'm good on
this. So I actually didn't read this
paragraph. Yeah.
So this doesn't make in these two lines, I think this don't
make sense. So again, there, there are no
gods in Wolfwald the RPG, which means I assume that means that
you're not worshipping anybody or whatever kind of whatever.
But in Wolfwald the setting, not only the gods are real.
I again, I think I'm the typo. Not only are the gods real, so
they are real, but everyone believes in them.
And then the very next line says the gods may not exist, but the
priesthood does do. Are there real gods or not?
I have no idea. Yeah, there's some clarification
that needs to be done there. And the typo in that line 5
right there. Not only the gods are real, I
think it's supposed to be. Not only are they are.
The gods real. Yeah, Yeah.
Yeah, regardless, the people believe in them and they fear
interview of them and there's a breakdown of all of them.
So basically the religions of of the men, there was the oldest
God, which is the worship of the earth dragon, which we'll go
over a little bit later, and that's Earth Druka and then that
and that was replaced by worship of the elder gods, which are
like the sun. And.
Yeah, exactly. And then that was replaced by
Religion of the New Gods, which is like Woden and Frigga and
things like that. Things that sound a little bit
more Nordic, right? Because the men feel very Nordic
in this. I mean, Logan is the Germanic
for Odin, yeah. And they're tall, blonde and you
have plated hair. So yeah, what could it be?
Yeah, I'm gonna be the religion of the wraithlings.
It says it's tribe. The tribe, they have their own
little little things that they worship.
Sun gods, war gods, things like that.
Horn gods of the forest. I fuck with wraithlings so hard.
I'm sad that the necromancers are technically, I think part of
are the the casters for the men and to the Cathars for the
wraithlings. Because the witches are for
wraithlings. Yeah, yeah.
And then the religion of the dwarves is interesting because
they worship, they worship the earth dragon.
Earthdruck us still, right? But she is real and exists and
they keep her imprisoned in the mountain and torture her so that
she creates fire to heat their forges and farm her eggs and
unborn offspring to create their arms, armor and magics.
Oh. So they literally have, yeah
they have their God captured and literally steal her eggs and
torture her and make her breathe fire to do their bedding and
shit. Pretty dark.
Yeah, pretty dark religion of the elves their ancestor
worship. Each tree in the forest contains
the spirit of an ancestor and every living elf is joined to
the spirit of a tree and that's that's pretty much their shit.
Then there's magic tables here that really do amount to magic
character sheets like they fucking do.
So when you look at the Dornick rune fate weaving, you literally
can mark off like what you've learned, what you've cast, how
you've cast it. It's got an explanation, It's
got the names of all of the runes on it, and it even has a
space to put your rune casting like number, like the number for
rune casting on it. When you go to the spell singing
it literally has like check boxes for what shapes you have.
It's dope as fuck. These are casting character
sheets. Give me one of these for the
classes. It's this easy I want more fault
character sheets and it break and it even gives you like what
you can do for glamour. What songs you have checked?
It has like 2 little boxes in case you've learned it twice.
And then for the forbidden paths, it has a part to mark
down how much date you have, how much fatigue you have.
What you're calling the dead number is what corruption do you
have? It's they're literally character
sheets for casters and the Wiccas have, the witches have
one too. There's a whole magical index
which is interesting because it actually is hyperlinked but only
the numbers are hyperlinked. So I skipped it.
I skipped over it a couple of times because only the numbers,
not the words are. Which is fine, I'd rather have
some than none, but it's all the way in the back of the book.
But it's an index. It's not the table of contents
in the beginning. Please hyperlink table of.
If you're going to hyperlink the index, which is literally like
100 fucking things, why not hyperlink the seven things at
the front of the index that it makes no fucking sense?
I'll get even more nitpicky. If you're gonna hyperlink the
numbers in your index, just do the whole line.
Just do the whole line. Yeah.
Yeah, I agree. OK, So that is magic.
We're gonna cruise through the next three.
I think we're cruising really well.
We did that whole one in like 25 minutes.
Yeah, I mean. I think the first one's the
longest one. I mean cuz campaign, we're
probably not gonna deep dive all campaigns.
I have like this much. I have like this much to say
about it. Yeah.
So this is the cover of campaigns.
It's got a building with flame coming out from it.
It's got a crown with some Spears going through it.
Says campaigns on it. You like the cover on this one?
Yeah, the cover on all of them are so sick.
Yeah, I don't know why, but this actually might be my favorite
cover, so I don't. Know I don't know.
I mean, honestly, my favorite is the the three wolves on Yeah.
The three wolves, I feel like that's everyone's first choice
for their favorite, though. I'm trying to be eclectic with
my choice. I'm trying to be an individual.
You know, are you? Well then mine is mine is mine
is probably the Magic 1 then, to be quite honest.
Oh, I don't know, the monsters one kind of fucks yeah, mine's
probably the Magic 1 then. So anyway, that's campaigned, so
let's cruise through campaigns real quick.
So once again, not hyperlinked, you get some sections, you get
the kingdoms of Wolfwald and other lands, Wolfwald society
and write your Wolfwald. And then you get a bunch of
appendices, appendices which are optional rules, the rolls war of
Wigwill, which is like an adventure, some stuff about war
bands. One of your Friedman is and
Wolfwald's who's who. So this is kind of a little
Gazeteer explainer. So talk about the Wolfwald
campaign. Basically it says the world of
Wolfold is a world where the bond of war band, the oath of
loyalty between warrior and king, your words, your honor and
your status mean everything. So it's just a, it's a breakdown
of of kind of the world and how it works.
There's a huge map here. I'll open the whole map in a
little bit. Actually, let me just open the
map as APDF so we can look at it.
So it is real quick open, bitch. There you go.
So that's the entire map. It's great.
It's beautiful. It's a gorgeous map.
Really nice map. Yeah, it's really the the dragon
Caves, like the Eastlands, like the the Moore Highlands.
It's so detailed and clearly like it gets, I mean, it's OK,
so it's not that, but it is very highly detailed.
You can get, you can get deep in this map.
I'm at 400% right now and it's very clear.
So you can get you can get up in Wodens wound.
So yeah. So campaign three.
So the Kingdom of Wolf, Ald and other lands.
So the world of Wolfold. Oh, I did write down a little
breakdown for this. The world of Wolfold is a world
where the bond of war, band, oath and loyalty between
warrior, between warrior and king.
Your word, your honor and your status, meaning everything, is a
world where family, community, and the King's laws are a shield
against misfortune and the terror of the unknown.
Unfortunately for the player characters, the world of Wolfold
is one which they have none of these things.
Yeah, and then you get what amounts to the gazetteer.
This is a list of the lands, ruler banner, some lore AD 12
encounter table and some other table sometimes.
So looking at this first one, Eastland sex Eastland 6 right,
the ruler king born hall, the banner, a black Raven on a blood
red background looks dope. There's a bunch of there's a
rest of that pages of lore about that land.
And then beneath that it says encounters in Eastland.
It's a 2D6 encounter table, which means, you know that what
a 2D6 means. It means that the ones in the
middle are the ones that are most likely to happen.
That's how 2D6 works. And that's a whole section.
So it goes through a whole big chunk of that, the Midlands,
Stuffland, Westland, Middle. So north-south, east, West and
middle. Very, very.
What's great is that this is exactly how people would call
them. I was just saying that's totally
how humans name things, you know?
What is the gate to the South called?
Oh, that's Southgate. Wait, come on, feel.
Like canyons, like it's really big and grand.
We'll call it the Grand Canyon. You.
Know exactly people that take too much time to name shit some
fancy thing. It's not, It's not.
That's not how things work. What is?
What is that river to east called?
Oh, that's East River. Like, come on.
Like OK, wolf walled society, where did that start?
Here we go, wolf walled society. So this is a breakdown of
technology and population size. It is a list of the wolf walled
social order which is right here starts at the king and goes all
the way down to the wolfs heads and there's a breakdown of all
of that from the king to the queen to the Princess to the
sages and everything Elderman things, all that cool breakdown.
There's a section here about the division of land.
It basically says like land is the main source of wealth and
things like that. So how how are how is land
divided? The smaller unit is called a
hide. And then it goes up from there,
tithing the 100, the Shire, things like that.
So how it's all separated, right?
Yeah. The Shire, they have around
doors the Wolfwald society. It says NPC attitudes or who
hates whom and why? I love that.
I don't know why that's so fucking funny, NPC attitudes.
But basically it says that it's a very rigid society and people
live and die in their for small communities.
The one constant of all of these small communities is that
everyone hates you because you're an outcast piece of shit.
Perfect. And then there is just a list of
who hates who in society. So if you if you if you start
with the first one here, which is basically like the the
peasants, right? The peasants are are to a lesser
extent curls. They hate everyone because they
fear everyone, but they are far too servile, cowed or fearful of
a beating to do much about it. Literally, it's who who hates
these people, who rules these people.
It's interesting. And that's that's neat.
Another another copy of the map is that twice a year?
I think maps in here twice, one vertical and one across 2
spreads. I'm fine that.
Is in fact in here twice. I wouldn't be surprised if it's
literally the middle spread of the book, which would be cool.
There's a section here on Write Your Wolfwald.
So there's a giant bit of writing here, like a like a
prose poem. This is the wonderer too.
The wise warrior must understand how ghostly it will be when all
this world's wealth stands ruined.
And then it continues for a whole page.
I love that. So there's a seven step process
for writing your wolf, Walt, your campaign.
We're not going to talk about them, but they're cool.
The seven steps are setting the tone, where to start casting the
NPCS. As in like creating them,
figuring out who they are, where they are, and why.
The campaign structure for number 4 #5 is Beyond Kings.
And what if it all goes wrong, right?
6 is. Meanwhile in Suffolin Sex, it
says by now you should have a basic idea of how to set up a
campaign, but what sort of structure?
Blah blah blah, you're going to read that right?
And then 7 is a session by session discussion, right?
You get to Appendix A, which is going to be your optional rules.
These are cool. You get reactions, so it's a
classic D6 reaction table with modifiers, right?
Immediate threat down to tentative friendship, which is
neat. You get a taking action section.
So outside of magic and combat, most of the game takes place in
an abstract narrative form. So there is a way that you can
choose to take action that says. However, if the outcome event is
disputed, it can be set with AD 6 role plus or minus any
relevant stat bonus. So beats 2 for beat, 2 for very
easy, 3 for easy, 4 for medium, 5 for hard, 6 for very hard, and
then there is a combat order 1. So it says set.
You can set order by class in the action, which we talked
about a little bit in Swivers. This gives you that kind of like
Swivers thing, not necessarily by weapon type, but just by the
action you're doing. So initiative winning
skirmishers take half a move and attack on aim is number 1 and
#10 it's initiative losing warriors move.
So it's literally by like the action you want to do and the
class you're taking. Very old school, but it is an
optional rule. It is interesting.
Appendix B is a short adventure. I like that they call it a short
misadventure. That's funny.
And then appendix, make sure Appendix C is the war band.
It is the abstract skirmishing for Wolfwald.
So it's basically like troop style.
They're derived from troop type. So that's interesting.
Definitely fun. Read on if you want to switch up
the the kind of positioning, tactical infantry, role-playing,
things like that, siege warfare, all sorts of stuff.
It's when you're not individually fighting.
We're going to fight as like a group or you know, a bigger
group. One of your freedmen is is
personality traits, behaviors and name tables for Friedman in
PCs. So you can literally roll for
personality, behavior and name. So do me a solid roll me 2D
twelves. Separately and then AD 60 and AD
30. OK, so the two D12, first one's
a three second one's A5. So you're a sly liar.
And then AD 60. Yeah, just type in one D60.
Hold on, I was using the Google's dice roller.
OK, for AD 60 I rolled a 53. So you're will and then on one
D30. And then I rolled A-15 on the
D30. Willen the sly liar.
There you go. There you go.
Not you. That's the Freeman. 60 Fuck you.
Can't be AD 66 and A and a 36. That's AD 60.
So and then you have a a wolf waltz who's who.
So I believe, oh, this is a non hyperlinked I I think perfect.
Yeah, it's a non hyperlinked list of all of the kings, Queens
and warlords and stuff for the entire table.
So there is a page number listed but it's UN hyperlinked.
Why? All five of these have such a
weird mix of bookmarks and hyperlinks and what part's
hyperlinked and what's not hyperlinked, Because I do
believe starting with Did this one have it?
No, it's the next. 1/3 So 3 has a list of who's who and everyone
you talked about with page numbers but not hyperlinks, and
the index is still not hyperlinked.
Let's move on to four. This is monsters.
The interesting thing about monsters is, guess what, this
one randomly for some reason does have bookmarks.
Yep. Pretty extensive ones.
Yeah, actually super. Yeah, it means everything is
bookmarked in this. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
So real quick rundown of monsters, This is super easy.
There are Dragons, Etnas, Etns, Etnas, beasts and everyone else.
And then a creature list. So Dragons, sometimes called
worms, They are all the prodigy of earth Draca, the earth
dragon, the mother dragon, the first dragon.
She hatches an egg every 100 years.
There are only 7 living Dragons and there's not going to be any
fucking more. Guess why?
Because the dwarves have her tortured and steal her eggs.
There we go. Yeah, I was.
Opening 5 I figured I wasn't open on my computer so I'm just
I'm prepping for the next one. Yeah, so there are, there's a
picture of her and there are 7 living Dragons.
Not going to go over them. They're cool.
You get a bunch of information, you get a name, you get lore,
you get stats, you get other stuff that they can do.
Like the first guy you can be as a shapeshifter and a poisoner of
hearts and minds. So there's seven Dragons.
They're all dope. A lot of them have art.
Not every single one of them, but they're school like half
page spreads for art for a lot of them, like half.
And then you move on to the Etnas like Eddens.
Basically, there are giants. There are 6 giants in the world
of Wolfold. That is it.
And when they are all slain, there will be no more.
That's when Ragnarok will come so.
Yeah, first one is Bevis of Whorehundle.
Yeah, Gil Bevis, Gil Grogar, the Long Man, the rude man is that 6
and the and the thirst man and the night man, he cometh.
So that's all those same, same as everything else.
You get some lore, you get some stats, you get some bonus shit
for it. Really cool beasts and everyone
else. It's literally fucking
everything. It's it's beastmen, doom goats.
It's a massive beast area. We're not going to talk about
them. We're going to skip all of that.
They're they're great art throughout the entire thing,
though. Like this, the art for the for
the marsh fiend with like the sheep running away from it.
Fantastic piece of art that's on page 21.
Really dope. I'm so wrapped up in the doom
goats. They have the goats with subtle
human features and bodies of humans with not so subtle goat
features. That's terrifying.
Yeah. Blowing.
Hood and roads it's that. 1824 movie, you know.
Yeah, so again, a lot of great art throughout this entire B
stereo section. It's cool.
We're going to get down to some weird stuff here at the bottom.
So creature list, dope. Fully fucking hyperlinked there.
So the first book that has bookmarks also is the first one
that is like super, well, hyperlinked.
I think Magic had hyperlinks, but only in the numbers.
This is this is the whole line. Everything is hyperlinked here,
right? It says volume 4 and has a list
of every dragon, giant beast and everyone else on here.
Great. Awesome.
And then for some reason the next page is volume 5, which is
people. Yeah.
This is where that is OK, Yeah. So it's we're going to get to
the people section, which is like basically a beast area
before like NPCS and people and shit, right?
And it is also not, none of this information is in this book.
For some reason, the the people list from Volume 5 is in volume
4. And I checked, it is in the book
too. It's in the printed book.
It's not just on. Yeah, it's in the printed book.
Very weird. If we go to the back, you'll see
that right here. It says you just want to know
what's in the next volume. You don't have to worry, you
already have the page numbers right here.
It says what? Let me go over, it says volume 5
right there. And the weirdest part of this,
which is fine, whatever, they're also hyperlinked, but, but
clearly not to the correct page because if you go to page 4,
you're going to go to a dragon, You're not going to go to the
doomed of the elves, right? So it's very weird that this is
here at all. And it's even more weird that
it's hyperlinked because it's hyperlinked to the wrong pages,
because this is correctly hyperlinked. 4 volume 5.
If you go to page 4 of volume 5, you're going to get to the ELF
doomed, right? But not here.
But if I click on that, boom, I go to page 4.
So it's very weird that it's here.
And even if you wanted the list here, you should break all those
hyperlinks. Kind of weird.
And then underneath that is a creature master list.
So it is not just a link to all of the creatures.
It's literally all of the stats for every creature, which I
think is also dope. This is not hyperlink, but I'm
fine with that. It literally is empathized.
That's it couldn't be easier that that's great there you know
I. Don't have I?
Have you ever seen the thing where it's literally just like
stacked all stats for every creature you need like right in
a row? That's fucking great.
Yeah, it's great. I mean, and the moment you get
to the point where you're so comfortable with this game and
you know the names of things, you're like, I can just find the
name really quick. It's no let.
Me. Just talk to the Friedman, yeah?
Yeah, you know, it's even funnier real quick about that
Volume 50. Never mind, I found it.
Never mind. Ignore me.
Keep going. Here's the thing that I don't
mind that it's here because all of those are listed in the
master creature list below, right?
So if I do want to go to the Phage or the Doomed or whatever,
I can go to F and here it is. Here are the stats.
Just break the hyperlinks. Yeah, obviously it's just copy
paste it over. You know, that's my assumption,
but just break the just take the page numbers out because the
page numbers aren't applicable to this volume.
It's weird. It's like the biggest, it's like
one of the only like big shining, like weird errors we've
seen across all the volumes. And then we're going to go 5 the
the last volume and then we're done.
I'm I'm we, we have basically two hours and, and we've cruised
close to 250 pages. I'm a fan.
So this is people. Yeah, this is people.
Let me bring up the cover for five so you can see it.
Boom. There's the people, here's the
steeple, here's the people. You know all that thing.
It's got three peoples. It's got like a, it's three
peoples, right stacked on top of each other.
One with the axe, one with the bow.
Wants a shield. It's dope.
I do like this one. Again, the art on this is
fantastic. We're going to go to #5 again,
this one also is bookmarked extensively, table of contents
still not hyperlinked. And then it's a breakdown of all
the peoples. So we're going to just talk on
them. So first is a breakdown of the
So this is more info on the kin trade, some stat blocks,
including what the PCs would be as in PCs, right?
So if you run into a doomed, that's not you.
What would fighting one be like? Right.
So for the elf, the the elf sin I wrote, yeah, the elf kin bro,
That's that's a. Pronunciation Guide.
Bro, fuck off. So the elf can I wrote not too
much new stuff. It just talks about all the
things that I talked about before basically like the trees
and all that kind of stuff. The forest fast the wood guard.
It gives a lot like like you could you could play as a wood
guard, but you could fight a wolf guard and here's the stats
for a wood guard forest interlopers, those kind of
things, right. The doomed stats for a doomed
shooters. So basically a lot of the the
classes that you could be, these are the NPC versions of them if
you're fighting against them, right?
A great huge page spread of of elfkin right here, which are
great. Same thing with the the
dwargars, the dwarves. This goes more deeply into the
lore about the dragon worship and like what lies beneath and
everything like that. So that's pretty cool.
Talks a little bit more about dragon weapons and then gives
you stat locks for things like Death Dealer and Shield Brother
and things like that. There's an image here of the the
little dwarf stalking of the dragon and and whatnot.
More art, which is cool, full of arts.
Then you get to the Wraithlings. This has more info on their
societal structure. So it says that they gather in
wolf packs, war bands, and sometimes even a horde.
But I do distinctly remember in the very first book, it's.
Saying. There aren't other wolf packs so
I think that's that should be flipped out.
They gather in war bands and sometimes hordes.
They raid across borders, killing, looting and burning
stuff. It's considered uncouth by men,
as many Rathling cultures are Whatever.
This is a breakdown of the entire Rathling societal
structure, which is really, really, really cool.
Gives more stats for a young Spears and the poison battle era
ones and things like that. Shield warriors, really
interesting. Again, stats for all of these,
art for all of these, these, these, these.
Yeah, it's cool. And then the witches have stat
blocks here too, different kinds of witches and whatnot.
And then you get to the the, the Earth Word, the Earth Word, the
Earth Word, Earth Word. They are, yeah, they are the the
main quote, UN quote. So that gives you a breakdown of
the wolf sets more societal roles like the prowls, Burrows
and corals. The then levy is basically all
the the lesser peasants and all that kind of shit.
You get information Freeman stats.
Yeah, this is exactly what this is a giant lore NPC book, which
is you know where this should be in its own fucking book and know
what's great about this? It's in its own book.
So if you don't need this info, you don't have to fuck with it.
I love it. I, I love the format of this,
going through that. More people, more stuff, more
art. So this is exactly what I think
these fuckers would look like too.
They're a great piece of art here on, on this page, on page
33. And then, yeah, talk about the
royal household, warrior Queens, Princess kings, all that kind of
stuff. I I mean, again, the men rule
the world, so there's more info on them than anybody else, but
they're obviously the least interesting fucks in here.
There's all section here on the Shining 1.
So more information on the shining ones, which, you know,
obviously big fan. Of course, it was a full page
piece of art for a king. And then we get to the back of
the book, which is the people list, which is the same list
that was we just said shouldn't be in volume 4, or if it is, the
page number should be removed because it is hyperlinked, not
the index. But all of this is hyperlinked.
There is also a typo here. In the very bottom of the very
last page, it says the full list of creatures and all their STAB
blocks are at the end of book 5. That's actually should say book
4. And in the print version it does
say book 4. So that's another typo in the
PDFs. Fix it for the print they did.
They did fix it for the print, which is great, and obviously
the list is not hyperlinked in the book, but it does list the
wrong page numbers because it's in the wrong volume for Volume 4
at the end. And that's it.
That's the entire fucking thing. That is 250 pages.
That is five booklets. That is the entire box set for
Wolfwald. I think we did a damn good job.
If we would have done this episode like we've done normal
episodes, we'd be here for five fucking hours or we would have
to skip half of it. So we're going to hop into the
the review scores here for Wolfwald.
Clearly this is going to be a book.
I think that we should, I think, like, look at them kind of as a
whole agree. Yeah, you're weirdly off to the
side. I think you moved your camera.
At some point, my camera. Well, OK, regardless, I'm going
to move you real quick and we're going to get going.
So, so again, we do what we do here in the show.
We, we, we give actual metrics, we give numbers to our we
quantify our terrible opinions with metrics and numbers for
books, quote UN quote books, things that are like 40 pages
plus we use 5 values for things that are less, we use three for
this. Obviously we're going to call,
we're going to constitute it as a book.
It is 250 ish pages. You can get up to 10 points in
each metric. The 1st is art and layout, which
is the quality, quantity and use of the art in the book and the
visual layout and style of the layout in the book.
For second is usability. It is how easy it is to take it
to the table, how easy it is to navigate with the book and the
PDFs. The rule set with an adapted
rule set. How do we like it?
If it's a unique rule set, how do we like it?
Originality is a combination of all those things and more, and
value is bang for your buck. It is what you get for the money
that you spend, which could be digital tools, extra adventures,
third party license to create stuff, you know, all that kind
of stuff. So on top of the cost of the
actual product. So let's start with art and
layout. What are your thoughts?
Good. I mean, you know, the art that's
in there. I really enjoy the layout's very
clean, very readable, nice and spacious.
It does have some like page decorations here and there and
then the the top right hand corner label of each spread
telling you where you are. I I I like the art and layout.
Yeah, I'm a I'm a big fan of the layout.
I think this is when I want like a really simple, straightforward
layout, like if, if I'm going to get black on white, you know,
black text on white pages, this is what I want it to look like.
The margins are nicely sized. Yeah, the text is nice and big.
It's not super fucking tiny, which I think the Zine format
helps. It allows each Zine to spread a
little bit instead of like worrying about expanding your
page count to 2535450. The text is super readable.
There's not too much information per page or per section.
Everything is broken down really, really well.
I think this is extremely well laid out for readability and it
looks very clean. I think when you look at a two
page spread and you see the design in the top corner and the
the I think it's super clean. I think the art looks fucking
great. I think all of the the graphics
on the cover of EZ and are great.
I think they're, I mean, there's a piece of art for every one of
the 12 classes. True.
Like I like one in three or one in four monsters have a piece of
art. There's very little outside of
the class section. I think that has some area on
the bottom which I wouldn't want to put art in there anyway.
When we were flipping through things like the NPC list, you
can see even across the bottom they had like the dragon like
across the bottom. They filled space really, really
well. The art is neat.
I think it's really appropriate for the setting.
It looks very Anglo-Saxon and things like that.
I, I, I I'm, I'm, I dig this and I I really dig this.
What number are you thinking? I think I think it's I think
it's really good. I don't know if I'm I don't know
if I think it's like great or blows me away, but I'm probably
around. I'm probably.
Dead on the seven. Yeah, I think 7 feels good for
this because again, it's super clean, super crazy, but are
really nice. It's very nice.
Nothing about it like super blows me away, but for
simplicity and ease of read and and cleanness, like I think this
is really fantastic usability. So this is one that's got a lot
of UPS and a lot of downs. It doesn't have a lot of ups and
downs. I was just thinking, I'm like,
there's things I like. It's divided up into separate
scenes. They're incredibly usable.
It's in the order that kind of makes sense even within those
scenes, right? The downs, sometimes they're
bookmarks. Most of the time there's not.
Sometimes there are hyperlinks, most of the time there's not.
As far as as this is The thing is like we're going to talk
about like the physical almost versus the digital, which a lot
of times it doesn't matter because there's one book, but
this is five books, right? I am obsessed with the format of
this. I'm obsessed with the box set 5
Zine plus the map cloth map format.
I think this is the ideal way to give people information that you
need. If this was one 250 page book I
would I would struggle to to bring this to the show because
I'm over reading books that are if.
If, if you talk about the page count as a as a positive.
In your marketing bro, you're 100.
Percent right, bro. What's funny is like right
before that I saw someone wrote we made a 350 page book.
I'm like, I don't want it like like I'm that's not a good thing
to me. Like your system takes 350 pages
to explain it to me. Make two books, bro, like come
on. Like so physically I'm obsessed
with it. I love it.
I with the layout stuff that we talked before visually talking
about that and actually usability.
God it's easy to read. It's so fucking easy to read.
The spreads are beautiful. The lack of character sheet
sucks. Yeah.
The lack of hyperlinks on the indexes.
Everything has a fucking character sheet bro.
Yeah, and all the match casters have character sheets.
Yeah, in the book. But I really wish even just the
indexes at the beginning were hyperlinked.
I love that the character lists and the NPC lists and something
that are hyperlinked. Thank, thank you.
But I really miss. The hyperlinks at the beginning
I like. Half of the books aren't
bookmarked so digitally it takes a hit.
Physically I'm obsessed with it. I honestly God, I'm so I'm.
Digitally for me. If this is digital only, it's a
5 yes. Well, I would say six across all
5 because we do get bookmarks and hyperlinks in like half of.
Them, OK, so it averages up to a six and then I think physically
for me it's closer to an 8. And so I think I'm in the middle
of that. So I think it's 7.
I'm down, I'm down IA. 100% agree with this.
I will say easy that if if all of the indexes, even just the
indexes, were hyperlinked, even if there weren't bookmarks
anywhere, if just the indexes in the top five PDFs were
hyperlinked, this would be an easy 8.
Unquestionably. I love the format of this.
I mean, if you're going to make a giant, what's your caveat?
My caveat for this is like I would not buy this digitally
only I would. I would not.
I would be like this is you need to, if you're going to get this,
get the physical. Don't get the digital only
because it's less usable. I mean.
I suffers. Yeah, I think for us, but I
think even, I don't even know if there is a physical, digital
only, but if that's you can afford, get it because it's
fucking slap super hard. Yeah, I think we care more about
the hyperlinks more than some people do.
So I wouldn't discourage people from getting it because of that.
I would definitely encourage Paulo to maybe release a new
version of this with some bonus hyperlinks at the top.
That would be really fantastic. But I hear what you're saying.
Yeah. Also, this is when we get to
value. Just get the physical.
My God. Rule set.
So here's the thing.
What rules. It has one, right?
It does it because there are rules for everything.
All it doesn't do all it doesn't do is give you the base.
Base core stuff is on purpose. It specifically says use the
core of whatever BX you want and then just here are the modifiers
and I think it works so fucking well and cuts so many pages off
of the book and specifically why I really love again, I'm going
to read this. Bring your own rules.
You don't need yet another booklet explaining how to roll
the hit save or find a secret door.
If we're looking at this from the context of it saying I'm not
giving you BX rules, you fucking know them, and if you're reading
this, you should know them and take it from there.
I think it's completely valid to not have the stuff in there if
we're looking at it from the context, yeah.
But no, I think it's valid if we're looking at it from the
context of someone who's never played BX picking this up and
going, how do you swing a sword? It's never explained.
That's a completely valid point. I want to rate this from the
context that it gives us, which is if you are familiar with the
game, I'm not going to tell you how to swing a sword.
You know it's D20 rollover plus modifier, right?
But so if we were to remove core rule set and just look at what's
added on to it, I mean the rules, I mean, even, I mean, I,
I think of like little rules like like the the deadly fatigue
for the necromancer is such a good fucking rule.
I love the entire magic scene is so fantastic.
I love the way that the weapons are modifiers versus the class
modifiers. I think the classes are super
clean and super, super, super well done.
Prime attribute is fantastic. I mean, I fuck with this rule
set so, so heavily. Like if I'm going to play D&D,
if I want to play D&D, this is my fucking D&D.
Dungeons and Dragons bro. Yeah, this is great.
I think it really sets up like for a specific type of campaign
and then constantly reinforces like the themes of what you're
doing and what makes this different from like a regular BX
gather gold game. I really dig this a lot.
I think the rule set for me is like it's as much as I
personally want, Like I said when we first got in here, like
I don't like you and I don't need to be explained the basics.
This is like an advanced players game and I really enjoyed that
and I think it does it well. And then I think the stuff
that's included is meaningful. I honestly with the rule set, I
think it's going to be the highest score.
I'm in the. I mean, it's probably like an 8
for me. Yeah.
I think it's an easy 8 for me. I think it's an easy 8 for me.
Yeah, Yeah, completely agree. I'd already pledged in there.
Originality. OK, so there aren't a ton of
games like this. The one that we think of right
off the top of our head is is was upon the coast, right?
This is similar ish. Similar ish.
Yeah, I mean Outkast Silver Raiders is also very similar
time period and like. Not true, True, true, true,
True, true, true, true, true. I mean, I think for Kyrie and
setting, it's not like the single most original thing ever.
Oh, look at that. Would you believe I gave mine
away? I would believe it.
Yeah, because I did. Yeah.
Where are you with this one? So here's the thing that I love
about the setting, right? That's where that was.
Oh look, traveler. Oh, I'm just through it with the
rest of my traveler stuff. I have a whole God, I have so
much traveler. We need to do that episode this
year. I am bro, just I think it's, I
think the originality is through the fucking roof on this.
Like honestly when I just think of the way that you have to cast
spells. Yeah, that does give a lot to
it. It gives a lot.
And then even just the way that the campaign is set up, right?
It's D&D, but it's it's literally says it's not a
dungeon crawler, it's not a wilderness explorer.
You're going to use those basic rules plus what I've given you
and you're going to do covert Black Ops missions with your
societal outcast trying to regain respect and stuff like
that. I think it's great.
I think, I think this is, this is how to do a retro clone in
that. Don't give me a whole book of
your slight weird 1° different rules and your take on it.
I can use the rules I want. Give me setting and all the
rules I need to, to reinforce that setting over and over and
over again. I love that.
I don't know, I'm pretty fucking high on the originality for
this. I, I think the setting is
fantastic. I think the rules are fantastic.
I think the format is not something you see a ton, which I
think adds to the originality of it too.
I think even even even I'll give you originality points for even
the beginning part where it literally says like, I'm not
giving you that those rules because you don't fucking need
them. I expect you.
This is a game for people that are that are in the hobby
already. I I I even love that.
I I think it's great. I personally think it's great or
give you. A number.
I'm an I'm an 8 for this. I think Aid's fine you.
I was starting lower, but you really sold me with past few
senses. I'm like, you know what?
You're fucking right, Ryan. Yeah, I am fucking right value
for this. OK, so if you want to get this
right now from the lost pages website, I do think maybe could
you check exalted funeral real quick to see if they have those
over there for the for the for The Dirty fucking Americans.
But so the Wolfwald box set plus PDF right now on the Lost Pages
website is 40 lbs. Which for Americans?
It's like $50. Ninety.
Yeah. Yeah, so $48 for the five Zine
box set, each Zine being like 50 to 60 pages.
I got A50 page Zine behind me that they charge 35 fucking
dollars for. All right, without PDF, another
15 for the PDF for 50 fucking dollars for for 150 paid Zen,
you're getting 5 zenes for 40 to 50 bucks.
Is it on exalted? I don't know.
It's not exalted. It is out of stock right now.
It's 60 bucks. Exalted. 60 bucks on exalted and
well, it's exalted so if you order directly from the website,
you'll pay the $48 plus shipping.
So it probably comes out to about the same, but you'll play
shipping and exalted too unless you go over like 100 bucks.
So we're going to say it is the £48 plus shipping to wherever
you are. You get the gorgeous box set,
you get all 5 zenes, you get a huge cloth map, you get PDFs of
all of it. I think that's honestly an
insane fucking. Deal.
I think that's pretty darn good. That's ridiculous.
My assumption, even though I don't remember seeing it
anywhere else, is that Paulo would be totally fine with
people making Wolfwald content because I think that's kind of
how they are. But there is no third party
license. I can imagine though that that
they would be OK with that. Not like they they could stop
them, they just could say it's not.
It's for use with Wolfwald. It's not for a Wolfwald I, but
also the you do get an adventure in the book and you get the
entire campaign structure and how to build 1 and do
everything. So I think what you get for this
is pretty darn fucking good for for only getting basically this
in the digital version. I think that's quite a bit.
I would say that's probably really good to me, I think.
Yeah, I think that's I, I, yeah, yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm thinking
about the the same place, probably about 7.
Probably about a seven. Yeah.
So, so that's those are our scores.
And I'm going to add this up, but don't forget this year we
did starting at the beginning of the year and every year we do
this scores are gradually getting kind of not lower and
lower, but a little bit more refined.
We did refined our system a little bit.
So because one reason is when we did our year interview, there
was like 15 games with an 8 for a rule set and those definitely
could have been spread out a little bit more.
So we. We also have a rule set right
now. Yeah, but it deserves it.
So when we look at the totals for this, it is 7 + 7 + 8 + 8 +
7. That is a 37.
That is a solid fucking score. That's right about where I
expected this to to end up. Again, if we went back and redid
and probably like our first like 50 games, you could probably
chop about 3 points off every one of those and that'd probably
be about where we're at now. So I think when we were being
maybe a little bit more generous a year plus ago, this probably
would be in the 40s, but again, we're being a little bit more.
What's the word you use? What do I keep?
30 maybe discerning 37 is fantastic.
I fuck with this game super hard.
Like I said, if I was playing it D&D, this is the D and DI would
want to play the product. The game is slapped super hard.
They'll product goes even fucking harder.
This is probably. Yeah, probably my favorite box
set on my shelf. First of all, the box is
gorgeous. The scenes are gorgeous.
It's great. That is the game.
That is Wolfwald from Paulo Greco of Lost Pages.
We'll make sure all the links are below.
We haven't decided what we're going to do next week.
We will talk about it. We do.
Yeah. We said we're we're doing less
interviews. And we are, we do have one next
week, though we have not announced what it is yet and
we'll wait to do that maybe over the weekend.
But Monday we will be having some special guests on and
probably then we'll tell you what we're going to do Friday as
well. So thank you all for being here.
We appreciate it. Hunter, beautiful as always.
And we will see you later, everybody.
Bye.