https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/308470/Wolves-of-God-Adventures-in-Dark-Ages-England
I think it is pretty cool and I saw some interest in it earlier on here.
Nice, I backed it and ordered my print copy.
Will take a while to arrive in Australia.
Yeah, the deluxe print copies are still more than a month out. It'll be a couple days before I can dive into the PDF but just skimming the file looks promising. It's a new layout compared to SWN and the writing style is totally different from any of the previous Sine Nomine material I've read before.
Tempting, but I'd never get my local crew to play it. I'd love to see Crawford's take on a domain management system. It would be fun to run a campaign to unite the tribes into a powerful kingdom.
I backed the Kickstarter and am happily anticipating the deluxe version: It's taken a lot less time than the Kickstarter said it would, but then Crawford was planning on that anyway.
Quote from: Vidgrip;1127546Tempting, but I'd never get my local crew to play it. I'd love to see Crawford's take on a domain management system. It would be fun to run a campaign to unite the tribes into a powerful kingdom.
As requested: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/99063/An-Echo-Resounding-A-Sourcebook-for-Lordship-and-War
Quote from: Brand55;1127518the writing style is totally different from any of the previous Sine Nomine material I've read before.
Yes, I really enjoy the writing style in Wolves of God. It's not entirely practical, and could be a hurdle for newcomers who aren't already familiar with RPGs, but it's still fun and extremely flavorful.
Quote from: Vidgrip;1127546I'd love to see Crawford's take on a domain management system.
Pretty much every one of his games has a domain/faction system included in the core rules, with several different basic systems across them:
- An Echo, Resounding is based primarily on control of cities and resource sites, and managing troops and ambassadors to handle the concerns of kingdoms.
- Stars Without Number, Silent Legions, and the upcoming Worlds Without Number use a slightly more abstract system, but still have specific faction "assets" that you move around and bring into conflict with each other, but the outcomes tend to be based more on the characteristics of the faction as a whole rather than the specific assets involved, and it's scaled for factions which operate within a kingdom (or whatever size government-controlled area) rather than running the kingdom itself.
- Other Dust, Spears of the Dawn, and Godbound use an even more abstract system which balances each faction's attributes against its troubles without ever addressing specific in-game entities such as how many troops a faction controls or how many temples are in its cities. Godbound is substantially more abstract than the other two versions of this system.
- Darkness Visible has a system designed for intelligence agencies which tracks what types of capabilities each agency has developed and allows agencies to disrupt or destroy those capabilities. Particularly notable here is that each capability developed by the agency has defined effects on the PCs in play. e.g., The higher the agency's Armory rating, the more gear PCs can requisition for assignments, higher Legitimacy allows the PC agents' crimes to be swept under the rug, or better Training facilities allow new characters to start with more skills and existing ones to develop their skills more easily.
- Starvation Cheap isn't really domain management, but rather war management. Each side has a certain number of troops, divided up into multiple units, which are then assigned to attack or defend various objectives. Like Darkness Visible, PCs can get defined benefits from other units assigned to the same objective where their mission is taking place, such as calling in air/artillery strikes or support from infantry or armor units.
- Suns of Gold doesn't do faction conflict itself (you would presumably use Stars Without Number for that), but it includes a system for founding and developing colonies on new worlds, which would also fall under the broader area of domain management play.
- Finally, Wolves of God has what appears to be yet another new system, which tracks your domain solely in terms of how much land you hold, how much wealth is in your coffers, and what vassals you have/what monks and nuns you are supporting. Conflict is focused on raiding your neighbors for lands or wealth, while staying within the constraints of how long you can keep your fyrd away from their lands.
Personally, I'd really like to see Crawford come up with an uber-system for faction/domain play which functions across all scales and can telescope into different levels on the org chart (so, e.g., the corner police station and the national government are both represented without either treating them as two completely separate, but allied, factions or essentially making it so that the police station can't act without taking up the full attention of the national government) but I highly doubt that will happen, since he's more into tailoring the faction rules for each game to that game's particular scope and concerns rather than doing something universal.
What are the titular "wolves of God"?
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1127635What are the titular "wolves of God"?
The English, whom God used to punish the decadent Britons for their wickedness.
Yep, the PCs are meant to be English adventurers. It's basically a take on that part of history as if all the myths and stories were true, so in addition to the religious aspects there are real monsters and magic in the setting. The interesting part is that the game is presented as if it were an actual RPG written by a monk in AD 710 with occasional notes by Kevin Crawford. So, for example, here's the introductory text:
QuoteListen! We are the English, the sons of conquerors and the fathers of kings, who came over the whale-roads to whelm the Wealh and take from them the land they had lost by their weakness. We are a great people, in sin and strength alike, and God has used us for His ends. Once we were His wolves upon the wicked, to wound the faithless and condemn their crimes, and now we are His children in the true faith. But our sins hang heavy on our hearts yet, and a shadow falls upon us from the deeds we have done.
I write this book so that the gamesmen of other lands may know of us and our ways, and may play at our mighty deeds as they do their own. The dicers of the Franks may add English heroes to their tale-makings, the Greeks may smile at our customs from the carved halls of Constantinople, and even the distant men of Tang may make curious stories of our far-off isle in that land of silks and strangeness. We are a poor people before the riches of Rome and the splendors of the Persians, but we are conquerors still, and our tales are worthy of telling.
Few are the gamesmen who can bear to be told ten thousand things before the dice rattle on the board, so I spare for now the many things I might say, and tell you only what you must know to fashion a hero of your own, and what grave perils await the work of your thoughts.
The actual system is Stars Without Numbers at its core with a number of alterations to make it fit the setting, and as usual for a Sine Nomine product there's a ton of useful GM stuff. Even if someone isn't into the whole "Christian adventurer" schtick, there's still a lot of good stuff to be mined.
I was going to back this, but decided to wait until it hit retail. Can anyone post a review when they get the chance?
Quote from: Brad;1127669I was going to back this, but decided to wait until it hit retail. Can anyone post a review when they get the chance?
Did you like Spears of the Dawn? Would you like mythological historical Dark Ages English version of that? Kevin seems to only be getting better at this with practice.
Of note, I saw rules for Wyrds, scars, domains, and mass combat. I haven't read through it yet because I am busy and I didn't read the betas (I realized that I really don't like confusing beta RPG rules and the actual rules).
It's styled like an older manuscript and most of the writing is in-character as though a monk from this time actually wrote an RPG and the author translated and finished it for the reader. It's kind of a wild way to go about this, but man does it get me way more into the mindset and I personally appreciate anything that makes me excited about the dark ages and Christianity in-general.
Quote from: Brad;1127669Can anyone post a review when they get the chance?
Kevin wrote it.
You should buy it*
I've never regretted any Sine Nomine purchase.
Every one of them has been highly useful as a GM resource, or an actual game.
If you haven't read his stuff yet, he's got plenty of kewl freebies on DriveThruRPG.
*the caveat is does Dark Ages Faux Historical RPGing sound cool to you?
I wouldn't be averse to getting a review copy of this. I'd be interested to see how dark-ages-authentic it is.
I really hope that it works with the Black Streams Solo Heroes rules. Do any of you think it does?
Quote from: Brand55;1127643Yep, the PCs are meant to be English adventurers. It's basically a take on that part of history as if all the myths and stories were true, so in addition to the religious aspects there are real monsters and magic in the setting. The interesting part is that the game is presented as if it were an actual RPG written by a monk in AD 710 with occasional notes by Kevin Crawford. So, for example, here's the introductory text:
The actual system is Stars Without Numbers at its core with a number of alterations to make it fit the setting, and as usual for a Sine Nomine product there's a ton of useful GM stuff. Even if someone isn't into the whole "Christian adventurer" schtick, there's still a lot of good stuff to be mined.
LOL. The intro text is a pretty close paraphrase of the opening of
Beowulf: "Hwaet we Gardena ingear dagum, theod cyninga thrim gefrunon" or "Listen! We the spear-Danes, in days past, whose mighty kings you have heard of..." Clever.
Quote from: arcanuum;1127831I really hope that it works with the Black Streams Solo Heroes rules. Do any of you think it does?
I haven't fully read the game, but it should still work with little if any adjustments. I'm more familiar with Scarlet Heroes, but I know that game was based on Black Streams. Importing stuff like the Fray Die should be no problem.
Quote from: Brand55;1127872I haven't fully read the game, but it should still work with little if any adjustments. I'm more familiar with Scarlet Heroes, but I know that game was based on Black Streams. Importing stuff like the Fray Die should be no problem.
Awesome. Thank you Brand.
Quote from: arcanuum;1127831I really hope that it works with the Black Streams Solo Heroes rules. Do any of you think it does?
Quote from: Brand55;1127872I haven't fully read the game, but it should still work with little if any adjustments. I'm more familiar with Scarlet Heroes, but I know that game was based on Black Streams. Importing stuff like the Fray Die should be no problem.
Also, the Drivethru page for Wolves lists among its features, "
Full compatiblity with Stars Without Number: Revised edition, with guides for mixing content between the games." SWNR (at least the full/paid version, not sure about the free version) includes a "Heroic Characters" chapter, which in turn has a "Heroic Combat" section, which is basically a compact re-statement of Black Streams: Solo Heroes. So you should be fine.
Quote from: RPGPundit;1127825I wouldn't be averse to getting a review copy of this. I'd be interested to see how dark-ages-authentic it is.
Do you only review physical copies?
Quote from: Brad;1128138Do you only review physical copies?
Yes.
What about metaphysical copies.
Pundit's quizzical, studies pataphysical copies on the web!
Any updates on those that have purchased this new one by Kevin? Would like to read any opinions, particularly session reports/reviews/snapshots.
I ordered a hard copy a while back.
It's not arrived yet unfortunately.
It takes AGES for Drivethru books to arrive in Australia...
Quote from: danskmacabre;1131627I ordered a hard copy a while back.
It's not arrived yet unfortunately.
It takes AGES for Drivethru books to arrive in Australia...
It is too bad that they don't use a local printer, as lulu does, or least the last I heard lulu did for AU. Does Amazon's POD service use local printers in Australia? I hope there is that option too for some books. Wolves of God is not an inexpensive item, and AU shipping! Big spender. ha Hope it arrives soon.
Quote from: danskmacabre;1131627...
It takes AGES for Drivethru books to arrive in America...
One little edit and it applies to me as well.
I'm actually really looking forward to diving into the game.
The historical period it is set in really does allow many of the "Fantasy Adventurer" tropes that people love to play in their normal elf-games.
You can go from Farmer, to Warrior, to King. Female warriors, etc... And all within historical verisimilitude.
One could do a lot worse than to study the early medieval era when creating a fantasy world from the ground up.
I sprang for the fancy-pants offset print version. Should arrive some time in June.
I've gone through it and really like what I read. I doubt my group will ever go for it, though, as it's not the usual high-powered stuff they're into. Combat is deadly, healing is slow, and if anything fights are to be avoided since characters can't shrug off injuries like in a lot of other D&D-esque games. There are a number of setting-specific rules like gifting, wyrds, and how the classes work that keep WoG from feeling too much like regular D&D.
I fully plan on raiding the GM tools for some of my other games, as is par for the course with just about anything Sine Nomine puts out.
I like it for the materials it gives me for Stars Without Number.
God I love that game.
Quote from: Shrieking Banshee;1131785I like it for the materials it gives me for Stars Without Number.
God I love that game.
What sort of materials are transferable? Please!
Quote from: Heavy Josh;1131812What sort of materials are transferable? Please!
It uses the base engine of SWN, and has a neat 'Low Magic' system, which is pretty easily transferable. It also has example of an alternate skill list and serves as a good demonstration of how to use the core system in other contexts. Its also got more Focuses and serve as a good way to make your own.
Quote from: Shrieking Banshee;1131830It uses the base engine of SWN, and has a neat 'Low Magic' system, which is pretty easily transferable. It also has example of an alternate skill list and serves as a good demonstration of how to use the core system in other contexts. Its also got more Focuses and serve as a good way to make your own.
That much I know. Are the caester generation tables transferrable to SWN? Thanks!
Quote from: Heavy Josh;1131877That much I know. Are the caester generation tables transferrable to SWN? Thanks!
You can even use the bestiary.
I backed "Wolves of God" on the KS and ordered my hard copy from DTRPG over 2 months ago.
I gave up on it arriving (they even sent a 2nd copy, they were very nice about it), as I've had loads of problems with DTRPG physical books arriving at all or a VERY long wait.
So after over a 2 month wait and basically just forgot about it, it did actually arrive yesterday.[ATTACH=CONFIG]4772[/ATTACH]
All other books from Sine Nomine were in a full hardback A4 type size.
I was surprised to see a much smaller A5 sized book arriving.
Still, the binding quality is good so far and it is a pretty convenient size.
Not sure how that'll pan out in usage when actually running a game.
Checking DTRPG, it clearly describes the size, so it wasn't a mistake.
The binding is very tight and I worry that in order to read everything, I have to spread the book open quite a bit, so I wonder if the spine will snap over time.
Particularly as the text runs fairly close to the middle of the book, which would be fine if it were a full sized book, but in this smaller size, it makes a difference.
The print quality is great, pages feel solid and binding, whilst tight, hopefully will hold up.
It's probably the last RPG I'll be buying for a long time, maybe I won't ever buy an RPG again (certainly not from DTRPG anyway, with those terrible delivery times and poor reliability), as I don't run them very often anymore and I have plenty of RPG material.
If anything I'll be getting rid of stuff I know I won't be using anymore.
I'm in much the same boat. I'll likely buy anything else Sine Nomine puts out, but otherwise my gaming purchases will be few and far between from here on out because I simply have so much to work with at this point.
I love the size of that book, though I do hope the issues with the binding and print don't cause trouble down the road. I'm still waiting on my copy of the deluxe version, so I'm curious to see how it holds up and if it has similar issues.
That's a nice looking book!
Here's a quick Mini-review I did on Youtube
[video=youtube;viahHyu3WXg]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=viahHyu3WXg[/youtube]
Quote from: Brand55;1131762
I fully plan on raiding the GM tools for some of my other games, as is par for the course with just about anything Sine Nomine puts out.
That was more rambly than usual for my Speech-to-Text nonsense. Apologies.
Short version: I'm picking through the free Sine Nomine stuff available now; nDervish has a good summary about what domain management stuff is in the various books on the first page; who uses what and what are your recommendations? I'm doing some sandbox worldbuilding, I was starting to use ACKS, but for a D&D 5e - and I've been dicking around a little with the Immortals Companion (https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/194619/Immortals-Companion) for domains.
edit 2 - Turns out at some point I bought An Echo Resounding. It's my read for the night. The DTRPG sorting tool thing did me some good this time.
This book is more and more tempting...
Quote from: RandyB;1145662This book is more and more tempting...
Each to his own, but for me, $60 is WAY too much for such a tiny book. That's a full-sized book price.
I agree that $60 dollars is too much, but I do not regret having backed the Kickstarter. I've been reading through my copy for the first time over the last week, and I'm this close to starting up a game of it. It is a functional remake of B/X D&D with simple classes. I like that it has class-specific-deeds-for-XP rather than gold-for-xp. The setting is fleshed out with region-specific event tables, a hex-map of England, equipment and treasure tables, minster and monk generation (minsters being abbeys basically, which one should use for a quest-base), tables for generating Caesters (ruined Roman towns and cities, inhabited by brigands and monsters, that serve as the dungeons of this setting), and monster entries.
The relics and potions lists are quite good, with flavourful entries baked in the setting's themes. I will name two and summarize their nature.
Dwarf-stone: an oily black stone the size of a child's fist. As long as it is worn on the bearer's skin, he will suffer no sickness nor plague.
Antique Garum: a fish-sauce "grown only more potent with the years". It can be applied to anything to make the object soft and edible (but distasteful to any English palate), or thrown to the ground, upon which time the stench will overcome any who smell it, save a Roman, who will no doubt appreciate the odour.
I was pleasantly surprised by the monster lists. I bought into the game for its historical setting, and I worried that a monster list would muddy the water. The entries are good though. Crawford has trimmed the Monster list down to those originating in Anglo-saxon lore. It has ents, sure, but they are not Peter Jackson's walking trees, nor even Tolkien's forest shepherds, but simply a man-and-a-half size of reclusive giant "melancholy with the sorrow of a race whose hour has passed". There is a kind of ent "infested with sorcery", called the eoten. Unlike ents they cling to their kind's lost power, using their strength to play at lords over those they can dominate.
There are dwarves, kind of, but more like the dwarves one hears about in Wagner's Ring Cycle. Dweorgs they are called, and they are twisted little men who desire after women, dwell in deep and hidden places, and craft beautiful things of wood and cloth and metal. They are cruelly strict in their hard bargains, unleashing any of a hundred plagues upon those who anger them.
My heart fell however, when I read "Orc" on the next entry. Not this cookie-cutter mediocrity!
Thankfully, these orcs are not Tolkien's, but again taken from an older tradition. They are human corpses animated by the spirit of a damned soul. This is more like the "orcneas" from Beowulf (where Tolkien took the name), which is possibly derived from "orcus", the name for Pluto god of the Underworld, and "nea", which is a corpse. Together, this makes something like "devil-corpse". I appreciate the attention to detail in entries like this.
There are several monsters that will be familiar in theme (but not always in detail) to the modern gamer: Merewife, Werwulf, Wraith, Ylfe, Haeg, demon, Draca. As well as creatures unfamiliar to most readers: Dru, Helrune, Fifel, Nicor, Pukkel, and Wudowose. Unlike certain bestiaries (*cough*5e Tome of Beasts*cough*), these are taken from the same culture and are internally coherent. Overall, I'd say that the monsters in this setting feel like if someone went back to the Anglo-saxon folklore from which Tolkien drew many of his ideas and presented those in an 8th century context for the modern player... Probably because that's just what Crawford did.
The setting is largely historical, as I have mentioned, with the most notable departures being:
1. The reality of magic, miracles, and monsters.
2. The presence of Arxes in many of the Roman ruins. These are magically-sealed demi-planes into which some of the last of the Romanish-Britons trapped themselves rather than be slaughtered by the Anglo-saxons. Inside these sealed places the legacy of Rome lives on, mixed with Hellish taint, and after long years some of these Arxes break open again, releasing their corrupted and malformed inhabitants. Some of the creatures that come out may be very human in appearance and nature, while others may be unrecognizable.
These Arxes are a little weird for me, but one could certainly excise them from the setting without missing much. You might like them, and I might come around. I don't know. *shrug*
There is a Splendour mechanic: a set of rules that determine how much individual items lend to the air of wealth when carried or worn by a character. This affects how many re-rolls a player gets per day for their character (from 0 to 4) and uses a math-friendly scale (from 0 to 16+).
I have one major complaint. Crawford loves to write. This maketh not for quick reading! The game rules are light, but stretch over 341 pages. To be fair, the game is complete: with everything the GM needs to run a game: character creation, rules, equipment, setting detail, good random generation tools for said setting, etc. And the writing is narrative and witty. (The conceit of the book is that it was written by an 8th century English monk and roleplayer.) This helps, but at times I found myself turning the page on yet another wall of text and gnashing my teeth at the lack of tables and charts to summarize some of this endless verbosity.
A minor complaint of mine is that I would have enjoyed a level of abstraction in the game's currency. Most items in the game are listed by their cost in pounds, shillings, and pence (librae, solidi, and denarii for the Roman nerds). One pound is 60 shillings, one shilling is 4 pence. It is a whim of mine that I have been steering towards abstracted wealth in RPGs for a while now, so this was a disappointment.
Thankfully, the game does not expect the players to find or spend much coin (the treasure tables contain goods and relics, no coin). The English barter, the monkish author says, leave penny-pinching and change-making to the Franks!
Overall, I think the game is a lovely capturing of the culture and beliefs of the period. In stark contrast to the mixed-bag, anything-goes metropolises of the biggest fantasy worlds out there, the setting is made up of villages containing about a hundred people. The only gathering places that contain a thousand to 4 thousand inhabitants in the whole country are the trading-markets of Londinwic, Hamwic, and Gipeswic in the south, and Eorwic up in Northumbria. But these are not capitals or towns or places of power, merely markets and camping places. They ebb and flow with the season and the flux of foreign traders.
The typical party will be fairly homogenous in culture and belief as well. Again, not your standard fantasy party made up of orcs, halflings, and half-elves, each from far-scattered regions of the world.
I found it refreshingly firm on its sensible stance towards obeying social customs, and not resolving all problems with the sword and seax. The monsters are good, the world-generation useful, and I look forward to running the game soon.
Oh, and the feasting table is good fun, and the book has a good index.
Quote from: Trinculoisdead on October 12, 2020, 06:15:05 PM
I agree that $60 dollars is too much, but I do not regret having backed the Kickstarter. I've been reading through my copy for the first time over the last week, and I'm this close to starting up a game of it. It is a functional remake of B/X D&D with simple classes. I like that it has class-specific-deeds-for-XP rather than gold-for-xp. The setting is fleshed out with region-specific event tables, a hex-map of England, equipment and treasure tables, minster and monk generation (minsters being abbeys basically, which one should use for a quest-base), tables for generating Caesters (ruined Roman towns and cities, inhabited by brigands and monsters, that serve as the dungeons of this setting), and monster entries.
The relics and potions lists are quite good, with flavourful entries baked in the setting's themes. I will name two and summarize their nature.
Dwarf-stone: an oily black stone the size of a child's fist. As long as it is worn on the bearer's skin, he will suffer no sickness nor plague.
Antique Garum: a fish-sauce "grown only more potent with the years". It can be applied to anything to make the object soft and edible (but distasteful to any English palate), or thrown to the ground, upon which time the stench will overcome any who smell it, save a Roman, who will no doubt appreciate the odour.
I was pleasantly surprised by the monster lists. I bought into the game for its historical setting, and I worried that a monster list would muddy the water. The entries are good though. Crawford has trimmed the Monster list down to those originating in Anglo-saxon lore. It has ents, sure, but they are not Peter Jackson's walking trees, nor even Tolkien's forest shepherds, but simply a man-and-a-half size of reclusive giant "melancholy with the sorrow of a race whose hour has passed". There is a kind of ent "infested with sorcery", called the eoten. Unlike ents they cling to their kind's lost power, using their strength to play at lords over those they can dominate.
There are dwarves, kind of, but more like the dwarves one hears about in Wagner's Ring Cycle. Dweorgs they are called, and they are twisted little men who desire after women, dwell in deep and hidden places, and craft beautiful things of wood and cloth and metal. They are cruelly strict in their hard bargains, unleashing any of a hundred plagues upon those who anger them.
My heart fell however, when I read "Orc" on the next entry. Not this cookie-cutter mediocrity!
Thankfully, these orcs are not Tolkien's, but again taken from an older tradition. They are human corpses animated by the spirit of a damned soul. This is more like the "orcneas" from Beowulf (where Tolkien took the name), which is possibly derived from "orcus", the name for Pluto god of the Underworld, and "nea", which is a corpse. Together, this makes something like "devil-corpse". I appreciate the attention to detail in entries like this.
There are several monsters that will be familiar in theme (but not always in detail) to the modern gamer: Merewife, Werwulf, Wraith, Ylfe, Haeg, demon, Draca. As well as creatures unfamiliar to most readers: Dru, Helrune, Fifel, Nicor, Pukkel, and Wudowose. Unlike certain bestiaries (*cough*5e Tome of Beasts*cough*), these are taken from the same culture and are internally coherent. Overall, I'd say that the monsters in this setting feel like if someone went back to the Anglo-saxon folklore from which Tolkien drew many of his ideas and presented those in an 8th century context for the modern player... Probably because that's just what Crawford did.
The setting is largely historical, as I have mentioned, with the most notable departures being:
1. The reality of magic, miracles, and monsters.
2. The presence of Arxes in many of the Roman ruins. These are magically-sealed demi-planes into which some of the last of the Romanish-Britons trapped themselves rather than be slaughtered by the Anglo-saxons. Inside these sealed places the legacy of Rome lives on, mixed with Hellish taint, and after long years some of these Arxes break open again, releasing their corrupted and malformed inhabitants. Some of the creatures that come out may be very human in appearance and nature, while others may be unrecognizable.
These Arxes are a little weird for me, but one could certainly excise them from the setting without missing much. You might like them, and I might come around. I don't know. *shrug*
There is a Splendour mechanic: a set of rules that determine how much individual items lend to the air of wealth when carried or worn by a character. This affects how many re-rolls a player gets per day for their character (from 0 to 4) and uses a math-friendly scale (from 0 to 16+).
I have one major complaint. Crawford loves to write. This maketh not for quick reading! The game rules are light, but stretch over 341 pages. To be fair, the game is complete: with everything the GM needs to run a game: character creation, rules, equipment, setting detail, good random generation tools for said setting, etc. And the writing is narrative and witty. (The conceit of the book is that it was written by an 8th century English monk and roleplayer.) This helps, but at times I found myself turning the page on yet another wall of text and gnashing my teeth at the lack of tables and charts to summarize some of this endless verbosity.
A minor complaint of mine is that I would have enjoyed a level of abstraction in the game's currency. Most items in the game are listed by their cost in pounds, shillings, and pence (librae, solidi, and denarii for the Roman nerds). One pound is 60 shillings, one shilling is 4 pence. It is a whim of mine that I have been steering towards abstracted wealth in RPGs for a while now, so this was a disappointment.
Thankfully, the game does not expect the players to find or spend much coin (the treasure tables contain goods and relics, no coin). The English barter, the monkish author says, leave penny-pinching and change-making to the Franks!
Overall, I think the game is a lovely capturing of the culture and beliefs of the period. In stark contrast to the mixed-bag, anything-goes metropolises of the biggest fantasy worlds out there, the setting is made up of villages containing about a hundred people. The only gathering places that contain a thousand to 4 thousand inhabitants in the whole country are the trading-markets of Londinwic, Hamwic, and Gipeswic in the south, and Eorwic up in Northumbria. But these are not capitals or towns or places of power, merely markets and camping places. They ebb and flow with the season and the flux of foreign traders.
The typical party will be fairly homogenous in culture and belief as well. Again, not your standard fantasy party made up of orcs, halflings, and half-elves, each from far-scattered regions of the world.
I found it refreshingly firm on its sensible stance towards obeying social customs, and not resolving all problems with the sword and seax. The monsters are good, the world-generation useful, and I look forward to running the game soon.
Oh, and the feasting table is good fun, and the book has a good index.
Thanks for the review. Crawford should hire you, because you probably just made him a sale...
BTW, here's a great documentary about the end of Roman Britain, it gives some great background context to the Wolves of God setting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glKe9njOB24
Neat! I'll check it out.
Yeah I don't mean to pander the product, it's just a promising game. I started off reading it with the apprehension that I wouldn't have enough ideas for an adventure of my own, but the book feeds you a lot of usable material. The minster generation in particular is good for jump-starting a campaign.
Last night I was reading the Caester (Roman city ruins) generation rules. They're good: fully automated point-crawl generators based on an hour-per-square exploration rate. There are Arx (enchanted dungeon-pocket-plane) generation rules as well. I've just come off an extensive playthrough of Caverns of Thracia, so my enthusiasm is dampened for dungeon-crawling, but people who are fans of early England and classic D&D, this is a potent combination.
Quote from: Graewulf on August 20, 2020, 10:16:41 AM
Quote from: RandyB;1145662This book is more and more tempting...
Each to his own, but for me, $60 is WAY too much for such a tiny book. That's a full-sized book price.
Jesus Christ!
The Old School Companion is $29.95, and that's including the PDF.
I agree that 60 dollars is a lot. But the game is 338 pages seems like a full sized book to me. However the 60 dollars pays for not just the pdf but also the full color hardcover.
"Full color" is a bit off. I have the special edition hardback and it is just sepia tone old timey appearance worth of color. I'm sure that it is the same price if you have full four color art pieces or parchment tone pages, but people shouldn't be expecting four color art pieces.
However, considering how many of his core rule books are available for free I'm willing to cut him some slack on this one and I'll still back Worlds Without Number as much as I can.
The book has full-colour art in it.
The game is totally worth $60. It has easily a year or more of weekly full-length sessions of content in it. That being said, the price probably has more to do with the niche market. WoG was never going to sell a lot and appeals to a really small slice of people. Hell, "Dark Ages England" as the setting is enough to scare most of my friends away from the game.
Quote from: Trinculoisdead on October 27, 2020, 03:43:39 PM
The book has full-colour art in it.
Mine doesn't, unless I'm missing a panel somewhere. It is hardback with a gold embossed pseudo leather cover and faux parchment tone pages, but flipping back and forth through it doesn't show any color other than old timey brown.
Quote from: Manic Modron on October 30, 2020, 04:17:55 PM
Quote from: Trinculoisdead on October 27, 2020, 03:43:39 PM
The book has full-colour art in it.
Mine doesn't, unless I'm missing a panel somewhere. It is hardback with a gold embossed pseudo leather cover and faux parchment tone pages, but flipping back and forth through it doesn't show any color other than old timey brown.
If you're telling the truth, you should contact Sine Nomine because it sounds like a printing error. Flipping through my copy, every piece of art is colored, and I can see a number of different colors in the text. Tables use different colors, for example, and the big letters that open up the text on a page feature white and gold. If you really don't see anything other than brown, then somebody messed up.
Check out Update 15 on the Kickstarter. Does your copy have the colored interior art and map like the ones shown there?
Yikes, I appreciate the heads up! I thought it was just an exercise in making it look like a tome I stead of a modern game book.
I'll check when I get home to be sure.
Would you mind giving me a couple of page numbers to validate?
Quote from: Manic Modron on October 30, 2020, 05:40:09 PMWould you mind giving me a couple of page numbers to validate?
Sure. Look at the inside cover. On the right-hand side, it should look like the image here: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/308470/Wolves-of-God-Adventures-in-Dark-Ages-England (https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/308470/Wolves-of-God-Adventures-in-Dark-Ages-England). Minus the title, I believe. You can see this in the Kickstarter update I mentioned in my last post. The left-hand side (the inside of the front cover) is similar. As for some art:
Pg. 9: Man holding out a shield to a boy. Lots of purples and greens, and you can see a whitish glint of light on the rim of the shield.
Pg. 15: Woman sitting in front of some cattle. The perspective makes her look like a giant, and she's holding a rock and a knife. Lots of whites and blues used in the mountains and sky behind her.
Pg. 31: Man sitting by a roaring fire, holding a cross and reading a book.
I am clearly having some sort of Berenstain/stein moment. Thanks for clearing the fog. Everything is normal, stand down from four color alert.