When the Wolf Comes – First Read
RPGs come in many shapes and sizes. From the all encompassing triple book core of Dungeons & Dragons to a £5 zine in your local games shop. The scale of the worlds presented in these games similarly waxes and wanes. Though the size of the book, and the scope of the game are not always in proportion. When the Wolf Comes promises tales of epic ‘Norsepunk’ action spread across the universe, all inside a book about a third of the total D&D core. The game is written by Ian Stuart Sharpe and illustrated by Jeremy D Mohler, Ger Curti, Deumalya Pramanik, and Paul Little.
First Read articles represent me going through the book in question for the first time. It is my initial impressions of the mechanisms, themes, and setting presented within its pages. I have not played the game at the time of writing.
The setting of When the Wolf Comes can be summarised by this idea: VIKINGS IN SPAAACCE! The Vikings conquered Midgard, Earth, and eventually stopped sailing the oceans to traverse the void of space. Unfortunately Viking myths & legends have followed them. Some real, some imagined (perhaps). Either way the threat of Ragnarok is around the corner and the gods have gone missing. Time to see if some heroes can step up to stop the end of all things.
When the Wolf Comes has evocative art throughout. It reminded me a lot of some of the work in the Sandman and Lucifer series of graphic novels. The art direction really feels like it is expressing a world of myth and techology woven together. I found the text a bit densely laid out but it is all very readable and the bookmarked PDF made jumping between sections easy.
The core system is a simple d20 roll vs target aiming to get equal to or greater than that target. The usual modifers from character stats apply. It would all be a bit ‘shrug, it’s fine’ but there is a really neat idea called woes and weals that adds interest here.
Woes and weals make you roll a number of d6 and either subtract or add the highest on to your d20 result. Woes are reasons you might be disadvantaged and weals are where you might have the upper hand. Some of these come from abilities, but others might come from the situation at hand. It gives a quick way for the GM to balance up pros and cons in a situation and inject some drama into the dice mechanism. They cancel each other out as well, meaning you only roll a pool of d6 to add or subtract from your d20, not both.
The system detail outside of the core mechanism definitley emphasises combat and exploration wihtout dwelling on the detail too much. There is a social section which rewards you for acting honourably and penalises you for bringing shame upon yourself. Later when you look at learning Craft (spells), you realise that doing so comes with a ‘shame’ penalty. This gives the setting a ‘wizards are feared’ vibe. That makes some sense to me from my loose understand of Viking myth.
When it comes to seetting out on your journey, I think players are going to need a fair bit of time to digest the ideas held within. Character creation options are numerous and varied, and while there aren’t a lot of stats as such, there are many paths that an individual character might go down.
When the Wolf Comes is based on Shadow of the Demon Lord. One of the unique aspects of the latter that has found its way into the former is the idea of levelling frequently. There are 10 levels for a character and you will gain 1 after every adventure, which for some will mean every session. This effectively limits the campaign to 10 sessions or so. Short lived by some folks standards but I really like a built in campaign length like you find in Agon. It also means you are constantly getting new toys to play with which will appeal to a lot of players.
From straightforward humans to a species fundamentally bound to the world tree Yggdrasil, even the baseline options are interesting. There is a lovely amount of flavour spread amongst the tables used for character creation to give you hooks and ideas to grab onto.
From these initial choices you will then choose a series of paths. Starting out as a Novice you will advance to Expert and then Mythic path choices. These paths are effectively classes. Where your initial choice is more about the cultural background of your character, paths represent the route they have chosen to take through life. There are extensive options and variations within these paths and many of the later ones will require pre-requisites to have been met. Its the sort of character creation system that will delight those who love a smorgasbord of options. The paths are not only full of abilities and stat bonuses but story hooks that can be folded into an ongoing campaign.
What do you do in those campaigns? Good question. I found it hard to get a good sense of what characters do in When the Wolf Comes. The GM’s section has a lot of very generic advice about running games, but nothing really about what you should do with this setting. A lot of ideas, just no strong direction. A caveat to this criticism. There are a good few modules out for the game including a campaign that kicks off with the adventure in the back of the book. It feels like running these adventures is the sort of ‘default’ mode for When the Wolf Comes that would bypass the lack of direction I feel is present in the core.
I mentioned at the top that Ragnarok is just around the corner. But is it? The idea of trying to fight against fate and destiny is not only part of the viking myths, but present in this game. The Norns, the viking equivalent of the greek Fates, make an appearance. Each character gets a destiny to embrace or deny. That’s a neat idea and I could see an interesting game being run around these concepts. However, Ragnarok seems optional.
Despite the back of the book, and the overview page I shared earlier, emphasising the presence of the coming viking apocalypse, the GM’s section says it is optional. This feels really odd considering the emphasis on this aspect up to that point. I want my RPGs to have strong tone and direction. I want to feel the designers intent. This feels like they pulled back from the brink of making something that would have really grabbed my attention. Without the threat of Ragnarok, When the Wolf Comes feels much more like generic space fantasy. If people want to take this game and remove Ragnarok from it, they will. You don’t need to provide that option for them.
The rest of the setting is reasonably well described with worlds you could visit along the thoroughways the Viking ships travel across. These nine worlds are very broad strokes with only a few notable locations for each one. Still there is enough here to spark the imagination of those who want to put the work in to turn them in gameable content. Weirdly there is more detail for each world in the Bestiary section of the book, with more time being spent on the creatures and foes you might encounter, than detail of the worlds themselves. This once again gives the game a feeling of emphasis on combat, exploration, and encounters with the weird.
When the Wolf Comes seems to be a well put together game that the designer has obvisouly poured a lot of love into. If you are looking for a game that allows quick levelling up, and dynamic character progression then it might be right up your street. I find myself hard to get very exicted about it. That’s partly down to the lack of purpose I feel in the game. Is it Ragnarok or isn’t it? What do these characters acutally do in this alternative history?
The RPGs I really advocate for have strong tone and direction, with systems that support those things. That’s what I want from all the games I play, whatever the format. When the Wolf Comes feels a little like a restaurant with too many options; you know it can’t all be good. Figuring out where it will shine might be a task that you enjoy. I want a more limited menu where I know I can get a good meal whatever I choose.
I was sent a PDF copy of When the Wolf Comes for a First Read and potential play focused review. Some of the links are affilate links for Drivethrurpg. We use this credit to buy more games for review.
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