Your history is gone. It was taken from you, or you from it. You were a thrall. Now your master lies dead in the bottom of a raiding vessel, equipped for adventure. You are free.
That is the entire, brilliant setup for Wolves Upon the Coast, a massive, no-art, open-ended sandbox campaign by acclaimed designer Luke Gearing (Acid Death Fantasy, Gradient Descent). Widely considered a masterpiece of the Old School Revival (OSR) movement, this bundle provides everything you need to sail the treacherous waters of a dark, mythic world inspired by early medieval Northern Europe.
Wolves Collection – $17.95
For $17.95 (retail value $71), you receive the complete game line and supplements as DRM-free ebooks. Note: These titles are not available on DriveThruRPG and must be downloaded directly from your Bundle of Holding Wizard’s Cabinet.
- Wolves Upon the Coast Grand Campaign (The complete 540-hex sandbox and ruleset)
- Monsters & (A tersely poetic, system-adapted bestiary)
- &&&&&&&&& Treasure (Reimagined items, artefacts, and loot tables)
- Whale Roads (A free, lavish 256-page fan-produced journal chronicling a year-long West Marches campaign)
- Bonus Play Aids: Includes an asset pack, quickstart equipment, and rules summaries.
Wolves Upon the Coast is a triumph of substance over flash. Aside from a 51×32-hex full-colour map and some dungeon cartography, the books are entirely devoid of art. The layout is spartan. The descriptions are terse, mysterious, and verging on poetic. Gearing gives the Referee exactly what is needed to run the game at the table, no filler, just pure, usable content across 540 keyed hexes.
The mechanics are a highly stripped-down adaptation of Original D&D. There are no classes, levels, or mental statistics. Instead, character advancement is driven entirely by boasts: make a grand boast to the world, fulfil it through play, and you gain a permanent bonus to your Hit Dice.
It is a bleak but wondrous setting of mud, saints, curses, and petty kings. You can sail the seas using a robust wind and weather system, uncover the lost continent of Lemuria, tangle with dragons dreaming on vast hoards, or even become a troll or an ogre. The Referee prepares situations, not stories, and the players are free to explore, plunder, and reshape the Mid-Isles however they see fit.
If you need proof of how engaging this sandbox can be, the bundle includes Whale Roads, a massive mega-zine documenting a 30-player, 3-Referee West Marches campaign that ran in this exact setting for a full year.
