A Review: Wolves Upon the Coast as a System
I have played a lot of Wolves Upon the Coast. I love it and recommend this system to anyone that wants the vibes of Iron Age Warriors seeking to make great stories. So if this is what you are looking for is just "is it worth it" I would say Yes. Past that I am going to do a review of my favorite and least favorite bits of this system. I also am going to review Wolves the system before Wolves the setting I will do the setting in the future but for now I wanted to talk about this system.
The Good:
Boasting - Wolves did away with traditional levels and moved to a more diegetic method of advancement that still provides a solid framework for players to look at when they question how else to advance. Pure diegetic systems can leave players feeling a bit lost as to what they are expected to do and ones with too strict of leveling systems can leave them ignoring diegetic advancement and focusing on the system instead of the setting. Boasting walks a good line in between by having players make statements of their own goals and having mechanical benefits and maluses based on their accomplishment of these tasks.
The Weapons System - Wolves uses a flat d6 damage system like its OD&D predecessor. However where Wolves moves off of this is it splits weapons into 3 categories Light/Medium/Heavy. Light and Heavy weapons deal damage with disadvantage and advantage respectively meaning it is always the same dice being rolled and that makes it simple to know effectively how much damage an attack going or coming is likely to do. Wolves also adds special bonus effects onto these such as with swords they have the Riposte ability which says when an attack against you totals 6 or less you may immediately roll an attack back against the enemy that made the attack. Compare this to a Battle Axe which says that when you roll a 6 on your damage dice you may roll an additional dice (repeating again on another 6) however you take a malus against your own Armor Class when enemies attack you. This makes it a super swingy weapon that can occasionally just end an attack vs a powerful foe in a single blow.
I have noted that players have disagreed as to if this system is good or not. Canyon my co-GM prefers the simplicity of simple number bonuses. I think the presence of those makes clear best options and ends up being the death of decision making and not the birth of it. Also it is funny that in my campaign I have had 4 different players declare definitively that x is the best weapon in the system. They all disagreed as to what that weapon was.
Class as Armor - this one I am actually really tentative on putting in the Good. It is a fun design a ton of what you do in the game is largely decided just on how much armor you have your PC wear. From how much they can carry (9+AC slots) to initiative (roll 1d10 under your armor to go before the enemy) to what your saving throws are (this is my least favorite aspect of this though it is simulationism to a good extent). It is a clean system that makes some delineation between PCs that can feel very similar in an OSR classless system. The armored juggernaut stepping into the middle of a ship load of pirates with his great sword is very different then the guy wearing no armor that flits about the edge of the battlefield pelting foes with javelins and oil flasks.
Magic - Spells via rituals that you must discover and engage with dietetically is an awesome design that works well in play. My players never really engaged that much with this as it often requires questing for resources and my open table west march-esque game often had players feeling guilty for trying to engage in personal questing led to very little magic being cast in my campaign. This is not a universal problem (nor even a problem for me as I enjoy the low magic setting) but most GMs I have spoken to say they have tended to have a PC or two that are just loaded with spells.
The Bad
Balance - As a system it has a lot of good ideas but in prolonged play you can certainly tell that Luke Gearing in all of his excellent ideas did not have access to prolonged playtesting. Some of the math just doesn't line up and the system required homebrewing to fix some issues especially around things like Boasting bonuses giving either +1 HD or +1 to Hit. The +1 HD is just so clearly the correct option mathematically that my players rapidly decided to pile up HD and keep their bonus to hit be minimum once one of them verbalized it. We pushed the bonus to +2 to hit which is still mathematically worse but it did at least keep fights quick and players started to sometimes pick it again.
There also was issues with shields as they quickly became game defining. Players would carry 2-3 shields and just use them endlessly to nullify hits rules as written this is effective endlessly. We fixed this by both requiring a full action to swap a shield and then on top of that Shields Shall be Splintered reduced damage to the minimum instead of 0. So a bear that deals 1d6+2 would do 3 damage still which is still dangerous to player characters who will often be 2 shot by hits like that.
Inconsistent This game uses 1d20 rule overs, xd6 roll under, 1d10 roll under, etc for various resolutions in the core system that will consistently be rolled. They can be hard to track at first and take some use to memorize.
The Ugly
Barebones - This game like many OD&D hacks (and B/X hacks) has a heavy expectation of the GM to be experienced and to fill a lot of gaps in how things work. There is a dozen hexes in the setting it is tied to that simply have 0 guidance on how to actually adjudicate these things. From horseraces, to building ships, to how to determine which mercenaries and followers can be found, to the simple concepts of getting knowledge of magic and wards out to PCs. You as a GM will need to either be comfortable with homebrewing rules on the fly for things that can be pretty extensive minigames (the horse races in Brychdyn filled an entire session) and the rules for it just don't exist. I have had many would be GMs ask me these kinds of questions and while I can tell them what I have done I also see that this would leave many GMs feeling lost. Not everyone has the experience necessary to know what rulings tend to work in what situations. I know many GMs like simpler systems but it leaves many others feeling lost. To me personally this is a flaw. I can ignore rules already written I tend to see people struggle with not knowing what to do at all.