Wolf’s Head Tor

By Pauli Kidd
Kitsune Press
OSR
Level 1

Millennia ago, the ‘Grey Folk’ -the High Elves -ruled the world. They were a cruel and indolent race, obsessed with their sorceries and experiments. These beings created other races as servants, slaves, artisans and warriors. After centuries ofinfighting and intrigue, the elven lords finally destroyed one another in a vast magical conflagration. Their civilisation vanished -leaving only magical dangers, monsters and strange rums. The other races scattered out ofthe wreckage and survived. A thousand years later, we now have a world of little city-state kingdoms and towns, tribes and weird monsters, all dotted about a world filled with ancient ruins, magical wastelands and wilderness.

This 235 page adventure contains a dungeon with … 150 rooms? It’s straight out of Jr High in the 70’s, since the designer notes that’s where it originally came from. That means a weirdness from the OD&D days mixed in with non-trope interactivity. It’s light on the treasure and light on the descriptive text. Another entry in the Good Old Days category, but, it’s gonna be a rough one to run with for a modern game.

We got some 79 (hehe!) action for you. The designer notes that this is from that time period and jr high self. We got your post-apo fantasy setting where the high elves are assholes and nuked the world a thousand years ago. Everyone else is the remnant of a slave race, and it’s all your standard Pot Fantasy setting. You’ve got kobolds/jawas running around the desert along with the sandpeople/lizard men. Pig faced orcs and wood elves serve as native american tropes, and a big ass desert full of the remains of the high elf civilization. Frogtown, naked after the statues of the giant frog in the center, is our starter town with the usual assortment of places expanded upon: bar, temple, guards. And then the Jr High elements of a bath house. I say Pot Fantasy because we’ve got a kind of Wizards vibe going on in town. Magical Ren Faire, where everyone lives together, but a kind of edge. Ala the orcs and wood elves. And, sticking in a bath house and a Wererat chick who hangs out in the bar in hybrid form … well. I’m sure the pot flowed freely. But, it all works if you’re going for that Pot/Shroom fantasy vibe. 

The main attraction is the titular Wolf Head Tor. Rumors in town lead you to a high elf tower in the desert. But, dude is still around. So you romp through a couple of levels-ish of a “palace” with a fuck ton of rooms. And it’s all weirdness. An opium den. A water weird in the wine barrel in the officers club. Giant undead loster-chickens in the biolab. A skeleton sitting at a table with a sword through his chest. Still moving mummy-heads in the trophy room. This is all coming from a time in which the tropes of D&D were not yet fully formed, and so you get that variety, and the interactivity that it entails, present throughout the adventure. I talk about things being written from a neutral point of view, and this it is. Get fucked up r learn how to use it to your advantage. Who wants to fight skeletons/zombies with wolf heads! Why? Because it’s cool, so fuck off!

The main issue here is going to be how it first in to the modern D&D field. And I don’t mean in tone. The descriptions (and, formatting, for that matter) do tend toward the minimal. This can be good. You’re not wading through a lot of text. And, in fact, there is not a lot of padding in this. And, also, there’s not a lot in the way of evocative text either. 
Four ogre zombies wait in this room. They erupt out of the room one round after any fight or alarm.” Well, ok. Short and gets the job done, I guess. But, wouldn’t it have been better to get a couple of words about the zombies to bring the encounter to life? 

Or, maybe, in this longer example:  “The door to this room gives off a feint scent of sulphur. The growling of dogs can be heard within. Inside the room, a long cage at the south east sector o fthe room holds four hellhounds. The hounds can breathe fire out of the cages at torch passers bye. Fortunately their range is limited (10 feet)”  This is a pretty good example of the text present, all around. It focuses on one thing in the room, in this case the cage/hell hounds. And that’s what you get. It’s not quite minimally keyed, but its pretty close to that. It gets close to the victorian room dressing style in places, but never falls off the edge in to long lists. WHich is a good thing, but, also … it never quite builds a picture in the DMs head. The evocative text just is not present in any consistent way, or way at all. From this you are essentially running a minimally keyed dungeon. 

And I’m not sure there’s a place for this. Other than an exercise in quantness, whats the point? A modern supplement, by which I mean ready to run at the table, this is not. I wish it kept the unique properties, the encounter weirdness, that makes it an excellent example of D&D, and yet also provided those amenities that I expect to see these days in a D&D adventure: evocative text. 

This is $7.50 at DriveThru. The twenty page preview will show you some of the setting information, but none of the keys. It really should, to be a good preview.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/403281/Wolfs-Head-Tor?1892600