Tabletop WoW: A roll of the dice
by Matthew Rossi 
Jan 9th 2008 at 3:00PM
Gamasutra has an interesting article exploring the creation of the World of Warcraft line of gaming books released by White Wolf's Swords and Sorcery imprint. Written by Luke Johnson, the co-developer of the line from White Wolf's end, it has a lot of good detail for fans of tabletop (or pen and paper, as my circle of geekish souls always called it) roleplaying games as to the challenges and difficulties of converting a sprawling property like WoW from the rigidly controlled computer game to the much more expansive format of live gaming.I own pretty much every book White Wolf's put out (both in terms of their WoW property and in general, I buy a lot of gaming books) and I have to say I found Luke's points about how the relationship between White Wolf and Blizzard as far as developing the lore in these books to be absolutely fascinating. Blizzard clearly wants to keep the development of the property and its lore firmly in their control, which on the one hand is totally understandable and yet on the other hand really shackles the writers hired to work on these books. You can't just throw in that Orcs like to eat human babies - any cultural note, even an offhand reference to humans having a lot of festivals throughout the year or trolls not liking large groups, needs to be accepted or rejected by the folks at Blizzard, which can really slow down the production of the books. The upside to this kind of supervision is that the RPG line can be used as a sourcebook for troubling lore questions for nerds like me. The downside is that it takes much, much longer to release the books if they have to go back and forth to Blizzard and wait for the team there to have time away from making the MMO in the first place to check what you wrote and decide if they want Harpies to be offended by flutes. The tightrope they walked between providing content and satisfying the folks at Blizzard is a problem I'd not considered in adapting something like this.
I would add one note to his list of possible solutions to the kinds of difficulties that developing a tabletop version of an MMO can cause, but it's a personal bias on my part. I don't think the ruleset they used (the Open Gaming License release of the d20 system created by Wizards of the Coast originally for their D&D game) works very well for WoW. Specifically, I don't think it does a good job of presenting the classes the way they feel in the MMO at all: mages in WoW do not run out of spells, for instance, the way they do in the d20 system. I really found, as a long time gamer, that a lot of the conversions didn't really feel like WoW anymore. Yeah, I know this is a minor quibble and using the OGL frees them up from having to design yet another gaming system when pretty much anyone who plays tabletop knows d20 already.
In general, I found the article interesting for an illustration of how WoW is branching out into other properties. And as a gamer I found it interesting to see how a game so clearly inspired by the tabletop genre (especially games like D&D and Warhammer) came full circle. Have you tried playing the game? Any thoughts on how well or poorly they succeeded in the adaptation?
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Odds and ends, Blizzard, Lore, RP
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Joran Jan 9th 2008 3:49PM
I own the first player's book. I liked a bit of the lore and how they fleshed out a bit of the Warcraft background, but I really did not like the d20 system. It just doesn't seem to fit, especially with memorization of spells. Druid shapeshifting was also poorly thought out. I'll have to go back and read it again, but the mechanics seemed like a complete antithesis of what Warcraft felt like.
On the other hand, I did get to stat out a Tauren that can dual wield totems and backstab with them, so that was fun.
Dave Jan 9th 2008 4:06PM
IMO, tabletop and pen/paper/dice games are two separate genres.
Tabletop means you HAVE to use a table to play, ie: Warhammer, Battletech, etc, with figurines and maps or pieces. Like a board game. Also, card-based games fall into this category. It's pretty difficult to play these games on anything BUT a tabletop or other sort of elevated surface with chairs, etc.
Clearly, you don't need that with a pen and paper RPG as you can throw dice anywhere and you don't need a physical representation of anything at all other than your character sheet, which does not require a table.
Kinda nitpicky perhaps, but it's a personal preference on the terminology I suppose.
I think a WoW game would be better suited AS a tabletop Warhammer style game, rather than a D20. The game itself is more or less able to be represented easily that way. You typically take a certain amount of points (ie: a 40-man raid) to a specific encounter, and that sort of thing could translate the same so you'd have a raider side and an encounter side and someone would play the part of Onyxia, or the Molten Core, or Tempest Keep, etc where you'd have large amounts of cheap trash to kill with a handful of expensive command units on the encounter side.
Of course, this will never ever happen, but it'd be really nice to see at some point and probably a load of fun to be able to customize your Horde army with platoons of Fire mages and Beastmaster hunters while your friend can make his full of Shadow Priests and such if he wants. Or a real "PVP" battle with your Horde army vs someone else's Alliance army. You'd even have to try and keep up with 2 or 3 full sets of armies, one for each faction and an NPC faction as well, which would be nothing but a huge cash cow for the company behind the game.
Too bad games workshop would nevereverever do it... even though tabletop RPG's have hit the skids and this could be a huge cash cow that might attract a ton of people.
mirilene Jan 9th 2008 4:16PM
They did that already, to an extent.
Its called Warcraft 1, 2 and 3
:)
theRaptor Jan 9th 2008 10:52PM
The reason they wouldn't compete with Warhammer would be fear of getting sued. Warcraft 1 was originally a Warhammer game done as a demo, but the guys at GW (genius that they are) didn't see enough money in it, so Blizzard made up a new back story. That is why the WC1 Orcs are pretty much just mindless brutes like Warhammer Orcs, and look identical.
This is why it is terribly amusing to see noobs saying Warhammer Online is ripping off WoW.
Zeebu Jan 9th 2008 4:06PM
in my guild, i'm known as the keeper of the lore, as i do spend a good bit of time reading the history of the horde and figuring out why we do what we do and why we do it via the various cultures, so i have the horde players guide. the lore really did make my day
mirilene Jan 9th 2008 4:19PM
Also, this is definitely not unique to Blizzard's Warcraft universe. Star Wars fans have had to deal with this for years and years. There is a VERY strict hold on what's cannon, what can be explored and whats not allowed.
Even the filler pieces in the miniatures game must be specifically approved by someone at lucasfilm licensing. They've shut pieces down before for not being true to their vision of what star wars is.
Also, imagine for 20 years being forbidden to explore certain areas of the timeline until Revenge of the Sith came out.
Ace Jan 9th 2008 4:58PM
WOW tabletop and figureprints. You could have one for you specific hero than a bunch of cheaper mass ones......an army of Tauren with tree trunks and Blood Elf frost mages.... if only lol your personal one would be the normal 100$ and the mass produced ones are 20$...if only :)
Sean Riley Jan 9th 2008 5:11PM
d20's not only familiar and easy to get started with, it's also a sales machine. There is a surprisingly large number of P&P roleplayers who will not touch anything other than d20, and White Wolf knows it. They're a good press (full disclosure, I used to work for them) and in it for the love of the hobby, but they're also very money conscious and look for the highest profit available whenever possible. (After all, making a big profit on book X makes it possible to actually publish book Y, even if Book Y looks likely to lose money.)
Matthew Rossi Jan 9th 2008 5:13PM
Like I said, I knew my objection was a fairly minor and meaningless one. I enjoy a lot of their work (especially Exalted, which I'd like to see made into an MMO) so I just take the small bad with the overall good.
Sean Riley Jan 9th 2008 5:39PM
As fun as Exalted is, I'd prefer to see it as a sandbox style solo-player game, or maybe (how could you make it work?) an online sandbox multiplayer game with five players as a circle. After all, the whole point of Exalted is that you WILL change the world with your every act. That's just not compatible with the Status Quo is God approach of the MMORPG.
Ugkul Jan 9th 2008 9:19PM
D20 might not be the best choice, but the pen and paper RPG is much more exciting and allows for more character development. Heck at least your actions can change the game world, and death actually holds more meaning in the P&P version.
I've read some nice ideas and background in the White Wolf books, but never have a chance to play them.
Sal Jan 10th 2008 6:09AM
For one quick note, @ #4, Blizz has a big deal with kind of borrowing from WH. Starcraft and WH40K anyone? Not sure what has been worked out between these guys, but it seems that in Blizz's early days that they had them in mind.
As far as d20 being a flawed system for WoW P&P, it should be noted that the system is getting a massive overhaul as we speak, and will be coming out later this year as D&D 4e. Still d20-esque, the system is getting some massive changes to fix things like wizards limited spell casting and other issues that will give a P&P WoW in this system a better blend between MMO gameplay and P&P freeform.