Tabletop Adventures on Azeroth
Let me begin by saying that I am very bad at actually posting anything close to on time. For that I apologize to readers that may want consistency.
My most recent project was jnspired by my friends, who began playing World of Warcraft, or returned to it, after the release of Battle for Azeroth.
(SIDERANT: BLIZZARD, HOW DARE YOU KILL VOL’JIN DURING LEGION! HE WOULD HAVE BEEN THE BEST WARCHIEF THE NEW HORDE HAS EVER HAD! YET, YOU HAD TO RUIN IT BECAUSE VOL’JIN WAS TOO REASONABLE AN INDIVIDUAL FOR THE HORDE! TROLL MASTER RACE!)
I have tried to make a World of Warcraft RPG before, a few years back. However, I never felt as though I could contribute anything that was really good for the experience of roleplaying in Azeroth. There was just nothing I felt that I could produce which would be better than what was already available. I did not intend to produce my own system; therefore, I was constrained, and no system, I felt, would allow me the flexibility to contribute something worthwhile and make it Azeroth.
When Fantasy Flight Games released the Genesys RPG, which was a stripped down, non-setting-specific version of their Star Wars RPG line, I immediately became intrigued. The FFG Star Wars RPG was great on many accounts. It presented the players with many options, the dice system was amazing, and its handling of The Force was more than amazing. However, the game suffered from the Talent trees that the careers were forced to comply with, which limited a character’s access to some of the options.
Genesys fixed this issue, creating a tiered system for their talents, ultimately still allowing progression, while expanding the scope of character opportunity. I loved Genesys after reading it, and immediately bought the book and a couple sets of dice to play the game.
Fast-forward to just over a week ago, my partner and I are discussing the lore of Warcraft, and they say that they want to play a Warcraft RPG. I tell them that I’ve considered it in the past, and they immediately become excited. I shoot it down, because I had given up. I tell this to my friends, and they also become excited, so I begin thinking: what if I tried again?
A Warcraf tRPG had already been published under the Sword and Sorcery line back in the early to mid 2000s. The game was alright, confined by the dominating ruleset of the time: d20. Any roleplayer experienced in different systems knows the most damaging flaw of d20, its rigid necessity for rules and statistics. For Warcraft, it also suffered from Warcraft’s myriad approach to spellcasting.Â
While druids, shamans, mages, warlocks, priests, paladins, and death knights all possessed different approaches to the casting of spells in Warcraft lore, the d20 system of Sword and Sorcery and many of its contemporaries possessed only one system for casting spells.
This was the primary reason that I had abandoned my attempts originally, and the reason that I still remain hesitant to attempt this. i will dive briefly into this endeavor and comment concerning my attempt in my next post.
Until then, Shorel’aran malanore...