Genesis Journal #14 - WoW Factions?

I really like the way that WoW did its factions. Having primarily two sides which the players can join in the fight limits how that player is going to start out. They might be able to join smaller factions as they progress and gain honor or reputation with other groups, but they always remain a member of eiher the Horde, or the Alliance.

I think we get this in Dungeons and Dragons for the most part going back a long ways, but probably not so clearly stated. You usually see a strong alliance between the majority of humanoid races i.e. humans, elves, dwarfs, halflings, and even half-orcs. The rest of the world is pretty much on the other side of the wall and may or may not be all on the same side.

Sure, in D&D things are more complicated. Individual kingdoms have their own agendas, politics, blah blah blah. However, if the far realm were to invade the world, these kingdoms would probably put their problems behind them in order to fight off armies of Mind Flayers.

These racial alliances really boil down to factions. I want to establish these racial factions in my game to make it clear to the players and to people looking at the world, who likes and dislikes who, from a very wide and general point of view. If you look at L5R, you get this to some extent with each of the clans. Maybe it is a bit different in terms of flavor, but you can see these same Large scale alliance coming into the picture there.

The Lore of the World at this point stands with the various humanoid races at the center of the world aligned together for the last few millenia. The Beastfolk Noble Races were, at the beginning of this alliance, all united into one. However, What I want to see happening is having these beastfolk races gradually growing apart and warring against each other. The fracturing of the Beastial Alliance begins the factioning process and several factions (maybe 3 or 4 racial factions develop).

What do you think about my analysis of the factions idea and about how I would use it in my world?

Genesis Journal #13 - WoW and less Punky Steam Punk

My current examination of World of Warcraft will be ending very soon. My poor Toshiba netbook which I have with me here in Japan decided that it no longer likes to run World of Warcraft now that I have installed the new expansion for the game; perhaps they upgraded the graphics, or, perhaps it is because my netbook seriously lacks the necessary RAM to keep the game from crashing the entire system through the floor.

All this really doesn't matter to my current campaign setting journal at hand.

One of the things I really like about WoW is the integration of technology into the system. Guns, Gizmos, Steam powered gadgets, magical machines, and even mecha all make an appearance in the game. But.... the game is definitely NOT steam punk.

So, what I have been thinking about is the integration of steam powered weapons, gizmos, etc., without entering into the Steam punk genre at all. In other words, if WoW can build a Punk-less Steam integrated universe, then I think just about any good role player or world builder could do the same thing.

Given this analysis, I really feel like my setting is leaning much more towards the WoW feel. The feel I have for the setting is more of a fantasy world with steam powered stuff populating it. I mentioned earlier in my post regarding Steam Punk and Cyber Punk that I was aiming for something in the middle of these two genres. Since my return to WoW, I think that I could easily put all kinds of steamy stuff into the world without turning it into a "Steam Punk" universe.

I really want to make the Mad Lands more of a Mad, Mad, Mad world kind of Mad Lands, then an upset and angry Mad Lands. I think that in doing something like this, I am more interested in making the game fun and whimsical (at least for the imagery) than in making the game world punk and edgy. I think I would put my setting more into the category of Fantasticaly, Steamy, Cybery Whimsy, than into any of these categories alone. This isn't to say that I want this setting to be funny; I just want it to be way over the top and filled with fun cool stuff and interesting stories, and some serious global plots.

WoW vs. 4e - Does the Setting Need to Make Sense to Be Fun?

I really don't even begin to understand all the lore surrounding the Warcraft Universe. There is simply so much going on. To be quite Frank, the system and the setting itself make very little sense to me. World of Warcraft is especially so. There seems to be a significant ammount of anachronism going on, what with massive cannons, zepelins, and motor cycle riding Minotaurs roving the streets of Orgrimar.

But, does it really matter that I don't get it? I don't really think so. It seems to me that when you get into playing a video game, you are able to suspend a lot of your sense of disbelief about the world. What you are seeing is what is there. If it weren't supposed to be there, it wouldn't be. When it comes to me playing WoW, I don't have any problem with the fact that a whole lot of settings, styles, and themes are all mashed together.

Why?

Becuase it is fun. I get a huge kick out of whatching a goblin parachute from a falling helicopter. I also get a huge kick out of summoning my vanity pet rocket-bot (which I think I got for Xmas one year). I do not however ask many questions about the world. I take it for what it is and I am grateful for that.

However, with role playing, and especially with games like D&D, the setting really matters. In order to develop a sense of immersion into the setting, I think a lot of people maintain that it is necessary for that setting to make sense. Players will question things that don't seem right. I believe everyone DM has had that moment where they have to think of an NPC name of the top of their head and come up with BoB the Half-Orc. This kind of extemporaneous NPC naming tends to ruin some people's gaming experience.

But, does it really have to?

If we are playing in a fantasy world, does the setting need to made perfect sense? With magic, or steampunk, or even cyberpunk elements, just about anything becomes possible. Is there really a need to explain how every little thing works, or, why every little thing is the way that it is?

If I want to throw some fantastic encounter on a flying city together and have the players go there, do I need to explain how the city is flying? why it is in this particular portion of the sky, or how it moves?

I don't think you should have to. This may just be my preference, but I don't really have a problem suspending disbelief even when it comes to Pen and Paper gaming. However, I don't really know how other people feel about this. What do you think? Does the setting need to make sense?

WoW vs. 4e - Crafting

I posted about Professions a bit ago, but this time I want to compare Crafting in WoW 4e and D&D.

In WoW, although you really want to become more powerful, most of the game revolves around making money. Going into dungeons, doing quests, everything has some time of currency tied to it. Crafting becomes a great way to make money in the game. It becomes a fantastic way for a player to take a little bit of time each day to make some gear and post it on the auction house and get a few gold pieces.

Yesterday I cleared out my bank and sold all of the old bags which didn't sell at all around a year and a half ago. I had put up a significant number of 16 slot bags on the auction house for about 3g a piece and none of them would sell. Now, I am dropping those babies out for more than 10 G a piece. I think over the last couple of days I have sold about 20 bags in all. That is a serious ammount of cash, for, lets face it, almost no work at all.

But D&D is not about making money. Sure, players are concerned about their gold. They may be at it for the money, but that really isn't the goal of the game. D&D is about having fun and doing some role playing with your friends. Trying to turn crafting in D&D into something like crafting in WoW might take a lot of the fun out of the game, especially if you give the players a chance to sell all the stuff they make.

I really think though, there is a place for crafting skills in D&D 4e that go beyond the simple stuff you can get through backgrounds. I will be blunt. I hate that crafting gets tied into backgrounds so easily. It just seems too quick and too simple. I want more.

I have several ways to get this done.

1. As I explained in an earlier post about Professions, at level 1, players can select a number of minor skills which are tied to Professions or Crafting.
2. Players can use these skills to craft items which are level appropriate, spending time and effort in order to craft a weapon or item (though relatively little game time).
3. Items that players craft CAN be sold, but not likely for 100% of the money you would see in one of the player's books.

However, using this type of system requires some work from the DM. It is up to the DM in this type of situation to limit the ammount of crafting that a player can do to a minimum. Perhaps doing a bit of crafting between sessions, or, doing a bit of crafting on the side, when the PC's return to their home city. As long as the game doesn't slow down, and the player doesn't get too rich through these means, I think that Crafting in 4e is perfectly acceptable.

WoW vs. 4e - Mounts

In my continuing personal study of World of Warcraft and 4e DnD, I thought I should bring up the mount. In WoW, the mount is pretty much your crowning joy. I know from experience that saving up enough money to get my hands on a flying mount was some serious work, a true labor of laboriousness (if that is even a word). But, once I had myself a flying mount, I couldn't have been happier. Now, I am saving to get myself a better one. It is a LOONNNGGG way off. Getting together the cash to get that mount is going to take some serious questing and some serious work on my part, but when it is all done, I will be flying around the skies of Azeroth in style.

Now...

What about 4e? In all honesty, I have never had a character that even owned a mount in 4th Edition D&D. In fact, only one character, my Gnome Bard/Paladin back in my RPGA days of 3.5 even had a mount (a warhound). Does not having a mount take anything away from the game? I don't really know.

From what I have seen, the standard Dungeon Crawl format of D&D 4e doesn't really support mounted combat very much. It is not going to be easy to get your mount into a dungeon and it is going to be even harder to keep it in line while there. But, does this mean that as a player, I have to give up on having a shiny magical mount of my own?

The problem, as I see it, is that you are rarely, if ever, going to really get to make good use of mounted combat in 4e D&D. If that is the case, than you are also very rarely going to want to spend the prescious money that you have to pick up an awesome mount of your own (if you look them up, some of the more expensive mounts cost quite a bit of cash).

In other words, as a player, you very rarely want to buy a mount, but if you think about it as your character, that character would most likely love to be mounted up and enjoying traveling on a trusted companion rather than some rental steed.

Now, how can we rectify this rift. Honestly, I don't know. WoW is a video game, and as such, they have rules which sometimes don't really work the way we would think of them. Mounts can't be used in combat, and you can't fight from atop a mount. However, in D&D you can do both of these things, and if you are riding around on a Dragon, that dragon is GOING to have a role in combat.

I guess, I am at a bit of a mental standstill on this issue. I would love to give all my players awesome mounts that they can use to get around my sandbox world in style, but I don't want to give them, essentially a massive weapon that can be used in combat for a huge boon.

If anybody has a solution to this problem, I am all ears.

WoW vs. 4e - Professions

Now that I have been taking a small vacation to Azeroth, returning to World of Warcraft for a bit to see some of the new content and connect with some friends back in the US, I thought I would like to make some comments on this experience and how I have learned from it as a RPG player and RPG Blogger.

I think one of my favorite things about World of Warcraft has been the profession system. I think it is really, really entertaining and engaging. Some people might think it is a big waste of time, or just something that you do to pick up some gold, but I really enjoy it. I have gone through a number of professions on my various characters, but my current avatar - Cystematic - a level 70 Mage, is currently both a Miner and a Tailor. I am really excited to finally sew myself a flying carpet when I scrap together the gold I need to pick up all the cloth for it.

Now, I have to say, It is a bit suprising that I would be excited about something like that in WoW, but not really in D&D. One of the reasons for this, I have to say, is the disappearance of crafting and profession skills from the game when it made its move into 4e. Sure, you can get some crafting ability when you take a particular background, but these backgrounds really only make some of your other skills better and don't really reflect what I would like to see.

Can anything be done about this? Sure, I think there is something very simple that any DM could house-rule into D&D 4e. When you make a new character, starting at level one, you can get training in a certain number of "Minor" skills. These minor skills don't grant any combat abilities, nor are they really used in Skill challenges, but what they are used for is granting flavor to your character that is reflected in the characters mechanics. This may be a very non-Old School way to play the game, but I am not from the old school. I like to have my game mechanics very clear and I like having my character stats show off what my character is like.

These minor skills could be things like Perform, Craft (Armor), Craft (Weapons), or even things like my WoW mage's tailoring. These skills would let you do some cool stuff that wouldn't throw off the balance of the game in the slightest. You could make a bit of small money from your profession now and again, and players could even combine their crafting skills to build magic items at higher skill levels.

If you have any house rules like this, or have a comment on this, I would appreciate any feedback that the RPG Blogging community might have to offer.

Back in Azeroth Again - WoW the place has changed.

I will admit it. I have been playing World of Warcraft for a long time. I might have mentioned this a long time ago, but I can't remember. This year, I picked up a new, very small, very compact Toshiba Netbook, to replace the Toshiba laptop that I have been toting around since I was a freshman in high school. I will say the netbook can't do much, but suprsingly, it will run WoW. After finding this out, I decided to give my free 7 day call back to Azeroth an Activation, and, since they were running a sale on Wrath of the Lich King, the second of their expansions, I picked up the game as well.

Now, I will say that at one point I was a die hard World of Warcraft player. It got to the point that in high school none of my friends actually wanted to get together to hang out anymore because it was more fun to go home, get some grub, and meet up online on WoW. We were all playing it, so it gradually replaced out RPG time. However, this time around, I can already tell that I won't be getting that involved. Most of the friends that I played with at one point, that really made the game fun, have either moved on from the game, or we have lost touch in the real world (living in another country will do that to you). With the exception of my best friend (he was the best man at my wedding) I actually don't know anybody that is even playing the game at this point.

I had a two year break from the game. I stopped playing before Wrath made its debut, and it looks like I started out again before Cataclysm goes live in about 5 days. The World is a lot different than I remember it. The UI has been improved. The talent system works differently. Also, because of the new expansion, the world has actually been drastically overhauled and physically has changed (It took me just over half an hour to find the Zepelin in Ogrimar).

You may ask, if this is a Pen and Paper RPG Blog, why are you talking about world of warcraft? Well, returning to WoW has changed the way I think about 4e. I think most people know that warcraft drew a lot from D&D and other fantasy role playing games. However, now, I really think there are some things that D&D could do, or simply bring back, that WoW is doing, which could really help both the feel and the style of the game.

With that in mind, I have a small series of blog posts coming out which will be an analysis of both WoW and D&D 4e, likes, dislikes, comparisons, and contrasts. Also, I will make some new entries in my Genesis Journal about WoW, its setting, style, and feel, and how those aspects of the game could be used in a pen and paper RPG setting like the one I am working on now.