Sword & Sorcery Studios to publish Warcraft D20

[Kobold Avenger]

According to the press release Warcraft, is a D&D campaign setting. It might not be developed by WotC, but much like Kingdoms of Kalamar, Ravenloft and Dragonlance, it is still a D&D setting, with a D&D logo on the book.

And seeing as how D&D doesn't have mana for spellcasters, neither will Warcraft. It'll pretty well be the same set-up that D&D has with a few tweaks.

 

[Phaedyme]

It's more than just the games, though. There's also the Warcraft novels, where mages don't prepare their spells in advance, and Orc Shamans actually gain their magic through communicating with the elemental spirits of nature.

You may be investing too much time into thought about this feature.

 

[Voneth]

As far as the WCIII RPG goes, what will get it for me will be all the "filler" spells.

The most special abilites that Heroes have is what, four or five? Though with WCIII, those abilites now have 4 levels each. So you either have a faithful adaption that has only a few spells that level or you have a lot of DnD spells that "fill" in the gaps and make the world feel more like DnD instead of WCIII.

In some respects, I am tempted to just use something rules light like Mutants and Masterminds or BESM. I will be fair and check out the book before I make my decision.

Then again, I may buy the book, just so I can use the info, no matter what rules I use.

... It had better not cost $40, though or I may just skip it completely.

 

[Phaedyme]

As far as the WCIII RPG goes, what will get it for me will be all the "filler" spells.

The most special abilites that Heroes have is what, four or five? Though with WCIII, those abilites now have 4 levels each. So you either have a faithful adaption that has only a few spells that level or you have a lot of DnD spells that "fill" in the gaps and make the world feel more like DnD instead of WCIII.

Of course, the problem with your so-called "faithful adaptation" is that while Warcraft III (and its predecessors) are real-time strategy games, D&D is *not*. Expecting an RPG to have the same granularity for representing the heroes as the RTS game is more than unrealistic.

Specifically, the heroes had special abilities and the casters had spells that were relevant to the game, but not exhaustive in terms of what those characters could do in, say, an RPG.

 

[Dark Jezter]

You may be investing too much time into thought about this feature.

Well gee, I'm sorry for theorizing about how the game could adhere to the universe it's trying to simulate. That's what people do here, you know, seeing as it's a forum for RPG discussion.

 

[Phaedyme]

Well gee, I'm sorry for theorizing about how the game could adhere to the universe it's trying to simulate. That's what people do here, you know, seeing as it's a forum for RPG discussion.

Nothing wrong with that, just offering comments on the comments.

I really don't want to stop people from wondering, just noting that some things are less likely to come about than others.

As for the emulation, and which would be more faithful - I suspect that comes down to little more than opinion. I don't know that spell preparation or a mana point system would be more faithful to Warcraft as an RPG setting, but I will point out that calling it "Dungeons & Dragons: Warcraft" and then putting a different magic system into the core book might not be the best of ideas.

 

[Wayside]

Nice work, Hardhead! You managed to do a good job with these. I read all of them.

On a seperate note, the Warcraft RPG will definately need to have different rules for casting spells than traditional D&D, since the Warcraft universe uses a Mana system instead of preparing spells at the beginning of the day.

That brings up an interesting point. Not really any global spells like tranquility or starfall in D&D.. the mechanics for those effects should be interesting. Healing wards, stasis traps, moon wells, auras, etc. too.

Think they'll incorporate the new material from the Warcraft 3 expansion and WoW or make them separate supplements? Hopefully the former..

As for whether the system is mana-based or not, the developers can do it whichever way they think is best. I wouldn't say we're "investing too much time into thought about this feature." They'll do whatever they'll do, and then I'll fix all their mistakes when I run it. That's how we do it round here.

 

[Phaedyme]

As for whether the system is mana-based or not, the developers can do it whichever way they think is best. I wouldn't say we're "investing too much time into thought about this feature." They'll do whatever they'll do, and then I'll fix all their mistakes when I run it. That's how we do it round here.

I'm sure I have a fairly good sense of what "they'll" do with the game.

(and "mistakes?" "fix?" strong words for what amounts to a difference of philosophy)

 

[Hardhead]

My primary loss in being the Warcraft developer is that I can't look at such things. :-/

Believe me, you have my full and carte blanche permission to use anything you want or even just pick up a idea here or there from it(1), and I hereby relinquish any claims of ownership or "wanting money for it" or whatever. Besides, it's not anything ground-shattering, gameplay-wise. If it doesn't occur to you that the Keeper of the Grove should be able to animate trees into treants, then the project is doomed already.


1. Besides, I have no illusions that these are publishling-level PrCs (though I fancy they're not too far off either) and reading back over them, I see one or two things I'd change myself. Especially if I were going to lengthen them into ten-levle PrCs, as you'd probably want to do (I kept them five levels long to coincide with the Dwarven King and Orchis Blademaster PrCs in that one issue of Dragon.

 

[Phaedyme]

Believe me, you have my full and carte blanche permission to use anything you want or even just pick up a idea here or there from it(1), and I hereby relinquish any claims of ownership or "wanting money for it" or whatever. Besides, it's not anything ground-shattering, gameplay-wise. If it doesn't occur to you that the Keeper of the Grove should be able to animate trees into treants, then the project is doomed already.

Heh. No, it's not that, it's just a general "don't look" thing that's fairly normal, legally speaking. I avoided lots of fan material for the Ravnos when I wrote that clanbook for the same reason.

1. Besides, I have no illusions that these are publishling-level PrCs (though I fancy they're not too far off either) and reading back over them, I see one or two things I'd change myself. Especially if I were going to lengthen them into ten-levle PrCs, as you'd probably want to do (I kept them five levels long to coincide with the Dwarven King and Orchis Blademaster PrCs in that one issue of Dragon.

Cool.

Admittedly, it couldn't hurt to write me at elune@swordsorcery.com and tell me how cool your stuff might be for publication. Probably couldn't use the prestige classes you've written as they're covered in the core book, but there will be *other* books...