WoW Players Wear Sunscreen

The following video (some of you may have seen it in the past, some may not) is a montage with various famous WoW videos and some original footage recorded by myself. It is a music video using the Baz Luhrmann's Everybody is Free (To Wear Sunscreen) song. It's not complete as you will notice, there are some black parts where there should be more videos or pictures. I still have the intention to finish it someday but for now, enjoy:

On The Question of Balance

In all games it comes up. Sooner or later you crack open a book, look over a character sheet or simply come across it in-game. Then, arguments ensue, game mechanics are changed, forum posts are made, it gets debated some more and the universe itself shifts. I speak to you of balance.

What is balance in a game where competition between players is theoretically non-existent? Where the idea is to be challenged by a person that essentially has a god like will over the game? Ultimately the answer is a balance of ego's. The ego of the DM and the ego of the players. The GM wants to believe his skill with the system and his knowledge is enough to provide a fun challenge while telling a good story. Players want to believe they provide a good believable character that will deal with the challenges in a heroic fashion. That's how it is in a perfect world.

Sadly, the world is far from perfect. GM's are normally far from skilled enough to stop a well focused player from exploiting one mechanic or another. And players are normally far from sensible enough to restrain themselves. They don't simply want to be heroic, they want to be antagonists themselves. They want to challenge the GM, to write a character and say "I dare you, mere mortal, to put an obstacle in my path I cannot crush within the laws and realities of this petty imaginary world! *cue lightning and thunder followed by maniacal laughter*"

Thus, competition ensues, often unconsciously, and one or more mechanic is changed for the sake of balance. Balance is a funny word to apply to a game that has no distinct rewards for defeating your fellow players. But, human ego is fragile, and no one likes to feel useless. And on the same end there's the desire to go above and beyond your fellow players ad take the spotlight whenever and however one can.

So,I guess the ability to change people is still beyond the limits of your average GM or player. Perhaps for the best. Still, how does one determine whats balanced? At what point is the fragile line from "powerful" and "broken" crossed into a tear jerking, argument inducing pain in the butt?

Well, it all starts when a group of writers sits around a table (a process I'm slowly becoming more and more familiar with) and decides on mechanics to the content of the book. A good portion of the time the crunch(mechanical content) is there to simply full holes and give some neat options for the players. The trouble begins when new mechanics or new twists on old mechanics are brought to the table. I've had the fortune of working with some very intelligent writers on EMM&M and we've done a relatively good job of keeping our mechanics in line. And even now as the fan book is on the verge of being released we still have the occasional thought or debate on how one or more mechanic we've introduced will affect the game. Even now we still discuss it. It's in this relatively chaotic process that sometimes a small detail or another gets by. Sometimes it's a small typo that seems almost insignificant turns into a massive explosion in game. This happens the most rarely, but, is the most commonly blamed.

The second cause of imbalance is misinterpretation. It's generally the plague of newness. New GM's, new players, new mechanics, all these things have a habit of misinterpreting something into something that is not. Sometimes, the easiest solution is education, other players, a rereading, or the rare case of clairfying errata is all it takes. Deliberate misinterpretation is rare but it does happen. In those cases the offender is quick to change his ways when he's caught red handed.

The third and final cause of imbalance is rules lawyering for the purposes of getting the upper hand. These people will twink, min-max, power game, and nitpick there way to glory and massive GM headaches. It's been said on the DnD official forums that with enough supplements one can do anything. This statement has proven itself true time and time again regardless of game. In other words: the more content you introduce the more chance their is that some combination of that content will create imbalance. As a GM, I both love and loathe these people. They're the ones that force me to get creative. They're the ones that make me consider all possibilities in an encounter and to decide how my NPC's should level and build. They're also the ones that give me a massive migraine.

Why should it you ask? Well, for the sake of the other players who for one reason or another either cannot accomplish the same level of power gaming or simply refuse to. And when one character or another simply overpowers the others a few things tend to happen. First, they tend to look to that character for leadership. After all he who is most effective likely has the better decision making capabilities. Second, the other players tend to get lazier and more distracted. Why should they spend more effort then necessary working together when Timmy has all the answers and all the muscle to accomplish the tasks? Ultimately, you're forced to balance encounters around that one player, either nullifying them and forcing the other players to act or increasing the difficulty of the encounters so the other players must act as support or the group as a whole falls rather quickly. Of course this creates resentment, the GM gets blamed, arguments about balance ensue and the circle of life moves on.

The results of this complaining often lead to changes to the game, which leads to more arguments, etc. etc. A lot of games get torn apart due to these things. But, is that the fault of the game and its writers? Or, rather, the fault of the players who use the rule set? Ultimately, I feel it's the fault of all involved. The writers are only human and can't be expected to catch every little thing that goes by. But, when that does happen they need to be prepared to fix it in some manner. DnD has been real good about this and individual fans and writers for WoW:RPG have been good about releasing errata when needed in order to answer the many problems that arise when new controversial content is released. White Wolf, on the other hand, has a very poor history of releasing errata. But, I suppose this is the difference in gaming philosophy between the two games. Storyteller games place a lot of power in the players and storytellers, therefore, it is their responsibility for maintaining balance. The rules themselves are merely guidelines. Unlike DnD and consequently WoW: RPG which has hard fast rules for practically everything.

On the player side of things it's really more about shutting up and enjoying the game. If there's a problem, fix it, and move on. If a player has a problem with a GM ruling, he's the GM get over it or leave. After all the goal is to have fun, not nitpick, not argue, not rules lawyer. Writers tend to be rules lawyers because that's their job description. Players are defined as having fun. So, leave the rules mongering and "balance" to those who get paid. I just wanna play.

New Wondrous Item - The Hand of Midhas

Speaking of gold and speaking of Dark Factions, here's a little freebie for all the DotA enthusiastics. However, you'll only be able to use it once the famous "Independent Player's Guide" is released. Just another thing to make you consider getting it in July.

The Hand of Midhas

Midhas Eagersome was a renown alchemist goblin, no one has ever known how was he able to finance all his chemical engineerings. Over the course of 20 years, he achieved the record mark of mixing over 250,000 magical potions. Some say he would have worked nonstop. Some truly believe he created a device or a magical item capable of funding his experiments. Either way, that still had meant 34 potions a day and required huge amounts of gold. Funny that even with an huge and unknow source of gold he didn't have that many enemies... Go figure.

The Hand of Midhas is a metallic golden glove, once per day thewearer of the glove can transmute any living creature into gold by simply touching them. When touched the target is affected by the Flesh to Gold spell.

Strong Transmutation; CL 13th; Craft Woundrous Item, Flesh to Gold*; Price 23,100; 11,550 Cost + 924 XP

*Flesh to Gold is described in Dark Factions: Chapter 4.

I came up with this idea of doing this item a long time ago but was never able to recreate it with a spell such as polymorph any object or anything less than a wish. Thanks to Dark Factions now it's possible. Next week, a brand new sneak peak of Even More Magic & Mayhem which is moving towards its completition.

Countdown to More Mayhem: Sneak Peak #2

After mentioning the new optional mana point system (Thanks to a post at the forums) in this blog with the intention of clarifying a specific rule. It's time to yet another preview of Even More Magic & Mayhem, the not-so-official-but-almost-there sourcebook that is being created by our Dream Team.

Once again this was prompted thanks to a post concerning the Trade Skills. This optional rule never made it to the corebook but it was supposed to be there in the first place. How does one use Trade Skills in the MMO?

You gather and create. Those two concepts are tied together in a single skill in the RPG and each kind of Trade Skill will grant you synergy bonuses to certain tasks and the best of all: IT WILL GRANT YOU GOLD!! The Trade Skills list is also enhanced with new ones and includes Jewelcrafting!

Having a profession never made you happier in a D&D game, now you have a reason to be proud of it. Stop earning copper and be a trader!

More Magic and Mayhem is scheduled to be released sometime before Dark Factions, so stay tuned.

WoW vs. WoW:RPG

When one runs into a D&D or Vampire based video game one can usually find a book at their local gaming store on the same regions and peoples that video game is based upon this conversion from table top to electronic format is practically traditional and in many cases is the first experience anyone has with a table top game.

In my case the first experience I had with table tops was through the Pool of Radiance game on my dad’s old commodore 64. Some years later I'm in a comic book store rolling a Barbarian.

I'm sure similar patterns have repeated themselves over and over again every time such a game comes out. Can you imagine how many people started playing D&D when Never Winter Nights came out? Imagine there surprise when they found out D&D doesn't actually have a point system that pushes your alignment one way or another.

In any case Warcraft is unique in that it doesn't base itself off a tabletop. Rather, it is a tabletop based off a videogame. This in and of itself creates some unique problems. Particularly when one must work with a company as tight lipped as Blizzard.

The first problem one has to deal with is translating a video game into a table-top, and not just any table top, but one that has been hailed and recognized before the concept of Night Elves was dancing nakedly in the back of someone’s head (purple elves? hawt!). This creates some challenges that the writers have proudly faced in WoW:RPG and its Predecessor Warcraft: The Role Playing Game. After all while videogames take their basic game mechanics from the tabletop itself the writers are forced to handle the ever changing philosophy of blizzards developers regarding the game while still keeping to their own format. Thankfully d20 is adaptable enough that no matter what direction blizz decides to go with the game the writers will always be able to keep up mechanically. But then, we get into lore....

Blizzard loves to retcon so much that it gave players an instance in which they can retcon time itself at the behest of times lords and masters. This is easy for them, after all they own the property and retconning is as easy as making a few code changes and releasing another patch. For the writers, retconning isn't really an option, once a book is out: it's out. The writer of those oh so popular Drizzt novels may have decided midway through the series that a Star Elf might have made a more popular choice then the now cliché drow (by the way if anyone ever pick up the new Drow book I recommend it, it gives them their balls back). But, because he can't simply grab every book in the world and rewrite history he has to stick to his guns and keep Drizzt a drow.

In blizzards case they've had a very hard time deciding just where their characters stand. Garona for example was a half human half orc. Then by Warcraft 2 one of her parents was Draeni. There was only one variety of troll, now there's five. All in all Blizzard loves to implement new ideas with the exuberance of a new GM constantly adding new details to his world despite already laid foundations from earlier in his campaign. That’s great for them but bad for the RPG.

If we sit down and think about all the stuff released, particularly about content which hasn't been released yet, then there’s a huge margin for error, and it already shows. How? Just look at Lands of Mystery, particularly the section on Northrend, then go to the World of Warcraft website and check out Wrath of The Lich King. See some problems? Already a lot of the preconceptions and lore given out in Lands of Mystery is being proven as not what Blizzard intended.

So, what are the repercussions of this on the line? Well, it hurts. New players will pick up the book, find the differences, and not buy it. After all, the book is called World of Warcraft. Automatically that associates it with the videogame, and automatically that gives the impression that the content and lore of the book will be identical if not more then what the game provides. But, if there are contradictions and errors in the book in comparison then it's not World of Warcraft. Thus, the prospective buyer won't spend the time, let alone the money on it. I don't think it takes an economics class to spell out what that means for the line. No money = no new books.

Unfortunately the eventual opening up of blizzard to the people who have the license to write these games is out of ours, the fans, hands. Blizzard isn't going to change it's tight lipped policy, and the writers and developers still need to eat, so sooner or later something is going to have to give and either the line will die out or simply go in a completely different direction.

But, that doesn't help us. So what are we to do? IF you don't play WoW online and are happy with the books, then good for you have nothing to worry about or think about until some player that does comes in and points out the inconsistencies. But, for the rest of us there are only two real solutions. The first is simply roll with the punches and retcon campaigns as easily as blizzard retcons itself. This has problems, but for those that want to maintain consistency that’s the best solution. The other solution, and the best in my opinion, is simply ignoring the inconsistencies if they're already in your game. Simply put your game is simply that: yours. So what if blizzard decides that Blood Elves now serve the Naaru? That’s fine, move on and continue having your Bloodknight BBEG give your ally players a hard time. Thrall assassinated? Who cares? In other words D&D is your game, your rules, the writers might have contract obligations, but you don't nor should you. So, go forth, have fun and decide how Your World of Warcraft should be run.

The Mana Gem Syndrome

Recently an issue has proved to be quite popular around the forum. Is the combination "pyroblast + mana ruby" broken? And in the advent of our upcoming sourcebook, I decided to analyze the use of mana gems if you decide to implement our new Mana Point System.

I won't give away the intricacies of our newest optinal rule; however, I will indulge to this complex matter. Many takes for a resolution were given in the refered thread (http://forums.white-wolf.com/viewtopic.php?t=69090) and I'll try to get the best out of it. Let's consider it part of the unofficial errata.

• Channeling spells can't be kept inside a gem after channel begins.
• A new mana gem will destroy the previous one, regardless of type.
• Mana gems can be detected by a careful caster using any spell detection.
• Treat mana gems like any other magic item in possession of the bearer and which can be destroyed if hit in combat. (totally optional, since some GMs are afraid of casters.)

Let's consider a few things before we move forward.

1. The main difference between conjure mana water and conjure mana gem is that one restores spell slots and the other readies a spell. (tabletop RPG)
2. The main difference between both spells is that one recovers mana while out of combat and the other while in combat. (WoW MMORPG)

If you change the way it works in a mana point system, it will make both spells work the same way with different names... A little lame and kind of pointless. Either way, I will provide the proper usage of Mana Gems if you were to change it to our current mana system*.

Mana Jades restore 5 mana points.
Mana Citrines restore 10 mana points.
Mana Rubies restore 15 mana points.

* The Mana Point system will be revealed in the upcoming e-book: Even More Magic & Mayhem.

We Were Prepared!

Great news everyone, I just started Even More Magic & Mayhem's Chapter One layout, revised manuscripts of Chapters I to VII were sent this morning to me by MagusRogue. We still need some last minute filler art and some magic items need thorough revisions, anyway, the project is taking now its final steps. And you shall see a finished book sooner or later. I hope you like the way I'm putting the book cause what you'll see is what I decide how you'll see it :P

I won't put here a release date yet, simply because there's a lot of stuff to layout and typeset, the book has a solid 200+ pages and I have my own life schedules which can make it slower or faster depending on how busy I will be.

Once again, thanks for your support and especially for your imense patience.

Dark Factions Release

Hey guys! So, after a long, looooooong wait, we have a release date for Dark Factions! It will be in stores in June of this year: a real, live, hard-bound book. I don't know about you, but this makes me happy. Hopefully I'll remember to post some previews and such as the release approaches.
_________________
Luke Johnson
WoW RPG and McWoD Developer
http://www.lukejohnson.com

Donation Expiration

I'd like to inform here that after one month and due to the extremely low rate of donators during that period, we're returning all donations to their rightful owners and we like to apologize for the fact that we can't be giving the mentioned prize and I'm (Salsa) personally sad with this cause I really wanted to help Magus on this situation, anyway I'd like to thank those who tried but unfortunely we couldn't even reach the 30 dollars mark.

I spoke to his wife the other day and Adam decided to use dial-up for the time being, I just hope he can get back on track with his life. By the way if anyone living close to his region still willing to help and who would like to adopt some of his cats, throw me an e-mail I'll let him know.

As for myself, I haven't been updating the blog because recently I'm working on two different short movies, writing a feature film script and doing some research for college about Clerks and Kevin Smith. So come back once in a while check for updates from the other contributors. And expect a new pdf containing the Draenei racial stats.

See ya, Marcos "Salsa" Bolton

who finally finished reading the Sunwell Trilogy, comments soon.

Tech Primer

There's been some questions on the forums regarding tech devices, crafting, and the tinker. I figured it was about time someone compile a primer for those new to the game or confused about the tech rules. Attached is the result Jordan and I put together. Complete with page references to the books.

http://www.geocities.com/logsmole/Tech_Primer.pdf

Note: This is NOT the netbook, Even More Magic and Mayhem. In fact, the primer references a few things in the forthcoming netbook. As such, these referenced items are subject to change.

Enjoy!

Jeff "Trousers" Moller

And Jordan, simply put: you rock.

Glittering Prizes

Hey guys. Our project will probably be postponed again unless of course you can help us. So I'm here in the name of Adam who can't log into the internet for reasons you'll understand as follows:

Alright, here's the deal. I've been out of work for two months due to some.... stupid decisions in my life. Currently I'm back to work, but I'm so behind on bills that catching up is like pulling teeth I no longer have. Perhaps the worst for my profession at current is a $500 bill to my cable company. Why is this such a problem, you ask? No cable = no internet. No internet = no writing jobs. In fact, this current lack of internet cost me a VERY valuable opportunity to be a new RPG developer for White Wolf!!! No!!!!!!! I could have been up there with Ethan Kamp or the like..... And, considering I have twins due in September, finances are making it impossible for me to get my internet turned back on. For a LONG time.

So.... here's the question. Any way any generous and loving fans out there wish to donate to my cause? I'll even throw in an incentive, so here it is:

To the highest two contributers, I offer two personally-signed books: The Alliance Player's Guide and the Horde Player's Guide. One to one, one to the other. (no, you can't get both, you only get one or the other). Conditions: If you want the books, please, a minimum of 20-25 bucks. Of course, if you pass me a hundred (or more), I'll definately be more appreciative and may through something else sweet into the mix....... *hint hint*

So, if you're generous, please flit over to Paypal and donate to my cause to get my internet back up and me outa debt hell. Thanks guys!

-- Adam C Loyd
Your friendly neighborhood game designer!
WoW RPG Freelancer

So, as you can see guys that's our problem. Remember that you don't HAVE to donate more than 20 bucks, any help is appreciated. And also you're not paying for any of our services, you'll just be helping from your own volition. Adam threw the books into the thing to motivate people and make things faster. But if you want to help with 10, 5 or even 1 dollar you won't be forgotten. We will be posting a list of the top 10 donations once this moment of crisis is over and also the names of all donators along with our gratitude.

You can send an e-mail to magus asking if this is true: magusrogue@gmail.com
And you can donate clicking on the button below:

I decided to place here some old files that might be useful to some people. The Steamthrone was something I created once I saw the drawings (or dare I say blueprints :P) for it at the forums. The Spellbreaker needs a revamp, don't know when Adam and I will get to it. And there is also the WoW Unofficial Errata. All those were files I created exactly one year ago.

• Blood Elves (by Adam Loyd)
• Spell Breaker for WoW RPG
• Steamthrone (goblin steam armor)
• WoW RPG Unofficial Errata

I have some of the old D&D Warcraft files, one of them being the old Pandaren Brewmaster. But since that prestige class is going to be covered by Dark Factions I decided to not include it here. I also have the Acolyte, the Goblin Baloonist, the Spell Sniper, and the Axethrower/Warlord. As well as some scourge racial classes. But all that stuff is old now and I'll only upload it if people ask for it.

Edit: Ok, I remembered that my files are hosted in another website (not mine) here is the link http://www.freewebs.com/lands_of_chaos/files.htm I would post the credits for the person who created the website but there is no info about him/her in it.

Return

"...when duty's done, and glory earned.

I swore my heart, I would return."

Humans learn, societies grow, creatures evolve and time is always at motion. Why should magic act differently? Aeons of knowledge are scattered around the corners of the Twisting Nether, ancient secrets probably caved in in the depths of Anh'Qiraj. And you really thought only two books could cover it all? You were wrong...

The Warcraft RPG Resource Homepage returns in a moment of triumph with an upcoming project that will tremble the very foundations of the internet. Under the provisional name of WoW RPG Blog, we will once again provide you with loads of new content to be used with the World of Warcraft Roleplaying Game and all that packed into neat PDF netbooks very close-looking to books from the official line.

Warcraft RPG: Even More Magic & Mayhem (preview)