After countless hours over the last two weeks, the wait is finally over. Drums of War is complete!
Drums of War is a tabletop roleplaying game designed to allow players to explore the world of Azeroth at their own pace and whim. It was created out of a desire to create my own stories and adventures in the Warcraft universe, coupled with a dissatisfaction with the amount of justice both WoW and the tabletop did to it's roleplaying potential.
This is a bit of a rough draft, officially an Alpha version, but should be complete enough to play with a creative GM and flexible players. All of the basic rules are covered, as well as all races and classes up to Lich King.
Comments and contributions are welcome. While this was largely a single person project in its initial stages, I suspect it will not see continued life without open contribution. There is still much room to improve and add here, and I welcome any ideas or bits anyone cares to contribute.
I'll have a full website up very soon on Google Sites or Wikia, but in the meantime, here's the PDF, hosted from Google Docs:
Drums of War, Alpha Version (http://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B3hWDeEiNI5aYzQ2YmM4M2YtZDE2Ny00OWRmLWIxMzctOTQ5M2QwMGZhZmY1&hl=en) (251 Kb)
How are saving throws implemented?
There are no saving throws per se, but similar situations do come up, and are generally handled as attribute checks. Magical attacks in particular are resisted by an opposed roll between the caster's Int and the target's Spi (or RV for monsters). I can't recall off the top of my head exactly how Hunter traps worked, I think it was an opposed Agi vs. Agi check.
Master of the Ghouls needs a cap on how many ghouls you can have in your service permanently at a time, otherwise Death Knights are going to have storehouses of ghouls.
Is it correct to assume that Paladin's Holy Hammer does require an successful attack roll, right? Can it be activated after a successful attack or is Holy Hammer it's own attack action?
What's the duration on the armor bonus provided by the Light Armor Kit? Can several of these stack?
Master of Ghouls should be a "once per combat" ability.
Hammer of Justice is a bit vague. I think I intended it to be an automatic effect, but at that mana cost that's a little bit over powering. Making it a Magical attack is probably for the best.
Light Armor Kits are meant to be permanent, like in the game, but can only be used once on a suit of armor. This should probably be clarified.
Between this, and the missing "resource box" and non-weapon/armor gear sections on the char sheet, looks like it's going to be time to start keeping track of changes somewhere.
I had a look, though generally its hard to comment in that I'm entirely unfamiliar with WoW and many of the design features could be there to match it's setup.
On attributes, some googling suggested 3d6-drop-lowest gives an average of about 8.4, which would be a yield of 42 points (compared to 40 for the non-random method).
There's some initial benefit for characters using nonrandom generation since (as with D&D 3-4), you can avoid the odd numbers that don't given extra bonuses, but since levelling up adds points directly to scores, this benefit vanishes reasonably fast.
Much of the character abilities are written to emulate their WoW equivalents in a hopefully more tabletop friendly form. If you go over to like WoWWiki or the like and look them up, they're usually pretty close in spirit, if not in actual numbers.
And the slight disparity in the average between random and point buy is quite deliberate. I've used a similar design in the past. I like that trade off between having the chance to do better with the dice, in exchange for not knowing what you'll get. It's that kind of slight risk/reward thing I like in chargen, it's what makes Traveller so fun, for instance.
Since I'm more often a player than a GM, I tend to focus on the character systems. Everything else is just figuring out how those characters interact.
i like that random/point buy trade-off you've got going. good design philosophy IMO.
downloaded a copy to read later. looks good so far. thanks for sharing!
Quote from: J Arcane;397205Master of Ghouls should be a "once per combat" ability.
So, Master of Ghouls lasts the duration of a combat and then the ghouls sod off? That sounds okay.
Quote from: DeadUematsu;397310So, Master of Ghouls lasts the duration of a combat and then the ghouls sod off? That sounds okay.
The description indicates that the duration is 8 rounds. I think I considered bumping it to 10 originally, as that's how long it lasts in WoW, but decided to lessen it to keep it from being overpowering.
Quote from: J Arcane;397317The description indicates that the duration is 8 rounds. I think I considered bumping it to 10 originally, as that's how long it lasts in WoW, but decided to lessen it to keep it from being overpowering.
You're talking about Army of the Dead. Master of the Ghouls is the talent which allows enemy corpses that are raised to be permanently in your control until released or destroyed.
Quote from: DeadUematsu;397323You're talking about Army of the Dead. Master of the Ghouls is the talent which allows enemy corpses that are raised to be permanently in your control until released or destroyed.
Oh, right. Yeah, sorry, I'm a bit burnt on all this stuff right now. I should know that, I play a damn death knight.
You're meant to only have one NPC Ghoul under your control at once. I think it got a bit confused because I also merged it with the Raise Ally effect.
Intended effect is Master of Ghouls should allow you to have one NPC Ghoul permanently in your employ, in a manner similar to a Warlock pet. If it dies you'll have to make another one.
Raised Allies should be independent, and thus not count towards the limit, but they can't be made permanent lwith MoG.
I'm gonna have to rewrite both abilities to make this clearer. Dropping the Raise Ally effect would help too, but I hate to let it go. I really like the spell, and you never really get any use out of it in WoW.
Cool. Still reading, but what does being stunned entail? (I searched for the word "stun" and didn't find anything describing what exactly the status condition does).
Quote from: DeadUematsu;397339Cool. Still reading, but what does being stunned entail? (I searched for the word "stun" and didn't find anything describing what exactly the status condition does).
Most of the abilities do describe specifically what being "stunned" entails, but some of them seem to have slipped through.
I suspect this is something that would be better served with it's own mention in the combat rules, rather than relying on individual descriptions. Specific universal rules for stuns and immobilizes and such like, to make it clear what effect it has and have it be standard across spells.
Part of the issue was so many spells do seem to work just a touch differently.
To answer the question though, "stunned" should mean the target can't act until the stun wears off.
Drums of War now has a wiki, which you can find here: http://drumsofwar.wikia.com/wiki/Drums_of_War_Wiki
I like what you've done so far.
IMO, Method 3 for generating attributes to a bit too miserly. Players are seriously better off using Methods 1 and 2 since 3d6 will average 10.5 thereby getting +2 for most of their scores.
Also, does Night Elf Invisibility immediately end when the Night Elf moves again or does the timer for the racial ability persist the two minute duration with invisibility kicking in whenever the night elf resumes standing still?
It should end the effect.
How much gold will the player need to respec?
I'll leave it to GMs if they wish to allow retraining. As it stands in the game I don't think that will be especially necessary.
The game has not been designed with the expectation of optimum anything in mind.
Question: What are the precise rules on DoT expiration? If it is a supernatural effect (e.g. Insect Swarm), does it cease if the character who cause them goes unconscious or expires? If it is an effect of mundane origin (e.g. Serpent's String), does it always run its course completely?
Also, if I am reading this correctly, DoTs seem to do more damage overall because of how much damage is dealt per round (since you're adding your Int modifier each round of the DoT's direction) as opposed to once for the instantaneous damaging spell. Not being familiar with the MMO, was this intentional?
I didn't wind up working in any dispel or remove curse/disease/etc. abilities, so DoTs generally just do their thing for that many rounds or until the target goes incapacitated.
The excess damage is somewhat intentional in many cases, though I think Fireball may need a bit of a nerf. Most of it should balance out a little bit once the levels advance and the damage from a single blast, or a DoT, tend to equalize depending on the ability in question, though the advantage of getting your Int bonus on every tick instead of once will always be present.
It also just dawned on me that I forgot to explain incapacitation/death and so forth, at least directly. One more thing for the errata.
Inspired by today's playtest, as well as the copious revisions that've accrued in the short time since release, I've put together a whole new version!
Check it out at the download page (http://drumsofwar.wikia.com/wiki/Download_Game_Rules), along with an editable character sheet! Revision notes are here. (http://drumsofwar.wikia.com/wiki/Errata_and_Revision_Notes)
This is good stuff.
Changing stance/aspect/aura is probably best as a free action. Everybody loves free actions.
Starting gold seems too random with 5D10. Maybe 20 + 2D10?
I am not sure if the "grunt monster" rule fits with WoW where "1 hit, 1 kill" usually only happens when the power levels between opponents is pretty extreme. However, it might fit well for a WarCraft 2 or 3 style campaign where the PCs are heroes who each travel their mass o' mooks.
I am a bit confused about how monster's activate their Special abilities, such as Bonk. Did I miss a section?
What was your thesis?
How did you specifically design the game to meet it?
When you made a specific game change from WoW, roughly how many were to fit the thesis and how many were to fit the change of medium?
I'm greatly interested in the "design behind the design" as it were.
Quote from: Spinachcat;399616This is good stuff.
Changing stance/aspect/aura is probably best as a free action. Everybody loves free actions.
Starting gold seems too random with 5D10. Maybe 20 + 2D10?
Honestly, I think the starting gold just flat needs to be higher as well. Much like in D&D, plate classes especially get the shaft with the present starting gold, but really, everyone struggles. I made a hunter and was barely able to afford a bow and a leather vest, and my warrior isn't even in plate.
Not necessarily starting out with the best armor is OK, I guess, but there's nothing left over for supplies, and food and water are pretty important if there's not a Mage around.
QuoteI am not sure if the "grunt monster" rule fits with WoW where "1 hit, 1 kill" usually only happens when the power levels between opponents is pretty extreme. However, it might fit well for a WarCraft 2 or 3 style campaign where the PCs are heroes who each travel their mass o' mooks.
The grunt rule was a suggestion from one of the playtesters, and I agree I don't know that there's a place for it in a standard WoW-style campaign. I think however, it'll be a good way to handle mass combat, as you hint at here with the mention of WCII and III.
It could as well be a handy tool for GMs, and I'm kind of big on the GM side of the "rules" being more of a toolkit to be used and abused as each GM desires.
QuoteI am a bit confused about how monster's activate their Special abilities, such as Bonk. Did I miss a section?
It was a last minute section, and I had been expecting to be the one running the game, so I didn't go too into it there. Even the monster levelling rules read more like notes than formal rules.
Monster abilities are pretty much at the whim of the DM, like the ones in old school D&D and so forth. "At will", more or less, which is why I tried to keep them low key. I just wanted to work in some of the little tricks that mobs pull in the game.
The monsters may also get an overhaul, though. I was thinking of more of a flexible system, having a standard table of base stats per level, with notes on how to improve them and a list of special abilities to give them, so GMs can more easily customize their own monsters.
The list chosen was mostly picked based on the miniatures that came in the boardgame, in case I wanted to play with a grid.
Quote from: CRKrueger;399675What was your thesis?
How did you specifically design the game to meet it?
When you made a specific game change from WoW, roughly how many were to fit the thesis and how many were to fit the change of medium?
I'm greatly interested in the "design behind the design" as it were.
I've got a whole 8-10 page paper on that subject, plus a good long interview on the Immortal Machines podcast as well. ;
But to boil down all that a little more basically, the central idea behind the whole thing was simply that WoW sucks for actually roleplaying, even if it is a fun game, and that a tabletop conversion would be more suitable for letting players explore the world more creatively and interactively. It was also sort of a personal social experiment, to really delve into design and follow where it lead and describe the process and what ideas I came with and how they stacked up by the end.
Originally, the system was going to be much simpler and more abstracted, to focus on the narrative angle, but as I looked at the game and mine and other players' favorite aspects of the game, it wound up being a little more gamey, a little more emulative. It was a case of not knowing quite what I DID like about WoW until I went into it, and that changed my design.
So much of the class design was about choosing what abilities I liked as well as what defined the basic nature of the class and what it can do, but keeping in mind what abilities wouldn't translate well into tabletop. In particular, there's a lot of abilities in WoW that are just buttons to push to do damage, and on tabletop I find that sort of dull, it's what I didn't like about 4e. So I tried to minimize that sort of thing as much as possible, though I'm not sure I entirely eradicated them all.
Still, while it didn't entirely meet my original expectation, I like the game as it plays on the table, and that's really the most important part I think.
Do you feel that slower pace of 2D10 (vs. D20) in combat?
Do the playtesters enjoy the lower variance? I know that was a dividing line for many players with GURPS, but 2D10 is more open than 3D6.
As for the Armor, both Mail and Plate seem very impressive. Have your PCs faced off against equally armored enemies? Did combat become miss-miss-miss-hit or is the default tactic to hit tanks with magic?
Other than social concerns, are there any mechanical issues with playing within a group who may be mixed Alliance and Horde?
Quote from: J Arcane;399688I've got a whole 8-10 page paper on that subject, plus a good long interview on the Immortal Machines podcast as well.
Is this posted on the Wiki?
Quote from: Spinachcat;399720Do you feel that slower pace of 2D10 (vs. D20) in combat?
Do the playtesters enjoy the lower variance? I know that was a dividing line for many players with GURPS, but 2D10 is more open than 3D6.
I didn't notice any problems on either my or the players end with the 2d10 in the playtest, and I've tried to balance the Armor and attack values in such a way to keep it from being too whiffy.
QuoteAs for the Armor, both Mail and Plate seem very impressive. Have your PCs faced off against equally armored enemies? Did combat become miss-miss-miss-hit or is the default tactic to hit tanks with magic?
Honestly, the original Alpha the enemies were waaaay too underarmored, so I can't answer this question, yet. I've bumped up the base stats for monsters, so we'll see what becomes of it in this weekend's game.
QuoteOther than social concerns, are there any mechanical issues with playing within a group who may be mixed Alliance and Horde?
I don't see that really becoming an issue. Orc and Tauren stats are pretty gnarly but shouldn't be enough so to leave anyone feeling out in the cold.
QuoteIs this posted on the Wiki?
The paper hasn't been posted yet, though I might do so at some point, I'm always faintly leery of posting my college work online.
The podcast interview discusses it a little though, and you can find that here: http://www.colonyofgamers.com/cogforums/showthread.php?t=19055
Jump to 12:30 abouts.
How was the second (or third) playtest?
Pretty well. We didn't do a whole lot of combat last session, but we're currently running with a broader spectrum of ACs against the newly buffed enemies, and sort of ran into a problem with the AC range.
Clothies are too damn squishy, especially priests. They really kind of get shafted compared to the other classes as they don't start off with the armor buff like Mage and Warlock do. Our priest died fast once the quillboar got on him. It was like D&D Wizards all over again.
By contrast, the Warrior was just too damn high. At the level he's at right now, he's got 20 AC, 25 in Defensive Stance, which basically makes him invulnerable to damage from equal mobs. And he's only in Mail.
So AC values are going to be adjusted towards the center on both ends I think, and I need to shuffle the priest abilities around so they can maybe get Inner Fire at a lower level. I may also reign in the Agi bonus a bit, adopting something akin to the 3e "Max Dex Bonus" mechanic.
The new test crit system worked out well though, players actually crit now, which wasn't really happening before. Now I just want to figure out how to link the crit ranges to stat instead of weapon, though this sort of removes one of the very few points of weapon differentiation if I do so. I've also considered adding something like LOTRO's weapon abilities, where each type of weapon has a certain base minor bonus, so they're not so generic.
We're too low level yet, so we haven't gotten to it in play yet, but based on some chargen tests I do foresee we could have some problems at high level with weapons being all but useless compared to character abilities, thanks to how many of them scale directly with level. A lvl10 Warrior deals weapon damage + 10d6 on a Heroic Strike, which is so much damage that stats and base damage start to become meaningless, especially since base attributes, even with magic gear, don't escalate quite so quickly. We'll see, that's all theoretical at this point.
I am a big fan of weapon differentiation. I just submitted a whole article on it to Knockspell for Swords & Wizardry.
Attaching a Max Agil Bonus to Armor is fine. Or, you could give a -X Agil bonus for those in armor, thus emphasizing Low Armor Missile guy versus Heavy Armor Melee guy.
Is the new test crit system in the current PDF?
As for weapons being useless at high levels, I am cool with grand heroes being able to decapitate people with a rusty dagger. But I do understand that you want magic items to be worthwhile and desireable at 8th and beyond.
THe new crit system is in the Alpha 2 version, yes. Basically I switched to a D&D3e style die range.
There's a part of my that's still not sure if a crit mechanic is necessary though, as the carryover mechanic does often do the job of giving bonus damage on really good rolls. Our first playtest actually ran without a crit system, because the die mechanic didn't work well with Magicstar's die roller (neither does the new one, sadly), and it seemed to play out alright anyway, plenty of bonus damage was flying around without it on good hits.
And like I said on the high-level issue, still don't know if it'll be an issue in actual play, but it is something I'll be keeping my eye on.
Any actual play reports?
No reports or write-ups online at this juncture, and I'm not sure any will be coming any time soon. I've never been big on AP reports, writing them is tedious, and reading them moreso. I have been trying to update the errata on the wiki and post on any highlights in the game threads on CoG.
Further, the atmosphere here isn't really what I signed on for anymore, so I won't be checking this forum in the future. Future discussion of the game will take place on Colony of Gamers' analog gaming forum (http://www.colonyofgamers.com/cogforums/forumdisplay.php?s=&daysprune=&f=17), where the playtests have been taking place, and of course the Drums of War wiki. (http://drumsofwar.wikia.com/wiki/Drums_of_War_Wiki)
I welcome you to bring any further questions there.