7 thoughts on “I cannot get this idea of a World of Warcraft / Dungeon World mashup out of my head.”

  1. Some interesting stuff in there! I especially like the tauren’s gentle giant move, I may steal it if I get around to making a Warcraft hack of my own 😉

    Some power imbalances though. For ex, the orcs get a move that makes their first attack forceful, conditionally, which is cool… but humans can make ANY attack either forceful or precise with the only condition being they must wield a sword.

    Likewise, “pressing onwards through impossible odds” is 1) kinda vague, and 2) likely to apply pretty often considering the kind of threats you usually face in WoW.

  2. Good points Linda – humans could use some more work. (Originally, I was going to give Orcs axe specialisation but the charge idea seemed more evocative.)

  3. When I was last poking at this myself, what I came up with for orcs was to give them a damage bonus when wielding a messy or forceful weapon. Encourages them to go for those big warhammers and spiky axes =)

  5. Hmm, looking at this more closely:

    – dwarf: looks good. I might even make the stoneform one less conditional, i.e. when you stand in defense on solid ground (so you need contact with earth, floors or decks will not do).

    – gnome: first move, while a solid one, seems to me to represent more raw stubbornness than the kind of creative lateral-thinking mindset I think you were trying to evoke. Not sure how I’d change it to reflect that. Second move may be a bit vague? Frankly, I just ripped off the halfling fighter’s move from standard DW.

    – human: still kinda vague. Sadly can’t make a specific suggestion, but I remember I was thinking in terms of humans being the most common/adventurous and least culturally cohesive race on Azeroth. Something about being able to declare when you enter a settlement that there are other humans there.

    – night elf: shadowmeld needs a more specific effect I think? DW has a few moves that are specifically about “when you do X, you won’t be spotted unless you Y”.

    – draenei: is good!

    – worgen: maybe something about looking human but still appearing vaguely creepy/feral to other people?

  6. And ze Horde!

    orc: looking good! I’d consider limiting the second one though, like only giving the bonus to the roll. Auto leverage AND the bonus basically means the orc always gets their way.

    troll: sweet moves, I like including their spiritist practices.

    tauren: gentle giant is fine, walk with the earth mother seems a bit too specialized. I like the basic idea of knowledge of/attunement to nature – maybe when you discern realities about things of the natural world, you get to ask one extra question?

    forsaken: man, if I were the GM, I’d read “something disagrees with you” as “the person you ate talks back to you, and they’re not happy”! That said, I don’t think I’d include not being seen (that’s a separate matter) and compared to other forms of self-heal I think “up to 50% of max HP” is way too powerful, at least at higher levels.

    blood elf: I’d give them the elf move from DW where a weapon they handle is always precise.

    goblin: best deals anywhere could be really really good or really really bad. I got what you need is just… really vague. I’d simply rip off the chopper’s move from AW (hmm, come to think of it, don’t know if you know AW!):

    When you search your pockets and bags for something (mundane, non-unique and small enough to fit) roll+WIS(?). On a 10+, you’ve got just the thing! On a 7-9, you have something pretty close. On a 6-, yeah, you used to have one of those but you sold it or it was stolen; you’ll need to get it back.

  7. Linda Larsson Great feedback, thanks! 🙂

    Dwarf: I changed the bonus to armour, as it seemed more appropriate. Also I realised that it’s basically the same as the human’s racial at the moment (back to that later.)

    Gnome: Fair point. I’ve gone with a modification to the halfling fighter’s racial, highlighting lateral thinking as you say (that’s the idea I was going for, yes.) It may be a “+1 forward” too far though as those moves look a little samey.

    Human: I struggled with this. The idea I want to highlight is that humans have faced impossible odds and extinction umpteen times in Wow, yet keep going. (See: rebuilding of Stormwind, Honor hold in BC, Argent Crusade… even the Deadmines in a way.) So a human player should be rewarded (or at least encouraged) to play in a way that they stand in the face of impossible odds, I think. I might make the human spirit something like a bond, and award XP for acting a certain way instead.

    Night elf: True, Shadowmeld is very similar to the ranger’s camouflage. I’ll have a think about this one.

    Worgen: The “looking creepy even in human form” was something I intended to put across, but probably isn’t clear enough in the text. I shall amend!

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