The Drums of War: a Warcraft RPG

[J Arcane]

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, but in the meantime, here's the PDF, hosted from Google Docs:

Drums of War, Alpha Version (http://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B3hWDeEiNI5aYzQ2YmM4M2YtZDE2Ny00OWRmL WIxMzctOTQ5M2QwMGZhZmY1&hl=en) (251 Kb)

EDIT: Here is the official Wiki: http://drumsofwar.wikia.com/wiki/Drums_of_War_Wiki

[Shieldmaiden]

I'm getting a "not available" message.

[J Arcane]

Damnit. Lemme change the sharing setting, see if that works.

[Shieldmaiden]

Works for me now.

Just so you know, I'm considering giving this a shot at my RPG club. There's a three-week slot coming up the needs another game and I've tentatively volunteered to run one. If it helps with your project, I can emphasise that it's a playtest and try and get lots of feedback.

[J Arcane]

Works for me now.

Just so you know, I'm considering giving this a shot at my RPG club. There's a three-week slot coming up the needs another game and I've tentatively volunteered to run one. If it helps with your project, I can emphasise that it's a playtest and try and get lots of feedback.
Please do. I'd be very excited to hear your feedback and how it ran with your group.

[Ravenlock]

Congratulations, J. I'm looking forward to reading through it. :)

[Shieldmaiden]

I've been thinking about it and I'm also happy to run a game online for a CoG group if there are enough people interested who can play on a GMT schedule.

[Superman's Dead]

I'll give it a shot!

[civil]

Whoa whoa whoa. Did you write/create all of that yourself? I don't know what any of it means, but mad props if you did.

[J Arcane]

That is all my own work. Most of it was completed over a 4 day marathon writing session over the last weekend, and the last two chapters were finished last night, finally closing and saving at around 1:47am.

Coincidentally, I am dead tired today . . .

[civil]

Like I said, I don't know what any of it really means but congrats on the undertaking.

[J Arcane]

I appreciate the congratulations.

A bit of an errata bit that just dawned on me as I was laying in bed trying to nap.

A number of abilities in the classes make reference to a "resource box" and putting tokens in it.

Original intention was to have a large empty box on the character sheet in which the player could place tokens earned and used for various class mechanics. These tokens would just be little chits or something, like the ones the WoW boardgame is full of.

However, when time came to design the character sheet, space considerations and my addled and exhausted brain conspired to ensure I forgot all about that bit, so there's no such box on the sheet.

I also neglected to leave any space on the character sheet for non-weapon/armor gear items, like rings and so forth.

Going to have to put together a new character sheet.

[evilgoodwin]

Wow. Very nice. Someone buy this man a steak and a beer.

I especially like the Murloc special :D

[J Arcane]

Mrrrlrrlrrlrrglrrrr!

[J Arcane]

Some further errata, discovered over on theRPGsite:

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.


I'm going to have to get some kind of site up very soon to keep track of all this, in the meantime, I'm noting errata, and once I've got enough, I'll put up a revision 2.

[J Arcane]

And I've just now realized while brainstorming for an adventure, that I've forgotten the resting rules! :eek:

Here's a draft rule, off the top of my head:
Resting

Characters regain health and mana by resting. Once per day, they can set camp and rest, to regain their Health and Mana.

As long as the character is well fed, they will regain an amount of Health equal to twice their Spirit modifier, and if they are hydrated, they will restore their Mana fully, after 8 hours uninterrupted rest.

If the party has no food and water, they regain an amount of Health equal to their Spirit modifier, and an amount of Mana equal to three times their Spirit modifier.

Should the party be interrupted during the course of their rest, they gain only half of the amount they otherwise would have restored.


That should work for now.

[Squidbot]

Impressive stuff, J. Well done.

[J Arcane]

It has become apparent from some discussion and confusion on the other site, that the Death Knight's undead summoning abilities are kind of a mess.

Here's how it should work:

Raise Dead lets you summon and control 1 enemy corpse for X amount of time.

Because I also wanted Raise Ally in there, but didn't want to waste two spells out of 10 to get it in there, I had merged it with Raise Dead, so they were one spell, with slightly different effects depending on whether it was an enemy or a party member. The Raise Ally effect could be a once per combat only thing.

Army of the Dead is supposed to be a "once per combat" ability. I had this confused with Master of Ghouls in the initial discussion, and was looking at the wrong description.

Master of Ghouls is supposed to remove the time limit on an enemy corpse raised with Raise Dead, essentially making it work like a Warlock pet. Stays as long as you like, but if it dies you have to resummon another one.

I hope this clarifies things for anyone who was confused by those abilities. I have a podcast recording tomorrow, but I'm going to try and squeeze in time to put up a revised version of the rules with some of these changes discovered so far, and include a "patch notes" page.

I also need to get a website or a wiki up for it, to help keep track of this stuff, and give people a place to post stuff they've come up with like new monsters and items and bug reports and stuff. In the meantime, this thread will continue to be the main repository for the game rules.

Also, if anyone's interested, I think I'd like to try to run a simple game via IRC, so I get to finally experience it myself. I'll make a thread in a moment with my adventure idea and see if anyone's interested.

And if anyone's interested in running a game themselves, I will be happy to play. I've been desperate to play in a WoW tabletop session almost from the moment I laid eyes on it, which is part of how this whole thing got started.

Thanks for the compliments and comments guys, it's been really cool seeing people actually get their hands on it, and

[J Arcane]

The Wiki is up! You can now check out the official home of Drums of War on the web at Wikia: http://drumsofwar.wikia.com/wiki/Drums_of_War_Wiki

There is a link to download the current rules, an errata page, and pages to post your own addons for the DoW game.

[J Arcane]

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)