World of Warcraft, Tabletop Style.

I run a 4th Edition Dungeons and Dragons game twice a month for a group of teenager at a local gaming store. The kids are a hoot, though they scare me sometimes, and it allows me to keep from getting too rusty in my DMing since my Friday night game has fallen apart as it always tends to this close to Finals Week. The gaming store is much smaller than my original haunt just outside of downtown, so we're usually rubbing elbows with the Warhammer players but the store owner is a great guy who really loves running his shop.

Now, I own a metric ass-ton of D&D books as well as some non D&D rulesets. However, as said before, I'm a sucker for a sale and I'm also constantly on the lookout for something new and fun. So, browsing through his discount bin, lo and behold, I find a copy of the World of Warcraft Roleplaying Guide.

The front cover is almost torn off; seems someone knocked over his book display case and this one got the worst of the damage. The publisher wouldn't take it back so he was stuck selling at a discount. I like Ron, but his loss is my gain. Rather than the $40 cover price, I grabbed this puppy for $10 and with some laminate, it will be as good as new.

The ruleset is based on 3.5 and WotC's Open Gaming License, though it's actually branded Swords and Sorcery (a sort of sub-ruleset/campaign setting). Constitution is changed to Stamina, Dexterity is changed to Agility, priests and mages still get spell slots, Goblins are a playable neutral race, and there are new Technological Devices that can explode in spectacular ways. Space Cows and Gender-Confused Elves need not apply--the story thus far is only up to WoW's initial release and really only includes that content. Of interest is that in their descriptions of lands and the cosmology, they specifically mention Outland (expansion) and Icecrown (expansion), as well as the Emerald Dream. I know Cataclysm is having the world explode in spectacular ways, but if the ultimate plan is to hit level 100 and we're now down to 5 levels per expansion, there's plenty of room to fit the Emerald Dream in there somewhere.

I haven't gotten too far into the reading, mostly it's been glancing at all of the cool stuff like Jumper Cables and seeing how they work in a table-top setting. Chances of finding a group of people who actually want to sit down and play are probably as good as finding a group for Shadowrun but it's certainly a good read and nice to see not just in-game art within its pages. If you manage to find a $10 damaged copy, snag it for sure. If it's face-value... well, I'm not telling you how to spend your money.