Lessons GMs Can Learn from World of Warcraft

Martin Ralya writes "As a tabletop RPG gamemaster, I've been thinking about what GMs can learn from World of Warcraft ever since I first logged in. After close to 200 hours of WoW time, I've come up with 9 lessons GMs can learn from World of Warcraft."

Comments

What is a GM?

[loddington]

I read the article and I still dont know.

Must be very important whatever it is.

Re:What is a GM?

[Bombcar]

That confused me, I though he was writing this to the Game Police of WoW, but no, he's telling Game Masters how to make tabletop gaming more like WoW, and therefore more fun.

Table Top

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, but all the things that WOW does well aren't what makes a good role playing experiance. For instance a high fantasy game where everything is epic can be just as much fun as a low fantasy game where the conquests are small and the people real.

I think the author misses the point. The strong part of a table top role playing game is that there isn't limits. Players don't have to go and kill all those bad guys to finish the quest or complete the mission in a way the GM ever imagined. To make a table top game more like WOW would be to short change players.

No, no, no, and maybe

[travail_jgd]

1. Everything should be fun
I don't disagree with this in principle, but one player's fun is another's tedium. I know a player who loves big soap operas focused on her character... not fun for the rest of us. OTOH, I don't mind combat, but the soap opera doesn't have fun -- she thinks it's boring.

And there's a difference between working with your players, and catering to them. Sometimes the lows make the highs stand out more.

3. Travel should be easy
Not necessarily. Being able to easily go from point A to point B in a fantasy game robs both places of their uniqueness.

The inability to move quickly also sets up tension. One campaign I DM'd had the players encountering a cursed artifact, which had to be hand-carried to its destination. (Teleports were randomized.) It made the game a lot easier than "OK, we take the sky cab to the big city"

5. Every class should have lots of things to do
Again, it comes back to working with players, versus catering to them. If a player is told that the game is going to be mostly role-playing, but creates an undead-slaying machine, I don't see the DM as being responsible for throwing in numerous combat encounters with skeletons.

8. It's okay to make changes after the campaign begins
9. Err on the side of being over-the-top
It really depends on the campaign, setting, and style. I definitely wouldn't say these are "hard and fast rules".

Re:No, no, no, and maybe

[SpacePunk]

There are two kinds of D&D games. Those that are fun, and those that suck. The D&D games that suck ALWAYS tend to have players or GMs that argue about the rules, and constantly refer to tables. Playing the game should never take a back seat to game mechanics. Game mechanics should be transparent, and argumentative players that are table whores should be ejected. GMs that are table whores should be beaten to death.

Re:No, no, no, and maybe

[ultranova]

If you want to tell a story, write a book. If you want to play a game, make it fast. If you do it right, you can make it fast AND tell a story. But, remember if you GM that it's not your story, it's the players story.

Why couldn't it be boths story ? If I was ever a GM, I'd propably try to get players to think up relatives and such for their characters, and then get them to the game - nothing to motivate an adventure than having the villain take your mother hostage :). So what does our noble palading do ? He can't sacrifice an innocent, but he can't deliver the destructive artifact the villain wants him to find either. So he has to play for time and try to find some way to free his mother - perhaps forcing him to hire a sneaky rogue to help him ? That might even be a reason the characters came together in the first place, and set them up to an epic quest of finding the artifact at the very start.

Or suppose some player wants to multiclass into a dragon disciple ? Of course she could simply take that class, but that is the boring way. Suppose you could tie slaying a dragon into the plot, and as the dragon lays dying, that character would suddenly recognize her dear old grandfather - maybe that's the reason why the relatively low-level party beat the dragon, it just wasn't as effective against its own relative - and realizes "I have dragon blood ! And I just killed my own grandfather !" and multiclasses into dragon disciple as a result of that realization. That kind of thing would require negotiation and setup between that player and GM beforehand, obviously - and of course the other players don't need to know about these kind of arrangements.

Or suppose that an amnesiac character is actually the greater goddess Taiia (from the "Deities and Demigods" book - read it once, and she stuck in my mind, mainly because of the neat picture) who somehow got killed a long time ago and has only now started to wake ? She would slowly regain her power during the campaign, which of course would draw lots of unwanted attention, including whatever put her into the deadbook in the first place... And, of course, there's the question of how, if at all, she would have changed from living as a human, and if it had, would it be for the better (the original Taiia is schizophrenic, to but it mildly; one of those creator-destroyer deities) ? And what will the "standard" D&D deities think about getting someone stronger than them around (Taiia's divine level 20, while Moradin and Corellon go up to 19 - and yes, they actually assigned levels to deities; perhaps they should had just made it into a prestige class ?-).

Now, I've only played computer RPGs, so I don't know how well this would actually work in tabletop ones. However, if all I want is to hack and slash, those CRPGs can propably do that a lot better than a human could, precisely because a computer can keep a track of and handle lots of details fast and easy. If I ever play tabletop RPGs, I want to try the things that a computer is bad at - flexibility and creativity.

Wow

[CableModemSniper]

If you needed to play WoW to learn these basically common-sense principles for GMs, I am going to have to flamebait and say that you were probably a mediocre GM before you learned all these "lessons" from an MMORPG.

Robust Quest System?

[SnoopJeDi]

I'm not a WoW player, but I did play a character up to level ~11 or so, and I was BORED out of my skull. I would do a quest, and while the description might have been thorough, I wouldn't call it fun or ideal. "In order to become a master ranger, go kill 10 beetles"

That doesn't do it for me. Maybe the high-level quests are fun, but then, that's not a good system, grinding up a ladded of xp and gear, the latter being hoarded by higher levels and sold at extortionary prices just to get to the fun.

I constantly compare other MMO-style games to Guild Wars, because ANet did a great job. When you start off, you're "recruited" by Sir Tydus, and told to go train to help the Ascalon Guard repel Charr invaders.

Compare that to killing beetles. I liked WoW, although it wasn't quite my style, but there are some things that just click or don't click with players. If you like it, you like it a LOT. If not, you play something else.

Despite my opinions on WoW, I think TFA points out the good foundations for a great game.

Re:Robust Quest System?

[Anonymous Coward]

If it takes 120 hours to reach a specific level, just say 120 hours and don't convert it to days. I don't know many people who can stay up for 5 days straight, playing a game or not.

As you said, it's not a game for everyone. I'm a gamer with a job, house, wife and small child and I find about 6 to 8 hours a week to play. If it takes 120 hours to reach the better content in a game, I'm not interested. It would take me 15 to 20 weeks just to reach that. This isn't about wanting instant satisfaction, but rather about making sure that the entire game is fun, not just parts of it.

Is this guy really a tabletop GM?

[MMaestro]

1. Everything should be fun

Define 'fun'. I once RPed with a GM who would throw in random unexpected traps and then have us figure out a way of getting out of the trap Macguver-style. It was annoying at times, but the 'solutions' we came up with sometimes were hilarous. (One time we fell down a random pit hole and 'got out' by blowing out the floor only to fall down into a -pre-arranged- pit hole on the next floor below.)

2. Details matter

Duhh...

3. Travel should be easy

Why? Its bad enough people rush through their lives between work and home, why not take things slow enjoy the adventure rather than simply the rewards at the end?

4. Item management should be simple

Again, why? We've had gamers constanting asking 'how can my character carry 20 different sets of armor in one easy to carry, lightweight, gravity-defying bag?' for years and all of the sudden now we want to get rid of it because WoW lets you do the same thing AND lets you jump? Pick a side and stick with it. (And while you're at it, why does a single, unstacked flower take up the same amount of space as a Two-handed Sword?)

5. Every class should have lots of things to do

Considering some RP groups take into consideration weather conditions (-1 to movement in snow anyone?), building architecture (stone? take cover! rotting wood? get the hell out of there!) and even the lighting conditions of a room (for those rogues out there), some people say theres TOO much to do in table-top RPing.

6. Style should shine through

Uhh, we are talking about table-top RPGs right? Last time I checked, the only 'style' there was in the storytelling and thats completely unique to the individual.

7. Everyone should leave every session jazzed about the game

Again, why? In table-top RPing, one bad saving throw can kill your character. Does this cause players to not 'leave every session jazzed about the game'? Generally, yes. Does this necessarily make the experience bad? No.

8. It's okay to make changes after the campaign begins

No, really? Most people call that reality, where things don't always go as initially planned.

9. Err on the side of being over-the-top

Again, why? If I start off on an adventure to find out what happened to a missing supply wagon of food supplies, why should I run into a goblin army or (worse) a dragon only to be rescued by a patrol of paladins or elven army coming to kill the dragon? (And no, WoW is not innocent of this as even simple 'kill X number of Y enemies' quests have been recorded to start 10+ multi-part quests. Araj the Summoner anyone?)

This guy is either a complete amature at being a table-top RP GM or a flat-out idiot. WoW is one of the WORST example of RPing there is. Alliance and Horde sides cannot communicate due to a built-in text scrambler (and 'cracking' it is a bannable offense), quests are either purposely designed to be done solo or require raid-sized groups to complete and the game is blindingly fast in comparison to any other RPG other there (table-top, console or PC).

Re:Response to 9 Lessons

[Flozzin]

I cant believe they modded you down for this. poitsn 2, 4,5 7,8 9 are dead on for the most part. Being jazzed after being camped by a 12 year old for 2 hours is hard. 5 - Yea be a water vendor and decurser..I mean mage...We die at the drop of a hat yet Rogues and Hunters are the ones who get the one shot one kill( aimed shot and ambush ).

Re:WoW is not a panacea.

[cgenman]

The quests are pretty much the exact some gameplay wrapped up with different names and faces past level 12.

For those people who haven't played it, WoW's quest system is exactly this simple. Your quest is to acquire X number of item Y, and take it to person Z, thus unlocking the next quest. That is it. That is what all of the quests are. Sometimes the person gives you an item right away and tells you to take it halfway around the globe. Sometimes you have to go halfway around the globe to kill a bad guy for an item, which you then take the rest of the way back. Sometimes you have to hang out and kill 50 guys until the 1 in 10 drop rate nets you 5 items, which take you back to the guy who asked for them. But they are all terribly formulaic, and get exceedingly dull.

The quest system is by far the weakest part of WoW.

Seriously, I could sit and play DS or GBA for hours while "playing" WoW.

I actually play Puzzle Pirates while playing World of Warcraft. Browsing Slashdot is also a favorite.

"3. Travel should be easy"

yea, and you should get your mounts at level 30.

You should get your mounts at level 20 or 10. Seriously, why is walking from point A to point B along an empty road for half an hour ever considered viable for inclusion in a game? It's like you're trapped in EA's "The Fairy Tale Adventure" where walking between towns took realistic amounts of time and had realistic encounter densities. (i.e. one every hour)

And if we can't skip the crap, at least let our characters auto-follow the road. It's really annoying while you're trying to read or play another game when you have to keep popping back into WoW to get your character unstuck from a tree while auto-walking.

5. Every class should have lots of things to do.

Unfortunately, I don't think this is true in WoW. When soloing, you have basically one or occasionally two winning strategies. When partying, your role is clear and defined from the first screen of your character creation. Sure, you can choose to heal with heal or you can choose to heal with flash heal, but overall you're pretty pigeonholed.

If you want to change your role, you need to build up an alt from scratch... a generally tedious process that people do again and again.

9. Err on the side of being over-the-top

Part of WoWs style is that everything is larger than life slightly (or more than slightly) cartoony, in a good way. In tabletop gaming, just as you shouldnt hoard your best ideas, you shouldnt be afraid to be over-the-top.

Hmm... I was just feeling the opposite of this. Sure, artistically WoW is a little over the top. But the quests I've done this session included curing a sick girl who went right back to sleep, killing some people because they were stomping on the grass, keeping some courier from getting robbed by highway bandits, and fighting crocodiles for handbags. None of these were particularly "over the top." None even left any impression on the world at all. They barely registered an impression on me.

World of Warcraft has been successful for many reasons, not the least of which is that it took a terribly, terribly slow genre and made it just mostly slow. But we still have quite a ways to go. WoW is still a grind, albeit a slightly less painful than normal one. It still takes hours and hours and hours of play to tick your level up one notch. It still rewards conservative, riskless play rather than running into the enemy's nest with guns blazing. And that quest system... could use a thorough overhaul.

Rules Lawyering

[Errandboy of Doom]

Some DMs care about consistency, and some will constantly fudge the rules to arbitrarily reward or punish their players. I prefer the former.

A lot of D&D players are obnoxiously and stubbornly argumentative. That's certainly no virture. But a lot of D&D players resent people who know the rules, because it reminds them that they really just want a game where they're omnipotent and the challenges are meaningless.

(IANARL)