Cataclysmic Campaigning: Three D&D Tips I Learned from World of Warcraft
Last month, the hugely popular fantasy MMORPG, World of Warcraft, released its third expansion entitled Cataclysm. Now I am sure that I am not the only 4E gamer out there who also “dabbles” in Azeroth from time to time, and I know many of you have shared in the amazing changes this expansion has brought to the game. But simply put, for those who do not participate in WoW, the developers at Blizzard Entertainment unleashed a world-wide catastrophe that completely changed not only the landscape of the planet, but changed the monster populations, quest series, and many other facets of the game as well!
Obviously, any fantasy-based game, such as WoW, can offer some interesting insights into how we run our own D&D 4E campaigns. And with an expansion as dynamic and provocative as Cataclysm, there are certainly some campaign and adventure design lessons which are worth considering.
Destruction is Good for Everyone
Like the Joker said in the movie The Dark Knight: “Introduce a little anarchy. Upset the established order, and everything becomes chaos.” Certainly, WoW is not unique in its attempt to “introduce a little anarchy” into a gaming setting to give it a new lease on life. Back in 1992, the D&D World of Greyhawk setting was forever altered with the introduction of the From the Ashes, when Iuz the Evil started a massive world war across nearly the entire continent. While not everyone was thrilled with the changes to the oldest D&D setting, I personally ran several very successful campaigns in war-sundered Flanaess, offering an opportunity for a more grim and gritty style of adventures.
And with the release of 4E, the Forgotten Realms setting had a major catastrophe in the form of the Spellplague, which changed not only the landscape of the world, but also altered the magic and magic item rich world of Toril to be one more compatible with the new D&D revamp. Of course, this is just another in a long string of cataclysms to strike the Realms, for who would not argue that the Time of Troubles was not as catastrophic to the world as the Spellplague?
So besides giving Dungeon Masters a chance to physically alter their campaign world’s landscape, using a cataclysm can also provide a chance to change many other facets of a world as well. Politics, religion, and magic can all be affected when a major catastrophe hits, and offers DMs the change to make positive changes to their campaigns, by changing or even removing game elements from their world.
Of course, a cataclysm need not be totally world changing. It can be more localized and affect just one country or region of a setting, and offer the DM a chance to affect the lives of Player-Characters on a personal and profound nature. Having the characters return to their home country from questing abroad to discover the aftermath of a cataclysmic event can offer new adventure hooks that will have a major impact on the Players. Finding their home city in ruins from a catastrophe (natural or otherwise) or maybe their country’s ruler deposed and replaced by an evil overlord are things that most heroes are going to feel very strongly about, and offers some a way to really motivate them to action.
Adventure Nodes
In pre-Cataclysm World of Warcraft, the “points of light” were pretty well spread out across Azeroth. It took a major excursion to travel to a new locale for adventure, and while the developers of the MMORPG used “flight points” to get from major cities to adventure locations, it was still a tedious process to travel on foot and discover the flight points before you could use them. And worse, quests would often start in one location, but would lead to some other far-flung point on the map in order to do it, and then require a trek all the way back to the starting point just to complete it.
The developers at Blizzard took advantage of Cataclysm to revamp many quest chains, and to remove the excessive travel time between quest-giver and the object of the quest. Players would not be pointed to meet with a quest-giver in what might be called an “adventure node”, and often transportation to this locale would be provided in the form of a flight or as part of a caravan. Once at the adventure node, Players would be offered a variety of quests, almost all of which could be completed within a fairly short distance from the node itself.
Adventure nodes like this can be easily developed and utilized in a D&D campaign as well, providing Player-Characters with a base of operations in a location where there are many quests. In fact, the idea has already been used in the WotC release of the Vor Rukoth adventure setting, as well as in the Chaos Scar adventures, which introduce a specific environ with all kinds of plots waiting to be explored. This is sort of different from a simple dungeon delve, as the heroes can be called on to do a lot more than simply slay monsters and loot a ruin for treasures. Providing a base of operations with useful services such as trading, training, and safe haven at the adventure node is key, and each adventure setting can have its own plots and intrigues, and might lead to yet another adventure node in a different locale to complete the tale. Adventure settings offer a really great opportunity for providing multiple quests all in one localized area, and can has a completely different flavor than the traditional delve.
Insufficiently Heroic
But while WoW’s Cataclysm offered opportunities for the developers to make some great changes to the existing game setting in addition to adding new content, not everything in the new expansion was praiseworthy. In fact, there is a cautionary lesson that can be taken away when you consider some of the new introduced in Cataclysm ostensibly designed for high level “endgame” Players.
One of the new zones introduced in Cataclysm was the undersea realm of Vash’jir, providing Players the experience of a completely underwater environment to seek adventure in. While there were quests which eventually lead heroes to assist the Elemental Lord Neptulon against a hideous tentacled “old god” invading his demesne, there are any number of quests which were frankly “insufficiently heroic” to participate in. Mind you, characters which are high enough level to journey into Vash’jir have fought and defeated nearly unconquerable foes such as the Lich-King and the old god Yogg-Saron, a whole collection of Demon Lords from the Outlands, not to mention dragons, evil elemental lords, and other horrific foes. Yet in this new underwater realm, these self-same heroes are back to being tasked to do insultingly grunt-work quests like gather up sixteen clams from the ocean floor, and delivering a case of crab meat to some bored pirate damsel.
And there is definitely a lesson there for any D&D Dungeon Master about adventure design. As Dungeon Masters, we are always looking for new ways to challenge our Players, and to provide an exciting new experience to their characters. But it is also important when designing new play-experiences to consider the Player-Characters’ past accomplishments, and how they should be perceived in the world they live in. As characters move from the Heroic to Paragon and then on to Epic Tiers, the quests and challenges must be more and more fantastic in scope, providing Players the opportunity to face not only powerful foes, but see their actions profoundly affecting the destinies of others. While Heroic Tier play might involve saving a village from an orc tribe, Paragon Tier heroes would not be tasked with saving a mere village, but would be concerned with saving a whole country or city-state. And Epic Tier play would involve questing on an even grander scale, seeking out the means to save the world or possibly the multi-verse from imminent peril! This sort of difficulty arc sets the quest bar ever higher for Dungeon Masters to have to meet, but it is certainly better than asking heroes who slew a flight of dragons to save the city to then head over to the local inn to deal with a pack of drunken ruffians…
So until next blog… I wish you Happy Gaming!
Do you find inspiration for D&D from MMOs or other computer games? What have you taken away from fantasy computer games and MMOs that you have modified your campaigns? Any and all feedback is most welcome here at Neuroglyph Games!
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That second bit sounds a lot like Dungeon Runners – the whole premise of that game was that it was as easy as possible to jump into the dungeon and back to town to deliver your quest objects, then back into the dungeon again.
I like travel in tabletop games, though. It gives the DM a bit of a breather to run some random encounters.
“Anarchy does not mean ‘without order,’ it means ‘without leaders.’ … This is not anarchy, Evey, this is Chaos.”
That said, you bring up some excellent points overall. Especially on the heroism angle. Most recently, one of my players tried his hand at DMing again, and pitted us up against a small army. Which he’s done before. Only THIS time, he gave us small units of soldiers to fight alongside us. It worked, it was quite fun, and it felt damn heroic. It doesn’t take much.
Then again, that’s why I don’t play MMOs like WoW. It’s because I don’t feel heroic. At all.