Hey folks. Former Pirate Captain Dloin on his free account here, looking to get some insights from the coolest server I’ve ever been a part of.
My D&D group has voted on a new campaign, and they want to play in Azeroth around the time of early classic, specifically as Horde characters. I’ve already found some cool homebrew resources that recreate vanilla races and classes in D&D 5e, so now I’m working on the actual campaign, specifically which parts of vanilla I want to highlight and where I want to eventually direct them. My goal is not to recreate the quest lines exactly, but to use the state of the world in vanilla as the backdrop for their own version of WoW’s narrative.
Basically I want it to FEEL like WoW, with it’s zones and dungeons and familiar NPCs,more than I want it to BE WoW.
I’ve decided to start them in the Barrens, because that is honestly where most new Horde groups formed back in Vanilla. I’m already planning on giving them quests to introduce them to the tenuous truce between the Horde and Theramore Isle, the corruption of the Emerald Nightmare through the Wailing Caverns, and the corruption of the Fel with the Demon Seed.
Beyond that I just have vague ideas of having an anti-party of Alliance that they run into periodically, and eventually getting them to Silithus and Ahn’Qiraj as the end of the campaign.
But what would you, as a WoW player, want to see in a game like this? What sort of fun parallels can I draw between the tabletop campaign and the PC game, even on a meta level? I’m hoping to collect a bunch of ideas to eventually develop further as my players level up and explore the world.
Go fish up the old RPG books, particularly Lands of Mystery for Kalimdor stuff. While not canon any more, they were canon at the time and have a loot of fun little nibbles in 'em
Lands of Mystery in particular is basically like. A prototype Wrath of the Lich King, given it basically has Wrath’s entire map and zones and was released prior to TBC
I’d want to experience the feral ferocity of the Night Elves as they were described in Warcraft 3. There were no peace summits, open inns, or friendly smiles. Simply death awaited those foolish enough to enter the lands of the Kaldorei, especially at night.
You could even run something akin to a Dying Light scenario, where nighttime approaches and so to does certain death when the Kaldorei Sentinels appear. Put the party on a clock and build tension as night approaches.
Playing in Classic Era is an opportunity to effect change on storylines the way the players want. Barrens has a lot of story to work with, so they’ll have their hands full with opportunity. Take the fight to the Quillboar? Do mercenary work for Steamwheedle? Explore the foul goingson with the Nightmare’s taint? What are the HARPIES doing here? You can make things very close, but different, and more different as the players change things.
As for an anti-party of Alliance? Check out Aean Swiftriver. Nothing is actually written for why her party is there. There is no quest to kill her or her party, she doesn’t outright attack Horde settlements, and has an extremely long patrol path through the whole zone, but you do get a quest for killing her. You could come up with why a dryad sent them there, because a dryad definitely did! Maybe they’re looking into the Nightmare, too. Maybe they’re keeping eyes on the Horde and their supply lines. Who knows?
There’s plenty room to fill with treats, mysteries, and challenges. I’m personally motivated by BIG DAMN HEROICS, and would love the opportunity to knock down a big enemy of the Horde like… say, the Quillboar. That alone could be a big quest. Vengeance, war, brutality- stuff orcs like.
I mean if we’re starting in the Barrens, it depends on if they’re WoW players themselves or not.
A great reference/meme is some Horde alchemist needs Zhevra hooves to make something and they have to get hooves…but when they go to loot them, the hooves mysteriously vanish. More of a survival check than a combat event to hunt them, but could be a funny reference to the low drop rate of that old quest while also tying in some void shenanigans later on.
As for what I’d actually want? I’d want to eventually be sent to Orgrimmar and to experience my DM describing the awe that was the chaotic, bustling city in the middle of a canyon. I want the heat of the Barrens and Durotar to be a problem, fresh water to be scarce. I want to find an oasis and rejoice that we have water, only for it to be claimed by the Centaur and have to figure out a way around (or through) that.
I want tense standoffs with the Alliance. Maybe they dissolve into conflict, maybe not, up to the players. But I want that tenuous peace to show. I want ‘the drums of war thunder once again’ to come up, like in the vanilla cinematic.
I could go on and on because honestly this sounds so so so fun, but I’ll stop there lol. What a great idea, I hope you have great success!
I love this idea. About 3 years ago, I started running a D&D campaign that was AU and set in the past. The central idea was that Calia was the Lich Queen instead of her brother being the one, and I used that to start the campaign off. I had a lot of twists on actual WoW lore based on that, like making the Scarlets more heroic than zealot.
I’d suggest taking actual Classic world NPCs and their quests, and having them show up as little cameos from time to time. Maybe toss in some Old God conspiracy as a slow burn, over-arching plot to be discovered and worked out.
The nice thing about an Azeroth D&D campaign is there are lots of sources of lore available, as well as maps, graphics and pictures.
Oh man, I have all of those old PDFs, but never thought to look into them! Ha! Thanks for the reminder!
Heya Sys! Always nice to see a familiar face when I come back from lurking, and doubly nice that it’s yours!
This is great. I’m already looking at ways to make flight paths less of a thing than they are in-game, to force the heroes (at least at lower levels) to have to travel on foot more. Saying that flight masters refuse to fly anywhere north of Barrens or Stonetalon because of the dangers Night Elves pose is a good way to go towards that, and I love the idea of veterans of the third war cautioning adventurers with “only a fool would enter Ashenvale after nightfall.”
Making the group have to worry about water while traveling in the Barrens and other arid regions is great. It makes the world feel more alive with the oases being more than just a quest destination, there is now a very good reason to have the Horde want to control one or more of them.
That’s the plan! All of the quest hooks the heroes are starting with are inspired by the quests of the Barrens, but also taken into more interesting directions because of the openness of tabletop gaming. And I’ve also prepped a couple of quests that are locked behind other things happening in the world, such as only if they get a certain random encounter or only if they visit a certain area at night instead of during the day. Verisimilitude is my biggest goal as a DM, so doing little things like that to make the world feel alive is really important. And the Barrens and classic WoW have more than enough quests for me to cherry pick, adjust, and plop into the campaign at a place that works for our game.