Warcraft RPG



The Warcraft RPG may refer to both the game series Warcraft: The Roleplaying Game and its successor game series World of Warcraft: The Roleplaying Game. Even though World of Warcraft: The Roleplaying Game replaced the previous series, both games are still referred to as the Warcraft RPG by many for simplicity's sake. World of Warcraft: The Roleplaying Game is also at times referred to as either the World of Warcraft RPG or WoW RPG. Both series are d20-based pen-and-paper RPGs from White Wolf Publishing released under their Sword &amp; Sorcery imprint.

Note: Sourcebooks created for the "Dungeons & Dragons® Warcraft® the Roleplaying Game are listed under the "Warcraft: The Roleplaying Game" on the front covers, but listed as being part of the "Dungeons & Dragons® Warcraft® the Roleplaying Game" on the back covers.

In 2005, White Wolf updated the rules from the previous game giving the new series the name World of Warcraft: The Roleplaying Game. This was done in order to tie in with the success of the World of Warcraft MMORPG and to use the Open Gaming License. A conversion document was released seperately explaining how to convert material from the previous game into the new system. The document also notes incompatible material that was replaced or eliminated in the new system.



Books


The following sortable table has a default order based on the order the books were published.

For the chronological order of where the books fit in the game world timeline, see Timeline (RPG Books Chronology).


 * Note that SKU 17209 has not yet been used by White Wolf.

PDF-only material

 * World of Warcraft: The Roleplaying Game Character Sheet
 * World of Warcraft Conversion Document
 * World of Warcraft: The Roleplaying Game Preview
 * Bones of Ironforge
 * Lands of Mystery Extra Web Bonuses
 * Lands of Mystery Extra Blue Dragonspawn Stats
 * Monster Guide Web Supplement

Official source of lore
Like the MMORPG, Chris Metzen is in charge of the lore and uses the books to expand upon things in his view of the World of Warcraft. Many things do not show up in the MMORPG due to limitations of the game's scale and other gameplay mechanics. These limitations make the game incapable of showing everything. Metzen's personal view is that the history of Azeroth is not found in just one source, but includes the RPGs, novels, comics, manuals, and games.

"'blizz' - Chris Metzen, World of Warcraft, Behind the Scenes DVD."

For example, in this interview, Metzen discusses a little bit about on how he uses the RPG to explain things within the World of Warcraft MMORPG.

'''BI: How do the Gnomes fit back into Warcraft lore? They were notably absent from Warcraft III. Where have they been?'''

Metzen: blizz

Furthermore, Metzen discusses the RPG as an expansion to Warcraft lore within several Foreword letters within the RPG as well.

From his introduction letter to Manual of Monsters:

blizz - Chris Metzen (co-author), Creative Director, Blizzard Entertainment, 7/07/03

In rebuttal to a poster that claimed that the RPG was not official, Eyonix had this to say:  blizz

blizz - Eyonix On the World of Warcraft official website, the Warcraft RPG is said to be an important part into getting to know more about Warcraft lore. In the "History of Warcraft" section section; "'blizz'"

In the Ask the CDevs 2 Blizzard stated that the RPG books are not considered canon:

Many of the creatures and some of the lore expand beyond what appears in the computer game.

Most of the books are placed chronologically before World of Warcraft, and authors in-universe such as Brann Bronzebeard cover many alternate legends believed by the people of Azeroth. Many of the books are located at earlier points in the timeline, and the culture, population factors, and other historical events have taken place or changed since the point in time that they cover.

Many cultures have changed since the period of time when the RPG books take place, and even between the events of the books. Some cultures mentioned no longer exist at the time of World of Warcraft, and some cultures existed thousands of years before or during the War of the Ancients. Some material first introduced in the RPG was expanded upon later in other sources such as novels and manga.

Loss of the license
White Wolf has lost their license for the Warcraft line.

"All the books under our license agreement for Blizzard for this product line have been released. The last one having been this summer. So while we will not be supporting a forum here, I have conferred with the company internally and we recommend reaching out to Blizzard for replacement RPG support resources.

We have a limited number of forums we can launch with due to the license we have for this software right now which also limited our options here so the decision was to focus on our core products." undefined

Several of the heavy posters on the White Wolf Warcraft RPG forums (which were removed from the list of White Wolf forums) have gotten together to start a new forum; some of these members include Jeff Moller, one of the developers from the book "Dark Factions".

The new forums can be found at: http://wowrpg.11.forumer.com

Reasons
Many people speculate the reason White Wolf lost the RPG license was due to its merger with a company, CCP Games (maker of EVE Online), that makes MMO games and therefore competes directly with Blizzard. However, many other people have also been critical of the RPG itself and that perhaps Blizzard was just looking for a new publisher due to quality issues.