Wizards of the Coast is bringing World of Warcraft to the tabletop, and the new Dungeons & Dragons World of Warcraft line arrives this November. The company organized a sneak peek featuring the designers behind the project, and the result is a full campaign setting, sourcebook, map pack, and DM screen that lets players explore Azeroth as a party of adventurers.
The Design Team Behind the Product
James Wyatt serves as Principal Game Designer and Project Lead Designer. Joey Haeck is Senior Game Designer and Designer of Dungeons. Ben Petrisor handles Character Classes and Unique Monsters. Erin Roberts is a Game Designer working on Miscellaneous Monsters. Carl Sibley is a Game Designer focusing on Monsters (Demons, Dragons) and Magic Items.
The team made one thing clear during the session: they are all deeply passionate about World of Warcraft and the world of Azeroth. That passion, they said, shaped a product that feels like both an iconic RPG and a beloved video game at once.
What Players Get Inside the Box
The products are already available for pre-order. The sourcebook, map pack, and DM screen are designed to bring the epic tales of WoW to your table or virtual tabletop (VTT) sessions.
The campaign leverages a lot of the core Dungeons & Dragons experience, especially character creation and dungeon exploration. But it also adds several new ideas that can be used for campaigns in Azeroth or anywhere else.
The Classes, Races, and Spells
Most of the classes and races from WoW already fit neatly into D&D’s rules. The overlap classes — Druid, Monk, Paladin, Rogue, and Warlock — have their own guidance to make them feel like their video game equivalents.
For classes, there are no new core classes. Instead, the book offers six new subclasses, three updated subclasses, and additional options that cover WoW’s 13 classes and over 40 specializations. Death Knight, Evoker, and Shaman are all accounted for.
Here are the new subclasses:
- Oath of the Ebon Blade (Paladin)
- Oath of the Holy (Paladin)
- Demon Hunter (Ranger)
- Shadow Domain (Cleric)
- Discipline Domain (Cleric)
- Path of the Elements (Barbarian)
The updated subclasses are:
- Swashbuckler (Rogue, originally found in the Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide)
- Path of the Spiritual Guardian (Barbarian, assumed to be the subclass originally found in Xanthar’s Guide to Everything as Path of the Ancestral Guardian)
- Warrior of Mystic Brews (Monk, assumed to be the subclass originally found in Xanthar’s Guide to Everything as Way of the Drunken Master)
Players can choose from 16 races, including Dracthyr, Draenei, Dwarf, Earthen, Elf, Forsaken, Goblin, Haranir, Human, Mechagnome, Orc, Pandaren, Tauren, Troll, Vulpera, and Worgen.
Spells, Magic Items, and Loot
The book includes 60+ spells and 25+ magic items. Some iconic WoW abilities, like the Mage’s Polymorph, don’t have a good analogue in D&D and will hopefully be included somehow.
DMs can always port their favorites over from WoW as needed.
Professions and Crafting
The crafting system is not entirely new, but it adds several new dimensions to Dungeons & Dragons’ existing rules. The designer who spoke about this said he is excited for it because, as an MMO player, one of his favorite things was grabbing a profession like fishing or mining and building around it.
The Renown System and Dungeon Structure
The campaign adds an expanded renown system for the Horde/Alliance style of conflict, with sub-factions for each main faction and joint-faction adventuring. There is also a loot system for generating random rewards from encounters, and a flexible dungeon system that supports both classic D&D combat-encounter experiences and WoW-style boss-fight focused adventures.
What This Means for Players
Playing World of Warcraft through the experience of Dungeons & Dragons is a world apart from the video game. The core mechanics of character creation and dungeon exploration remain familiar, but the new concepts — professions, renown, loot, and the flexible dungeon structure — set this apart from other campaigns.
If this sounds like something you’re interested in, check out the pre-orders now. The products come out in November.
Our View on the Line
This is a clever adaptation. Wizards has taken a sprawling video game and built a boxed line around it. The class and race coverage is extensive, and the new subclasses draw on existing D&D material with fresh twists.
The real separator is the new systems. Professions, renown, and the loot generation are the parts that will make a WoW campaign feel distinct from a standard D&D game.
The Polymorph question is a small detail. WoW’s version of the spell turns enemies into sheep, while D&D’s Polymorph works differently. How the two versions interact is still unclear.
The campaign lands this November. Pre-orders are open now.
Source material: “Getting Ready for Dungeons & Dragons World of Warcraft,” Hipsters of the Coast.
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