MMO Strategy Guides - a good template for a tabletop campaign book?

I was browsing through a copy of the World of Warcraft Strategy Guide for the Cataclysm expansion and looking at the book and the details it presented, I figured it would be a great way to lay out a campaign book for a gaming world.

The WoW Cataclysm book is four hundred pages of quests, stats and strategies. This could easily be translated into a campaign book. Yes, plenty of quests in the game are seriously dull 'go here and kill 'x' number of beasties' but even these could be fleshed out slightly. Let's say that you use 100 pages of the book for background information and the rest for adventures in the world at large. Let's say one page of description for a town or area, maybe a small map, and the next ten pages for quests and adventures, one adventure per page. The print in these books is quite small so you'd get quite a lot of detail in there, mayvbe even tiny stat blocks for the simpler systems.

So that's 400 pages including covers, so drop the actual usable pages to 390 for intros and other non-game info. 90 pages of world background, that's plenty, and then the last 300 pages for adventures and quests. 10 pages per location, so that's 30 locations with 9 adventures per location if we're looking at one adventure per page. That's 270 potential adventures, some of which can be linked to make longer campaigns. Let's say that the average gaming group game once per week and each adventure is designed for 1 session. That's 270 weeks of games, or roughly 5.2 years of adventuring.

Of course, somebody would have to write the damn thing. Yeesh.

Adventure Games Guild - a new gamebook/RPG game

I was introduced to the RPG hobby by Fighting Fantasy gamebooks and Dungeons and Dragons, so to find out that there's a book coming out later in the year that crosses the two games? How could I say no to that? I'm sincerely looking forward to seeing what they have, and with enough Facebook 'Likes' and Twitter followers, they'll release a preview of the character sheet.

Here's the official press release from Adventure Games Guild:

'ANNOUNCING 'ADVENTURER: THE SOLO ROLE PLAYING GAME'
June 7, 2012:

Adventure Games Guild, a new publishing company, today announced their first game, 'Adventurer: The Solo Role Playing Game.' Due for release in late 2012, this product will be designed by Shane Garvey (QUERP, Fabled Lands RPG) and Stuart Lloyd (Lloyd of Gamebooks). The game promises to blend the appeal of solo, gamebook style adventures with a fully detailed role playing system.

Mr. Garvey, president of Adventure Games Guild, said, "I am honoured to be working with Stuart Lloyd on this project. Our mission is to update the old style gamebook system, which always had a set of simplistic rules, into a fully realised, well detailed role playing game. Sort of Fighting Fantasy meets Dungeons and Dragons."

The company promises to offer a set of rules reminiscent of many popular role playing games but to adapt them into the solo format. They plan to include rules for low and high levels of play, rules for running your own keep and much more besides.

'Adventurer: The Solo Role Playing Game' is due late 2012.'

Dragon Warriors from Serpent King Games

As regular readers of this blog might know, I'm a massive fan of the Dragon Warriors RPG. It's now being produced and released through Serpent King Games, and you can get a lot of the product line from drivethrurpg.com.


My original review on RPG.net will tell you all you need to know regarding why I love this game so much.

Free RPG Day

As you're all no doubt aware it's Free RPG Day, the one day of the year where we get to preview, test out and revel in all things tabletop roleplaying.

There's nothing I have my eye on in particular - to be honest, I'm looking forward to the local shop, Spirit Games, filling up and giving me the chance to meet new gamers. That's the part of it I like the most.

That, and the free stuff.