Character Profiles: Ballough Hammerkeg

Name: Ballough Hammerkeg
Race: Dwarf
Gender: Male
Age: 96
Class: Warrior (fury)
Religion: Holy Light
Alignment (Per D&D): Lawful Neutral
Traits (per CK2): strong, honest, gregarious, trusting, content, duelist

GDE: Dream of Creation, Verdant Plains zone

Call it build 7.0.0.21600

Welcome back to Game Design Exercise, where I try to write up an expansion to World of Warcraft as I would have done it, despite about three or four people total caring about what I post here! As I would have done it, if I had a thousand pairs of hands and a mountain of money to spend. Really, it’s my wish fulfillment fantasy, taking the best parts of various expansions and doing them in the context of the Emerald Dream. Like I said in the last post, I’m in a slightly resigned mood when it comes to these. In the time since the last post I’ve been thinking about various other design options. A Dishonored sequel about an Overseer who becomes the next Outsider! My original game idea about playing as a guild, which turns out to be a lot like Garrisons: the Game! Ultimately, all of those ideas are extremely unlikely to become anything more than ideas and with this one, at least I have a few more people reading it. So I might as well keep going.

Now, to end the rant, today we’ll embarking to the first zone of the expansion proper, Verdant Plains. Like in Warlords of Draenor, I decided to go with an Alliance/Horde split between starting zones. In part because I thought it worked, and in bigger part because I decided the entrances to the Emerald Dream become the racial mini-capitals for the new races. It would be like Alliance players entering the Cataclysm zones through Bilgewater Harbor. So today’s post is the beginning of the Alliance storyline, and involves several factions, including Greymane Crossover (a new Alliance reputation faction), Skettis Exiles (the arakkoa racial faction), a continuation of the Wild Hunt storyline and an introduction to a few new elements.

GDE: Dream of Creation, Arakkoa starting experience

Call it build 7.0.0.21600

Welcome back to Game Design Exercise. The first thing you might notice is I decided to shorten the title. “Game Design Exercise” was taking up a lot of precious character space, so I decided to shorten it in case I ever need a particularly long title for one of the sections. The second thing you might notice is that the map posted this time is different from the previous one. I continue working on it and although most of the additions are things I hid from public view (because they spoil future content before it’s ready) there are some zone shape and size changes. They stem from me noticing that Ravenwood and Thornbranch are definitely too small. Most starting zones aren’t much smaller than regular end-game zones, so I thought I wouldn’t be able to realistically squish in a full 1-13 experience in those areas. They are now bigger, partially at the cost of the oversized Verdant Plains.

Another thing I wanted to talk about before the break is a concern that was raised on Twitter recently. Dream of Creation is adopting several fey creatures from Dungeons & Dragons and other fantasy sources and one of those creatures is called a hag. They’re ugly troll-like creatures that undeniably bear some resemblance to a caricature of an old woman, and the term likely comes from there. To me, a person with a certain fantasy gaming experience, hags were just a normal thing that didn’t raise any red light. I was however told that the term is considered offensive. I mean, it’s obvious calling a real person “hag” is an offense, but a person was concerned that using it as a name of a fantasy creature is offensive as well, regardless of the term’s past in the genre. Personally, I don’t see it, but if enough people see it as a valid concern, I will adopt it. So, what do you think? Let me know on Twitter or in the comments below.

So, I invite you to read my take on arakkoa starting experience for Dream of Creation, an Emerald Dream expansion. They are arakkoa from the main timeline, so they continue storylines from the Burning Crusade and only influences from Warlords of Draenor are clarifications about the common past of both timelines and references – such as WoD characters showing up here in their main timeline incarnations. Enjoy!

Character Profiles: Sednaq Mikiruq

Art by enipnion

Name: Sednaq of Mikiruq
Race: Tuskarr
Gender: female
Age: 29
Class: Expert (non-combatant)
Professions: Skinning, leatherworking, fishing, cooking, first aid
Religion: Traditional tuskarr shamanism
Alignment (per D&D): True Neutral
Traits (per CK2): gregarious, gluttonous, kind, diligent, brave, lustful

Character Profiles: Lunk

Art by Ron Spears for WoW TCG

Name: Lunk, of Dustbelcher Clan
Race: Ogre
Gender: male
Age: about 30
Class: insists it’s Culinarian
Professions: cooking, archaeology, keeps randomly dropping and reacquiring various other professions
Religion: Lunk will pray to the closest available god because he’s not sure they’re always in range.
Alignment (per D&D): Chaotic Good
Traits (per CK2): genius, slow, kind, charitable, content, arbitrary, humble, gregarious

Character Profiles: Riktal Bluefingers

Riktal during her visit to Frostfire Ridge

Name: Riktal, daughter of Tagal, of the Frostwolf Clan
Race: Orc
Gender: female
Age: 21
Class: Mage (frost)
Professions: herbalism, inscription
Religion: Shamanism
Alignment (per D&D): Chaotic Neutral
Traits (per CK2): quick, ugly, shy, kind, just, diligent

Character Profiles: Podric

Not written by Podric’s player

Name: Podric, alternatively spelled as Poddric. No family name.
Race: Human
Gender: male
Age: 23
Class: Mage (fire)
Professions: enchanting, tailoring
Religion: Holy Light
Alignment (per D&D): True Neutral
Traits (per CK2): quick, slothful, shy, honest, content, kind, just

Character Profiles: Mehrzad

Name: Mehrzad Arashpoor
Race: Djinn
Gender: male
Age: 28
Class: Shaman (restoration)
Professions: Herbalism, alchemy
Religion: Al’Akiri elementalism (in theory)
Alignment (per D&D): Neutral Good
Traits (per CK2): twin, scholar, diligent, gregarious, honest, kind, charitable, patient, chaste, arbitrary

Character Profiles: Gornn & Ling

Look, I told them to make a pose. It’s not my fault what pose they did.

Name: Gornn (and Ling)
Race: Gronn (and Gronnling)
Gender: male (male)
Age: About 150 years (About 10 years)
Class: Not applicable
Professions: None (None)
Religion: None (None)
Alignment (per D&D): True neutral (True neutral)
Traits (per CK2): strong, slow, patient, honest, proud, brave, content (strong, slow, wroth)

Of angry draenei and frozen penguins

It’s rare to see an angry draenei. I don’t mean they’re rare, it’s just rare to see them, because they’re usually angry when no one can see them. They like to pretend they’re above our petty emotions, but they’re just as much subject to them as everyone else. They’re just very… conceited about their emotional state and hide it under layers of seeming self-control. But sometimes, you can actually find one that appears openly angry and even pursues a personal agenda. I talked to one of those some time ago. His name is Zovaar, and he traveled in time attempting to bring back his family. He apparently used to be a paladin but got broken and went with some krokul into this temporal escapade. Imagine my surprise when this (lesser) enemy of the Timewalkers shows up on my doorstep.