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Post by enpeze on Nov 18, 2009 0:48:12 GMT -9
I know possibly its too exotic for some readers. So I am not even sure if I should post this idea. But how about a new papermini set in the style of World of Warcraft monsters and characters?
Why?
Recently I got the wow rpg in my hands and thought, ok why not playing it? But for roleplaying I need my minis. There are wow plastic minis out there, but these dont have 25mm bases and are 40mm. So they are not interesting for roleplay.
I dont think that its possible to do a line with exact names and visuals without violating some IP rights of Blizzard. But how about a "clone"? This means, similar cartoonish graphical style but with slightly different colours and names?
Wow has some very exciting and unique races and monster you dont find in other rpgs. Eg. the trolls and night elves are totally different to standard rpgs. Additionally I think the cartoon style of WoW suits excellently to the style of one monks minis.
I know I would love such a paper mini line and I am sure many thousands of Wow players too.
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Post by anitangel on Nov 18, 2009 9:32:33 GMT -9
I was actually thinking about that, but I really don't see much challange in the style --because I'm copying and not making something new and original -- and I also see problems with the --like you said copyrights. I was also trying to get my hands on some kind of guides where they actually list them and show them --no luck. But their style is awesome looking on screen I'm pretty sure it would look good on table too Anita
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Post by squirmydad on Nov 19, 2009 6:38:54 GMT -9
I think it would just be safer to copy the style, which is what I do. I try to get the chunky solid look of the creatures at least, the characters are a little too cartoony for miniatures nowadays. There are a couple PDF monster manuals for the WOW RPG that are pretty nice, and I have the Wow art book as well, I really like the styles for bears and those type beasts and will try to get that look in those figures. JIM
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Post by enpeze on Nov 20, 2009 3:09:52 GMT -9
Well I think there could be a big market demand for such figures. WoW has a tremendous following of 11 Mio players worldwide and growing. Even if only a few of them play P&P rpgs, I guess there are enough who would buy a line of 3$/pdf to give their rpg the needed minis. Additionally there could be synergetic effects for public relations in the wow forum community. ("hey I know a cool papermini producer for wow. he produces a line of starcraft paperminis too...." The problem with the current WoW rpg is that WoW has a great and very unique cartoonish style which most players of the MMO love. But they cannot equip their P&P games with the proper miniatures in order to evoke this WoW style. They only can use "standard" paperminis which are often good but not suiting to the wow aesthetic. There is plastic mini line but this line is not good for roleplaying just for skirmish. Its expensive and it has the wrong bases for the WoW P&P rpg. (which is based on d20) So the existing plastic mini line is no solution... I am not sure if there is a expensive licence involved in producing 3$/pdf paperminis for the game, possible its free of costs or Blizzard only demand a small cost for official WoW paperminis. The best would be to contact the company for this. If there is a licence fee and it is too expensive then the solution could be a "clone" with a similar style but different names. Calling the iconic WoW "jungle troll from Zul Aman" just "blue forest troll" or whatever.
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Post by kane on Nov 20, 2009 9:31:57 GMT -9
I've been wanting Tauren miniatures for so long. They are easily my favorite WarCraft race. I would also love a WC skirmish game. I'd love to say someone should ask Blizzard what kind of licensing would be necessary, but since they are part of Activision...well...they would probably want millions up front instead of profit sharing. I just don't think it will ever happen. I guess it could not hurt to ask, though...
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Post by enpeze on Nov 20, 2009 14:54:41 GMT -9
I've been wanting Tauren miniatures for so long. They are easily my favorite WarCraft race. I would also love a WC skirmish game. I'd love to say someone should ask Blizzard what kind of licensing would be necessary, but since they are part of Activision...well...they would probably want millions up front instead of profit sharing. I just don't think it will ever happen. I guess it could not hurt to ask, though... Yep. Asking does not cost anything. Maybe they say yes for a very small fee or even for free. I mean 3$/pdf papermini industry is not that big business I guess
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Post by Adam Souza on Nov 20, 2009 22:02:38 GMT -9
I'm pretty sure you can make all the Tauren you want as long as you call minotaurs.
As far a player races go, WOW has all of one Unique race. Everything else they borrowed from fantasy.
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Post by enpeze on Nov 21, 2009 0:38:45 GMT -9
I'm pretty sure you can make all the Tauren you want as long as you call minotaurs. As far a player races go, WOW has all of one Unique race. Everything else they borrowed from fantasy. seems logical. (Tauren could also called "bison men" or so) There are some unique races like furbolgs (marten men?) or racoon men (from northrend) or pandaren ("panda kung fu men" ? Additionally the grafical style the goblins, night elfs and trolls are drawn is quite unique.
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Post by Adam Souza on Nov 21, 2009 6:40:29 GMT -9
I was talking about the player races mostly, but...
The WOW Orc and Goblins look like they escaped form the Warhammer Universe.
The only thing ,not even that, unique about WOW goblins and elves is they have really big ears.
WOW trolls look a bit different. Being thinner and having tusks on the males is probably unique to WOW, but I must admit I don't keep up with much Fantasy settings beyond WOW, Warhammer, and LOTR.
MY point is, you could make critters that look appropriate to WOW without violating IP if your smart about it. Licensing WOW's likeness would be prohibitively expensive for paper miniatures.
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Post by squirmydad on Nov 21, 2009 7:28:00 GMT -9
When Wow first started, the game was originally being designed as Warhammer Online, but GW rejected the idea. Hence the reason many of the core races and monsters have a Warhammer feel.
The only way the official designs would ever make to paper minitures is if some large publishers got the rights, and not some geek designing paper miniatures a couple hours a day at his kitchen table. I have a full time job in the games industry, and I don't need two.
I can see making some suitable stand-ins for the Wow stuff. And you do realize, you can create your own figures from the original arts, as long as the figure is in a reasonable angle, and your not concerned with rear views.
For my part, I'm more than content to just goof around with what I'm doing, and really don't have time to do more. JIM
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Post by ceredwyn on Nov 21, 2009 23:55:39 GMT -9
I've actually been planning a set of miniatures of major characters in my two RP guilds >.> Will post 'em when I have something solid.
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Post by enpeze on Nov 22, 2009 1:53:04 GMT -9
I've actually been planning a set of miniatures of major characters in my two RP guilds >.> Will post 'em when I have something solid. Really? How about with some enemies (trashmobs and bosses) you encountered in your last raid too? A "raid pack" so to say.
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Post by ceredwyn on Nov 22, 2009 2:05:38 GMT -9
Well, I could actually include a huge Scarlet Onslaught army... We ran a guild wide Storyline recently where our guild was being constantly harried and attacked by the Scarlet Crusade for... Varying reasons. It culminated in a 'boss fight' with a Scarlet Champion who we had to defeat. She had her own private guard, aka trash, that we had to fight down first, plus some unique abilities. We RPed the whole thing out using a system Kioma Winterwolf wrote that is level based and uses /roll. It was.. Pretty intense!
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Post by enpeze on Nov 22, 2009 11:10:28 GMT -9
Well, I could actually include a huge Scarlet Onslaught army... We ran a guild wide Storyline recently where our guild was being constantly harried and attacked by the Scarlet Crusade for... Varying reasons. It culminated in a 'boss fight' with a Scarlet Champion who we had to defeat. She had her own private guard, aka trash, that we had to fight down first, plus some unique abilities. We RPed the whole thing out using a system Kioma Winterwolf wrote that is level based and uses /roll. It was.. Pretty intense! Kioma Winterwolf? You played WoW as a P&P game with your guild? How did you manage this? Per Skype? TS?
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Post by ceredwyn on Nov 22, 2009 23:01:34 GMT -9
Kioma is my partner, and also on these forums. Yes, we played in p&p style, but... There were build up 'scenes', sort of like cut scenes in a game, or a movie, that established the storyline. These came in the form of stories posted to our forum, and some freeform-ish RP in our Guild Chat, with is all In Character.
Theeen... What we did was set a time and date for the major battle, which was a surprise attack on the guild's headquarters from Tyr's Hand. Our guild has taken over the ruined buildings in the DK starting zone, and our guild chat is set in a hidden fortress in the mountains or Eastern Plaguelands. Everyone turned up in person, we formed a raid, we explained the rules, re-stated some warnings we'd posted on the forum, such as 'if you participate you must understand your character could die', and then we started the event. We had one main storyteller, Kioma, and two supporting storytellers, myself and our guild master. Together we had a channel where we planned things out, and we /emoted the story. Everyone rolled an essential initiative-type roll, and that was both action and post order. The bad guys had set turns they acted on as well, and so it combined to be a huge, long jumble of stuff. Taking into account that each person's post was meant to cover a period of about 6 seconds, anything you could do in 6 seconds was allowed, though you had to roll to see if it succeeded. So in actual fact, the combat would have been very short in reality.
Doing all of that in OUR time, however, was a lot more complicated. Because there were so many people (woohoo!) it meant that the baddies died faster and in larger numbers, so there wasn't as much for everyone to do. This is probably a good thing, because the RP itself lasted over 7 freakin' hours. Over seven hours for about 15 or so minutes of In Character prep, combat and after-event RP. It was thrilling and exhausting, and created a real sense of achievement in a game where you have bosses that 'come back again' and you dont really 'defeat' anyone. Fantastic for character progression, too. RP is boring as hell if people dont evolve.
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Post by enpeze on Nov 23, 2009 12:33:40 GMT -9
Kioma is my partner, and also on these forums. Yes, we played in p&p style, but... There were build up 'scenes', sort of like cut scenes in a game, or a movie, that established the storyline. These came in the form of stories posted to our forum, and some freeform-ish RP in our Guild Chat, with is all In Character. Theeen... What we did was set a time and date for the major battle, which was a surprise attack on the guild's headquarters from Tyr's Hand. Our guild has taken over the ruined buildings in the DK starting zone, and our guild chat is set in a hidden fortress in the mountains or Eastern Plaguelands. Everyone turned up in person, we formed a raid, we explained the rules, re-stated some warnings we'd posted on the forum, such as 'if you participate you must understand your character could die', and then we started the event. We had one main storyteller, Kioma, and two supporting storytellers, myself and our guild master. Together we had a channel where we planned things out, and we /emoted the story. Everyone rolled an essential initiative-type roll, and that was both action and post order. The bad guys had set turns they acted on as well, and so it combined to be a huge, long jumble of stuff. Taking into account that each person's post was meant to cover a period of about 6 seconds, anything you could do in 6 seconds was allowed, though you had to roll to see if it succeeded. So in actual fact, the combat would have been very short in reality. Doing all of that in OUR time, however, was a lot more complicated. Because there were so many people (woohoo!) it meant that the baddies died faster and in larger numbers, so there wasn't as much for everyone to do. This is probably a good thing, because the RP itself lasted over 7 freakin' hours. Over seven hours for about 15 or so minutes of In Character prep, combat and after-event RP. It was thrilling and exhausting, and created a real sense of achievement in a game where you have bosses that 'come back again' and you dont really 'defeat' anyone. Fantastic for character progression, too. RP is boring as hell if people dont evolve. This is great ceredwyn. Using the WoW game as "tool" for a real rpg with own rules! The first time I heard such thing. ATM I am trying to check out a p&p rpg in the WoW setting. Its not that easy because there are no modules out there, so I have to develope an own style. My idea is to take a "sandbox" approach, with not a very tight storyline, but several dungeons they can choose at the same time and parallel quests. (eg Deathmines against van Cleef, yummy! Maps and pictures for WoW are easy. I just take the ones from the MMO. (of mix of direct screenshots of the environment, the ingame maptool and some WoW artwork books) The beauty is that every part the PCs can visit is already existent in the virtual world. I plan to play per p&p one evening and continue the same scenario ingame at another evening (nearly all the players have accounts so that would be technically unproblematic) and visit the place the scenario take place with the ingame character. So the experience is enhanced (at least I believe this). the biggest prob I am facing is the players accept the very simple and focused WoW world. We are used to play for p&p in more complex and realistic worlds (like Warhammer or Young Kingdoms) We will see, but I am quite optimistic. It was true as you said, roleplaying can be boring if the players dont evolve.
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Post by ceredwyn on Nov 23, 2009 14:55:38 GMT -9
I guess its a matter of re-focusing the player's imaginations, so that they think less about the 3d world as the be all, end all environment they are experiencing, and act more like they would in a p&p session. That being; thinking more about who their character is as well as what they can do. RP in an MMO is as much in the mind as a p&p game is. You have to invent and imagine. And just because their character can technically go in and pwn everything because of their in game abilities, doesn't mean you will let them! Its a hard transition for a lot of MMO RPers to make!
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