Has Anyone tried the Wheel of Time RPG?

[Droningbass]

I recently discovered that there is a published Pen & Paper Wheel of Time RPG that was released in 2001 by Wizards of the Coast, but I haven't really found any reviews or stories of people playing the game. I have a copy of the book now, and I'm a huge fan of the series. It's a shame that it didn't catch on, because it looks fun (despite the complicated rules about channeling). The only big issue that I can see is that there are very few enemies/monsters to set against the players, so combat might get boring after a few levels.

Has anyone out there ever played it? What did you think of the gameplay and options? Do you have any advice for starting a campaign or keeping one exciting?

It must be awesome to square off with a Heron-marked blade or the One Power against a Myrddraal!

[iceman10058]

unless everyone is very familiar about the books and story, its not very fun. also to me it was a more narative game than say D&D or shadowrun. but that is just my experience.

[BWR]

I haven't actually tried it, or even looked at it since I bought it, but I remember being very disappointed with the channeling system. It seemed like such a lazy, unimaginative and inaccurate way of trying to model the powers. As for monsters, I seem to recall that there were about as many types of monsters available in the RPG as there were in the books. This isn't D&D with impossible numbers of monsters with immense variation in form and powers, this is a world where the vast majority of your interactions will be with humans, and a few trollocs.

[The_Snark]

It's... okay. If you're a fan of the series you can have fun with it.

The channeling system is better than I expected at first glance. The D&D spellcasting system (that is, spell slots/day) seems like a bad way to model channeling, but it turns out to be sorta fun in play, and works a bit better than you might expect. Not very balanced, though; some weaves are really weak, others are broken, and... well, numerous other issues. The non-channeling classes are even worse off; except for the channeling system, it's essentially D&D 3.0 with the magic stripped out and most of the classes weakened. Also, there are no supplements. The end result is that you don't get a lot of options, few of them are interesting, and none of them are very good. As for lack of monsters... I don't think that's a problem; like the people above me said, it's not really designed for dungeon crawls with lots of exotic monsters. Mostly you'll encounter humans, the basic varieties of Shadowspawn, and occasionally something weirder.

The ruleset is functional, you can play a game and it won't fall apart, but I feel like it was a somewhat lazy conversion of the D&D 3.0 rules. If you enjoy it, I suspect it'll be the plot and setting that keeps your interest, not the game mechanics.

If you're willing to tinker with the rules a bit, I suspect you could make the game much more interesting by taking elements from D&D 3.5's many supplements. Appropriate non-magical classes, prestige classes and feats would go a long way towards spicing the game up for non-channelers, and smoothing out the rough spots in the channeling system shouldn't be too hard either.

[The Random NPC]

It has a Pathfinder conversion, but that mostly just renames some classes to match Wheel of Time. The only thing I really liked about the system was that it had a medium save progression.

[hiryuu]

It's... okay. If you're a fan of the series you can have fun with it.

The channeling system is better than I expected at first glance. The D&D spellcasting system (that is, spell slots/day) seems like a bad way to model channeling, but it turns out to be sorta fun in play, and works a bit better than you might expect.

Right? I was pretty excited with the weave system, and pleasantly surprised it made it into 5th Ed D&D, and while it maybe doesn't model weaving that well, it's still very neat and has some cool fiddly bits, making it a shame that it was restricted to just this book.

Maybe somebody could patch it up for use with 3.5/P.

If you're willing to tinker with the rules a bit, I suspect you could make the game much more interesting by taking elements from D&D 3.5's many supplements. Appropriate non-magical classes, prestige classes and feats would go a long way towards spicing the game up for non-channelers, and smoothing out the rough spots in the channeling system shouldn't be too hard either.

Armsman is an utter joke, but it's still better than the fighter. Desert spear guys and armsmen alike could easily be done with Tome of Battle, especially in the absence of so many magical items.

[Digitalelf]

Do you have any advice for starting a campaign or keeping one exciting?

I've never played it, but there was a single adventure published that was supposed to be a campaign starter...

Prophecies of the Dragon is the name of the adventure, and it can be found on eBay and Amazon at a reasonable price.

There was a downloadable web enhancement as well as a character sheet available, which are still floating around the internet; just do a search for: "Wheel of time RPG web enhancement"...

*EDIT*

Also, In the Dragon Magazine d20 Special Issue, these two articles appeared:

Pattern Weavers
New hero templates for the Wheel of Time Roleplaying Game
by Owen K.C. Stephens

Beasts of the Wheel of Time
Twenty-six Wheel of Time creatures to ride, eat, or fear
by Robert Jordan and Owen K.C. Stephens

[Telwar]

We tried a short game of it.

The problem is that if you're not a channeler, you're basically window dressing. We decided at the end of the campaign book that our characters, including the Aes Sedai, were going to buy an inn and never go adventuring again, because it hurt so damn bad. Healing sucks, there's almost nothing to get from adventuring to make yourself more effective, you can't come anywhere close to the book characters without tremendous numbers of bonus feats, etc.

Oh, and trollocs are brutal. Ogres with falchions, basically.

I kinda would like to see another treatment of it, but I doubt that'll happen.

[BWR]

Oh, and trollocs are brutal. Ogres with falchions, basically.

Isn't that basically what they are in the books?

[Telwar]

Isn't that basically what they are in the books?

Yes. But they're pretty much supposed to be orc-types rather than ogres, so they're probably somewhat more dangerous than they should be. They're considered to be equivalent to a 1st-level armsman in challenge ("challenge code A"), but in a one-on-one the trolloc will take the armsman, most likely.

Dear lord I actually have my book.