James Wyatt, the principal game designer and project lead designer of the upcoming Dungeons & Dragons: World of Warcraft book was already running games in Azeroth long before he took on the project. For him, the fun of bringing WoW to the table is not to ignore the flexibility of D&D but to embrace it.

"Part of the beauty of playing D&D in the world of Azeroth is that you can do things in D&D that you can't do in a digital game because the options haven't been programmed for you," he said in a recent presentation attended by PC Gamer.

On November 12, you'll be able to see how Wyatt and the other designers mixed the two RPGs by "paraphrasing" the MMO into the tabletop ruleset. But Wyatt and senior game designer Ben Petrisor gave us a peek into how their approach affects the classes you can play in D&D: WoW.

WoW's classes are thematically similar to D&D's, and that's part of what makes the collaboration so fitting. However, WoW's classes have to fit into restrictive roles, like a tank or a healer, that don't really exist in D&D, so the D&D: WoW designers decided to return to some of the class customization that was introduced with 2020's Tasha's Cauldron of Everything.

Paladins won't have to give up their usual kit when they invest in WoW's holy specialization, for example. Wyatt explained that a lot of the unique abilities and talents WoW classes have access to have been translated into options players can incorporate into their characters.

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