Tabletop Guild Wars

Good thing there are more systems than simply d20, then, right? Especially as d20 isn't a perfect system and doesn't fit everything, contrary to popular belief...

My friend has a system he's been working on on-and-off for a few years now that I think would be well-suited to GW's gameplay with a few tweaks.

I guess it depends on how you want to play. Yeah, there are more systems than d20 (I'm in an Exalted game right now, for starters) but you could, depending on what you wanted, take the lore and use it for your own d20 game, and it would have the advantage of having a system already set up for you. If someone wanted the setting of GW, d20 would work. I won't say it's perfect - I think it's far from a perfect fit - but I don't think it's entirely unusable, either.

I don't think you can make a perfect transition from GW the computer game to GW the TTRPG or GW the TCG.

LOL - doubtful, even if my internet/power went out.

What's the point? Just get out a deck of cards and play the many solitaire versions available...

Or Sudoku it if you're hardcore craving.

Honestly, I hate d20 as a system :P But I'm most familiar with the old school World of Darkness system, myself. D20 would work well enough for the setting, but yeah, if you were trying to capture the feel of the gameplay as well, it wouldn't cut it. Hacking together some house rules to make it work better wouldn't be terribly difficult, though.

And no, of course not. But that's the case of any TTG/TCG adaptation of a video game/movie/TV show/book/what have you. It is possible to come close to the same style, though.

Because it could be fun and there are people who would enjoy it?

Also, tabletop RPG != card game.

I don't hate the d20 system, but it would definitely need some serious tweaking to capture the gameplay of Guild Wars - which is what I think any good conversion should at least try to do, because ultimately that is the game. For me, using only the lore with an existing system wouldn't work. It would just feel like a "reskinned" D&D, GURPS, etc.

3.5 makes a gw campaign so easy, just tweak some of the crunch and fluff and house rule the gaps.

Ritualist = vestige binder
Warrior = fighter
Necromancer = um, duh?
Ranger = again, don't make me smack you!
Monk = cleric/monk hybrid
Assassin = SLAP!
Dervish = ranger/cleric/sorcerer hybrid
Paragon = cleric/incarnate hybrid
Mesmer = sorcerer/mystic/psion hybrid
Elementalist = Come on now, work with me here!

Tweek the crunch and fluff and house rule the gaps. So easy even a cave man can do it! If I wasn't currently working on a module I would be more than willing to do this. Maybe in the future when things slow down a bit.

See... tabletops aren't about getting loot or having sweet combat. A lot of the fun comes from just interacting with your friends (imagine that, actually sitting around talking with people face to face), including all the off topic conversations. Also, its the ability to do basically ANYTHING, including some really ridiculous situations. Think of the game Mass Effect. You can choose to do whatever you want in it. You could meet Gwen and punch her in the face when she starts whining. You could help the Lich conquer Tyria because you think its a good idea. Your options are a lot more wide open then in a video game. Playing the a story someone else wrote will always be more limited then being able to use your imagination to develop your own. That is why computer games will never completely eliminate tabletop gaming.

The skill system would be very unwieldy and create a lot of rules lawyering. Especially given monthly updates aimed at destroying anything that works for player goals and achievement. The paperside would be outdated 3 months before it could be printed and would never be able to keep up with the up-dates.

They might be able to make GW2 more in line with PnP. Somehow I doubt GW2 is going to be interesting of functional for PvE play. But at least PnP you would not be limited to WASD movement and poorly placed obstacles that prevent movement...

GW has/had some "lore" justifying the whole gameplay system, with 8 "skill rings" you equip, one for each non-thumb finger. That's a complete 180 from any of that vancian casting junk or X uses of ability per day - you can't just plop the thing into existing d20 classes and expect anything to work. You could superimpose such a system into d20, but you're going to be building it from the ground up. The biggest question is whether you really want to simulate/track "energy" let alone adrenaline, or are going to come up with replacement concepts that are easier to manage in PnP.

Precisely.

Me and my friend really have a dislike for DnD and having to tie things so closely to such a system, especially with having everything decided by essentially what's a cointoss. With our diceless rules, the sky is quite literally the limit. You can choose to party with your friends, you can choose to backstab your friends, very little is closed to you as a player. Not only that but with Amber's auction system there's no two players that'll be the same.

Top it all off to make your entirely own story, your own main bad force, your own classes (not that there are really classes, but you can definitely pinpoint which actual GW class that a players' build fits)...Just all so awesome.

Video games are toys. As enjoyable as it may seem there's still very little you can do with it. Pen-and-paper campaigns are the closest you can get to having everything you'd want in an RPG, you just gotta use some imagination : )

No offense intended, but I think you would have a lot more gaps to cover than you think there are. I'm not saying it most definitely won't work, but - you know, if you just took each GW class and said "OK, this is the D&D equivalent" like you just did... that doesn't do GW justice.

Another option would be to have each major race in GW, a different army in a Warhammer style setup.
e.g One could be ascalonians, you could have archers, footmen, guards, flaming scepter mages, "Ascalonian Captian" for a general and Rurik as a special character. You could "invent" some new units to give a bigger choice of what to have, like adding peasant warriors or seige equipment.

You could include Charr, you have the weaker warriors, the stronger warriors, archers, and the caster char could have some kind of weak magic the function pretty similiarly to a ranged attack. Generals could be "Charr Commader" and special characters could be bosses from the game.

Other armys that could be included are Stone Summit, Mursaat, Undead, Whatever species devourers and scarabs fall into, Luxons, Kurzicks, Margonites, Kournans, Aflicted, Am Fah, Jade Brotherhood, Hekets, Shadow Army, and so on.
Obvoisly you would only want to include armies from one campaign, otherwise things could get a little odd.

Sure I do and sure it does. A ritualist isn't going to take on the traits of the spirits it summons like vestiges do, but the mechanics behind how a binder works will be just fine for making a ritualist work in the game. Tweeking the mechanics/rules/crunch to fit more of a gw styled game will help sell that and filling in the gaps will make it air tight.

My examples were just that, not direct conversions as how they would work. But you don't have to create a completely new rules system just to make a game work. In the game itself characters don't know what levels are, or hit points or saving throws. They only know that they have learned many things, can take a hit and don't catch colds as often as everyone else.

You take the mechanical ideas of how each base class works and modify it into a new class for the gw conversion. So a paragon with incarnum ideas won't manifest soul energy into visual soulmelds, but a paragon would be able to manifest energy into shouts much like a barbarians warcry, although a paragons shout would have a more supernatural aspect to it as they have found a inner strength to draw from, like a mystic. The clerical aspects of a paragon would also operate like a mystic, power from within.

The hardest part about making rp conversions is not the mechanics (crunch), its the layers of detailed fluff. Anyone can make a rules setup with classes, spells items and all that. Making a fully inhabited world come to life is a completely different thing.

As for the races, thats easy too. You take a base race, say Human and apply a gw template to it. Tyrian, Krytian, Magnum, the desert folk, elonian, canthian. Templates are just a layer of detail you place over the base.

You could even have sub racial qualities and racial levels like monsters. every third racial level, a player could choose to take a sub racial level. This is like a base class + a template + a minor template. So that tyrian warrior can gain additional benefits/qualities like a faster runner for example. +10 movement speed ontop the the base movement speed of 30-40.

I doubt most people will follow what I'm saying unless they enjoy being a GM/DM but its very simple once you've done it for a while.

Tweek the crunch and house rule the gaps. Easy. Atleast for me it always has been in the 15+ years I'v been designing campaigns.

I couldn't have said it better myself. Unfortunately so many people are turned off by pen and paper RPGs because of the geeky stigma attached to them. That and so many people simply can't use their imaginations. They need to be hit in the face with a multimillion dollar movie to enjoy themselves. A shame really.

^This is worth saying again.^

I would love a PnP Guild Wars. I've been playing PnP rpgs for 20+ years already and one more couldn't hurt. Although I like the d20 system, there are many others out there. Anyone ever play the Star Wars rpg before they switched it to d20? It used a series of d6's with one d6 as the wild die. Good times, but I digress....

Didn't you all know that DnD is evil? Seriously, check these links out to find out more.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHdXG2gV01k

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Kgx2...eature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-WuG...eature=related


Seriously though, you could use almost any system to make GW into a ttrpg. d20 is probably the one that most people would be comfortable with. It'd be nice to see an example of each system (d20, the d10 system from World of Darkness, or the d6 system from old school Star Wars rpg.)