Guild Wars 2

Since the latter years of GW1, and then again because of GW2, I’ve wanted to try and do a roleplaying campaign set in that setting. But to do that there a few things I need to decide, namely what ‘era’ of the world to set it in, and what rules system to use.

I am probably going to go elsewhere for system advice, but the current plan is Dungeons & Dragons 4ed with houserules.

My question for everyone here is twofold, one being easy and one being potentially a lot harder;

Is Tyria the name of the ‘planet’ or the continent where Ascalon, Kryta and so on, is?

Which time-period in the Guild Wars setting do you think is the most interesting?
Examples being the period GW2 is set in, the years around the various EDs waking, GW1’s time period, and so on.

Many thanks in advance.

Tyria is the name of both the planet and the continent. It can get confusing.

As for the time period, I would suggest you and your players pick based on preferences. If set in GW1, having a one of your characters play a charr and one play a human would be much harder to have adventuring together in alot of places. I found my best luck GMing in a world not set to a system but was already established was to pick a part of that fantasy world both me and my players found interesting. If you players arent picky make the choice your self. Your going to have to build the plotline for them so its got to be something that interests you.

Also you may want to be sure you know the lore about what your GMing better than your players. It can be pretty frustrating if your player knows the lore better than you and you get corrected for something you got wrong. Lore fans can be really uptight about things being canonly accurate.

My problem with choosing a time period is that they almost all interest me in some way, even the few years of difference between the GW2 books and the actual GW2 setting. But yeah, I will definetly consult them as well. In the few campaigns I’ve GMd before, the time period has been chosen for me.
I do have one potential player who is about as lore-buff as me in regards to the first game, but not so much the second game.

Interesting time periods? Around the time of the Exodus, 200-ish years prior to GW1 (King Thorn’s reign, Joko vs. Turai, Lord Odran, titans appearing before Flame Legion, and Shiro causing the Jade Wind all happened in this timeframe), GW1, and GW2 are the busiest timeframes for sure. If you can make an interesting enough story, any time period would do though. And the less lore known in that time period, the more you can freeball it (as long as its reasonable, of course :p).

I have done in-game RP on the side in GW1 and GW2, and we usually assume that our characters are around at the same time as events in the game, but we’re not the heroes who are doing all the main story stuff (because, you know, we can’t all be when we have multiple characters). Doing that can be fun because you can weave in references to story events happening elsewhere, or throw in NPCs from the game. Then again, with the amount of history we have for Tyria you can do that in almost any time period, including NPCs when they are younger/older than in the game.

If you’ve got a strong story of your own that you want to do, though, you might prefer to choose a period outside of the games so that it’s believable that this story happened, we just never heard about it. As Konig says, the less we know in lore, the more freedom you have to fill in the gaps.

Hope the campaign goes well if you run it! I admit, I’ve been playing a lot of Pathfinder lately and playing with ideas about how to translate the GW2 races into Pathfinder racial traits for a similar thing

Role playing has to be set in a distance past so it won’t effect anything today. So I would say in the Age of Giants. Talk about Lupi, Jotuns, Norns, Mursaats, Seers, Dwarfs, Forgottens and their fight against the Elder Dragons in 10,000 BE.

CHIPS.6018:

Role playing has to be set in a distance past so it won’t effect anything today. So I would say in the Age of Giants. Talk about Lupi, Jotuns, Norns, Mursaats, Seers, Dwarfs, Forgottens and their fight against the Elder Dragons in 10,000 BE.

There’s so much speculation there that it’d take a wall of text to fully explain. :P To bulletpoint it:

1. We don’t know when the Age of Giants was (if it existed, given Thruln’s credibility).
2. Nothing says the mursaat, seer, dwarfs, or forgotten were around for the Age of Giants (it’s a 50/50 chance depending on if the Age of Giants was before or after the last ED rise).
   #Norn most likely weren’t around for the last ED rise as only five sentient races survived it – jotun, mursaat, seer, dwarfs, and forgotten. Unless the jotun don’t consider the norn to be sentient; or alternatively, mention them in their stalea.
3. Indications actually point to the last rise to be around 2,000-1,000 BE.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

#Norn most likely weren’t around for the last ED rise as only five sentient races survived it – jotun, mursaat, seer, dwarfs, and forgotten. Unless the jotun don’t consider the norn to be sentient; or alternatively, mention them in their stalea.

Is it only five sentient races, or are those the five major races of the time – like how we have humans/norn/charr/asura/sylvari as the Big Five, but there’s little sentient races like quaggan, skritt, krait, ogres, grawl, dredge, etc.

Because then norn might have been around, but may not have been a large enough or influential enough race to be counted or noticed by the surrounding races at that time – and then rose and developed post-ED.