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Darren Martin
United Kingdom
Lincoln
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Hi there,
I've been interested in playing a pen and paper rpg for many a year, but have still never managed to do it. I've recently bought the Pathfinder beginner box as it looks user friendly and easy to teach to complete beginners(which all of us will be). The problem that I see, is that the game is set in a generic fantasy world/setting, which my wife may be unable to relate to. Is there a way to convert this to be set in Azeroth (World of Warcraft) so that my wife can understand the world/monsters/classes etc? I believe that there was a Warcraft rpg that used Dungeons and Dragons 3.5, and as Pathfinder also grew from that game, would it be easy enough to use that souce material and convert it? Or would it be a thankless task, and far more effort than it's worth? Cheers for your help!
Pincher
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paz AKA Matt Lewis
United Kingdom
Great Sutton
Cheshire
All hail Lord Fudge!
[PFRPG PBF Games] GMing: Crypt of the Everflame, 2x We Be Goblins! · Playing: Vestige's Margreve 'Hollow', Bearpaw's Pathfinder Society
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I don't own the Beginner Box, and I've never played WoW, but I'll do my best.
The Beginner Box is designed so that someone who has never played a fantasy game of any sort should be able to pick it up and play it. Golarion and Azeroth are about as close to 'generic high fantasy' as each other, so she should have no problem relating to it. You could try to convert everything to WoW terms, but I would question whether it was worth it. Did you both enjoy the Lord of the Rings films? They include fantasy elements like elves, dwarves, orcs, etc. that would be recognisable to you, even though the implementation was slightly different.
When you're creating characters, the Beginner Box supports humans, elves, and dwarves as races, and clerics, fighters, rogues, and wizards as classes. My understanding is these would all be valid in WoW too, so that should help.
I would imagine that most of the monsters in the game would be familiar names, although the relative strengths may be different, and they may look/act slightly differently.
If you progress to the full Pathfinder RPG and using the Pathfinder Campaign Setting you will undoubtedly find more differences, but bear in mind that a lot of it was new to players moving from D&D v.3.5 too!
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Mark Buetow
United States
Du Quoin
Illinois
Best game company ever?
GMT Games, of course!
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Is your wife actually FROM Azeroth?
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The Harnish
Germany
Duisburg
NRW
Cult of The Harnish Leader
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I agree with Matt. If you're just looking to adventure in Azeroth, using its location and general history, you won't find it too difficult using the PFRPG. On the other hand, if you want to play using the WoW classes, races, etc. that's going to be much more involved and not really possible with the Beginner Box considering it just gives you the 4 iconic classes (Fighter, Cleric, Wizard, & Rogue) plus a few races. All that said, the game really isn't designed for 1-on-1 play so I'm not sure how great it's going to work if you just want to play with your wife.
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Steven Robert
United States
Altadena
California
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I know nothing about WoW, so I'm probably not the best person to answer this question. (I didn't even know what Azeroth was in the thread title!) However, I suspect it wouldn't be too hard to do what you'd like.
The hardest part would be the characters. Renaming things is no problem, but monkeying with the actual powers will be very difficult. But maybe that will be enough. For example, the magic missile spell is fundamentally just a way to deal damage at range. So call it force blast, but leave the actual mechanics alone, and the game will work just fine.
Monsters are similar - if orcs are called gorcs in WoW, and all have blue skin, just describe them that way. If all orcs have some sort of minor power to distinguish them, you can probably toss that in as well - just keep its game effect small, emphasize the sensory effects instead, and nobody will ever know the difference.
Pathfinder is indeed pretty generic and is meant to be playable in many different campaign settings. I'd aim to change descriptions to match what you want but leave the underlying mechanics as close to the original as you can.
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Darren Martin
United Kingdom
Lincoln
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Malacandra wrote: Is your wife actually FROM Azeroth?
She's from Plymouth, so she may as well be 
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Levi Pressnell
United States
Athens
Alabama
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This may be a bit of a late response, but as one of the few people who owns books for the World of Warcraft RPG I feel like I can help. Although I don't own the PF box, I know a bit about the game.
And really, the answer depends on how much effort you want to put into the game. It won't really matter if you just rename PF elves to quel'dorei and make the dwarves from Ironforge (WoW RPG dwarves are almost identical to those in D&D 3.5, which PF dwarves are heavily based on as well). Similar monsters can cross over--unfortunately this is where my lack of PF box knowledge is a problem, because I frankly have no idea what monsters are in that box. PF/D&D trolls are tremendously different, although you could call them "dire trolls" without problem after the massive ones seen in a few troll areas. Depending on how much you care about accuracy, you don't necessarily have to change anything other than the specific name.
Classes might be the biggest problem. Fighters become Warriors and Rogues are still Rogues, but they may be lacking what she'd consider "iconic" abilities from the MMO. I will say it's never bothered me; both of those WoW RPG classes are, essentially, the same as their D&D counterparts, but I never played them much online either. Wizards are good as Mages if you focus on evocation and abjuration and limit/remove access to necromancy and maybe summoning magic (seems more like a warlock to me). PF Clerics are going to seem more like Paladins, however, with their heavy armor and inclination toward melee combat. There is a system reference document if you want to go outside of the beginner's box and pick up Druids or Rangers (as Hunters). The Summoner might also work for a Warlock, though I don't have enough PF experience to know for sure.
If you were wanting to go Horde, you're going to find yourself with a lot more work to do, as the common races don't translate nearly so easily. Elves can be blood elves, sure, but the others don't have PF counterparts as readily available. I'd recommend tracking down a copy of the WoW RPG book* if you're really interested or want to run anything Horde, as they'd be mostly compatible, but it's up to you
* Make sure you find the World of Warcraft RPG, though, not the simple "Warcraft RPG." The latter was based on D&D 3.0, which is ~ compatible with 3.5 but not as close to PF. The second version (WoW RPG) was also better designed and, interestingly enough, gives spellcasters class features much like PF did. The races are also a bit more powerful than D&D's (again, much like PF).
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Anthony DuLac
United States
Minnesota
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A better question might be, "WHY would you want to convert it to Azeroth."
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Dorian Kernytsky
United States
Pennsylvania
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wytefang wrote: A better question might be, "WHY would you want to convert it to Azeroth."
that's exactly what I thought. I'm pretty sure there are WoW RPG books that you could convert but PF has such a rich world of it's own that really worth exploring.
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