Some of you may remember that post I did awhile back about tabletops and video games. I had a lot of fun writing that post and a lot of you seemed to really like it. So I decided to do a follow up series called To the Table where I'll analyze various video games and show why they would make good tabletops. Also I will explain how I would translate some of the mechanics found in these games into a workable tabletop format. First on the list is Borderlands.
For those of you who are not familiar with Gearbox's random gun generator with a first person shooter theme, Borderlands is a first person shooter role playing game with tons and tons and TONS of guns. Shooting bandits and leveling up are satisfying and fun and the loot keeps flowing. Furthermore, the Borderlands games are based in co-op. Up to 4 players can work together to shoot their way through the planet of Pandora to get the best loot possible and find the legendary vault. Some people might ask how would a first person shooter translate into a tabletop RPG? Well think about tabletops like Cyberpunk 2020 and Shadowrun. Those are games that are kinda like what would happen if you translated a first person shooter into a tabletop. But here are some good reasons why Borderlands would work.
First off: it's an RPG. It may be a first person shooter, but at its core Borderlands is an RPG. There are distinct classes, distinct powers for each class, distinct roles and ways to build each class, and a leveling system to progress through the game.
Second: it is built around co op. Some games may say they are "co-op", but they're not built around actually helping each other. Borderlands is one of those co-op games that really encourages the players to stick together and work together. Help each other out and you will succeed magnificently. Plus by having so many distinct ways of playing a character ensures that you will almost always be a necessary part of the team.
Third: a world to explore. Pandora is massive. There are a wide variety locales to visit, from dusty deserts, to luscious grasslands, to snowy tundras, to radioactive sludge pits, to eridium infested wastelands. There are people to meet, things to see, stories to tell, and most importantly loot to find. On top of that, if you don't want to use Pandora as the backdrop to your story (SPOILER ALERT), the ending of Borderlands 2 opened up the entire universe for your gaming pleasure. Make up your own planet, stories, and characters to use. No need for using the already given world.
Now how would you make this all work with a tabletop mechanically? I have a few ideas. First off you would need to determine a dice system to use for the game. Easy: d100. Why d100 you ask? For gun-play. All the guns in the Borderlands games have an accuracy rating on them to tell you in generally how wild your shot is gunna go when you pull the trigger. So put that into a d100 system and roll below to the percentage to hit. Easy peasy. Next up I would say you would want an action point system in there. Different actions take different amounts of time for different characters and different guns. The system should recognize this and accommodate for it. Hence action points. Different tasks would require a different number of actions points, like reloading or firing different weapon types or switching guns. Now the really tricky part would be maintaining that sense of fast paced action that a first person shooter has. For that I would throw out the usual initiative system most tabletop RPGs have in favor of what I like to call simultaneous initiative. Essentially you would have someone leading off the action, they would do whatever they're doin before everyone else. Then everyone else declares their action. All of these happen simultaneously. If 2 actions conflict you roll off to see which happens first. For example, if a psycho is charging at you to whack you over the head but you wanna run away and fire at him so he can't reach you, you would roll off to see which of those happens first. Could be a mess could be absolute genius. Anyway you would then need classes. I would say have the Gunzerker, the Psycho, the Mechromancer, the Hunter from BL1, the Assassin, the Commando, and the Siren be your classes. Each would have their own set of skills as well as some generalized skills that everyone could take or groupings of them could take. For Sirens you would have a bunch of powers to choose from but you could only pick one. At this point you could go wild with powers so long as they were balanced and could be worked with. As for how you would do guns, you would probably just make tables for generating random guns. Heck, if you had someone good at programming you could probably make an app for GMs to randomly generate loot for their games. Interesting idea that a friend suggested to me would be to generate the loot before game then put them on cards with all the gun stats that you would then give to players so they could actually hold all their guns and compare gun stats without having to flip through tons of pages of character sheets or write down tons of gun stats.
Anyway that's all of my ramblings on this. Also just a note this is a thing! I am currently designing this tabletop system and if you are interested in helping out post in the comments!
Thanks for reading! As always leave a comment to let me know what you think of the blog! Like the topic? Let me know because I have more of these in mind that I could do. Got an idea for a game you think could be translated into a tabletop? Post it in the comments and I'll give my analysis of it guaranteed! Signal boosting is always appreciated so post the link everywhere and invite your friends to read!
Gamer out.
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