My first Savage Worlds experience...

[rvalle]

Some of you might like this thread:

http://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?t=7317


Its a guy posting notes about his running the Evernight campaign using Fantasy Grounds. He's started off with the adventure "Against the Orks" and has just finished it up and is ready to start the campaign going.

rv

 

[Dragon Snack]

Only thing that takes long is for inexperienced players to choose Edges.

We have one player who routinely plays down an Edge (or two) because he can't figure out what to take - and he has been with us since we started playing Savage Worlds.

 

[Asmor]

We have one player who routinely plays down an Edge (or two) because he can't figure out what to take - and he has been with us since we started playing Savage Worlds.

If you don't mind my asking, is it because he can't find one that he likes, or that he likes many and can't decide which he wants?

If the former, it sounds like he just needs to come up with a more specific character concept.

 

[Allensh]

Pinnacle publishes "toolkits" for various settings; right now they have pulp, fantasy, science fiction and horror. These toolkits contain plenty of good advice for tweaking SW to fit the genre. The Fantasy kits (World Builder, Gear and Bestiary and Character Generator) are extremely good. The World Builder kit contains special Edges and even sample spells that let you make the magic system much better, expanding the spell list and even having different kinds of magic.

Allen

 

[Dragon Snack]

If you don't mind my asking, is it because he can't find one that he likes, or that he likes many and can't decide which he wants?

If the former, it sounds like he just needs to come up with a more specific character concept.

A little from column A, a little from column B. He always seems to have 2 or 3 choices when he asks the other players what he should take, but it's also the player of the spellcaster who is finding himself more useful in melee than as a spellcaster (but still wants to be a spellcaster).

 

[Flynn]

Third time into the breech, second as a GM...

Good Morning, All:

I ran a second One Shot of Savage Worlds last night, and it had its high points and its low points. The low points first: Based on the ease with which the larger group wiped out the Extras in my last One Shot, I sent too many Extras against the party last night. I wanted to capture the big combat feel that many people talk about with Savage Worlds, and see how well the rules hold up to that. Needless to say, it was ugly. Some lucky rolls on my part, a poor tactical decision early on, the party split up and they went down. Yeah, it was ugly. The result was that now I know to start small and build up in encounter size as the main campaign moves forward, to help me get a feel for the combat. The randomness factor was still an issue (small but present), and that might be an obstacle in the future, but aside from that and the ugly end of the scenario, all three players reported that they really enjoyed the system for various reasons (no classes, versatile character concepts, fast resolution, etc.) and were willing to try a campaign in it.

The high points: the system proved once again easy to teach and easy to implement. After the scenario, we talked about the system for almost another hour, exploring different elements of it and discussing character and combat possibilities. We recognized that the character concepts that had been discussed thus far for the fantasy campaign I'm going to start were not combat monsters, and I am taking note of that in my plans for adventure creation.

The system is starting to come second nature to me now, which is a good thing. There were a few elements that I have to look up (because I hadn't used them yet), and it is likely that there always will be, but I feel about as comfortable with it as I do with D20, which surprises me. The hardest part to get used to is setting my own expectations for encounters (obviously), because I need to develop a sense for a character's capacity within the system.

Still, even with the unbalanced encounter, the mood in regards to the system itself was positive, and so I am definitely moving forward with my plans to run the next campaign as a Savage Worlds campaign. So, it looks like the gang will need to build some characters over my group's mailing list this week, and hopefully next Wednesday, we can start our new campaign!

Looking Forward To It,
Flynn

 

[Caedrus]

I am new to the system myself (we have played 3 sessions of the Rippers campaign so far), and am loving it! I want to do a fantasy campaign next, so I'm curious how it handles fantasy. Please post notes on your game. Thanks!

 

[Particle_Man]

I ran a second One Shot of Savage Worlds last night, and it had its high points and its low points. The low points first: Based on the ease with which the larger group wiped out the Extras in my last One Shot, I sent too many Extras against the party last night. I wanted to capture the big combat feel that many people talk about with Savage Worlds, and see how well the rules hold up to that. Needless to say, it was ugly. Some lucky rolls on my part, a poor tactical decision early on, the party split up and they went down.

Still, even with the unbalanced encounter, the mood in regards to the system itself was positive, and so I am definitely moving forward with my plans to run the next campaign as a Savage Worlds campaign.

I think it is a positive note for the game that there was a TPK and the players still loved it.

 

[BabbageCliologic]

My only house rule suggestion is not to let people convert more than 1 unspent Bennie into XP per session, especially if any PC gets extra bennies. The only 'problem' I had in my Savage World run was a kid who has some of the best dice luck I've seen in a while. He would have six bennies saved at the end of the session and the proceed to convert an average of at least 3-4 to XP every session. Sometimes he did all 5-6.

I had this problem in my SW games, until I stopped doing it (and with support from the Savage Worlds Explorer's Edition as previously mentioned).

I did, however, add a house rule that may be interesting: Unused Bennies are converted to Group Bennies (anyone can use them during play) for the next game sessions. I usually did 3 unused = 1 group bennie, with max 3 or 4 group bennies.

Try that one!

/BC

 

[BabbageCliologic]

This is why I think Savage Worlds handles magic "poorly" (in quotes because it seems to be intentional). While there are Edges that give you a +2 to a lot of skills, Spellcasting (other than healing) is ignored (unless I'm missing something or the newer books have added it).

In the 50 Fathoms campaign I played, my Mage basically gave up on casting spells for a while. Even with a d12, I was still failing 25% of the time. I managed to "inherit" a decent (but not magical) sword and ended up being just as effective with the sword without having to worry about my power points for spells. It wasn't until I reached Legendary status that I was able to pick up Edges to swing the balance back in favor of spellcasting.

The caster in my current campaign is coming to the same conclusion. Now he save's his power points for healing (he has the Healer Edge) and spends more time in melee combat (it's not a total transformation, but enough to be noticable).

This, of course, isn't necessarily a bad thing if you don't want the casters to overshadow the melee types - but it's a definite consideration when coming from a mindset of automatic casting like D&D.

This is easily fixed if you add another edge to the Wizard Edge tree. The Wizard Edge is "each Spellcasting raise reduces cost of spell by 1 point." Make an Advanced Wizard Edge (N, Wizard) +2 to Spellcasting. **caveat based on the Test Drive Rules, as I do not have access to my SWEX edition**

/BC