What? Nobody's got a single comment on this? Well here's some of the designer's notes. I think this is pretty cool.
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The Rules
So here I was in search of a faster, simpler game. I wanted something that was fast, furious, and fun. I even decided that's what the new game's "tag line" would be: Fast! Furious! Fun!
Now let me ruin the ending. This all ends with a modified Great Rail Wars system. But you should know that I wasn't close-minded about writing a new game. I played around with several different ideas. One of which was something called Blood Moon. I don't want to talk about the game world now--it will come out as a Savage Worlds setting sometime in 2003. But the game system was very simple and elegant. It was basically a 2d6 plus adds kind of system, with my traditional love of Aces (that's exploding dice for some of you, or rerolls on a roll of 6 for the rest). The problem with a game like this happens the first time you have a really large battle. It can be a real problem for a GM to roll two dice for every single mook. And you have to "kluge" autofire.
Picture this. It's Weird War One. A Hun on a machine gun cuts loose with a burst of fire. The GM either has to roll 2d6 several times (plus any Aces), or there has to be a kluge of some sort (every 5 points over the TN causes another bullet to hit or some such). Those things work, but there's a better way.
And think about a mass Warhammer type battle. I wanted something that could handle huge formations of troops as well as small roleplaying-type battles. If you've got a block of skaven fighting righteous Imperial halberdiers, you can't very well be rolling 2d6 for every figure in the two units.
Nope. It had to be one die per attack. That turns your machine gun attack into one roll of 3 dice. The block of skaven with a 10-rat front rolls 10 dice.
Okay, so you roll one die. That's nice, but it's also nice if (aside from a few common modifiers) the die roll is the result--you don't have to add any skill or attribute levels to it. What you see is what you get.
Those of you who have played the Great Rail Wars know that's what it already does.
So I came full-circle. The game system would basically be Great Rail Wars.
The Rules
Here's the basics of how Savage Worlds works. Characters are rated in their attributes and skills from a d4 to a d12 (supernatural creatures can go above a d12 to d12+1, d12+2, etc.) An average person has a d6 in his five attributes and whatever skills he possesses.
There are three basic TNs, Average (4), Hard (8), and Incredible (12). Roll that number or over and you're successful.
Damage is based on your Strength for melee weapons (Strength+3 for a long sword), or a fixed number for ranged weapons (2d6 for most pistols).
When a target is hit, he rolls his Toughness plus any armor. If damage is 1-3 points more than the Toughness roll, he's Shaken (like Eatin' Dirt in GRW). If damage is 4+, the victim is wounded. Mooks are taken off the table, heroes and archvillains suffer wounds, and eventually get into some fun, gory criticals.
That's the basic game.
Wild Cards
The only problem here was that there's no "curve" to the die roll. That's not a big deal for "mooks," but a little frustrating to a hero. So we played around with a couple of ideas. The first was that out of combat, a "hero" type could roll two of his dice and take the best. That seemed a little confusing.
The second idea was better and stuck. We called "heroes" (which also includes villains) "Wild Cards." These are player characters and arch-villains who take wounds instead of just getting taken off the table when they're wounded. They also get a "Wild Die" (a d6) along with each skill or attribute roll, and take the best.
Here's an example from the Legend of the Five Rings game Zeke Sparkes ran. My character, Iuchi Tang, had Spellcasting at d12. When I go to cast a spell, I roll a d12 and a d6 and take the best of the two. Trust me--that d6 can really save your bacon sometimes.
Adding Character
We worked in our curve, and we already knew combat was fast and easy, but characters needed much more depth to feel like real roleplaying characters and not just combat stats for minis.
Fortunately, this part was easy. All our games have Edges and Hindrances, and long ago, when we had first talked about an RPG based off GRW, we had talked about adding a "schtick" to each archetype. The idea was actually inspired by Lee Garvin's excellent Tales of the Floating Vagabond more than D20, but WOTC solidified the concept with Feats in Dungeons and Dragons 3rd Edition (r).
So we modified our Edges a bit and made them more accessible. About every other game session, you'll get to increase your hero's skills or add a new Edge. You can even increase an attribute once per "Rank." (And you'll get to "level up" four times between each Rank until you get to Legendary, when it slows down a bit.)
What's a Rank? It's a measure of how many experience point awards you've received. Characters start out at Novice. When they've received 20 experience points they become Seasoned, then Veteran, Heroic, and Legendary. (Things slow down a bit at Legendary--a whole slew of new Edges become available, but you only get to advance every 10 experience points.) Legendary also opens up a whole host of really cool Edges--such as followers, hideouts, "supernatural" stats, and so on.
Next Week: Gadgets, Spells, and Powers.
). Add into that the use of 'bennies' to reroll trait tests and you further make it easier to succeed at easy tasks. Remember also that this is merely the quick test-drive rules. The actual rulebook is supposed to be more than 90 pages. Add in Edges, hindrances, etc and there will be a lot of ways to "break" the rules a little bit.
