Tell me about Savage Worlds

[Witchfinder General]

From the official page about plot point campaigns:

The real goal behind all this is to help Game Masters who don’t have tons of time to prepare their own game. In 50 Fathoms, for example, a GM can start the overall campaign, figure out where the players are going, and read a short summary of that location. Then he can look at the points of interest at that site and see if there are any Savage Tales—short adventures—that his party might want to get involved with.

Think of a Plot Point setting as a quick pick-up instruction manual for actually running a game session (almost) on the fly. The location descriptions are intended to quickly hone in on how the GM describes the area to his players, the plots—via Savage Tales—have enough detail to run a night’s session, and the bad guys or challenges are defined and statted—either as unique villains or by reference to the bestiary.

In my experience, this works as advertised. My prep time in Savage Worlds is quite short compared to Pathfinder.

 

[FickleGM]

War of the Dead is a better example of a Savage Worlds adventure path than a Plot Point.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Thanks, guys.

So my reservations (I grabbed the PDF from RPGNow, though I've not read the whole thing yet) are pretty much the things you are all saying they will be: the limited character advancement and the wound system. And initiative is just completely random, unaffected by the character/creature? That said, it does seem ideal for non uber-heroic games.
k?s!

I would agree for D&D style heroic, it isnt a great fit without modification. But it is good for heroic adventure in that the player characters have a huge advamtage over most other characters in the game (that is why they roll an extra die). So it works great for die hard, but not so great for something in the style of 1-20th level D&D campaign. In savage worlds there is less room for advancement, but you are pretty goid out of the gate (and if you think of heroic action stuff like die hard, the main character generally starts out pretty good and doesnt really improve much over the course of the series). I like it for pulp, swashbuckling, modern crime, horror, and certain flavors of fantasy. Also pretty good for historical settings. Really it works well for anything cinematic. But if I am in the mood for D&D style fantasy, I'd go with 3E, AD&D, or pathfinder over SW. Getting savage works to play like pathfinder would take a good deal of work.

my suggestion is give it a try with a GM who has run it and likes it.

also, highly recommend the pirates of the spanish main book.

 

[amerigoV]

So folks keep using the term "plot point", but I don't know what that term means. Is it SW's terminology for an adventure path, or is it something different?

Hmm. So full-fledged 12-part APs like the stuff we produce probably isn't a good fit? Or do those exist also?

I want to highlight something between SW and D&D that is important in this consideration - advancement and play range. Esp 3rd edition D&D, there is a lot of "fill" in the adventures. Basically, if you want PCs to fight goblins, Ogres, Dragons (a kick butt one, not a baby one), and a Tarrasque in one story arc the PCs will need to kill a lot of critters by the RAW (killing stuff = XP, and it has to be level appropriate stuff to even matter). This lead to many encounters in these adventures that really are nothing more than filler. I ran RttToEE evil twice and stripped out the Crater Ridge Mines segment both times because it as 90% "get the PCs from 6th to 10th level" and 10% story.

In Savage Worlds, the game play is roughly level 4-level 12 in pre-4e D&D terms. But you can have very competent combat types right out of the box - they will be good at one or two things. As they advance, they get more broad (expanding the back of tricks). Or you can start more broad and get better in certain areas. Either way, you can throw a powerful dragon at a "low xp party" and they have a decent change of winning or at least surviving if they use tactics and spend bennies appropriately (or the GM sneaks them a few extra). XP is not granted for killing stuff, but for accomplishing stuff/moving the story forward. Players get an advance every 2-3 sessions on average (an advance is about 1/2 a D&D level).

When you combine these two with the ease of prep, it allows you to focus on story or the setting and less about the encounters themselves. Let about the stats, more about what is going to happen

50 Fathoms is the Plot Point Pinnacle points people to as the best implementation of this approach. I am running in now and it is incredibly flexible and just stuffed with gaming ideas. The Savage Tales are usually just a paragraph or two. With the ease of prep, you can use the Savage Tales as a one-night game or expand them out to multiple sessions. The Plot Point events have more meat to them, but its rarely a 100% detailed event.

These One-Sheets are about the detail an event in a Plot Point campaign would have, but obviously tied to a broader story
http://www.peginc.com/product-category/one-sheets/

War of the Dead is a better example of a Savage Worlds adventure path than a Plot Point.

This is a fine example of a Savage Worlds Adventure path.

 

[Morrus]

I want to highlight something between SW and D&D that is important in this consideration - advancement and play range. Esp 3rd edition D&D, there is a lot of "fill" in the adventures. Basically, if you want PCs to fight goblins, Ogres, Dragons (a kick butt one, not a baby one), and a Tarrasque in one story arc the PCs will need to kill a lot of critters by the RAW (killing stuff = XP, and it has to be level appropriate stuff to even matter). This lead to many encounters in these adventures that really are nothing more than filler. I ran RttToEE evil twice and stripped out the Crater Ridge Mines segment both times because it as 90% "get the PCs from 6th to 10th level" and 10% story.

In Savage Worlds, the game play is roughly level 4-level 12 in pre-4e D&D terms. But you can have very competent combat types right out of the box - they will be good at one or two things. As they advance, they get more broad (expanding the back of tricks). Or you can start more broad and get better in certain areas. Either way, you can throw a powerful dragon at a "low xp party" and they have a decent change of winning or at least surviving if they use tactics and spend bennies appropriately (or the GM sneaks them a few extra). XP is not granted for killing stuff, but for accomplishing stuff/moving the story forward. Players get an advance every 2-3 sessions on average (an advance is about 1/2 a D&D level).

When you combine these two with the ease of prep, it allows you to focus on story or the setting and less about the encounters themselves. Let about the stats, more about what is going to happen

50 Fathoms is the Plot Point Pinnacle points people to as the best implementation of this approach. I am running in now and it is incredibly flexible and just stuffed with gaming ideas. The Savage Tales are usually just a paragraph or two. With the ease of prep, you can use the Savage Tales as a one-night game or expand them out to multiple sessions. The Plot Point events have more meat to them, but its rarely a 100% detailed event.

These One-Sheets are about the detail an event in a Plot Point campaign would have, but obviously tied to a broader story
http://www.peginc.com/product-category/one-sheets/

So "no", then, if I'm understanding you right?

 

[amerigoV]

So "no", then, if I'm understanding you right?

I did not mean to convey that - what I meant to convey is that the more lean Plot Point approach works because of how the system is set up. As FickleGM noted the War of the Dead is a very successful series that is set up as a regular Adventure Path. If you were to port an AP over, you would want to review the material and ask yourself is this encounter adding to the story or just adding to the XP total? If the latter, you have an opportunity to streamline the material.

If you made every encounter meaningful in the original material, then conversion should be focused on the themes of the encounter, and not attempting to convert "skill to skill, feat to Edge, Spell to Power".

 

[Lindeloef]

Can Savage Worlds run Space Battles (fighter and or Larger ships) well?

 

[Morrus]

If you made every encounter meaningful in the original material, then conversion should be focused on the themes of the encounter, and not attempting to convert "skill to skill, feat to Edge, Spell to Power".

Yup! That's a pretty solid strategy for most any conversion between systems.

It's a little different in this case in that the original source story is a novel, not a D&D adventure.

 

[amerigoV]

Can Savage Worlds run Space Battles (fighter and or Larger ships) well?

There are three approaches you could do:

Pure Tabletop - there are vehicle rules, but the 3D aspect might be challenging.

Chase Rules - these rules a very good for anything from a dogfight (not the Michael Vick kind...) to ship to ship fighting. Its more abstract, but it works very nicely and is used as the primary basis for ship to ship combat in the aforementioned 50 Fathoms (Explorers Edition version - pirate ships).

Mass Combat is very abstract - more when the PCs can influence the outcome of a large battle but they do not win or lose it by themselves.

PEG is producing a SciFi companion that probably will expand some of this from the core rules.

 

[Lindeloef]

[MENTION=26651]amerigoV[/MENTION] thanks for the answer