Tell me about your Savage World Fantasy Campaign experiences

[RevTurkey]

Savage Worlds Fantasy...

HELLFROST by Triple Ace Games.

just go get that, it's amazing.

Excellent, setting, character options, story hooks, published modules, monsters and more.

I have run this for my group for a full blown year plus campaign and they completely loved it. Best rpg I have ever DMed by a long way. I love D&D but my player's enjoyed this more. The proof is that they still talk about the games, events and characters. It's great.

 

[amerigoV]

Savage Worlds Fantasy...

HELLFROST by Triple Ace Games.

With Hellfrost, Shaintar, and Beast & Barbarians - you just cannot go wrong!

 

[Gundark]

I wish the game had lasted longer (we only played about 3 sessions), but I loved that we got so much done because we weren't bogged down by the rules. I'd say that we managed to cover about 3-4 D&D modules worth of play in those sessions, and I was really impressed by that.

Coming to SW after 3.5/4e I was NOT prepared with how fast the sessions went. I remember them completing the scenario that I had prepared in about 2 hours (whereas before it would have been 4-5 hours).

It shaped my playstyle now where I hate when games get in the way of the pacing of a story.

 

[innerdude]

Coming to SW after 3.5/4e I was NOT prepared with how fast the sessions went. I remember them completing the scenario that I had prepared in about 2 hours (whereas before it would have been 4-5 hours).

It shaped my playstyle now where I hate when games get in the way of the pacing of a story.

Yup, this is a big thing too. Pacing in Savage Worlds is almost entirely up to you. If you want a big, grand "set piece" combat to take a significant amount of time, you can. If you want to focus on story elements with shorter combats, you can.

I used to hate it when players would engage in what I felt were "superfluous" combats, or "mundane" minutiae in Pathfinder, since it meant we weren't going to get to other more "meaningful" things. But with Savage Worlds, it's totally freeing, because it doesn't matter where or when or what your players do, because it's so easy to improvise.

I became totally unafraid of putting players on a "railroad," or expecting them to pick up certain plot hooks, because it's almost like you can lay out the bits of the railroad just . . . barely ahead of the train coming along behind it.

The players make choices, all you have to do is feed what they want to them.

 

[Somebloke]

Hi- not sure if you're interested in input, but I've run a quite successful swashbuckling/fantasy mashup campaign that involves chaingun wielding alchemists, massive battles, sorcerers who trade humanity for power, flintlock pistols akimbo, sword duels as flirting, eldritch serpant demons (including one as a player character), infiltrations, political intrigue, assasinations, secret societies, kung-fu persian priests, Firefly-reapers, ten-story clockwork mechas and one very angry demon-queen based on the girl from Ringu.

I've been able to do this with one house rule (faith magic needs to fall in the maybe magic, maybe mundane trope) and two new edges (one was just a reworking of the adept class and the second was the previously mentioned sorcerer 'class').

The players love the system (after working through and eventually discarding FATE, D&D 4th edition and Pathfinder for the same setting) and I love the flexibility and inherent heroism and daring of the rules.

 

[TarionzCousin]

My gaming schedule is full, but this thread really makes me want to play/run Savage Worlds.

 

[S. Baldrick]

I ran a Savage Worlds Beasts and Barbarians game and it was a lot of fun. I did lose one player that didn't like the system everyone else either tolerated the system or flat out loved it. Beasts and Barbarians is very "Conanesqe" and it is a terrific setting with some great adventures out there.

You can read my adventure log at my blog.

http://barbariansofprovo.blogspot.com/

It also covers my Crypts and Things campaign as well.

 

[MrAndrewJ]

My experience was with only the Explorer's edition and one game at a con, but it wasn't as positive as everyone else's. Using only the core rulebook, magic users felt very constrained for new characters.

Briefly re-reading the rules, it seems likely that a character won't be quite as constrained for as long, but the way magic is tied to edges still felt weird.

I love systems that feel like group tool boxes, and was enchanted enough by Savage Worlds to purchase a digital and print copy. Yet the one part of the system that did not feel like a toolbox was how it handled all of the Arcane Background material.

That said, that was a strict rules-as-written situation. I can easily see how taking the time to tinker and make the game match your setting would be very fun and very much in the spirit of the game.

 

[Zadmar]

My experience was with only the Explorer's edition and one game at a con, but it wasn't as positive as everyone else's. Using only the core rulebook, magic users felt very constrained for new characters.

That's actually quite a common complaint, but it's almost always because the group isn't using trappings, as I elaborated on in an earlier post.

This was more of a problem with the old Explorer's Edition (SWEX), as it only provided a few example trappings. The Fantasy Companion included some actual guidelines for creating trappings, as did the newer Deluxe edition of the rules, but it's still an aspect of the game that many people seem to overlook.

That said, that was a strict rules-as-written situation. I can easily see how taking the time to tinker and make the game match your setting would be very fun and very much in the spirit of the game.

Every setting includes its own rules, Edges, Hindrances, etc. The core rulebook even has a section with example setting rules, along with some pointers on designing your own Edges, which is useful if you're designing or converting your own setting. I wouldn't ever use the core rulebook on its own, except perhaps for a quick one-shot (like the examples in the book itself) - for a full campaign I'd always include setting-specific stuff.

 

[MrAndrewJ]

Zadmar, I think we agree overall.

The trappings were great! Very reminiscent of HERO/Champions, and really cool.

It was, in short, that the Arcane Background itself felt like a half-step back toward class-based systems instead of the more organic systems I was used to. It might actually be a great step when moving from class based games to organic games. I can see how it would fit very well with Azgulor's inspirations as well.

I was ultimately trying to say the same thing about using only the core rulebook that you said better.