Savage Pathfinder Pathfinder for Savage Worlds Is Live!

The Kickstarter for Pathfinder for Savage Worlds is live! It includes two boxed sets -- the Rise of the Runelords adventure path and a core rules boxed set which includes the Savage Pathfinder core book, a bestiary, and a ton of additional material.

Pathfinder for Savage Worlds

Explore Pathfinder's world of Golarion as never before with Savage Worlds

www.kickstarter.com

The big question -- how do they do classes? -- is answered. Classes are replicated via Edge trees; one for each traditional Pathfinder class.

Two of the designers -- Chris Warner and Mike Barbeau -- appeared on our podcast last week to talk all about it.


You can grab it digitally for $25, the core rules hardcover is $50, the core boxed set is $200, and both boxed sets together comes to $300.

 

[innerdude]

I have a couple of the big boxes. However, I think I would want to go for the physical boxes regardless. All that stuff will be good if I ever get to play in person again. However, if that doesn't happen, then the PDFs would be fine. But in that case, I won't be playing Savage Worlds online (which seems pretty impossible on my VTT). And if I'm not playing it online, then I won't be playing it - and ergo, I shouldn't buy it anyway.
Befuddled.

We've been playing on Foundry VTT, and it's fantastic for Savage Worlds. Pinnacle just signed off on an "official" module for it a few weeks ago.

I absolutely hated Roll20 with a passion. The UI is so, so bad, and it's so, so slow. Fantasy Grounds just seemed to be way more "campaign management" tools than I needed.

 

[dbm]

I ran weekly sessions of Savage Worlds on Fantasy Grounds for over 9 months; it’s a fantastic implementation of the system with lots of automation and custom status effects for powers and so on.

For example, use the Speed / Slow ability and there and four or five custom status effects attached to the power which can be applied to characters to action the game effects.

 

[Retreater]

I dunno. I hear good things about VTTs other than Roll20, but I'm hesitant to take the plunge. I've had Fantasy Grounds for years and couldn't really get the hang of it. Even after a year of running 3+ games a week on Roll20, trying to come to Fantasy Grounds it just seems slow, jittery, and ready to crash at any moment (even bought a new PC primarily for the purposes of running online games). Importing maps, tokens, etc., seems like a real crapshoot.
And Foundry VTT - I don't know about that one. It seems very unstable. Like maybe it will work, maybe not. Maybe the modules get pulled. Maybe your features will continue to work, maybe not.
On top of learning a new VTT myself, I will have to teach the players (who are already at wits' end with Roll20) in addition to teaching them the mechanics of a completely new, medium-complexity rules system, with which they do not have access to the books (unless I make them buy their own copies).

 

[Morrus]

And Foundry VTT - I don't know about that one. It seems very unstable. Like maybe it will work, maybe not. Maybe the modules get pulled. Maybe your features will continue to work, maybe not.

Unstable? What does that mean? I was thinking of taking a look, but do you know something I don't?

 

[dbm]

I've had Fantasy Grounds for years and couldn't really get the hang of it. Even after a year of running 3+ games a week on Roll20, trying to come to Fantasy Grounds it just seems slow, jittery, and ready to crash at any moment

Presumably that was FG Classic? FG Unity is, as far as I can tell, a complete rewrite on different tech stack. The downside is you would need a new license (though they do a lower cost ‘upgrade’ license). Content you have bought for FG Classic should work with Unity, no need to re-buy.

 

[Retreater]

Unstable? What does that mean? I was thinking of taking a look, but do you know something I don't?

From what I am following on a few social media groups (including Foundry-focused groups) and a few GMs I know who use it, most of the features are designed by community members. Some of these crowd-sourced features disappear at random or are shut down by various companies that don't technically approve them (which happened with DND Beyond). So you risk signing into your game one day, and key features are gone. Not to mention that you usually have to pay subscription costs or support these creators on Patreon who may or may not have legal permission to offer these resources.
It's all very shady to me.

 

[innerdude]

I dunno. I hear good things about VTTs other than Roll20, but I'm hesitant to take the plunge. I've had Fantasy Grounds for years and couldn't really get the hang of it. Even after a year of running 3+ games a week on Roll20, trying to come to Fantasy Grounds it just seems slow, jittery, and ready to crash at any moment (even bought a new PC primarily for the purposes of running online games). Importing maps, tokens, etc., seems like a real crapshoot.
And Foundry VTT - I don't know about that one. It seems very unstable. Like maybe it will work, maybe not. Maybe the modules get pulled. Maybe your features will continue to work, maybe not.
On top of learning a new VTT myself, I will have to teach the players (who are already at wits' end with Roll20) in addition to teaching them the mechanics of a completely new, medium-complexity rules system, with which they do not have access to the books (unless I make them buy their own copies).

Unstable? What does that mean? I was thinking of taking a look, but do you know something I don't?

It's not "unstable," if you're talking about the actual application. The actual application has been incredibly robust. About the worst bugs I've encountered is very rarely a character sheet automated action might get stuck (javascript event management FTW!), but a quick refresh of the browser page and everything comes back roses.

I think @Retreater might be more referring to the system / module ecosystem. There's limited "official" support for things coming from DM's Guild / D&D Beyond. There was a converter made to automatically convert D&D Beyond content into Foundry, and WotC issued a cease and desist.

So yeah, if your goal is to get fully pre-configured, fully automated adventures/modules up and running without having to lift a finger, then yeah, you could be setting yourself up for disappointment with Foundry.

But the actual application is rock-solid stable, and infinitely more intuitive, faster, and easier to run than Roll20.

I've never tried Fantasy Grounds, but all the demos / video I've ever seen of it makes it seem like it's significantly over-engineered for the type of problems I really need a VTT to solve.

 

[Retreater]

Presumably that was FG Classic? FG Unity is, as far as I can tell, a complete rewrite on different tech stack. The downside is you would need a new license (though they do a lower cost ‘upgrade’ license). Content you have bought for FG Classic should work with Unity, no need to re-buy.

Yes. Unfortunately, my only friend who has FGU (who is actually a professional Unity developer) has such trouble getting FGU to work that he claims it is actually worse than Classic. And if I didn't get much use out of Classic, it's hard for me to justify buying the software all over again if it's not markedly improved.

 

[innerdude]

From what I am following on a few social media groups (including Foundry-focused groups) and a few GMs I know who use it, most of the features are designed by community members. Some of these crowd-sourced features disappear at random or are shut down by various companies that don't technically approve them (which happened with DND Beyond). So you risk signing into your game one day, and key features are gone. Not to mention that you usually have to pay subscription costs or support these creators on Patreon who may or may not have legal permission to offer these resources.
It's all very shady to me.

This hasn't been my experience at all. In fact, several community-contributed features/modules that I was using were actually picked up and incorporated into the core program a release or two later.

There is a very open-source vibe to the community, but that's not a negative in my mind. Yes, it's possible that at some point, the people who create a module may fail to maintain it. That's the nature of any software that tries to create a community ecosystem. But in 6+ months of using the app, everything I've experienced would cause me to give Foundry a whole-hearted endorsement. For my use case, it's an excellent piece of software.

 

[Retreater]

But the actual application is rock-solid stable, and infinitely more intuitive, faster, and easier to run than Roll20.

I mean, I'll have to see. I can't imagine a single thing that would improve 5e's implementation on Roll20, especially now that I can import maps from PDFs, create tokens, add line of sight, create custom creatures when needed, all in a matter of a few minutes. Plus it has official support for WotC products, already put in there for me.
If I was going to try to run something other than 5e that it doesn't handle well (like PF2), I would perhaps look into another VTT. Maybe if I eventually get around to running Savage Worlds or WFRPG (provided they are still legitimately supported on Foundry, and if they are well executed).