Looking for Some Friendly Advice for Learning to Balance/GM Savage Worlds

[innerdude]

So I'm thoroughly enchanted with Savage Worlds Traveller's Edition rules, and I'm excited to try a fun pulp action campaign sometime at the end of this year, or early next year.

But for those of you who have played it, what are some of the big "gotchas" to avoid?

For example, how hard/easy is it REALLY to switch genres using the core rules? (Fantasy to modern pulp action to sci fi).

How do you balance challenges with characters with wildly different Benefts/Hindrances, or skill dice?

For example, a long, long time ago we started a Serenity-based campaign using D20 modern, but from what I've read, the Savage Worlds rules seem like a lot more fun to try a campaign like that again.

Would that be something really "do-able," or would we be fighting the "rules lite" approach too much, and want something more codified?

 

[Henry]

I've not yet DM'ed it but have played quite a few sessions, so my limited experiences:

--Because of the Wild Card Die and the exploding dice, no PC will have a "no chance in Hell" moment, just a "really unlikely chance" moment from time to time. In all, most characters are pretty balanced with one another, but you can fix it so that you suck in combat, you just want to make sure that players put at least a LITTLE something in a combat skill or two (maybe 1 point in fighting or shooting, just so they don't have a -2 to everything they try to roll!)

I think Savage Worlds works great with most any game setting -- except as a substitute for games where the players WANT a lot of fiddly bits a la 3E or 4E D&D. Characters improve, but they start out pretty good and end up better, but not superiorly better. In d20 terms, it would be like going from about 4th to 10th level over the course of a career, in my opinion.

The Explorer's edition gives you some good pointers in the GM section about "not fighting against the rules-light nature of the system," and I'd take those to heart. Other than that, I'd try to get Rel or Qualidar to do a drive-by on this thread and give some pointers -- both of them are excellent SW Gamemasters.

 

[Particle_Man]

Make sure the players get the Combat Survival Guide one sheet so they learn what to do if either they face an opponent that is hard to hit, or one that while easy to hit, is hard to hurt. If they are used to other games with hit points that can be whittled away, they may otherwise be frustrated at the "I hit him, what do you mean I didn't hurt him?" aspect of some monsters.

http://www.peginc.com/Downloads/SWEX/Combat Survival Guide.pdf

Make sure that the players know that sometimes it is ok to run away and regroup.

Give out bennies like they are candy. I tended to forget this so I just gave out an extra one every hour of play (my players helpfully reminded me). But that could be changed to half-hour, 15 minutes, etc.

 

[Matchstick]

I've GM'd SW a couple times. Here are some of the things I would have done in retrospect:

- Read the whole book. I tended to skip around to the parts of the Explorer's edition that currently interested me or what I currently needed, but when I read through the book as a whole I saw the rules a lot more as a whole.

- Don't house rule right away, play two or three sessions. SW has a surprisingly deep and balanced design for such a "lite" ruleset. That doesn't mean you won't have to house rule, I just think it's hard to see the depth of the rules in anything other than actual play.

- The Combat Survival Guide is indeed handy.

Personally I think you could cover a whole ton of settings with Savage Worlds. We're doing pulp, but I wouldn't be afraid to do a more modern setting or a fantasy setting with just the core book. I agree with Henry that the upper reaches of the power scale for characters won't be as high as in D&D, but there's very much the potential for some pretty powerful characters in a longer campaign.

The biggest thing that I've tried to do is to keep the Fun part of Fast, Fun, and Furious. If I'm not sure I err on the side of Fun. I'm sure we haven't followed the rules exactly, but that will come as we all get more familiar with them, and in the meantime we're having a good time.

 

[Umbran]

I don't have the Savage Worlds rules, but I do run the original Deadlands, from which those rules are derived.

Does Savage Worlds retain the "chip" mechanic from Deadlands? If so, when you choose to hand out and spend chips can go a long way in helping balance an encounter at runtime.

 

[innerdude]

Awesome comments so far, thanks!

 

[Matchstick]

Here are a couple links that you might find fun!

Savage Heroes
This is a great SW site. There's a TON of conversions of differing levels of quality, there's DM screens, reference sheets, all sorts of good stuff.

Great White Games/Pinnacle Entertainment Group :: Index
The root of the Pinnacle forums Particle Man referenced. Not massive amounts of action up there from day to day, certainly nothing like here, but there's some good conversations. That's a great place to learn not only about the core rules but about the official settings and even the licensed settings.

 

[Matchstick]

Mod please delete.

Sorry, I checked on a different tab before I posted each time .

 

[Matchstick]

Mod please delete.

Sorry, I checked on a different tab before I posted each time

 

[Stormonu]

I don't have the Savage Worlds rules, but I do run the original Deadlands, from which those rules are derived.

Does Savage Worlds retain the "chip" mechanic from Deadlands? If so, when you choose to hand out and spend chips can go a long way in helping balance an encounter at runtime.

Not quite; Deadlands Reloaded (which uses SW rules) keeps chips, but basic SW gives each player 3 starting "bennies", which basically allow a reroll or soak rolls when hit.