My "Savage" Experience

[Retreater]

I attempted to run a session of Savage Worlds on Sunday (Deadlands: Lost Colony, if you're curious). It wasn't my first time with the system, but my god it was like trying to pick fly poop out of a pepper shaker while wearing boxing gloves.

The first combat was terribly slow. People were continuously missing. Or failing to do enough damage to get past the Extras' toughness - so no one was getting shaken or wounded. I did permanently kill one character because Savage is swingy. (One round, I did 3 Wounds - two of which were soaked after spending several Bennies; the next round I did 5 Wounds - which I capped at 3, but the character died anyway.)

Characters wanted to use multiple shots with their higher RoF, but it was basically no different than just taking multiple actions. Powers, Edges, Hindrances, Equipment, and statblocks for the enemies and allies are scattered across multiple chapters in different books.

This isn't even my first time running it. I ran a 9 session campaign in Savage around a year ago. I've played in several other games.

How can a game that's supposed to be fast-paced ("Fast, Furious, and Fun") have an introductory battle that takes as long as a 4E D&D fight?

 

[Gorgon Zee]

SW isn't my favorite system, but my experience has been that combats are pretty fast. If players are spending all their time looking up rules, my suggestion would be just to start off with simple characters using just one book. When I run a game in any system, I try hard to make it so the players don't need to look stuff up much.

I assume you were running a pre-existing module or adventure. In which case I'd have to say this sounds like an issue with the stats for the encounter. If you are rolling 12 over a PC's toughness, and then the next round 20 over their toughness, but your players are unable to even hit the opponent's toughness, that feels like a serious scaling issue.

I have no experience with Lost Colony, but I did run a campaign of Flash Gordon and generally found the scaling pretty good. Based on your experiences, I think the Lost Colony campaign might be one to skip ...

 

[payn]

I attempted to run a session of Savage Worlds on Sunday (Deadlands: Lost Colony, if you're curious). It wasn't my first time with the system, but my god it was like trying to pick fly poop out of a pepper shaker while wearing boxing gloves.

The first combat was terribly slow. People were continuously missing. Or failing to do enough damage to get past the Extras' toughness - so no one was getting shaken or wounded. I did permanently kill one character because Savage is swingy. (One round, I did 3 Wounds - two of which were soaked after spending several Bennies; the next round I did 5 Wounds - which I capped at 3, but the character died anyway.)

Characters wanted to use multiple shots with their higher RoF, but it was basically no different than just taking multiple actions. Powers, Edges, Hindrances, Equipment, and statblocks for the enemies and allies are scattered across multiple chapters in different books.

This isn't even my first time running it. I ran a 9 session campaign in Savage around a year ago. I've played in several other games.

How can a game that's supposed to be fast-paced ("Fast, Furious, and Fun") have an introductory battle that takes as long as a 4E D&D fight?

I had some severe brain fry from an entire weekend of Battletech convention here in TC so this bit feels a little fresh. Some battles can cause a crazy amount of rules look up for edge cases. Normally, shooting each other and resolving crits is second hand. What gets confusing is when a guy does something unusual like push a guy into another guy that causes the second guy to fall off a cliff into water thats 2 levels deep and now has to make breach checks after his collision damage has been added to his falling damage and then resolve a seat belt check and...

Anyways, sometimes the fight goes fast becasue its routine and nothing special or interesting comes up. Sometimes its a domino effect of rules look ups in books often not edited well. The situation may not be the norm for the system or the group.

 

[Reynard]

I attempted to run a session of Savage Worlds on Sunday (Deadlands: Lost Colony, if you're curious). It wasn't my first time with the system, but my god it was like trying to pick fly poop out of a pepper shaker while wearing boxing gloves.

The first combat was terribly slow. People were continuously missing. Or failing to do enough damage to get past the Extras' toughness - so no one was getting shaken or wounded. I did permanently kill one character because Savage is swingy. (One round, I did 3 Wounds - two of which were soaked after spending several Bennies; the next round I did 5 Wounds - which I capped at 3, but the character died anyway.)

Characters wanted to use multiple shots with their higher RoF, but it was basically no different than just taking multiple actions. Powers, Edges, Hindrances, Equipment, and statblocks for the enemies and allies are scattered across multiple chapters in different books.

This isn't even my first time running it. I ran a 9 session campaign in Savage around a year ago. I've played in several other games.

How can a game that's supposed to be fast-paced ("Fast, Furious, and Fun") have an introductory battle that takes as long as a 4E D&D fight?

I have never seen the Lost colony book, so I don't know how they statted the enemies, but I am surprised to hear the high whiff factor. One of the defining features of SWADE (one that some folks complain about) is that success is easy: needing a 4 on (probably) 2d6 is pretty high probability. Was it mostly a melee fight with overtuned enemy Parry values, maybe? As to the Toughness thing: sounds like the opposition was not well designed for an introduction. Mooks should go down fast. What makes them interesting in SWADE is that they have as good a shot as hitting you as you do them usually, so take them out quickly!

I'm sorry you had a bad time with it. SWADE is my favorite RPG for general action games, and is my go-to for convention games just because it is so easy to learn and usually makes players feel pretty competent right out the gate.

 

[Retreater]

SW isn't my favorite system, but my experience has been that combats are pretty fast. If players are spending all their time looking up rules, my suggestion would be just to start off with simple characters using just one book. When I run a game in any system, I try hard to make it so the players don't need to look stuff up much.

Oh, they're playing the pre-generated characters that came in the boxed set. Everything they should need is printed on the card.
The "needing to look up stuff in multiple books across several chapters" were the enemy stats I was running for the encounter. Like, I need to look up the rules for frag grenades, multi-shot guns, AP, shotguns, two different enemy types, etc. For the intro encounter in the game. (They can't even include the damage a grenade does in the main listing?)

If you are rolling 12 over a PC's toughness, and then the next round 20 over their toughness, but your players are unable to even hit the opponent's toughness, that feels like a serious scaling issue.

When the dice are hot, they're hot. They were scalding hot for me on those two rounds against that PC.
The problem is, when the dice are hot for the heroes, they one-shot a mook. When they're hot for a mook, you kill a character.

 

[Retreater]

I have never seen the Lost colony book, so I don't know how they statted the enemies, but I am surprised to hear the high whiff factor. One of the defining features of SWADE (one that some folks complain about) is that success is easy: needing a 4 on (probably) 2d6 is pretty high probability. Was it mostly a melee fight with overtuned enemy Parry values, maybe? As to the Toughness thing: sounds like the opposition was not well designed for an introduction. Mooks should go down fast. What makes them interesting in SWADE is that they have as good a shot as hitting you as you do them usually, so take them out quickly

It was mostly all ranged combat.
The enemies had 9 Toughness. The heroes had weapons with no AP. So a 2d6 had to get a 9 to Shake them, 13 to Wound them.

I'm sorry you had a bad time with it. SWADE is my favorite RPG for general action games, and is my go-to for convention games just because it is so easy to learn and usually makes players feel pretty competent right out the gate.

Yeah, it's looking like I'll probably retire the entire system after running a few sessions. It's a shame because I bought into it pretty heavily, but I just can't wrap my head around the system.

 

[Gorgon Zee]

It was mostly all ranged combat.
The enemies had 9 Toughness. The heroes had weapons with no AP. So a 2d6 had to get a 9 to Shake them, 13 to Wound them.

Yeah, that doesn't seem like a recipe for a fun session. I'd expect a toughness of more like 5 or 6; you should be able to wound a non-wild card opponent without requiring a raise.

 

[Reynard]

It was mostly all ranged combat.
The enemies had 9 Toughness. The heroes had weapons with no AP. So a 2d6 had to get a 9 to Shake them, 13 to Wound them.

And they weren't getting raises they could apply to damage to bring that damage up? Toughness 9 does feel pretty high for first encounter mooks. Orcs have an 8 and they really aren't meant to zerg rush starting PCs.

Yeah, it's looking like I'll probably retire the entire system after running a few sessions. It's a shame because I bought into it pretty heavily, but I just can't wrap my head around the system.

That's too bad. If you give it another shot, make sure you and the players looks at all the options and maneuvers to make the fights more fun and the PCs more effective, and spend those Bennies! Bennies are meant to flow freely in SWADE and treating them like a precious resource will affect play. Players should spend them and you should award them.

 

[grimmgoose]

Without actual details, it's hard to say. What was the Toughness of the enemies? Did the PCs build towards combat? I've never played Lost Colony, so I can't speak much towards it, but while I wouldn't say SW is fast, I'd put it on-par with 5E (past level 5, at least).

The swinginess is a feature, not a bug. If embracing that doesn't sound fun for you, you won't like it. One of the most memorable sessions in SW was when our PC psyker went down immediately after a Sniper domed him with The Drop.

The tension as the psyker only soaked one Wound; the firefight between the rest of the party as they tried to pull their comrade into cover; the crazy play as the assassin snuck around and climbed up the building to kill the sniper.

None of that was planned. I assumed the sniper would be a roadbump, but it radically changed the session.

 

[MGibster]

How can a game that's supposed to be fast-paced ("Fast, Furious, and Fun") have an introductory battle that takes as long as a 4E D&D fight?

Is it possible the players weren't taking advantage of all the options offered to them? i.e. Were they getting gang up bonuses? Did they make wild attacks which do an additional +2 damage? Did they try using skills like Taunt to Distract or Shake their enemies?