My "Savage" Experience

[Thomas Shey]

Honestly, I'm not comfortable in most settings beyond fantasy. Sci-fi is a big stretch and it should probably be space-fantasy.
I can't think of many successful campaign I've run that haven't been fantasy. I suppose there was one Call of Cthulhu game.

Well, there's fantasy and there's fantasy. You can still find a pretty wide variety of options there if you're not meaning "D&D fantasy"--which if that's what you want, I'd just buy the Fantasy Companion and roll your own campaign there.

 

[Reynard]

Yeah, I've probably got somewhere between 30-50 campaign setup books I've picked up over the years in PDF. Not all of them are great quality, but enough are it shows its usually pretty possible to get an at least adequate game out of SW in a lot of genres (I'm still super-dubious about it for supers, though).

I am planning my first real SWADE Supers campaign this year. I love supers and have run it in a million systems, but Savage Worlds has always felt a little off. I am hopeful that SWADE evened it out a little. We'll see.

 

[Reynard]

Honestly, I'm not comfortable in most settings beyond fantasy. Sci-fi is a big stretch and it should probably be space-fantasy.
I can't think of many successful campaign I've run that haven't been fantasy. I suppose there was one Call of Cthulhu game.

Have you looked into Pathfinder for Savage Worlds? It is a decent implementation of D&D branch fantasy in SWADE. But there are lots of other, non D&D fantasy setting for SWADE too, from airships to the days after Ragnarok.

 

[Retreater]

Have you looked into Pathfinder for Savage Worlds? It is a decent implementation of D&D branch fantasy in SWADE. But there are lots of other, non D&D fantasy setting for SWADE too, from airships to the days after Ragnarok.

Yes. I own both boxed sets. It's on the list to consider. If we don't go with Savage for the next game, I might suggest Fabula Ultima. Also considering Age of Sigmar Soulbound.

 

[Autumnal]

I am planning my first real SWADE Supers campaign this year. I love supers and have run it in a million systems, but Savage Worlds has always felt a little off. I am hopeful that SWADE evened it out a little. We'll see.

I’ll be looking forward to hearing how that goes!

 

[Thomas Shey]

I am planning my first real SWADE Supers campaign this year. I love supers and have run it in a million systems, but Savage Worlds has always felt a little off. I am hopeful that SWADE evened it out a little. We'll see.

I'll be interested in hearing how it goes for you. I think there's at least one fundamental problem with SW for supers, but it'd distinctly be a distraction in Retreater's thread to go into it.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Have you looked into Pathfinder for Savage Worlds? It is a decent implementation of D&D branch fantasy in SWADE. But there are lots of other, non D&D fantasy setting for SWADE too, from airships to the days after Ragnarok.

Though DAR is more alternate universe post WW2 pulp (I occasionally have an urge to run it).

 

[thullgrim]

Pathfinder for Savage Worlds works really well out of the box. I don’t love how they converted the APs. They still need to take advantage of some of the SWADE tools (dramatic tasks, quick encounters) but that’s easy enough to change /handle. They also should have combined some encounters.

The logic I’ve read is that they went more or less with a straight conversion because they don’t know how individual GMs run their games. If the GM wants to make those changes they can.

 

[Bae'zel]

I had a session a few weeks ago where we had a guy run us Savage Worlds Pathfinder (a one-shot scenario). We had a similar experience to the OP: characters missed a lot, enemies were super tough and skill failures were common.

At one point, as the party rogue (pre-made by the published scenario), I sort of gave up on attacking because of my terrible stats and skills, and started just doing tactical moves to help the other characters' chances of success. The DM, noticing how ineffectual I was in combat, told me out loud "not to forget your sneak attack, why aren't you using it?". I had to remind him that the pre-made stat block he gave me (not a Pathfinder rogue, just a regular SWADE rogue) had no sneak attack ability at all.

So... I think it was more of a DM problem and pre-made scenario problem, because I distinctly remember SW running more smoothly and fun a few years ago when I ran Interface Zero 2.0.

That's a problem with any game, really. But it did sour my perception of Savage Worlds for my friends and I until I re-read the rules a few days later.

 

[BigZebra]

Pathfinder for Savage Worlds works really well out of the box. I don’t love how they converted the APs. They still need to take advantage of some of the SWADE tools (dramatic tasks, quick encounters) but that’s easy enough to change /handle. They also should have combined some encounters.

The logic I’ve read is that they went more or less with a straight conversion because they don’t know how individual GMs run their games. If the GM wants to make those changes they can.

According to PEG they weren't allowed to alter anything about the encounters. So they left it all in, and as is. And then it's up to the GMs to Savageify it. Like using Quick Encounters, Dramatic Tasks etc.
I would love if they would make an original adventure for Savage Pathfinder that really is tailored for the system. When that is said, I think most GMs that have read the WHOLE core rulebook should be able to use the tools properly. But yeah, it's not optimal.