Savage Worlds - do you tweak how skills work?

[Piratecat]

Just curious - whats the setting/genre?

1930's pulp. Very Doc Savage or Sky Captain.

 

[amerigoV]

1930's pulp. Very Doc Savage or Sky Captain.

A great setting that SW really shines in.

In case you have not seen it, take a look at Triple Ace Games website (Wiggy used to work for Pinnacle). They have a pulp line. At the bottom of this link are free downloads containing a few rule adjustments to ramp up the Pulp plus there pregens that are fully leveled (ie, you can just click on 35 xp and it updates the PDF to that XP level). I have run a few of his adventures and they are a blast. He does some creative things with the Chase rules (pre-Deluxe version, but inspiring none the less). If nothing else, the pregens will give you some guidance on making your own.

Triple Ace - Daring Tales

 

[Piratecat]

Oh, superb. I'm seeing a distinct lack of zeppelins.

 

[amerigoV]

You gotta have zeppelins! Plus Nazi stormtroopers with rocket packs!

 

[OpsKT]

Untrained means you have no idea what you are doing. Lets take fighting - I am sure the first time someone steps into the boxing ring with someone who knows what they are doing will get their clock cleaned (d4-2). Now, you might learn quick if you have natural ability, but it is a skill, and it must be learned (just like D&D must be UnLearned ). Let take it to another skill - survival (Smarts). If you have no basic survival training, you are not going to survive if you get dumped in the desert. Being Smart allows you to learn, but it does not magically give you all the options.

Plus, you will find them d4's Ace alot in critical situations. That is a great representation of beginners luck.

Finally, the ability scores in Savage Worlds are much more important than in (say) D&D. Agility tricks, Smarts Tricks, Vigor rolls (Soaking damage), Spirit to come off Shaken, and Str for damage. Making them even more important will really skew the game in favor of Ability scores (which pulls people away from taking cool stuff like Edges or Skills when they get an Advance).

Very well put. That is one thing that has always bugged me about D&D, Storyteller, and Shadowrun, dump enough into the attributes, and skills are barely required.

In the real world, when you don't know how to do something (in particular, physical skills) you don't know how to do something. With natural talent, you might get lucky here and there and learn it quickly, but to start you don't know.

As for the stuff everyone should know in a setting, that is covered nicely in Savage Worlds with the common knowledge roll, which is representative of normal socialization into a given society. It is sublimely elegant.

I'll just say this - after playing SW for about 2 years in a varity of genres after being a dedicated D&Der, the Attribute/Skill link now feels very natural. Its one of those things that is different from other games and people immediately want to change it. "It does not make sense" tends to come from the context of other game experience (kinda like if you intro someone to TTRPGs and they ask "where is the board?"). You can always tell the new people on PEG's boards when they try to convert their favorite D&D setting - they are trying to covert every Feat/Power in the book instead of stepping back and figuring out what really provides the flavor of the setting. They try tinkering with the attributes/skills, roll a d20 for initiative instead of the cards, less Acing, graph back on HPs. All that is fine, but what you find is it strips away the Fast! Furious! Fun! of the game.

I call this 'right tools syndrome', where because they have played with a hammer for so long, every game looks like a nail, when it might indeed be a screw or fine china. And it happens everywhere. Like when WoD was 'the thing' in the late 90's, I cringed every time there was a movie even vaguely Gothic or supernatural themed, because I knew the boards over there would be filled with people trying to cram that movie into the game.

You know the gamers that have been at it a while over the younger ones, because us old guys look for a system that fits the story we want to tell, instead of trying to cram a square story in an oval system.

As an example, to the Core rules I have only one House Rule

Savage Wolds is the first system I've found where I see no reason for house rules at all. I don't have a one. I use some setting rules in specific settings, but no real changes to the rules at their core. The only game that comes close with the low number of house rules I need is the new World of Darkness, which has only 3 to the core rules, and 5 total when running Mage. (It all relates to making armor into Damage Reduction rather than Defense adds).

The fact that I don't need to change Savage Worlds any for the games I want to run with it and so any new player that shows up can learn form just the book, is one of the reasons I love it so much.

 

[Piratecat]

Yep. I honestly don't think that Savage Worlds is ever going to be my system of choice, but I want a nice robust system for pulpy high-action games. I'm sure hoping this turns out to be it.

Do you guys have a preferred character generator online anywhere?

 

[OpsKT]

Well, there is this one--

Savage Worlds Character Generator

Which is really complex, but almost unneeded for Savage Worlds.

I prefer this one, which just checks the math for you really.

Savage Worlds Character Creation Assistant

Both are web based, so you can use it anywhere you have internet access, no download required.

By the way, whomever coded this site to automatically parse urls, thank you. Makes it so easy to post links.

 

[Is_907]

Yep. I honestly don't think that Savage Worlds is ever going to be my system of choice, but I want a nice robust system for pulpy high-action games. I'm sure hoping this turns out to be it.

Do you guys have a preferred character generator online anywhere?

It'd cost you money, but HeroLab has nice support for SW now.
I don't have it but one of my players does. (Since I'm GMing I didn't feel the need to spend money just yet.)

 

[S'mon]

You know the gamers that have been at it a while over the younger ones, because us old guys look for a system that fits the story we want to tell, instead of trying to cram a square story in an oval system.

Eh, in the '90s I was using AD&D for Cyberpunk, for Modern Horror, for World War 2 & Vietnam, for sci-fi...

 

[BluSponge]

So what do other people think? Is it just me? Is there a good solution I'm missing?

It's just you.

No, really its not an uncommon complaint. I see it a lot, right behind the whole "cards for initiative" and "no hps????" arguments.

The thing is, your having a high Agility trait makes it cheaper to raise your Shooting skill. An uncoordinated character is going to have a much rougher time raising his shooting (or any Agility-based skill for that matter) without a lot of specialization. This makes sense to me in that just because you are a highly coordinated person (say, an expert martial artist) doesn't not directly translate into ALL of your Agility-based skills.

Also keep in mind that in SW, Edges are what make your character. So if you want your lithe, agile character, you're going to have a lot more going for you than a high Agility score. Your going to want the Acrobat professional edge at a minimum, plus several others to round out your character. Want to be good with a gun? You'll want Marksman and Trademark Weapon (Old Painless) at the very least. If you're playing in some sort of Wahoo, John Woo-style Urban Noir setting, there may be 2 or 3 more gun related edges for you to choose from. Almost any one of these edges is going to quickly eliminate that -2 unskilled penalty, and many of them have an Agility d8+ prerequisite. So, as far as I'm concerned, its all there in the mix.

I suppose you could just as easily add an edge (called, let's say, "Versatility") that eliminated the –2 penalty from Unskilled actions. I'd make the character take this once for each and every Attribute they want to negate the penalty in, though.

You could also simply houserule that once your character passes a certain threshold (say, d10) in an Attribute that it eliminates the unskilled penalty for those skills based on that attribute. But then buying that skill at a d4 seems like a bit of a waste (maybe you can buy two skills per level op). I don't think that would break the game.

Tom