Flynn
First Post
Good Morning, All:
Last Friday evening, I got the chance to play in one of SavageRobby's games, a Savage Worlds One Shot based off of a Pathfinder adventure. As it's been a hectic weekend for me, this is the first time I've had to sit down and write up my impressions from the experience.
As a bit of background, back in November, I actively sought out a GM to run a Savage Worlds One Shot so I could try out the system. SavageRobby stepped up and volunteered. At the last minute, however, his work sent him out of the state, and I picked up the challenge of running the game, so I never got the chance to play in one of his games. Well, his life has since settled down a little, and he contacted me a few weeks back with an offer to still run a One Shot for us if we still wanted it. Since I have only played Savage Worlds for two One Shots (a Tron scenario and a Solomon Kane scenario), I jumped at the chance to play. We got six players together, and SavageRobby ran a game for us. Of course, as I suspected, we had a blast.
WARNING: The synopsis of the scenario below probably contains spoilers for Paizo's Gamemastery Module D0: Hollow's Last Hope. Although SavageRobby rewrote parts of this adventure to make it function as a One Shot, if you don't want to spoil your gaming experience, please skip the Synopsis and read the Commentary with care.
The Synopsis:
Our brave party of six adventurers gathered together at an Inn a half-day's travel from our old hometown, Falcon's Hollow. As children, we had all grown up in this village, but had left town to find our own paths. Now, we were returning to our hometown for the Festival of Red Fireflies, which is held every five years in the village. This made a nice excuse to get together as a party, and we immediately began to make up details of our lives together growing up.
Our party of six comprised of: Breene, a human rogue; Karg, a half-orc mercenary; Varren, a dwarven warrior; Ramey, a human ranger; Josiah (my character), a half-elven wizard; and Pallius, a human priest.
While at the inn, we heard tale of a plague spreading through our hometown of Falcon's Hollow, so we rented some horses and made our way quickly home. As we arrived, we were challenged by guards, but a quick bribe on Breene's part got us into the village. There, we saw the devastation the plague had wrought. Many of the townfolk were infected, and the children at the orphanage that raised me (being a half-elf and all) were among the hardest hit. Nothing pulls at a half-elven wizard's heartstrings more than children on the brink of death.
We learned quickly that magic was ineffective against the disease, and that the source came from an infestation of black scum within the village's well. While I could have cleared the scum with a fiery blast, Pallius warned me that doing so may release the disease with the clouds of smoke that would have emerged, and suggested we find a better way to resolve this. Ramey, a friend of the local herbalist, discovered that the herbalist had a possible cure that required three ingredients. These ingredients could only be found in the depths of the haunted fey wood known as the Darkmoon Vale, and so we took it upon ourselves to fetch these ingredients.
Our first stop took us to the tallest tree within the Vale in search of a special mold. We had but stepped into the clearing surrounding the trunk of the great tree when a drake leapt upon us from the boughs high above. The fight was vicious, for the beast was hardy, and we rained many a blow upon it before the drake finally fell dead at our feet. Good fortune was with us, and none were seriously hurt, although for many of us, our luck had surely run out.
We then made our way to the hut of an old hedge witch, whom I had heard had passed away in recent years. On the shore of the lake, we came upon her hovel guarded by the skulls of humanoids mounted on pikes. In an unearthy silence, we crept to her door, and found what we thought to be her corpse within (yet it proved to be only a mannekin prepared to look like a mummified body). We gathered what we had come for, left coin for our ingredient, and made our way to the last ingredient.
A day's travel brought us to ruins of an old dwarven monastery, abandoned long ago for reasons unknown. We approached the ruins with trepidation, slipping inside and beginning our search for the special mushroom that was our last ingredient. Sadly, a pack of wolves, led by a dire wolf, had made the old building their lair, and it was a rough fight to drop the pack and its leader. Finally, we had slain the beasts, and so we set about to recover the mushrooms.
From there, we returned to the township, and the herbalist saved the village. Yay!
The End...
The Commentary:
It was great fun to sit on the other side of the screen for a change. SavageRobby is a fantastic GM. In addition to the prep work of converting the D20 adventure to Savage Worlds, he also brought along a lot of seconadary props to add to the gaming experience, including paper 3D miniatures of a hovel, some flip maps for each location, notes on our character's memories and knowledges to give us at the appropriate time, and so on. He had prepped each of our Pregen characters with full write-ups on powers, edges and hindrances, and provided us each with a mini. He went all out, and I appreciated it very much. (I'm good, but I'm not this good.
)
Being an experienced Savage Worlds GM, SavageRobby had a few rules variants he enjoyed following, such as removing the Guts skill and just using Spirit for Fear checks, a common rule variant that I'd read about online. These rules changes were minimal, and I had no problem making the adjustments, but I did note these as subtle differences in how we ran games. I think SavageRobby is more comfortable with bending the rules to work with his concept of the milieu. I'm sure I'll get there in time, but I did get to see different approaches to the rules through this experience, and I liked the diversity it gave me in evaluating my own approaches.
Our first big opponent was a drake, a small wyvern-like beast that took forever to kill. I had never ran nor played against a monster with the Hardy trait before (i.e. a special ability that did not convert a second Shaken condition to a wound), and the drake's Toughness was high enough that we had a very, very hard time getting our damage over the 18 needed to actually wound the beast. We did keep it shaken about half the time, through the use of gang-up bonuses, wild attacks and called shots, as well as the occasional Trick and/or Test of Will. Still, I think even the GM was surprised at how long it stood up to our onslaught. We spent many a bennie in keeping ourselves from dropping, and so many of us left that fight with either one bennie or no bennies left at the end.
Our second big fight was against a dire wolf and a pack of wolves. This time, we were more effective, and the pack went down fairly quickly, letting us feel like heroes. The dire wolf took a bit longer, but we enjoyed the challenge. From the perspective of showing off the system, it would have been better to have this encounter first and the drake second. However, since they are tied to different areas and we took the path we did, there's really no way it could have happened in that manner. Fortunately, half of the players had previous SW experience, and were able to help the new guys along through both encounters.
Despite only being two encounters, plus RP scenes at the hut and early on in the game back at Falcon's Hollow and the mining camp upriver, the session felt fast and furious, and was definitely action-packed. I burned my bennies fairly quickly, and so there was extra tension for me during the second encounter. Still, I had fun.
As an aside, this was the first time I'd ever used Adventure Cards as part of a session. My character got one that allowed him to take a complete second turn (move and actions) once during the session. I used that to aid the party against the dire wolf in the final encounter. Others used cards that granted bonuses to adjacent allies for the turn, and so on. They were interesting ideas and events, but as the cards require a bit of work to prepare for the game (i.e. take the PDF to Kinko's and print them out on cardstock, cut them out and put them into card protectors), I'm going to have to think about it some more before I introduce them into my game.
All in all, I had a great time, and I look forward to other opportunities to play in one of SavageRobby's games, either as a One Shot or an ongoing campaign. That is, of course, assuming that SavageRobby was okay with my play style.
Of course, as always, if you have any questions, concerns, thoughts or observations, please feel free to share them.
With Regards,
Flynn
Last Friday evening, I got the chance to play in one of SavageRobby's games, a Savage Worlds One Shot based off of a Pathfinder adventure. As it's been a hectic weekend for me, this is the first time I've had to sit down and write up my impressions from the experience.
As a bit of background, back in November, I actively sought out a GM to run a Savage Worlds One Shot so I could try out the system. SavageRobby stepped up and volunteered. At the last minute, however, his work sent him out of the state, and I picked up the challenge of running the game, so I never got the chance to play in one of his games. Well, his life has since settled down a little, and he contacted me a few weeks back with an offer to still run a One Shot for us if we still wanted it. Since I have only played Savage Worlds for two One Shots (a Tron scenario and a Solomon Kane scenario), I jumped at the chance to play. We got six players together, and SavageRobby ran a game for us. Of course, as I suspected, we had a blast.
WARNING: The synopsis of the scenario below probably contains spoilers for Paizo's Gamemastery Module D0: Hollow's Last Hope. Although SavageRobby rewrote parts of this adventure to make it function as a One Shot, if you don't want to spoil your gaming experience, please skip the Synopsis and read the Commentary with care.
The Synopsis:
Our brave party of six adventurers gathered together at an Inn a half-day's travel from our old hometown, Falcon's Hollow. As children, we had all grown up in this village, but had left town to find our own paths. Now, we were returning to our hometown for the Festival of Red Fireflies, which is held every five years in the village. This made a nice excuse to get together as a party, and we immediately began to make up details of our lives together growing up.
Our party of six comprised of: Breene, a human rogue; Karg, a half-orc mercenary; Varren, a dwarven warrior; Ramey, a human ranger; Josiah (my character), a half-elven wizard; and Pallius, a human priest.
While at the inn, we heard tale of a plague spreading through our hometown of Falcon's Hollow, so we rented some horses and made our way quickly home. As we arrived, we were challenged by guards, but a quick bribe on Breene's part got us into the village. There, we saw the devastation the plague had wrought. Many of the townfolk were infected, and the children at the orphanage that raised me (being a half-elf and all) were among the hardest hit. Nothing pulls at a half-elven wizard's heartstrings more than children on the brink of death.
We learned quickly that magic was ineffective against the disease, and that the source came from an infestation of black scum within the village's well. While I could have cleared the scum with a fiery blast, Pallius warned me that doing so may release the disease with the clouds of smoke that would have emerged, and suggested we find a better way to resolve this. Ramey, a friend of the local herbalist, discovered that the herbalist had a possible cure that required three ingredients. These ingredients could only be found in the depths of the haunted fey wood known as the Darkmoon Vale, and so we took it upon ourselves to fetch these ingredients.
Our first stop took us to the tallest tree within the Vale in search of a special mold. We had but stepped into the clearing surrounding the trunk of the great tree when a drake leapt upon us from the boughs high above. The fight was vicious, for the beast was hardy, and we rained many a blow upon it before the drake finally fell dead at our feet. Good fortune was with us, and none were seriously hurt, although for many of us, our luck had surely run out.
We then made our way to the hut of an old hedge witch, whom I had heard had passed away in recent years. On the shore of the lake, we came upon her hovel guarded by the skulls of humanoids mounted on pikes. In an unearthy silence, we crept to her door, and found what we thought to be her corpse within (yet it proved to be only a mannekin prepared to look like a mummified body). We gathered what we had come for, left coin for our ingredient, and made our way to the last ingredient.
A day's travel brought us to ruins of an old dwarven monastery, abandoned long ago for reasons unknown. We approached the ruins with trepidation, slipping inside and beginning our search for the special mushroom that was our last ingredient. Sadly, a pack of wolves, led by a dire wolf, had made the old building their lair, and it was a rough fight to drop the pack and its leader. Finally, we had slain the beasts, and so we set about to recover the mushrooms.
From there, we returned to the township, and the herbalist saved the village. Yay!
The End...
The Commentary:
It was great fun to sit on the other side of the screen for a change. SavageRobby is a fantastic GM. In addition to the prep work of converting the D20 adventure to Savage Worlds, he also brought along a lot of seconadary props to add to the gaming experience, including paper 3D miniatures of a hovel, some flip maps for each location, notes on our character's memories and knowledges to give us at the appropriate time, and so on. He had prepped each of our Pregen characters with full write-ups on powers, edges and hindrances, and provided us each with a mini. He went all out, and I appreciated it very much. (I'm good, but I'm not this good.
)Being an experienced Savage Worlds GM, SavageRobby had a few rules variants he enjoyed following, such as removing the Guts skill and just using Spirit for Fear checks, a common rule variant that I'd read about online. These rules changes were minimal, and I had no problem making the adjustments, but I did note these as subtle differences in how we ran games. I think SavageRobby is more comfortable with bending the rules to work with his concept of the milieu. I'm sure I'll get there in time, but I did get to see different approaches to the rules through this experience, and I liked the diversity it gave me in evaluating my own approaches.
Our first big opponent was a drake, a small wyvern-like beast that took forever to kill. I had never ran nor played against a monster with the Hardy trait before (i.e. a special ability that did not convert a second Shaken condition to a wound), and the drake's Toughness was high enough that we had a very, very hard time getting our damage over the 18 needed to actually wound the beast. We did keep it shaken about half the time, through the use of gang-up bonuses, wild attacks and called shots, as well as the occasional Trick and/or Test of Will. Still, I think even the GM was surprised at how long it stood up to our onslaught. We spent many a bennie in keeping ourselves from dropping, and so many of us left that fight with either one bennie or no bennies left at the end.
Our second big fight was against a dire wolf and a pack of wolves. This time, we were more effective, and the pack went down fairly quickly, letting us feel like heroes. The dire wolf took a bit longer, but we enjoyed the challenge. From the perspective of showing off the system, it would have been better to have this encounter first and the drake second. However, since they are tied to different areas and we took the path we did, there's really no way it could have happened in that manner. Fortunately, half of the players had previous SW experience, and were able to help the new guys along through both encounters.
Despite only being two encounters, plus RP scenes at the hut and early on in the game back at Falcon's Hollow and the mining camp upriver, the session felt fast and furious, and was definitely action-packed. I burned my bennies fairly quickly, and so there was extra tension for me during the second encounter. Still, I had fun.
As an aside, this was the first time I'd ever used Adventure Cards as part of a session. My character got one that allowed him to take a complete second turn (move and actions) once during the session. I used that to aid the party against the dire wolf in the final encounter. Others used cards that granted bonuses to adjacent allies for the turn, and so on. They were interesting ideas and events, but as the cards require a bit of work to prepare for the game (i.e. take the PDF to Kinko's and print them out on cardstock, cut them out and put them into card protectors), I'm going to have to think about it some more before I introduce them into my game.
All in all, I had a great time, and I look forward to other opportunities to play in one of SavageRobby's games, either as a One Shot or an ongoing campaign. That is, of course, assuming that SavageRobby was okay with my play style.
Of course, as always, if you have any questions, concerns, thoughts or observations, please feel free to share them.
With Regards,
Flynn
