Sell me on Savage Worlds

[MGibster]

You make no modifications to the base skills and traits and resolution mechanics?

I did. I got rid of Swim and Climb and rolled them both into Athletics. It just boggled my mind that players had to spend their precious skill points for two skills that were hardly ever used. Even in one of my pirate campaigns, PCs hardly ever went swimming.

 

[aramis erak]

Savage Worlds is basically a simplified version of the rules they used for their Deadlands RPG back in 1996.

This is another one of those eye of the beholder things. I don't see a massive disconnect between the skills and the way combat is handled. To me, the combat in SW is simple and moves quickly.

The biggest problem I saw was initiative handling.
The second biggest was that combat was very whiffy; that is, most attacks had no effect. The group I was sitting in on had been playing the system for about a year, and was slowed to a crawl in combat due to those factors; any given combat turn was slowed by the initiative, the individual attacks weren't terribly effective - they weren't able to get wounds reliably except by ganging up. Nor were the opponents. It was a slog. This may have been due to unusually high armor, or not, but it was slow going. The players were using cover, as well, as were the opponents.

Lots of ineffectual turns is no better than slow, cumbersome, but usually effective turns.

 

[Thomas Shey]

From the looks of it, that's because you're a simulationist over an abstractionist.

You make no modifications to the base skills and traits and resolution mechanics?

The only thing I recall doing was changing the critical injury table because I thought it made it too easy to be long-term crippled.

As I said, I believe in simulation where I think it matters. I don't find being overly coarse with weapons usually produces a good outcome, because it leads to degenerate choices on weapons because there's usually too clear-cut a winner. Maybe if someone doesn't care at all that (as we saw back in the bad old RQ days) everyone uses a bastard sword that's not a concern, but its not primarily a simulation-based one in my case, its a look-and-feel one.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I did. I got rid of Swim and Climb and rolled them both into Athletics. It just boggled my mind that players had to spend their precious skill points for two skills that were hardly ever used. Even in one of my pirate campaigns, PCs hardly ever went swimming.

Like I said, that one always bugged me on consistency with other skills. I can live with chunky skills or with fine-grain skills, but a game that's going to do what SW does with combat skills and vehicle skills doesn't make sense to do that with Swim and Climb. This is a game that doesn't make a distinction between driving a car and operating a submarine, but Swim and Climb should be split off?

Of course the newest edition fixed that themselves.

 

[Thomas Shey]

The biggest problem I saw was initiative handling.
The second biggest was that combat was very whiffy; that is, most attacks had no effect. The group I was sitting in on had been playing the system for about a year, and was slowed to a crawl in combat due to those factors; any given combat turn was slowed by the initiative, the individual attacks weren't terribly effective - they weren't able to get wounds reliably except by ganging up. Nor were the opponents. It was a slog. This may have been due to unusually high armor, or not, but it was slow going. The players were using cover, as well, as were the opponents.

Lots of ineffectual turns is no better than slow, cumbersome, but usually effective turns.

I have to suggest that's more an artifact of specific campaign/genre assumptions; if the setting, for example, has guns but not much body armor, you may have a problem, but it won't be the attacks being too ineffective. On the other hand, if you have one with handguns but few or no longarms, you can absolutely get the effect you're talking about (its a potential issue in any damage-threshold system where armor is worth a damn at all).

The cards I'm conflicted about; I had an automated manager for most of that so I didn't have any problems, but I'm unwilling to say how it'd have worked out if done manually. But I'm a little leery of card-play mechanics in general in RPGs for various reasons.

 

[MGibster]

The second biggest was that combat was very whiffy; that is, most attacks had no effect. The group I was sitting in on had been playing the system for about a year, and was slowed to a crawl in combat due to those factors; any given combat turn was slowed by the initiative, the individual attacks weren't terribly effective - they weren't able to get wounds reliably except by ganging up.

That does happen on occasion and I chalk that up in part to the swingy nature of the system which I recognize as a flaw. There have been times when I've had to ask my players if they'd opened any ancient Egyptian tombs recently because by their dice rolling I assumed they were suffering from some sort of curse. This problem can be exacerbated by throwing Extras with high Toughness or Parry against the PCs or not giving them enough Bennies.

 

[corwyn77]

I think the card init system works great. I've played games with init every round with dice and they are horribly slow because you have to track all the rolls every round. With SW, you don't have to track anything. Deal out the cards and you can see with a glance who goes when. Takes about 10-15 seconds extra per round. I keep two decks so if there is a Joker there is a second deck which is already shuffled.

A bit clunkier if playing online.

 

[Sir Brennen]

It takes me at least 15 minutes to resolve a 5 party combat round in SW. There is the card drawing (and re-drawing for those PCs with Cool head and Quick edges etc) the effects of Jokers when drawn, PC's deciding what to do with their 3 actions when their turn comes up, calculating TN's via MAP (mutiaction penalty), range, wounds, recoil, snapfire and other effects, rolling and adding exploding die for each action (possibly multiple times) then rolling exploding damage die (and adding them up) for each attack that actually hit, doing the [damage -(toughness+[AP-AV])]/4 calculation, and then possibly rolling an exploding Soak test to reduce that damage (without forgetting Bennie re-rolls).

Do all of those things come up in a single round for you? I think you're exaggerating for effect.

I mean, I could just as easily list out all the possible things that might also occur in a D&D round which could slow things up: figuring out which characters are surprised, calculating critical hits, does someone have Advantage, spellcasters trying to figure out what spell to cast (often spending part of their turn re-reading the spell), players trying to figure out what they can use a bonus action on, range, cover... the list goes on.

For SW, none of the things you describe should take that much additional time, even cumulatively.

• Card drawing: a few seconds. Slower than D&D's static initiative, but not by a whole lot.
• Drawing additional cards for special Hindrances and Edges: a couple extra seconds
• Effects of Joker (+2 to everything, player is likely to choose to go first): literally a couple of seconds, and that's for the player to say "I'll go first."
• PCs deciding what to do with their 3 Actions: Most players won't take 3 actions because that's a huge penalty. Most only take one, sometimes two, unless you're playing a game with very advanced characters. And even then, usually the choice is simple: I attack, I attack, I attack.
• The Multi-Action Penalty: it's 0/-2/-4 for taking 1/2/3 actions.
• Calculating TNs: It's just 4, or Parry for Fighting. What are you calculating? Every Character should have their pre-calculated Parry as part of their stat block, just like Armor Class in D&D.
• There can be other roll modifiers that can come into play, but they're almost all +/-2 or 4, fairly consistent and easy to remember.

The damage calculation can be difficult for some people, and Armor Piercing does add a complication. But I've never had a round take 15 minutes to resolve, and that's with 6 players and often a ton of bad guys, currently in a sci-fi setting with a variety of modern/futuristic firearms and psionic powers.

In addition, while a little more time consuming, many players find things like card-based initiative and exploding dice make the experience of SW more fun, and unique in flavor compared to other systems.

 

[Thomas Shey]

That does happen on occasion and I chalk that up in part to the swingy nature of the system which I recognize as a flaw. There have been times when I've had to ask my players if they'd opened any ancient Egyptian tombs recently because by their dice rolling I assumed they were suffering from some sort of curse. This problem can be exacerbated by throwing Extras with high Toughness or Parry against the PCs or not giving them enough Bennies.

I can see that under some circumstances; its just hard for me to see as being any worse than low damage rolls. Though I suppose if you have high enough difficulty numbers to hit, the relatively frequent Raises that usually seal the deal might not happen either. I can't say I ever actually saw it happen, though.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I think the card init system works great. I've played games with init every round with dice and they are horribly slow because you have to track all the rolls every round. With SW, you don't have to track anything. Deal out the cards and you can see with a glance who goes when. Takes about 10-15 seconds extra per round. I keep two decks so if there is a Joker there is a second deck which is already shuffled.

A bit clunkier if playing online.

Or, honestly, any situation where people are not really playing around a common table, which I haven't seen in forever. That's where my reservations lay.