Sell me on Savage Worlds

[Sir Brennen]

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.

Well, that's part of the core rules now, so it's not even a modification anymore.

 

[Sir Brennen]

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.

How are you playing online? Many of the VTT sites out there have methods to handle the cards. I'm using Roll20, and it lets me deal cards to everyone instantly, and to re-shuffle instantly. I can also still manually draw cards for the player that has Hesitant as a Hindrance, and just drop it into the turn order if it's lower.

 

[corwyn77]

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.

In the playtest video, the gm draws for everyone showing each card as drawn and then keeps them on her table, presumably reserving specific spots for the characters' cards. Took about 30 seconds or so, max, per round. Not a big deal.

 

[corwyn77]

How are you playing online? Many of the VTT sites out there have methods to handle the cards. I'm using Roll20, and it lets me deal cards to everyone instantly, and to re-shuffle instantly. I can also still manually draw cards for the player that has Hesitant as a Hindrance, and just drop it into the turn order if it's lower.

I'm not but the online game in my group just uses Roll20 for maps and figs and uses Zoom for speech/video. Overall faster for us but that's GURPS where init is fixed.

 

[Flamestrike]

In the playtest video, the gm draws for everyone showing each card as drawn and then keeps them on her table, presumably reserving specific spots for the characters' cards. Took about 30 seconds or so, max, per round. Not a big deal.

And the ubiquitous Level Headed and Quick PCs, or those with the Tactician edge?

 

[Thomas Shey]

In the playtest video, the gm draws for everyone showing each card as drawn and then keeps them on her table, presumably reserving specific spots for the characters' cards. Took about 30 seconds or so, max, per round. Not a big deal.

And that's why I haven't completely written it off when non-automated.

 

[Thomas Shey]

And the ubiquitous Level Headed and Quick PCs, or those with the Tactician edge?

If you know they exist as a GM--and you should--its not like its hard to draw a second card at the same time as the first. Its one more card.

 

[Flamestrike]

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

My last group was:

A PC with an autofire rifle (Level Headed and Quick).
A second PC dual wielding (two fisted etc) semi automatic pistols, with the Quick edge
A melee PC (and possible innocent bystander) with Frenzy
A spellcaster with the Quickness Power and Bolt (spamming multiple bolts)

There were MAP's, bursts, two fisted shooting, wild attacks in melee, and all sorts of random penalties to track and around 10 attack rolls (and damage rolls) pus a few soak rolls to resolve, plus a crap load of decision points (do I autofire, do I 3RB, rapid attack, semi auto fire, aim, called shots, wild attack etc etc etc)

And thats just the PCs.

The mook/ extra rules are great for SWADE, but again would be better and faster with a single dice (plus fixed number) damage v T mechanic, and honestly the mook rules for SW Saga edition were nearly as good (once you go the hang of the aid another action).

 

[aramis erak]

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.

There's also the low cumulation; if you don't do enough to shake them, you don't have any cumulative effect.

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.

If the same conflict takes 3 rounds of 10 min each, that's still faster than 10 rounds of 4 minutes each.

The time per round is really a piss-poor metric, and feels almost deceptive as an argument; how many rounds is as important to the feel of speed as time per round, but the combination of the two, in time per combat, is far more important.
It's in the number of rounds that the damage mechanic of Savage Worlds was failing the "fast" feel - plus, the guys playing would have been far faster by just rolling, because they were having to move from the comfy positions to get their cards, (no table) and still had to make the same kind of comparison every round. And it took many rounds to dispatch foes. it all adds together to give the impression of slow.

 

[Aldarc]

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.

Maybe, but D&D doesn't advertise itself as having "fast" combat.