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Message: <blockquote data-quote="aramis erak" data-source="post: 9112252" data-attributes="member: 6779310">Retreater: you're ruling out many rules-medium games as too complex. My suggestion for Savage Worlds would be, Put the major combat options on a player handout. Rather than expecting them to grasp it from play, put it on paper for them to reference as needed.  SW is a simple core mechanic - which misleads many into assuming it's a rules light game... The core mechanic is dead simple in Savage Worlds, Mongoose's Traveller, MegaTraveller, 2300 AD, BRP, or FASERIP... but all of those are a simple core so the mechanics feel unified, and there are no shortage of modular elements for each. And the games are not simple. (Ref my note about many OSR fans ignoring most of the RAW? Well, that is especially true within both the Mongoose, Classic, and MegaTraveller fanbases. In Classic Traveller, you're supposed to pick which modules to use...)My normal suggestion for story driven, easy on the players, but highly tactical is FATE Core... (while I've not played Fate Core itself, I've played other FATE games) and it's not a bloody rules light game, even in that expression of it. (Fate Accellerated? THat's somewhat lighter, but again, if one reduces it to just the core rolling mechanic, one may as well use FUDGE, as FATE is Fudge + Aspects + Fate points, and in some flavors, specific stunts for specific skills.My backup is normally Cortex Plus or Cortex Prime - but note that Prime is a gamme construction kit, and Plus are all differentiated cores - that is, the core rules are the same as far as resolving rolls, but the rest varies by specific attached setting.I've noticed that when a high strength character hits a high toughness character, there tends to be swish, swish, tap, tap, swish, BANG!Lots of Toughness 8 critters in Deadlands.  The Strength 8 PCs tend to get little until one or both dice pop, and then hit with usually 4-6 over.Last session, one player got not a single roll over target toughness 9 in 10 rounds... using a 2d8+1 weapon (rifle),  they finally rolled a 16 on the 2d8, then popped that for 12, giving 28 on the dice, for a 29 total. 20 over, for 5 wounds, and the critter had one already... I spent my last 3 chips (2 reds)  to soak a mere 2 of them... so the big  bad went down from two counted shots, over a span of about 30 attacks.That 1 extra toughness made a HUGE disparity in wounding rates. Largely because it shifted most firearms to merely stunning them. It happened to cross the breakpoint for Acing.I don't quite agree about SW being rules light. My mechanical notes are 13 pages of typed shorthand. Not counting weapons tables, powers, edges nor hindrances. There are a LOT of special cases covered in the not short rulebook, and the rulebook almost purely rules.I've only been running SW for a month, and while it's not table heavy (there are 3 tables that see a huge amount of use in Deadlands... the damage table, the melee modifiers, and the ranged modifiers... and the annoying thing is that, at least in Deluxe ed, half the modifiers are not in the description of ranged attack, but in the combat special rules.The number 1 most common special case so far, and this seems really appropriate for a western, is firing into a fistfight. 1 on the Trait Die hits a Bystander, IE, someone else other than the intended target. We also have the ambushes.I'll say that the rules approach is straightforward, but the mechanics as written aren't light any more than MegaTraveller or Mongoose Traveller. They're no Hârnmaster, GURPS, or Phoenix Command, either...</blockquote>

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