Quote from: Shrieking Banshee;1116077Savage worlds seem's to have everything I like a whole lot about a whole lot of systems, and Im mainly gathering cons to know what to fix.

Im actually very familiar with "Trappings" from Mutants and Masterminds which had a similar system. That was one of its strongest aspects I found, so I was excited to see it in Savage Worlds.

What exactly did the trappings lose in the transition?

One big con in Savage Worlds: Outside of very specific sections (like setting rules), Savage Worlds is very difficult to just change what you do not like. The system is tied together nicely enough that little changes can have large knock-on effects. This can be a strength because little house-rules (custom setting rules) can drastically change the tone of the game and how players behave. It is recommended that you "play it straight" before trying to mess with anything.

Trappings in Deluxe had mechanical examples of what they could do to augment a power. Some were free, others cost power points. That system got moved into a general power modification system and removed from trappings. The "free" effect of trappings depends on the GM (or the setting) and will not do something like "for an additional power point the target's pace is decreased by 1 until the end of its next turn". Instead it is up to the GM to decide if a fire-bolt has a good chance to catch something on fire or if fire spells work more like shonen anime or 3.5 D&D where they rarely catch anything on fire. The GM is encouraged to allow for the trapping to have actual mechanical effects on the gameplay, but they should be things that logically follow. A Weird Scientist could trap his fly power as glider with an air-bladder, but then he will not be able to cast that power unless he had that device on him. A speed power trapped as a fancy bicycle may work terribly in odd terrain but way better down a smooth hill. Likewise the speed power trapped as "fire spewing out of my feat" may not work in an area with no air.

I suspect the next fantasy companion will flesh out fantasy trappings more.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee;1115922Since we have had similarities before, id like you to fill me in on why you hate it.

I was perhaps being a bit dramatic there. tenbones gave it a pretty good breakdown, although I didn't find it to be that terribly flexible IME (but you should probably take that with a grain of salt; I only ran 1e and never used any of the setting books so I'm not exactly a know-it-all when it comes to SW). I will say my favorite thing about it is how easy it is to simply *play*, even if I dislike the over reliance on battlemap/minis and the dice step granularity is sort of obnoxious to me. The Benny mechanic was a little annoying too, but I heard that's supposedly been fixed.

I also think I might simply be a bit more sensitive to the items in tenbones'  "Cons" list than many folks are, too. It's worth noting I was, at that time, mainly evaluating SW through the lens of a GURPS lover (in other words I wasn't fleeing D&D). I missed all the dials and knobs of a "true" generic system (not that SW isn't generic, in that it can be applied to different genres and settings; rather that its playstyle seems, to me, much more focused than GURPS by default for instance). But I think that's a selling point for a lot of people. "Fast, Furious, Fun!" is its motto, after all!

Quote from: Antiquation!;1116099I also think I might simply be a bit more sensitive to the items in tenbones'  "Cons" list than many folks are, too. It's worth noting I was, at that time, mainly evaluating SW through the lens of a GURPS lover (in other words I wasn't fleeing D&D). I missed all the dials and knobs of a "true" generic system (not that SW isn't generic, in that it can be applied to different genres and settings; rather that its playstyle seems, to me, much more focused than GURPS by default for instance). But I think that's a selling point for a lot of people. "Fast, Furious, Fun!" is its motto, after all!

I like GURPS as well (As I said I love dem sexy bell-curves) but the chances of me finding a dedicated GURPS group (Even online) is about those of me finding Black Beards Treasure.

Im just happy to hear cons and pros to analyze what to do.

Well the usual caveat: No system is *perfect*.

I am the type of GM that has no problem going "off-road" - but when it comes to new systems I always run it straight-up for a good long while until I've put every sub-system to use, to the point where I feel "proficient" in grokking the tone and tempo of it. Then I start making tweaks to my taste.

The beauty of Savage Worlds is that the core task-resolution mechanic is uniform. The only exceptions to this are based purely on sub-system variables that are designed to be tweaked - Combat is vs. a static derivative stat 50% of the time (melee which is your Parry rating) vs. standard task resolution difficulty (Ranged which is the standard number of 4) with normal modifiers (range increments/environment etc). These values since they're separated from the Task resolution allows you to adjust with really solid results to get the "tone" you want.

This lets you do gritty cyberpunk, grimdark hackety-hack gore-galore style semi-/realistic combat, or over the top swashbuckling man parries a hundred blows and fights ten-people simultaneously while swinging on a rope one-handed type combat with only the slightest tweaks.

I wasn't looking to flee D&D. I came to unfortunate realization that playing for years at 15th+ level in my multi-years long campaign that the sheer chore of slogging through combats, designing combat setpieces (some which never got used), creating NPC's worthy of the challenge, etc. plus all the Stronghold needs (players running a nation and all the sub-factions etc) forcing me to create whole new sub-systems (which I ended up using to publish in Dragon) to support the game, became such a tiresome chore. I realized it wasn't the game per se. It was that I'd pushed the ruleset beyond its "fun" zone. It wasn't really mechanically well designed to inhabit this place outside of white-room conjecture.

Savage Worlds does it with ridiculous ease. And it didn't take any real effort *at all* to realize that if I toss out the Tribal loyalty to D&D - my game didn't fundamentally lose anything. It gained everything. And I love nothing more than a good revelation that proves me wrong despite my natural skepticism. My game, itself, is more important than the rules I use to run it. Go with what works for you. (which may not be Savage Worlds - so take this with a grain).

Quote from: tenbones;1116110Well the usual caveat: No system is *perfect*.

Oh for sure. To add to that, I find a lot of system preferences come down to general taste; I've known many a person satisfied with their campaign, while still fighting the game system itself (I've been guilty of that in the past, although I'm a tinkerer so molding things into shape for a given campaign is part of the joy as GM [so long as I'm not fixing needless errors or oversights for the designers themselves]). I too am a lover of off-roading as GM; I'm sure if I spent more time with SW I would have found ways to tune it more to my liking. Plus I've never read any of the splats, so I haven't seen how others have tuned it before either (because examples and extra dials always helps).

Currently I have been looking at TinyD6 and Everywhen as alternatives, but I'm waffling a bit.

Quote from: Antiquation!;1116114Oh for sure. To add to that, I find a lot of system preferences come down to general taste; I've known many a person satisfied with their campaign, while still fighting the game system itself (I've been guilty of that in the past, although I'm a tinkerer so molding things into shape for a given campaign is part of the joy as GM [so long as I'm not fixing needless errors or oversights for the designers themselves]). I too am a lover of off-roading as GM; I'm sure if I spent more time with SW I would have found ways to tune it more to my liking. Plus I've never read any of the splats, so I haven't seen how others have tuned it before either (because examples and extra dials always helps).

Currently I have been looking at TinyD6 and Everywhen as alternatives, but I'm waffling a bit.

I have a copy of 1e Savage Worlds. It does not compare well at all to the current 4/5e SWADE.

It may be worth taking another look at the game. Savage Worlds editions tend to take the good ideas from splat books and just make them core, so the game has evolved quite a bit from the beginning.

Comparing to GURPS though, if you already have a GURPS game set up and the players know the rules, then converting to Savage Worlds makes little sense. Though getting players to learn GURPS is laughably hard. I've ran into players that can't master The Black Hack 2e let alone GURPS or Savage Worlds.

Quote from: Antiquation!;1116114I'm sure if I spent more time with SW I would have found ways to tune it more to my liking. Plus I've never read any of the splats, so I haven't seen how others have tuned it before either (because examples and extra dials always helps).

I think *this* stands as a very important difference. We don't sound very dissimilar in our views, but my first SW experience was as a player (Deadlands Reloaded). And using Deadlands with the core Explorer's edition put those differences front and center between the Core and the setting. The game is designed for maximum tweakage to make the rules conform to *your* tastes for your setting.

I'm skeptical enough (probably to the point of it nearly being a flaw) that I needed to look at some other setting splats to see if this Deadlands thing was some "one off"... And it's not. I own a *vast* amount of savage Worlds and it's very much a toolkit with specific rules and formula to use to tweak the system within it's own parameters to do just about anything.

I personally could run a game with just the Core book... but real question is why? There is a *TON* of material out there to crib from. You can tinker endlessly with the system and fine tune your game with wild-abandon and not lose fidelity. Check out some other settings. It's worth it imo.

I've run a lot of SW over the last decade, or so.  It sets exactly where I want for crunch, has strong support for mini's, and only handles the mechanical bits so I can overlay my own fluff over them however I want.  Those are all great and it does excellent.  I'm a probability/statistics guy by trade, but really don't find the statistical bumps in it to be a big deal.  They're there but aren't noticeable during play, so meh.  However, the mechanics are just blah in themselves, so you really have to flesh things out yourself, or get your players to buy in, to get them beyond mechanical widgets.  I love the idea, but several in my group don't embrace that very well.

I love mini's skirmish games and love combat systems based on them, and SW really satisfies my tactical interests, while providing a lot of nice widgets for players to do things.  However, if your players just want to roll to-hit and see what happens or need detailed explanations of how to do interesting things in combat, the system can be a bit flat for the effort.  I ran a ton of GURPS in the 90's (3rd edition).  I burned out on it with the tax-form like character building. It'd completely overwhelm my current group.  It's also a far heavier game to manage.  For me SW, neatly fits into that same space with everything dialed down one notch on the crunch scale.  

The big gotcha's in it are that important NPC's and PC's can both be taken out quickly with exploding dice.  I love this.  If you embrace it, it works great.  It's easy to end up with high parry or high toughness foes that drop with a single hit or can never be dropped (short of a big exploding dice run).  Go for relatively weak opponents at first and just paly into this.  Really, it's no more difficult than most older games for groking what works and what doesn't.  

Personally, I wouldn't do a godbound-like game with it.  I don't think it scales up to that power level all that well.  Also, Godbound is such a great game out of the box, I'd recommend just running it.  SW does well with heroic fantasy, sci-fi, modern world, weird science, etc. above human level but below demigod levels.  

If you want more of a standard fantasy feel with something akin to GURPS for mechanics, I've been very impressed with The Fantasy Trip boxed set I picked up.  It's about as heavy as SW, but is an obvious predecessor to GURPS.  It sets in a similar crunch/skirmish game level as SW to my mind.

Skirmish - Yeah. I'm very tempted to go there. SW is clearly made for it. But frankly, I got too much other stuff going on to dive into minis (again) then next thing I know, I'll have two-3d printers cranking out my mult-level dungeon/cityscape that will fill my entire living room, next to my painting room which is air-tight for all the air-brushing, and of course I'll be divorced and penniless. But think of the GAMES!!!!

God Mode - SW scales into super-human stuff pretty well. I don't think it does full-on GOD MODE well. I've heard people claim it does. I do own all the Savage Rifts stuff... but I feel that scale is a little "too abstract". I could be wrong, I'm *SKEPTICAL* of it at this level. But someday I'm going to put it to the test.

Either way Savage Worlds has already proven its worth to me. I've purchased more Savage Worlds material (Five Kickstarters in the last year or two at $150-$200 a pop. Savage Rifts, SWADE, Deadlands Lost Colony, Wiseguys, Interface Zero 3.0, and I plan on backing Deadlands, Savage Worlds Fantasy, and probably any other splat), than any other gaming system.

Added the the fact I own most of the previous editions material (which is a ton)... yeah I think it's made a good impression. ALL of that material is useful simply for the fact you can crib rules and supplementary material to create your OWN thing. For a GM that likes to tinker - It's gold, I tell you. GOLD.

Quote from: Rhedyn;1116116I have a copy of 1e Savage Worlds. It does not compare well at all to the current 4/5e SWADE.

It may be worth taking another look at the game. Savage Worlds editions tend to take the good ideas from splat books and just make them core, so the game has evolved quite a bit from the beginning.

Comparing to GURPS though, if you already have a GURPS game set up and the players know the rules, then converting to Savage Worlds makes little sense. Though getting players to learn GURPS is laughably hard. I've ran into players that can't master The Black Hack 2e let alone GURPS or Savage Worlds.

Hm. I may take another look at some point then. They do have some nice looking splats out.

Though, I haven't had any difficulty pulling together groups for GURPS before, even with players brand new to roleplaying. I've had good success just handling any mechanical overhead on my side and introducing new concepts in bits and pieces; so long as they understand the base roll mechanic which is pretty straightforward, it goes fairly smoothly that way. I think the biggest difficulty is in building characters if you're not familiar with the mechanical underpinnings of how to properly achieve a given concept; in the past, I've handed out plain-english character questionnaires, to be filled out and returned to me at which point I build their characters for them (and allow liberal tweaking the first few sessions). To be fair though I live in a very roleplayer-heavy area, and as I usually GM (which I enjoy) it's hard not to trip over potential players on my way to work (literally; the last two players I recruited were both from my company and brand new to the hobby in general).

All that said, it can be nice to have a lighter alternative game to work with for certain campaigns. Maybe it's time I get around to looking at SWADE and seeing how its "mouth feel" treats me a second go-round.

Quote from: tenbones;1116118I think *this* stands as a very important difference. We don't sound very dissimilar in our views, but my first SW experience was as a player (Deadlands Reloaded). And using Deadlands with the core Explorer's edition put those differences front and center between the Core and the setting. The game is designed for maximum tweakage to make the rules conform to *your* tastes for your setting.

I'm skeptical enough (probably to the point of it nearly being a flaw) that I needed to look at some other setting splats to see if this Deadlands thing was some "one off"... And it's not. I own a *vast* amount of savage Worlds and it's very much a toolkit with specific rules and formula to use to tweak the system within it's own parameters to do just about anything.

I personally could run a game with just the Core book... but real question is why? There is a *TON* of material out there to crib from. You can tinker endlessly with the system and fine tune your game with wild-abandon and not lose fidelity. Check out some other settings. It's worth it imo.

Ah, as I suspected. That's part of why I like GURPS too is the sheer breadth of material to draw from, both for inspiration, tweaks and other. I haven't had issues running it in the past (IMO it's pretty easy to GM) but it wouldn't hurt to branch out. In particular I'm curious about how SW handles supers and high-powered beings and the like; those, while doable in GURPS, are... well, less than elegant and require quite a bit of work in the preparation stage. I'll go about looking into some SW splats; I've heard Rifts is pretty good and I feel like that sort of gonzo would be a nice place to dip my toes. That or Deadlands, so I can finally force a Western campaign on my players...

Edit: Ah, just saw your comment on Supers tenbones. Thanks!

Oh by the way, are there any splats/settings for SWADE that specifically handle "gritty" really well? Not that I mind a heroic baseline for the core game, but I genuinely love me a good "mud-covered peasants with pitchforks outsmarting monsters" campaign and similar.

Quote from: RMS;1116119Personally, I wouldn't do a godbound-like game with it.  I don't think it scales up to that power level all that well.  Also, Godbound is such a great game out of the box, I'd recommend just running it.

I checked it out and it was too loosey goosey for me. I didn't feel like it would represent godliness in the mechanical way I wanted. When everybody is near the same, being an exceptional god feels unexceptional. It just feels like allot of work as a GM to give it the level of consistency that I would want.

I as a player would feel unsatisfied if 90% of my coolness was GM fiat, and as a GM I would feel unsatisfied if cool stuff my players did was my own fiat.
I liked the generators though.

The parts where you influence stuff with your divine energies is the part Im gonna crib.

Quote from: Antiquation!;1116122Though, I haven't had any difficulty pulling together groups for GURPS before

Now I know your a robot. The second any player I know sees the charts for how damage is calculated at all they run for the hills.

Quote from: Antiquation!;1116125Oh by the way, are there any splats/settings for SWADE that specifically handle "gritty" really well? Not that I mind a heroic baseline for the core game, but I genuinely love me a good "mud-covered peasants with pitchforks outsmarting monsters" campaign and similar.

Gold&Glory: Seven Deadly Dungeons may be what you want (they have a SWADE version now too).

Now remember, Savage Worlds PCs are action heroes. You could make a small child character with a limp, but he will still be able to take on monsters like they do in Stranger Things. Your peasant with a pitchfork is Clint Eastwood or Sylvester Stallone in shabby attire. He is better than all of the regular peasants and could easily take on 3 other peasants in a fight and probably win without injury.

Savage Worlds is not going to let you make "Guy at the Gym" that is equal to all other guys at the gym unless you are running some weird universe where regular people are wildcards.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee;1116129Now I know your a robot. The second any player I know sees the charts for how damage is calculated at all they run for the hills.

LOL! I have had a couple innumerate players who grappled with damage and the like constantly; they couldn't even add a couple dice pips accurately with any consistency, so imagine the looks on their faces when I told them "now subtract DR, any damage that gets through you multiply by 1.5 for Cutting; rounded down"! :eek:

Quote from: Rhedyn;1116130Gold&Glory: Seven Deadly Dungeons may be what you want (they have a SWADE version now too).

Now remember, Savage Worlds PCs are action heroes. You could make a small child character with a limp, but he will still be able to take on monsters like they do in Stranger Things. Your peasant with a pitchfork is Clint Eastwood or Sylvester Stallone in shabby attire. He is better than all of the regular peasants and could easily take on 3 other peasants in a fight and probably win without injury.

Savage Worlds is not going to let you make "Guy at the Gym" that is equal to all other guys at the gym unless you are running some weird universe where regular people are wildcards.

Ah, right. This was an issue I had with my read-through of Everywhen; not that I mind the "PCs-default-to-action-heroes" model as it can be appropriate in many campaigns and genres, but it does tend to harm my suspense of disbelief when in a "realistic" campaign (no loaded intent meant with that term, hopefully you get what I mean) the 12-year-old bookworm in a wheelchair PC can beat up 3 crooks or whatever by himself by virtue of being a protagonist (the same thing often bugs me in movies and television unless it's intentionally portrayed tongue-in-cheek or comic book-y).

Not a deal-breaker for me, but worth noting. Thanks for the recommendation!