Following on from this thread:

https://www.therpgsite.com/pen-paper-roleplaying-games-rpgs-discussion/in-the-market-for-a-published-osr-campaign/msg1254413/#msg1254413

I've pretty much decided to run The Dark of Hot Springs Island, and have been doing the prep-work. So far I've been doing system-neutral stuff: making maps, uploading assets to the VTT, coming up with NPCs, etc. Now I'm at the point where I need to start stat-ing things, and I'm at a conundrum. My original intent was to run this via a modified version of Lamentations of the Flame Princess, purely for simplicity's sake. However, there's a few possible problems there. 

Hot Springs Island is quite a "high fantasy" module, so I'm worried that LOTFP characters, even homebrewed, aren't going to be up to the power level. The module as written also lacks a base town or much in the way of D&D style loot (i.e., it doesn't have +2 swords lying around), and it doesn't even have a coinage based economy. I'm concerned that it's going to pair badly with a game like LOTFP (which uses XP-for-gold, expects the players to use hirelings/retainers, and starts them off very weak), even if I homebrew the system to try and compensate.

I have a gut reaction which says that it would pair better with Savage Worlds, that being a game that is less reliant on equipment and leveling up. The problem there is that I've never run SWADE before, and I don't think anyone in my likely group has played it. I've read the core rulebook a few times, and am pretty sure I get it, but I have a couple questions for those with more experience in the system:

How much more work is SWADE than a typical OSR game? I particularly mean this on the GM side, but to a lesser extent for the players as well.

Can I run an effective classic fantasy campaign just from the SWADE core rulebook, or do I need to add things in from either the Fantasy Companion or from Savage Pathfinder? Again, I'm trying to keep things as simple as possible, but not at the cost of a worse game.

I remember when I ran Monkey Isle (Isle of Dread expy) in Classic D&D with a low level solo PC, he had a whole expedition with him, dozens of men, like King Kong etc. Worked great.

I tend to run a tighter ship than this, but Savage Worlds in general is a system which lets you play really loosey-goosey with things. I was a player in a 60+ session campaign where the GM rolled a D12 for practically everything except a very few Wild Cards, most of whom only lasted one encounter.

You could run Dark of Hot Springs Island with just the core book for SWADE; it has equipment, powers and a bestiary that would give you the base of everything you need. You would still need to make stuff, but then the monsters are all pretty unique so you would need to do that if you were running in an OSR system, too? Having the Fantasy Companion would be useful IMO; it gives more creatures, more powers, more edges that are aimed at fantasy and so on. The Fantasy Companion is due in physical format imminently and you might be able to pre-order it and immediately get the PDF version.

You mention that you will be running on VTT - SWADE has excellent VTT support in my experience. During lockdown I ran a year-long weekly game of Savage Worlds on Fantasy Grounds. The levels of rules automation are great - exploding dice, damage rolls, soak rolls. It can take a lot of the strain for you as a person relatively new to the system. I hear that the other VTTs also have good rules support for the most part.

As a side note, I also have this module in my back pocket to run at some point using Savage Worlds. High quality system-neutral stuff is quite hard to come by. King for a Day is another one.

Savage Worlds is a very "love it or hate it" system, if you're new to it I suggest running a short adventure to see if your players find the chance that a hobo with a knife can take down an armored knight with one stab a bug or a feature.

If they end up liking it consider looking at the Fantasy companion and/or Savage Pathfinder, the core rulebook doesn't really have enough stuff for running a long term campaign.

The main advantage of SWADE is you can run pretty much anything you want to run straight out of the box with minimal effort. It isn't the ideal system to run any given game, but it's serviceable for almost everything.

The Fantasy Companion or Savage Pathfinder add value, as has been mentioned by other posters.

The rules for SWADE end up making the game feel very much pulp adventure, so that will certainly be different than Lamentations. Still, there's certainly still a tactical side of it (even with the swingyness), and it rewards a player learning the ins and outs of the system - but all that said I've seen players have fun with many different types of characters.

SWADE is absolutely one of my favorite systems of all time. It's completely versatile in doing so many different genres and settings. It's companion books are excellent and expand things even more (Fantasy, Horror, and Superhero Companions are out now, with Sci-Fi on the way)

You absolutely can run any Fantasy type scenario or setting in Savage Worlds, and it's a very easily tweakable system to make things more or less deadly as you see fit.

Savage Pathfinder and the Savage Fantasy Companion can both make Savage Worlds *feel* more like Dungeons and Dragons to greater or lesser extents, up to and including putting actual 'classes' into what is normally a class-less system (Though Savage Rifts pretty much did the same thing) by introducing 'Class Edges' that give you a number of benefits.

That being said, neither are completely necessary, though I still recommend the Fantasy Companion for all the additional great stuff it will give you.

The combination of very broad and general skills and the wild die give Savage Worlds characters a high base level of competence. This is advantageous if you're not going to have much in the way of level advancement or magical treasure. If your PCs are all "pretty good" at stuff, they're not going to sweat it much if there's no +2 shield of not getting your ass kicked hiding away in the next room.

QuoteHow much more work is SWADE than a typical OSR game? I particularly mean this on the GM side, but to a lesser extent for the players as well.

SWADE rules are pretty easy and scale *far* better than d20 of any edition. While people on this thread will throw generalizations like "It'll play very Pulp-style if you like your D&D that way." - I find a bit weird when while by default it feels that way, the system is designed to be customizable in fairly radical ways - including on the fly.

SWADE rules can be tweaked up or down for your tastes. You can make it grimdark and lethal, you can make it fun and over-the-top with players having lots of room for survival (Pulpy), you can make super-heroic, by the simple use of Setting Rules.

In terms of prep? Assuming you have some basic knowledge of the rules, it is no more difficult than an OSR game. Due to the cohesiveness of the system in that the task resolutions require less thought at scale (In other words the more high-powered you get, the less calculating actual numbers to achieve success/failure are required than say a high-level d20 game), I think it's a wash between the systems in terms of effort at low-mid levels. At high-levels of play, SWADE will dominate with ease.

In terms of what is "required"? You can run an OSR-style game with only the SWADE Core. If you're wanting more D&D flavor - I'd go with the Fantasy Companion too. I would avoid the Savage Pathfinder rules unless you're *really* trying to keep "classes" as a thing in the game. The Fantasy Companion will let you have 99% of what you get in the Savage Pathfinder rules, but you'll need to curate it a little bit. And by a little bit, I'm serious - it's very low-effort.

The Companion rules + Core will easily handle any level of OSR play you could ever want to engage in. Unless you're married to the d20 mechanic and its normal curvature of play, and have no desire to learn a new ruleset, I'd go with SWADE any day of the week. SWADE can handle most genres in the hands of a competent GM with a pretty high degree of accuracy.

The days of "peasants killing knights with daggers" are not very common - and in fact even on paper would be as likely as a real peasant killing a knight with a dagger. Could it happen? Sure. Exploding dice are a thing. But in SWADE (as opposed to the earlier editions) there are failsafes that make such rolls pretty difficult to pull off. BUT! It could happen... I've seen it. Again, there are parameters (Setting Rules - like No attack can do more than 3 Wounds in a single blow) that can be uses/not used to mitigate such things.

Most of the concerns and assumptions of SWADE that people have over the years are well accounted for and "fixed" - and some are features, not flaws. But if you think they're flaws, they almost can always be fixed with a simple Setting Rule.

One of the cool things I love about SWADE is that it gives the GM a range of tools to use at the table. Quick Encounters are really neat for addressing the 'peasant issue' without needing to bring in other rules (unless you want to, of course). They are especially helpful if you are wanting to convert d20-style adventures to SWADE.

D20 systems tend to be built on an attrition model - you have a bucket of hit points and it's only really the last hit point that counts. This means that adventures tend to feature 'speed bump' encounters which are only there to whittle down resources and aren't intended to be a significant threat to the PCs.

Since SWADE characters basically have three hit points and never any more, this is a very different model. Every fight could be significant - which is great unless you don't want it to be anything more than a speed bump. For example, the PCs might need to fight their way past some thugs on the door before they get to the real meat of the encounter.

Quick Encounters let you shift from the granularity of 'task resolution' to 'scene resolution'. The GM describes the scene, the players each describe what their character will attempt in that scene, and then they make one skill roll based on what skill the GM decides is most appropriate to that course of action. If all the characters succeed then they get the best result possible. Failure means a cost and critical failure means a likely significant cost. In a 'dangerous quick encounter' failed rolls mean taking a Wound, a crit fail means taking d4 wounds which could put you on the deck.

So, if the characters are going into a fight which should be pretty much a foregone conclusion, and you don't want to spend table-time playing it out round-by-round, you can just do a 'dangerous quick encounter' and figure out whether the PCs do indeed cake-walk it or they take some knocks along the way. That peasant could still take out a PC, but it's much less likely.

(And in the books Geralt of Rivia was actually killed by peasants, though he got better )

  A peasant is extremely unlikely to take out a PC, however 20 peasants have a real chance of killing a powerful melee combatant PC.  If they are shooting crossbows at him....it might be unwinnable for the PC.   That I do not mind so much.  A peasant killing a PC with a dagger who is armored and a good fighter extremely unlikely but certainly more a chance than the peasant against a level 10 fighter in plate armor (which the chance is zero in AD&D).   

    Like tenbones said it is extremely scalable and one thing I did note was mass encounters are much easier to handle and PCs can handle mismatches in numbers much earlier in their "careers" than in OSR as a party.   They do have to take a fight somewhat seriously though, especially if those bennies are running low or on empty.   Scaling bennies is a VERY easy way to make combat more or less deadly.  Gritty damage is another.   I ran a series of dungeon crawl style sessions for my group and it was very easy to do and give a very OSR feel.  Resources are still going to be in question if time is a constraint, but there is definitely a difference with regard to spell casting and healing down in the dungeon.  The group is not going to be worn down in the same way as an OSR experience given the way power points and magical healing works.   Fights with strong opponents are also considerably more swingy for both the party and the BBEG, if the BBEG has AOE magic or can hit for big damage... one ace and a player is down no matter how many bennies they have.   This can go the other way as well as I had a particularly comical session where the barbarian decides to quaff an unidentified potion right before a fight with an Ogre Mage (and with cone of cold and invisibility this was becoming a borderline TPK event for the party).  The potion shrinks him to the size of a large house cat  making his damage dice shrink right along with him.  Due to size differences and his high fighting ability he gets a raise on him hit score and then proceeds to ace his bonus damage and his (now d4) reduced melee damage several times.... the basically cut the foot off the mage and forced it to take gaseous form and retreat as several party members were already down this odd series of events saved the group.   It was unexpected (I thought after he drank the potion they were done for as his damage and frenzy are often the tipping point in fights with really tough opponents) and funny for everyone. 

   So some things can and will happen that are completely unpredictable....but isnt this sort of the nature of heroic tales?   A hero beating all the odds and coming out on top?  Also an unexpected fall from unforeseen event that creates more drama?   I like SW a lot.  We are currently playing AD&D and largely for streamlining some game sessions (the one "knock" with SW is the same that comes up in games for us as using GURPS does, there are A LOT of considerations in combat that can swing your favor considerably and sometimes players get a bit of paralysis by analysis the simplicity of AD&D is a big boon when you have a bunch of players at the table IME) but we will return to SW in a bit.

   One thing to consider very strongly...certain things like bonuses to skills ( I used the old fantasy companion random tables to roll up magical loot) in certain situations are EXTREMELY unbalancing.   The thief in the crew found a magical scabbard that gives him a +3 bonus to all skills involved in thievery.   This makes detecting most traps and picking locks pretty much impossible for him to fail (critical failure is the only way really if he has any bennies) and does remove some of the danger presenting by such things. 

Quote from: ForgottenF on June 04, 2023, 02:19:25 PM
Following on from this thread:

https://www.therpgsite.com/pen-paper-roleplaying-games-rpgs-discussion/in-the-market-for-a-published-osr-campaign/msg1254413/#msg1254413

I've pretty much decided to run The Dark of Hot Springs Island, and have been doing the prep-work. So far I've been doing system-neutral stuff: making maps, uploading assets to the VTT, coming up with NPCs, etc. Now I'm at the point where I need to start stat-ing things, and I'm at a conundrum. My original intent was to run this via a modified version of Lamentations of the Flame Princess, purely for simplicity's sake. However, there's a few possible problems there. 

Hot Springs Island is quite a "high fantasy" module, so I'm worried that LOTFP characters, even homebrewed, aren't going to be up to the power level. The module as written also lacks a base town or much in the way of D&D style loot (i.e., it doesn't have +2 swords lying around), and it doesn't even have a coinage based economy. I'm concerned that it's going to pair badly with a game like LOTFP (which uses XP-for-gold, expects the players to use hirelings/retainers, and starts them off very weak), even if I homebrew the system to try and compensate.

I have a gut reaction which says that it would pair better with Savage Worlds, that being a game that is less reliant on equipment and leveling up. The problem there is that I've never run SWADE before, and I don't think anyone in my likely group has played it. I've read the core rulebook a few times, and am pretty sure I get it, but I have a couple questions for those with more experience in the system:

How much more work is SWADE than a typical OSR game? I particularly mean this on the GM side, but to a lesser extent for the players as well.

Can I run an effective classic fantasy campaign just from the SWADE core rulebook, or do I need to add things in from either the Fantasy Companion or from Savage Pathfinder? Again, I'm trying to keep things as simple as possible, but not at the cost of a worse game.

  To address the two original questions:  I find it to be considerably less work for the gm in prep and live at the table.  For players its interesting, if they just want to take an action and resolve it, its as simple as OSR.  If they want some strategy or to do something a bit more off the center (shout a taunt, attempt to intimidate and then attack, try to hit harder, aim, etc) it is there for them and will greatly benefit them to use options if the situation is there for it. 

   You can most certainly run a classic fantasy campaign directly from the core book.  As mentioned the fantasy companion is a lot of help (I do not have the new one which I think is more expansive than the old one, the old one was great though) but in no way necessary.  You will be able to adjust OSR powers, spells, monsters, etc on the fly once you have run a few games so the core rules once used a few times allow for TREMENDOUS flexibility.   I find brand new characters are considerably more competent and hardy than 1st level OSR characters and edges they choose tend to change them more to an archetype than simple advancement.   

   You can use whatever parameters you want for advancement.  I tend to use the old rules of 3xp per session with bonuses to players for humor, being in character (actually playing to their disadvantages and as they said their characters personality is) and accomplishment of goals.  This means they will advance every other session consistently and in some cases hit an advance in back to back sessions.   The advances are more gradual than a full player level but help a great deal to define the characters with the edges or skill advancements they choose. 

   I prefer GURPS to OSR, and OSR to 3rd edition d&d and on.  I like SW quite a bit and when it comes to running more than 3-4 players like it more than GURPS.  I find 1st edition D&D and SW run about as fast (this is speaking of low to mid level....higher end I think SW is easier to run hands down and faster) to run largely because 1st edition streamlines decisions and actions down for speed at the table and SW resolves the actions pretty fast. 

   I think Classic dungeon crawling is probably best with 1st edition D&D...but SW can emulate it extremely well and other genres like Sword and Sorcery can perform much, much better.  If you have the book I say run it and see how it goes.  Try to play the encounters a bit on the dumb side for the first few (mooks ganging up or hitting players from behind/flank can turn into a TPK at rapid speed, as well as massed missile weapons) sessions and let the players get the hang of what their characters can do.  After that...its a blast.

Thanks everyone for the responses. Unfortunately I've been away from the computer for the last few days and haven't been able to respond singularly, but I have been reading.

Based on the responses I'm seeing, I'm pretty committed now to at least trying trying the game out in SWADE. I can always convert back to LOTFP later if it doesn't work out. I had the old Explorers Edition Fantasy Companion already, and I've picked up the Savage Pathfinder core rulebook.

My initial follow-up question was going to be about how deadly SWADE is, but since a lot of people have addressed that, I'll try and specify the question a bit. I've made a few characters in Roll20 and experimented with their dice rolls. One thing I'm noticing is an apparent imbalance between offense and defense: It seems pretty easy to get your Parry stat up to 5-8, and your toughness around 9-11 (just with middling armor and a shield). Most monsters seem to have a fighting die of around d6-d10, with the average weapon being d6 or d8 + Str.

Given those numbers, it seems like the combat would be prone to round after round of missing or not doing damage, broken up by the occasional massive hit when the exploding dice come up. Does that jive with your experience, or am I misreading the numbers?

When you shoot someone, or magic mojo kaboom someone, the target number is 4, not their parry.

SWADE has a support/test mechanic which effectively provides either a +2 to your ally or a -2 to your opponent. It's modeling things such as throwing dirt in your enemy's eye, and other sorts of monkeying with the fight.

Otherwise, yes there will be lots of missing and not breaking toughness. This is because the PCs only have three hit points, and most NPCs go down the first time they take a wound. Survivability involves not getting hit in the first place, or grazing blows. This is offset by the fact that when a PC does take a wound, they start racking up wound penalties. SWADE is technically a death spiral system.

Typically, hits that break toughness deal a single wound, so you do see a fair amount of chipping away, but big hits definitely happen. Because of the wild die, you should expect the PCs to be the ones landing the big tide-turning hits more often than not.