TheRPGSite

What is the best Savage Worlds setting and why?

The Day After Ragnarok hands down for me. You have a setting in which World War II ends with an (almost literal) Earth-shattering bang as Nazis unleash the horrors of the end-times of Norse myth upon the world.

The result resembles a pulp men's adventure take on Rifts by way of Hellboy and League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. You get to rub shoulders with characters both historical and fictional (and better still, fictional versions of historical characters) as you fight off Soviet-aligned frost giants, degenerate dwarves, apocalyptic cultists, monstruous serpents, Nazi ODESSA operatives, Soviet ape-men and Imperial Japanese agents, to name but a few.

The book's also got random generators for post-apocalyptic towns and adventure hooks, as well as 5-item lists such as "5 Places You Might Find A Castle Ruled By A Madman" or "5 Places You Might Run Into Air Pirates."

I've run a pretty successful game of DAR with my crew and a couple of them often pester me to return to Earth after the Serpentfall and one of these days I might just do that.

Achtung! Cthulhu has stats for Savage Worlds in it: allied forces + mythos vs. nazis + mythos = awesome.

I also like the setting of Accursed for its Universal and Hammer vibe.

Cthulhu Vice, available for free at http://www.relsden.com
Miami Vice meets the Mythos, for free.  Ran a 3 part session for my group and it was hilarious and fun and exciting.
The author has a number of free Savage Worlds settings there, as well.

Space 1889 Red Sands

Because it is Space 1889

That's all the reason needed.

Quote from: YourSwordisMine;735468Space 1889 Red Sands

Because it is Space 1889

That's all the reason needed.

I agree fully with this statement

Quote from: Ronin;735470I agree fully with this statement

Ha, the SW settings are usually a bit off. This Space 1889 is really bunkers. I like the originality in most of their settings.

My favorites are (crap I can't choose):

• Deadlands (Noir)
• Solomon Kane
• Hellfrost (Land of Fire)
• The Day After Ragnarok

Quote from: 3rik;735446Achtung! Cthulhu has stats for Savage Worlds in it: allied forces + mythos vs. nazis + mythos = awesome.

I also like the setting of Accursed for its Universal and Hammer vibe.

Of course Cthulhu. Cthulhu is always cool. There are a shitload of games right now. Achtung, Brittanica, Trail of etc. Are they all good?
Or this worth another topic? ;)

Quote from: jan paparazzi;735527Ha, the SW settings are usually a bit off. This Space 1889 is really bunkers. I like the originality in most of their settings.

My favorites are (crap I can't choose):

• Deadlands (Noir)
• Solomon Kane
• Hellfrost (Land of Fire)
• The Day After Ragnarok

Bunkers? Sorry not familiar with the term.

Although I find the Deadlands setting (and it's kin: Reloaded, Noir, etc.) interesting, I can't get into it very much. I prefer SW for pulpy stuff, such as Daring Tales of Adventure.

I really do want to run Hellfrost/Hellfrost: Land of Fire sometime soon, however, just to see what it is like.

Slipstream is genius. It's inspiration is Flash Gordon but the specific setting better suited for gaming and the plot point campaign makes for a good sandboxy campaign.

Necessary Evil has a killer premise and a lot of good ideas but the I wasn't entirely happy with the execution, in particular the way Dr Destruction is meant to boss the characters around.

Quote from: Ronin;735531Bunkers? Sorry not familiar with the term.

Typo. Bonkers.

Quote from: jan paparazzi;735553Typo. Bonkers.

Oh makes more sense:)

I really like Marchland by Hearthstone Games: http://www.hearthstonegames.com/

Its a great urban fantasy game (focussing on fae, ghosts and mages), which is a genre generally covered only by systems that are too complex for my tastes (nWoD, Dresden Files etc).

There is no best when it comes to these threads.  Every obscure setting will get a mention, looking to be popular.

Quote from: Soylent Green;735546Necessary Evil has a killer premise and a lot of good ideas but the I wasn't entirely happy with the execution, in particular the way Dr Destruction is meant to boss the characters around.

That bothered my players quite a bit, as well.

Space 1889 originally wasn't a SW setting. A new edition is currently in the making, funded by Kickstarter, and will be an English translation of the German, Ubiquity-based version. I'm personally not that enamoured by SW so, especially as a GM, I'd prefer using another system anytime.

I was going to mention Solomon Kane but I figured that in terms of setting it's basically just a slightly anachronistic pulp version of the early 17th century (IIRC 1610 is the default year to set your scenarios in) with some supernatural antagonists thrown in. It's a very nice game but the setting by itself is not that unique.

Deadlands has way too much steampunk and weird science for my taste, to the point where it becomes very silly.

Quote from: jan paparazzi;735528Of course Cthulhu. Cthulhu is always cool. There are a shitload of games right now. Achtung, Brittanica, Trail of etc. Are they all good?
Or this worth another topic? ;)

I'd say that question warrants another topic because most of them are not dual-statted for Savage Worlds. Achtung! Cthulhu *is*, however, and due to the nature/tone of the setting you can go a bit more crazy over-the-top with it than with most Cthulhu settings by default.

50 Fathoms is my favorite. All you need to run in one book + SWD really helps. 10+15= 25 and you are playing. Although it helps if the PCs get their own SWD 10 + 7.50 for a 50 Fathoms PH = 17.50. But the cost of entry for a year of gaming is very low.

We are playing Deadlands: The Flood and Shaintar presently. But the Flood requires PH/GM/The Flood and Shaintar has Legends Arise/Unleashed, so not self-contained in one book.

Quote from: Soylent Green;735546Slipstream is genius. It's inspiration is Flash Gordon but the specific setting better suited for gaming and the plot point campaign makes for a good sandboxy campaign.

Necessary Evil has a killer premise and a lot of good ideas but the I wasn't entirely happy with the execution, in particular the way Dr Destruction is meant to boss the characters around.

That plot point campaign is genius. That's the way I want to GM. I was in another threat (can't find it anymore) where someone described four different types of GM's. The referee (oldschool D&D, just guarding the rules), the storyteller (WoD, frustrated novelist), storyguardian (somewhere between the first two) and storygames (no GM or everyone is the GM). I think the plot point campaign is the storyguardian option. It has some story written in advance, but it does allow for improvisation.

What is a sandbox btw? Some people use this for big kitchen sink setting and improvised gameplay. But I also heard people use the term sandbox for the new world of darkness, which is a toolbox to my opinion.

Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;735605There is no best when it comes to these threads.  Every obscure setting will get a mention, looking to be popular.

Which is good. I check them out.

Quote from: slayride35;73569850 Fathoms is my favorite. All you need to run in one book + SWD really helps. 10+15= 25 and you are playing. Although it helps if the PCs get their own SWD 10 + 7.50 for a 50 Fathoms PH = 17.50. But the cost of entry for a year of gaming is very low.

We are playing Deadlands: The Flood and Shaintar presently. But the Flood requires PH/GM/The Flood and Shaintar has Legends Arise/Unleashed, so not self-contained in one book.

50 Fanthoms looks really cool. It has a small metaplot or backstory (what is it?) about the world getting flooded after a witch curse. That's is great. I like that stuff.

Quote from: Patrick;735448Cthulhu Vice, available for free at http://www.relsden.com
Miami Vice meets the Mythos, for free.  Ran a 3 part session for my group and it was hilarious and fun and exciting.
The author has a number of free Savage Worlds settings there, as well.

His settings are really good, and definitely worth checking out. He puts a lot of work and effort into them.

Quote from: jan paparazzi;735702What is a sandbox btw? Some people use this for big kitchen sink setting and improvised gameplay. But I also heard people use the term sandbox for the new world of darkness, which is a toolbox to my opinion.

Someone probably has a big essay and/or a thread in these very forums that gets into the nitty-grittty with more propriety than I could possibly hope, but briefly, it's the sorty of game in which the GM, instead of prepping a "plot" or a "story", creates a setting (as small as a city or as big as a galaxy), seeds it with interesting (read: adventure hook) NPCs, objects and events, and lets the PCs choose what they want to do.

They are free to engage or ignore any one of the offered adventure hooks and the GM's job is to have the world (a) move of its own accord (e.g. if the PCs do not act against the Dark Lord, the Free City of Tharsis will fall to the Army of Evil within a year) and (b) respond to the PCs' efforts in a lifelike manner (saving the Free City of Tharsis will entail a lot more than killing stray zombies and orc patrols).

nWoD is optimally geared for this because it offers very little concrete setting and zero metaplot, which is a way of egging GMs on to imaghine the hell out of it; but so did the oWoD, with most By Night books being settings without a scripted plot; of course, later in its life cycle it also spit out crap linear adventures (e.g. the Giovanni and Transylvania Chronicles) that more or less stand in diametrical opposition to the idea of sandbox gaming.

Hope that helps.

Quote from: The Butcher;735752nWoD is optimally geared for this because it offers very little concrete setting and zero metaplot, which is a way of egging GMs on to imaghine the hell out of it; but so did the oWoD, with most By Night books being settings without a scripted plot; of course, later in its life cycle it also spit out crap linear adventures (e.g. the Giovanni and Transylvania Chronicles) that more or less stand in diametrical opposition to the idea of sandbox gaming.

Hope that helps.

Isn't a game more optimally geared when it has a lot of concrete setting and zero metaplot? Instead of having little of both? I mean I like it best when the world has a lot of different areas and a lot of different factions all doing their own thing. Quest get triggered when players enter an area or something else triggers it. I mean old WoD had more worldbuilding. You knew the Camarilla was in charge of Europe, the Setites in Egypt, the Anarch in South-America and the West Coast (LA/SF) and the Sabbat in Mexico.


Another thing: Maybe it's better to make this thread about your favorite Savage Worlds settings in different categories.

For example:
Fantasy: Hellfrost
Science Fiction: Slipstream
Pirate: 50 Fanthoms
Western: Deadlands
Adventure: Solomon Kane
Horror: Rippers

Necessary Evil is pretty good. I have the Pirates book and quite like that. The Wierd Wars books are also lots of fun. Personally i think SW shines when peopoe use it to make their own setting or genre backdrop. The best SW campaigns i have been in were modern spy (usually anywhere from WWII to present) where the GM just used the basic Savage Worlds book.

Quote from: 3rik;735625Deadlands has way too much steampunk and weird science for my taste, to the point where it becomes very silly.

That was my take on it too. I went in expecting horror/western and got Brisco County Jr. instead... though if I'd looked closer at the books I would have seen how that's plainly the intent... and it didn't help that I was the only player in the group who even likes horror (I'm guessing Deadlands dials could easily be set to something a LOT darker in tone... but at that point it's something else).

Quote from: Simlasa;735851That was my take on it too. I went in expecting horror/western and got Brisco County Jr. instead... though if I'd looked closer at the books I would have seen how that's plainly the intent... and it didn't help that I was the only player in the group who even likes horror (I'm guessing Deadlands dials could easily be set to something a LOT darker in tone... but at that point it's something else).

If you use the setting as intended, to me it is hardly recognizable as western anymore. Part of the appeal of a western setting for me is the fairly primitive technology and sense of isolation, none of which I get enough of in Deadlands. Deadlands' (weird) tech level to me feels incompatible with some of the western genre tropes, making the setting feel rather implausible and forced.

Add to that the fact that I've not grown as enamored with SW as I'd perhaps have expected (or hoped), so the game is pretty much useless to me now.

Quote from: jan paparazzi;73570450 Fanthoms looks really cool. It has a small metaplot or backstory (what is it?) about the world getting flooded after a witch curse. That's is great. I like that stuff.

The really cool thing about 50 Fathoms is a lot of race variety for Player Characters. I played a human and a masaquani, but I only ended up playing two characters over the whole course of the campaign. Wish I could have got to play the gliding Atani, close killing Kehana and Doreen, power fighters like the bulbous Grael, multi-limbed Scurillians, or the strong Red Men, or a mage like a Kraken Elementalist/Fighter.  But we did get to see at least one of every of these characters except the Atani in action.

The big thing about 50 Fathoms is 180 pages of plot point campaign. You have the main plot line but a ton of subplots and savage tales, and about 30 pages of NPCs and creatures to encounter in the back.  There are about five major areas, but a ton of stuff to explore in each area.

50 Fathoms showed us how SW combat can slow down once you get about 50 extras on the table though (say 25 allied crew for us and 25 enemy crew for them plus a bunch of wild cards). So direct ship to ship fights slowly evolved to chase rule combats instead as the campaign went on and our crew/ship/fleet continued to grow in size.

The other problem with the game is logistical. I.e. Carousing counter and paying the crew (every 30 days), food and ammo/cannonballs needed to feed so many people and guns and only so much cargo space to fit it all in, dividing ship shares, etc.  50 Fathoms is highly extra driven because you need enough people to man the crew. Which means you have to feed them and keep them equipped.

One of the things we are enjoying about Deadlands and Shaintar is smaller scale fights because we don't need a lot of extras to ride around the land just some horses. Deadlands cares a lot about food/water management due to the scarcity of food and potable water in California but I have handwaved most of it in Shaintar at present since they are in the Wildlands and can grab food from Ranger HQs or are generally good at Survival since they are Grayson's Grey Rangers after all.

Well, I'm pretty partial to Necessary Evil.  It's a great old school comic story top marks for the setting.  I'm not so fond of the powers system.

Space 1889 is of course Space 1889 and that's something right there.

But I'm going to go with Evernight.  Because one day I'm going to run that in another system, just so the PCs don't see it coming.  Sure it's just a generic fantasy setting except BANG!  OH THE HORROR HOLY CRAP!  THIS ISN'T WHAT I SIGNED UP FOR!  I think it's one of the best bait and switch plays I've ever seen.

Sadly anyone playing fantasy in Savage Worlds will be expecting it.

Quote from: David Johansen;736019Well, I'm pretty partial to Necessary Evil.  It's a great old school comic story top marks for the setting.  I'm not so fond of the powers system.

Space 1889 is of course Space 1889 and that's something right there.

But I'm going to go with Evernight.  Because one day I'm going to run that in another system, just so the PCs don't see it coming.  Sure it's just a generic fantasy setting except BANG!  OH THE HORROR HOLY CRAP!  THIS ISN'T WHAT I SIGNED UP FOR!  I think it's one of the best bait and switch plays I've ever seen.

Sadly anyone playing fantasy in Savage Worlds will be expecting it.

Ran it recently (in SW) myself. I think there's a core of a good campaign in there, but you need to build out a lot on the skeleton they give you. And there are some terrible scale problems with the maps and the enemy ships. As it was, it basically played out like Mass Effect 3 in my campaign. Fun in its way, but not what I thought it was going to be at all!

Another vote for 50 Fathoms because, basically you get to play this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_5F1zYQF5M). My players had a blast.

Rippers was pretty cool too :

Quotea game of supernatural horror, where players lead Victorian-era monster hunters—the Rippers—against a confederation of monsters and madmen known as the Cabal. [...] The Rippers are human, but they are far from helpless prey. Some wield arcane biotechnology "ripped" from the very creatures they hunt. Others invest in the latest technology—incredible devices of iron and steel powered either by steam or, more recently, by electricity. Still others practice ancient magic, or perform miracles. A rare few rely on nothing more than their own cunning and courage.

The plot-point campaign is a bit over the top but great in a "Stephen Sommers' Mummy" kind of way

And Savage Justifiers (https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B4TBit4mrI1tWWJOLXlnUzZsUzA/edit), because I wrote the damn thing.

But to be honest I think there are a lot of great settings for the game (Accursed, Weird War 2, Deadlands Noir, Beasts and Barbarians, Streets of Bedlam...). It's hard to choose !

What´s that Marchland setting about? I can´t find a lot about, except that it might be like Changeling the Dreaming.

I nominate Necessary evil.

Its the setting that makes me want to play savage worlds again even though I had a bad first date with savage worlds.

Quote from: YourSwordisMine;735468Space 1889 Red Sands

Because it is Space 1889

That's all the reason needed.

Space:1889 is magnificent, but I just wish it had been done with a new edition inspired by the original rules, rather than by making it into a SW setting.

It seems to me that Savage Worlds settings in most cases are really broad, but not necessary very deep. That suits me perfectly. It's broad enough to do different things with them. And it's just deep enough to get me interested without giving way too much info. Often they have a small metaplot event (Hellfrost, Day after Ragnarok, 50 Fanthoms) to make it even more interesting.

And I really like Plotpoint Campaigns. The best compromise between sandboxing and storytelling.

Quote from: jan paparazzi;737170And I really like Plotpoint Campaigns. The best compromise between sandboxing and storytelling.

I read an interview with Shane Hensley where he said that, other than the original Plot Point in 50 Fathoms, none of them have worked as well as he'd hoped.

I haven't had a chance to run or play in one, despite desperately wanting to, so I don't know what he's referring to. Anyone have any idea?

Quote from: Daddy Warpig;737193I read an interview with Shane Hensley where he said that, other than the original Plot Point in 50 Fathoms, none of them have worked as well as he'd hoped.

I haven't had a chance to run or play in one, despite desperately wanting to, so I don't know what he's referring to. Anyone have any idea?

The idea behind a Plot Point Campaign is that they give you in the campaign book a mix of full adventures and detailed adventure hooks/summaries, which can be strung together in to a campaign by a party with minimal GM effort, and which put the players broadly in control of the progress of the story.

In broad terms, think of it as them giving you an X-Files season, where they've given you detailed write ups for the five myth arc advancing episodes for that season, and then given you 40 or so ideas for what the other 17 episodes will be.

50 Fathoms, as I recall (not played it and not going to run and double check just to make this post) gives the players a lot of geographical freedom (they have a boat), and dangles in front of them some pirate style mysteries where they're never quite sure which island the clues point to. So the players can decide they just want to do pirate things, in which case when the GM wants to advance the plot he can spring it on them as a complication ("the island you were told is full of buried treasure is actually home to the mysterious witches you were supposed to be chasing"), or they can try to pursue the plot, but likely they still won't go the to the right place first time every time.

The trick is balancing the degree to which the key events are there and in the player's control to aim for is they want, with the degree to which the players are motivated to do anything other than that. Plus of course for obvious reasons Pinnacle don't want to just re-use the 50 Fathoms approach every time.

The one Plot Point I have played is the one in Savage Worlds of Solomon Kane (the other PEG setting I've run is Evernight, but that's a full scripted campaign that pre-dates the plot point concept). The overarching plot of Solomon Kane is essentially "we need five items of mystical power, that a great evil is preventing me from locating at any resolution more precise than which continent they're on. They're spread out one to a continent, so get looking". So basically the party just starts following up on rumours and trekking round the world, getting in to a different adventure every week. When we started the campaign I presented rumours and let them pick, but as time moved on we shifted to running it more as a railroad, as the players were enjoying the campaign but getting increasingly disinterested in the side stories, so it made sense to cut them down and focus more on the key events.

All in all our campaign ended up feeling a lot like the Incredible Hulk TV show from the 70s. The PCs would roll in to town, hear rumours about what was wrong here, go deal with it, and then leave town again. We had a good running subplot about a magical book for a while though (came from one of the Solomon Kane supplements, and actually added more of a sense of urgency than the main plot ever had - honestly if that book had been the driver of the PPC things might well have worked better for the whole campaign).

50 Fathoms works really well because the world is mostly flooded and its relatively small. You can sail around the world in 30-60 days if you have a good enough captain/elemental air mage with zephyr and a large ship with a good travel speed. So 3 + 4 for a raise on boating +5 for zephyr +6 for a raise on zephyr. So that many squares on the 50 Fathoms map of movement. We all bought maps in game and printed them out for personal use as well to plot our own course. By the end of the campaign we literally (and I mean it, we sailed in a circle around the Flotsam) sailed around the world of Caribdus twice tying up all the loose ends before we started the endgame. The Adventure Deck helped a lot too, since we could play Spurred On on a 6 square result and travel 12 squares lategame, meaning we were really motoring around that world.  

The lack of land is also a huge benefit. We can fish and try to survive, but its much easier to go to a port and buy hard tack for the journey. Now that we are going to a nearby port or land mass, events trigger. Now in Deadlands: The Flood its a similar situation, but its easier to go around towns and avoid them for specific towns because rail, horse, or boat will get us there quickly or quick enough (And we are gonna get a blimp soon...with no good pilots though. Wyn has Ace and no Piloting skill and Josephine has a d4 in it, still Ace make's Wyn a bit better because he can soak for the blimp). So unless the group has a real good reason to do a sidequest from The Tombstone Epitaph, it makes it easier to beeline for the end goal. Besides our allies in Shan Fan and Perdition, we haven't really strongly bonded with any of the NPCs so far in 17 sessions.  

This became a similar issue in 50 Fathoms for us because we needed to go to western ports for the merchant to pick up his money for the month with his rich edges and the noble of Kaja to pick up his money for the noble/very rich edge. But the merchant's shops being in the west and Arfk in the north and many of our quests taking us to the eastern Kieran Empire or the southern isle of Torath Ka had us going in circles around the world. But going to the same places doesn't help the Plot Point system in many games, because there are only so many quests in each town.

One of the things that helps 50 Fathoms out in this regard is that there are time arcs in some of the towns because of event triggers that happened in the campaign later. This has some of the plot points triggering later on sort of stored for later use in a way. This makes it a little less linear. It also gives the world more of a feel of a living and breathing place.

And as the merchant expanded his shops, we slowly changed the feel of many of the western island towns. And Kaja changed as well as the noble tried to make Arfk into a power in the world of Caribdus. We changed the look of the once isolated port into a town with a booming economy. So when you combined what the game world did with its own time arcs and what we did with our character story arcs, it made 50 Fathoms vibrantly alive.

I'm sure Deadlands: The Flood has some triggers later, but for now it seems more linear. Of course, our own character arcs/backgrounds are so interesting that they have been taking up more screen time than the minor savage tales.  The reason that Perdition becomes a focus is Josephine's hated enemy, Dr, Gunther has a base nearby. Hitoshi wants to take down Kang, so Shan Fan is a great place to be to perhaps forge an alliance with Kang's enemies to try and deal a mortal blow to him. I don't want to go to Shannonsburg because its Confederacy territory (And my Wanted [Major] for desertion is a whopping $6000 CSA dollars), and we have made ourselves unwelcome in Lost Angels due to our own actions. So we have 2 major areas we want to be at and 2 we don't. Which doesn't work quite as well.

Then again we made ourselves unwelcome in the Kieran Empire as well, but we would still roll through their territory with our fleet and just dare them to take us on by the endgame in 50 Fathoms. But that is the thing about hitting legendary in Savage Worlds and gaining a huge reputation, you have that kind of confidence to even go into places you are not wanted. Not a place our group is at yet in Deadlands.

The general best way a PPC can work is by having a game system where the PCs really need the towns for some reason. In 50 Fathoms we needed food, but the real reason was ammunition. Gunpowder and Cannonballs can't be found in the ocean. And for most crews, without an elemental water mage, fresh water becomes a major issue in 50 Fathoms as well.  So these reasons as well as boat repairs drive you to the ports and towns. Plus every 30 days you need a drink (carousing) or start going sea crazy. Another way to force you into those towns and trigger those PPC events and Savage Tales. Deadlands: The Flood wants to work similarly, but so far our scale of need does not come close to what we had in 50 Fathoms where a friendly or even not so friendly port was such a welcome sight. Feeding ourselves and our horse (3 food and water each), feeding ghost rock to Wyn's bike, and our ammo needs just are not as big a deal as trying to feed an entire pirate crew and keep our guns working.

The blimp might be a very good thing, because it may require a lot of ghost rock and change our scale of need. We might need a lot more cash to keep it going. Which means more sidequests, especially ones where ghost rock is the prize.

Quote from: jan paparazzi;736226What´s that Marchland setting about? I can´t find a lot about, except that it might be like Changeling the Dreaming.

Marchland is essentially an urban fantasy setting set in a town in the US. It has a heavy Celtic vibe for the supernatural. PC types are mortals, fae-blooded (includes vampires and shapeshifters), ghosts or mages. So, it can do Changeling the Dreaming, as well as Dresden Files or most of the WoD lines. Its also capable of doing something light or dark depending on taste.

There's a decent "Look Inside" preview on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/dp/0985954310?tag=heartgames-20&camp=14573&creative=327641&linkCode=as1&creativeASIN=0985954310&adid=1D3JNX9ZF60Z0DJ3D072&&ref-refURL=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.hearthstonegames.com%2Fnews%2F

Quote from: Daddy Warpig;737193I read an interview with Shane Hensley where he said that, other than the original Plot Point in 50 Fathoms, none of them have worked as well as he'd hoped.

I haven't had a chance to run or play in one, despite desperately wanting to, so I don't know what he's referring to. Anyone have any idea?

I will make another thread about this. I really like the idea, I just don't have a lot of experience playing them. What I like about it is not necessarily playing them out of the box, but the approach to GM'ing. I was kinda bored with oldschool sandboxing, but I can't really get the hang of WW way of storytelling. It's too railroady and has chokepoints. This seems like the right mix.