Heard anything about it?

This popped on my radar literally yesterday.

So I'm digging into it. I know of it only tangentially from the Basic Fantasy side of things, so apparently it's been converted to SWADE. I'm diving into it right now. I'll report back with my thoughts.

On the side - I just got my SWADE Fantasy Companion, and I've already been using the alpha-copies in my SWADE Forgotten Realms (Graybox) conversion campaign, and it was awesome.

It more than proved my assertion that Savage World can do D&D Fantasy better than D&D can. Anecdotally, I've run some games for 5e superfans and gaming noobs locally and online (friends of family - of a variety of ages) and they all pretty much were floored on how easy it was to play and absorb. Character generation and control is massively more flexible.

So, on the surface, without having looked at this product, I'm interested in it simply because what SWADE Fantasy needs right now are SETTINGS made by dedicated people that want to pour their heart and soul into a well crafted world. The mechanics of SWADE can be bent and twisted to make it happen with ease. So lemme dig deeper and hopefully these guys have made a real gem.

(and yes I'm working on my SWADE Fantasy setting for publication - so I'm always interested in other people's stuff in this arena!)

Strangely, there is little discussion on the official Discord...

But there is a TON of material from the Basic Roleplaying edition they can convert. So it looks very promising in that regard.

Cursory look at the Basic Roleplaying edition material - it's a pretty vanilla. It seems knitted together by many writers doing adventures for it. That's not a big draw for me, but that's not necessarily a bad thing given that there so much of it. I can't speak to the quality of the material but I'm still digging. Thus far, nothing is really jumping out at me other than this appears to be a kitchen-sink setting comprised of adventures written by a lot of authors.

Tenbones, there's a setting/20 part adventure coming out next week : https://forum.rpg.net/index.php?threads/recommend-pre-made-campaigns-for-systems-other-than-d-d-or-pathfinder.912868/page-3#post-24912468

The author later in the thread states that the only old school thingie he's not doing, is loot, loot, loot. Doesn't work in SW. Now, I'm curious - I myself find the loot gathering so intricstic to old D&D hard in SW - the numbers simply matter too much. Since you say SW does D&D better than D&D, I'd like to hear how you handle magic treasure - especially magic items like weapons and armor?

Couple of things...

I mostly do sandbox play. While I have nothing against AP's/Modules, in the rare cases I use them, I almost always disassemble them to fit my sandboxes and recontextualize them for my own use.

Since I run sandboxes, my campaigns have to represent the world for long-term use. This doesn't mean my player's characters do not accrue lots of magic items as in standard old school D&D... but it has to be in the manner the setting supports. So magic items even in my D&D games while plentiful, are always contextual. My campaigns are slow but meaningful progression (in D&D).

In SWADE - like my D&D games, I keep magic rare but powerful as a general rule. Mages aren't just walking around without a good reason. There are no friendly neighborhood "Ye Olde Magic Shoppes" - generally. But when you do find such a place, it's going to be a big deal with a lot of particulars about dealing with them. Arcane casters I treat as a fraternal thing where those who practice the Art tend to keep their secrets, and therefore most spellcasters (NPC's and PC's alike) have pedigrees. Hedge Mages exist - and they have entirely different social issues to deal with, especially with other spelltossers.

SWADE magic items ironically fit my long-form campaigns very well. Because they tend to be more effects-based than a simple number. A bonus +1 in SWADE is the mathematical equivalent to a +4 in D&D. So you don't have to toss out +2 swords, or even a +1 (to hit) sword is a major deal. But you can give them bonuses to Armor Penetration, Damage, or even more powerful effects likes Powers and Edges.

Ultimately you can make them more robust and powerful than even venerable +1-3 weapons and armor in D&D and most of the cool classics like Flame Tongues, Defenders, Vorpal Weapons, Holy Avengers, etc. are already mocked up in the Savage Worlds Pathfinder and Fantasy Companion books.

What a lot of people don't realize, just like in D&D is that too many magic items without solid context in their games can ruin the campaign. But that's a GMing thing that one has to learn through experience. SWADE has a bazillion options, including random tables for generating all the magic items you want. They have simple and solid systems for creating magic items, including one-shot items. Further - all the SWADE non-Fantasy products, are perfectly compatible so you can mine those for all their worth. If you want some black-powder weapons more than in the SWADE Core Rules, you can take gear from Deadlands (as well as monsters, and magic items!) If you want more high-powered fantasy/sci-fi, you can take entire rule-subsystems from SWADE Rifts and *super-charge* your campaigns for that BECMI scale that operates faster, cleaner and with less headache, all under the same chassis with minimal effort.

SWADE scales from low-magic normies to god-mode fantastically better than D20. What people have to learn how to do is to GM to that broad scope fearlessly, and the SWADE toolkit with a solid setting, is a hard-to-beat option.

Good input. Thanks.

When is the print version of the Fantasy Companion supposed to be released?

Quote from: Rhymer88 on August 22, 2023, 04:36:52 AM
When is the print version of the Fantasy Companion supposed to be released?

I got mine a couple of weeks. It's excellent. And contrary to what others might say, if you have Savage Pathfinder, they complement one another. Effectively Savage Pathfinder has Class Edges (if you really want to simulate classes) but the Fantasy Companion has them broken down into discrete Edges so you can customize your character as you go.

There is a *little* cross printing, but they very much went out of their way to minimize it. Including a pretty robust Besitary in the back that complements the Savage Pathfinder Bestiary.

As for when it will be on their store? I think for the non-backers you can pre-order it https://peginc.com/product/fantasy-companion-swade/, last I heard (and this is just what I remember so don't hold me to it) those pre-orders should arrive around December? Someone correct me if I'm wrong. Meanwhile, you'd get the latest PDF immediately.