Quote from: kryyst;457336That would be true, if bennies weren't also your luck mechanic as well.  It's the same problem many games that have this kind of fate/action point system.  Players are reserved into holding onto them until they really need them and not potentially squander them.  Then they blow the wad near the end of the session because they have them all left.

Well, my players held them in different ways - some of my players would spend about half of their bennies on re-rolls, especially for important ones, and save the other half for soak rolls, where one guy just saved all of his for soak rolls and wouldn't use them for anything else.  But in neither case did they blow them near the end of the session that I can remember, although they did fly pretty heavily during the last session of the campaign.

Theoretically you're supposed to be handing them out during play, but I never quite got into that.

I thought the SW Deadlands material had some nice steampunk style elements. But I didn't like the setting itself a great deal. I have no wish to derail this thread however. But I think that it could be used for an enjoyable game. Not for real gritty Westerns though.

Quote from: jcfiala;457337Theoretically you're supposed to be handing them out during play, but I never quite got into that.

And that's the key.  The system works great if the bennies are flowing.  The more the GM hands out the more the characters are going to use them.  But in several games I've played in (with different GM's) the gm's weren't handing out the bennies so the players saved them for 'in case' moments or only spent them out of necessity.

The flow of bennies will greatly effect how your game feels in Savage Worlds as it will shift the game from more gritty to more heroic.  Which as a simple way of adjusting the pacing of a game is nice and simple.  The issue I've always run across is that of GM'ing styles vs player expectations vs setting expectations.

Again though these are just my hang-ups on SW based on my experiences.  Which ultimately has left me not really liking SW, I find the mechanics don't match the theme.  The exploding die wonkiness combined with the bennies thing just doesn't work for me.

Quote from: kryyst;457327My biggest beefs with Savage Worlds is that for the fast action pace that it tries to set we found that it did still get kind of bogged down in keeping track of all your abilities, this could be mitigated with action cards or even cue cards listing your special stuff.

By abilities, are you referring to stuff like Combat Edges?

QuoteAnother issue we all generally had is that stats and skills aren't really linked.  It's purely an aesthetics thing but there seemed be no connection or reason as to why some things were stat based and others were skilled.

The only link between stats and skills is that a stat lets you raise its linked skills for less points.  So, if you have a low Agility, it will cost more points over the long run to raise your Fighting skill, for instance.  I really, really like this as it fixes a major problem I had with skill-based games, where in order to be a good fighter you had to have both a good Agility/Dexterity/whatever in addition to having a good fighting skill.  In Savage Worlds, if you want to be a good Fighter, you just get your Fighting skill up, that's it.  You can play a Strength-based fighter, for instance, with a sucky-ass Agility; this results in you having to spend more points to raise your Fighting skill, which means you wont have as many points to spend on other skills.

I'm a little confused as to what you mean by "why some things are stat based and others were skilled".  Are you talking about how some actions use the stat, while other actions use a skill?  Or do you mean the requirements for Edges?  Or something else?

QuoteNext on the list was the damage mechanic.  We were fine with the downward spiral effect.  The issue was how quickly it kicked in.  There was no real buffer.  Basically you are ok one minute then the pain starts.

Then there's the mook rules.  Though this could have just been our generally horrible luck.  But we found that the mook rules don't work well at all.  The problem was that mooks die easier, but they still hit just as hard.  So if you are expecting to wade through waves of mooks you are going to get swarmed then dead.   Where as against bosses we (the pc's I mean) generally were doing the outnumbering and clearly had the edge.

Well it should be noted that Extra's are not mooks (as the word is defined in, say, Feng Shui or some FATE games), nor are they introduced as such.  Extras are just normal joe-shmoe characters, the majority of NPC's you encounter in a game.  The PC's are Wild Cards, as are NPC's who have "importance to the story", and as such have better survivability than the joe-shmoes as well as a more weighted chance of success.  So when PC's take Wounds, sure they are getting hit by penalties, but at least they aren't dead like most NPC's would be in their shoes.

QuoteLastly the exploding dice.  Again could have just been our experience.  But essentially what we decided was this.  It's better to constantly be trying the most ridiculous stuff because most roles in combat needed to explode to do any real damage.  So you may as well just always swing for the fences instead of just trying to hit.  Our issue with that is if you always need to swing for the fences, then that becomes the ordinary at which point it just became boring.

I'm not really following you again.  Do you mean that you are better off taking major penalties to attack roles for extra damage?

Quote from: kryyst;457361And that's the key.  The system works great if the bennies are flowing.  The more the GM hands out the more the characters are going to use them.  But in several games I've played in (with different GM's) the gm's weren't handing out the bennies so the players saved them for 'in case' moments or only spent them out of necessity.

The flow of bennies will greatly effect how your game feels in Savage Worlds as it will shift the game from more gritty to more heroic.  Which as a simple way of adjusting the pacing of a game is nice and simple.  The issue I've always run across is that of GM'ing styles vs player expectations vs setting expectations.

Again though these are just my hang-ups on SW based on my experiences.  Which ultimately has left me not really liking SW, I find the mechanics don't match the theme.  The exploding die wonkiness combined with the bennies thing just doesn't work for me.

That's my problem with all such 'player currency' type mechanics like bennies, I never spend them. Ever. I am a very bad judge of when is an opportune time to use them. So I just never use them. Which puts me behind the power curve of other players. This is why I prefer systems that don't use player currency. I do realize that this puts me in the minority. Most people seem to love them. Maybe I am just not fated to be a gambler.

Quote from: kryyst;457336That would be true, if bennies weren't also your luck mechanic as well.  It's the same problem many games that have this kind of fate/action point system.  Players are reserved into holding onto them until they really need them and not potentially squander them.  Then they blow the wad near the end of the session because they have them all left.

This is an issue that has come up a lot on Peginc's forums, which I think a majority of responses from the management was something like "well were you giving the players bennies throughout the game session?"  A lot of people with more experience than I seem to suggest that if you don't want players to hoard bennies then to just "let them flow", as it were, handing them out for simple things like roleplaying a hindrance, making a joke, or shuffling the cards.  And since bennies are spent to retry a roll rather than auto-succeed, players can sink most of their bennies on a single roll, which can counteract your influx of extra bennies.

One houserule that has popped up is having both Luck Bennies and Soak Bennies, which can only be used to soak damage.  You start off with the normal amout of Luck Bennies and a customizable amount of Soak Bennies, depending on how lethal you want the game to be.

Quote from: kryyst;457361And that's the key.  The system works great if the bennies are flowing.  The more the GM hands out the more the characters are going to use them.  But in several games I've played in (with different GM's) the gm's weren't handing out the bennies so the players saved them for 'in case' moments or only spent them out of necessity.

The flow of bennies will greatly effect how your game feels in Savage Worlds as it will shift the game from more gritty to more heroic.  Which as a simple way of adjusting the pacing of a game is nice and simple.  The issue I've always run across is that of GM'ing styles vs player expectations vs setting expectations.

Again though these are just my hang-ups on SW based on my experiences.  Which ultimately has left me not really liking SW, I find the mechanics don't match the theme.  The exploding die wonkiness combined with the bennies thing just doesn't work for me.

I like the fact that beenie flow can affect the grittiness (as can the additional gritty combat options.
Player versus GM expectations are key though. You need to set this up front. So if I was playing say a Hellboy syle Weird world war game with SW (a perfect match by the way) I would hand out beenies often and make that obvious to the players. If i were playing a standard Dirty Dozen WW2 squad game (which you can also do with SW though not such a good fit) then I woudl restrict beenies and make that obvious.

Personally, I think a good judge of 'Is SW a suitable system?' is who would direct the movie. So a Roberto Rodrigues or Quentin Tarrintino Western use SW a John Houston or Clint Eastward Western use something else (personally I would use Boot Hill ...)

My apologies if I run over the top of anything that's been said here.

I'm a loooong time Deadlands fan, and a huge Savage Worlds fan for the last couple of years. It's my favorite in-print system, and Deadlands is probably my favorite setting (because I don't get all hung up on the political correctness or so on and so forth).

Maps and minis are not required, but damned if I can remember what the "inches" scale actually breaks down to at the moment...an inch = 5 ft game distance, I think?

Starting characters are pretty competent, but if you restrict the Fate Chip flow, the game can get UGLY fast (your mileage my vary over whether or not this is a good thing).

I used to HATEHATEHATE maps and minis until I played Savage Worlds and found that they actually made the game run faster...while I try to have stuff prepared in advance, I keep a blank grid map and a dry erase marker handy for those impromptu moments.

In the initial Deadlands Reloaded release, a chunk of the "flavor" (especially for each "class") got stripped out...when Matthew Cutter took over as line developer, he started adding some of that stuff back in, trying to balance the "flavor" aspect with the "Fast! Furious! Fun!" aspect.

I haven't personally witnessed a huge imbalance in Edges/Hindrances, although some Hindrances do have mechanical effects while others are mostly role-play effects. On the surface, it sounds like this may hamstring someone who takes the former while another PC has the latter (and then doesn't roleplay them)...if you're faced with that situation, just make it a point to give the first guy a chip every time his Hindrance comes up while the second guy's chips get bled out...he'll learn.

The original Deadlands actively punished Big Damn Heroism since character advancement came from converting left over Fate Chips into Bounty Points (I suffered first hand as a player, burning through my chips being the "front line" for the group, while our sniper advanced rapidly)...this is utterly and completely gone in Reloaded. But again, if you feel like it's not gritty enough, restrict the Fate Chip flow...if that still doesn't work, download the free Crime City supplement from Pinnacle's website and apply their gritty combat rules.

I don't begrudge anyone who has stuck with the old system, it's still pretty damn great and I would play it in a heartbeat (and strongly consider running it if someone insisted), but the ease of GMing Savage Worlds will have me defaulting to that every time.

Quote from: Tommy Brownell;457403Maps and minis are not required, but damned if I can remember what the "inches" scale actually breaks down to at the moment...an inch = 5 ft game distance, I think?

1" approximately equals 2 yards, or six feet.  The reasoning I think they give is that makes the scale equal to an average person's height, i.e., between 5 and 6 feet.

Anyone played or run the Pirates of the Spanish Main SW? Its been gathering dust on my shelf for years. Been looking for an opportunity to run it. Anyone have insight on how well it plays?

About Fate Chips / Bennies: Of course, I'll try to remember giving them out, but at least when we start playing, I'll probably have enough trouble keeping all the basic rules straight in my head. Therefore, I'll encourage my players to tell me when they think they or their fellow players have earned a Fate Chip. I hope this'll also have the side effect of encouraging stunts and general cinematic shenanigans.

Wound penalties / downward spiral: I'll at least try running the game as written first before I start thinking about house rules. However, isn't it trivially easy to just ignore the Shaken penalties or add one or more "+/-0 wound levels"?

Quote from: Todtsteltzer;457523Wound penalties / downward spiral: I'll at least try running the game as written first before I start thinking about house rules. However, isn't it trivially easy to just ignore the Shaken penalties or add one or more "+/-0 wound levels"?

Shaken is a rather important mechanic to the game, so I wouldn't recommend ignoring it.  I have heard people adding more wound levels, but that has the boring side-affect of stretching combat out longer than it needs to be, especially with high-Toughness characters.  One house-rule people have is to just remove the wound penalties altogether; I think the game is able to handle that just fine, but I would also recommend you rework the Incapacitation table a little or people might never go down (see the the Raise entry on the Incapacitation table for what I mean).

If you need help understanding Shaken better, please feel free to PM me with questions.

I've heard of some people replacing the Shaken's "can't perform any action except half move" with "can act, but all actions receive a -2 penalty".  If you go with this method, I would highly recommend that the -2 penalty does not affect free actions, otherwise the Spirit roll to recover from Shaken would also get hit by the penalty, making people stay Shaken for longer.

Quote from: islan;457531If you need help understanding Shaken better, please feel free to PM me with questions.

Thanks, but I do understand! I'm at work and don't have my books with me (of course), so I was basically just talking out of my ass.

As I said, I'll run the game as written at first and introduce house rules at a later date should we ever need them. Also, the Shaken / wound mechanic didn't bother me personally - this was just in response to another poster here!

Quote from: Todtsteltzer;457539Thanks, but I do understand! I'm at work and don't have my books with me (of course), so I was basically just talking out of my ass.

As I said, I'll run the game as written at first and introduce house rules at a later date should we ever need them. Also, the Shaken / wound mechanic didn't bother me personally - this was just in response to another poster here!

My only problem with the RAW combat rules to be honest is that there is no attack of opportunity option. So if you are playing with minis characters can run across your field of fire there is no base rule to target them. This is a side effect of the movement system running in full movement in initiaitive order.
I did work out a tactical movement optional system for use in combats where in close

Quote from: jibbajibba;457541My only problem with the RAW combat rules to be honest is that there is no attack of opportunity option. So if you are playing with minis characters can run across your field of fire there is no base rule to target them. This is a side effect of the movement system running in full movement in initiaitive order.
I did work out a tactical movement optional system for use in combats where in close

In SavW you get a free attack on someone when they Withdraw From Combat, so long as they were adjacent to you.  If you are referring to "not being able to shoot at someone as they run from cover to cover", that's what the Hold rules are for.  I personally hate AoO's as they are described in D&D 3e, but that's all up to personal taste.