Not a lot to add here.

It's a game of larger-than-life heroes kicking ass.

Because they're larger than life (Wild Cards, with bennies), they are significantly more competent than the masses (Extras), thanks to the Wild Die; and they can shrug off wounds that can kill or cripple lesser men, by spending bennies for a soak.

Even the wonky exploding dice system, which tends to favor lower skills (e.g. someone with 1d4 on a skill has a 25% probability of acing, not accounting for the Wild Die because I suck at Bayesian stats; as opposed to less than 10% for someone with 1d12) is kind of in-genre, with unskilled characters either failing miserably or extraordinarily lucking it out. Gimmicky but fun.

Card-based initiative is more fun that it has a right to be. Just wait until someone gets a Joker and you'll see what I mean.

Supports miniatures if you're into them, but I've never used them and had no problem.

My gripe with the system is that combat feels harmless at times, unless you're throwing hordes of Extras and/or a band of Wild Cards at them. It's not really the sort of game in which a random goblin with a knife can get the drop on Hruthgar The Mighty, Barbarian Warlord of the Cold Waste and kill him with a lucky stab to the vitals (then again, neither is D&D after a certain level). Certain pulp tropes, like surrendering to armed foes who get the drop on you, make no sense because PCs have a decent chance of taking on a gunman heads-on, even if unarmed, and winning, even if the gunman is a Wild Card.

Also, Powers are a bit bland and you should play fast and loose with them; make up new ones, reskin existing ones, imagine the hell out of it. Or use the Super Powers system (Necessary Evil and/or Super Powers Companion) which is kick-ass for a certain kind of game (mystery men are a breeze, X-Men or Titans easy enough, Avengers is a bit tricky, Justice League would be a pain).

I had a pretty good run with SW, which used to be my go-to system until fairly recently. I still think it's a great design, just not what I'm looking for these days. But I heartily recommend for its fun gimmicks, minimally demanding prep and book-keeping, fast yet customizable character generation, cheap and portable core rulebook and abundant support both in-house and third party. Both groups I game with loved it.

And if you're going to pick up one setting, it's The Day After Ragnarok. Seriously. This is so cool everyone should be playing it. There's also a Hero System version, and I think a Wild Talents version is in the works, though it should be a breeze to convert it to anything else like Two-Fisted Tales, Unisystem, GURPS or even TSR-era D&D.

Our first foray into SW was an all around thumbs-down. It seemed that in combat we were either shaken (and useless) or spending bennies to be unshaken. It was frustrating that round after round several players just couldn't do anything.

That was our try-out session. Deciding to give it another go, we house ruled most of the shaken rules into oblivion, then it was much more fun.

Quote from: Caesar Slaad;579643I totally get why it's a thing. Yes, edges and hindrances do help differentiate a character. But skills matter less than they should, because of a) the wild die and b)modifiers.
 
Savage Worlds loves using -2 as a modifier. And if you stack just to modifiers, that's a whopping -4. If you consider for a second that most skills are going to be d6 or d8, that's huge.
 
The net effect is that when things get rough in the game, you are relying more on dice exploding (and spending bennies to reroll so you can try to get them to explode) than you are your skill. I understand the excitement of amazing rolls, but I think SW is geared a bit too much to rely on the amazing success than the skills of the characters.

I agree there's some truth in both of these things (what I've quoted here and your comments on Shaken, which I'll agree can be annoying).
A character with d6 or d8 skill attempting a TN 8 task is going to be relying on Aceing/rolling up to succeed, and the penalties are a bit harsh.
 
I don't agree with the 'most of time its d6 or d8' though. I expect every character is going to have a few skills that are completely untrained (d4-2, and the -2 applies to the wild dice as well which is bad) and perhaps one or two that are cranked up past the attribute level or boosted by an Edge - in my last group (doing Realms of Cthulhu) we had the detective with assorted investigation skills (and an Edge giving him a +2 on that), the scholarly lady with d10 Smarts and Jack of All Trades (who was completely untrained in Fighting), and my 'Face' character with a Persuade of d10+4 (Attractive, Charismatic), although everything else on him was between d4-d8.
 
I suppose there are some incentives to spreading your points around more evenly, but its not mandatory. Possible a game which is heavily focussed on fighting everyone will make that their focus area and end up more the same.

Quote from: The Butcher;579656Even the wonky exploding dice system, which tends to favor lower skills (e.g. someone with 1d4 on a skill has a 25% probability of acing, not accounting for the Wild Die because I suck at Bayesian stats; as opposed to less than 10% for someone with 1d12) is kind of in-genre, with unskilled characters either failing miserably or extraordinarily lucking it out. Gimmicky but fun.
.

Remember though its not how many times you explode the die its the total number you get to. On that basis the maths seems to show that d4's don't beat D6's or d8s

Like I said 6.25% of getting a 9 on a d4 but 11.11% of getting a 9 or better on a d6 and 12.5% (double a d4) of getting a 9 or better on a d8.

The numbers do get odd but not quite as odd as you think.

Quote from: jibbajibba;579702Remember though its not how many times you explode the die its the total number you get to. On that basis the maths seems to show that d4's don't beat D6's or d8s

Yeah, this particular chestnut's been rehashed to death.  People get knotted up about acing and miss the fact that it's completely irrelevant to the actual pass/fail test.

Quote from: jibbajibba;579702Remember though its not how many times you explode the die its the total number you get to. On that basis the maths seems to show that d4's don't beat D6's or d8s

Like I said 6.25% of getting a 9 on a d4 but 11.11% of getting a 9 or better on a d6 and 12.5% (double a d4) of getting a 9 or better on a d8.

The numbers do get odd but not quite as odd as you think.

If you go back and re-read that sentence you quoted, you'll notice that I never said that smaller dice succeed more often.

They do explode (ace, in SW terms) more often.

Which means that less skilled PCs do fail more often than skilled ones, but when they succeed, they tend to ace, leading to the d4 Fighting guy punching out someone twice his size, or such. Which makes the game wilder and zanier, which can be fun at times. That was my point.

But yeah, "low skill succeeds more often in SW" is a common line of argument, which happens to be bullshit. I'm well acquainted with the SW probability curves, and I'll provide a link when I have the time.

Savage Worlds has a pretty simple task resolution system that seems (as far as I can tell) to have been streamlined with the newest edition.

The only worlds for it that I'm familiar with at all are Sundered Skies, Necessary Evil, and Weird War 2. I also played in a homebrewed setting created by Sean Patrick Fannon at a con once. That game session made me dismiss the entire game for a few years (didn't care for the referee/gm's style). Anyway, I'm unfamiliar with the games you listed.

Settings all have their own additions and subtractions from the main rules, however, all the ones I've looked at have very minimal changes. Usually just additional Edges and Hindrances and races that make sense for that setting.

Overall, I enjoy it. Once you get used to the rules, it moves along pretty quickly, but it can be pretty deadly too. I, and everyone I play with, constantly forget to use our bennies. It's the first RPG I ever played using miniatures, and I think they are mostly necessary for the combat portions. I've never really felt that way about any other game other than 4th ed. DnD.

However, I think it is far less (needlessly) complicated than 4th ed. And a hell of a lot more fun to play.

Also, I've been making a Savage Worlds Macross setting, off and on for a while now.

Quote from: daniel_ream;579725Yeah, this particular chestnut's been rehashed to death.  People get knotted up about acing and miss the fact that it's completely irrelevant to the actual pass/fail test.

The one corner case where it matters is where you have a target number (e.g. parry) of 6. You actually have a better chance of rolling a 6+ on an exploding d4 than a d6. The expected value of the d6 is still higher.

Quote from: Tommy Brownell;579535I use minis, but lots of folks have ran the game happily without them. I find I actually enjoy using minis in SW (I used to HATE them).

I do hate Power Points. Tracking Power Points (which are not used in Solomon Kane and a few other settings) just feels out of place with how everything else seems to work.

I used to hate mini's too, didn't like 'em until Savage Worlds.

Do you think that the system used for ammo could be used to substitute for Power Points?

Quote from: Caesar Slaad;579744The one corner case where it matters is where you have a target number (e.g. parry) of 6. You actually have a better chance of rolling a 6+ on an exploding d4 than a d6.

By a whopping 3%, yes.

Seriously, this is "OMG BOTCHES GO UP WITH INCREASING DICE POOLS" all over again.

Quote from: daniel_ream;579749By a whopping 3%, yes.

Seriously, this is "OMG BOTCHES GO UP WITH INCREASING DICE POOLS" all over again.

Hey dude, I admitted it was a corner case and not really part of what I am concerned about, but I don't think you advance your case by:
1) Saying it's just 3%, where even 0% (i.e., exact same chance) would be a problem,
2) Comparing it to a seriously craptastic design decision in Storyteller which really makes this little hiccup pale by comparison.

Quote from: Caesar Slaad;5797991) Saying it's just 3%, where even 0% (i.e., exact same chance) would be a problem,

I disagree that it's a problem, in that it simply isn't going to make the slightest bit of difference at a real gaming table.  By comparison to the real problem of "can we get everybody together on the same night more often than once a fiscal quarter", no.

Quote2) Comparing it to a seriously craptastic design decision in Storyteller which really makes this little hiccup pale by comparison.

Where for one specific target number and dice pool combination, the chance of botching goes up a whopping ten percentage points. OMG TEH SKY IZ FALLNG

This is all very informative, thanks. I don't really have a problem with the decreasing chance of exploding dice with increasing stat levels.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;579653(...)The skills are somewhat broad and there are not too many, but that hasnt been an issue for our group at all (if you like having lots of skills like you have in GURPS, this may not be the best game for you).

For pulpy, cinematic or comicky games a small number of broad skills seems appropriate most of the time. Cinematic Unisystem, BoL and 2FT also have it.

For Call of Cthulhu it wouldn't be so fitting, at least IMHO.

Quote from: The Butcher;579656(...) My gripe with the system is that combat feels harmless at times, unless you're throwing hordes of Extras and/or a band of Wild Cards at them. (...) Certain pulp tropes, like surrendering to armed foes who get the drop on you, make no sense because PCs have a decent chance of taking on a gunman heads-on, even if unarmed, and winning, even if the gunman is a Wild Card.

This could be a problem, once the players realize they're virtually invincible they might always go for the full-on confrontation instead of choosing a more sneaky or subtle approach.

Quote from: The Butcher;579656I had a pretty good run with SW, which used to be my go-to system until fairly recently. I still think it's a great design, just not what I'm looking for these days. But I heartily recommend for its fun gimmicks, minimally demanding prep and book-keeping, fast yet customizable character generation, cheap and portable core rulebook and abundant support both in-house and third party. Both groups I game with loved it.

I'm pretty much convinced by now that I'll at least pick up the corebook Explorer's edition.

Quote from: The Butcher;579656And if you're going to pick up one setting, it's The Day After Ragnarok. Seriously. This is so cool everyone should be playing it.

Hm, I did read into this but for some reason it doesn't particularly appeal to me.

Quote from: languagegeek;579662Our first foray into SW was an all around thumbs-down. It seemed that in combat we were either shaken (and useless) or spending bennies to be unshaken. It was frustrating that round after round several players just couldn't do anything.

That was our try-out session. Deciding to give it another go, we house ruled most of the shaken rules into oblivion, then it was much more fun.

A couple of people have mentioned something along these lines so far. I'll have to see how it turns out for my group. If it bothers us I'll get back to you about your house rulings.

Quote from: everloss;579745I used to hate mini's too, didn't like 'em until Savage Worlds.

Do you think that the system used for ammo could be used to substitute for Power Points?

...I may have to try that out.