Alright Veeky Forums, I'm working on a homebrew dieselpunk fantasy weird war campaign, but I haven't settled on a system.
My friend suggested Mutants and Masterminds, and it could work, but I think this system might work better.
Also, is Savage Worlds even worth paying 30+ dollars for for the corebook and the supplements I'm interested in?
Oh, and if neither is good for it, some suggestions would be appreciated.
in b4 >paying for books
I prefer SW if for nothing else because it's simpler and faster. Grab some fan supplements(Savage Armory and one for spells).
Mutants and Masterminds would have a lot for a little. You could use it but I wouldn't unless you are really familiar.
Savage Worlds is a really good system and you might be able to get away with just using the free rules they have online.
At the end of the day you either want to use a system that is designed to be generic, or one that you are so familiar with you can manipulate easily for your purposes.
If I could find the damn things free, I'd just take them. I dislike pirating things as well (not the idea mind you, I'm just too lazy). Savage Armoury sounds good though.
I personally am not familiar with MaM at all, the friend who suggested it is currently running a campaign with it. I'm real iffy desu.
Originally I had planned to use GURPS, but literally everyone but me disliked it, and my group has a really nasty habit of drawing out combat ridiculously slowly, which bogs down GURPS horrendously.
SW is good, worth spending the time hunting a few PDFs down.
If you expect a lot of combat, Strike! could work. It's kinda mediocre at other stuff though.
Yeah do Savage Worlds and fuck Mutants and Masterminds. You would spend more time sifting through the book to create stuff than actually running the game.
I'm hoping it'll go more like a cross between Star Trek, Wolfenstein, and DnD.
I also just really like generic systems, since I tend to really hate premade worlds.
SW seems fitting then. At least, that's kinda how I imagine what you describe.
If you are interested and the topic is still around, I'll have time to shill Strike! in about... 3-4 hours.
Mutants and Masterminds is a broken piece of shit of a system, built on top of a broken piece of shit of a system. Avoid at all costs.
Savage Worlds is acceptable if what you want to do aligns with the general outlines of the system. Meaning, if you mostly want a rules-medium, pulpy and whacky game, then the system will work well enough for you. Be aware that dice can and will explode, that starting characters are incompetent at everything unless heavily specialized so you might want to give out more points at character creation, and that people can spontaneously explode in combat.
> that starting characters are incompetent at everything unless heavily specialized
What? No, not at all
My group has a metric fuckton of experience with WoD, so exploding dice are actually somewhat welcome. I was also intending on giving the players a bit of a boost to start anyway, because there's nothing worse than being unable to do anything because of your stats when you logically should be able to.
I'm also not retarded, so unless there's a very good reason why a player's character just spontaneously combusted, I can think of something else to explain away whatever just happened.
Wild Talents would work well.
WoD would actually work very well unless you are jonesin to try a new system.
I don't want to have to rework any more than I have to. This is only part of a larger project, and the less time I spend on it the better. That and WoD abilities won't mesh well with the setting.
mk I dig.
Yeah I'd say Savage Worlds.
OP here, just spoke with the aforementioned MaM friend. Turns out he actually greatly dislikes SW, apparently from experience. He doesn't like how rules light it is, and he also thinks the abilities suck. Any comments on that?
To repeat my earlier point: MaM is a broken piece of shit system and Savage Worlds is rules medium, not rules light. It's just less of a broken piece of shit than MaM.
Also, abilities? As in, the skills? Like, Knowledge, Medicine, that kind of stuff? Or what is he talking about?
Like spells. His specific complaint is that they're too generic, basic shit like fireball and the like. He also claims that the lack of rules and unflexibility of the abilities (same meaning) isn't fun. I'm not so sure though, I think with a few tweaks it would be just fine.
Besides, since we only have one real minmaxer in the party, I feel like the lack of extensive rules is actually a boon.
In the base book there are only spells, no other abilities or stuff. Them being generic and simple is kinda the whole point. A "Shoot Stuff at Dudes"-Spell does just that, and if you want to add some additional flavor, you get to slap effects like "Fire" on top of it.
There are more than enough rules for everything, really. Skills, Social, Combat and if you want it shit like Chases, Armies, Vehicles... I legitimately don't know what your friend is on about, unless he specifically enjoys MaM because it's so easy to completely obliterate. You can build an immortal, undefeatable character with absolute minimum of character creation points, for fuck's sake.
To be honest, I think he's just overly biased due to bad experience with a crappy GM.
Yeah unless he wants to go full asshole about it you guys are fine.
And if he wants to go full asshole at least you know that he's not someone you want to play with.
Hm... Alright.
Well, I appreciate the help guys. If anyone's still here, feel free to turn this into a SW general thread or something. Or not. Have a good one!
Savage Worlds is definitely what you are looking for. It has fast tactical combat and an emphasis in pulp. I agree with your sentiments on premade settings. I like to brew my own settings, and as a result like to have systems that are generic and extremely customizable as a result.
Corebook's only ten bucks.
Which supplements do you have your eye on?
Oh, uh, the Weird War ones. I was thinking about snagging the supps for ww1 and ww2, then the ww1 civilians npc book
Tweaking spells and stuff is part of the rules, called Trappings. While the core book doesn't do an amazing ability as describing how to apply trappings if you get the Savage Spellbook he compiled a large amount of spells using various trappings and has authors notes for each one.
To take this in a generic SW general direction:
Are there any setting-books for a Romance of the Three Kingdoms or Warring States China period?
Or should that just be core with maybe a few changes to rename weapons and other little things?
Their weirdness is pretty much just supernatural horror, so if you're expecting a more fantasy-geared approach you can expect disappointment from both.
The corebook has stats for several common WWII weapons already there (and they're more lethal than in Weird War II), so your mileage may vary.
It is a damn good setting by itself if you want to do Wolfenstein-esque Nazi-bashing shenanigans, though, and mixing Achtung Cthulhu with it is entirely possible.
I love you for that pdf. That is probably the very most helpful thing in this thread to me, and there are lots of helpful things here.
Mostly I just wanted it for any strange abilities and/or interesting things that I didn't think of.
>paying 30+ dollars
Dude, buy the little softcover edition for $10. Totally worth it.
Then get Savage Rifts.
I believe there is one on DrivethruRPG somewhere, although I'm buggered if I can remember the name.
Ultimate Three Kingdoms Guide? Never actually looked at it myself though, so no idea on quality.
drivethrurpg.com
Can't speak for Weird War I, but there really isn't a lot you can't get out of, say, the Horror Companion. The varying arcane background edges are largely just adjustments to what's in the core book (with the exception of Haunted), and the Horror Companion actually allows you to leech power out of your kills unlike Weird War II's faith powers/psionics.
I wasn't particularly interested in the Horror supp anyway.
That's a shame, it's one of the few supplements I recommend even to those who aren't big on the genre. You might be better served with the Sci-Fi one, has a very flexible vehicle construction system.
You know, if anyone happened to have the SW Deluxe pdf onhand and was willing to share it...
You got 2 options here
One is my mega repo @ mega.nz
The other is this link for just SWD.
uploadmb.com
Bonus: This link probably has *slightly* (likely tiny) better bookmarks than the one in my mega as I continuously fiddle with them as I read and re-read the PDF, and I haven't updated my mega in quite a while.
I'm gonna try the first one, but if it doesn't work, I'mma try the second. I appreciate it for sure.
Hey, thanks. Have a hot broad.
Mega isn't decypting for me.
Try a different browser? Is it just getting stuck at "decrypting folder data" or something?
Not really sure, user. There's a lot there so maybe it takes some time, but I don't know.
Yeah it is, OP here. It's doing the same thing.
Yeah I (the guy who posted the link) just tried opening it myself in google chrome and it just decrypts forever too.
That's weird - I've had this link online for months and google chrome used to work fine.
It's working on Firefox for me...and then oddly enough works in chrome if I sign on to my secondary account.
I have no idea what to do beyond suggest you try it in firefox or failing that, register for an account. Mailinator works for a throwaway email last I checked. I can't really upload all my files anywhere else.
You may have posted the private personal link rather than the public-access link.
It's the same one I've been using in PDF share threads for the past like 8months or so
But I clicked "get link" just to double check and oddly enough it's a different one now
mega.nz
Try this, then. I wonder if mega changed something.
Yeah that one worked. Weird.
also, holy shit, there's all kinds of fucking treasure in here
That was it. New link works, thanks. Mega may be intentionally altering links to prevent long-term piracy. It's not an API after all.
>5 zillion SW supplements
So which ones are good? Which are essential?
>The other is this link for just SWD.
>uploadmb.com
This looks different to the small digest-size deluxe explorer's book I own (in hardcopy). Do you know which one is newer and what the differences might be?
The "Supplements" in that folder are generic expansions made for SW, namely Fantasy, Horror, Super Powers, and Science Fiction.
The Fantasy one is a bit outdated - they have some second printing I don't have.
Horror adds sanity, rituals, vampires, werewolves, etc... Sci-fi adds cyberware, space ships, mecha etc, fantasy adds bards, knight-type stuff, and a bunch of magic treasure tables, super powers changes the game so everybody is a superhero of varying ability.
Interludes I'm not even sure what it has because SWD has interludes in the core book- it might be for older SW games. I haven't looked at it, really.
Modern Martial Arts is just some stuff Clint Black (the SW community manager or something on the forums) made, if you want to get more martial-arts stuff than just "Martial Artist" and "Improved Martial Artist." Let's you make cooler unarmed fighters if you're into that.
The Fan stuff is mostly just Zadmar, which is some fan that makes a bunch of stuff and has a bunch of maths balancing and he's cool, but not required at all.
None of them are really necessary, they're just made to add more rules for specific games.
All of the setting books are just setting+rule books people made for specific settings eg victorian-era monster hunting like you're Van Helsing (that'd be Rippers & Rippers Resurrected) or fantasy caribbean pirates where the world has been flooded (50 Fathoms)
I tend to just use SWD core plus a setting book if I'm playing a game, really.
OK, thanks.
SWD explorer's is literally just SWD but physically smaller in size, I believe.
They kind of had shitty naming for a while, as I think the order goes
Savage Worlds in 03 - original release
SW Explorers ("SWEX") in 07 - updates some stuff, incorporates changes that Deadlands Reloaded made (eg melee damage is str+die not str+flat number)
SW Deluxe ("SWD") in '11 - Updates SWEX with I don't know what specifically. Chase rule changes? Guts skill removal? Incapacitation rule changes (more deadly) other stuff too probably
SWD Explorer's in '12 - As far as I know, this is just SWD in smaller format. The PDF I have has the cover say "Savage Worlds Deluxe Explorer Edition", so it'll still be marked as Deluxe.
I have that last one, so I should be good, thanks.
>If I could find the damn things free, I'd just take them.
Having a physical copy is generally nicer (and it's good to support games that you like), but there's no sense paying for something before you've even had a chance to at least look it over in some detail. Anyway, for all I know, it was you asking for it over there, but there's a link to Savage Worlds stuff in the pdf thread: .
Agreed. And I'd like to have physical copies. But man, sometimes people are just too poor for shit... Thanks for the pdf though. I'll be heading off after this post, so once again, if ya'll want to turn this into a general thread for realsies now, go for it.
OP, signing off.
Physical copies are great, we found a local place selling the deluxe explorers edition for $9 CAD and just ended up buying 5 copies for the table. The companions are not as great of a deal, like 1/3rd the pages for double the price, but the Sci-FI and Heroes 2nd ed companions are awesome.