Savage Worlds General?

What does Veeky Forums think of Savage Worlds? I see it mentioned a lot but haven't seen too many threads about it. I've been reading through it and it seems like really flexible and fun system.

Anyone care to discuss? What are some of its weaknesses.

Its not the best for simulation style play, and the skill system is less crunch and more designed to feel cinematic.

It also has a hard time running really long term campaigns but does well for short to mid range in length games.

I think it has potential as a system all around, being both lighter than many other options, yet never descending into wishy-washy narrativist territory. I'm not sure what its weaknesses are.

I'm currently designing a fantasy setting for it centered around an industrial empire in a very post-apocalyptic earth. It's vaguely influenced by Wizards and Adventure Time. Though not really borrowing any of the zaniness of the latter.

How's Rippers? Seems interesting.

The latter can be a strength in the right group.

bump?

What do you consider a long term campaign?

>What are some of us weakness

Character creation to be a bit fiddly. It's quite simple by my standards but does the occasional oddly detail rule here in there that will throw place off.

skills default to d4-2, your ability stats only affect a skill point cost, so there's some front ended number crunching to do.

Guns are over powered. They do more damage than being melee and only need target number 4 to hit. Realistic but annoying.

'Aceing' means damage can explode. This applies to both the player and enemies.

Bennys end up becoming defacto Hit points. Because of said unpredictable damage.

Aceing allso favours the 'worse' die. A d4 is more likely to ace then a d10. You're still an average better rolling the D10 but for the lower numbers it makes a noticeable difference.

Constantly re-rolling dice because the ace takes time. Meaning combat won't actually that much less time compared to a lot of systems. It's simple it but not actually much quicker

I love the setting but have never gotten anyone else to play it

About a year once a week play, or every other week.

Don't like the XCOM feel of the game where you are get to shove various supernatural appendages into your body for strong traits.
Too horrific for me.

>only need target number 4 to hit
by default yes, but penalties tend to quickly ramp up for ranged combat: -2/-4 for medium/long range, -2/-4/-6 for target being prone or in light/medium/full cover, and -2/-4/-6 for dim/dark/total darkness

fuck's sake, why do people keep forgetting this

What?
You don't Mutare ad Custodiam?

Honestly I think that there are better generic systems out there, but Savage Worlds gives you some great tools to use right out of the box and on top of that it works really really well with minis.

You a GURPS man, I take it?

I kind of like it, particularly the weird war setting. the problem is it's easy to get a high toughness which makes it so anything that can harm your character would tear the rest of the party apart.

Honestly fuck MECS, they're OP as shit and boring as fuck, it's a minmaxers dream.

Character creation is way too open for new people especially if you introduce multiple companions. There is also an optimal way of distributing your skill points that is pretty jank. Buying skills early especially at a d4 is objectively better than training in a new skill later on.

Just to combat this guy's point on guns. You should never have less than a target number of 5 to be hit assuming a flat open field with 0 cover. Crouching. It's literally a free action. Brings being shot inline with attacking someone with a fighting of d6, system average.

Acing is also significantly less common than he leads on with absurd rerolls being. well absurdly uncommon.

can you elaborate on your qualms with character creation. It seemed pretty basic to me. But my group and I have been around the block, playing D&D 5E, Shadowrun, Pathfinder and various others. Seems like ordinary point buy to me.

I've run multiple SW campaigns that were a year+ in duration. By the end of the longest one, the players were "double Legendary" -- the all had 160+ XP.

I ran a long campaign in this. Amusingly, the players were so afraid of the downside of Rippertech that they avoided getting the implants. So it more-or\-less became a generic Victorian-era monster-hunting game, instead of Victorian-era quasi-supers/horror game. The players still had a lot of fun, however.

Anyone got some good tips for making balanced custom content? My group our making a setting with Dawn of Worlds and want to play in it with Savage Lands. What books should I get aside from Deluxe and Fantasy companion for the tools to make good custom races and monsters?

Tons o edges. Just tons of them. Not really an issue if you're playing core, or the gm knows his shit and chargen is session 0. Wildcard creator helps with this as well.

The biggy is that the order by which you take skills, especially if you begin above xp 0 matters. A d4 in character creation regardless of ability costs 1 of your 15 skill points. Afterwards it takes an entire advance, even if the skill is below your attribute.

This can easily result in new players losing out on the equivalent of 1 or 2 advances, putting them a full half of a rank behind everyone progression wise if the gm doesn't go full irs on this sheet (as it can be tricky to figure this all out as it isn't obvious). So ideally you want to spread out early and build up. This can make auditing character sheets of non-0xp characters a bitch as well.

if you're shooting for static modifiers edges that effect only you should aim for +2's while edges which affect potentially multiple people should shoot for +1's, or equivalent. The best custom content is that which just adds options not strait mods in my opinion though.

You'd want the scifi companion for the updated racial creation rules if you want to dip into that. Supers too if you want to make more powerful races as they trade systems 1:1.

I'd look at the official forums specifically at clint's stuff. He's basically paid to make suggestions and clarify the rules, and has come up with some interesting ideas over the years that don't appear in any books.

thanks, man.

I mean, non-ranged combat can't even attack when ranged combat is only having penalties.

Think about it.

You can set damage to be non-explosive and have multiple raises affect damage die to even things out a bit.

>Aceing allso favours the 'worse' die. A d4 is more likely to ace then a d10. You're still an average better rolling the D10 but for the lower numbers it makes a noticeable difference.

This has actually been debunked with basic math. Bigger die is better because it's more likely to succeed, simple as that.

Hate the Benny system, and it's so ingrained that it ruins everything else if you fuck with it.

Not sure if serious. Anyway, if you play it smart, using cover and lighting to your advantage, you can close the distance to melee range RELATIVELY safely, if your GM isn't a cunt. And in melee, you can't use guns bigger than a pistol, and even pistols have to roll against your defense then.

A situation where the melee-er is not in massive disadvantage can be engineered. But do you think the gunner is just staying in one place until the melee guy runs up? Having terrain means he also has more spots to run around and kite. He also still has a chance he gets hits in, while the melee-er doesn't have a chance to deal damage at all.

He could also just tank the break away opportunity and obliterate him with a shotgun, if he's using modern firearms.

Oh and I forgot, once you are in melee your only advantage is that you now don't have a disadvantage. Nice.

That's exactly why ranged cobat is in the vogue nowadays. It's just how the world works, I'd say. Melee character still can have the advantage of higher damage per hit due to STR die, when he gets close. My point still stands, ranged gives melee a run for it's money, but it's not be-all, end-all due to many negative modifiers the ranged combatants have to suffer.

see
>in melee, you can't use guns bigger than a pistol, and even pistols have to roll against your defense
so the main ranged weapon becomes useless when you close the gap

>obliterate him with a shotgun
i'll give you that, shotguns are a bit broken RAW. I houserule them so that armor counts for each shot die separately, this makes soft targets eat shit and shit lead, but anyone wearing more than a leather jacket is mostly unphased.

ADDITIONALLY there's litterally nothing stopping you from picking up a d4 or d6 in shooting and taking potshots at the other guy as you move in on him to engage in fisticuffs.

>That's exactly why ranged cobat is in the vogue nowadays.

I get that, I just think being melee focused is a fools game, because aside from the obvious benefits of range, melee's benefits is slighty higher damage dice, but you pay for that out the nose by needing both strength and agility, because fighting relies on agility...

>ADDITIONALLY there's litterally nothing stopping you from picking up a d4 or d6 in shooting and taking potshots at the other guy as you move in on him to engage in fisticuffs.

...and by the same token, shooting is agility based, and so's all the fighting skills, so the shooter can just invest in those and still have good dodge on top of okay damage. Which is why I think running away would be worth it for him if he didn't have a backup weapon and was using a two handed gun.

>hating on meta currency

How's it feel being back in 1990 grampa?

What are your issues with it? I'm genuinely curious since this mechanic is pretty wide-spread.

>Hate the Benny system
Me too. Hate all meta system mechanics, really. Pulls me out of hte game and turns it into a resource-counting board game.

I like interface 0's shotgun option. +2 to hit only kicks in in medium range while using buck.

How is this not a criticism of every game that has ever included a ranged weapon?

You've also both been forgetting about unarmed defender modifiers on the shooter the turn the melee begins. Unless they have a bayonet their gun is going to count as an improvised weapon until they take an action and draw some kind of melee holdout.

I'm sure he has a much more reasonable complaint, but my favorite was one fella who claimed savage worlds was broken because the "ideal way" to play a session was to show up. Make 1 roll. Benny the fuck out of it. Alright see you guys next week.

On a more reasonable front, they do take consideration by the gm while handing them out. If I remember correctly the old unspent bennies = xp bonus mechanic was removed from the earlier edition because it could quickly lead to a charismatic player ranks above everyone else and nigh immortal to boot.

I've only ever read Deluxe edition which says that unspent bennies just get thrown out so players have incentive to play them. My group has almost never used metacurrencies whenever they are in a system. Not by choice but just forgetting its a thing mostly. Also the incentive to roleplay is always good since we can't have a serious game to save our lives.

>being melee focused is a fools game
in modern game, it depends on a setting - modern day civilians? nah, you won't be gunning down every other guy on the street, best to be able to brawl in nonlethal way. In any sort of war or life-or-death conflict, you've got a fair point. Then again, I don't THINK anybody would ever decide to just make a melee character for, say, WWII campaign. I'd just advise against this.

In fantasy though, with ambushes, monsters around corners, and ranged options being less than stellar, it's still definitely a strong choice IMO. Saying that right now as i'm running a Beasts and Barbarians game. Of course a bowshot is a great opener to a fight, but unless you plan on constantly running the fuck away, next comes melee. Maybe I just don't play the enemies as smart as I should, though.

Not that guy, but a friend of mine dislikes their nature as bait for roleplaying adequately, when players should be doing so of their own accord. For these tons of systems where bennies and so on are kinda core to the mechanics, what's a good alternative schema for handing them out? I think that could fix things for us. I was thinking maybe just giving an extra one out at the beginning of each encounter/important scene, or on critical failures/successes as applicable.

>roleplaying adequately, when players should be doing so of their own accord
Ideally, yes, but a lot of people, especially in my group, aren't very good at roleplaying and don't make much of an effort to so having that incentive is a plus for us.

Yeah my group generally don't pay much attention to them either.

>melee character for, say, WWII campaign.
Lieutenant-Colonel John Malcolm Thorpe Fleming "Jack" Churchill, DSO & Bar, MC & Bar (16 September 1906 – 8 March 1996) was a British Army officer who fought throughout the Second World War armed with a longbow, bagpipes, and a basket-hilted Scottish broadsword.

Literally a real life wildcard. Didn't remember the long bow though, so I guess he wasn't pure melee. The big thing here is to remember that most opponents in a savage world's game should be extras. An extra ranged character is going to have significantly less of an advantage over a wildcard melee character (who should have fleet of foot if this is a gun heavy setting).

There's always the good old crit fail cannot be re-rolled, but you get a benny for your troubles scheme. Makes their numbers significantly more predictable.

Is there any master list of Edges and Hindrances so I don't have to cross reference all the companions for more options?

The wiki has one, but it includes homebrew and I have no idea just how complete it is.

If you find a copy of the wildcard creator it can suck up pdfs and sorts all of their character creation options by what you qualify for.

>Lieutenant-Colonel John Malcolm Thorpe Fleming "Jack" Churchill
Oh fuck, forgot about this madman. Even then, he is a one in a million, which is some magnitudes higher than average wildcard rarity, I'd say. Either way, it's still something you'd have to have a lot of luck and skill to pull off reliably, and not a standard occurence by any means. That proves my earlier points about rooty tooty point and shooties not totally crushing melee I suppose, though.

So like what do you think. Heroic with the luck elan wombo combo thrown in there at some point? Maybe a little dodge.

Slept and head things to do. Back now.

I mostly hate how it's essentially integrated as the systems HP system.

IME players mostly board them to use as HP when they get hit, and combat difficulty send to depend far too much on how many Bennies were hoarded before combat.

And if you cut them out for combat, the game is suddenly a highly lethal game of "stunlock tag", which is no fun.

I feel the system needs a different HP system, and Bennies need to not be able to be spent to make your character durable.

I consider it to be a game breaking flaw in a core mechanic.

Yup, stunlock tag if combat lasts more than one Round. Fucking morale setting rules purging the encounter of subordinate Extras if their WildCard commander goes off-board.

I might get shit for this but I like the OpenD6 ruleset. I like making gear tables and custom rules for settings and my group likes playtesting them. I like GURPS too but Minisix is my preferred base ruleset.

So yeah, I hate the Benny system, and I've not seen/come up with replacement rules that make the game fun and fix my problem with it.

I'm more inclined to GURPS. Failing that, unisystem. Have also been considering trying opend6, and HERO, and BESM3e, but haven't had a chance to play them yet.

If you end up doing OpenD6, use Minisix as the core and grab the original books to pull tables and extra stuff from. Just be aware that it plays best when you customize it and make it your own. It can certainly be played out of the box, though.

Savage Worlds for me is one of those systems I picked up cause the core book was selling for £1 at my local game shop due to the fact some shitcunt spilled tea over it; and it was retailing for £5 so if it was good I could get a decent copy for the table. I really /want/ to like it and it has a few interesting ideas, but OpenD6 from what I've heard just does stuff way better. I mean, I'm trying to fix up one of the published SW settings and starting to want to claw my eyes out at certain aspects of SW rules; but re-writing all the minutiae of that setting for another system seems like an even worse kind of hell.

Also Studio2's QA is shite. Utter shite.

Agreed, I learned OpenD6 first in depth, ran lots of games with it, then learned SW. OpenD6 has numerous benefits over SW, but it can take a little initial work to get it going as there aren't really many published settings for it. Of course that is opposed to SW where if there is no published setting you have to put in a shit ton more work than OpenD6. Overall I like D6 a lot better. Better bell curve on rolls, easier to customize and make new rules and content for, easy as shit to balance, and so on.

>Of course that is opposed to SW where if there is no published setting you have to put in a shit ton more work than OpenD6

Just curious, what kind of extra work would one have to put into a non published setting that would be any more work than your run of the mill homebrew D&D campaign?

I think that it's still easier to customize and do homebrew for than DnD, so assuming you have to write up about the same amount of crap for both it would be easier than DnD homebrew.

D&D is pretty inflexible compared to something like GURPS. If you want a different magic system, for instance, that's a ton of work. Whereas in GURPS there's a book for that , that walks you through it. There are also several example systems.

I do find it convenient that SW has a ton of settings, both published and converted.

>run of the mill homebrew D&D campaign
I'm not one of those memesters that think D&D is terrible, I actually like 5E, but trying to homebrew it into a different setting or genre that isn't Fantasy and uses a different magic system is a fools errand. You are much better off using a generic system that has the tools and flexibility.

Homebrewing races is ready enough in d&d. Even classes aren't so bad.

I've been curious about D6 for some time. High time there was a thread for it.

Hero is probably your best bet as a lateral move. Hero and GURPS are like two sides of a coin.

>This has actually been debunked with basic math. Bigger die is better because it's more likely to succeed, simple as that.

Not exactly. It depends on the target number. If you need to get a result of 8 you're actually slightly better off with a d6 then a d8.

You're better off using the bigger dice in general and it's only like 2% difference but it does occasionally happen

It's a great setting but a very lackluster plot point campaign.

Even extremely "high level" characters are pretty specialized and can't go curbstomping solo. In general the power curve doesn't get a whole lot bigger as you go. I personally think that's a good thing (encourages teamwork and all that) but some players don't like it.

It thinks a little too much like a wargame sometimes.

Some players find the damage rules hard to grasp and find the shaken status annoying.

It is by far my favorite overall system since I found it.

This is what the archetypes are for. They provide pre-made starting sets that are just as easy as picking a class, then you get to grow from there however you choose.

Alright, I know SW threads tend not to last long, but I figure I can throw a bump in the hopes of it.

Anyone here have experience with plane combat and or a campaign focusing on it?

I disagree about the character creation honestly, at least with my players who are accustom to games like pathfinder, where even a single class has 10x more than the entire SW book.

Even the guy whose never played an RPG before didn't seem to have a problem, but we made characters together as a group so it was easy to just offer suggestions and ask him what his goals are with the character, but I feel like doing that should be the norm for any game.

On another note, how does one go about establishing a general? Are there enough Savage Worlds players on Veeky Forums to justify its existence?

GURPS can barely pull of a general. Savage Worlds has no chance.

Can someone post the other companions please?

To talk about chargen for a second:

None of my players had any issue when creating characters for a 6-shot campaign I ran over December and early January; it just needs some reading and GM knowledge of going "hey do you know of any Edges/Hindrances/Powers that do X" and being able to answer it.

That said, I feel Savage Worlds is one of those systems whereby it's good for what it does and is VERY cheap; but is sadly throttled by poor quality control, edition inconsistencies, lack of setting support and vapour-books in the case of my setting of choice.

With regards to other systems; it compares favourably to the systems my group has played together (Pathfinder, D&D 5e, Marvel Universe, Shadowrun 4e, Cortex, Fantasy AGE) but veers slightly into the realm of being a little too bland in some regions and a little too overstuffed in others, most notably combat compared to social encounters; then again as far as I'm aware True Pulp Heroes ask questions with their fists and take names with their bullets so that may be a quirk of the system's desired feel.

tl;dr For sub-$10 it's a fairly good introduction to RPGs, but in my experience players will either be left wanting a little more in their game, or be crushed from the get-go, all because of the free d6 and EXPLODING DICE!