Well, finally today I managed to get enough players together to run Savage Worlds.

I ran an urban fantasy adventure with an investigation theme. One player was new to Savage Worlds and new to RPing in general. No one had characters made up beforehand.

It took about 45 minutes to get everyone's character up and running. Not everyone had the rules handy and one player had to be instructed on how to go each step of the way. So I think 45 minutes total for 4 players including a newbie was pretty reasonable.

There was a lot of roleplaying at the beginning, and the players started the investigation in an completely different direction that I failed to think about ahead of time. I gave them a few red herrings, but they got the key information they needed their way and didn't need any of the other avenues I had laid out.

I was very pleased with the roleplaying and social interactions. The players did a good job of getting into character.

When they tracked over to a key encounter area, there was a brief skirmish. We all went through how combat works, explaining to the new guy how to go each step of the way. I took time to recap what each of their rolls meant, what the target numbers were, and what the final result was. A good refresher for new and old players alike.

The real mystery was getting a lot closer, but it had been about 4 hours, so we left at a cliffhanger-type moment.

Oh, and the whole thing was done online with Fantasy Grounds and the new SW ruleset, which worked well.