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D&D Players: Why you might like Savage Worlds

Started by Shrieking Banshee, October 10, 2021, 01:18:47 PM

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oggsmash

#15
Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on October 13, 2021, 02:49:46 PM
I think pinnacle is doing the right thing with SW by trying to get these licenses. But its a tricky act because the more public the license is, the more money it has to make and if it asks for too much it will backfire like Genysis and star wars.

Thats why I think they made Savage Pathfinder before a fantasy companion.

  I have a feeling the pathfinder license was a lot like the Rifts license, on sale.   I noticed they kickstart the projects too, so they really are doing a smart job pre selling anyway.   Since they can digitally distribute in the mean time waiting for print copies to arrive to customers, I think they are doing a rather good job of using what the 21st century offers to creep up on the leviathan(s) of the Rpg industry. 

  I would also add, they had the system long developed and tweaked several times before they got too concerned with setting and license that was not in house.   As a system I think geneys kind of sucks, and though it might be a good fit for star wars, it seems awkward as hell with fantasy and some other settings (they essentially seemed to have done exactly the opposite of what SW did regarding setting license and system) and last I checked was pretty much a huge sales dud. 

  A system, no matter how good, needs a very strong setting baked in to have massive sales success.   Not to be good, or great for my purposes, but I probably fall into the 1-5 percent of game consumers with regards to the threshold it takes for me to buy a game/system...I think the other masses need an evocative setting to suck them in.   Rifts is that, with both older players for nostalgia as well as newer players with *wow*.   Pretty much the same for Pathfinder, as IMO it hits an even bigger audience, the D&D audience with something familiar to get them to give it a try.   I think for rifts, it kills their system to be honest.  But maybe KS made a deal to fund his retirement on royalties and will finally stop being a control freak and collect checks while out fishing.  Pathfinder looks to me to be in a big shift (as in losing market share and money) and maybe they did the same, where the founders there were looking for a long term royalty income so they made deals to keep the prices reasonable and the money flowing.  They also seem to be benefitting from using their license for video games, so who knows. 

   This is the big gripe I always had with GURPS....create, or license a setting that sucks people in.  I swear, they choose some of the oddest properties to license the past 10-15 years.  I think they had a shot with dungeon fantasy as an underpinning to create a solid setting, but did not.  That was an idea that IMO was the best they have had in a long time, but they seem to lack gumption as to pushing it any further (which is understandable, their money from Munchkin and other games is much bigger, and SJ is getting older and probably wants to position the company where he can sell it and sail off, or at least create a revenue stream where he has a good retirement). 

Shrieking Banshee

Quote from: oggsmash on October 13, 2021, 02:54:07 PMI have a feeling the pathfinder license was a lot like the Rifts license, on sale.

Probably. But the idea worked well enough to lure enough of my PF players to it.

oggsmash

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on October 13, 2021, 03:00:56 PM
Quote from: oggsmash on October 13, 2021, 02:54:07 PMI have a feeling the pathfinder license was a lot like the Rifts license, on sale.

Probably. But the idea worked well enough to lure enough of my PF players to it.
Oh that was my point, it was a great idea. 

tenbones

#18
SWADE Core and downstream - the Companion books were conceptually always meant to support the main ruleset for the purposes of GM's doing whatever they wanted with them.

@Oggsmash - there is definitely a lot of sound logic to your analysis. I think especially their choice of licenses and where they're were in their own development cycle, with the Savage Worlds Deluxe Edition showing it's age, I suspect a lot of this is very happy coincidence.

SWADE was in development before they even realized it - as they were cleaning up the rules for Flash Gordon, and somewhere in that mix the development of Savage Rifts was already in the pipe. Savage Rifts came out *before* SWADE (which is why they reissued it under SWADE rules later).

So I do agree that Rifts and Savage Worlds were the perfect combination in terms of timing and respective audience, I know Shane was working on the Fantasy Companion before they ever announced anything for Savage Pathfinder. Again I agree that Pathfinder + Savage Worlds was a genius pairing - because I know personally, that I've had a hard time selling my own players on "D&D using Savage Worlds" - which is weird to me, since it's kinda obvious. But now with Pathfinder firmly in the fold, it feels and plays *solid*.

And in Savage Worlds fashion - I've already made pretty significant changes to Savage Pathfinder to make it closer to Savage D&D 1.5e - and its gobbled up those changes without a single hiccup.

The Savage Fantasy Companion is supposed to be different than Savage Pathfinder - but completely compatible. I'd think of it as an Unearthed Arcana for Savage Pathfinder. But the reality is pretty much all Savage Worlds books and settings are alternate rules to plug-n-play into your game.

I could never get my current players to try Rifts. but now? After running it a few times - they can't *wait* to get back in. It makes me happy to see a lot of Rifts players coming around to it too. With Pathfinder players coming in, and Rifts players coming in - Savage Worlds is really starting to get momentum.

I'm loving hearing in various places, the stories of Pathfinder players getting into Savage Worlds - and you can see the lightbulbs igniting in their eyes when they realize all the potential it has, or how easy it is to things vs. PF/d20, or the possible options that exists for them as players.

Good times ahead

Bedrockbrendan

Savage Worlds is a ton of fun. I don't want to oversell it to D&D players, because I think pushing a game too hard sometimes backfires. But I will say, definitely give it an honest try and see how you feel about the system after a few sessions or a campaign. I love the way they use the different dice in the system. I like the simplicity of the game (simple but still meaty enough that it still provides a good foundation for things like tactics). I also do really like the card based initiative system. A lot of people say it is gimmicky. I understand where that reaction comes from but....it is so intuitive. So I think it isn't a gimmick because it actually makes initiative easier than in most other systems IMO. Also this is one of the few games where, for whatever reason, the use of miniatures or tokens doesn't bother me. Normally I prefer strict theater of the mind, but with Savage Worlds I find I can deal with the shift to minies.

Ghostmaker

Savage Worlds's biggest downside is the chase mechanic.

Oh. My. God. I hate the chase mechanic like nothing else. It is entirely possible I am not reading the rules correctly but the ONE TIME our Rifts group used them it turned into a horrid slog.

tenbones

I've only used it a couple of times - and it was a slog the first time. Once I got the hang of it, it wasn't a problem. If you make it your own - you could technically use it to create a "chase" ahead of time in terms of setting up obstacles etc. Then it takes on a different kind of play altogether.

I'm wanting to use it for vehicle combat ala Road Warrior. I think I can make something really special out of it.

Or you know... you could just not use it. And do it the ol' fashioned way.


Shrieking Banshee

Quote from: Ghostmaker on October 13, 2021, 09:18:45 PM
Savage Worlds's biggest downside is the chase mechanic.

I can believe it. But with the elegance of its resolution system I could slot in some other chase mechanic (or none at all) quite easily.

Ghostmaker

Quote from: tenbones on October 13, 2021, 10:08:24 PM
I've only used it a couple of times - and it was a slog the first time. Once I got the hang of it, it wasn't a problem. If you make it your own - you could technically use it to create a "chase" ahead of time in terms of setting up obstacles etc. Then it takes on a different kind of play altogether.

I'm wanting to use it for vehicle combat ala Road Warrior. I think I can make something really special out of it.

Or you know... you could just not use it. And do it the ol' fashioned way.
We've been picking at it (both players and GM) to see if we can streamline it.

Honestly, it hasn't come up much. Our last session, we stole a river barge crammed with pre-Rifts treasure, then our technowizard gave it flight and we flew the thing away from the Coalition troopers.

They can't do a chase on you if you outpace them by some ridiculous amount. *taps forehead*

(Well, they did have a couple flying SAMAS suits but my borg killed them dead.)

tenbones

where I've had success with it is contextualizing each segment as we went - including making some segments into actual obstacles beyond drawing a club, so it created (un)atural chokepoints that forced the party to react naturally as a team.

For example one of our chases were through a thick old-wood forest, the party was being swarmed by a horde of goblins, some mounted, some not - the PC's were mounted, but some of the obstacles in this case a massive briar patch, and forest stream/wash, forced riding checks as well as possible Pace-reduction to ford safely. This actually caused a LOT of mayhem as some PC's had either no riding skill at all, or they dismounted in order to more accurately pick off lead pursuers.

The Chase Rules allowed a very good and gritty abstraction of a very long hunt for the PC's interspersed with a *goddawful* amount of skirmish combat - and I say that in a good way. Because if I left it purely to the stats on paper, the PC's would have been caught, likely it would have been a massacre without the intended chase-element.

I definitely understand how taken at face value the Chase Rules could be kludgy. I think i've been doing Savage Worlds long enough to naturally spruce up whatever is presented for my own needs - which is why most of these subsystems are well designed in my opinion, they give you ample room to jack around with their mechanics as you see fit, intentionally. And of course, you could just not use them at all and use the normal core rules to run a regular chase normally.

It's definitely take-it or leave-it, but I'm finding it useful for very specific stuff. I don't use it for everything.

oggsmash

 I completely ignore the chase rules, and simply resolve it with contested pilot checks and comparison of vehicles.  I read them, and I understood them, I just didnt see a need for a different game within the game.

tenbones

Quote from: oggsmash on October 14, 2021, 02:02:17 PM
I completely ignore the chase rules, and simply resolve it with contested pilot checks and comparison of vehicles.  I read them, and I understood them, I just didnt see a need for a different game within the game.

That's effectively how I do it in all my other games.

And I still do it in SW if I'm not feeling the "chase" is worth the whole pageant of doing it. One of the things I'm playing around with is alluded to kindof in Bedrock's post upthread, is using the cards to give me a third axis on which to express certain things. It's already established in some aspects of the game that that deck-pulls come up with "obstacles" when you pull Clubs. I like this mechanic as sort of an ad-hoc and fast way to make a random-table roll which leverages my itch to improv at the slightest prompt. I know a lot of people struggle with it - but it's something I'm good at. So I kinda feel the deck is not getting enough use - or rather *I* could be using it for a lot more than it is. Which is why some people think its "gimmicky".

The Chase Rules fits right into that weird zone of optional systems that exists, and its challenging me to use it, then bend and twist it and make it better. But I think that Savage Worlds is like that in most cases with its mechanics.

tenbones

Anyone got some opinions on the Savage Worlds magic system(s) (SWADE, SW Pathfinder, Rifts) holds up in comparison to D&D Vancian magic?

oggsmash

Quote from: tenbones on October 14, 2021, 03:52:25 PM
Anyone got some opinions on the Savage Worlds magic system(s) (SWADE, SW Pathfinder, Rifts) holds up in comparison to D&D Vancian magic?

   MUCH better IMO.   I like the power points to fuel magic, and the option to not have them.   Giving it a bit of thought though, I do not think I can think of a single RPG of note that I do not like it's magic system better than D&D. 

Shrieking Banshee

Quote from: oggsmash on October 14, 2021, 03:57:47 PMMUCH better IMO.   I like the power points to fuel magic, and the option to not have them.   Giving it a bit of thought though, I do not think I can think of a single RPG of note that I do not like it's magic system better than D&D.

IMO its much better by itself, and I mean fucking EVERYTHING is better then Vancian.
Id say if you wanted too, you could make specific powers from the listed powers for specific games.

For instance id say the power set could be used to replicate VTM for instance.