I will be honest; my appraisal of Savage Worlds is that Horror is one of it's worst applications. The exploding dice mechanic means that the Indiana Jones theme comes out screaming once every few rolls, which means that it is inevitably an action-adventure system first.

I'm not complaining--I think that action-adventure is a far more important genre to serve well than horror, so this is a good trade--but it limits the system's potential in this specific case.

Quote from: tenbones on February 23, 2024, 10:02:56 AM

Quote from: Rhymer88 on February 23, 2024, 04:29:01 AM
It's probably simply a matter of cost that they have the books printed in China. It not only affects books, but also cards. For example, Ulisses Spiele recently let American players of the Aventuria card game choose whether they wanted cards that were printed in Poland or ones that were printed in China. In the U.S., the cards from Poland were 3-4 times more expensive than the ones from China. Needless to say, most players opted for the Chinese cards, even though Ulisses pointed out that it couldn't guarantee that they would be of the same high quality as the ones from Poland. I don't know why they don't have the cards printed the U.S. for the American market. Perhaps they couldn't find any printer who could do it in high quality at an acceptable price.

100%. Pinnacle is pretty straight up with their processes. Even the bad ones. If they gave us an option for a U.S. printing I doubt anyone would pay the extra price for just the books. It's pretty cool for Ulisses to do it, but of course they're in Europe, so I imagine that despite the Polish printing costing 3x, I can't imagine how much more a US printing would be for Pinnacle by comparison. It's probably steep as hell.

I have been worried about South Asia manufacturing for a long time. China maintains it's control over many industries by manipulating their exchange rate to encourage businesses to outsource to China. There are some small to medium sized printers based in the US, but by and large the high volume publishers have gone to China searching for profit margin. WotC sure has.

If something serious happens in South Asia (it starts with T and ends in "aiwan"), a lot of bad things can happen quickly. I'm not just thinking books; most NAND flash in modern computer SSD drives are manufactured in Korea, and most classic hard drives are manufactured in Thailand or Vietnam or in the Philippines. This is a set-up which could theoretically break the internet.

Quote from: Fheredin on February 24, 2024, 08:17:22 AM
I will be honest; my appraisal of Savage Worlds is that Horror is one of it's worst applications. The exploding dice mechanic means that the Indiana Jones theme comes out screaming once every few rolls, which means that it is inevitably an action-adventure system first.

I'm not complaining--I think that action-adventure is a far more important genre to serve well than horror, so this is a good trade--but it limits the system's potential in this specific case.

It's weird, because the Acing mechanic (exploding dice for those that don't play SW) is something that I've become so used to. I feel now that it's like talking with people that used to bridle at the idea of Natural 20's being Critical hits way back in the day.

I'm not saying you're wrong or anything... it's a flavor thing. I do agree that a good roll in SW can be very Indiana Jones (heh - it's a good analogy given SW's pulpy core). But I'll also say this: the core task resolution takes this into account and you *can* control it. It just depends on what it is you want to do. Just because someone gets a *really* high roll, doesn't mean it's going to be an auto-kill. It depends on what Setting Rules you have in play.

Case in point, in the standard rules the most you can get with a high roll, let's say something stupid like: Your investigator in a CoC game, actually runs into a Mi-Go. The popular notion that exploding dice can one-shot someone is an artifact of 1) Deluxe Edition where additional Raises on attack added bonus damage dice 2) Damage dice explosions going hog-wild (which is still a thing).

In SWADE - your investigator *only* needs to roll a 4 to hit something with their .38 snubnose. This is standard rules for all ranged weapons (barring size, environmental, cover, and range modifers). For argument's sake let's just say your investigator is in short range, comes across a Mi-Go in an alley (LOL) and wins initiative. Let's also say your Shooting skill is a d6. You get a killer roll... let's say something nuts like 48 due to your dice having both atomic explosive capacity and the blessing of Ranald.

That means your pistol - even with that insanely good roll, hits for 2d6 +1d6 from a Raise. A Mi-Go has Toughness of 9. On average, you're going to do a Wound. But Mi-Go's have an ability to have damage from non-magical sources. Let's dig a little deeper...

Let's also say when you roll damage, your "worse case scenario" happens and your damage dice WTFEXPLODE, and you roll your 3d6 from above... and you get some insane thing like 60+ damage due to exploding dice. So suddenly your investigator goes all Indiana Jones see's the Mi-Go, doesn't shriek in terror, smirks, pulls out his cute lil' .38 and nukes the Mi-Go right off the planet into another dimension of your choosing... Right?

Well by normal rules - yep. But if you've decided your Setting Rules ahead of time, you can easily mitigate stuff like this. Nothing prevents you from giving your monsters qualities like "Unstoppable" - which limits the maximum number of Wounds they can take by any single attack to 1 Wound. Or you can blow your Bennies to help save your monster. Or you can use Setting Rules like damage caps where anything over 3-Wounds turns into Incapacitated. Or you can say some supernatural creatures that aren't Wildcards, have an extra Wound. Any one of these, or in combination utterly changes the context of these colossal rolls that SW is known for, but only people that play the current game and its nuances know about. Most people still just have it in their minds that SW is mega-swingy (and with the Acing mechanic - it absolutely can be), but in SWADE you can totally mitigate most, if not all, of this phenomenon.

Of course how you express these rolls in your game to keep the Horror tension up, is always on you too, regardless of what the rolls are. But mechanical flavor and expression of that flavor is subjective to us all.

Quote from: Fheredin on February 24, 2024, 08:17:22 AM
I have been worried about South Asia manufacturing for a long time. China maintains it's control over many industries by manipulating their exchange rate to encourage businesses to outsource to China. There are some small to medium sized printers based in the US, but by and large the high volume publishers have gone to China searching for profit margin. WotC sure has.

If something serious happens in South Asia (it starts with T and ends in "aiwan"), a lot of bad things can happen quickly. I'm not just thinking books; most NAND flash in modern computer SSD drives are manufactured in Korea, and most classic hard drives are manufactured in Thailand or Vietnam or in the Philippines. This is a set-up which could theoretically break the internet.

Yeah, I've got my eye on the situation too, because I'm planning on print publishing, and I want to stay ahead of things. I have *zero* desire to deal with Chinese companies, as friends of mine have lots of headaches in dealing with their action-figure manufacturing. It's hairy. I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.

Quote from: tenbones on February 24, 2024, 01:18:26 AM
My thoughts were this...

I'm trying to emulate the Bloodpool's of Vampire and marrying it to the Powerpoint pools of SW. TECHNICALLY you're right in pointing out that a human vessel could store more than just 3-Bloodpoints worth. It only takes more than 3 to kill them, just like in Vampire.

I'll adjust the rules further. That's the beauty of SW, the goal should be to make the game exactly what you want. And there's plenty of handholds to do that. Lemme give your ideas some mulling over. Yours might be more elegant than mine.

I look forward to seeing what you come up with.  I am going to start rereading my core book tonight and refamiliarize myself with the rules.

Some thoughts I had with a couple of my players...

1) The amount of work to translate would provide a very nice opportunity to create not just a WoD translation of Vampire, Wereworlf, Mage, and Changeling - but to also create our own non-WoD versions without all the WoD metaplot.

2) For a WoD translation, it occurred to me to make the base Vampire template (as above) but make an Arcane Background: Blood Disciplines with a catch-all category for each familiar WoD Discipline which would allow the Clans to have access to from the start. But it wouldn't *just* be powers per se, it would also be a collection of Edges to denote traditions for those that practice those respective disciplines might share. Trappings for these Disciplines would be Clan specific, even if the effects are the same. Some would be fueled by the Bloodpool(Power Points) others might just be benefits of having the Discipline. 

Further I'm thinking of re-ranking some Powers/Edges *within* the Disciplines themselves, to denote that while some Disciplines might have some crosspollinations (Dominate and Presence in SW Power terms) their emphasis might require a different Rank to pull off *within* that Discipline. This will give the WoD feel within Savage Worlds a much more granular feel.

It will also provide a very nice working template from which to do my own thing without obviously being an entire WoD derivative per se.

And right on queue... My Savage Worlds Pinebox Middle School book arrived yesterday.

Here's the cover


Here is the Table of Contents


From a casual read-thu, this is for everything from Scooby-doo type adventures, to wild ass Stranger Things and beyond. It's a really nice little sandbox that bookends East Texas University's material from Deluxe edition. It's supposed to be about playing 6th-8th graders where your Advancement is tied directly to the school year (much like East Texas U). Lots of cool stuff here to play precocious and normal kids with exceptional curiosity and potential that can lead to all kinds of cool adventures.

It comes with a bunch of pre-built adventures that take place in Pinebox, and a surprisingly nice little addendum to the Horror Companion in terms of monster and creature modifications for your game.

Not something I'd *normally* do... but I'm definitely considering it.

Quote from: tenbones on February 22, 2024, 07:05:18 PM
@pawsplay - you're saying that Pathfinder = D&D. No they're different. No one can look at Greybox Forgotten Realms and pretend it plays like modern Pathfinder. There are very large mechanical differences, there are very large narrative assumptions. Further - I'm not sure what you're looking for in the Fantasy Companion? You're literally ignoring the setting rules that can transform your game into any kind of Fantasy you'd want.

That's not what I'm saying. By dint of common lineage, both have a cleric/wizard divide, both have dungeons and adventures in which you score magical items, both have a similar approach to dragons and various other monsters. Trolls are big, green, and regenerating, and so forth. There are some call-outs to other approaches, like the pulp Sorcery which is not 3e-style bloodeline sorcery or wild magic, and different sorts of trolls. However, a lot of the pagecount is devoted to elf, dwarf, human, and halfling adventurers who are bards, clerics, wizards, and fighters, defeating dragons and ogres so they can score a "mithral" sword that does +1 damage.

Obviously, I can use the FC to make things my own... I can use the core rulebook to do that. By and by I've been writing up a hypothetical Mystara campaign on Google sites.

It's not there's no place for those adaptations, I'm just disappointed in the emphasis. It's just a narrow conception of what fantasy is and could be. Whereas the Horror Companion seems to be a bit more broad. So that seems good.

Quote from: tenbones on February 27, 2024, 11:36:40 AM
And right on queue... My Savage Worlds Pinebox Middle School book arrived yesterday.

I had looked at this.   I am interested in this.  I hope it is better than East Texas University.  How is it?

Caveat: I own East Texas University, never run it.

So take this all with a grain of salt. I rarely, if ever, run games where the whole party are a bunch of kids. I've done it before as a staging section of a game in an extended prelude for WoD in order to set up the rest of the actual campaign, and it worked marvelously well. But it was also a pretty heavy horror/no comedy hijinks kinda game. Which is basically where I lean.

That said, I can do comedy hijinks if I want, it's just not my normal mode. This book *because* it's SWADE let's you go any direction you really want. It's clear how much more evolved it is from East TX University, because of the difference in editions. It's more cohesive and like a good sandbox, it doesn't beat you over the head with some assumed form of play. You can dial the Horror/Comedy/Sci-fi/Exploration/Adventure nobs up/down/sideways with as much confidence as you like.

The only conceit is that Pinebox *assumes* you're playing children between 6th-grade and 8th-grade, and it assumes you're advancing not by "campaign progress" but by the school-year. Which is pretty novel for me. (This is just like ETU as well). Nothing *says* you have to adhere to this. If you wanted to run ETU with modern SWADE rules, it would be *trivial* to do so using Pinebox + Horror Companion + Core Rules, to do so.

I suspect that's one of the reasons we don't have a formal SWADE: ETU. But there is a conversion document, which doesn't really require a whole lot.

My gut reaction is - this has more potential for a short-form campaign for my group, that could lead to something bigger. I can't imagine my players doing a really long sandbox campaign playing kids. Your mileage may vary. But I can definitely see them playing kids in a very very long protracted prelude to something larger. Where effectively they'd be playing their backgrounds out before we get to the "real game".

If you wanted to do a Scooby-Doo Mission based thing for one-shots, or Monster of the Week thing, this is the game for you. If the Kids thing is of no interest, then it might not be worth anything to you, except for the sandbox elements of the setting.

They have a neat little Adventure Generator  where you can easily crank out an adventure on the spot.

Baby Ghostbusters, Goonies, Scooby Do, and fun adventure type games rubbing up against real Horror elements is squarely where this setting feels at home.

It can *easily* transition into Army of Darkness, or if you're willing go full Mythos horror and anything in between.

So far my favorite of the Companions has been the Fantasy Companion... I think it really went the extra mile in terms of showcasing a ton of different Arcane Backgrounds and varieties of Magic with inherent abilities and edges that show how you can emulate any kind of Fantasy you can think of.

The Horror Companion is my Second favorite of the bunch, but I agree with it's presentation being on the blander side. Still, it has a lot of useful info for running everything from Call of Cthulu to World of Darkness as TenBones is demonstrating.

My least favorite and the one I was most disappointed with was The Super Powers Companion.

Where as the Fantasy and Horror Companion give you tools for playing a variety of different campaigns, The Super Power Companion is way more restrictive. The Superpowers are priced in accordance with the specific way the writers *WANT* you to play a Supers Campaign, one dedicated to just making "problematic powers' not worth taking entirely. It's impossible to model half of the X-men or the Justice League, and it disappointed me because I know I will never use it now.

Quote from: Orphan81 on February 28, 2024, 02:05:09 PM
So far my favorite of the Companions has been the Fantasy Companion... I think it really went the extra mile in terms of showcasing a ton of different Arcane Backgrounds and varieties of Magic with inherent abilities and edges that show how you can emulate any kind of Fantasy you can think of.

The Horror Companion is my Second favorite of the bunch, but I agree with it's presentation being on the blander side. Still, it has a lot of useful info for running everything from Call of Cthulu to World of Darkness as TenBones is demonstrating.

My least favorite and the one I was most disappointed with was The Super Powers Companion.

Where as the Fantasy and Horror Companion give you tools for playing a variety of different campaigns, The Super Power Companion is way more restrictive. The Superpowers are priced in accordance with the specific way the writers *WANT* you to play a Supers Campaign, one dedicated to just making "problematic powers' not worth taking entirely. It's impossible to model half of the X-men or the Justice League, and it disappointed me because I know I will never use it now.

  I was wondering how the super powers companion was.  I liked the Fantasy Companion too...I felt like they definitely filled in a few gaps if I wanted to more fully emulate some genres of Fantasy and it really was good at just giving me a few ideas I guess.  I am looking forward to the Sci fi companion as I think they did a good job with Savage Rifts and the old sci fi companion was pretty good.   I am hoping they dedicate a big portion to post apoc and maybe even...a few genre rails for something more along 40k (though I think SW Rifts can do that pretty well as is).

Quote from: oggsmash on February 28, 2024, 03:01:46 PM

  I was wondering how the super powers companion was.  I liked the Fantasy Companion too...I felt like they definitely filled in a few gaps if I wanted to more fully emulate some genres of Fantasy and it really was good at just giving me a few ideas I guess.  I am looking forward to the Sci fi companion as I think they did a good job with Savage Rifts and the old sci fi companion was pretty good.   I am hoping they dedicate a big portion to post apoc and maybe even...a few genre rails for something more along 40k (though I think SW Rifts can do that pretty well as is).

It is definitely serviceable. It's perfectly playable, if you absolutely must do Super Powers with Savage Worlds it will do the job. I just don't like how slanted it is towards a certain style of play. Rather than say Champions or Mutants and Masterminds that has warnings over powers that can ruin certain types of campaigns, the Super Power Companion just makes those powers prohibitively expensive and or difficult to use. Mind Reading and Mind Control powers for example are very expensive and very limited in their use. Playing someone like Jean Grey (without the Phoenix) is simply impossible let alone Professor X or the Martian Manhunter.

This is made even worse that unlike in previous editions of the SP Companion there's no way to increase your power points. Previous editions had rules for letting Players take an edge to gain more power points, and even had the ability to take extra hindrances to get an additional set of Power Points at character creation. The current SP companion has a set amount of Power Points based on the campaign level with no way to raise them outside of GM Fiat or using the optional "Rising Stars" system where the set limit is doled out automatically over advancements.

So for me, it's just better to use a previous edition that gave more player Freedom or just use Mutants and Masterminds instead. Overall it seems a step backwards.

Not to derail the thread but people have talked about the fantasy companion and it lead me to the next question.....

How is the fantasy companion and how does it compare to Pathfinder.  For running a fantasy game using SW which is better.

Quote from: GhostNinja on February 28, 2024, 05:07:06 PM
Not to derail the thread but people have talked about the fantasy companion and it lead me to the next question.....

How is the fantasy companion and how does it compare to Pathfinder.  For running a fantasy game using SW which is better.

I don't have Savage Worlds Pathfinder, so I can't compare there. To clarify, what kind of fantasy game do you want to run?

For example, I've been running games set in Middle Earth. I did not find the Fantasy Companion useful for my purposes. However, other fantasy games might find it useful.

Quote from: Orphan81 on February 28, 2024, 04:06:16 PM
It is definitely serviceable. It's perfectly playable, if you absolutely must do Super Powers with Savage Worlds it will do the job. I just don't like how slanted it is towards a certain style of play. Rather than say Champions or Mutants and Masterminds that has warnings over powers that can ruin certain types of campaigns, the Super Power Companion just makes those powers prohibitively expensive and or difficult to use. Mind Reading and Mind Control powers for example are very expensive and very limited in their use. Playing someone like Jean Grey (without the Phoenix) is simply impossible let alone Professor X or the Martian Manhunter.

This is made even worse that unlike in previous editions of the SP Companion there's no way to increase your power points. Previous editions had rules for letting Players take an edge to gain more power points, and even had the ability to take extra hindrances to get an additional set of Power Points at character creation. The current SP companion has a set amount of Power Points based on the campaign level with no way to raise them outside of GM Fiat or using the optional "Rising Stars" system where the set limit is doled out automatically over advancements.

So for me, it's just better to use a previous edition that gave more player Freedom or just use Mutants and Masterminds instead. Overall it seems a step backwards.

I am no a big fan of the Supers Companion for only one reason: I run a very tight game of MSH and frankly it works a lot better for Supers the way I run them. However, SW Supers is a *superb* way of pushing the envelope of any other other SW games within the context of their own genres. You could easily leverage any/all of the Supers systems for your Fantasy game and make Exalted or drop it into your Savage Rifts game like you could do it with Heroes Unlimited.

It's the least useful Companion for me for purely ulterior reasons, but it's a welcome addition insofar as supplementary material for the SW toolkit.

Quote from: GhostNinja on February 28, 2024, 05:07:06 PM
Not to derail the thread but people have talked about the fantasy companion and it lead me to the next question.....

How is the fantasy companion and how does it compare to Pathfinder.  For running a fantasy game using SW which is better.

While there is some cross-over material between them, they're actually very different from each other too. First off, The Pathfinder rules are complete. They contain the entirety of the Savage Worlds rules themselves. As of this time there is no way you can get the Pathfinder rules separate from the Savage Worlds core rules.

More than that however, the Pathfinder Savage world Rules are specifically centered around replicating a "D&D" like experience. To the point where they have Class Edges... These Class Edges are much like the Iconic Frameworks from Rifts (though not as powerful obviously) in that they duplicate some of the class abilities you would normally expect in D&D and become broader as you advance.

Meanwhile the Fantasy Companion is broader. It doesn't cover the Class Frameworks of Pathfinder but does come with a plethora of edges and hindrances that are based around more Fantasy type things. You get far more races (with new "ancestry abilities") in the Fantasy Companion... 28 in total that are also more broad in terms of Fantasy as opposed to the Pathfinder version of those ancestries.

14 new Arcane Backgrounds and they really went out of their way to make them Unique like... Choosing to be a Necromancer lets you have a more powerful version of "Zombie" right at Novice level along with a couple other edges and hindrances. Overall The Fantasy Companion is far more useful for creating your own Fantasy setting and giving you all kinds of tools (lots of different setting rules too) than the Pathfinder version.

But if you really want to do a D&D game with Savage Worlds go for the Pathfinder version.

If you want to play Savage Worlds with expanded Fantasy rules and setting creation, than the Fantasy companion is the way to go.