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I got my Savage Worlds Horror Companion...

Here's the TOC

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It does an excellent job for covering nearly any kind of Horror type game you'd want using the SWADE Core + Horror Companion. Genres covered with examples of other media for inspiration:

Cosmic Horror - This is one of the most popular types of horror, in no small part due to the work of our friends at Chaosium, creators of the popular Call of Cthulhu Roleplaying Game. Based on a series of stories written by author H.P. Lovecraft—and subsequently expanded upon by many other authors, including popular pulp writers like Robert E. Howard and Clark Ashton Smith—cosmic horror pits humanity against unknowable, alien, and all-powerful beings from beyond time and space.

Examples:  H.P. Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness and other stories, Ambrose Bierce's Shadows of Carcosa, Edgar Cantero's Meddling Kids, Nick Cutter's The Deep, Stephen King's The Mist, Annihilation, Stranger Things, In the Mouth of Madness, Cast a Deadly Spell, Event Horizon, the Darkest Dungeon video game.

Gothic Horror - Another very popular subgenre of horror rose out of the writings of authors during the Romantic and Victorian eras. These stories of "gothic horror" were known for melodramatic writing, bleak and oppressive settings, and strong emotions. The supernatural was present but more subtle—perceptible only to
those directly affected, and sometimes even then with enough margin for doubt that the protagonists often wondered if they were simply losing their minds. And in true literary
spirit, the supernatural evil functioned as a metaphor for temptation, the dangers of playing God, the sin of adultery, and so on. Modern gothic horror has left behind the
symbolism, but the tropes are alive and well—vampires, ghosts, castles, foggy Victorian streets, remote provincial villages, desolate graveyards, and musty crypts. Locations tend to be isolated, emotionally cold, and almost abandoned. Often there is a sense of lost grandeur—a castle with dusty passages long since forgotten, a neglected manor house
on a distant moor, a crumbling colonial plantation on the bayou. Even urban areas are bleak, places of crushing poverty, dilapidated architecture, and fading hope.

Examples: Bram Stoker's Dracula, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights, Edgar Allen Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher, Arthur Conan Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles, Gaston Leroux's The Phantom of the Opera, the Dungeons & Dragons® Ravenloft setting, Crimson Peak, Suspiria, House of Dark Shadows, Sweeney Todd, Van Helsing, The Fearless Vampire Killers.

Action Horror - This very modern invention is a unique crossover subgenre which blends typical horror trappings (classic monsters, eerie locations, the fight against all-consuming evil) with the exaggerated, over-the-top mayhem seen in action movies or comics. Unlike other horror subgenres that depict the struggle against the supernatural as
hopeless, dangerous, or even symbolic of a larger struggle against sin, action horror frames the conflict as a mainly physical one, where defeating supernatural evil is more often accomplished with grit and firepower. There might even be a touch of the comedic as the heroes dash off witty quips while taking out a pack of werewolves.

This type of horror is at home in nearly any time or place. The investigators might be pulp adventurers in the 1930s fighting mummies, stalwart werewolf hunters in the Victorian era, cybernetically-enhanced vampire hunters in a postmodern urban sprawl, a team of Navy SEALS stopping a zombie outbreak, or even plucky high schoolers fighting summoned demons.

Examples: Edgar Cantero's Meddling Kids, Seth Grahame-Smith's Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, Richard Matheson's I Am Legend, Justin Cronin's The Passage, The Mummy (1999), Army of Darkness, Zombieland, Van Helsing, Planet Terror, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Shaun of the Dead, Dog Soldiers, the Blade trilogy.

Slasher Horror: Made popular by John Carpenter's 1978 movie Halloween and countless similar movies in the years that followed, the slasher subgenre focuses on a group of people being hunted by a single (possibly unstoppable) killer. The victims are taken out one by one until a single one remains. Slashers can take place in a variety of
locales and times, but are almost always set in a modern or near-modern era.

Examples Stephen Graham Jones' The Last Final Girl, Sergio Gomez' Camp Slaughter, A Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Scream, Halloween, Alien, Nightmare on
Elm Street, Friday the 13th, I Know What You Did Last Summer, The Cabin in the Woods, Child's Play, Candyman, Malignant, Jeepers Creepers, Don't Breathe, The Quarry
video game.

Pulp Horror: Unlike the other types of horror in this list, which originated from literature or movies, pulp horror was born in the world of cheap comic books of the 1940s and 1950s. Intended to be read and then discarded much like newspaper, comic books of the day often featured daring heroes, cliffhanger situations, simplistic plots, and two-dimensional characters. The supernatural in pulp horror exists purely to tempt humans into vile acts, and then punishes them for it. Black magic (stereotypes of "voodoo" or "witchcraft") interferes with the thoughts or feelings of the target, but always comes with a hefty price. Victims of dark betrayal inevitably get revenge from beyond the grave through bizarre misfortunes, unforeseen consequences—or even by returning as a shambling corpse.Pulp horror adventures are best geared toward one-shots, as they tend to dish out permanent justice on the main characters.

Examples: W.W. Jacobs' "The Monkey's Paw," Saki's "The Interlopers," Ambrose Bierce's "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge," Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery," Edgar Allen Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado" and "The Telltale Heart," the Tales from the Crypt comics, The Twilight Zone, Pumpkinhead, Creepshow, Tales from the Darkside, Hellraiser, Tales from the Hood.

Superheroic Horror: This type of horror centers around extremely powerful protagonists with extraordinary—perhaps even superhuman—abilities. As horror usually relies on powerlessness to inspire fear, superheroic horror is less concerned with the fear of physical defeat but rather with spiritual defeat. The main character is often an "anti-hero" who has become powerful due to the supernatural, but that power also comes with the gradual, maybe inevitable, loss of his soul. The superheroic character must use his dark powers to prevent harm befalling others, thus flirting with an even deeper slide into darkness. Ironically, his salvation comes from not using those powers—but he would then
carry the guilt of inaction forever.

Examples: The Marvel Zombies comic book series, Ex-Heroes, The Tomb of Dracula, Spawn, Hellboy, Batman, Justice League Dark, Midnight Sons, Werewolf by Night, Swamp Thing, Constantine, Blade.

Survival Horror: Survival horror as a subgenre is most commonly associated with zombie apocalypse scenarios, where (due to a virus, parasites, alien energies, magic, etc.) the dead all over the world have risen to destroy the living. But as its name implies, the only real requirement for survival horror is that the characters are plunged into a life-or-death scenario with no apparent goal beyond sheer survival. Unlike other horror subgenres, survival horror is about teamwork and pits the heroes against many foes, rather than one which prefers to divide and conquer. The monsters are never humanized or sympathetic, nor are they interested in corrupting their victims. They just want to kill—perhaps to eat, or maybe it's just the reason they exist.

Examples: Max Brooks' World War Z, Justin Cronin's The Passage, The Walking Dead graphic novel series, Night of the Living Dead, Tremors, Aliens, Dawn of the
Dead, The Descent, As Above So Below, The Last of Us, the Resident Evil video games, Dead Space, Days Gone.

Obviously you can mix-and-match subgenres.

It covers Setting Rules specific to the Horror genre. Among those being:

Buckets of Blood - In "splatter films," victims often explode in showers of blood far beyond what the human body might possibly hold. Anytime an individual dies in some
gruesome fashion—whether it's an Extra or a player character—his corpse erupts in a massive blood spray. Mechanics include heightened Fear checks (penalties) and the implied environmental issues with blood being everywhere (slippery, enemies can smell the splashed PC/NPC's etc.)

Difficult Healing - You only get ONE chance to heal a particular Wound. After that? It's all natural Healing.

Slaughter Rules - This is effectively SWADE on *hardcore* mode. PC's/Wildcards get ONE Wound, No Soaking UNLESS they have Conviction, Bennies are awarded to Players, not their characters (so the expectation of their PC dying is high, and you get to keep your Bennies with your next character) Critical Kills - anytime you role a Critical Failure where the there is a possibility you could die? You DO. Don't roll Snakeyes, kids.

Lots of archetypes for players to choose from or for GM's to use to build their scenarios and sandboxes. You could easily replicate any kind of Horror setting or convert an established one with ease. Plus you could use (and I already have been doing this) the Horror Companion to add some spice to your other genre-specific games. I'm running a Savage Worlds Bloodstone Lands game and leverage a lot of the Horror Companion here.

There are rules for Corruption, Insanity, new Fear rules. They even have a section dedicated to stat-blocs for Lovecraftian Mythos. Yes, they stat those bad boys out. So you could even drop these things into your Rifts game without missing a beat.

Supernatural "races" are totally doable. At a glance you could recreate World of Darkness with very little effort. ANY aspect of it could be done without ANY of the metaplot baggage with *ease*. Mage? Yes. Vampire? Yes. Were-anything? Yes. Mummy? Yes. And pretty much anything else.

Lots of rules for Rituals, Bindings/Wards. Magic Items, a *really nice* Bestiary in the back. All in all - I'm impressed with it more than I thought I would be.

Between the Core Rules, the Fantasy Companion and this Horror Companion, GM's have enough material to run for years if you're DIY. There's some adventures already made, I haven't gone through them.

Lastly - there is nary a note of "trigger warnings" or nonsense like that. Given the fact they have a whole section on Lovecraft, these days, it's nice to see they didn't veer into that silliness.

Feel free to ask questions/comments, I'll answer as I can.

Interesting.  If I get back into Savage Worlds I may look at picking this up.

So I know you must have answered this before, but what compelling reason is there to use SW vs. something like GURPS or HERO? I suppose that's a more general question, so I'll make it specific and say I have Horror HERO and GURPS 3rd edition Horror and have yet to run either of them; I have run Chill, Silent Legions, Beyond the Supernatural, and Cryptworld, which I guess is just a Chill clone. Why use SW instead?

Some backstory...I used to play GURPS with a bunch of hardcore fans of the system, they ported everything over. One of their favorite games was Twilight 2000 but using GURPS. So a few years pass, I thought about playing GURPS again, the main advocate told me they had moved to SW because it did everything GURPS did but with 1/10th the effort. I always found that interesting so I got a copy of the rules, but didn't find them that compelling. I also have SWADE and still can't really see much reason for using it, honestly. Is this one of those, "You need to play it and not theorycraft," scenarios?

Savage Worlds mostly avoids edge-cases, and the GM workload can be pretty light. It's not that different from most other medium-crunch games otherwise. I'd say the GURPS comparison is probably an exaggeration if you use templates for GURPS and mostly original stuff for SW.

Is this a compleat game? Or is it a supplement to be used with a core rulebook?

Any game with "Slaughter rules" gets my approval ;D

SW really is trying to branch out. I'm waiting on Savage Shadowrun.

Quote from: Svenhelgrim on February 22, 2024, 05:04:13 AM
Is this a compleat game? Or is it a supplement to be used with a core rulebook?

It's a supplement. You'll need one of the Savage Worlds rulebooks to use it (it's designed for the latest, the Adventure Edition rules).

Quote from: Theory of Games on February 22, 2024, 05:54:44 AM
SW really is trying to branch out. I'm waiting on Savage Shadowrun.

Is this something official or something someone is doing on the side?

Quote from: Brad on February 21, 2024, 09:17:23 PM
So I know you must have answered this before, but what compelling reason is there to use SW vs. something like GURPS or HERO?

Savage Worlds is easy to use.  I used to be a fan of the HERO system but I don't have time these days for complicated systems and the HERO system was hard to get people to play.  They would look at the book and roll their eyes.  And that was 30 years ago.

GURPS is just terrible and overcomplicated.  I bought the books wanting to get into it but the rules are so poorly written and confusing I just gave up and moved on.  Character creation didn't have a easy to follow flow.   Eventually I found Savage Worlds but that was after some time looking.   I find Savage Worlds easy to teach people while playing and easier for people to pick up.

Quote from: Brad on February 21, 2024, 09:17:23 PM
So I know you must have answered this before, but what compelling reason is there to use SW vs. something like GURPS or HERO? I suppose that's a more general question, so I'll make it specific and say I have Horror HERO and GURPS 3rd edition Horror and have yet to run either of them; I have run Chill, Silent Legions, Beyond the Supernatural, and Cryptworld, which I guess is just a Chill clone. Why use SW instead?

Some backstory...I used to play GURPS with a bunch of hardcore fans of the system, they ported everything over. One of their favorite games was Twilight 2000 but using GURPS. So a few years pass, I thought about playing GURPS again, the main advocate told me they had moved to SW because it did everything GURPS did but with 1/10th the effort. I always found that interesting so I got a copy of the rules, but didn't find them that compelling. I also have SWADE and still can't really see much reason for using it, honestly. Is this one of those, "You need to play it and not theorycraft," scenarios?

  It takes playing.  I had several editions and would read and re read the book and did not see the appeal.  Finally played it with our group and it was much better on the table than it was on the page. 

Quote from: Brad on February 21, 2024, 09:17:23 PM
So I know you must have answered this before, but what compelling reason is there to use SW vs. something like GURPS or HERO? I suppose that's a more general question, so I'll make it specific and say I have Horror HERO and GURPS 3rd edition Horror and have yet to run either of them; I have run Chill, Silent Legions, Beyond the Supernatural, and Cryptworld, which I guess is just a Chill clone. Why use SW instead?

SW is much lighter than HERO or GURPS. The whole point of SW is navigating tropes while giving you mechanical heft to them. It errs on the side of the players and since it keeps the number calculations low, it's very easy to assimilate as a new GM and get on with the good stuff.

What it does super-well is scale with very little mechanical overhead. For example, it's not important to know HOW much stronger that metal plating is on your giant robot. It might have an Armor Rating of 15 (which is decent) but since it's a giant robot, it's now got Heavy Armor. That means any weapon *not* with the Heavy quality simply bounces off. And just like that, you have effectively created Palladium MDC without having to retool things. Sounds simplistic? And yet, it works marvelously.

It's not so much that it's giving you mechanical specificity (Like GURPS), it's giving you fast resolution and approximation that lowers the nitpickyness of trying to aim for absolute detail that can get in the way. A simple +4/-4 range due to environmental/ability/gear has *massive* impact on the outcomes of task-resolution which keeps your overhead down without sacrificing anything.

By comparison a +1 bonus in SW is the equivalent of a +4 in D&D. This works both for/against players. So the stakes are always high/low as you need. Plus the system has a wonderful array of switches and levers to dial the game up/down or even sideways with simple options that do not fundamentally change the core task resolution.

What this does is allow you to fully lift material literally from *any* Savage World product and drop it into your game as needed. So when they dropped Savage Rifts... it wasn't *just* a standalone game as it's designed. It's now a vehicle for us to leverage the insane power-levels of Rifts into our other games piecemeal. Want Archmage level gaming? Well Rifts *starts* there.

On the other side, if you want to play gritty, grimdark sword and sorcery? A couple of setting rules like Betrayal (Can't soak Sneak Attacks), or Difficult Healing (One chance to heal a wound), Gritty Damage (any wound causes a roll on the Injury table), Hard Choices (When PC's spend Bennies it goes into a pool for the GM to use for his NPCs). etc. etc. There are TONS of Setting Rules that you can use to customize your campaign with huge effects but little mechanical footprint.

Can GURPS and HERO do the same things? *ABSOLUTELY*. But both of those systems have far more overhead for GM's that have not fully assimilated those systems, much less players, to run as smoothly. SW can be jumped into in minutes. The core task resolution can be explained with "Roll higher than a 4, or your opponents Parry rating." That's 80% of it minus bonuses and modifying Edges.

I've played with GURPS GM's that can run blisteringly smooth games. They live and breathe GURPS. But as a player? The choices are paralyzing even for someone like me that loves options on top of options. SW gives me the best of both worlds: mechanical fidelity to its core premise - "Cinematic Tropes - Fast, Fun, Furious!" while giving you nobs and levers to add as much detail as you want with little overhead. Plus TONS of meaningful options.

Quote from: Brad on February 21, 2024, 09:17:23 PMSome backstory...I used to play GURPS with a bunch of hardcore fans of the system, they ported everything over. One of their favorite games was Twilight 2000 but using GURPS. So a few years pass, I thought about playing GURPS again, the main advocate told me they had moved to SW because it did everything GURPS did but with 1/10th the effort. I always found that interesting so I got a copy of the rules, but didn't find them that compelling. I also have SWADE and still can't really see much reason for using it, honestly. Is this one of those, "You need to play it and not theorycraft," scenarios?

You sound like one of my trusted players. Dude is whipsmart but he said the same thing. "I don't get it."

Backstory - *I* was converted to SW in the Deluxe edition. One of my friends suggested we play Deadlands, which I heard a lot about over the years, I made a Shaolin monk (c'mon! You mean I can play Cain, walking the earth, whipping that ass?) and after the very first fight - less than 60 seconds into the game, I *knew*. It FELT right. I hadn't even conceived of anything with SW being a "game about Tropes" - but when I was playing it, all the Tropes were happening. My monk was dodging bullets, deflecting tomahawks with his hands, moving between opponents, elbows, circle-kicks, etc. All up until one player rolled a Critical Fail, then rolled insane success on me and blew my head clean off.

My takeaway had nothing to do with the Deadlands game itself (I loved it, despite dying to player bad choices) - was that this could have been a D&D game... only faster, higher-octane, and *right out of the gate*. I didn't need to memorize the PHB, or know the nuances of obscure combat rules, or gear to maximize my efficiency in delivering damage per round. No. I was kicking that ass right out of the gate and it felt AWESOME. Second realization was the fact we're in the Wild West and I'm working very well right alongside people using *firearms*... and on top of that, technically I was a spellcaster (Chi powers are "spells" just with different trappings) - so the incessant problem of blackpowder "realism" and Gish concepts being half-assed were immediately eliminated theoretically, with zero effort. The ONLY thing no one at the table other than myself saw: This is what DnD should be.

It's not about being realistic, it's about exemplifying the play at your table you want WITH mechanics that back it up.

Back to my player with opinions like yours - he flatly didn't see it. He said that he didn't see how the system had the legs to express the totality of what DnD had given us all these years. And in truth - he wasn't technically wrong. I started looking at SW's settings, and they *did* have some fantasy settings, they had the Fantasy Companion, but I was fighting an uphill battle against a group that had campaigned with me for two-decades in the Greybox Realms and made it ours. Selling them on wholesale going to a new setting AND a new "untested" system that I believed would deliver what I've been giving them for the last few years was an insanely ridiculous tall order.

And they weren't wrong. My selling point had to be something smaller and more intimate. I had to go back to my Sword and Sorcery roots, low magic, high adventure, blood and steel mode, with gold and tits, and kingdoms to conquer. I knew I was still a beginner with SW and wasn't comfortable designing a setting yet. And SW had that setting: Beasts and Barbarians. It's a loveletter to Hyboria that stands on its own. Yes the magic is low-key, but it showed my most jaded players that SW rocks the fucking socks on Fantasy.

The possibilities were now obvious to them, they just needed that DnD feel. Fortunately by this time SWADE dropped, and we were doing other games (lots of MSH) but when I started to feel comfortable with the system they announced Savage Rifts. That was a milestone for me as well - because I loved Rifts, and I was SUPER skeptical about SW being able to handle the sheer powerlevel of Rifts. And it stuck the landing. Now the full extent of what SW could do was apparent. While I don't think at the highest end of the power spectrum it's perfect, it's damn solid. It lets you run any kind of encounter - player fighting normal monsters, to players fighting Kaiju sized monstrosities without any change in rules.

Further the sub-systems like their mass combat, are brilliant. I've run battles that were 90k men in pitched combat that came down to the wire, where the players were literally terrified they were about to die only to pull it out at the last second... standing amongst the fallen of 70k dead and counting during the rout... and feeling great about it. Those same rules apply to Space fleets, to City Sieges, to literally anything without missing a single beat. But still we hadn't played D&D fantasy yet.

By then I'd felt very comfortable with the system - I started converting Greybox Realms to SWADE. In mid-design or thereabouts, they announced Savage Worlds Pathfinder... That's when I knew we'd "arrived". While I knew it wouldn't be the perfect rendition of what I like in D&D fantasy, it would be close enough. And it was. It's *not* perfect, but it IS Pathfinder rendered into SWADE.

With the Fantasy Companion (and now Horror Companion) all the pieces are there to create the exact game you want in whatever setting you want (if you're willing to do the work) with fairly low effort since all the component parts are freely interchangeable. You *can* have super-heroic fantasy, or grimdark gritty fantasy, swashbuckling pirates with black powder? No problem. Loincloth wearing barbarians? Done. Want to put them on Cybernetic Laser shooting Velociraptors? No problem!

SW is intensely plug-and-play with very low effort... but I do not sell it as a "light system". I define "Crunch" as - the minimum number of sub-systems required to know with the core task resolution in order to run the game. In this area, it's Medium Crunch - but you can ratchet that UP or DOWN as you see fit. In terms of "Complexity" - it's the maximum number of calculations to run the core task resolution - in this area it's light.

The combination of these two factors makes SW punch *way* above it's level. It's low complexity, but the mechanical heft it gives allows for a remarkable array of genre emulation possibilities where navigating tropes is the key. And it gives you additional layers of options to fine tune it to make it yours.

Perfect? No. I find that it doesn't quite suit my needs for Superheroes - but that's largely because of my MSH and DCHeroes biases and the decades I've spent perfecting running those games at my tables using those dedicated systems (which is another thread). But I do own the Super Heroes Companion for SWADE, and I'm tempted to try...

or you know... I could just lift some of those rules into my other games... maybe I'll do a Savage Worlds Exalted game...

Quote from: Theory of Games on February 22, 2024, 05:54:44 AM
Any game with "Slaughter rules" gets my approval ;D

SW really is trying to branch out. I'm waiting on Savage Shadowrun.

The Sci-Fi Companion kickstarter launched two days ago. BANK on cyberpunk stuff packed into it.

OR you could simply take Interface Zero and add supernatural races into it. It's pretty much Shadowrun if you squint. It has Psionics... the rules for Psionics are almost identical to Arcane Magic. If you wanted to use some elbow-grease you could easily port over all the gear, and write up race-templates (SWADE gives you rules for creating your own races) and just let it fly.

The Interface Zero rules for netrunning are SOLID.

I started my own SWADE Cyberpunk conversion I call CPRed-Zero, which is CP2020, with CPRed elements, and leveraging a lot of the rules and gear form Interface Zero. But I have yet to release it on my players. It'll happen soon. I'm working on my own custom vehicle combat rules for some Mad Max love... THEN we'll see.

So from my view, I've started GMing Savage Worlds (SWADE) for a Middle Earth setting. I like the core of Savage Worlds mechanics - they are fast work well, and I enjoyed playing in Savage Worlds games and my recent GMing.

However, I have to say, I was very disappointed with the Fantasy Companion - which biases me against the Horror Companion.

The Fantasy Companion, in my opinion, was dominated by dull and flat write-ups of fantasy spells, magic items, and monsters. It felt like it was trying to be devoid of creativity, so as to cover the most boring of fantasy tropes. While D&D or Palladium Fantasy or similar are generic, they at least try to be a little distinctive and interesting, with some interesting twists. I found it essentially useless for my Middle Earth game.

By contrast, the HERO System books and GURPS books have had generally interesting content. Fantasy HERO has good content about how to do different sorts of fantasy, with its checklist to tailor magic to a specific setting. GURPS Fantasy is the specific world of Yrth, which is generic but had at least some interesting twists, like populations brought over from real-world history.

The Fantasy Companion spent way too much basically showing you how to convert D&D 3e to Savage Worlds. I would have liked greater breadth of the fantasy genre, rather than assuming some kind of D&D/Pathfinder mishmash as the default. There is some support for other stuff, like pulp-style Sorcerery, but it's definitely the weakest of the genre books, and specifically I would say because it didn't try hard enough. Like, if I just want Savage D&D-finder, Savage Worlds Pathfinder is right there.

The Companions
They exist in their current form at their standard basic level to emulate what people think of as fantasy/horror/supers. They're not overtly trying to emulate any particular edition of D&D or whatever, they're trying to emulate what people conceive of generally within the tropes of what is popular.

Savage Pathfinder - *that* is trying to emulate 3e into Savage Worlds because it's directly taking Pathfinder as a set of tropes and "Savaging" them. The Fantasy Companion by direct comparison deconstructs those very 3e elements into distinct abilities for the sole purpose of the GM to decide what is/isn't going to be used at the table.

These general core rules are supposed to be described and colored by the GM to reflect his setting. It's not like when someone launches a Fireball in 1e DnD or 5e DnD there is much of a descriptive difference between editions, nor between means in which they're cast. But in Savage Worlds there is absolutely supposed to be a difference, via Trappings, and Arcane Background - the mechanics might remain the same, but the GM and Player have a say in that too. If you *don't* do that, then you're missing the whole the point of the system.

If you're insisting the mechanics are the game itself, I will highly disagree. I would disagree in any game or setting where mechanics should be the starting point of roleplaying. Otherwise by relative comparison, the Blast Power represents the Fireball spell pretty accurately as a *trope*. Anything else that is missing is for the GM to extrapolate on via Setting Rules.

@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.

You can literally make any kind of race you can imagine. You can literally make any kind of Powers, Skills, Abilities you need. They give you all the basic guidelines you need. If that's not in your capacity or desire to do, you're trying to pretend a toolkit is a full blown setting. It's not. Nor is it intended to be.

But without specifics I can't really address your issues. Nor do I think it would be beneficial to anyone since you're pretty disingenuous in general.

I backed the Horror Companion Kickstarter, so I've had the PDF for several months now. I found it unsatisfactory, but I'm not sure I could put my finger on exactly why. I think it might just be that its flavor of horror, though broad, is decidedly too 'modern' for my tastes (by which I mean pretty much anything post-Hammer/American International :) ), and its presentation reflects that--it's a rather unpleasant-looking book to me. Also, I'm not a fan of Pinnacle's China-centered manufacturing, even if I understand the reasons.

I'm not a big enough horror gamer or GM to back this, but I did just end a 6 month SW Pulp 1930s game, and backed the SW Science Fiction Companion (finally KSed!)

Yeah, Savage Worlds is great. It really models various kinds of action movie genres and really shines when you let the players just do their thing. The one thing I did need to get used to as GM was just how much crunchier it is than the OSR games (SWN and OSE) that I've been running for the past few years. I also don't use grid maps, so I had to be very careful about ranged combat mods and the gang-up bonus (which is pretty nasty!).

I still am not sure I know how to run a chase, or a dramatic encounter. But I'll try again at some later date. Good times, would run or play again.

Quote from: Heavy Josh on February 22, 2024, 08:09:27 PM
Yeah, Savage Worlds is great. It really models various kinds of action movie genres and really shines when you let the players just do their thing. The one thing I did need to get used to as GM was just how much crunchier it is than the OSR games (SWN and OSE) that I've been running for the past few years. I also don't use grid maps, so I had to be very careful about ranged combat mods and the gang-up bonus (which is pretty nasty!).

Yeah, I also had a great time this past weekend running my Lord of the Rings game again. I'll report soon about that run soon. I do greatly enjoy the Savage Worlds base system.

Quote from: tenbones on February 22, 2024, 07:05:18 PM
The Companions
They exist in their current form at their standard basic level to emulate what people think of as fantasy/horror/supers. They're not overtly trying to emulate any particular edition of D&D or whatever, they're trying to emulate what people conceive of generally within the tropes of what is popular.

There are different approaches to emulation, though. There's a toolkit or an example, say.

I think Lord of the Rings is damn popular within fantasy. It's the best-known fantasy story ever, and has had a dozen or more RPG adaptations. Still, as I said, I found the Fantasy Companion essentially useless for my Middle Earth game.

The Fantasy Companion's approach to emulating what's popular seems to be a "lowest common denominator" pastiche. i.e. Lord of the Rings is popular; D&D is popular; and Warhammer is popular. All three have elves, but the three versions of elves are all different. So the Fantasy Companion has a single "elf" that includes only the most overlapping and least distinctive parts of the three. I think this is a bad middle ground. It's not a good setting to use out of the box, and it's not a good toolkit for me to adapt something like Lord of the Rings.

Quote from: jhkim on February 22, 2024, 09:07:28 PM
There are different approaches to emulation, though. There's a toolkit or an example, say.

I think Lord of the Rings is damn popular within fantasy. It's the best-known fantasy story ever, and has had a dozen or more RPG adaptations. Still, as I said, I found the Fantasy Companion essentially useless for my Middle Earth game.

The Fantasy Companion's approach to emulating what's popular seems to be a "lowest common denominator" pastiche. i.e. Lord of the Rings is popular; D&D is popular; and Warhammer is popular. All three have elves, but the three versions of elves are all different. So the Fantasy Companion has a single "elf" that includes only the most overlapping and least distinctive parts of the three. I think this is a bad middle ground. It's not a good setting to use out of the box, and it's not a good toolkit for me to adapt something like Lord of the Rings.

They need to be "lowest common denominator" because by definition the point of these books are to be a toolkit to appeal to the widest audience looking for this fare. As you pointed out - all three elfs are different and very basic. But I'd go further: LotR elves are not represented by any of the Core Rules, the Fantasy Companion, or the Savage Worlds Pathfinder rules. That's because they're not supposed to represent anything but what a basic elf assumption is. The point is, outside of the SW Pathfinder rules, these "elves" are just examples of, as you said, popular (and frankly lame) notions of what Elves could be. They aren't mandates upon you.

The point is to tweak your content to be what you want it to be.  There is no "official" standard build for a race. The normal model is a +2 total modifier. But even their races they provide as examples of custom races are +4. Most of the Race/Iconic Frameworks clock in OVER +100, to give you an idea of how far you can push the system to get *exactly* what you want for it.

Saying the "Elf" in the Fantasy Companion is a weak representation of your LotR Elf concept, is like saying that a go-kart sized example of a formular car is not a good representation of an actual formular car, but you ignore the fact they give all the tool components to create the exact car you want.

For instance - My Savage Worlds Moon Elves look like this:

(https://i.imgur.com/fKnP2kQ.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/m5APnUs.png)

It's a +4 build as are all my other elves: Sun/Imperial Elves, Wood Elves, Drow Elves. All of them are distinct and fit my conception of my Realms setting.
I have about a dozen other races as well. Including regional Edges for Humans from a specific locale within the Realms. The whole point is to use the Core and the Companion to take full control of your setting as *you* see fit.

Whether you find that value in the books is up to you, of course. I find the Fantasy Companion an excellent addition IN LIEU of the Savage Pathfinder rules which is much more a Pathfinder vibe than I need. Although I will say I do like some of the unique Edges and Prestige Class Edges, as well as some of their sub-systems. Once you have your basic stuff in place, the core rules will handle pretty much anything you can throw at it without missing a beat.

It might be fun to translate some Horror tropes (i.e. other game settings, novel material etc.) using the SW Horror and Core rules.

Everyone here seems to like classic 1e World of Darkness... maybe some Vampires or Werewolves?

Quote from: Armchair Gamer on February 22, 2024, 07:47:01 PM
I backed the Horror Companion Kickstarter, so I've had the PDF for several months now. I found it unsatisfactory, but I'm not sure I could put my finger on exactly why. I think it might just be that its flavor of horror, though broad, is decidedly too 'modern' for my tastes (by which I mean pretty much anything post-Hammer/American International :) ), and its presentation reflects that--it's a rather unpleasant-looking book to me. Also, I'm not a fan of Pinnacle's China-centered manufacturing, even if I understand the reasons.

I do agree they read bland. But it's like reading a Basic Manual of How To. Nothing about the Core or Companions jump out in terms of writing, other than conveying how to use the new bits and bobs and subsystems in a dutiful fashion. Which is fine to me.

I also agree I've never been a particular fan of the art or layout. And I'm definitely not a fan of the China printers making it a whip for us to get our printed books (not to mention I don't think printing in China is a good move for political reasons but that's another discussion. I'll probably feel differently when I start publishing, but I feel pretty strongly about it - so we'll see.)

While I'm in it for the rules content, bad art will kill it for me. None of Savage Worlds books rises to what I call "Bad Art". Bland? Sure. Occasionally good. But nothing I'm ever going to do a flip about.

Quote from: tenbones on February 22, 2024, 11:54:57 PM

Quote from: Armchair Gamer on February 22, 2024, 07:47:01 PM
I backed the Horror Companion Kickstarter, so I've had the PDF for several months now. I found it unsatisfactory, but I'm not sure I could put my finger on exactly why. I think it might just be that its flavor of horror, though broad, is decidedly too 'modern' for my tastes (by which I mean pretty much anything post-Hammer/American International :) ), and its presentation reflects that--it's a rather unpleasant-looking book to me. Also, I'm not a fan of Pinnacle's China-centered manufacturing, even if I understand the reasons.

I do agree they read bland. But it's like reading a Basic Manual of How To. Nothing about the Core or Companions jump out in terms of writing, other than conveying how to use the new bits and bobs and subsystems in a dutiful fashion. Which is fine to me.

I also agree I've never been a particular fan of the art or layout. And I'm definitely not a fan of the China printers making it a whip for us to get our printed books (not to mention I don't think printing in China is a good move for political reasons but that's another discussion. I'll probably feel differently when I start publishing, but I feel pretty strongly about it - so we'll see.)

While I'm in it for the rules content, bad art will kill it for me. None of Savage Worlds books rises to what I call "Bad Art". Bland? Sure. Occasionally good. But nothing I'm ever going to do a flip about.

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.

As a big SW fan I'm going to pick this up. Ta' for the overview, TB.

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.

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.

The Polish cards aren't overly expensive within the EU because of the common market. The problem, I think, is simply the cost of shipping and the U.S. customs duties. Chinese companies must be printing the books/cards so cheaply that they are competitive on the U.S. market despite the shipping and customs.

Quote from: Svenhelgrim on February 22, 2024, 05:04:13 AM
Is this a compleat game? Or is it a supplement to be used with a core rulebook?

I mean...it's called a Companion, so...

So I farted around on my lunch and whipped this up... mind you this is literally just an example, I'm toying around with some other options. The assumption here is a "starting" vampire. They clock in at +9 points. Which is where I'll ballpark the rest of the templates. The basic gist - all Vampires share the same basic template, then they choose their Bloodline/Clan and take ONE of their signature Clan Features, but they also take the Hindrance. This should represent a starting vampire. If you wanna start them more powerful, just let them start with more advances.

I'll still need to flesh out some stuff - Diablerie, Blood magic, Clan specific "disciplines" which might just be Edges or Bloodline powers. Easy stuff.

Savage World of Darkness

Vampires
Vampires haunt not just the shadows of night, but of history itself. The Thirteen Clans have ruled the world (or so they like to believe) via their pawns and machinations since the dawn of history. They have done so by their mighty powers and terrible knowledge that comes with age.

Each of thirteen bloodlines share similar traits, but also bear distinctions that mark them from one another. These unique traits are subtle, in other cases grotesquely obvious. These distinctions are more than just superficial, they are defining of their respective Bloodlines. And with those Bloodlines comes legacy. Those legacies are defined by conflicts passed down by centuries of political conflict and outright war for control. Even as rivals vampires maintain their own culture, a decorum that transcends the brutish modern era, calling themselves Kindred... where legend labels them a more abased title befitting their nature — vampire.

Common Vampire Traits +9 then (Bloodline)
All Kindred share the following traits unless otherwise modified under their specific Bloodline.

Ageless: Vampires do not age.
Bite: The vampire has retractable fangs that cause Str+d4 damage.
Feed: The vampire must drink at least one pint of fresh blood every day. This is treated like the Habit (Major) Hindrance. Each pint refills their Bloodpool by 1 point. A normal human suffers 1 Wound per feeding, and gains 1 Fatigue for every point taken. If more than three pints are taken, the human will die if not taken to a hospital.  -2
Regeneration (Slow): As long as they have fed, vampires may attempt a natural healing roll every day. Once fully healed of Wounds, permanent injuries may be recovered as a normal Wound afterward. 
Strength of the Damned: Vampires increase their Vigor one die types once turned.
Undead: +2 Toughness; +2 to recover from being Shaken; no additional damage from Called Shots; ignores 1 point of Wound penalties; doesn't breathe; immune to disease and poison.
Stake Through the Heart: A vampire hit with a Called Shot to the heart (−4) by a wooden weapon must make a Vigor roll vs the damage total. If successful, it takes damage normally. If it fails, it instantly becomes paralyzed and remains so until the stake is removed.
Sunlight: Vampires burn in sunlight. They take 2d6 damage per round until they are ash. Armor protects normally.
Bloodpool: All Vampires start with a Bloodpool of 10-points. These points may be used to fuel the following powers: boost (Strength, Agility, Vigor, Self only), heal (self only). When a Vampire's Bloodpool is empty they must make a Spirit check or go into a Frenzy (See Frenzy). Bloodpools can only increase via increasing their Generation score.
Bloodline: Every vampire belongs to one of the Thirteen Bloodlines, and adds any unique traits from that Bloodline to their list. Those that are abandoned must use the Caitiff rules (see below).


Bloodlines
According to Kindred scholars, the Flood destroyed Enoch the first vampiric city and the thirteen antediluvians that survived spawned their brood which would proliferate through the ages in an endless struggle against their own brethren. Here are the thirteen Clans and their bloodlines. Upon choosing one's Clan, you may take one of the Clan Features. You must also take the Clan Hindrance.

You may purchase your other Clan Features with a regular advance, providing you meet the requirements. Some features the GM may require specialized training to learn. Features unique to some Clans may not be purchased without the GM's approval.

The Brujah
The legacy of the Brujah is one of halcyon greatness marred by their own fiery natures. Theirs was the glory of ancient Carthage, but Ventrue treachery in ancient Rome brought the dream to an end. Since then, the Brujah have borne a grudge.

Tonight, the Brujah are rebels and Provocateurs, bat-swinging hooligans and agents of change in a society long crippled by stasis. As rebels, it's in their nature to challenge the status quo — though sometimes, without adequate opposition, they embody the status quo themselves. It works out fine, because there's always a hot-blooded Brujah waiting in the wings to bring down an uppity Clanmate grown too comfortable in the role of rebel-turned-dictator.

More so than any other Clan, the Brujah still feel the flames of the passions that once inspired them as mortals. Clan Brujah loves a cause and is quick to act on a stirring speech, accusation of injustice, or a call to arms. This connection to passion can be a blessing, but inspiration can also yield to the madness and hunger of the Beast.

Clan Features (Choose One): Berserk (Edge), Bloodline Power: speed (self only) Charm (See Vampiric Edges).

Clan Hindrance: Thin Skinned (Major)

Ok Tenbones, I have wanted to do a vampire game and you have really have my creative juices flowing.  I am going to have to pick up the horror companion and I am going to reread the rules to shake off the dust and really learn the rules again.  I used to really know the rules but after 2 years of not playing SW, I need to brush up.

One thing I would suggest for feeding is that the recover a quarter of your Blood pool does one would to the victim, half the blood pool is 2 wounds and if you are very low and need to fill up then it would do 3 wounds to the victim.

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'm actually jazzed at the idea of doing Werewolf and possibly the other Fera.

Quote from: tenbones on February 24, 2024, 01:18:26 AM
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.

Precisely. It gives you the tools to create a WoD-like game without being loaded down with all of the lore, which many players would expect if you played an actual MtG game.

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
(https://i.imgur.com/rej2opr.png)

Here is the Table of Contents
(https://i.imgur.com/C7vMdvv.png)

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 (https://sites.google.com/view/mystaraswade/home) 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.

Quote from: tenbones on February 28, 2024, 05:34:32 PM

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.

I thought about this myself often enough, but in the long run I've just seen Savage Settings that seem like they should use the Superpower companion (Savage Rifts) but end up doing their own thing with the base system that turns out better (Again, Savage Rifts).

You yourself for example showed how to do World of Darkness Vampires with the Base system... You could easily build disciplines with Super Powers, but the base Savage Worlds Power system with some tweaking probably handles it 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 can speak GOBS towards this...

SW Pathfinder is a near perfect translation of Pathfinder into Savage Worlds. WARTS AND ALL.

Pathfinder is a perfect example as a flavor of D&D where things went really wrong with the mechanics of 3.x and meta-gameplay. Clerics = HEALBOT, Thieves = Janky Fighters whose whole schtick can be done better with spellcasters. Fighters = "Tanks... in name only." Boring progression, boring vertical gameplay. Casters = OWN ALL. Lets create yet more ways you can be an Arcane Caster and dominate.

MOST of these problems were not because of the narrative flavor of these classes, but because of the mechanics and role-protection that emerged from the mechanics that worked more and more on the battlemat-simulation-video-game-simulation-circle-jerk, which plagues low-end gaming to this day.

Because they're mechanical problems in nature, the translation of the direct mechanics are resolved simply by making them Savage Worlds mechanics. What *isn't* resolved is the emergent design conceits that Pathfinder decided to enforce mechanically by fiat. In this case the biggest problem is the Cleric Uber Healer issue. As well as the notion that letting PC's die is "bad gaming".

Savage Pathfinder, in their emulation of the original Paizo edition, retained some of these artifacts. This is largely because of the lack of mechanical rigor that Pathfinder applied to its own ruleset (regardless of what you think their reasoning was). Thankfully, because Savage Worlds is so modular *all* of the perceived issues I have are reasonably solvable.

The Differences
Savage Pathfinder is a self-contained system. It doesn't require the Savage Worlds Core Rules. The Core Rules are cooked into the Savage Worlds Pathfinder books. There are some setting rules baked in that are Pathfinder specific. But these can be rendered optional, like any Savage Worlds setting. The point is the Savage Worlds Pathfinder rules are *by design* aimed at emulating ALL of Pathfinder, lensed through Savage Worlds rules. It's not overtly trying to *fix* anything you perceive about 3.x d20, or even things you don't care about Pathfinder. But it gives you a very close idea what D&D fantasy could look like on the Savage Worlds Chassis.

Class Edges - Savage Worlds doesn't do classes because a "class" is just a package of abilities that "define" a role. But in emulating Pathfinder they leveraged the design mechanics they developed in Savage Rifts "Iconic Frameworks" to model Palladium's O.C.C's. <> D&D Classes. To this end, they build a package of abilities mechanically balanced them as Edges and cooked in some Hindrances to replicate a vertical progression of what a D&D Class would look like.

For example - if you were a regular spellcaster in Savage Worlds, you'd have the Arcane Background: Wizardry (or whatever). There are no inherent drawbacks to taking that Edge, other than your GM saying it's not available for whatever reason in their game. So this frees you up to progress as you and your GM sees fit. In Savage Pathfinder, when you take the Class Edge: Wizard, not only do you get the Pathfinder specific abilities of the Arcane Background: Wizard (which doesn't technically exist in Savage Pathfinder) but it has hindrances like, you can't wear armor. Among other such things. Each Class Edge has *specific* abilities open only to them that they can purchase as they gain Rank (there are no levels per se in SW).

Since much of the SW mechanics eschews things like "role-protection" - the implication of the Class Edges are simply there to give you that facsimile that people are used to having. It's is NOT mandatory you take a Class Edge (though you get one for free - you can choose to take a standard SW Profession or Background Edge instead.)

As I stated above - since the Class Edges reinforce "role-protection" - the Class Edges are powerful and disincentivize trying to recreate those Roles outside of the Class Edge system itself. Yes, you CAN do it, but some abilties they folded into the Class Edges are simply "too good" to pass up.

The Savage Worlds system itself solves a *lot* of the problems of Pathfinder (and d20 in general).

Linear Fighter/Quadratric Mage - NON ISSUE. Non-Caster's are as dangerous as Casters. Yes, Casters definitely have some advantages, but non-casters are badass.
Ascending/Descending AC - Savage Worlds uses Parry/Flat number 4 to determine how you hit. This means your skill in fighting is what matters, not the armor you wear. Armor absorbs damage, it doesn't make you harder to hit.
HP bloat - Savage Worlds gives you three Wounds. That's it. You mitigate damage by making yourself harder to hit, and raising your Toughness rating through gear, Edges, spells etc.

The Bestiary - The Savage Pathfinder book comes with a decent little bestiary in the back. Plus it has it's own dedicated Pathfinder Bestiary book which has pretty much everything you could want in a D&D game. Plus they give you guidelines on creating your own monsters.

The Savage World Fantasy Companion
So YES there is some overlap between the Fantasy Companion and Savage Worlds Pathfinder. But it's not as much as you'd imagine. The big differences is they made the Fantasy Companion with rules to encompass D&D fantasy in the various flavors it exists, plus with options to express different kinds of fantasy and how to do it with Setting Rules mechanics.

MOST of the Class Edge abilities found in Savage Pathfinder have been deconstructed down into discrete Edges in the Fantasy Companion. You could technically recreate most, if not all the Savage Pathfinder Classes organically.

They added alternative Arcane Backgrounds, Weapons, Gear, Races, Hindrances, Edges, more robust rules for traps, poisons, guidance on creating "classes" without making Class Edges. Options for magic - cantrips, more Trappings, more options for Domains, more rules for creating magic items, an expanded bestiary with very minor overlap (which they did intentionally - the FC bestiary is much more grounded in mythology and "standard D&D" type monsters.) Plus they give a nice cosmological overview on the Planes and samples of each Plane and what the mechanical conditions are for GM's to create their own content.

For ME - the FC is a great book, because I'm very DIY, and it bookends Savage Pathfinder. The more I GM it, the less need I have for Savage Pathfinder, to be honest. Savage Pathfinder is great for:

1) If you're wanting a self-contained Fantasy game and system that emulates Pathinder's flavor of D&D and it's setting.
2) People that want to get their feet wet in Savage Worlds rules, and don't want to spend a lot of time fiddling around.
3) If you're that person tired of the D&D rules, but you don't want to give up your D&D fantasy.


The Fantasy Companion is good for those GM's that like being hands on, and know what they want and how they want it. I can simulate any kind of fantasy sub-genre between the FC/Core Rules and anything else in my SW toolbox.

I like them both, but going forward, I'll use the Savage Worlds Pathfinder for their bestiary, gear and little else.

Edit: And damn you Orphan81 for beating me to the punch and saying the same thing in half the words...

Quote from: Orphan81 on February 28, 2024, 05:47:10 PM

Quote from: tenbones on February 28, 2024, 05:34:32 PM

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.

I thought about this myself often enough, but in the long run I've just seen Savage Settings that seem like they should use the Superpower companion (Savage Rifts) but end up doing their own thing with the base system that turns out better (Again, Savage Rifts).

You yourself for example showed how to do World of Darkness Vampires with the Base system... You could easily build disciplines with Super Powers, but the base Savage Worlds Power system with some tweaking probably handles it better.

Yep. You're probably VERY right here. I'm just riffing on the WoD thing. But since you mentioned it... I do need to see what I can leverage out of that Supers Companion.

I have *nothing* against the Supers Companion when it comes to Supers. I'm just too invested in my MSH system to sell them on SW Supers. But it might happen one day.

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.

Tenbones and Orphan aren't wrong, but...

You're asking a question that doesn't really have an answer because the Fantasy Companion and Savage Pathfinder aren't actually different. Everything that was said about Pathfinder class edges is also true about the arcane backgrounds presented in the Fantasy Companion, it's just that Savage Pathfinder provides this option to regular physical combatants as well. In short, you have edges that come with prepackaged hindrances to make a meatier edge. Savage Pathfinder is a complete game, and Fantasy Companion is the how-to manual.

I have spent the past few days tinkering with a SWADE conversion of Dragonlance since DL1 is 40 years old this year. As I've been fiddling with the races, I've noticed that it's easier to just copy Savage Pathfinder and make small adjustments rather than reinvent the wheel. The Savage Pathfinder dwarf and elf are already pretty faithful representations of 1E AD&D, which isn't surprising because Pathfinder is just 3E, and the more I play around with Savage Worlds, the more I find it doesn't really matter what edition of D&D I'm looking at. All of those changes between editions that got people so outraged on internet forums mean fuck all nothing when you're converting to Savage Worlds.

Once you're done building your own fantasy game with the SWADE core book and the Fantasy Companion, there's a better-than-50% chance you end up with Savage Pathfinder.

Hard copies of SWADE and the Fantasy Companion are sold out, but vendors are likely to have a Savage Pathfinder boxed set. That's a type of "better", at least for the foreseeable future.

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 have both.  I think the companion is better for running a fantasy game.   I think  if you have players that need a tight structure for advancing their characters SWPF might be better, but companion gives some good ideas as to how to emulate a "class" if players are looking for specialists.  IMO though its pretty easy to create a class with focus on edges anyway with no frame work in place. 

Quote from: Corolinth on February 29, 2024, 08:23:05 AM
Savage Pathfinder is a complete game, and Fantasy Companion is the how-to manual.

I have spent the past few days tinkering with a SWADE conversion of Dragonlance since DL1 is 40 years old this year. As I've been fiddling with the races, I've noticed that it's easier to just copy Savage Pathfinder and make small adjustments rather than reinvent the wheel. The Savage Pathfinder dwarf and elf are already pretty faithful representations of 1E AD&D, which isn't surprising because Pathfinder is just 3E, and the more I play around with Savage Worlds, the more I find it doesn't really matter what edition of D&D I'm looking at. All of those changes between editions that got people so outraged on internet forums mean fuck all nothing when you're converting to Savage Worlds.

Once you're done building your own fantasy game with the SWADE core book and the Fantasy Companion, there's a better-than-50% chance you end up with Savage Pathfinder.

Hard copies of SWADE and the Fantasy Companion are sold out, but vendors are likely to have a Savage Pathfinder boxed set. That's a type of "better", at least for the foreseeable future.

Yeah! The takeaway is that what *we* think of as D&D-Fantasy is subjective to a *point*. We agree there are Elves, Dwarves, Halflings, etc. we can agree on elements within the settings we like, even across editions. But we differ on how those elements are expressed. Those expressions are often tied directly to the mechanics we use. Once we're free our perceptions of those mechanics - like The Glass Wizards of 1e are not remotely the same as the Wizards of 5e.. then we naturally resynthesize what we actually WANT.

Savage Worlds gives you an easy way to do that. So sure, if your notions about D&D are out-of-the-box based on no specific edition and you're not trying to get deep into any particular setting, Savage Pathfinder will give you *exactly* that. The Fantasy Companion will let you tweak your D&D game into nearly any kind of Fantasy game you want, with the core assumption that it *is* Fantasy vs. other genres. Of course nothing prevents you from using those other Companion books to add those elements into your mix...

Sure I'd agree 50% of D&D games are well represented by Savage Pathfinder. But of course your mileage may vary. Pathfinder as a system and as a setting are mediocrity on parade. There are interesting bits in there, but the mechanics of Savage Worlds definitely elevates the play, and gives it much more scalability. And on that alone, makes it a better game option than most d20 options. Unless you're really a d20 system-wonk.

I read over the Horror Companion expecting... I'm not sure what I was expecting. Maybe something more Lovecraftian, given there was Lovecraft mythos stuff in the back.

I think what I got was more Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The TV show, not the movie.

The book feels like it's missing something. It needs more manly chin. Either a strapping young buck who lost his hand and replaced it with a chainsaw, or an elderly Elvis teaming up with JFK to defeat a mummy in their nursing home.

It read light. All the Companions do.

As long as they give me the tools, I add the Man-Chin.

Since this is winding all over the place about Savage Worlds... may as well point out I saw that on DTRPG there is a GM Sale.

You can get the Savage Worlds Core rules pdf for cheap.

https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/es/product/261539/savage-worlds-adventure-edition

All their Savage Pathfinder stuff, Savage Rifts, adventures and localized editions are up there too.