Man am I impressed.

I played my first Savage Worlds skirmish this past weekend. I cannot express how glad I am.

The Game Master, or whatever it is called in SW, ran us through a skirmish very reminescent of the combat in Balin's Tomb (Fellowship of the Ring). It was 5 of us against 8 orcs, 15-20 goblins and a cave troll.

Mind you, this is the first combat using this system for all the players, except the GM. He gave us premade characters and explained the basics of the SW system that we would need for combat and set up the board. This took about 30 minutes. Then we went at it.

The whole combat was like a comedy of errors since for the first few combat rounds we couldn't roll a 4 to save our lives. The party's spellcaster kept rolling 1's for her spellcasting roll and spent 80% of the combat shaken. Our dwarf berserker rushed in and missed the orcs for 3 consecutive rounds. And me, I couldn't aim my bow worth crap, at least for the first half of the combat.

Even then, we were able to complete this whole combat in just under 1 hour!!!!!

I'M SOLD!!!!!!!

I highly recommend to anyone sitting on the fence about SW, to give it a good shakedown. Don't just read the rules, play the game. And by play the game I mean have a HUGE combat. With a little bit of tweaking I can see this becoming my main gaming system, even for my Eberron Campaign.

Great White had the test drive rules on their site, that should be enough to give the system a try and to see if you like it. I'm still trying to convince my group to take it out for a spin.

If you get the chance, check out the new Savage Worlds campaign book, Rippers. It's Victorian England monster-hunting, and a lot of fun!

Just have to convince Denny to make Victorian-style buldings now!

I've had a wee scan through the SW freebie, and it all looks good. I'd like to give it a try. Answer me this though; is it possible to run a prolonged campaign using SW? I get the impression that its better for smaller games (i.e. one off adventures or a very small campaign)

Hanx
Elrond

The Ranks in SW run in 5 levels from Novice to Legendary. It takes 20xp to get from one rank to the next, and you get about 3-4xp per session. That's about 20-25 sessions to get from Novice to Legendary. But you don't stop there; you can then gain Legendary+ Ranks in perpetuity.

So... yes! You can have a long-term game in SW!

The short answer? Yes. We've been running our Evernight campaign for almost a year now, and we're planning our Firefly campaign to run concurrently (hopefully it will be a nice long one).


I have, however, found that characters can advance pretty quickly through the ranks if you award XPs the way the rules advise, even moreso if you let Bennies convert to XP - too quickly in my book. I'm not sure if its a function of our shorter - 3-5 hour - game sessions or what, but if I awarded XP and the normal rate, my PCs would be Heroic by now.

So now, I award XP much more slowly. Typically they get 1 per session. If they accomplished something important (not just nice, but important) then they get 2. If they accomplish something absolutely monumental, they get 3 (hasn't happened since I moved to the more restricted awards). Occasionally someone will get a bonus XP for exceptional roleplaying, although usually I handle that through Bennies.

Also, for converting Bennies to XP (something I know a lot of folks don't do), I let them do it, but only on a 6, and a max of one Bennie XP per session (regardless of the number of 6s they roll if they have extra bennies).

Thanks for the reply Luthyr, 25 sessions from novice to Legendary sounds quite long term.

Robby i found a similar thing with WFRP v1 (Not played a longenough v2 campaign to tell if its still a problem). Basically the players got all the XP they needed to max out 3/4 of the way through the campaign (and that was playing with the total they gave you). What ya suggest is probally a good way around it!

Hanx
Elrond

SW gives the initial impression that it won't go long term, but I can tell you from years of experience with it that that's the farthest thing from the truth. I ran Evernight for probably 6 months and the group ended at the high end of Seasoned; we may have had a Veteran character. That was with 3 xp per session. The advancement works well in that you get interesting boosts with each level-up that make a noticeable difference in the next session.

I love Savage Worlds. I started playing D&D in the late 70s, and it was always my system of choice. We played other stuff, first Top Secret and Gamma World and Gangbusters back in the day, then branched out to non-TSR games like Runequest and Stormbringer and Rolemaster and Champions, then finally to later games like Vampire and Werewolf, throwing in odd games like Over the Edge or Legacy for fun. But I always came back to D&D. I had a game hiatus for a few years, then started playing 3.0, which I liked. For awhile. Until the great 3.5 money grab, and the bazillion and one sourcebooks explosion. I was running a group of mostly newbies, and it was just complicated. We'd spent all evening running one or two fights.

After much prodding from some folks here, and much reading on the Savage Worlds forum, I picked up Savage Worlds. Wow. It read as a really fast, really fun system, but looked a little light. Nonetheless, we gave it a shot, and it has really transformed our gaming sessions. Most of our sessions are spent playing, not looking up rules and not rolling myriads dice. Early on we ran a combat with our group of PCs (7 at the time, plus 3 allies), 20 enemies and another 5 or so allies - a combat that would have taken all night in D&D, and it lasted maybe 45 minutes all told.

The fear I had that Savage Worlds was going to be too rules light turned out to be unfounded. It has solid, elegant mechanics, and they all work together really well in the end. The main rule book gives you pretty much everything you need for most campaigns - and the things that are lacking (an expansive martial arts system, for example), can easily be added by the GM or had from the variety of fan resources available.

It has some concepts in there that are much different from most other games, and they take a little bit of getting used to. And if you like charts and tables and minutae (and some folks do), then its probably not going to be for you.

But from a GM's point of view, I ain't going back. I'll play using another system, but - for now, at least - I'm not running anything else. Its a dream system for a GM. Almost no bookkeeping, NPC stats/creation can be done well on the fly, unusual situations are remarkably simple to adjudicate - its just a real pleasure to run.


Besides the one book, they have two other types of supplements. One are the campaign books, such as Evernight (dark fantasy), 50 Fathoms (pirates and magic), Necessary Evils (super heros ... sort of), Tour of Darkness (Cthulhu + Vietnam), Low Life (strange post-acopolypse) and Rippers (victorian gothic horror). Upcoming are Deadlands Reloaded (the weird west), Scairey Tales (children's fantasy gone awry) and Necropolis (undead vs. space marines) among others. These are full campaigns, most of which have a definite ending that you can lead your players up to. And typically, all you need is the one book, plus the campaign.

They also have a few companions to the campaign books released as PDFs (50 Fathoms is the only one out at the moment, I think, but there is a Rippers one in the works, as well), and a series of Toolkits they released in PDF as well. The Toolkits give you ideas for creating your own Fantasy or Sci-Fi worlds. They're not required, and not at all necessary, but the few I've read had a lot of useful ideas in them (they'd be good for any game).


Oh - and Savage Worlds has free Test Drive rules available on their website. I encourage you to check them out if you're remotely interested in SW.

Hope that helps.

I've been a Savage Worlds fan since the first Test Drive (with multiple Target Numbers!! ) and I agree with everything that everyone else has said about it. It's terrific.

However. In my extensive experience with the game it can sometimes suffer from a feeling of sameness from genre to genre. Tactically, the game doesn't change much from setting to setting. Sure there are setting rules and whatnot but it can still feel repetative. I've actually burned out on it a few times just for want of something different mechanically.

Well I won't try a SW vs 3.5 debate because I think it have been spoken before and I think that in no way I would change your mind (not even my itention but I like to discuss thinks when there is a even remote posibility of arrive to "join" views)...and I think they are at two opposite sides (not bad/good...) that make it difficult to have a valid argument for it (Maybe True20 sits more in the middle...I've to try it also...)

I don't think that SW is the best game in the world, sometimes I also miss the Quick..of the system because I spend all of a sesion in a combat (short sessions and combats that I would have not dream to do with other systems)...but I supose is the right system for what I'm in the mood...fun and easy to learn...It doesn't cover every aspect of the life and death of your character, I also have found holes in the system...but at least I've been able to read all the book (one only book) and that with 3.5 as been nearly impossible (and I've a lot of games and have read a lot of worse games systems maybe) ... I don't know maybe someday I found someone that seats at my side and make me understand all the need of 2 books to play a game and have fun (and has I've said in the past I've done but now I'm not into it...too litle time to loose...and I've tried I promise...Even with games with the D20 built into it like B5/Star Wars...who I would love to GM but can't pass the character creation part and go straight to the setting that is what I like)...
Maybe Auld you could open my eyes and point me to the heaven of 3.5 (Spycraft 2 I've heard ¿¿?? ... maybe is worth the try) don't restrain to try it...