Savage Worlds-- upsides and downsides

[Grod_The_Giant]

I'm considering using Savage Worlds for my next campaign. I played a Deadlands one-shot recently and had a blast. That being said, I think I owe it to myself to look a little deeper, so I ask you: what are the best things about the system, and what are the most frustrating?

Assume I'm talking about the most recent Deluxe edition.

[Raum]

SW does action well. PCs are "big d*** heroes" without being invincible to normal characters. They'll succeed at most actions, you won't run a fail fest in SW without twisting it...a lot. It's reasonably tactical while keeping accounting minimal. You can run large squad / small company combat almost as quickly as small squads. It also has a subsystem for larger battles. I've skipped over a lot, but those are the reasons I often come back to the system.

What it doesn't do well are high powered games. It'll do the low end of supers, though some cracks start to show. It doesn't really do higher end supers. It doesn't have a lot of support for utility magic, it's mostly short term or combat related. Deluxe does have rules for social conflicts but SW isn't the game I'd choose for political and social shenanigans.

Finally, it's not going to give you long lists of similar powers/spells/weapons/equipment with minor differences. Instead it gives you the basic types and encourages you to add your own trappings. However, many settings do add the trappings for you. Whether the need for trappings is a strength or weakness probably depends on how comfortable you are with creating your own details.

[Man on Fire]

Yeah, Savage Worlds is great game, but I don't think I would play it for high-powered superhero campaing. It makes you great Batman and Zetman, but horrible Superman or Goku.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Yeah, Savage Worlds is great game, but I don't think I would play it for high-powered superhero campaing. It makes you great Batman and Zetman, but horrible Superman or Goku.

Well, I've got Mutants and Masterminds for that.

[mcbobbo]

I'd underscore the 'no one is invulnerable' point, because in most games this isn't the case. Let me flip it for a second - anyone can go splat at any time.

Got an idea for a BBEG building momentum towards a nuclear strike, taunting the heroes the whole time? Better redesign it. They will either smoke him in seconds or die never having hit him (depending on his stats). The common recommendation is to fill the room with mooks, which at least causes them to break a sweat first.

There's also a 'tipping point' problem where the only success possible is a critical. So you get situations where someone is well armored, and rarely takes damage at all, but if they do it has a huge chance of being fatal.

That being said, I actually like the system a lot. It's just 'different'.

[Reverent-One]

I don't know about the it not being able to do higher powered supers. I've been in a superhero game that itself didn't reach that level, but from what I remember of the rules, there's little reason you can't have a character with super strength, incredibly hard to hurt/kill, laser vision, cold breath, flight, and so on.

[Scow2]

I don't know about the it not being able to do higher powered supers. I've been in a superhero game that itself didn't reach that level, but from what I remember of the rules, there's little reason you can't have a character with super strength, incredibly hard to hurt/kill, laser vision, cold breath, flight, and so on.

You can always roll a 1.

[Reverent-One]

You can always roll a 1.

And a level 1 commoner can save against an epic archmage's spell with a natural 20 in D&D. Doesn't mean the caster isn't ridiculously high powered.

[Scow2]

And a level 1 commoner can save against an epic archmage's spell with a natural 20 in D&D. Doesn't mean the caster isn't ridiculously high powered.

You have an easier time rolling a 1 on a d12 than a d20. And, even with a +2, your range is still (usually) great. In higher-powered Savage Worlds games, you start concerning yourself with Raises more than hits.

[Reverent-One]

Can't you boost stats/skills even above a d12 though? And PCs get the wild dice as well, which means you're not dependent on a single die roll. Regardless, the laundry list of powers and influence those powers can have (pretty sure you can become immune to nearly everything for example) seems pretty high powered to me.

[Raum]

Using the Supers Companion you can build a hero who can go toe to toe with a tank and win. That's low level Supers. :) Building a hero who can do everything Superman or Green Lantern can is more difficult, you'll have to make some compromises. Building one with Silver Surfer's power isn't really within the system's capabilities.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Like I said, I'm not too worried about extremely-high-power play. If the only "weakness" of the system is that it doesn't do big gorram superheroes as well as M&M...

mcbobbo-- thanks for the warning... certainly something to keep in mind.

[Mordar]

NOTE: Even though the "likes" is a single line and the "dislikes" is a block of letters, I like SW. The issue on number of words is just because the dislike takes more explanation.

Like: Easy-to-learn, fun to play, great fast-action emulator

Dislike: Limitations of character structure create situations where generalists carry the day, so the character who really wanted to be the expert/savant in theoretical particle physics is only *slightly* more likely to be successful on a TPP test than a modestly more intelligent blacksmith (by the RAW...certainly in such cases the GM should address the issue appropriately).

Basically, I'd like more stratification in skills/talents, that's all.

Meta-Dislike: Too many people I know want to run everything in the SW system, and while I like SW for SW-intended games, I think some games/settings suffer horribly when run in systems other than intended.

tl;dr: SW is good. Don't use it as the system for intricate settings that require significant skill stratification.

[Man on Fire]

On the other hand, even the games/settng conversions that suffer can have some useful things with them to bring to other games. Even if you dislike SW Earthdawn, you may still want the book that does it, because it's also known as "The Great Book of Edges".

[ThirdEmperor]

Just popping by to put in a good word for the combat. It's surprisingly complex for such a light system, with the taunt/trick options being simple but effective, and different enough to really make a tricky, agile fighter feel different than a brute force barbarian.