Trying out Savage Worlds for the first time tomorrow. What do I need to know?

[pwykersotz]

Hey guys,

So I'm trying out the Deluxe edition of Savage Worlds for the first time tomorrow. I'll only be using the core book for now, but I'm sure if it goes well I'll be trying a great many supplements.

The thing which drew my attention to the system in the first place was the promise of fast and punchy combat, and I was incredibly excited to see a magic system that I don't have to know 450+ spells to run. Plenty of the smaller subsystems look like great fun too, especially the Interludes, and I have high hopes for being able to run the occasional mass battle, which I've always shied away from in D&D due to the large amount of complexity. I'm a bit worried about translating the game away from miniatures. The designer notes say it should work fine, but my table doesn't use figs or maps, and all the default units are based on those. I guess I'll find out.

The thing is, I have only ever run Dungeon World (minimally), D&D 3.5, and D&D 5e games before. I've played in a few other systems, but never long term. Obviously I want to maximize the experience for myself and my players, and let the system put its best foot forward. Are there any suggestions for things to either focus on or avoid? Problem areas or sweet spots of the system? Pitfalls I might run into due to heavy indoctrination into D&D?

Thank you in advance for the input.

[Cealocanth]

I play a lot of Savage Worlds.

The thing you need to know is that Savage Worlds is two things before anything else: cinematic and generalized.

SW can play almost every type of game reasonably. It can run westerns, fantasy, sci-fi, horror, superheroes, war games, post-apocalyptic humor, anything. However, it will never do as well as a specific setting. It doesn't do D&D as well as D&D, it doesn't do Mutants and Masterminds as well as Mutants and Masterminds. However, it's great if you want a game with simple easy to understand mechanics that can do almost any genre, or one where you can very easily make custom settings.

The other thing is that Savage Worlds is cinematic. Exploding dice, the wound system, the fast and furious mechanics, the simplistic power style, the simple success/fail mechanics. All of these are built to make the game seem cinematic. This setting does not do the crunchy dice-play that d20 games do. If you're saying "Um, Actually" at any point in the game, you're playing it wrong.

Some pitfalls of the system are that the system is easy to metagame. Roleplay-based hindrances (your character likes to challenge the leader) are ranked on the same levels as stat-based hindrances (you literally start with half the skill points as other players). The system also tends to break down when you play settings built for it. Deadlands is by far the best built setting. Superheroes is by far the most broken. Broken Earth is by far the worst-designed setting. The default setting is by far the most balanced.

Quick note: if there's one thing that Savage Worlds does well, it's Horror. Deadlands, Last Parsec, Evernight, Hellfrost, East Texas University are all the best settings in Savage Worlds, and they're all horror settings.

More later when I have more time.

[pwykersotz]

Awesome, thank you. That is definitely helpful.

[harlokin]

Be generous with Bennies. Give them out liberally for cool/thematically appropriate behaviour, and encourage them to spend them; the game can kludge up if the Benny economy is strangled.

Savage Worlds is fine just using the base book, but REALLY shines if you use one of the pre-made settings, such as Hellfrost.

There was an important bit of errata to the most up-to-date version of the rules ( Deluxe Explorers Edition)

https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/p...Q_May_2015.pdf

[pwykersotz]

Be generous with Bennies. Give them out liberally for cool/thematically appropriate behaviour, and encourage them to spend them; the game can kludge up if the Benny economy is strangled.

Savage Worlds is fine just using the base book, but REALLY shines if you use one of the pre-made settings, such as Hellfrost.

There was an important bit of errata to the most up-to-date version of the rules ( Deluxe Explorers Edition)

https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/p...Q_May_2015.pdf

Oof, that is important. I did think Shaken was a little tough to remove. Good to know!

[pwykersotz]

So, I just got finished playing, and we loved it and scheduled another session in a few weeks.

Problems I had:

• Inches instead of feet was too much. I'm used to in-world forms of distance, not battle maps. I think I'll swap this and not look back.
• LOTS of rules lookup and modifier trouble. There were too many situational modifiers to keep easy track of in the first session. Everyone was nose-deep in the book half the game, checking and double checking stuff. I assume this will clear up with a little experience, but I am very spoiled by the advantage/disadvantage of 5e. I'm already thinking of ways to hack it into Savage Worlds, but I will refrain until I have more experience.

Awesomeness:

• Interludes are amazing. I will use them in every system I run from now on. Done.
• I really enjoyed the swift combat. Enemies dropped faster than I'm accustomed to, but it still allowed great challenges and let us press on quickly.
• Power points recovering one per hour was super fun for the mages in the group.
• Aces and Raises are super fun!
• Enemy statblocks are very compact, I don't have to process as much to run the combat in that regard.

Basically, I loved it, my group loved it, and we've all decided we need more experience in it. I'm sure this will become at least an occasional regular system for certain types of campaigns we run. I'm certain to run into a LOT more trouble in the future though, so if anyone has any more advice, I would still definitely appreciate it!

[harlokin]

I'm really glad you liked it

I should have linked the below combat cheat sheet, it's pretty useful...

https://www.peginc.com/freebies/SWco...al%20Guide.pdf

[Tinkerer]

Problems I had:

• Inches instead of feet was too much. I'm used to in-world forms of distance, not battle maps. I think I'll swap this and not look back.
• LOTS of rules lookup and modifier trouble. There were too many situational modifiers to keep easy track of in the first session. Everyone was nose-deep in the book half the game, checking and double checking stuff. I assume this will clear up with a little experience, but I am very spoiled by the advantage/disadvantage of 5e. I'm already thinking of ways to hack it into Savage Worlds, but I will refrain until I have more experience.

Yep I absolutely loathe their use of " in the books. Very immersion breaking while reading which leads to me wanting to read less. For the modifiers are you talking environmental modifiers? I made up a short cheat sheet for that and put it on my screen. I don't often use screens since I either need more information than you can fit onto a screen or so little information that a screen is pointless for information purposes but I find Savage Worlds is just right for being in the middle ground.

Awesomeness:

• Interludes are amazing. I will use them in every system I run from now on. Done.
• I really enjoyed the swift combat. Enemies dropped faster than I'm accustomed to, but it still allowed great challenges and let us press on quickly.
• Power points recovering one per hour was super fun for the mages in the group.
• Aces and Raises are super fun!
• Enemy statblocks are very compact, I don't have to process as much to run the combat in that regard.

Yeah, Interludes are a permanent part of my style now. I will never forget Savage Worlds just for that one simple little thing. For the mages did you give them a chance to play around with the trappings? Since starting play I've been realizing just how versatile the magic system is in terms of what can be done and how you can do it. I tend to plug this resource in every Savage Worlds thread and I'd highly recommend checking out the Savage Spellbook for some good examples of what I mean.

http://www.godwars2.org/SavageWorlds/

[pwykersotz]

I'm really glad you liked it

I should have linked the below combat cheat sheet, it's pretty useful...

https://www.peginc.com/freebies/SWco...al%20Guide.pdf

That sheet is wonderful. Since I print character sheets for the group, I might take the liberty of putting that on the back of their sheets for quick reference, in addition to having a copy. At the very least, it will help us get used to those maneuvers faster. Also, your suggestion earlier about giving bennies freely was great.

Yep I absolutely loathe their use of " in the books. Very immersion breaking while reading which leads to me wanting to read less. For the modifiers are you talking environmental modifiers? I made up a short cheat sheet for that and put it on my screen. I don't often use screens since I either need more information than you can fit onto a screen or so little information that a screen is pointless for information purposes but I find Savage Worlds is just right for being in the middle ground.

Yeah, Interludes are a permanent part of my style now. I will never forget Savage Worlds just for that one simple little thing. For the mages did you give them a chance to play around with the trappings? Since starting play I've been realizing just how versatile the magic system is in terms of what can be done and how you can do it. I tend to plug this resource in every Savage Worlds thread and I'd highly recommend checking out the Savage Spellbook for some good examples of what I mean.

http://www.godwars2.org/SavageWorlds/

I will spend a LOT of time on that site. You may have just killed several hours of my time. Thanks!

The mages did play a bit with trappings, but we didn't get a chance to do it a lot. It's certainly something to explore more in the future.

For modifiers, I'm referring to everything. I remembered gang-up stuff, but practically every situational rule we used needed to be re-referenced and re-read at the table, powers were double checked fairly regularly, and rules like healing and soaking needed to be double checked. In short, it was exclusively because we second guessed everything due to not having used the system. We have been playing D&D for a minimum of 9 years at this point (others at the table have played for 20), so we tried really hard to make sure we weren't mixing the rules up with our preconceived expectations.

[Knaight]

LOTS of rules lookup and modifier trouble. There were too many situational modifiers to keep easy track of in the first session. Everyone was nose-deep in the book half the game, checking and double checking stuff. I assume this will clear up with a little experience, but I am very spoiled by the advantage/disadvantage of 5e. I'm already thinking of ways to hack it into Savage Worlds, but I will refrain until I have more experience.

This will clear up pretty quickly, it comes with basically any new system and most become second nature soon enough.

As for other things, while I've never really liked Savage Worlds (a dislike that has only deepened after discovering Ubiquity) it does sound like something that fits your needs well. It does tactical combat well up to the scale of large skirmishes, it handles followers well, and if you're good about handing out Bennies (which can be tricky, and is made easier by having a physical stack of poker chips or similar in front of you as a visual aid that they exist and should be handed out, and which allows handing them out without stopping the flow to say anything) it flows well enough.