Quest for Savage Glory

[LibraryOgre]

So, my 7 year old wants to play a proper RPG, not just Hero Quest. So, I'm thinking I can go with using Savage Worlds to run one of my favorite CRPGs, Quest for Glory I: So You Want to be a Hero.

What suggestions would you have for savaging this classic game?

[Cikomyr2]

So, my 7 year old wants to play a proper RPG, not just Hero Quest. So, I'm thinking I can go with using Savage Worlds to run one of my favorite CRPGs, Quest for Glory I: So You Want to be a Hero.

What suggestions would you have for savaging this classic game?

Make a list of npcs, locations that you know you need structurally. Have them draw encounter cards and make up random encounters based on the events you want to inflict on your character. Can be bandits, goblins, npcs..

Just be ready to make stuff up that isnt in the game if your players want to be creative. Otherwise, have fun. Savage world is a brutal system that i think would fit Quest for Glory style of lethality.

[LibraryOgre]

Make a list of npcs, locations that you know you need structurally. Have them draw encounter cards and make up random encounters based on the events you want to inflict on your character. Can be bandits, goblins, npcs..

Just be ready to make stuff up that isnt in the game if your players want to be creative. Otherwise, have fun. Savage world is a brutal system that i think would fit Quest for Glory style of lethality.

So, we've played a couple sessions.

He decided to play a dragonfolk mostly fighter (he's got a touch of thievery), and we swapped out "Arrogant" for "Can't wear humanlike clothes and armor".

First game, he explored a little, signed up in the adventurer's guild and got in a fight with a saurus. It got The Drop on him, but it's a freakin' saurus, and he's in natural armor plus some leather, so it didn't manage anything but Shaken, which he immediately shook off and smashed it with one hit. He then spent most of the rest of the session forcing the butcher to come butcher his dead saurus (the butcher finally said "**** it, I'll buy the dead saurus off you so I can go back to gambling"), and meeting Shema, Shameen, and Abdullah (Abdullah greatly inflated the number of brigands).

Second game, he's looking for work. I subtly shove him towards the Healer, but put her ring inside the fire... as a dragonfolk, he just reached in and picked it up. He then went to Erana's Peace, and picked some flowers for her, then tried to find magic mushrooms. He has no survival. He got lost, and made it just as night began to fall. He told the fairies why he was there. They did not like him picking mushrooms, so he offered them a fruit from Erana's Peace, which they loved, and asked him to get them more, and they'd give him some mushrooms. He then tried to pick mushrooms AGAIN, at which point, they cursed him to dance.

Rather than kill him, I had him dance all night and pass out, exhausted. He awoke to a saurus poking him with its nose, in preparation for eating him.

So, in order to save money, he'd only been eating one meal a day. He doesn't carry food. So, when he woke up, he's exhausted from dancing all night and hasn't eaten in 36 hours. He'd also used all his bennies trying to break free of the faerie's dance. Fighting the saurus was a SLOG. He switched to wild attacks to negate most of the exhaustion penalties, and it still took him forever to manage a couple wounds on the beast. He then rested a couple more hours, cooked some saurus, and hauled it back to the butcher again, who bought it for less money, and told him no more sauruses, since the town would only eat so much saurus meat (Crusher and Otto might get a taste). He then went to dinner, and ate with the Sheriff and his wife, getting a bit more information about the valley. The sheriff's wife requested that, next time he goes hunting, he bring back some venison. Shameen offered him a deal on staying the night... 10 gold to stay for the month (essentially, 30 days for 20 days worth of money). The boy wants a house. He's also heard about the dwarves in town, near the tavern. He's heard of Erasmus, and been suggested that he go to Zara to learn more.

We've been having a LOT of fun with it. I'm riffing on things that the games hinted at, and he's exploring it completely new.

I've got some conversions already up. Sauruses are pretty much nothing... d4 fighting, 4 parry, 6 toughness.

[Bunny Commando]

Just a hint, I found that for smaller parties it is usually better to be quite generous with Bennies.
After all, your kid won't ever benefit from Ganging Up, handing out some more Bennies so they won't ever be dry during a fight might help in speeding up combat - as a rule of thumb, a fight against an Extra should not last more than one\two rounds IMHO.

Anyway, sounds fun. Never really played Quest for Glory, but it does look like it has that old-school quality that I miss a bit in modern games: finding yourself in a fantasy world, discovering it bit by bit instead of being rushed to save the world.

[Cikomyr2]

The "sandbox you get to poke until.you find what you want or die" is a cool gameplay beat. Especially if your players dont do a "do everything" playthrough and just try something different with every itteration.

Plus, Savage World is sufficiently brutal to recreate the grim violence of these adventure games. It was so easy to die in those. +_+

[Cikomyr2]

I just wanted to post here to ask you how it went? Your players still having fun?

[LibraryOgre]

I just wanted to post here to ask you how it went? Your players still having fun?

We haven't played in a while, owing to pretty much a month of everyone being sick, but he wants to get back to it. We're both off next week, so I think we'll fire it up and send him after potion ingredients. Still need to figure out a way to get him up to the ogre...

[Cikomyr2]

We haven't played in a while, owing to pretty much a month of everyone being sick, but he wants to get back to it. We're both off next week, so I think we'll fire it up and send him after potion ingredients. Still need to figure out a way to get him up to the ogre...

You mean, you want to design encounter and a path, or you want to build motivation so he gets there of his own will?

[LibraryOgre]

You mean, you want to design encounter and a path, or you want to build motivation so he gets there of his own will?

So, a problem I've run into is the exploration bit.

On the computer, it's relatively easy... you walk through all of the screens, and stumble on this ogre outside a cave. Boom. Instant place to explore, once you can defeat the ogre.

In person, it's a little more complicated. If he's not doing specific explorations, how do you get him to where he needs to go?

Now, I had the fairies direct him towards the Dryad, so he has the list of ingredients he needs. So he'll need to explore for those. But how to make exploration interesting?

Maybe I need to set up a card game... lay out the deck of cards, and have a match mean something, with each search taking half a day, or so.

[Cikomyr2]

So, a problem I've run into is the exploration bit.

On the computer, it's relatively easy... you walk through all of the screens, and stumble on this ogre outside a cave. Boom. Instant place to explore, once you can defeat the ogre.

In person, it's a little more complicated. If he's not doing specific explorations, how do you get him to where he needs to go?

Now, I had the fairies direct him towards the Dryad, so he has the list of ingredients he needs. So he'll need to explore for those. But how to make exploration interesting?

Maybe I need to set up a card game... lay out the deck of cards, and have a match mean something, with each search taking half a day, or so.

Deadland has a random encounter system using a deck of cards. When you draw a face card (1 card drawn/day) you have an encounter, which depends on the card color drawn.

Clover means an obstacle (rock slide, quicksand, a dangerous river, etc..)
Spade means a hostile enemy
Diamond is a treasure (rare mineral vein, actual buried chest, etc..)
Heart is a "stranger" encounter usually not hostile by default.

You could just have him draw these encounter cards every time he travels between locations that arent well patrolled, and use these to make him randomly encounter stuff you know he will be needing one day. Then, once these places are established, he can always try to find his way back, but those will require further encounter checks, etc... Etc...