Deadlands is pretty dope and has a lot of content.
Personally, I was a bigger fan of Rippers. Murdering monsters in Victorian England and grafting their innards and limbs to you so you can kill better, but going too far turns you into a monster as well. Kind of the biological version of cyberpsychosis.
I ran a custom one shot in Weird Wars II, I thought that was fun.
I was also running a conversion of Shadowrun, and had a kick with that, but then one player wanted to run 5th edition dungeons and dragons and we were stuck in that hell for 2 years before he got tired of it.
I think the reason that SW isn't more popular is because GMing it is very different than a lot of other systems. The concept of a random farmer just happening to be able to kick a dragon's head right off its neck because of random rolls wrecks a lot of session planning for a bunch of GMs, but in SW you gotta learn to laugh at it and just carry on because shit changed. You cannot rail road for shit in such a system and gotta really get used to just winging it from set piece to set piece, changing shit on the fly, and keep the story elements far more open than most are comfortable with. From a player standpoint, that murder stick can go up your ass just as easily as an enemy sometimes, so getting attached to a character is also kinda dumb.
>From a player standpoint, that murder stick can go up your ass just as easily as an enemy sometimes, so getting attached to a character is also kinda dumb.
So, would you say it's not exactly system for longer campaigns?
Nah, it's fine for longer campaigns. The likelihood of extras killing a PC is very low. Bosses are a different beast altogether and newbies treating a boss like an extra that can take higher wounds get their shit pushed in hard. So, they gotta learn by usually having a dead PC at the end. It encourages the players to really manipulate the battlefield, use cover, and play smarter.
I've run plenty of longer campaigns with it.
The system, of course, fitting to run crazy pulp adventures.
It's the same shit as with Hollow Earth Expedition: the main selling point are the rules of the game, not the horribly boring and restricting setting.
>The concept of a random farmer just happening to be able to kick a dragon's head right off its neck because of random rolls wrecks a lot of session planning for a bunch of GMs, but in SW you gotta learn to laugh at it and just carry on because shit changed.
No, because that concept is fricking stupid.
The philosophy behind exploding dice is the kind of stupid bullshit you should grow out of by your early 20s at the LATEST.
It is childish and not conducive to immersion or a fulfilling game honestly.
Now I understand that Savage Worlds requires exploding dice in order for its "dice as stats" system to function. But the amount of dice rolled in some cases makes explosions far too likely. Any kind of "meaty" fight is pretty much impossible in the setting. Even with a "Wild Card" opponent, the characters will still have a 3 to 1 or more advantage in terms of health. If they aren't fighting a Wild Card? More like 16 to 1. This would be like a level 1 D&D party fighting a single level 1 goblin, for reference.
It just doesn't work very well for anything that isn't a horde-fighting campaign. So....war campaigns (so long as it's all CQB because the rules are dogshit for handling long range engagements), zombie campaigns (so long as you're willing to assume a "Shaken" result from a bite breaks skin, if you're going for the whole "fatal zombie bite" thing), other swarm-fighter style campaigns, and.... that's about it.
The system doesn't even really function for its intended original purpose, which was Wild Wild West. With the way the dice go in this campaign, your gunslinger duel is gonna be awfully drawn out as two Wild Cards slug it out in a war of benny attrition as they empty their six-shooters into each others' chests.
Brother in Christ, SW does not take itself seriously you shouldn't either.
>Bennies should be traded back and forth constantly.
This is one of the big reasons why I can't get into running Savage Worlds. I don't enjoy awarding metacurrency to players based on arbitrary judgements. It's why I can't get into most other cinematic systems. Yes I'm weirdly autistic about this.
Otherwise, decent system tbdesu. I'd gladly still play it, but it's fallen from being my main generic game.
It works out well if you consider it the same as awarding situational modifiers that the players apply by thinking outside the box. To be fair though, it definitely highlights the gaming side of the system, which I support, because SW as is just will not let rail roading GMs function.
>Brother in Christ, SW does not take itself seriously you shouldn't either.
Okay well some of us have real jobs and lives and want a game that we can take seriously instead of feeling like a fricking child playing some stupid-ass nat20 critical roll simulator.
Savage for playing. Palladium isn't bad, but I can't justify learning it's system when SW has way more settings and plays much faster making it the better system to learn how to run and play.
I really like the setting for Necropolis and want to try the combined arms fighting with player units and full military units.
This is how I run a lot of Savage Worlds games. I've run star wars, megaman, madoka magica, and taimanin asagi with those rules. It's great to fall back on for a bit of a higher power level game that doesn't have any official support. The super powers can cover pretty much anything. Especially devices. I was a big fan of mutants and masterminds back in the day but I like the set-up for SW more.
Day After Ragnarok is fricking awesome, I wish it was a more developed line but you get a lot even in a small book.
Tell me more about your madoka games, what powers girls had and how companion was used. I dream about making my own mahou shouji game but in a mahouiku setting.
>Which has the most legs?
S'karnith, realm of centipedes. Chitinous legions scuttle across massive 3-dimensional battlegrounds as they compete for the right to scavenge the corpses of cyclopean titans. Hide on the underside of a massive skull to drop down on unaware foes! Rear up onto your back 50 legs to get an attack bonus... but beware the loss in stability, for a solid hit will then send you careening downwards when a more sure-footed centipede would have held on. Cannibalize your foes, fashion armour from their chitin. Metabolize their venom-sacks and feed their flesh to your spawn. Upgrade your spawn, perfect your spawnline with recombinated genetics. And beware - for all your endless warring, the dominant centipede lords are not the only arthropods to exist in this realm...
Will you crawl to victory upon a hundred stomping feet, or will your story end with a sickening CRUNCH, a spray of green slime? Try S'karnith right now!
They've written better shotgun rules but refused to use them in SWADE. Instead of greater chance to hit outside of close range but less damage like normal systems to it, they went with big epic reddit damage hope you saved a bennyrino.
The system, of course, fitting to run crazy pulp adventures.
It's the same shit as with Hollow Earth Expedition: the main selling point are the rules of the game, not the horribly boring and restricting setting.
I like Deadlands personally.
But the real Savage World question is how do you as the GM deal with Shaken?
My party loathes it but I'm not sure if it's just because I'm not raining enough bennies on them or some other reason?
>Not raining bennies
That is the GM fricking up. Bennies should be traded back and forth constantly.
The system, of course, fitting to run crazy pulp adventures.
It's the same shit as with Hollow Earth Expedition: the main selling point are the rules of the game, not the horribly boring and restricting setting.
Yeah, it's the core rules for pulpy stuff, however, having settings with bestiaries and lore to have those pulpy adventures in is a plus.
>Bennies should be traded back and forth constantly.
This is one of the big reasons why I can't get into running Savage Worlds. I don't enjoy awarding metacurrency to players based on arbitrary judgements. It's why I can't get into most other cinematic systems. Yes I'm weirdly autistic about this.
Otherwise, decent system tbdesu. I'd gladly still play it, but it's fallen from being my main generic game.
>But the real Savage World question is how do you as the GM deal with Shaken?
In swade shaken might as well not exist until you start taking multiple wounds,
50 Fathoms using Pirates Of The Spanish Main's mass combat rule
I do agree with above anon that savage worlds leaning heavy into miniatures rules makes it best-suited for big clusterfrick encounters but my players fricking love having goons to boss around and I think leaning into that kind of thing is the right idea for SW campaigns.
My play group had fun with Wiseguys. Unfortunately, one of the players started having to work on the days that we played, so the game is on indefinite hiatus.
Holler sucks because it completely misses the tone of appalachian folklore (self-made men overcoming impossible odds in search of fabulous wealth, surviving off nothing but their wits and gumption) and trades it in favor of some moronic-ass lorax bullshit about the evils of LOGGING and POLLUTION, which are not only tonally irrelevant and jarring but also just way too modern in sensibility to actually feel authentic in any way. The entire idea of random fricking homesteaders waging a guerilla war on a megacorp in fricking 1850 is moronic from the outset and this is made immediately obvious by the fact that said megacorps have to be literally supernatural in order to justify anyone actually buying into the scenario.
>entire idea of random fricking homesteaders waging a guerilla war on a megacorp in fricking 1850 is moronic from the outset
You mean, unlike the multiple real-world guerilla wars that random homesteaders fought against coal companies, logging concerns, cattle conglomerates, train corporations, and basically every other 19th century version of megacorps? Get the frick outta here.
Yes unlike those because it's a region literally defined by being overtly hostile and rich in readily available resources and hilljacks all fricking hate each other.
This is a setting and time literally defined by self-sufficiency that throws all that shit out in favor of a bad anti-corporate parable and claims to be doing service to a folkloric tradition that it wholeheartedly ignores.
It's gay as frick.
Coal towns and shit were real things that happened during those times, you massive dipshit.
The Pinkertons were waging full on war against unions and shit during those times, including have machine gun drive bys using train cars to help the big corps in the area.
The "striking it out on your own" was extremely leveled at getting away from GOVERNMENT not business and jobs. Hell, it wasn't until very recently that the government managed to talk a portion of the Appalachian population to get on Medicaid and the like because of deep rooted hatred the people there still have against government in general.
Yes unlike those because it's a region literally defined by being overtly hostile and rich in readily available resources and hilljacks all fricking hate each other.
This is a setting and time literally defined by self-sufficiency that throws all that shit out in favor of a bad anti-corporate parable and claims to be doing service to a folkloric tradition that it wholeheartedly ignores.
It's gay as frick.
>Real-life history never happened, because zoomershit declares it cringe
I'm gonna bet a fiver you're from West Coast, no less
People tend to have a wildly skewed version of history. For example, in Canada, there have been a lot of instances of major slaughter of indigenous people that where proven to have never happened when the search for bodies in the area were conducted. Hell, just recently it was deemed that Indigenous women were a victim of modern day genocide by Canadians despite over 90% of their killer being other indigenous people.
History, and, shockingly, modern events, are manipulated constantly to fit whatever narrative is being pushed as the correct one at the time leaving a confused populace and severely tainted research results.
Holy quints. And it's pretty savage, even if you ignore the uncommon meme exploding dice the injury system is pretty good, taking any kind of damage immediately begins to cripple you with wound penalties, and the hindrance system let's you play as all kinds of maimed characters. I wish more systems had hindrances they're pretty funny.
It's why I frequently used a flaws table for character generation with the rule that I had to act on the flaw or start taking roll penalties that I kept track of.
Unfortunately I got alcoholism and bestiality as my flaws for one campaign. The former was easy to cover because I was a dwarf, it took a long time before anybody found out about the second as I just kept chickens for a good source when adventuring and nobody knew I was fricking them to death before cooking the party meal until way late into the campaign. The party was disgusted, the group thought it was hilarious, and every encounter with animal or animal adjacent foes was grounds for mockery. My character loathed anthros, they were impure.
NTA but i was thinking and houserule for RP only hindrances: basically if you want to push through your hindrance (as in acting contrary to the nature of your disadvantage) you can't roll the wild die with any related check.
It's kind of weird tha SW doesn't have game mechanics for these though.
Day After Ragnarok is fricking awesome, I wish it was a more developed line but you get a lot even in a small book.
Deadlands is pretty dope and has a lot of content.
Personally, I was a bigger fan of Rippers. Murdering monsters in Victorian England and grafting their innards and limbs to you so you can kill better, but going too far turns you into a monster as well. Kind of the biological version of cyberpsychosis.
I ran a custom one shot in Weird Wars II, I thought that was fun.
I was also running a conversion of Shadowrun, and had a kick with that, but then one player wanted to run 5th edition dungeons and dragons and we were stuck in that hell for 2 years before he got tired of it.
I think the reason that SW isn't more popular is because GMing it is very different than a lot of other systems. The concept of a random farmer just happening to be able to kick a dragon's head right off its neck because of random rolls wrecks a lot of session planning for a bunch of GMs, but in SW you gotta learn to laugh at it and just carry on because shit changed. You cannot rail road for shit in such a system and gotta really get used to just winging it from set piece to set piece, changing shit on the fly, and keep the story elements far more open than most are comfortable with. From a player standpoint, that murder stick can go up your ass just as easily as an enemy sometimes, so getting attached to a character is also kinda dumb.
>From a player standpoint, that murder stick can go up your ass just as easily as an enemy sometimes, so getting attached to a character is also kinda dumb.
So, would you say it's not exactly system for longer campaigns?
Nah, it's fine for longer campaigns. The likelihood of extras killing a PC is very low. Bosses are a different beast altogether and newbies treating a boss like an extra that can take higher wounds get their shit pushed in hard. So, they gotta learn by usually having a dead PC at the end. It encourages the players to really manipulate the battlefield, use cover, and play smarter.
I've run plenty of longer campaigns with it.
Thank you for your insights, sirs.
>The concept of a random farmer just happening to be able to kick a dragon's head right off its neck because of random rolls wrecks a lot of session planning for a bunch of GMs, but in SW you gotta learn to laugh at it and just carry on because shit changed.
No, because that concept is fricking stupid.
The philosophy behind exploding dice is the kind of stupid bullshit you should grow out of by your early 20s at the LATEST.
It is childish and not conducive to immersion or a fulfilling game honestly.
Now I understand that Savage Worlds requires exploding dice in order for its "dice as stats" system to function. But the amount of dice rolled in some cases makes explosions far too likely. Any kind of "meaty" fight is pretty much impossible in the setting. Even with a "Wild Card" opponent, the characters will still have a 3 to 1 or more advantage in terms of health. If they aren't fighting a Wild Card? More like 16 to 1. This would be like a level 1 D&D party fighting a single level 1 goblin, for reference.
It just doesn't work very well for anything that isn't a horde-fighting campaign. So....war campaigns (so long as it's all CQB because the rules are dogshit for handling long range engagements), zombie campaigns (so long as you're willing to assume a "Shaken" result from a bite breaks skin, if you're going for the whole "fatal zombie bite" thing), other swarm-fighter style campaigns, and.... that's about it.
The system doesn't even really function for its intended original purpose, which was Wild Wild West. With the way the dice go in this campaign, your gunslinger duel is gonna be awfully drawn out as two Wild Cards slug it out in a war of benny attrition as they empty their six-shooters into each others' chests.
Brother in Christ, SW does not take itself seriously you shouldn't either.
It works out well if you consider it the same as awarding situational modifiers that the players apply by thinking outside the box. To be fair though, it definitely highlights the gaming side of the system, which I support, because SW as is just will not let rail roading GMs function.
>Brother in Christ, SW does not take itself seriously you shouldn't either.
Okay well some of us have real jobs and lives and want a game that we can take seriously instead of feeling like a fricking child playing some stupid-ass nat20 critical roll simulator.
Slipstream is neat
Fairly large universe. https://peg-slipstream1.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/SLIPSTREAM_ENDPAPER_MAP.jpg
Savage Rifts is my shit. Deadlands is dope too. I wish Evernight would get a new edition, but it's probably never going to happen.
Which is better, Savage Rifts or Palladium Rifts?
Original is more crunchy and detailed. You probably want splats for lore.
Savage for playing. Palladium isn't bad, but I can't justify learning it's system when SW has way more settings and plays much faster making it the better system to learn how to run and play.
Hellfrost. So many good elements to loot for a fantasy game.
>inB4 not a PEG setting
>Not a PEG setting
Neither is Pathfinder, but the SW setting is fricking awesome and blows d20 PF out of the water.
Have you tried superhero companion?
I really like the setting for Necropolis and want to try the combined arms fighting with player units and full military units.
This is how I run a lot of Savage Worlds games. I've run star wars, megaman, madoka magica, and taimanin asagi with those rules. It's great to fall back on for a bit of a higher power level game that doesn't have any official support. The super powers can cover pretty much anything. Especially devices. I was a big fan of mutants and masterminds back in the day but I like the set-up for SW more.
I love it too, great take on the cold war.
Tell me more about your madoka games, what powers girls had and how companion was used. I dream about making my own mahou shouji game but in a mahouiku setting.
Pact Worlds of the past
>Which has the most legs?
S'karnith, realm of centipedes. Chitinous legions scuttle across massive 3-dimensional battlegrounds as they compete for the right to scavenge the corpses of cyclopean titans. Hide on the underside of a massive skull to drop down on unaware foes! Rear up onto your back 50 legs to get an attack bonus... but beware the loss in stability, for a solid hit will then send you careening downwards when a more sure-footed centipede would have held on. Cannibalize your foes, fashion armour from their chitin. Metabolize their venom-sacks and feed their flesh to your spawn. Upgrade your spawn, perfect your spawnline with recombinated genetics. And beware - for all your endless warring, the dominant centipede lords are not the only arthropods to exist in this realm...
Will you crawl to victory upon a hundred stomping feet, or will your story end with a sickening CRUNCH, a spray of green slime? Try S'karnith right now!
>sweet, a savage worlds thread
Ahem... THE SHOTGUN RULES SUCKS!!!
It's just a +2 to hit, anon.
How is it that bad?
They've written better shotgun rules but refused to use them in SWADE. Instead of greater chance to hit outside of close range but less damage like normal systems to it, they went with big epic reddit damage hope you saved a bennyrino.
Accursed. Waiting for the proper SWADE version they are supposedly working on
If you are playing Savage for its settings, you already failed the point of that game.
What is the point of that game?
t. has never played Savage Worlds.
The system, of course, fitting to run crazy pulp adventures.
It's the same shit as with Hollow Earth Expedition: the main selling point are the rules of the game, not the horribly boring and restricting setting.
The corebook kinda sucks at doing more then le funny oneshot
The actual setting books give you something you can use in a campaign (most of the time).
I like Deadlands personally.
But the real Savage World question is how do you as the GM deal with Shaken?
My party loathes it but I'm not sure if it's just because I'm not raining enough bennies on them or some other reason?
>Not raining bennies
That is the GM fricking up. Bennies should be traded back and forth constantly.
Yeah, it's the core rules for pulpy stuff, however, having settings with bestiaries and lore to have those pulpy adventures in is a plus.
>Bennies should be traded back and forth constantly.
This is one of the big reasons why I can't get into running Savage Worlds. I don't enjoy awarding metacurrency to players based on arbitrary judgements. It's why I can't get into most other cinematic systems. Yes I'm weirdly autistic about this.
Otherwise, decent system tbdesu. I'd gladly still play it, but it's fallen from being my main generic game.
>But the real Savage World question is how do you as the GM deal with Shaken?
In swade shaken might as well not exist until you start taking multiple wounds,
So the Sci-Fi companion will be next, correct?
50 Fathoms using Pirates Of The Spanish Main's mass combat rule
I do agree with above anon that savage worlds leaning heavy into miniatures rules makes it best-suited for big clusterfrick encounters but my players fricking love having goons to boss around and I think leaning into that kind of thing is the right idea for SW campaigns.
My play group had fun with Wiseguys. Unfortunately, one of the players started having to work on the days that we played, so the game is on indefinite hiatus.
Actually thinking about picking up Holler which has been compared to All Flesh Must Be Eaten in regards to hopeless the setting is.
Holler sucks because it completely misses the tone of appalachian folklore (self-made men overcoming impossible odds in search of fabulous wealth, surviving off nothing but their wits and gumption) and trades it in favor of some moronic-ass lorax bullshit about the evils of LOGGING and POLLUTION, which are not only tonally irrelevant and jarring but also just way too modern in sensibility to actually feel authentic in any way. The entire idea of random fricking homesteaders waging a guerilla war on a megacorp in fricking 1850 is moronic from the outset and this is made immediately obvious by the fact that said megacorps have to be literally supernatural in order to justify anyone actually buying into the scenario.
>entire idea of random fricking homesteaders waging a guerilla war on a megacorp in fricking 1850 is moronic from the outset
You mean, unlike the multiple real-world guerilla wars that random homesteaders fought against coal companies, logging concerns, cattle conglomerates, train corporations, and basically every other 19th century version of megacorps? Get the frick outta here.
Yes unlike those because it's a region literally defined by being overtly hostile and rich in readily available resources and hilljacks all fricking hate each other.
This is a setting and time literally defined by self-sufficiency that throws all that shit out in favor of a bad anti-corporate parable and claims to be doing service to a folkloric tradition that it wholeheartedly ignores.
It's gay as frick.
Coal towns and shit were real things that happened during those times, you massive dipshit.
The Pinkertons were waging full on war against unions and shit during those times, including have machine gun drive bys using train cars to help the big corps in the area.
The "striking it out on your own" was extremely leveled at getting away from GOVERNMENT not business and jobs. Hell, it wasn't until very recently that the government managed to talk a portion of the Appalachian population to get on Medicaid and the like because of deep rooted hatred the people there still have against government in general.
>Real-life history never happened, because zoomershit declares it cringe
I'm gonna bet a fiver you're from West Coast, no less
People tend to have a wildly skewed version of history. For example, in Canada, there have been a lot of instances of major slaughter of indigenous people that where proven to have never happened when the search for bodies in the area were conducted. Hell, just recently it was deemed that Indigenous women were a victim of modern day genocide by Canadians despite over 90% of their killer being other indigenous people.
History, and, shockingly, modern events, are manipulated constantly to fit whatever narrative is being pushed as the correct one at the time leaving a confused populace and severely tainted research results.
>Schizo goes full schizo
>While missing the point
It's only schizo if it is not reality.
Deadlands
Honestly, from what I remember from skimming the holler book is that it felt kinda gay, you know like a homosexual.
>foundry
wish someone would upload all those paid modules
Are the Worlds truly that Savage?
Very much so.
Holy quints. And it's pretty savage, even if you ignore the uncommon meme exploding dice the injury system is pretty good, taking any kind of damage immediately begins to cripple you with wound penalties, and the hindrance system let's you play as all kinds of maimed characters. I wish more systems had hindrances they're pretty funny.
It's why I frequently used a flaws table for character generation with the rule that I had to act on the flaw or start taking roll penalties that I kept track of.
Unfortunately I got alcoholism and bestiality as my flaws for one campaign. The former was easy to cover because I was a dwarf, it took a long time before anybody found out about the second as I just kept chickens for a good source when adventuring and nobody knew I was fricking them to death before cooking the party meal until way late into the campaign. The party was disgusted, the group thought it was hilarious, and every encounter with animal or animal adjacent foes was grounds for mockery. My character loathed anthros, they were impure.
NTA but i was thinking and houserule for RP only hindrances: basically if you want to push through your hindrance (as in acting contrary to the nature of your disadvantage) you can't roll the wild die with any related check.
It's kind of weird tha SW doesn't have game mechanics for these though.