It’s been so long since I blogged anything about Savage Worlds. So, I figured it was time to go back and revisit my old friend.
This time I want to rant a little about Whiff & Ping. For those not up on the local gamer jargon, Whiff & Ping is easy to explain. Whiff: I swing, I “miss”. Ping: I swing, I hit, it bounces off my opponents thick scaly hide. Pretty much not matter what your system of choice is you’ve felt at least a little bit of this. In D&D, in it’s many forms, you’ve got high AC’s, Spell Resistance, Energy Resistance, Damage Resistance, Evasion, the lucky Saving Throw and the list goes on. In GURPS, you’ve got your Active Defense, Damage Reduction and a host of resistance rolls. In World of Darkness, you’ve got a one die pool mechanic, sometimes known as the “Roll a Pile of Dice and Nothing Happens” System. The danger of Whiff & Ping exist in pretty much every game.
At first glance, it might appear that Savage Worlds combat can suffer from Whiff & Ping Syndrome and in a way it does. In Savage Worlds, you have two defensive stats, Parry and Toughness. Parry is basically your target number to hit. Toughness is basically the target number to damage. Simple. Right? Anyway, some Big Bads can get some pretty high numbers. So it can be pretty hard for your buff fighter with a d8 in Fighting and shells out 2d8 in damage can hit the dragon but he’s going to have a hard time hurting it.
But here’s the deal. A lot of games out there basically use attrition damage systems (At least, that’s what I’m calling it here.) Let me explain. Most damage systems rely on a slow whittling away of Hit Points, Life Points, Wound Levels or whatever. Now, there’s nothing wrong with this. In a way, it’s kind of neat. It builds tension in the fight scene whether the players realize it or not. They slowly see their life getting chipped away bit by bit. When they hit an opponent, even it’s for the tiniest amount of damage it’s a reward. It builds the excitement and the players gain some sense of accomplishment. Our gaming brains have been wired to look at combat and damage in this light. Savage Worlds is more about the constant danger that the rug will be yanked out from underneath you at any moment. A couple of good hits and the right dice mojo will end a fight.
The act of hitting and not damaging an opponent equates to failure in most gamer’s minds. And nobody likes to fail. Even if you land that solid blow, you still might not hurt the guy. I’m going to use an extreme and overly simplified example here. Let’s say that we have an encounter with your standard D&D adventuring party of four versus a big nasty red dragon with 100 HP. On average due to various conditions each of our heroes does 5 HP a round to the dragon. It would take about five rounds with a total of 20 attacks to finally take down the dragon. In Savage Worlds, a similar encounter would run pretty much the same way. Twenty or so attacks until someone finally rams a sword through the beast’s eye. There will probably be a couple of Shaken results and maybe a Wound. Now, I know some of the math fetishists out there will want me to run some sort of simulation and work out all the probabilities. That ain’t happenin’.
Now it’s time to talk about the Whiff factor. This one is really simple. If you’re having problems hitting an opponent, read the Combat Survival Guide. If you are still having problems, you need to figure out if your GM is cranking up things too high. Finally, gauge your character to your oppoents. You might think your character is a bad ass but according the GM’s encounters, you’re a mook. Just talk things out, folk.
Just like any other game, it’s real easy to outclass the player characters if GM’s aren’t careful. The key here is just like every other game is to know the player characters and their capabilities and then design encounters that will challenge them. There’s no real magic bullet to balance an encounter and it doesn’t matter what game system you are using.
Last week when I posted about catching the GM bug again, one of the ideas that was floating around in my head was for a Savage Worlds Horror campaign. So I figured that I’d share some thoughts about why I think Savage Worlds is great for horror games. Like I said originally, I want the campaign to be slightly more cinematic than Supernatural.
First and foremost and the easiest answer is that I love Savage Worlds but there some logic behind my decision. As a GM, Savage Worlds is easy to play with. Monsters and NPC’s are a breeze to create. For this campaign, I’m planning on converting several published adventures from a variety of sources. That ease of creation carries over to conversion aspect as well. Prep time can focus story rather than number crunching. Along those lines, light rules means that during game sessions the group can focus on mood and story rather than referencing a rules tome.
One of things I’ve heard people say is that Savage Worlds is a pulp game. Sure it can handle a group of heroic player characters against an army of mooks without a hitch. But once you start adjusting a few knobs here and there combat can be deadly. For really good examples, just turn to Reality Blurs’ Realms of Cthulhu for Savage Worlds. A little tweaking to the Wild Die mechanic and your party can still probably take on those mortal mooks but they better watch out against a couple of zombies.
Of course, the deadly combat can be a double edged sword (no pun intended). While Savage Worlds is great at running larger combats, sometimes the party against one Big Bad can be a let down when a player character draws a Joker on the first round of combat and then Aces several times on his damage. The players may feel great at first but then later they may feel a little robbed that it was so easy.
The easiest and worst means to handle this is to just up the Toughness of the Big Bad. More than likely this will just frustrate players. An extra Benny or two could be appropriate in some cases but might not save him from the Incredible Acing Head Shot of Doom (AKA “What do you mean you just rolled 54 for damage?”). One good example of how to handle this is the Werewolf from SWEX. Unless you’re using a silver weapon the best you can do is Shake it. But you know, if this is the final fight of an adventure or story arch, there’s a very good chance that the player characters have already figured out what it takes to kill the Big Bad. The Undead template handles this pretty well too with its bonuses. Now the Hardy Monstrous Ability is nice but from my experience it rarely comes into play. It just maybe the luck of the dice at my table but that’s what happened. I want something more for some of my Big Bads. So here’s a new Monstrous Ability (and as I always if this popped up somewhere else first in the cornucopia of the Savageverse. Just let me know.) :
Supernaturally Tough: No matter how much damage the creature takes from a single attack, the best result that can be achieved is Shaken. The only way to wound the creature is with repeated Shaken results. This ability is not compatible with the Hardy Monstrous Ability (obviously).
Now, use this just occasionally and for a Big Bad that it’s appropriate for. But you are all big kids and don’t need me holding your hand.
Finally, I want to talk about the much maligned Guts skill. Some folks hate it. Some folks love it. But for me, in this case, it’s in. I’ll probably limit to only increase per Rank and cap it at d6 for Novice characters .But I think it’s a good addition to a horror game. Fear is the cornerstone emotion of horror games and the Guts skill is an easy way to work this in. 12 to Midnight does have Fear Effects for Savage Worlds and being a bad boy and kind of broke it’s still on my to buy list but I’ve heard great things about it and have complete faith that it is a very good product based on their previous releases.
Later I’ll probably throw up some thoughts on low powered magic, psychic abilities and the powers of faith. Of course much of that will depend on what sort of juicy tidbits come out in the upcoming Horror Companion.
Well, ran into a few problems. Such as me being an idiot and not reading the complete terms. But never fear. Things will be well. I’ll be posting the results of the first survey later this week.
I don’t want it to be said that I don’t admit my mistakes or don’t act on constructive criticism. After some feedback, it sounds like folks are really interested in what others are playing. So in I put together another survey dealing more specifically with what people are playing, what they want to play and how often they do it. This time I used a different survey service so shouldn’t hit my free account quota so quickly. This is a different survey from the first so feel to take this one as well. I promise I won’t do another survey for at least three months.
So here it is the RPG Habits and Trends Survey. Remember I am not a professional survey writer. Thanks again and I’ll be posting the results later this month.
Curiosity has gotten the better of me so I decided to create this little survey. It’s rather short (only ten questions). And I think might yield some interesting results about what folks feel about RPG blogs, third party publishers and the industry as whole. So please just about 30 seconds of your time take the survey. Feel free to pass on the link. The more responses I get the better the information shall be. Right now. I’m planning on running this survey for two weeks and then report back with the results.
Click here to take survey
It’s been a long time since I’ve been behind the screen. But the GM’ing bug is gnawing away at my brain and it’s time to start crafting a new campaign. I know it won’t till this fall before there’s an opening for a new campaign but I like to take my time and plan things. I’ve pitched a couple of ideas to the Friday Gang and my big three ideas are a Savage Worlds Horror campaign, the Dragon Age RPG and something with Pathfinder. No matter what ends up being selected, my random thoughts through the campaign creation process are going to end up here.
Since most folks end up here looking for Savage Worlds Stuff, I’ll start with some thoughts about that. It’s been so long since I’ve ran a horror game. And I have fond memories of playing and running in such campaigns. Savage Worlds hits the sweet spot for what I’m looking for. In this case, light and flexible rules to bend to my vision and easily be able to accept conversions of adventures from different rules. A combat system that can be deadly and cinematic at the same time. And plenty of source material (both professional and fan created) to draw from. I’ve got stacks of old Chill, Kult, Call of Cthulhu, Nemesis and Pinebox Adventures (from 12 to Midnight) ready as spring boards. For a tone, I’m looking at a little bit more cinematic than Supernatural but less so than Buffy/Angel.
I have to admit. I have not ran a D&D game since AD&D. I’ve played Second and Third Edition and Fourth is just gathering dust on my shelf. I’ve ran plenty of other games and played through most of Paizo’s Adventure Paths. My group likes Pathfinder and so I just might throw my butt into the DM chair and see how it goes. For this I wanted something different and not exactly of Paizo’s universe. Nothing against them but I didn’t feel anything that I came up was going to measure up to one of their Adventure Paths. After a little searching, I came upon Obsidian Twilight by LPJ Designs. The quick pitch is that it’s a cross between Ravenloft and Darksun or a post apocalyptic survival horror setting. I’ve downloaded what is available and it’s pretty darned good. I had liked some other things that I’ve gotten from LPJ Designs (like Haven: City of Violence). This is a relatively new setting so everything isn’t out yet which leaves my Old School imagination run wild filling in the blanks. I plan to tweak the setting, of course, since I just can’t seem to leave things alone. For this I want a more pragmatic tone and play down the survival and horror aspects. Sure undead run the place and there are angels and demons wandering around. That’s just the way things are. Deal with it. There will be a little resistance fighting against the undead lords but I really don’t plan on having it be the real meat of the campaign.
Then there’s the Dragon Age RPG from Green Ronin. I did review of Set 1 a few weeks back and I liked it. But it suffers from the exact opposite problem as Obsidian Twilight. While not all of the fluff has been released for Obsidian Twilight, there’s plenty of other sources to pull the crunchy bits to build up a campaign. For Dragon Age, there’s more fluff than you can shake a stick at out there but we’re going to have to wait for the other sets to get a good idea on how the higher level rules operate.
So that’s it. Those are the little gaming projects that I’m working on in my copious free time. I’ll keep y’all update as interesting ideas pass through my head. And, yep, I really didn’t bother to proofread this post.
Wow. This is just great news. I’ve been a fan of these guys for a long time. According to the PEG home page, their first product will be a Savage Worlds conversion of The Kerberos Club.
So first of all, just who is Arc Dream? These are the guys that brought us great games like Godlike, Wild Talents and Reign. The One Roll Engine is a slick, quick and deadly system. If you remember back in October, I mentioned Project Nemesis, a modern horror version. Might I also mention that some of the minds at Arc Dream are the same that dreamed up the now classic Delta Green.
Any way on to the Kerberos Club. This was one the down loads you got for Drivethru RPG’s Haiti Bundle. The original version uses the ORE but a Savaged version just seems natural. The Kereros Club is a Wild Talents take on the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. To put into other words, Victorian super heroes. I admit that I haven’t had the time to go over the original version but I’m sure that it’s just fantastic judging by the quality of Godlike and Wild Talents.
My personal prediction is that this will another great Savage product coming up. Trust me on this.
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