Time is running out to vote for Critical Hits! Voting ends Saturday Night!
You only have until the end of Saturday, 8/1 to vote for us in the 2009 Ennie Awards for Best Website. (Remember, you don’t need to vote for any other category if you don’t want to, and 1 is best!) We just reached 1500 RSS feed subscribers today, and so if we got all of you (plus our regular readers who don’t subscribe to the feeds, plus some random passerbys) to vote for us, I think we’d have to a shot against our behemoth competitors.
We’ve already told you about all the endorsements we’ve gotten from game designers, bloggers, and even a celebrity. But I also prefer to let our work speak for itself: check out our interviews, reviews, news, gaming advice, and much more in our archives, as well as our About page that lists our “best of.” We’ve been running for nearly 4 years now (longer than any of the other nominees) so have tons of material for every RPG fan.
Additionally, we were one of the co-founding sites of the RPG Bloggers Network, and have toiled many, many hours to operate it and promote it, so a vote for us (as well as for Mad Brew Labs) is a vote for the Network and independent RPG blogging.
Finally, to lift from Geek’s Dream Girl’s list of three legitimate and three illegitimate reasons to vote for us, Bartoneus & Sucilaria have a puppy named Freyja:
If we don’t win, the puppy will be sad. You wouldn’t want to make the puppy sad, would you?
So please vote for us now and many, many thanks to those who have already done so. I promise, this is the last full post devoted to the Ennies (until we win or lose).
The One Page Dungeon Codex (and More!)
For those too excited to read:
These last few weeks, Chgowiz and I have been working at delivering on our promise of creating a special PDF file that brought together the very best entries from the contest One Page Dungeon contest.
Well the wait is over and we offer you the Hobbyist version of the: One Page Dungeon Codex 2009!
(Go ahead, download it, it’s 100% free)
The Codex collects all winners of the contest as well as the Runner-ups. We also added several blog articles about the history of the One Page Template and how to use it. Plus we got it a killer cover by artist Mark Allen.
Why ‘Hobbyist version’? Let’s just say that we are planning to release a ‘Deluxe’ version a few weeks from now with a few extras (like specific art representing the 3 winning entries drawn by AvatarArt). This version will be uploaded to the various PDFs shops courtesy of our friends of Tabletop Adventures.
And of course, the Pro version will also be free.
But that’s not all. By popular demand, we’re also releasing all, yes ALL, one-page dungeon contest entries, unedited and bunched together in a single file (it’s 30 MB long so be warned) we informally called the 1-pg Dungeon Compendium.
You can find it here.
Enjoy and let us know how you like it.
I Didn’t Know You Could Do That With 4E: Adventure-Length Effects
Hey everybody! My name is Brad Gardner. I’m a long time D&D player. Currently I’m DMing a game for some friends (The “Savage Tide” adventure path, converted to 4E) as well as writing for the RPGA’s Living Forgotten Realms campaign. As of GenCon 2009, I’ll have the privilege of having five adventures published for the LFR campaign.
Writing for RPGA has gotten me to think quite a bit about creating self contained adventures. I want to be able to craft a fantastic story and have it supported but solid rules elements. Most of the rules work well for self contained adventures except for one: diseases. Diseases through all the versions of D&D have been a great concept but a poor implementation. First, the idea that an effect (such as a disease) can be inflicted during the fight makes the fight feel more dangerous – not only do the PCs want to defeat the monster but the want to do so without getting infected. If a PC does get infected, they have to fight off the disease. If they are unsuccessful, they face a slow slide into a seriously debilitating condition (possibly death).
The problem in 4E D&D is that diseases only advance (or get cured) during the PCs extended rest. That’s fantastic in a campaign setting where the PCs is going to be played for months of game time. Most self contained adventures however only take one day of game time, so by the time the PC has to face the results of the disease they caught the adventure is over. Perhaps the DM might roll out the results of the disease as sort of a interesting dénouement but that’s probably it.
(As an aside, the other problem with diseases is they are incredibly ease to cure. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a PC being seriously affected by a disease in any edition in the game. Cure disease is way too easy to get and use. I’ve only seen one PC die of a disease in a 2E adventure, and that was due to a lack of a cure disease spell and incredibly bad luck.)
As an author I’d like to see such slowly developing effects play out during the course of a single adventure. Since having effects advance at every extended rest is too long and having them advance every round is too fast (poisons, combat conditions), how about having them advance on every short rest? As a DM you can expect that the PCs will want to take 2-4 short rests during the course of one 4-6 hour adventure. The number of short rests is just enough to see the results play out over the course of one evening. I call this option an Adventure Length Effect.
Adventure Length Effects
I haven’t really defined “effect” have I? By “effect” I mean any kind of condition that happens to a PC. Adventure length effects slowly develop over the course of the adventure. Some specific examples include:
- Slow Acting Poison: The PCs nemesis slipped a slow acting poison into their drinks which will kill them by the end of the day unless they find a cure (or meet their enemies demands).
- The Interloper’s Curse: As PCs break into the tomb of El-Khut to retrieve his golden scepter, a curse set but the builder of the tomb is placed on the PCs. The PCs are slowly being transformed into rats (polymorphic effects will be covered in a future post).
- The Life Leech: While wading through the putrid waters of the Vile Morass, one or more PCs are infected by a parasitic life leech, which has nestled inside the PCs and is slowing draining their vitality (healing surges).
To create an adventure length effect I suggest you use the format for Diseases found in the DMG (pg. 49). Each effect has a Effect Track, which describes the initial effect on the PC. There are also steps along the Effect Track to describe how the effect worsens, or gets better.
During each short rest, the PC should roll a skill check to determine if they get better, stay at the same state, or worsen. If the effect is integral to the pacing of your adventure, consider other criteria for when the effect worsens. For example, the Slow Acting Poison might kill the person in 8 hours unless an antidote is found, and its effects worsen every two hours.
When designing these effects consider both possible ends of the Effect Track. Do you want the option for the PC to become completely cured? In most cases yes, but using the Slow Acting Poison as an example you might want the only cure to be the antidote. On the opposite end of the Effect Track is the final state. Death, of course, is the worse case example. Most of the time you want some sort of significantly debilitating condition.
You should place these effects early on so they can mature over the course of the adventure.
Countering Adventure Length Effects
Players never want to feel like their characters are helpless victims, so consider adding options into the adventure for PCs to either delay or obtain a bonus to resisting the effect. For example, as the PCs search for a cure to the slow acting poison they stumble across the alchemical lab that made an early version of the poison. PCs succeeding in a Complexity 1 skill challenge can craft an antidote based on a notes left by the alchemist to delay the poison a bit, giving the PC two extra short rests before another check needs to be made.
You could also go the opposite direction with this by adding things that worsen condition. The PCs affected by the Interloper’s Curse may, during the course of their adventure, stumble across a small shrine to Set. If a PC defiles the idol or steals the Golden Crook from the idols hand find the power of the curse strengthening – the PC must make an immediate check to see if the curse worsens.
Example: Spellfeeder’s Corrosive
This is a variation on the Rust Monster’s ability to damage, or destroy, the PCs items during the course of an adventure. This implementation has a its advantages. First, the item slowly degrades until it becomes a nonmagical, but still functional, object. So instead the avenger who just loves swinging his greatsword having to switch to a different weapon (because the standard rust monster destroys the item) she can still swing away with her greatsword. Also, this corrosion is equal opportunity – it can be applied to any magical item.
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| Effect: Magic items under the influence of this corrosion are immune to any Creation rituals such as Enchant Magic Item. This effect persists for 24 hours after the corrosion is cured or reaches its final state. |
| Cure: | The magic item is cured. |
| Initial Effect: | PCs trying to use the magic item roll a saving throw. On a success, the item works normally. On a failure – Weapon or Implement: Properties and Criticals enhancements do not work (save ends). Other: Properties do not work (save ends). |
| Worse: | If the magic item has multiple levels and it is currently not at its lowest level, reduce the item by 1 level. Calculate the difference between the levels; residuum of that amount flakes off and can be collected by the PC. If the magic item has only one level or is at its lowest level, go to the Final State. |
| Final State | The magic item loses it’s remaining resiidum and becomes nonmagical. |
I would recommend adding Spellfeeder’s Corrosive to a monster other than the rust monster since retrofitting the rust monster would involve removing a good chunck of its powers. I’d look at using an elite or solo brute of an appropriate level. I did a quick look a the Compedium and I think a black pudding would work great. You could use the monster stats as is and just retitle it as a Spellfeeder.
A final word of caution about desigining new effects: Don’t make the worse case scenario too overwhelming. Overly debilititing effects that are permanent aren’t any fun for the players and will lead to frustration. Sure, making the final state of your Head of Vecna artifact curse be that the PC is permanently blinded, deafened, and mute might make that small, evil voice in the back of your head giggle with glee. It’s going to really, really suck for you player who might decide to not play their character instead of facing such an debilitating effect.
Random D&D 4E fact: As of Monster Manual 2, creatures with the resist: insubstantial quality have only 70% to 75% of the hit points of a non-insubstantial creature of the same role and level. Monster Manual 1 monsters were calculated at -2 hit points per level and monsters generated by the RPGA or Dungeon magazine varied greatly on what rules they followed.
Quick Review: Adventure Art – Issue #1
Mythic Design has released a new product called Adventure Art in a series of issues, with the subtitle “Professional Artwork for Use in Your Roleplaying Games”. They were kind enough to provide us with the first issue which is for May/June 2009, which is a nice looking collection of artwork from the archives of AvatarArt.com. I’ve always been a fan of the work produced by Avatar Art so it’s nice to see these twelve black and white high-quality sketches presented in a combined PDF format.
This issue of Adventure Art begins with a rundown of the characters presented in the artwork, with a brief descritption and a name given for each. The rest of the issue is one full-page spread for each work of art, each of which is a very well executed pencil shading rendering of a fairly unique fantasy character or setting. The art featured on the cover is the best work in the issue, that of a grizzled looking man removing a mask with an animal companion and one of the few pieces with a finished background to it. The rest range from a knight in full armor to a wizard to minotaurs and a naked female satyr holding a giant gem.
This is a very interesting idea for a product, but I’m not sure it has been pulled off as well as it could be. The short descriptions in the beginning don’t tell you anything you couldn’t figure out from spending a minute looking at the piece of artwork, and I really think they could have used that space and more to really develop these works of art into unique and interesting characters that people would want to pay money for. That said the artwork is really great quality when it comes to black and white shaded artwork, and I can see some DMs really enjoying having a large stock of portraits to choose from close at hand while running their game. I think this product could really make some waves if it begins to steer towards the direction of helping to give DMs ideas while they look through the artwork as well, rather than just being something secondary that any person might choose to show to a party. All things considered I’m not sure how many people will pay the $10 price for this product, but I think there’s a lot of potential to make future issues something that people will really clamor to have!
If you’d like to get the first two issues of Adventure Art for free, I highly recommend going over to Dungeon Mastering and signing up for his excellent premium DM Tools! You can use the Dungeon Mastering DM Tools to create monsters, create your own traps, and put those monsters and traps all into one encounter template (something which I find incredibly useful). You should also check out their beta for Powers and Magic Weapons, I whole heartedly believe that Yax has put together one of the best collections of 4th Edition tools on the internet, so I cannot recommend enough that you check it out!
Hands On: Monster Builder Beta
The Monster Builder was released today to DDI subscribers, allowing us to build our own monsters for 4e. Of course, we could already do that… through Asmor’s Monster Maker, the Dungeonmastering Tools, or WotC’s own bonus tools utility.
So what does the new software bring to the table? Well, you still can’t use it to build encounters and have it print out stat blocks. Nor can you use it to apply templates to monsters. What you can do, that was mostly unavailable before, is modify existing monsters, swap powers between monsters, and build all new monsters by using bits and pieces from other monsters (and not just for Flesh Golems).
So here’s a walkthrough (with screenshots) of some of the Monster Builder features. As a few caveats, I don’t do a lot of homemade monster creation. I find the existing monsters in the game more than sufficient, and when I need something else, I can almost always shemp something into shape. So I didn’t pay a lot of attention to the specifics of monster creation when building some samples… mostly, I was just playing around.
First things first: I now use a MacBook, with VMWare installed to run Windows XP, in order to use the Character Builder and now the Monster Builder. The Character Builder was already installed, making the installation process easy, but your mileage may vary.
So after closing Character Builder, I installed and fired up the new Monster Builder. The first screen lists the “Adventure Tools”, of which Monster Builder is only one, with 4 other empty slots. What will these slots contain? Only time (and probably a lot of it) will tell. Anyway, next step was to click on Monster Builder, and then the launch took about a minute.
First screen lists some of the things you can do with the Monster Builder. A number of helpful tool tips appear on screen at various times to guide you through the process.
On the left, a list of all the official monsters from the Compendium. (Presumably, like the CB, Adventure Tools will update every month with new monsters). You can filter by name, keywords, level, and more. The middle shows the currently selected monster. The right has a “holding pen” where you can place a couple monsters you want to work with. The bottom middle has options for what you can do with the current monster: edit custom creature (for monsters you’ve made yourself that you want to modify), duplicate and edit creature (to use an existing monster as a starting point), or create new custom creature (to start from scratch).
Let’s start with modifying a monster. A few weeks back, I ran an adventure that needed Dwarven pirates. Let’s make a Dwarven pirate captain. I start with the Human Pirate Captain from MM2, which I find by typing in “pirate.”
I selected it, and it brought up all the details, with a separate entry in each block on the side for each of his powers.
I changed his name, up his level to make him more menacing, and add the Dwarf keyword. The powers automatically have their attack bonuses increase.
I gave him an extra range attack, his trusty flintlock pistol, with a recharge to represent reloading. I made it his basic ranged attack, and added some text. I modified the default cutlass melee attack to be a little weaker.
I needed to Dwarfify him, so I searched for Dwarf in the right sidebar. Oops- turns out that there’s a Dwarven buccaneer already. That’s OK, my Dwarven pirate will be way better. I clicked and dragged the “Stand Your Ground” racial power over. I saved the modified creature. I can copy it to the clipboard in rich text and paste into TextEdit or in image form (but that wasn’t working for me- couldn’t paste into Photoshop or any other program). I can also print my Captain, so I sent it to PDF.
To get back to the main screen, I clicked the X which says “Cancel Monster” since that’s the only option to go back. It prompts to save, even if you’ve already saved it.
OK, now a new monster. I clicked the make new monster button, and entered in the basic details. Paragon monster sounds about right, and now I need some powers.
As you can see, I can grab all kinds of different powers from different monsters, and it automatically recalibrates the attack and damage for level, though there’s no indication of when I’ve added too many powers for the level, so I just wing it.
I changed a few power names and a few keywords/damage types, and voila! I have a new monster.
I have a statblock ready to print and bring to my game table.
My analysis? It’s still early in the development of the tool, but clearly a boon for those who love to make their own monsters. The ability to move around powers between monsters (and even the ability to build off existing monsters) is a huge benefit to monster makers and tinkerers. However, for someone like myself who doesn’t have a lot of experience with doing it, it’s difficult to judge just what I’m doing and if my final creation is balanced along the lines of existing monsters. Swapping racial powers is useful, but not enough to make it invaluable when planning my game. Add in encounter building with statblocks and templating, and you’ll have yourself a deal.
For new GMs: Worldbuilding is storytelling: complication, complexity, micronarratives, and your precious little fantasy world-baby
Wax Banks has been blogging quietly in a corner since 2002 or so. His recent RPG obsession annoys his regular readers.
Here are two worlds.
First, Ptolus, by highly-regarded RPG designer/writer Monte Cook:
Of all large cities in the Empire, Ptolus is probably the least devoted to Lothian, a fact made all the more ironic because this has become the traditional home of the Prince of the Church. Since 657 IA, the heir apparent to the Holy Throne has lived in Ptolus, with the idea that the heir should not live in the same city as the current Emperor of the Church. However, since the sacking of Tarsis by barbarians in 710, the Holy Emperor, Rehoboth, has lived with his son in Ptolus. Although Rehoboth’s stay has been officially declared a “visit,” he has now dwelled in Ptolus for eleven years.
Ptolus has a bishop – a man named Nireus Pard (human male cleric12)—but he does not enjoy the power of most bishops in a city the size of Ptolus. In fact, he has almost no power at all. His traditional roles are filled instead by the Prince of the Church and the archbishop, Adlam Theobold (male human cleric20). And now, with the Holy Emperor himself living in Ptolus, the bishop is virtually ignored, except for issues dealing directly with St.Valien’s Cathedral. And even St. Valien’s prominence comes into question when the temple within the Holy Palace is becoming a more “important” church than the cathedral; when the city’s powerful and influential elite need to visit a Lothianite church for any reason, they go to the Holy Palace more often than St. Valien’s.
In addition to St. Valien’s Cathedral, Ptolus has various satellite churches: St.Gustav’s Chapel at Delver’s Square in Midtown, Daykeeper’s Chapel in Midtown, St. Daris’ Church in the Guildsman District, Church of the Lawgiver in the North Market, Church of Lothian the Redeemer in Oldtown, St. Chausle’s Chapel in the South Market, and the Chapel of St. Thessinain Rivergate. With the temple inside the Holy Palace, that makes nine churches altogether.
Now, Uresia, Grave of Heaven, by highly-regarded RPG designer/writer S. John Ross:
Four gods are now known to have survived the Skyfall. There may be others, too, but there has been no sign of them in over a thousand years. The surviving gods are an odd mix of “unimportant” gods – morally ambiguous and largely unapproachable.
The Primal One: The god of animal urges – want, hunger, instinct, and lust. Some mistake her/him/it for “evil,” but it’s both above and beneath such things. It’s the shadowy essence of the Id, and of unthinking motive impulse. It cares only for its native worshippers, the wild animals. Paradoxically, it’s the secret ruler of a mortal kingdom.
The Sea Dragon: The serpentine goddess of wind and storm at sea, and the protector of the secrets of the deep. A fickle and destructive god, driven by alien motives and fond of drowning anything weak enough to require air to breathe. Villains who attempt to get on her good side end up just as drowned as anyone else. She commands a tiny secret cult of children.
The Arbiters: Their genders and personalities vary according to which culture you ask, but their area of concern is straightforward. They like any contest, as long as it is fair. They have no preference between violence and peace, or between right and wrong, so long as men are competing and striving for a judgment of victory. These cosmic referees inspire most Uresian kingdoms with an obsession for some kind of sport or contest.
The Wine God: In Helt, he is called Tom Beer, a laughing party-animal. In the Volenwood, she is Nysha, Goddess of the Vine, and the patron of the vintners’ art. In Sindra, they call it Golu: The Shadow of Drunkards, a semi-sinister spectre of alcoholism, the dark image that the drunkard can only escape by plunging into darkness. Each representation of a facet of the whole truth, but that the Wine God makes more personal appearances in Helt than anywhere else tells Man something, even if it is only how he prefers to be seen. [Read the rest of this article]
Gen Con Hiatus Update: Guest Post Galore and Critical Hits!
I got an incredible response to my call for guest posters and we’ve already started posting! In fact, I already have 2 posts more ready to be posted and the schedule is almost full!
Speaking of guest posts, have you seen the one I did for Critical Hits yet? I took Dave’s excellent 5X5 campaign design method and applied it to adventure design.
I hope you like it.
Back to Gen Con prep work!
Using the 5×5 Method for Adventure Design
Hi there, ChattyDM here. You know, that guy from that other blog ? Dave was kind enough to invite me to be a guest writer for the CH audience and for once I won’t be talking about Wii games.
What I will do today is build upon Dave’s groundbreaking concept: the 5×5 method.
In his post, Dave explained how you can build a multi-threaded campaign, featuring 5 interrelated plot-lines by planning your campaign on a 5×5 Grid. Each plot being broken up in 5 full adventures, giving you a 25 adventures campaign that could last you a few years.
When I read about that post, something clicked in my mind. I could feel that this seemingly simple concept had near unlimited potential as a game mastering tool. At the time I didn’t know what it would be, so I let that feeling simmer for a few weeks.
The 5×5 Adventure Method
Then, earlier this summer, while planning a short summer adventure, that dormant idea flourished…
What if I used the 5×5 method to create an adventure instead of a campaign?
What if, instead of having 5 long-term campaign plots, you would start with 5 quests/adventure hooks? For a D&D adventure, you could have one or two major quests and 3-4 minor quest or rumors as starting points. For example:
- The local baron asks the party to recover the fabled Shield of Eternal Valor from the ruins of Doom Keep to help him defeat bands of raiding goblinoids.
- The Church of St. Zwilek wants Divine Heroes to banish the leaders of the demonic cult of Gra’zok-Thousand-Eyes, responsible for enslaving gullible peasants.
- The son of a farmer was kidnapped by disfigured humanoids wearing demon-like tatoos.
- Rumor: Tales relate that an ornate legendary sword that talks lies lost deep under Doom Keep.
- Rumor: A Dragon used to lair near Doom Keep, its hoard was never found.
Each of those quests and rumors would in turn be broken in up to 5 scenes/encounter that move the story toward completion of the quest (or uncovers the truth about a rumor). You can use the 5 Room Dungeon model to create those scenes (a room and a scene are interchangeable in my mind).
Much like the original application, the trick of the 5×5 adventure method is to have some scenes connected by common elements like locales, NPCs, objects, etc. Maybe the party has to deal with a single NPC to obtain the necessary info for 2 or 3 of the 5 quests. Maybe they need to explore a single place to find 2 objects needed to complete 2 quests.
The more connections you make between the 5 plots/rumors, the more your players will link elements together, pulling their characters deeper in the story.
Rumors are an intriguing concept in that they don’t have to be true at all but must have a reason to exist. You can develop them into something completely unexpected.
For example, let’s take the legendary sword rumor and develop all 5 scenes:
- An ancient retired adventurers tells the party about a talking sword of legends abandoned deep under Doom Keep.
- In (occupied) side chamber of first level of keep, PCs find remains of adventurers. An ivory scroll case containing a depiction of sword and warnings about it’s evil nature is found.
- During negotiations with some humanoids living under the dungeon, they reveal that the sword is in possession of cult leader, deeper in the dungeon.
- Cult Leader turns out to be an animated corpse controlled by the sword impaled in it! As the cultists charge, the zombie draws it and attacks.
- After defeat of cult, the PCs must decide what to do with artifact, possibly leading to another adventure.
As you can see, the rumor turned out to be something unexpected while still being linked to the second quest (The Cult) and the first one (The Doom Keep).
Now one really interesting thing about using this method in regards to creating a D&D adventure is how convenient it is. Here’s how: take 5 quests and/or rumors and introduce each with a scene. That leaves you with 20 scenes/encounters to plan.
According to the D&D encounter algorithm, PCs level up after having played through about 10 encounters. This means that if you don’t combine too many scenes together, using the 5×5 method will give you an adventure that covers 2 levels, which puts them on par with a published adventures.
Neat huh?
Pacing of the 5×5 Adventure
One other concept I want to explore is how pacing of your game will affect how a 5×5 adventure plays. The way you set up your scenes and how far apart they are from one other (in terms of distance or timing) will greatly affect the feel of that adventure.
If all 20 scenes are spread over a multi-level dungeon, the adventure will take several sessions and feel like a classic dungeon crawl. If on the other hand, each scene takes place over a large area, including mini-dungeons, cities and frontier keeps, all with a backstory of war and intrigue, then your adventure will have a majestic, epic feel.
I tried to do the complete opposite with my summer D&D game. I had all plots be potential catastrophes that threatened the PC’s city and I had all of them occur one after the other. This created a sense of confusion and urgency similar to “oh crap” movies like Snatch and Lock, Stock and 2 Smoking Barrels. It was a hell of a blast to play but my players were convinced that I was out to get them.
So give the method a try, I know I’ll be using it as soon as I start playing again in September.
Dude, You Gotta Try Savage Worlds!
Wrath of Zombies is a recent Blogger. You can follow his RPG antics over at his blog.
Wow. I feel all sorts of special getting to fill in for Chatty today! Honestly, for a new blogger like me, these are big shoes to fill but I’ll try not to disappoint!
I, ironically at the same time as a few other fellow bloggers, Greywulf’s Lair and The Bone Scroll, discovered the wondrous joys of Savage Worlds.
Since I’ve started putzing around on RPG Bloggers, I had heard people mention Savage Worlds and how great a system it is. I’m one of those people who, once my curiosity is piqued, have to know everything I can about that particular thing. I’m also not one to judge a system without having read and played it. So, needless to say my curiosity was piqued for Savage Worlds.
Why do I find Savage Worlds so great?
One of the first things that blew me away about Savage Worlds wasn’t even in the book, it was the community built around the game itself! There are many great people out there who are willing to listen to your questions, ideas, and thoughts about Savage Worlds and give you constructive feedback.
I have, as of yet (knocks on wood), to receive the kind of harsh criticism from the Savage Worlds community as I’ve received about my ideas about certain DnD rules, house rules, or questions from diehard fans of the DnD community. I’m not saying that they aren’t out there, because they are. They, to me, seem to be in the minority though.
Speaking of the community, there are some GREAT fan resources about converting your favorite RPG to the Savage Worlds system. Savage Heroes has conversion rules and also some other nifty things for all your SW needs. The community also really shines on the Pinnacle Forum (Publisher of the game). You will find TONS of fan made worlds, adventures, ideas, and advice. The official SW moderators and staff are also always willing to answer questions and give helpful ideas for your blossoming or veteran SW campaign!
There are also great toolkits on Studio 2’s webpage that help craft your ideas and make the GM’s life easier! I can’t even begin to tell you just how much I LOVE the Combat Survival Guide! I have very casual players. They love to play, but the rules aren’t something that they memorize and know by heart. They get familiar with them, but I usually have to remind them of certain intricacies. This guide is AWESOME! Even my girlfriend was really thrilled about this.
Thus, every single one of my players now has this guide attached to their character sheet as a reference guide that will push their combat creativity to flow, gush, and spring forth.
Oh man I got to go to the bathroom now… I’ll be back.
So much more than a Great Community!
The other thing that really impressed me about Savage Worlds is how easily you can convert your most beloved game to fit the “Fast, Furious, and Fun!” tagline of SW. As I was reading the core rule book (which is only 160 pages- so it chews that fat, throws out the fluff, and gets right to the meat of the game) I was already thinking of ways to convert Vampire the Masquerade, Shadowrun, Dungeons and Dragons, or All Flesh Must be Eaten to it.
I also started realizing how EASY it is to homebrew a campaign where virtually no mechanics exist. I am currently working on a Steampunk campaign setting. Now while there are different resources that I plan to be using to make my game richer and more detailed, everything exists in the core rule book for you to make up your own items, contraptions, etc. This also goes for whatever world or system that you wish to create or use!
In SW, doing a pick up game is easy, a lot easier than many of the d20 games for instance. SW does away with the level of micromanagement that many other games have.
You want more? All right!!!
One of the things that will make or break a system for me is combat. On that account, SW delivers. I dare say, it might become my favorite combat system, knocking d20 out of the top spot. I’m not quite sure yet, still too early to tell, but from the few combat sessions I’ve played, I am really digging it.
Combat is fast, dangerous, and makes players really have to plan, but while they strategize, it honestly doesn’t take that long! That is one of the shining beacons for me! Combat flows smoothly, brutally, and is tons of fun!
In Closing
I honestly recommend people try SW. The core rule book (Savage Worlds: Explorer Edition) is only $9.99 and it has all you need to do a campaign. You never need to purchase another book! You can totally make up everything all on your own and it is easy!
There are also a ton of setting books out there that sound amazing! From what I can tell, the most popular seems to be Deadlands: Reloaded. And from what I’ve seen, I’m definitely going to pick this product up soon!
Savage Worlds really does offer something for everyone. Whether it be a high flying pulp adventure, sci-fi space exploration and alien invasions, playing super heroes and villains, playing a setting of conspiracy and political intrigue, or an apocalyptic western setting, you’ll be able to play it in SW.
Take the chance.. I did.. And look at me!
Yep... Nothing wrong here.
Also some other good links for SW, if you are curious about the system and it’s possibilities :
Savage Worlds eZine
Savage Worlds Wiki
Another great review of the SW, eloquently put by Telas
And finally… I posted my initial impression of SW. I also posted my groups first playtest of the system.
So thanks must go to Chatty for giving me this opportunity to post on his blog! I hope he is enjoying is time out and about!
YouTube Tuesday: Chase Dat Gold Edition
A “gangsta rap” about LARPing. Yes, I’m serious. Keep in mind that there is some potentially offensive things in it (some of which are thanks to the genre) so approach with an open mind.
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