Savage West, Session 1: The Riverboat Poker Heist, The Plan
I bought 3 copies of the pocket-sized Savage Worlds Explorer’s Edition at Gen Con last summer. It was a game I was told I might like given the limited time I could spend playing on Friday nights. I asked Yan if he’d like to GM a demo to our once-a-month Sunday geekout crew (PM, Maze, Ubisoft Alex and I) and he agreed.
Savage Hybrid
The best way to describe Savage Worlds I heard was to say that it’s what would happen if D&D and GURPS created an offspring. It’s purported to be fast and furious. This is mostly achieved by a dead simple task resolution mechanic: all attributes (Strength, Agility, Vigor, etc) and skills are ranked in terms of polyhedral dice (D4, D6, D8, D10, D12). When you attempt a task (or try to hit a target), you pick the appropriate polyhedral and you try to roll a 4 or more. All dice are open ended (i.e. you keep rolling maximum results and add them together). As a PC, you also get a bonus D6 wild die for all rolls and you get to choose which of your normal or wild die rolls you keep for the task at hand.
Combat is done on battlemaps (squares or hexes, GM’s choice) and is indeed fast and swingy. There’s no Hit Points to worry about, just combat conditions likes “dazed” and “incapacitated” plus various wound levels that make your character progressively less effective. Mook NPC are even easier to deal with, going down after one solid hit or 2 minor ones.
Action and general character badassery are helped by the expenditure of Bennies. They are Savage Worlds Action Point and allow PCs to do things like re-roll failed checks, soak up damage or cancel a critical failure. Each player gets a few every sessions and can win more through play.
Finally, character generation is simple yet covers a very wide range of possibilities through the existence of setting specific Edges (advantages) and Hindrances (disadvantages). Each character buys attributes, skills and gears. Then, they pick two edges and one major (or two minor) hindrances and they are ready to go.
Thus after a bit of brainstorming, Yan offered to run a Far West game and we made PCs accordingly. [Read the rest of this article]
The Inner Half-Orc versus The Retro-Clone
(PM is a good friend of mine and while our interest in gaming and movies intersect, we have not roleplayed all that often together. Here’s one of his rare, and always very entertaining posts about his experience as a closet RPG geek -ChattyDM)
Where is it? I’m sure it was around here somewhere… I hear it rant from time to time… Ahhh! There he is; stuck between ‘Fix the fireplace’ and ‘Replace the fence’. My (very dusty) inner half-orc has spent the last few months in the procrastination part of my brain. It’s not the nicest place to be stuck in, but at least there’s plenty of space to walk around; that part of my brain is HUGE! In any case, a surprise game of S&W grants him an early release from his prison. Yay!
This article is part of a short series about my introduction to RPGs and my perspective on the interaction of the players.
As ChattyDM explained here, four of us were treated to a retro-clone type game and it was a thoroughly enjoyable experience. At one point, I even described it as my best RPG experience ever. (Where ‘ever’ corresponds to 5 or 6 game sessions). As I considered the potential faux-pas of saying this in front of my usual DM (Franky), I started to ponder how and why this game fitted better with my player personality.
Squirrel!
As I’m revisiting the evening, the first thing that pops into my mind is that creating my character didn’t throw me into the woes of planning paralysis. Whenever I’m presented with a quantifiable logical system, I attempt (and love) to find the best way to take advantage of it. But as a player in a role-playing game, I find it detracts from my goal.
Let me put it this way…
I’m sure you’ve all once seen a dog engaged in a deep battle of wits with a tennis ball only to be suddenly extracted from this epic war by the sight of a passing squirrel. Quantifiable logical systems are my squirrels. If the character system is simple, the distraction will be short and will not bother me. If it’s complex and meaty, and full of good stuff, I’m screwed. This also applies to combat of course, as they are also anchored deeply in the rules I’m oft… SQUIRREL!
My tennis ball…
My personal goal when I play a RPG is to find solutions to the different obstacles presented by the DM. I enjoy a good plot twist as much as the next guy, but that’s not why I’m here. To be thoroughly enjoyable, whatever solution I find must flow naturally with the game itself and I prefer if the solution comes from me, not from my character sheet. My solution can be supported by the character sheet, but it shouldn’t dictate it. (I guess that’s where I align with Chatty’s ‘Say yes’ new philosophy).
This game offered quite a few opportunities for such occasion. They were pretty simple and probably not vital to the adventure, but it was something I could sink my teeth into.
Ultimate consequences or lack thereof
This game of S&W was all about exploration, and keeping out of more trouble than we could handle. That last part was pretty important to my enjoyment as well. We had to be cautious or our chances of getting out alive would drop precipitously. I don’t know if it’s because we had no skills to use, or more equipment to ‘MacGiver’ into a solution, but I was glad to see that fights were dangerous and avoiding them was often a good thing. I guess I’m saying that the game didn’t over-promote fights at the expense of any other alternatives. Now I won’t pretend that S&W doesn’t use fights as a default ‘turn of event’, but at least there’s a very real threat, and it will take 15 minutes to resolve.
…maybe it was just this specific adventure; my sample isn’t large enough to make a distinction.
Of mice and fights…
As I’m writing this, I realize that my experience, whenever the party flubs a dice roll or chooses wrongly you end up with either an additional fight, or just an even bigger fight. To me it feels like the price for not reaching a goal is nothing more than a slap on the wrist. ‘You screwed up, here’s a 45 minutes fight to go through before you can continue.’ And as Chatty previously explained, a performing party will ultimately dispatch any aggressor without much danger. So not only does the default complication does not involve any real jeopardy, it will consume much of session’s preciously saved-up time allotment.
Recently, Chatty discussed briefly how Mouse Guard uses complications when a character is unable to perform a task or reach a goal and how he thought that was something worth trying. I was a little bit surprised at this since to me it’s clear that when such an event occurs, it’s only logical that there should be a complication. Then I realized that the statement was simply incomplete. When a character is unable to perform a task, there should be a complication that doesn’t necessarily involve combat. Something I have not encountered too often in my previous games. Skill challenges are okay but… SQUIRREL! Again.
Is this it? Retro-clones forever?
I don’t think I’m forever limited to this type of rule set. Like any other player, I just need to communicate my own likes and dislikes to my DM and work with him to make the sessions more enjoyable. I mustn’t forget that there are other members in my party and they probably enjoy different aspects of the game.
Here’s a simple wish.
Get me something to do other than talking or fighting. I discussed combat a lot more than I intended but skipped over role-playing altogether since there wasn’t really any to speak of this time around. But what’s left to do but these two you ask? Exploring! Opening doors to rooms empty of any enemies works for me. Let there be something to do in that room from time to time and I’ll be happy. It doesn’t need to be a puzzle straight out of Myst either.
Let’s take your basic plot hook ‘Find the sorcerer’s globe of badassdom’.
After we kill the sorcerer’s in a fight (if we must have one) let me explore the room and find the thingee on the top shelf of the library.
‘The sorcerer falls to the ground dead…’
“We search the body for the globe…’
‘You don’t find it on him.’
‘I check the room.’
‘After a quick inspection, you notice a faint glow from the top shelf. The shelf is too high for you to reach’
‘Is there a ladder somewhere?’
‘Nope’
‘I climb to the top using the lower shelves’
‘Ok roll your dexterity’
FAIL
‘Midway up the shelves, you hear the whole structure crack as it rips from the wall. As you fall you try to hold on to the remaining shelves under you but they break off as well. The shock loosens something on the top shelve and you see the globe slowly roll toward the edge… aaaaand.. It falls….’
‘I dive to grab it’
(Just say yes)
‘You catch it just in time, but all the noise attracted two guards who were patrolling nearby’
Ensues a 10 minutes fight where we might be in danger for real… of dying, being imprisoned, or losing the globe to a quick thinking guard.
Sounds a little bit goofy right? Not too heroic either I guess but I love that kind of stuff. And this whole exploration mini-scene couldn’t have lasted more than 10 minutes. Sure, the DM needs to be pretty good at improvising the situation, but not every room needs to be like this either.
I, Demon: This is getting interesting…
This is my play session log of our re-started d20 World of Darkness game (written by Monte Cook and published late last year). I’m writing in character because it allows me to explore a more narrative writing style, but I’ll pepper it with Out of Character (OOC) comments on the actual game.
The main thing one must know about the game is that because of complete lack of product support (and setting incompatibility with other WoD books, since the underlying story is drastically different). we are actually playing more of a Shadow Chasers d20 Modern campaign with d20 WoD character classes.
Dramatis Persona:
- William Gunther, Awakened Human, played by Yan
- Duncan Clark, Werewolf, played by PM
- Brook Didler, Vampire, played by Mike
- Citation Needed/Vicky Fox: Demon, played by your’s truly
- GM: Franky
An atmosphere of distrust and suspicion pervaded my first few hours in the Shadow Chasers squad of the Chicago branch of the IDA (Intrusion Detection Agency). I wouldn’t want it any other way. [Read the rest of this article]
I, Demon: The Awakening
This series is going to be a diary-like re-telling of the d20 World of Darkness game I’ll be playing once a month. It’s going to be GMed by my buddy Franky.
Way back when, we started the game but it was left aside for some time. We’re kick starting it again and this post is a pre-game exploration of my new character, a yet unnamed Demon recently woken up by the Nightmare Wave.
I have slept for countless eons on this inconsequential mud ball. What I am and how I got here can’t be written in that simpleton system of grunts and scribbles that you call language. In any case your fragile linear minds would crumble if I was to convey to you all this.
Suffice it to say that I am Rage and Destruction made alive through the very material that this cold moldy rock is made of. I along with my brothers were here, surfing and slumbering along the tectonic plates of Pangaea way before any amino and ribonucleic acids decided to meet up and have a party in the so called primordial soup.
Intelligent design? Pfaa! If only they knew…
Fast forward a couple of hundred million years and that thin layer of dirt and water flourished in what Humans like to selfishly call ‘higher life’. Among those finally arose Homo Sapiens, with its ideas of grandeur and obscenely naive beliefs. That’s when the awakening call, like the progressively louder buzz of an alarm clock, started to stir us.
I woke up, as luck would have it, about 2 years ago deep in the muck of the Gulf of Mexico, off the coast of Texas. The “incident” had just occured and my masters (don’t ask, really) were beckoning me to arise and act against the humans.
Chief among our ‘ennemies’ were the Awakened, a subset of humanity who are a tad bit less boring than all the billions of mind numbingly dull sheep most of that rest is.
Unable to resist their biding, I took form from the rock and seafloor sediments surrounding me and crawled to the surface.
As I stood on the shores, so many miles away from the incident that triggered all those commands screaming in my mind, my newly formed physical shell slowly dried up. As water evaporated from my body and the salt just became an inert crystal layer, I realized just how strong I was and how much more powerful my will could be.
(Aside: My character’s weakness is salt water)
As the voices were filling me with their plans and edict, I raised my head toward the heavens and let out the most liberating of howls:
FUCK YOU! THIS MOTHERFUCKING WORLD IS GOING TO BE MY PLAYGROUND’ NOT YOURS!
While the voices continued for some time, from that moment on, I didn’t feel compelled to act on them, nor even listen. They eventually stopped, writing me off as an inconsequential rogue.
How wrong they are!
I made my way to a coastal Texan community and took the appropriate shapes whenever it became necessary to avoid detection.
I started absorbing what little knowledge humans had comprehended so far and the tools and beliefs they used to keep their fragile sanity intact in this cold dark reality.
Reality that was soon to become much colder and infinitively darker unless I helped them a bit.
I learned all of this mostly on something called Wikipedia and also Fox News.
It’s during that time that I discovered this cute human habit of writing one’s private thoughts on paper. That’s why I recently got myself a notebook and started recording my antics. It’s completely useless but even Demons develop quirks I suppose.
Demon. It’s such a quaint name to wrap one’s mind around what it is that I am, but it will have to do.
Keeping a log of my daily life isn’t the only thing I put down on paper. I also translated some of the things my former masters were telling me. I choose carefully the things I decided to write so they could be conveyed to the authorities that were organizing around the Awakened humans without shattering their simple minds.
Armed with some key ‘secrets’ of the Inconnu’s plan (cute name too), I made my way to Chicago, where the “Incident” occurred and I sold them to the IDA.
I had to use a lot of my powers to persuade, charm, and convince them of my loyalty to the humans’ cause. (HA!).
It worked, I was hired to fight the Inconnu, alongside a few others of ‘my class’… That will get, interesting!
I’ll be able to monitor what the awakened do (and screw with their puny minds, just for shits and giggles) while at the same time beat back the Inconnu so I can have this world to myself afterwards.
I start tomorrow. Looking forward to see what kinds of ‘partners’ I’ll have… Apparently I’m joining a group where one of their Awakened buddy’s snapped and went off the deep end.
Hopefully I’ll be able to help the remaining one along.
You can call me… Citations Needed.
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