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Why not start with the "Explorer's Edition" of the rules? Complete rules-set for 10 bucks? What could go wrong?

Our group has never played SW, but we have played the original Deadline rules from which it is distilled. I suspect that I might have similar objections: the multiple dice involved seem a bit clunky (but then, that's not hampering my fun with 4e); I'm not sure I really like systems where character attributes themselves are variable quantities (as a GM, I tend to make ballpark calls a lot, based on the values of character attributes; this is still doable if they're variable, but involves a bit more, or perhaps just different, mental-math than I'm used to).

For that kind of fast-n-loose setting-in-a-box kind of gaming, I'm probably more likely at this point to use one of HERO, Spirit Of The Century/FATE, or Chaosium's BRP, depending upon the sort of feel I want to achieve. (The only reason that HERO qualifies in this list is that our group has a long standing history with the system, and so the math has been burned into our neural pathways.)

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Oh, or HeroQuest; that should go on the list, too. I was quite happy with the results I got from the (rather limited) table time I spent playtesting the upcoming HeroQuest v2.0.

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Hmmm. I think I'll check out that rules set. Thanks.

I was impressed by SoTC, and I do have those rules already... not to mention HERO and various BRP versions.

And yes, re: neural pathways. Time was, I could keep track of movement segments in my head...

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Sweet God, did I say Deadline? I'm getting milddle-aged... geez... I mean "DeadLANDS", of course... 8p

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OLD! OLD! OLD!

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All I know is I hate it because it uses more than one die type.

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You would love the HERO system, I bet! Handfuls of dice, all the same type!

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DICE POOLS? NOOOOOOOO

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Not pools! Oceans!

Have you played 2nd edition Paranoia? 1 twenty-sider, and nothing else!

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I don't know... twenty sides is a lot...

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Prince Valiant, then. Coin flips!

Or, I guess you use some kind of diceless system... or, you know... play Candyland. ;)

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"Let me tell you about my 2nd level Gummy Paladin..."

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So what we need is the d4 system? :)

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d4s are pointy!

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Nobilis?

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Flowers are smelly.

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waiwode.livejournal.com

Well, skill checks are always on 3d6, like GURPS ... but far moreso than GURPS (at least at the superheroic level), in combat the effect of those skill checks can result in handfuls of dice.

Doug.

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Those little, teeny plastic boxes packed with 24 or 30 D6 dice I'm pretty sure were created solely thanks to the hunger of HERO players to have a large set of easily packable and usable D6...

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stress-kitten.livejournal.com

And the Warhammer crowd. Hehe... my husband has three different boxes of them.

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It's rather fast. You can pretty easily run combats with 50 people on each side, and be done in an hour.

However, I find it kind of... bland, and lacking detail. Which probably is connected.

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What do you run, normally?

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Every White Wolf system but Streetfighter and Aeonverse stuff, Nobilis, and Rifts. I've heard this said by people who play things like BRP (used for Call of Cthuhlu among other games) and Spirit of the Century as well though.

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BRP people say it's bland?

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OK, maybe not that part :) They do say it's fast though. Some of them at least.

Most people I know who are into Savage Worlds run it as a sort of GURPS lite.

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I'll probably check out the $10 ruleset.

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I find it kind of ... bland, and lacking detail.

Odd: that's kind of what I thought about "Deadlands". Originally, I thought that I just couldn't really connect to the background, but while we were playing, I kept thinking how I could get a much better feel with the background using a different set of rules.

There is a lot to be said about having a smoothly playing, quick set of rules. But it's also interesting how "system matters", and the really fun games are not only quick to learn and play, but also have that something that's mechanically intriguing as well.

For me, I just look at Savage Worlds and think I can't imagine ever using it because other sets of rules would always get chosen first. But for folks who don't have those other "default" choices, it might be just fine, thank-you-very-much.

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I actually kind of found the original Deadlands system to be fun, but a mess to actually play.

As to my opinion of Savage Worlds, if I liked a game using the system the system wouldn't sell me off it, but it wouldn't be a positive point in the favour of the game either.

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waiwode.livejournal.com

What Viktor said is true ..and the Pinnacle home page has a quick start rules pdf in the downloads section (I'd link, but I can't I'm behind my work firewall).

From Deadlands came the simplified Great Rail War, and from the Great Rail war was developed SW.

SW uses cards (for initiative, and for some other stuff in things like the new(-ish) SW Deadlands).

SW uses dice ... most PCs roll a skill die (d4 through d12) and a "Wild Die" (d6). All dice open end (Roll again, add results). Take the single highest die as your result.

Most NPCs roll a single skill die. So if you and your squad of peltasts are pinned behind some rocks by six Rhodian (not a Rodian) slingers (Shooting d8) the six slingers roll 6d8 and count each die. But young Phorastrias, an NPC "Wild Card" would roll a d8 and a d6, and count the highest one.

Stats are bought, not randomly generated. There is a very trim little skill set with few social skills (Taunt, Intimidate) ... most social interactions are Stat rolls modified by your Charisma ... which starts at +0 for most characters and can be raised or lowered with Merits and Flaws.

It is exactly what it says: Fun, fast, furious! I do find that it pales a little in extended play, but that's just me.

Doug.

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Thank you sir, that's exactly the sort of details I was hoping for, and too lazy to look up. :)

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And much better than my details, because they're based on actual play. Thanks, Doug!

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jordangreywolf.livejournal.com

I find Savage Worlds to be fairly well suited to my style of GMing, simply because I'm not content to actually play for very long in anything much resembling anyone else's game universe; I want to tweak it and twist it, or do a one-shot that seems like our own world but really turns out to be more like something out of the Twilight Zone.

For that style of play, where I'm simply not willing to put weeks of work into numbers-crunching to "properly" build a new campaign setting, Savage Worlds seems to work well. But then, an added bonus is that I'm a Deadlands veteran, so some of the mechanics are familiar to me.

As for Solomon Kane, it has nice production, and it contains a version of the Savage Worlds rules, along with some rules for magic that interest me, but an awful lot of the book is devoted toward a "plot point" campaign that I sincerely doubt I would ever use. (Why? Because I'm never content to use someone else's plotline; I feel like I need to tailor mine to fit whatever plot hooks the PCs' backstories seem to provide.)

Anyway, the Savage Worlds Explorer's Edition softcover book is $10, and pretty good quality. I recommend also checking out the Pinnacle web site (http://www.peginc.com) for various free downloads of supporting material (PDFs of character sheets, GM screens, sample settings and adventures, etc.). Even though my present campaign is ostensibly a "Pirates RPG" campaign (and the Pirates RPG book is self-standing, with Savage Worlds rules - minus stuff that doesn't fit the setting), I found it beneficial to get a few copies of the SW softcover book, and to put index tabs to mark the chapters and important sections, to have them around the table for easy reference. (Some of my players actually bought their own copies, too ... which seems to be almost unheard-of in my playing group.)

Savage Worlds isn't the best system of all time (and I haven't yet figured out what that is), but it's a fun system and seems especially designed to make things easy for the GM to get things rolling - and to make quick and drastic changes to the plotline if need be (when the PCs do really unexpected things and head off in strange directions).

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jordangreywolf.livejournal.com

Pinnacle Downloads Page (http://www.peginc.com/downloads.html)

"Test Drive" demo, intro to the basic rules (http://www.peginc.com/Downloads/SWEX/TD06.pdf)

General Character Sheet (http://www.peginc.com/Downloads/SWEX/SWEXCharSheet.pdf)

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doc-mystery.livejournal.com

I played Savage Worlds at GenCon a few years back, this in a pulpish game GMed by smalley_smoot, and with kent_allard_jr as one of my co-players (I'm too lazy to input their LJ codes).

It seems to run pretty fast, and many of the beginners to the system in attendance that day seemed to pick it up okay. It's a bit quirky with the combo of the variable polyhedral dice (a bit like Iron Claw in fact) and cards (and at times I felt I was playing a game within a game) but its light enough.

I bought an extra copy of the Explorers edition of Savage WorldsI could lend you if you want to read a dead tree copy of the rules.

::B::

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I bought an extra copy of the Explorers edition of Savage WorldsI could lend you if you want to read a dead tree copy of the rules.

I'd like that!

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thebitterguy

I like SW quite a bit; it was, in fact, the system we were going to use to play that post-apocalyptic game with no rules until I broke down and cried because there were no rules for playing robots, and you wanted to play an android wrestler.

Today, I can't really imagine letting something like that get in the way of a game. I guess my current GM is a good influence.

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