Tabletop Roleplaying Games (D&D, Pathfinder, CoC, ETC.)

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Steinercard said:
So I just found out Savage Worlds Pathfinder exists. It got me quite excited.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=yPTUhgdI3Nk
I have no interest in Garglemandalorian or whatever the base Pathfinder setting is called. What entices me about this is that it works as a wonderful conversion kit for any DnD 3.5 content to Savage Worlds. That's excellent to me. I wanna see if I can get Dark Sun or Ravenloft working in this.

As an aside, anyone else have nostalga for Game Geek's Kurt Wiegel? When I first got into RPGs over 13 years ago, I was watching his videos for all the RPGs he was talking about. It got me interested in all the different games other than DnD that I preceded to never ever find any groups for. I'm glad to see he's still around even if he looks more and more like a middle class caveman by the hour.
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This looks pretty cool, I need to pick up Savage Worlds and give it an honest try sometime. I've played in a couple of short games and really enjoyed it. It'd be a nice distraction before I inevitably return to the comforting autism fest that is PF1e.

I liked what they did with the setting in Wrath of the Righteous, but I think everything done there could have been done in Forgotten Realms or whatever default setting you want. I always thought that the whole idea of every type of game you could want is just another hunk of land on the same continent, so you have vampire spooky town next door to robot land. Feels like a dumb theme park rather than an actual world. Would have been a lot cooler if you kept all of those concepts to different settings and let people do world hopping if you wanted to mix them up.
 
Seven Devil Wolf said:

RPG Writeups — Beast: The Primordial

writeups.letsyouandhimfight.com writeups.letsyouandhimfight.com

It's a long read, but well worth it. You can feel the frustration.

It doesn't outright state it, but this being a World of Darkness game, you can custom tailor your 'feeding' to some extent. The game doesn't stop you from making someone who feeds off stalking little boys.

But in the supplement, it has a a canon kiddy diddler Beast. The book makes sure to constantly state Beasts are not bad guys.

It doesn't help that later on, after all this, the book just straight up says 'Yeah, Beasts are supposed to be troons and Muslims. They're outsiders, you just need to like, learn lessons from them, wypeepo."

EDIT: Ironically, I hadn't heard of Deviant until reading this. I expected much worse from the title. I was pleasantly surprised to find it was basically World of Darkness: Double Cross or Galerians.
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Haven't read all of that review (it's novel length) but reading through it brings back a few memories. I bought Beast but never ran it. My greatest recollection is not really getting it. Apparently I was just too naive to get the subtext back then. I recall not really understanding Heroes and I definitely remember it saying that Heroes are assholes and to be despised because that was something that seemed very forced to me at the time. I did try to set up some kind of one-shot with pregens but I never completed it because I couldn't really get my head around what the actual goals were supposed to be. Also, all my character concepts were adults. I don't think I actually realised child characters were supposed to be a thing. Most of the other CoD lines I could see the motivations for the faction: oppose the Wyrm, oppose the Technocracy, oppose... each other. But Beast just never clicked. Now I half realise why: it's because I didn't at all understand the metaphors in the game. Now I'm kind of repulsed by it. I can still see potential in it. It's sort of a weird mish-mash of Nightmare on Elm Street with the PCs as Freddy Kreuger. But... the whole of it just doesn't really work.

Also, re-reading that review the concept now reminds me rather hilariously of the kitten in Max Landis's Dirk Gently adaptation (it's actually good so don't reveal spoiler unless you've seen the show or never will). In the show there's a kitten that has had the soul of a hammer-head shark put into it. The Beast concept is a little like that which makes me laugh.
 
MembersSchoolPizza said:
Seriously, am I the only person who really doesn't like Savage Worlds?
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You're not. I could never really bring myself to care about the systems in Savage World. It always felt kind of wobbly and undefined, and the characters being by definition "special" rubs me the wrong way.
 
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Can I get a Cliffs Notes version of Savage Worlds, since it gets brought up so frequently here?
 
On the topic of Fatal and Friends it amuses me that some of the reviews on it would probably be considered problematic now on the same site. I know at least one of the Chris Fields book is about an America split into pro-choice and abortion opposers and the slating the reviewer gives the pro-choice lot who are meant to be the heroic side seems like modern Something Awful would give them a banning for it.
 
Snekposter said:
Can I get a Cliffs Notes version of Savage Worlds, since it gets brought up so frequently here?
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Gladly; it's pretty much one of my pet favourites.

TL;DR - Game created as a new way to play Deadlands and streamline the system. Characters are Attributes and Skills. Unlike D&D or several games, these are two separate things.

Attributes work akin to 5e saves. Agility is not really used on it's own, but to qualify for Edges (the game's equivilent of feats). It's also used to dodge fireballs, etc. Attributes are also used to determine how hard it is to learn skills (If you have Agility d6, you can spend an Advancement which is essentially a level up, to two skills linked to Agility up to d4 or d6, or one skill up to d8 )

Characters are Wild Cards, who are basically the main characters. Wild Cards get a Wild Die, which represents how naturally skilled they are. In most cases, a Wild Die is d6. You roll your Wild Die + Skill (so, Fighting d8 would be d6 + d8 ), take the highest number. Max rolls explode. Generally, a 4 is a success, and getting 4 higher than your target number is a critical success.

Characters don't have HP. Instead, they have Wounds, similar to Warhammer. Characters can be Shaken (which potentially causes them to lose a turn), Wounded by an attack, or taken out. NPCs are taken out with a single Wound.

Wild Cards can take up to 3 Wounds before being taken out (technically 4 - it's the 4th Wound which takes you out). Each Wound is a -1 to your actions. You spend Bennies, the games metacurrency, to Soak damage by rolling Vigor.

One of the main things about the system is that all rolls are open ended. Including damage. This means, barring special monster rules, a goblin can potentially lob a rock at a dragon and still have a chance to kill it - the chances are one in a million, but it could happen. This leads to the game working a lot more smoothly at higher levels than say, D&D, as

Wounds don't really increase. Meaning a d6 Fighting zombie can still clobber a decent level character on a good roll, meaning players aren't so easily able to go "Well, I'm not scared of that knife - it can only do 9 damage at best'.
The game itself is generic, but it used for a lot of official settings, and some more off the wall ones. Stuff like Deadlands, Weird War 2, Rippers, etc.
 
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Morethanabitfoolish said:
On the topic of Fatal and Friends it amuses me that some of the reviews on it would probably be considered problematic now on the same site. I know at least one of the Chris Fields book is about an America split into pro-choice and abortion opposers and the slating the reviewer gives the pro-choice lot who are meant to be the heroic side seems like modern Something Awful would give them a banning for it.
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I never frequented Something Awful, but I noticed that with some of these reviews. I looked into Monsterhearts, which sounds like the most generic PbtA nonce crap, and it's just line after line of the normal phrases. "Problematic stuff is removed..." "Leading to a much more diverse range of characters..."

Btw, are there any links showing how to add quotes to edits, and such?

Really can't figure it out for the life of me, and don't wanna end up shitting up the place with double posts.
 
Seven Devil Wolf said:
One of the main things about the system is that all rolls are open ended. Including damage. This means, barring special monster rules, a goblin can potentially lob a rock at a dragon and still have a chance to kill it - the chances are one in a million, but it could happen. This leads to the game working a lot more smoothly at higher levels than say, D&D, as
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Sounds like its similar enough to WEG D6 I could grasp it fairly easily. And speaking of exploding damage, a buddy had a TIE Fighter one-shot an ISD in WEG's Star Wars D6 because the damage roll kept exploding. He put a cap on it right afterwards for obvious reasons...

And before you go "Well, that seems highly unlikely", I've heard a horror tale of a 40k game where a Tau Gun Drone bonked a BT Empy's Champ to death in melee thanks to(un)lucky dice rolls.
 
Seven Devil Wolf said:
Characters don't have HP. Instead, they have Wounds, similar to Warhammer. Characters can be Shaken (which potentially causes them to lose a turn), Wounded by an attack, or taken out. NPCs are taken out with a single Wound.

Wild Cards can take up to 3 Wounds before being taken out (technically 4 - it's the 4th Wound which takes you out). Each Wound is a -1 to your actions. You spend Bennies, the games metacurrency, to Soak damage by rolling Vigor.
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Which both feed in to one of my big problems with SW. I know some people defend it as being "realistic" or "dramatic", but between losing turns and progressive penalties, there's a serious death-spiral effect, I find. I don't enjoy that, or at least not handled like SW does.

Plus, losing turns is just not a fun game mechanic.

Seven Devil Wolf said:
The game itself is generic, but it used for a lot of official settings, and some more off the wall ones. Stuff like Deadlands, Weird War 2, Rippers, etc.
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I do sometimes steal SW settings and use other systems for them. But SW is kinda turning into D20 2.0... other companies are putting out their old, loved settings in Savage Worlds format, which just annoys me.
 
MembersSchoolPizza said:
Which both feed in to one of my big problems with SW. I know some people defend it as being "realistic" or "dramatic", but between losing turns and progressive penalties, there's a serious death-spiral effect, I find. I don't enjoy that, or at least not handled like SW does.

Plus, losing turns is just not a fun game mechanic.



I do sometimes steal SW settings and use other systems for them. But SW is kinda turning into D20 2.0... other companies are putting out their old, loved settings in Savage Worlds format, which just annoys me.
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Yeah, it was somewhat of an issue in the previous edition, where losing a turn was very much possible. This has been changed (now, instead of rolling 8+ to auto unshake on your turn, it's 4+. And even on a failure, you still get the D&D equivilent of a move action, which can allow you to take defense positions, move into cover, etc. One thing people often forgot was that you can spend a Bennie after a failed roll to unshake and get your turn. That can potentially be an issue if your GM isn't keeping the flow of Bennies high (which he should be).

Yeah, I've never been a fan of arguing it's realistic, 'cause I don't really find it to be such. My main take away from it is it's easy to measure (outside of certain Legendary perks, Wounds remain the same), it's just random enough to keep people (and enemies) on edge, but the death spiral, while it can get rather harsh, is generally only something you experience if you force yourself to remain in the fight. As soon as the -1s begin to show, people really start to reconsider just fighting each other to the death. But there are also Edges later which mitigate this too, which does allow for characters who can, in true action film style, take a shot to the shoulder, and just get angry because of it.
 
Snekposter said:
Sounds like its similar enough to WEG D6 I could grasp it fairly easily. And speaking of exploding damage, a buddy had a TIE Fighter one-shot an ISD in WEG's Star Wars D6 because the damage roll kept exploding. He put a cap on it right afterwards for obvious reasons...

And before you go "Well, that seems highly unlikely", I've heard a horror tale of a 40k game where a Tau Gun Drone bonked a BT Empy's Champ to death in melee thanks to(un)lucky dice rolls.
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That's my big mechanical problem with SW. While exploding damage can work because combat is rather unpredictable, exploding dice for skill checks (higher and higher degrees of success) can be very messy unless the GM has a very firm grip on the story they want to tell, and fairly short reins on the players. Otherwise people are encouraged to play like higher degrees of success can attain the impossible.

It's the good ol' "shit-covered farmer convinces queen to give him a blowjob because he rolled a nat 20 on persuasion" bullshit, but in exploding dice form. Storyteller suffers from a similar issue, but since the games often rely on fairly strong-willed NPCs and/or tight hierarchies that must be respected, it's easier for the ST to stop falling into that trap.
 
Snekposter said:
Sounds like its similar enough to WEG D6 I could grasp it fairly easily. And speaking of exploding damage, a buddy had a TIE Fighter one-shot an ISD in WEG's Star Wars D6 because the damage roll kept exploding. He put a cap on it right afterwards for obvious reasons...

And before you go "Well, that seems highly unlikely", I've heard a horror tale of a 40k game where a Tau Gun Drone bonked a BT Empy's Champ to death in melee thanks to(un)lucky dice rolls.
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But then we wouldnt have Grendel and Grendel is awesome.
 
876472ED-327A-4BB1-AD77-22E13E290C9E.png
So I created a bit of a hybrid of a young red dragon and a hydra statblock and I’d like some opinions .

I am aware that the fire immunity negates the ability to stop it from growing heads. That was intentional. I just forgot to remove reference to that feature in the text.

Basically the idea behind this is that should the hydra survive an encounter with the party it will by nature of its ability to grow new heads have become a far greater threat once it has time to rest and heal its wounds. I’m thinking I could turn this into it’s own side arc depending on how it goes.

Now, before you think I’ve been too brutal take note that due to starting with five heads a party could potentially kill it off the bat if they can deal one hundred twenty five damage before it gets its turn. Granted this is made for a pretty tough party of D&D vets so I don’t think it’s too crazy to expect that they could beat it.

What do you guys think?
 
Snekposter said:
Can I get a Cliffs Notes version of Savage Worlds, since it gets brought up so frequently here?
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I thought it was just me being the local SW fanboy.

@Seven Devil Wolf basically summed up about 80% of the game. Those basic rules are enough to run the game if you want. It's a game that scales in complexity really well.

Corn Flakes said:
That's my big mechanical problem with SW. While exploding damage can work because combat is rather unpredictable, exploding dice for skill checks (higher and higher degrees of success) can be very messy unless the GM has a very firm grip on the story they want to tell, and fairly short reins on the players. Otherwise people are encouraged to play like higher degrees of success can attain the impossible.

It's the good ol' "shit-covered farmer convinces queen to give him a blowjob because he rolled a nat 20 on persuasion" bullshit, but in exploding dice form. Storyteller suffers from a similar issue, but since the games often rely on fairly strong-willed NPCs and/or tight hierarchies that must be respected, it's easier for the ST to stop falling into that trap.
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SW does have some big mechanical problems but exploding dice isn't one of them.

Like you said, the nat 20 persuade = the king hands over the kingdom bullshit is in most games. I think SW handles it better than most games since you can give the player a benny and then proceed as normal. You don't need a unique outcome for every possible raise.

I think players should play as if they can achieve the impossible. Savage Worlds works best when you use action movie logic (in my opinion). A great example is that fights in 5e tend to be limited to the grid and players only take actions clearly defined by the rules. In SW players are more likely to ask to do something cool, logical, or in character.
 
DDBCAE CBAADCBE said:
View attachment 4008894So I created a bit of a hybrid of a young red dragon and a hydra statblock and I’d like some opinions .

I am aware that the fire immunity negates the ability to stop it from growing heads. That was intentional. I just forgot to remove reference to that feature in the text.

Basically the idea behind this is that should the hydra survive an encounter with the party it will by nature of its ability to grow new heads have become a far greater threat once it has time to rest and heal its wounds. I’m thinking I could turn this into it’s own side arc depending on how it goes.

Now, before you think I’ve been too brutal take note that due to starting with five heads a party could potentially kill it off the bat if they can deal one hundred twenty five damage before it gets its turn. Granted this is made for a pretty tough party of D&D vets so I don’t think it’s too crazy to expect that they could beat it.

What do you guys think?
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Looks solid to me. Don't see anything that says you can't kill it by just stabbing it to death and if the party has played a bunch they'll probably like the challenge. It's good to flip things around sometimes anyway and TPKs are fun too.
 
Mr. Manchester said:
Looks solid to me. Don't see anything that says you can't kill it by just stabbing it to death and if the party has played a bunch they'll probably like the challenge. It's good to flip things around sometimes anyway and TPKs are fun too.
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The especially fun part is if they retreat or it survives and escapes somehow then it could potentially become an ever evolving threat. Doing the math it has the potential to grow about seven new heads not counting the health it gets from the new heads during the course of a full battle, so more like ten if they get it to especially low health without killing it. Meaning of it survives and escapes there’s a possibility that it could rest up to full health now with fifteen total heads which at that point would likely require more than just the party to dispatch unless they go strictly long range.

I’m also toying with the idea of having it grow in size if this happens, maybe having the second fight happen a few levels later so I have an excuse to make it a bit bigger and stronger as if, like it’s heads it too can completely adapt and grow as it feeds and gets more heads from battle. Something like that anyways, I haven’t hammered out all the details yet.
 
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