Savage Worlds - Adventure Edition

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Yeah - letting the natural course of play dictate Advances has a two-fold effect:

1) It makes your players appreciate the experience of growth more. Especially since Advances are fairly significant increases to ones character.

2) It's an excellent way to teach GM's how to pace their campaigns and exercise stewardship over their games. It's a tricky thing to learn when you're stuck to XP-tables that sometimes advance PC's at "odd" times - and you do this for years and become indoctrinated to the "play the rules" not the "game" mentality that plagues a lot of new/mid tier GM's.
 
How different are the rules changes in Flash Gordon from the Adventure Edition? I ask because the FG bundle is currently for sale on Bundle of Holding.
 
I BELIEVE (don't quote me on it) - Flash Gordon is already "SWADE-ified". It was the first game that already had most of the SWADE edition rules cooked in (even though it came out before SWADE.

There might be some small errata.
 
I was using the latest Savage Worlds along with Interface Zero 2.0 for a Cyberpunk game. But things got a bit out of hand. I think that I'd rather keep all of my Savage Worlds games Core-book only with only a few things borrowed from setting books.

For example, Interface Zero 2.0 had "simple" vs "complex" hacking rules. I only used the simple ones because they pretty much covered everything that I needed.
 
I BELIEVE (don't quote me on it) - Flash Gordon is already "SWADE-ified". It was the first game that already had most of the SWADE edition rules cooked in (even though it came out before SWADE.

There might be some small errata.
Looking through my copy, the only things that don't match from the SWADE are setting specific Edges, some of which were changed for SWADE.
 
One thing that I would say is not a strength of Savage Worlds is fights of a PC team versus just one Big Bad and no other enemies. There are Edges and setting rules and etc. that can make it more likely to be an intense fight, but on those rare occasions when I convince myself, "Okay, I can make an all-versus-one fight work this time," my Big Bad literally gets one-shotted on the first player's first action of the combat.
A shame they never fixed this (assuming, of course, you think it needs fixing). Final battles against the big bad are a staple of most of my games.
 
A shame they never fixed this (assuming, of course, you think it needs fixing). Final battles against the big bad are a staple of most of my games.
The only place those tend to show up in are Superhero comics and Fantasy fights vs. Dragons or other monsters. In the Pulp serials that SW likes to emulate, most fights with a villain are one-on-one.

But given that most RPGs feature on average 4-5 players, that sort of combat is not very possible.
 
A shame they never fixed this (assuming, of course, you think it needs fixing). Final battles against the big bad are a staple of most of my games.
I haven’t tried the Dragon out in anger, but it looks pretty tooled up for taking on a party:
Vigor d12 and Spirit d10
Toughness 20 with only four of those points from armour
5 wounds in total
Can’t be wounded by being Shaken twice
Improved Frenzy (which is more deadly in SWADE)
Plus two free tail attacks
...and a Breath weapon plus Flight
It has more wounds in this edition, and the way actions and edges have changed it can throw our more melee attacks, too.
 
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Oh, so you can give critters more wounds than 3 in this new edition? I did not know that. Might have to take another look.
 
Yes, both Extras and Wild Cards can have more hits now
 
Do bennies still work in the usual ways per the core Adventure rules? Re-rolling trait tests, making soak rolls, removing Shaken?
 
Do bennies still work in the usual ways per the core Adventure rules? Re-rolling trait tests, making soak rolls, removing Shaken?


All the old uses for bennies still apply, but there are also some new ones:

Draw a new Action card. I like this one, but my players rarely use it.

Reroll damage. This used to require a specific Edge, but now it's something anyone can do.

Influence the story. This one I do not like and have not used. I prefer my players try to influence the story the old-fashioned way, by asking me lots of leading questions :smile: .
 
*Smacks head* I even saw that when you posted it ten days ago. Wow, memory issues much?! ...
 
Whew, anyway ... Yah, I have to admit, I was not a big fan of how bennies worked in SW. They seemed to be designed to negate the results of the rules rather than enhance them, and they were a bit too meta for my tastes, mostly functioning completely separate from what was happening IC. Just a personal taste thing, mind you, but it also seemed to result in some head-scratching moments at the table, not just for me but the others players too.
 
We mostly use them for skill re-rolls, either when they really matter or a PC has whiffed on their ‘signature skill’ and feels shorted by that.

One of the other changes is that you can always try to become un-shaken at the start of your turn, for free. That makes it less common to spend a Bennie on removing Shaken status, unless you are still at risk of more shaken results which could flip over into damage.
 
TheophilusCarter TheophilusCarter The new edition probably won't change mind on how you feel about bennies, then.

Had an amusing moment in our last game: one of my bad guys was Shaken, and failed his Spirit roll to un-Shake.

Me: "I'm spending a GM bennie to re-roll that... damn, failed again."

Player: "Um, couldn't you have spent that GM bennie to automatically un-Shake him?"

Me: ".... Yes. But I already ruled on it, so, moving on."

Oops.
 
Another new rule: On your combat turn, you can do one action at no penalty, or two actions at a -2 penalty each, or 3 actions at a -4 penalty each. In the previous edition, iirc, you could attempt as many actions on your turn as you wanted/your GM would allow, as long as you were willing to keep stacking -2 penalties.

I don't really have much of an opinion about this rule change because my players almost never attempt multi-action turns anyway.
 
Draw a new Action card. I like this one, but my players rarely use it.

Reroll damage. This used to require a specific Edge, but now it's something anyone can do.
Both of these are welcome changes.

Fair enough. I think it holds up to long term play better than any other system I’ve ran, though. Your mileage may vary.
I have run a lot of Savage Worlds and feel it lacks the... granularity for a satisfactory long term game. I don't know how to explain this better. I am gonna give it another shot though, maybe I was doing it wrong.
 
Another new rule: On your combat turn, you can do one action at no penalty, or two actions at a -2 penalty each, or 3 actions at a -4 penalty each. In the previous edition, iirc, you could attempt as many actions on your turn as you wanted/your GM would allow, as long as you were willing to keep stacking -2 penalties.

I don't really have much of an opinion about this rule change because my players almost never attempt multi-action turns anyway.
That's not a new rule. It was in some of their settings, though, probably in Mars or some of the pirate ones.
 
I have run a lot of Savage Worlds and feel it lacks the... granularity for a satisfactory long term game. I don't know how to explain this better. I am gonna give it another shot though, maybe I was doing it wrong.
What do you mean by 'granularity'? What exactly, do you, Mr Brock Savage need to make a game, any game feel satisfactory?

Honest question, I'm curious.
 
I have run a lot of Savage Worlds and feel it lacks the... granularity for a satisfactory long term game. I don't know how to explain this better. I am gonna give it another shot though, maybe I was doing it wrong.

Fair enough. I've ran Deadlands into Heroic rank and Necessary Evil into Legendary. It worked great for *us*. But I don't know what we got out of it that maybe you were looking for and didn't find. Obviously, subjectivity is a very real thing.
 
What do you mean by 'granularity'? What exactly, do you, Mr Brock Savage need to make a game, any game feel satisfactory?

Honest question, I'm curious.
First of all, I want to be clear that I am not a hater. Savage Worlds was my go-to system for a good long while and I still highly recommend it to others. Same with BoL. Second of all, the granularity thing is hard to explain so bear with me. Since every little bonus in SW is HUGE I have to be extremely conservative in handing out rewards that grant any sort of mechanical bonus. It can also be difficult to differentiate things mechanically.
 
First of all, I want to be clear that I am not a hater. Savage Worlds was my go-to system for a good long while and I still highly recommend it to others. Same with BoL. Second of all, the granularity thing is hard to explain so bear with me. Since every little bonus in SW is HUGE I have to be extremely conservative in handing out rewards that grant any sort of mechanical bonus. It can also be difficult to differentiate things mechanically.
I had a similar feeling back when I used to run SW a lot. It's not an overly granular game, very much by design, but at the same time, there's something tactical and/or crunchy about it that sometimes felt to me as though it needed some more granularity.
 
I'm not really a fan, but I'm looking forward to Savage Worlds Odyssey. I've heard a lot of good things about how it's... just going to be the best version of SW for fans of the Pub.
 
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