[Savage Worlds] First time GM tips

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Necrozius

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Hi folks,

I'm looking for general Savage Worlds tips for first time GMs.

Sure there is already a lot of advice out there via a cursory Google search, but I wanted this community's perspectives.

Background/Context: I'm about to run my first Savage Worlds campaign. We will be using Savage Rifts, but following both my own instinct and actual advice from the Savage Rifts GM guide, the first session will be a one-shot in which the players will create regular Savage Worlds characters. The intention is to give them a simpler introduction to the rules before plunging into the gonzo insanity of the Rifts setting.
 
The first one that comes to mind is, don't use GM bennies for maximum efficiency, use them for dramatic pacing. Villains constantly soaking their wounds can get really old, in particular. Use them to make sure "boss" villains don't drop in the first round of combat and to make sure you succeed at any cool moves you want to show off. Leave the strategic play to the players.
 
Don't forget to hand out player Bennies when someone does or says something cool or plays up their Hindrances in a good way. If you have a group where one or two players are likely to fit the category of Benny winner to the detriment of the more quiet players, or you think you might forget to award them (an occasional fault of mine in all the excitement), consider using the Joker's Wild rule to reward the players. Players tend to do more cool and pro-active stuff when they know they have a Benny or two.
 
Read the combat rules with attention (I did it wrong for some time — remember that damage rolls can Ace and that each Raise in a damage roll us a Wound.)

Don't forget to hand out player Bennies when someone does or says something cool or plays up their Hindrances in a good way. If you have a group where one or two players are likely to fit the category of Benny winner to the detriment of the more quiet players, or you think you might forget to award them (an occasional fault of mine in all the excitement), consider using the Joker's Wild rule to reward the players. Players tend to do more cool and pro-active stuff when they know they have a Benny or two.

The flow of player Bennies is what the chief dials the game's level of grit. Lots of bennies = Hollywood action movie. Less bennies = more grit.
 
The first one that comes to mind is, don't use GM bennies for maximum efficiency, use them for dramatic pacing. Villains constantly soaking their wounds can get really old, in particular. Use them to make sure "boss" villains don't drop in the first round of combat and to make sure you succeed at any cool moves you want to show off. Leave the strategic play to the players.
Definitely this.

However, I do use NPC Wild Cards bennies strategically. I just make the NPC's benny pile visible to the players. That way, even if I use a benny to soak a hit by a player, there is still a sense of accomplishment. The player may not have wounded the the Big Bad, but he forced him to use his last benny! He's on the ropes now.

Don't forget to hand out player Bennies when someone does or says something cool or plays up their Hindrances in a good way. If you have a group where one or two players are likely to fit the category of Benny winner to the detriment of the more quiet players, or you think you might forget to award them (an occasional fault of mine in all the excitement), consider using the Joker's Wild rule to reward the players. Players tend to do more cool and pro-active stuff when they know they have a Benny or two.
I have one friend that runs Savage Worlds, and he is a great GM, but he always forgets to hand out bennies during the session. The game still works, but it loses some of the fun.

I'd only use Joker's Wild if you think you will forget to hand out bennies. Players are happy to get random, meaningless bennies, but they are still meaningless, which devalues the coolness of bennies overall.

Definitely give bennies when players act on their Hindrances and make it clear you will do so. That was an explicit rule in Deadlands, and it was one of the best parts of the game. Of course, only do it when a hindrance genuinely causes trouble. If the character with a Big Mouth lets out a trivial secret, it is good roleplaying, but maybe not worth a benny. If they let slip their plans to the bad guys, that is worth a benny.

I find reading the room to be the best way to awards bennies, rather than just having an internal system. When someone does something that raises the energy level among the whole group, that is when you give out a benny.

Read the combat rules with attention (I did it wrong for some time — remember that damage rolls can Ace and that each Raise in a damage roll us a Wound.)

There is one mistake I made in my early sessions. The usual progression on a damage roll vs. Toughness when attacking an unshaken target is:

Basic success = Shaken
One Raise = One Wound
Two Raises = Two Wounds
Three Raises = Three Wounds.

If the target is shaken, you only need to roll a basic success to wound them. However, that doesn't mean One Raise becomes Two Wounds. One Raise is still One Wound, so the progression on a Shaken target it:

Basic Success = One Wound
One Raise = One Wound
Two Raises = Two Wounds
Three Raises = Three Wounds.

I was running it with One Raise equaling Two Wounds, so the game was deadlier than was intended. I think it is still a fair house rule though, if you want a grittier game.

The flow of player Bennies is what the chief dials the game's level of grit. Lots of bennies = Hollywood action movie. Less bennies = more grit.

Along this line, when I play Savage Worlds, it is good to look at the overall level of bennies in the group to decide when to retreat. If the whole party is has either one benny or none at all, unless you are at the mopping up stage of a combat, you should either look for a way out, or take actions that will draw more bennies out of the GM.

If you do decide to retreat, shaking your opponents is your most reliable way to get out of there. In earlier editions of SW, shaken characters had half movement. At some point, they removed that penalty entirely. My house rule is that shaken characters still have half movement unless they are flat-out running away or for cover.

Another fun part of the game is the ease with which players can control groups of extras without slowing the game. It's one reason that 50 Fathoms was so much fun. The PCs could have a pirate crew and bring their crew along on adventures without dragging the game down.

Extras make great "treasure" in a Savage Worlds game. If they complete a great quest for the Duke, he makes them all knights and gives them each some men-at-arms. If the party thief builds up clout in the thieves' guild, he gets a gang of cutthroats to manage.

I find extras just help people invest more in the setting as well. In a lot of traditional games, adventures go out of their way to avoid letting you get any back-up mainly because it will slow the game down. On the other hand, if the local villagers are willing to rally and fight beside the players, or their patron is actually willing to lend them a few of the soldiers he has idling about, the players feel more connected to NPCs. It also lends a lot of value to socially skilled characters.

My basic progression for a teaching the game is to give the players a fight against a bunch of extras, so they can just get a feel for the basic mechanics with minimal danger. Once they have that down, they can take on a high Toughness opponent, and practice the tactics for that. I'm going to assume, since you already have gotten advice, that someone has already pointed you to the Combat Survival Guide and told you to give a copy to each player.

Knowing how to approach a High Toughness opponent is crucial to enjoying the game. A group that knows to bring down a big monster with a series of tricks, called shots and wild attacks is going to have a great time. A group that just keeps making basic attacks over and over to no effect is going to have no fun at all.

Lastly, give them a fight where they have extras on their side and are up against a sizable enemy force.

You don't need to cram these all into a single session. I just view these as the milestones of learning how combat works in Savage Worlds.

The players also need to remember that team tactics matter in this game. Some games work fine with each player dealing out as much damage as they can in the bubble of their own action. With Savage Worlds, you often want to use a trick to set up an attack by another player. That other player may even want to delay their action to let you do so. Creativity matter as well. Tricks are a mechanically specific action, but how cleverly you can describe them with regard to the monster you are fighting and the environment might make the difference in getting a benny out of it.
 
Use miniatures for combat. Savage was designed to be used with miniatures, and the game becomes a lot more fun when you have some table space out to do so (or a map grid if playing online). I have a drawer full of heroclix I pull out for this purpose every time.
 
Great replies, thanks everyone.

Yeah I found that Combat Survival Guide. Fantastic.

Also found this wheel thing to help calculate raises. That seems like a good tool.

Gonna make a player kit for this.
 
Regarding GM bennies, I go a step further: Not only do the see the GM/NPC piles, bit if they force a Soak roll, I actually give the benny to the player that made the attack. This helps avoid the problem of forgetting to give bennies, and it serves as an even more tangible reward: Yes, the bad guy soaked...but you saw his limited stack of life saving resources deplete, and now you have one more yourself for either your own soaking or Trait rolls as needed.
 
Use miniatures for combat. Savage was designed to be used with miniatures, and the game becomes a lot more fun when you have some table space out to do so (or a map grid if playing online). I have a drawer full of heroclix I pull out for this purpose every time.

I started running SW immediately after running 3.5, and the last thing I wanted was minis and battlemats in my games after the slow speed of the in that game. It is entirely possible to play SW without minis, so I avoided doing it for a few sessions. Eventually I gave in and broke some minis out, and it worked great. The minis didn't slow the pace of the game at all.

Oddly, I think the reason that SW plays so well with minis is that it doesn't have much in the way of rules for minis. Minis make tracking positioning easier, so a lot of designers decide that with that easier positioning, they can layer on a lot of additional rules relating to positioning. These additional rules tend to slow the game down more than minis speed it up. Savage Worlds doesn't make that mistake.

When I run it, I use minis for a fight on a case-by-case basis. I feel the game works well with or without them. For example, I ran one fight where a PC was chasing a hit man out of a nightclub into a dark alley without minis. The tension of the fight came from the darkness and uncertainty. It's easier to get this feel with theater of the mind. For a more standard situation, usually minis will work well.

Even when I don't use minis, I still use counters. To elaborate a little, I use a lot of glass beads when I run SW. I have blue for bennies, Yellow for one wound, red for two wounds, white for shaken (although a lot of people like to tip the miniature for this), and I have black minis for generic minis (and other colors that I use as needed).

Even in no minis are being used, I still lay out a counter in front of me for each enemy, usually the black minis for extras and some other color for any wildcards. These counters are spaced out enough that I can lay cards down for them and place wound and shaken counters by them.

If a player wants to attack the guy the hit last round, it's a lot easier for them to just point to the right counter in front of me rather than me having to remember which one that was. If a character is in one-on-one melee with some one, I will often just slide the counter (and any peripheral counters/card) over in front of that player as a reminder.

When I am a GM for SW, I never pick up a pencil for anything other than taking plot-related notes.

A final mini tip: if you want to use minis and not use a battlemat, get some long, white pipe cleaners. Use a black magic marker to make marks every inch along the pipe cleaners, and then give one to each player. They make great flexible rulers for tracking any winding route that a mini moves along the table. They make movement feel a lot less stilted than counting squares, and you don't have diagonal movement issue.
Also found this wheel thing to help calculate raises. That seems like a good tool.

Good catch. That is a life saver for some players.
Regarding GM bennies, I go a step further: Not only do the see the GM/NPC piles, bit if they force a Soak roll, I actually give the benny to the player that made the attack. This helps avoid the problem of forgetting to give bennies, and it serves as an even more tangible reward: Yes, the bad guy soaked...but you saw his limited stack of life saving resources deplete, and now you have one more yourself for either your own soaking or Trait rolls as needed.

I like that a lot more than Jokers Wild as it is tied to the player having a setback.
 
Worth saying that I don't use joker's Wild all the time in Savage - it depends upon the setting of the game and whether it's a one-shot or not.

I disagree that JW can be meaningless, however. I've experienced a couple of occasions at cons recently where the drawing of a Joker really served as a dramatic awakening at the table. Now, this was at least partly due to the draw coming at coincidentally appropriate moments, when the balance of a conflict was on a knife's edge, but it was also because the player who drew the card used it as a role-playing opportunity to effectively rally the troops and described an evocative narrative picture of how it happened. In effect the drawing of the Joker facilitated a great opportunity for a piece of tasty role-playing.

I can see how JW becomes just a thing if this is not done. I'm lucky with players that way.
 
All the talk about SW rules set and settings here have convinced me to check it out. What's the best place to start? Is there a central rulebook or does each setting book include the core rules?
 
Most SW books do not contain the core rules, so make sure you have 'em before you get a setting.
 
SW is best with minis and terrain bits. If you have a Lego fan or 40ker in your crew, put them to work. Also, the 99 cent store is your friend.
 
Yeah even though I haven't actually played it yet, I've collected several books (companions, Savage Rifts, Pirates of the Spanish Main) and so much of what you find in the core book (Deluxe Explorer's Ed.) covers just about everything.

Theoretically, you don't really NEED anything else, it's such a simple yet dense book.
 
Yeah even though I haven't actually played it yet, I've collected several books (companions, Savage Rifts, Pirates of the Spanish Main) and so much of what you find in the core book (Deluxe Explorer's Ed.) covers just about everything.

Theoretically, you don't really NEED anything else, it's such a simple yet dense book.
The concept of trappings also makes it pretty versatile. I ran a cyberpunk adventure with it shortly after first picking it up, and I just reskinned Edges as cyberwear (Marksmen = Targeting Cyber-Eyes, etc.). Worked pretty well.

When I first got the game, I spent a lot of time talking about it online, at the Pinnacle boards and elsewhere. After a year or two, I mostly stopped discussing it online. It was just so easy to do what I wanted with it, that I really didn't need to talk about the game anymore. It's not a game that can do anything, but within its niche of action/adventure/investigation gaming, I can bend it towards any setting I want without much effort.
 
It's not a game that can do anything, but within its niche of action/adventure/investigation gaming, I can bend it towards any setting I want without much effort.
Hmm, what would you want to do, specifically, that you see Savage Worlds as being incapable of doing?
 
Rifts doesn’t have to be Gonzo or silly. It’s a toolbox and can be whatever you and your group want it to be. So don’t get lost thinking it needs to be crazy or anything, you can run whatever way you want and it will be able to handle it
 
Hmm, what would you want to do, specifically, that you see Savage Worlds as being incapable of doing?
It's more about what it does well. Savage Worlds works best for heroically human characters and street level supers. It's a little iffier at handling the upper end of superheroics or something like high level D&D characters.

It's also not enormously granular. If you wanted to have a game where lots of little bonuses matter or you can model dozens of types of cars with distinct stats, you are going to have issues.

Neither of these things are really an issue for me, but I just bring it up as I have seen people run into it before.
 
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