Savage Worlds Pathfinder Adventure Paths

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True, I still prefer Savage World, for the fact players can handle more than one monster at a time, but they're all still threats.

On the other hand, 5e did more to make single monsters into capable threats against a whole party than Savage Worlds has, but I'm tinkering with some ideas there for my home games.
 
I hope this KS makes Pinnacle a ton of money, so after Savage Rifts and Savage Pathfinder(SPf) the idea of “just reskin every possible setting into bog standard vanilla SW” gets retired forever.
I rather suspect the opposite will occur - if Savage Pathfinder makes a ton of money (and it looks like it is), that's only going to encourage Pinnacle to try to repeat it. Savage Starfinder, anyone?

Personally, I'm glad this KS is doing well - I'm interested in the results, but it's a bit rich for me just now. I'll probably pick it up in the inevitable Humble Bundle of Holding. :wink:
 
I rather suspect the opposite will occur - if Savage Pathfinder makes a ton of money (and it looks like it is), that's only going to encourage Pinnacle to try to repeat it. Savage Starfinder, anyone?

Personally, I'm glad this KS is doing well - I'm interested in the results, but it's a bit rich for me just now. I'll probably pick it up in the inevitable Humble Bundle of Holding. :wink:

a) Pinnacle has all but said more Pathfinder is coming so long as fans are happy and Paizo is happy.

b) Jason Tondro, who works for Pathfinder, has said that if he can make it happen, Savage Starfinder will happen.

but also

c) Pinnacle has gone out of their way to grow and divide up their project teams with less overlap, so more product coming out doesn't mean slowdown for other projects.
 
I'm not likely to pick this up, myself. Paizo has a tendency of trying to mix real world politics with fantasy ones, which doesn't really work if you think about it. Almost as bad as Eberron does with the Dragonmark Houses (When you have one 'corporation' dominate a single field, like say travel, monopolies set in and that just doesn't work in a pulp-ish style settings.)

However, like Mr. Hogwood said, the more success this has, the more we can see other game settings adapted to a system I like.
 
I'm not likely to pick this up, myself. Paizo has a tendency of trying to mix real world politics with fantasy ones, which doesn't really work if you think about it. Almost as bad as Eberron does with the Dragonmark Houses (When you have one 'corporation' dominate a single field, like say travel, monopolies set in and that just doesn't work in a pulp-ish style settings.)

However, like Mr. Hogwood said, the more success this has, the more we can see other game settings adapted to a system I like.

Like I said above...I'm in this more for what I can use it to do with D&D stuff than I am Pathfinder. Our current plan is to probably do Rise of the Rune Lords, but that's mostly because it's a low resistance approach to seeing how the mechanics work in play. I don't actually give a fuck about Golarian when I have decades of TSR and WotC settings and adventures at my disposal.
 
b) Jason Tondro, who works for Pathfinder, has said that if he can make it happen, Savage Starfinder will happen.
This is interesting. Do you happen to have a link to the forum post/tweet?

I kinda assumed the only reason Runelords is happening is because PF1e is no longer in active development.

I would love a Savage Starfinder. I’m in a campaign right now and i love the setting, but I’m really just over d20 games.
 
I rather suspect the opposite will occur - if Savage Pathfinder makes a ton of money (and it looks like it is), that's only going to encourage Pinnacle to try to repeat it. Savage Starfinder, anyone?

Personally, I'm glad this KS is doing well - I'm interested in the results, but it's a bit rich for me just now. I'll probably pick it up in the inevitable Humble Bundle of Holding. :wink:
I don’t care if every possible setting gets Savaged, if “Savaged” means that the setting is evaluated and new rules are created for SWADE to better reflect the setting.

It’s the “just use existing rules with different Trappings” idea that has to die screaming in fire on it’s way to Hell. :devil:
 
I don’t care if every possible setting gets Savaged, if “Savaged” means that the setting is evaluated and new rules are created for SWADE to better reflect the setting.

It’s the “just use existing rules with different Trappings” idea that has to die screaming in fire on it’s way to Hell. :devil:
That's lazy and the sort of thing we saw with early D20. When I buy something and I could have done the rule design aspect myself in 10 minutes, I feel totally ripped off.
 
That's lazy and the sort of thing we saw with early D20. When I buy something and I could have done the rule design aspect myself in 10 minutes, I feel totally ripped off.
I think it was more an issue with D20 than with Savage Worlds. Savage Worlds is already designed to handle pulpy action adventure, which means it cuts across a lot of genres. D&D is designed to run D&D. To be clear, I like D&D, but it is it's own weird genre. There are a lot fewer genres D20 can handle well by just giving it a new hat.

It's really the reason for this product. Doing most fantasy with SW is fairly easy. Doing D&D with it is hard because its conventions are so tied into its mechanics.
 
This is interesting. Do you happen to have a link to the forum post/tweet?

I kinda assumed the only reason Runelords is happening is because PF1e is no longer in active development.

I would love a Savage Starfinder. I’m in a campaign right now and i love the setting, but I’m really just over d20 games.

It was said in the Savage Worlds Facebook group (by Jason, not hearsay).
 
I don’t care if every possible setting gets Savaged, if “Savaged” means that the setting is evaluated and new rules are created for SWADE to better reflect the setting.

It’s the “just use existing rules with different Trappings” idea that has to die screaming in fire on it’s way to Hell. :devil:

So, this spawned from the conversion advice in the Savage Worlds books for the last few iterations. Except Pinnacle rarely does that with their own books. I can't think of a single setting book they released that didn't add mechanics. But if someone ventures into the Savage Worlds community and asks how to do...pretty much anything, then it's met with "Just use core, plus trappings!"

It's dumb.
 
There was also a former podcast in the community that really harped on using anything other than the core rules. That helped light that flame as well.
 
There was also a former podcast in the community that really harped on using anything other than the core rules. That helped light that flame as well.

And then they released a book for a genre that was completely playable with core plus trappings, and couldn't figure out why it didn't fund on Kickstarter. (Okay, so the real reason is because the target goal was super high because they were aiming for traditional offset printing, but the irony was not lost on some of us.)
 
So, this spawned from the conversion advice in the Savage Worlds books for the last few iterations. Except Pinnacle rarely does that with their own books. I can't think of a single setting book they released that didn't add mechanics. But if someone ventures into the Savage Worlds community and asks how to do...pretty much anything, then it's met with "Just use core, plus trappings!"

It's dumb.
Yeah, SPF was on the Pinnacle forums talking about SR, and someone said “Oh Cyberknights, so you’re just going to do A, B, C with trappings, done.” And SPF was like “Um, no there’s quite a bit more to it than that.”

That’s what finally sold me on it.
 
This reminds me of the fact that I both wanted to do Grim Dawn and World Trigger in Savage Worlds. I would have had to do a lot of custom rules to get the feel of both, but I find the people who just skip doing that kind of stuff to adapt Savage Worlds to what they want to do (if it is different from standard SW) feels lazy. ESPECIALLY as a published product.

(For Grim Dawn I was basically going to make a free edge at first, and a free edge at the beginning of Seasoned, that could be used to grab Mastery Edges (the classes for Grim Dawn) and have those be the only ones that you could use to pick those up. restrict a lot of edges to specific Masteries, write specific powers for them, etc)

(For World Trigger, it was a lot of building out how the triggers worked, as most of the "powers" in World Trigger are in the items they use and how they are configured).
 
This reminds me of the fact that I both wanted to do Grim Dawn and World Trigger in Savage Worlds. I would have had to do a lot of custom rules to get the feel of both, but I find the people who just skip doing that kind of stuff to adapt Savage Worlds to what they want to do (if it is different from standard SW) feels lazy. ESPECIALLY as a published product.

Yeah, I could have done the same with Savage Pendragon. "Okay, you're knights, make your characters". But I specifically added some setting rules and then made some of my own, and modified a couple of the skills to get the feel I wanted.
 
I honestly don't know why people ever looked at Savage Worlds from the perspective of: run everything Core and just re-skin <X>.
Seriously, my first 45-seconds playing Deadlands... and I was hooked. I thought of all the things I wanted to do with the core rules and add my setting-stuff into it, immediately.

After subsequently looking at most of the Savage Worlds settings - it was pretty clear that's what most publishers were doing. The core rules just sets down a normal baseline. Everything else is setting conceits. As long as those conceits plug into the core mechanics, it will remain cohesive, modular and scalable.

Pathfinder Necromancy School Specialization? Oh you know it's gonna get some hot juicy Rifts Ritual Rules (which I'll further modify for all the other schools for their own unique effects).

I'm with Tommy on this - I'm going full Savage D&D and I've got decades worth of material to pull from on this hot new chassis. Golarion? Eh. I got Spelljamming to do.
 
Im not a big of fan of Golarion at all, and most of Savage Worlds leaves me cold (minus Deadlands, and thats mainly just the flavor of it that draws me), so i dont really have a dog in this fight but the moves Paizo seems to be making smack of desperation of 5e eating its lunch right after the debacle that was their MMO and then the almost indifferent response (my friend called it Undead on Arrival haha) of PF 2e. I dont mean to be doomy and gloomy about events ofc, but the scene, though booming, seems to be booming at the top and bottom ends, i fear that the middleweights like paizo, green ronin, mongoose, and pinnacle are on the verge of going under

Of course, i dont have access to their books, and assumptions being what they are, i very well could just be Chicken Little
 
I honestly don't know why people ever looked at Savage Worlds from the perspective of: run everything Core and just re-skin <X>.

Because it was right there in the GM section of the rulebook, even as they released books that introduced a slew of new Edges, monsters and setting rules, rather than just running "core plus trappings". It's always been "do as I say, not as I do".

Im not a big of fan of Golarion at all, and most of Savage Worlds leaves me cold (minus Deadlands, and thats mainly just the flavor of it that draws me), so i dont really have a dog in this fight but the moves Paizo seems to be making smack of desperation of 5e eating its lunch right after the debacle that was their MMO and then the almost indifferent response (my friend called it Undead on Arrival haha) of PF 2e. I dont mean to be doomy and gloomy about events ofc, but the scene, though booming, seems to be booming at the top and bottom ends, i fear that the middleweights like paizo, green ronin, mongoose, and pinnacle are on the verge of going under
ery well could just be Chicken Little

Pinnacle is doing fine, based on their Kickstarters alone. They made $64,000+ off of a Kickstarter that was literally just updating 8 year old adventures that people could have ran in SWADE without a conversion sheet. And they're buying ad space on Hulu.

I won't speak to the health of any other companies, but Paizo making this deal is smart if for no other reason than this is the only time I've spent money on a Paizo product aside from one set of their Pathfinder Pawns and a few maps.
 
I won't speak to the health of any other companies, but Paizo making this deal is smart if for no other reason than this is the only time I've spent money on a Paizo product aside from one set of their Pathfinder Pawns and a few maps.

I can certainly see that, i guess i was more talking about the origins of the decision to branch out as opposed to whether branching out is a good business idea (which it seems to be, based on the reactions of everyone here haha far be it from me to complain about people getting more options/value in the rpg scene)
 
I will say, trying to read a friend's copy of Rise of the Rune Lords, I may skip the campaign. This...is not engaging stuff.

What is it about RotRL that you don't find engaging? Having read it, I have my ideas, but I'm curious about yours?

I don't want to come across as a RotRL fanboy. I'm not. It has some components that I think would play out in a fun manner at the table. It also is has, what at least I found, a somewhat strange and convoluted plot. As if a bunch of individual designers all wrote modules with a defined start and end point :grin:
 
Just the walls of text and backstory doesn’t hook me. Trying to read the encounters, I’m trying not to get turned off by the stat blocks, which will be substantially smaller in Savage Pathfinder, but it’s hard.

I’m not trying to be a hater, because my current plan is to run it after we finish ETU: Degrees of Horror. I’m just second guessing that now.
 
Just the walls of text and backstory doesn’t hook me. Trying to read the encounters, I’m trying not to get turned off by the stat blocks, which will be substantially smaller in Savage Pathfinder, but it’s hard.

I’m not trying to be a hater, because my current plan is to run it after we finish ETU: Degrees of Horror. I’m just second guessing that now.
I never played Pathfinder, but I remember the days when Paizo was publishing Dungeon, and walls of text were a consistent problem.
 
Just the walls of text and backstory doesn’t hook me. Trying to read the encounters, I’m trying not to get turned off by the stat blocks, which will be substantially smaller in Savage Pathfinder, but it’s hard.

I’m not trying to be a hater, because my current plan is to run it after we finish ETU: Degrees of Horror. I’m just second guessing that now.

Paizo has definitely embraced the "wall of text" approach. I honestly believe it's because they know a lot of Dungeo Magazines and then Adventure Paths were purchased more to read than to actually use in play.

You'll also find the AP, as with all of them, is pretty much a straight railroad, start of finish. There are some installments where there is room for various tactics, but there is a definite in and out situation in each AP. And I think this will do very well for Savage Worlds, In my experience, it's the vocal minority of players who are also GMs/creators who are against railroaded adventures. The average player is fine with them. Some players really love them. They show up each meeting with dice and character sheet in hand, make some tactical decisions at the table, have a fun evening and then go home. No need to think about next week, because the trip plan is already laid out.
 
Paizo has definitely embraced the "wall of text" approach. I honestly believe it's because they know a lot of Dungeo Magazines and then Adventure Paths were purchased more to read than to actually use in play.

You'll also find the AP, as with all of them, is pretty much a straight railroad, start of finish. There are some installments where there is room for various tactics, but there is a definite in and out situation in each AP. And I think this will do very well for Savage Worlds, In my experience, it's the vocal minority of players who are also GMs/creators who are against railroaded adventures. The average player is fine with them. Some players really love them. They show up each meeting with dice and character sheet in hand, make some tactical decisions at the table, have a fun evening and then go home. No need to think about next week, because the trip plan is already laid out.

Let me dip this roll into some nuance-sauce.

I *very generally* agree with this. But there are some clauses that I feel need to be stated:

As to "what" becomes a railroad in the minds of 'players' is largely determined by their GM's. Yes, a published adventure can, and often are, written and designed as a 'railroad' narrative. But on its face, it's just material designed to be processed for players by their GM for consumption. I don't want to sound like I'm being legalistic or even rhetorical and trying to be "but technically" - I absolutely believe this. Whenever I've used a pre-written adventure, like many other GM's who run their games like I do (and don't like railroads), I contextualize it to my campaign and often break the adventure up into what is useful and discard that which isn't.

*I* can no more run a railroad adventure as presented to me than I can force myself to eat/drink something I don't like. It's largely habit now. The vocal minority you're speaking about (which I generally agree with you on) - are, to me, those of us that have been doing this for a while that find 'railroad' adventures not very useful, vs. players that simply do not know better for lack of experiencing well crafted campaigns by GM's with some modicum of skill.

Yes there is probably a majority of gamers that look at RPG's as single-session endeavors where they show up and do "the thing" and go home. I know of no good GM that dislikes "railroads" where players have that experience unless the game is implicitly being run as a "one-shot".

Savage Worlds, while they do have railroady Plot Point Campaigns, most of their Plot Point Campaigns are pretty wide open and general in terms of how they're designed. I wouldn't assume that just because this AP is railroady that there isn't room to make them not-railroady. Of course this will depend on the GM in question. I think Savage Worlds PPC's are a great way to get GM's that run railroad one-shots into doing larger scale fare which Pathfinder AP's and D&D campaigns (and clearly they share similar DNA by intent, though their structures are different).

So yeah - I'm think a lot of the Pathfinder players that do the one-shot thing will find SW much more accommodating for them than they might think. But I conversely believe that the SW system, because it's much "looser" than PF/D&D will open up some eyes to those that only are familiar with the d20 experience. Because certainly SW is much more aggressive about doing "other things" than just D&D Fantasy than d20 is about doing other genres (though they do exist, they're not as popular).

Edit: I need to reiterate - I'm not shitting on Pathfinder/D&D. I'm *very* excited about Pathfinder coming to SW in order to expand SW into a realm that is effectively low-hanging fruit (that is LONG in coming). I find anything that causes people in the hobby to experience things outside of their bubble a great thing - especially when it comes to drawing people out of d20, regardless of where they land. That's how the hobby will grow and revitalize itself, rather than sit under the singular sun that is d20.
 
I honestly don't know why people ever looked at Savage Worlds from the perspective of: run everything Core and just re-skin <X>.
Seriously, my first 45-seconds playing Deadlands... and I was hooked. I thought of all the things I wanted to do with the core rules and add my setting-stuff into it, immediately.

After subsequently looking at most of the Savage Worlds settings - it was pretty clear that's what most publishers were doing. The core rules just sets down a normal baseline. Everything else is setting conceits. As long as those conceits plug into the core mechanics, it will remain cohesive, modular and scalable.

Pathfinder Necromancy School Specialization? Oh you know it's gonna get some hot juicy Rifts Ritual Rules (which I'll further modify for all the other schools for their own unique effects).

I'm with Tommy on this - I'm going full Savage D&D and I've got decades worth of material to pull from on this hot new chassis. Golarion? Eh. I got Spelljamming to do.
You will be posting all your Savage Spelljammer content here for us, I'm sure, especially the ship rules. :devil:
 
New preview up, this time for the Paladin.

A big red flag for me: One of the intentional design choices for SWADE was "Skills for Actions, Attributes for Reactions". And the Savage Pathfinder uses Spirit as their arcane skill to cast spells with Spell Training, which contradicts that design philosophy.

Pre-SWADE? I wouldn't have noticed. Post-SWADE? It's an eye opener.
 
New preview up, this time for the Paladin.

A big red flag for me: One of the intentional design choices for SWADE was "Skills for Actions, Attributes for Reactions". And the Savage Pathfinder uses Spirit as their arcane skill to cast spells with Spell Training, which contradicts that design philosophy.

Pre-SWADE? I wouldn't have noticed. Post-SWADE? It's an eye opener.
Yeah that is weird. I’m sure it will be brought up in public feedback. I’m guessing they did it so the paladin wouldn’t have to spend skill points on an arcane skill at Seasoned?

Or it simulates that the power is not coming from the Paladin alone.
 
Yeah that is weird. I’m sure it will be brought up in public feedback. I’m guessing they did it so the paladin wouldn’t have to spend skill points on an arcane skill at Seasoned?

Or it simulates that the power is not coming from the Paladin alone.

But it's cheaper to buy a new skill/raise a skill than it is to raise an attribute (one attribute raise per rank, whereas you can take even a new skill while raising another in SWADE, making it much less of a tax than it used to be).

I mean, I've already decided I'll probably houserule it for consistency because I disagree with this one single thing being an exception to that rule.
 
So all Pathfinder Paladins are Good, now? There's nothing listed for 'Evil' ones.
 
Paizo has definitely embraced the "wall of text" approach. I honestly believe it's because they know a lot of Dungeo Magazines and then Adventure Paths were purchased more to read than to actually use in play.

You'll also find the AP, as with all of them, is pretty much a straight railroad, start of finish. There are some installments where there is room for various tactics, but there is a definite in and out situation in each AP. And I think this will do very well for Savage Worlds, In my experience, it's the vocal minority of players who are also GMs/creators who are against railroaded adventures. The average player is fine with them. Some players really love them. They show up each meeting with dice and character sheet in hand, make some tactical decisions at the table, have a fun evening and then go home. No need to think about next week, because the trip plan is already laid out.

Older modules going right back to the classics tended to be walls of text too, I think just took a long time before anyone realized there were better options, desktop publishing also contributed to more thought going into layout I think.
 
My 2 favorites are Jade Regent and Iron Gods. Jade Regent starts slow but really picks up, and Iron Gods I think is good throughout.

I think part of it is my love of the more esoteric locations in Golarion, and like, a journey through Viking land and then the equivalent of Antarctica to the Asian inspired countries for Jade Regent, or barbarian ancient alien tech land for Iron Gods are just way more fun than Varisia (where RoRL takes place).

Jade Regent and Iron Gods look like fun, I'd be interested in either as a 5e or SW conversion, PF isn't my thing.
 
I’m pretty sure in PF 1e corebook there are only good Paladins.

PF2e has The Champion, which does have evil alignment options.
The preview's wording implies that there are 'evil' ones. I don't have Pathfinder anymore, so I don't remember if 1e had different types of the class. It's why I was asking.
 
Antipaladins are an alternate class in the Advanced Player's Guide. They also created the "Tyrant" in the Ultimate Intrigues book.

There may be others (I'm not a Pathfinder expert).
 
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And the anti-Chaos Hellknights are a thing in PF.

They have been added to the Companion book as a stretch goal.
 
Paizo has definitely embraced the "wall of text" approach. I honestly believe it's because they know a lot of Dungeo Magazines and then Adventure Paths were purchased more to read than to actually use in play.

I don't think it is this simple. I wasn't a huge fan of Paizo Dungeon magazine (I much preferred the TSR version), but I still bought issues regularly at my local smoke shop because I liked having content for my campaigns. I read and ran them. As a GM, I've always liked having both more verbose RPG books available and also having RPGs with greater brevity, easy to read while running, available. The reason is simple: the latter is easier to use during play, but the former often sparks my imagination more prior to play. More text is definitely harder to run IMO. I wouldn't want it to be the only thing out there. The Van Richten books for example are pretty verbose (not modules of course, so maybe it is a difference). But reading those things gave me millions of ideas that turned into adventures in my campaigns (and I used a ton of the content). Feast of Goblyns is also a little on the verbose side, but I played it straight through many times and I chopped up content from it, or just took the material there and used it as a basis for exploring kartakass in the campaign. I don't mind reading a bit more if the ideas excite me about running a game.
 
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