Character Journal

Here's a link to my favorite Savage Worlds character sheet:

The Savage Worlds Character Journal.

Savage Changes

So I've gotten some information about rules tweaks to the next Savage Worlds edition (the previously mentioned Cheap edition.) Just though I'd preview them here for discussion, for no real important reason. :)

1) Not really a change, but a clarification. I knew about this one a while back, but decided not to change in the middle of FF. When a wild card is hit and he is already shaken, here is how it is supposed to happen: If the attacker does say, one wound, the WC takes ONE wound and stays shaken. If the attack JUST shakes the WC, then he takes a wound and is shaken. I think they way we do it (and trust me, the way it was worded in the book, a lot of others do it that way too) is more consistent and easier to understand. It is a little less deadly, but that cuts both ways. Not sure where I am about this "change."

2) The big change: The change to the current rules when you are incapacitated. The SW guys feel that the current rule is too confusing for a lot of folks. So now what will happen is that when you get INC, you will make a vigor roll (i presume modified by wounds and such) and that will tell you what happens to you. One advantage that they mentioned, is that it's now possible to take a temporary impairment but remain up. I guess it sounds ok. I know Brad never liked that it wasn't possible to knock a guy out from standing, because that would require a level 4 knockout blow, which is pretty deadly.

3) They are putting in a new set of chase rules. I'll have to reserve most of the judgment until I see them. Again they state it's a big point of confusion among new players. I feel the current rules are ok, but they seem to simulate airplane dogfights better than car chases.

4) Here's another biggie: Bennies no longer turn into XP. Now, we haven't really had a problem with this, but MANY Gm's have made this a house rule before. I'll lay out the reasoning: The current system rewards you for sitting back and hoarding your bennies. If say Matt uses up his bennies sailing the ship very well, he get's less XP. Also, with a set # of XP, it's easier for the GM to control the character growth speed. I suspect this to be the most controversial change. I'm leaning toward this one.

So, let's hear the opinions!

Cheap Savage Worlds

Just in case anyone has been holding out on buying a Savage Worlds rulebook, the next printing will be a softcover for only $9.99! Read about it here.

Preparing to be Reloaded in Deadlands

OK...

So I took a few minutes to rebuild The Marshall...and it kinda works and kinda doesn't.

Without the character sheet that we had at the end, I can't tell you how close this is, but I know that it is pretty close to where it started at...


See the attached .bmp to the right and I will try to upload the file for a closer review.

This is The Marshall with only 10 additional points added to the sheet... from the Deadlands character creation instructions.

Differences which I remember between old creation and this one.
1) I know that Andy required us to all take "Veteran o' the Weird West" previously, so I made sure to do that... which is the reason for the 20 of the XP listed there and obviously 4 of the additional advances on the sheet.
2) Other than "Strong Willed" the SW system doesn't have a good analogy for "The Voice" or "The Stare" that the previous Deadlands system had, but I was able to get that with one of the 4 additional advances.
3) The Marshall's horse is a Legendary Edge now("On A Pale Horse...") which is depressing since he was a cool portion of the character.
4) With any additional advances given, the shooting and more Edges for shooting would appear. Also the Spirit would be purchased up a rank or 2 in order to not be constantly shaken, but I remember having that problem before.

I suspect that not everyone will have the same experience as I did... although I suspect that Tim will with his Agency man, since "Vo'tWW" would allow him to purchase the Professional edge that he would need.

Originally I had thought that I wouldn't need any additional advances to get here, but then I realized that I hadn't taken the d6 Guts, so I needed the additional 10 points to get those.

Brad, take a shot and see what you get in the end... same with you Tim.
Nigel and Brian, I don't know if you have the books for this, but I can bring them for you to see next week.

Oh, and Andy... if you can scare up the old sheets, that might help.

Shawn

Villian Edges

Just a couple of villainous edges I'll probably be using. In the interest of full disclosure.

Henchman
A henchmen is an extra who rolls a wild die on trait tests. He is treated as an extra in all other respects.

Fanatic
Any extra within 1" of the villain becomes fanatical, sacrificing his life so his master can live. Any attack made against the villain is instead made against one of the extras of the GM's choice, as he leaps in the way of the blow.

Need a tester

Howdy. I need someone who brings a laptop with them to the game to be adventurous and try out a map program with me. All you gotta do is download and install the tool, then I want to test out how easy it is to connect with each other.

You want the map tool found at RPTools.

I was already able to make a bunch of 50 fathoms tokens for it.

Follow up: Nigel was able to download it, and connect to me with it in less than 15 minutes. It worked great. I really think this tool has promise.

Aaaaarrrrrrrrrrr!

I just picked up PEG new Pirates of the Spanish Main RPG. A lot of cool stuff, some of which would be neat for 50 fathoms due to the obvious connection. Don't know if we want to go so crazy as to use their tabletop ship rules with ship mini's just yet, but who knows. Anyway here's a sample of some cool stuff.

Edges:

Gifted Leader:
Requirements: Veteran, Command
Extras making a group rolls while under this leaders command roll a d8 wild die instead of d6.

Hero
Requirements: Veteran, Wild Card
Heroes can pull of stunts lesser men can only dream of. Once per session, when you spend a benny, you may add the reroll TOTAL to your previous roll.


Just a little taste.

Savage Worlds Rules

Hello my fine players. Just wanted to start a little discussion on a rules module that is in Deadlands Savage Worlds. The word on the discussion boards is that this rule will become "official" in future printings of SW, as the "+1d6 for a raise" rule did. They are already using it in all future settings they are working on. Hopefully you all didn't groan inside too much from that news. So here is the lowdown:

To start, forget what you know about melee damage. Instead of using Strength plus a number, we pre-calculate the damage of melee weapons as die types.

Weapon Damage Die
Fist -
Dagger d4
Short Sword d6
Long Sword d8
Great Sword d10

A weapon at Str+5 becomes d12. Str+6 becomes D12+1 and so on. When you strike a foe in melee, you roll your strength die and your weapons die and add them together. (much like ranged weapons, except the dice might not match) Both dice can Ace, just like ranged weapons. You can't spend bennies to reroll, because it's not longer a trait roll.
Example: Two feathers has a strength of D10 and wields a war club (+d6.) He lands a blow on a walking dead and rolls a d10 and a d6. He rerolls any aces as usual and adds the dice together to get a damage total.
Bonus damage is not affected. If you hit with a raise, you still add a d6 to your total damage.
Strength Restrictions
There are some restrictions on strength and weapons. Your weapon die cannot be higher than your damage die. So if your strength is d4, you would roll 2d4, not d4+d10. Also, if you are too weak to use a weapon you lose any special benefits the weapon might have (armor piercing, parry bonus.) The old rules for minimum strength are no longer used.
Unarmed fighters just roll their strength die. There's a new "full defense" maneuver that you can use to roll your fighting and replace your parry with the total.

Ok so why change to this? Several reasons. First of all, it makes the damage rules more uniform. I also believe that extras are really lame with hand to hand damage. An extra with a gun might do 2d6 damage, where armed with a sword rolls a a single d6 and adds 2. This way they will also roll 2d6, which at least makes them viable. Now you may be thinking "it's great for use that extras suck at hand to hand Tim, because we fight a lot of them." True, but I have to make the battles interesting. Right now I can only do that two ways. Use a lot of guns, which works sometimes, or add in a lot more enemies. Adding in more enemies just makes the battle take longer, I'd rather just have the extras have a chance to hurt you some. You guys fought hoards of probably some of the nastiest extras in the game and they could hardly touch most of you. (I know Delphino got hurt, but he's not supposed to be in melee too much.) Also don't forget, your allies will get a little cooler too. I'll still use the damage cap in 50 fathoms to minimize the chance of Joe Schmoe Pirate taking your head off with one shot.

Ok let me hear you guys. Questions? Praise? Complaints? Speculation?

Tressa's speech

Just a reminder of Tressa the Red's speech to you:

Ah, Welcome. Sorry about all of that. Part of the rub, you know. Comes with the house. I haven't found any way to turn it off. Congratulations on getting through it-no one else has yet. Except me, of course. How can I help you?


Yes. I know. It seems there's a leak. Between this world and this "Earth" you visitors hail from. I can only imagine it is the work of the Sea Hags, but I can't be sure as there's so much magic around the Devil's Cross-that I can't quite pick that out.
If it is their dark magic, elemental sorcery can't counter it. The two forces just don't mix. The only way to cancel one of their spells is to destroy them. Even that won't return Caribdus to the way it was-I don't know any way of doing that-but it should stop the leak and put an end to their terror at the very least. I've actually been slowing down the leak by treating they symptoms instead of the disease, so to speak, but it's trying work. Doesn't leave me with much to go out and actually try to fight the hags. Plus, if a whole Kraken fleet and over 50 archmages couldn't do it well...
I don't suppose you've got any carroway fruit do you? That stuff is great for restoring my energies.
Anyway, I've put together the first piece of the puzzle. Seems their black magic is all about weird rituals and so forth. A glass of water from another world poured of the Devil's Cross makes the witches come out of the sea. That's not such a great idea though because I suspect they'll arise as gargantuans as they did against the Kraken. You'd need some mighty powerful magic, maybe some ship's cannons, to take them down.
You can probably find water from another world on one of the wrecks that didn't make it out of the Flotsam Sea. For it to summon the hags you have to pour it over the ruins of Ograpog and speak the witches true names. I'm afraid I haven't met anyone yet who knows them-so many people from Ograpog died in the flood it's difficult to find anyone who knew them or witnessed their trial. I know. I've tried.
There is one thing that might help, though. There's a relic called the Tears of Lys. It's a gem said to grant visions to those in need. It's possible the device could tell you the witches true names. Last I heard it was in the possession of a cute fire mage named Tomas de Orinjo. Tomas serves aboard a privateer working in and around the Gray Isles. I don't know what it would take to make Tomas part with the relic though. Such a thing is nearly priceless.

Now, go save the world, handsome.