Review: Legends of Steel

I really ought to stop buying Savage Worlds settings. I have something like 30 of them now, of which I have actually run a campaign in, errm, well, one actually.

I had a sort of plan here though; since the Dread Sea Dominions of Beasts & Barbarians has an ocean to the left of the map, and Erisa in Legends of Steel has an ocean to the right, I thought of this:

Erisa

Big ocean thingy

Dread Sea Dominions

It’ll probably never get used, but maybe someday… Anyway, on with the motley.

In a Nutshell: Sword & Sorcery setting for Savage Worlds. 70 page PDF. This is one of the Evil DM’s home campaigns done as a setting book. If SW isn’t your thing, there are also versions for other RPGs; Barbarians of Lemuria, Broadsword, and ZeFRS (a retroclone of TSR’s Conan RPG).

CONTENT

Introduction (1 page): Quite possibly the shortest I’ve ever seen in a book like this, largely because it assumes I already know what roleplaying games are. Moving on…

Player’s Section (19 pages): This begins by setting the tone – or rather, recommending that the group agrees what kind of sword & sorcery they’re playing, choosing from 1930s pulp fiction, 1970s comic books, 1980s movies and cartoons, 1990s TV shows. The default setting, Erisa, is a mixture of the comic book and cartoon versions.

Players are encouraged not to limit themselves to barbarian warriors, but to consider their PCs’ background, motivation for adventuring, race, age and so on. The best advice and examples given are for motivations.

Character creation is largely unchanged from SW core, and blurs into setting rules; there are four of these:

• PCs start at Seasoned, not Novice. My first thought was “Oh no, not again”, but the author, Jeff Mejia, points out that protagonists in the genre are generally famous veterans when we first meet them.
• There are no Rank requirements for Edges. Want to have a sidekick and loyal followers at Seasoned? Go for it.
• Wild Cards are never considered unarmed, even if all they have is their bare hands. I quite like this idea, it underscores the general badassery of the sword & sorcery hero.
• PCs with an Arcane Background are limited to Novice rank powers. This is because in the genre, any halfway decent wizard is a hostile, evil NPC. (The author argues at several points in the book that a pure sword & sorcery campaign would have no PC spellcasters at all.)

There are a handful of setting-specific Knowledge skills; Etiquette, Heraldry, Legends and Lore, Military Training, and Religion. I’d be tempted to call all of those Common Knowledge myself.

As usual in a setting book, there is a range of new Edges (about 30 of them), and some tweaks to the standard ones (four of these, I think). I especially like the tweak for Attractive and Very Attractive; in addition to the Charisma bonus in the core rules, a character with one of these Edges always looks good, whatever has just happened to them – this explains why the sword & sorcery movie heroine has freshly-applied makeup and stylish hair at all times, and why the mud on the hero’s costume disappears between scenes. Of the new Edges, the one that intrigues me most is Birthright, which allows the PC to begin with a family heirloom of some power, effectively a magic item. Not sure I’d let one start with a flying ship, though.

Unusually, there are no new Hindrances. Character generation closes with another good idea, references; these are three statements about your character made by minor NPCs, for example Arik the Barber may say the PC is a jealous type who assaults anyone insulting his lady friend.

Next is a section on the style of play appropriate for the genre; everything, including the heroes, is in shades of grey; money and equipment are largely irrelevant, as there is always a half-eaten body with what you need on it lying around, or a patron who will equip you for the mission. The author points out that the hero’s motivation is usually wealth, but he rarely becomes wealthy; a wealthy hero is a retired hero, and a retired hero is bored – and boring.

From the GM’s perspective, the genre is built around the short story or single issue of a comic book; there are no long story arcs, just individual adventures. The GM is advised to work within the framework of the pulp short story, make things thrilling, rewarding and heroic, capture heroes rather than kill them, and make extensive use of outrageous coincidences. Magic items should be rare and unique. Everything, in fact, that I love about sword & sorcery.

Taverns get special attention, as that is where the PCs will spend most of their time off-duty, and consequently is where they will be most often recruited. Naturally, this leads into setting rules for over-indulgence.

Campaign Section (35 pages): This is essentially a gazetteer of the world of Erisa, with a full-colour map and details of a score of locations, usually provinces or cities rather than nations.

Each location has about a page dedicated to it. There is a short description, followed by brief discussions of its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats; it would be easy to extract adventure seeds from the opportunities or threats, while the strengths and weaknesses are more about what the place is like.

In addition, there are capsule summaries of another score of minor locations – forests, swamps and the like. These are followed by two pages discussing the gods and goddesses of the region, at roughly one paragraph per deity.

River Pirates of the Belsa (5 pages): Here’s the obligatory introductory adventure. Dagoberto the merchant wants revenge, and hires the PCs to infiltrate the pirate gang which killed his son and assassinate their leader for him. Unusually, most of the word count is devoted to the personalities in the gang, with the plotline taking second place.

Sample Characters (6 pages): There are half dozen of these; Anteus the gladiator, Brother Stern the warrior priest, De Silva the sorceror, Risa the mercenary archer, Talena the pirate, Talon Ironhawk the exiled prince. They are all at Veteran Rank, so perhaps better suited as NPCs than PCs, unless you want to run a Veteran level one-shot.

FORMAT

Full-colour cover, looking for all the world like a comic book cover, wrapped around single-column black text on white with greyscale illustrations – almost all of these are in the Campaign section.

There is a separate printer-friendly PDF delivered with the main one, although that is relatively printer-friendly itself, and the download also includes a TIFF file of the world map. That would be useful if I wanted to mark up with map with things of my own, as I often do.

SUGGESTIONS FOR IMPROVEMENT

The book would benefit from an editor or proofreader looking it over. There are a number of grammatical errors and inconsistencies in layout. It sounds petty, but these bring me to a grinding halt every time I find one.

There’s no Gear chapter, which doesn’t bother me; what does the sword & sorcery hero need besides a horse and a sharp blade? Both of those are in the core rules already. However, there is no bestiary either; I was hoping I might see stats for at least the reptile men the iconic heroes are fighting on the front cover. I guess I would just reskin orcs for those.

CONCLUSIONS

With its cinematic combat and larger than life heroes, Savage Worlds is well-suited to the sword & sorcery genre. That genre is an exercise in a limited palette; PCs are human, sorcerors are evil NPCs, monsters are more likely to be prehistoric reptiles or animated statues than orcs and goblins. Legends of Steel is essentially a set of GM’s notes on how to evoke that genre, with a setting in which to do so, drawn with very broad strokes; it reads like a collection of blog posts, which I suppose is probably what it started out as.

I can’t help comparing this to Beasts & Barbarians Golden Edition, which is about twice the price, but three times the page count, with a richer and more detailed setting, and ongoing support in the form of adventures short and long. For what you get, I think Legends of Steel is overpriced; I can’t help feeling a little disappointed with it.

Overall Rating: 3 out of 5.

Shadows of Keron Episode 29: The Death of Kumal the Smiling

Yes, it had to happen: Kumal’s luck finally ran out.

This was an improvised scenario aimed at switching the narrative track towards Caldeia, where I intend to run the Kithtakharos adventures next. Sitting down at the table, I pulled together a number of leftover plot threads – campaigns start to write themselves after a while. So there were undead guardians, a Daughter of Hordan, a handsome slave in vigorous good health, a Valkyrie, assorted Valk on warponies, a dark and stormy night, and a cave.

“We are NOT going in that cave,” said the Warforged. “There’s always something nasty in caves.”

Deftly bypassing the cave (and its undead guardians), the party treks on through the night and the pouring rain.

At length, they come upon an encampment, with a couple of dozen Valk and their tents, the leaders debating something with a Valkyrie. The Warforged hates Valk, and is all for slaughtering them on the spot. Nessime takes a more reasoned approach, and being unsure what to do, consults the Hindrances on her character sheet as I often counsel players to do in these situations.

• Heroic. Are the Valk in trouble? No, so Nessime does not have to help them.
• Loyal: Friends. Are the Valk her friends? No, so this Hindrance doesn’t come into play.
• Vow: Fight evil until the last fire goes out (she is a paladin of Hulian, in effect). Are the Valk evil? Well… they worship demons. They speak the same language as demons. Close enough.

They approach stealthily, and The Warforged opens hostilities with a Fear spell. All the lesser Valk and the warponies flee in panic, but by virtue of not running away, the Valkyrie reveals herself to be a Wild Card. Gutz then taunts her something rotten, one of his favourite tactics, and she becomes Shaken. This buys the party enough time to drop an overpowered Blast spell on her, killing her outright despite the liberal application of GM Bennies.

Searching the wreckage, they discover a slave hiding in the Valkyrie’s tent, which also contains a map, a half-written letter, and a strange leathery object somewhat bigger than a football.

“Do you have a name?” asked Nessime.

“Yes, ma’am,” replied the now-freed slave. “Antaeus.”

“Oh you poor thing,” she said. “I am so sorry.”

This leaves Antaeus in a state of confusion, little knowing that throughout the campaign the only NPCs to survive encounters with the party have been those without names (and Kumal the Smiling); having a name ensures NPC death, or so the party now believes.

Antaeus declines to join the party, even after gifts of weapons and armour, but does agree to travel with them to the next town, wherever that might be. He explains that he was a prisoner of war from the Kyrosian rebellion the PCs fought in some time ago, sold as a slave and passed from merchant to merchant until the Valk picked him up. Had they kept on with this line of questioning they might have learned something truly useful, but since it’s not something Antaeus wants to talk about he doesn’t volunteer it. The party instead becomes distracted by the map and letter. The letter is apparently from the Valkyrie to someone called Baltazar, which several of the party recognised as a Tricarnian name, explaining that she has the object he seeks and is bringing it to him in Caldeia. (Gutz immediately reasons that this must be the leathery object, and it is therefore valuable and should be carried off.) The map is interesting partly because it exactly matches the map Gutz liberated from his erstwhile colleagues early in the campaign, which he was told by said colleagues showed the location of a great treasure, and partly because it has little pictures of Warforged on it, in the Caldeian swamps.

By now the party is getting the idea, and decides to press on south towards Caldeia. They come to a river, and determine (rightly) that if they follow it downstream they should come to the swamps. After a little while, they encounter the warponies, who have somehow got onto the other side of the river. There is much debate about how to cross the river to get to them, but at length this plan is abandoned.

A little while later, they encounter the Valk, who are looking for their warponies. Now that it is daylight, Kumal the Smiling (for it is he) recognises his opponents. He bullies the other Valk into attacking the party (because he hates them), then attempts to sneak off (because he is terrified of The Warforged, and not without reason).

Outnumbered three to one by dismounted nomad archers, the party is undaunted. The Warforged fires off his signature Blast spell against Kumal, and incinerates him, again despite GM Bennies.

Gutz takes a moment to honour the memory of a worthy foe, while Nessime uses Beast Friend and an excellent Persuasion roll to convince a swarm of nearby meerkats that the Valk are attempting to steal their territory. Two of them fall under a whirlwind of tiny teeth, claws, and offers of cheap warpony insurance.

Gutz drops a couple with arrows, The Warforged barrels into the closest group and whacks them silly with his Enchanted Sorceror’s Frying Pan, and once they reach 70% casualties the survivors break and run.

Antaeus is volunteered to pick up and carry the loot (mostly composite bows), since the party forgot he was there and didn’t use him in the fight. (He was quite happy with that, and they didn’t seem to need his help.)

It is without further incident that the group travels downriver into the swamps, to the sleepy village of Kithtakharos, which I must now read up on.

If you have worked out what that leathery object is, don’t tell them, it’ll spoil the surprise.

Review: Streets of Bedlam

Something else that fell onto my hard drive from the RPGNow Halloween freebies. I see I’m becoming a theoretical gamer, in that I read and blog about games but don’t actually play them much – that will have to change! Anyway, enough of that; what has it got in its pocketses?

In a Nutshell: Ultraviolent noir crime setting for Savage Worlds Deluxe; 264 page PDF.

CONTENTS

Life in the Big City (8 pages): This explains the nature of the setting by reference to the movies that inspired it; The Godfather, Reservoir Dogs, and so on. That’s to say, there’s a lot of crime, a lot of violence, and nobody is entirely innocent. The typical hero in the setting is a tarnished low-life, driven by something in his past to do Good or die trying, and unencumbered by any snivelling considerations about due process. Bedlam itself is the archetypical big, sleazy city, fallen on hard times, with gangs running the east side of the river (Lamrose) and corrupt politicians the west (Bedford).

Invisible Lines (28 pages): This outlines the history of Bedlam, which is really two cities on opposite banks of a river, and its famous locations in broad strokes; the GM and players are intended to cherry-pick places they like and use them to define their own version of the city. You won’t find a map here, and frankly you don’t need one, because Bedlam isn’t about which route you take to get to the drop, it’s about when you arrive – which is either in the nick of time, or five minutes too late, depending on which is the more interesting story.

The backstory and the locations could’ve come straight out of any Quentin Tarantino movie or the cop show you fell asleep in front of last night; Bedlam is a crime-ridden American city, and if you watch any TV at all, you already know it.

People in Trouble (68 pages): This chapter is about the characters; questionable people who do bad things for good reasons. It opens with advice on how to make and play a character that fits the setting. You’re encouraged to pick one of the 15 archetypes listed and customise it by applying Hindrances, and describing the character; this is because the genre relies on stereotypes, and every major character should fit one of the preordained niches. I don’t have a problem with that.

The archetypes range from the Badge (cop) to the Valkyrie (vigilante hooker), and each has an illustration, a description, advice on playing the character, and how to build one; each begins with some mandatory Edges and skills. However, the bulk of chargen is about why the PC does what she does; her motivation, which is based on one of a selection of Hindrances. Gear is pre-allocated according to the archetype.

15 doesn’t sound like a lot, but how many players have you got, and how many characters are they going to get through in each campaign? I think 15 is enough.

This is present-day America, so there are no elves, dwarves, rakashans or what have you, and no Arcane Backgrounds. The equipment is whatever you could buy over (or more likely under) the counter in any big town.

Rules of the Streets (34 pages): Here are the setting rules; which SWD setting rules work with the setting, 6 new skills, 14 new Edges (I especially like Entourage, an ally group which helps your Intimidation rolls but is otherwise utterly useless), 8 new Hindrances (honourable mention for Dead Inside, which means nobody can make you feel guilty, about anything, ever).

It occurs to me that if you’re familiar with SWD but haven’t twigged what Bedlam is like by now, listing the recommended setting rules would do it for you; they are Blood & Guts, Critical Failures, Fanatics, and Gritty Damage. Ouch.

The skills are the first in a long time to make me sit up and take notice. Especially Cop Sense for the veteran badge’s gut instinct, Eyes of God which is effectively Detect Evil, Interrogation – I’ll come back to that one.

Moving on from those, we next come to drugs (7 different kinds, each with notes on the dosage and what it does to you in game terms) and rules on addiction and how to overcome it, then on to Rep.

Rep is a new stat which applies to interactions with NPCs who don’t know you personally, but know something about you because of what you’ve done; it’s sort of the inverse of Streetwise. You could also see it as Charisma for specific groups, as you have different Reps with the three main factions in Bedlam; the authorities, the public, and the underworld. In each case, the higher the score, the more they will trust you – but the less other groups will. You can increase Rep by spending an advance on it.

I said I’d come back to Interrogation, and now I will. Whether your character is committing a crime, solving one, or preventing it, he needs information – the kind people don’t want to give him. Interrogation methods in Streets of Bedlam are specialised dramatic tasks, pitting one of the interrogator’s skills against one of the subject’s attributes; the Interrogation skill can be swapped for any other skill used in interrogating a subject, so you might use it instead of your Persuasion, for instance, if it were better.

There are also rules for handling investigations. While the PCs never miss the crucial clues (the rules prevent that), they might not figure out what the clues mean. Prior to play, the GM draws several cards – the higher the perpetrator’s Rank, the more cards get drawn – and uses them to lay out a sequence; the crime itself, the cleanup, and the escape. The PCs then turn up, noticing stuff as they arrive, then processing the crime scene. How well the crook did (measured by the card draw) and how well the PCs did (measured by skill rolls) determines what interpretation the PCs place on the clues. This bit, I did not really follow, and a detailed example would have been very useful.

Ultraviolence. This is essentially a set of trappings; in Bedlam, you don’t just punch someone, teeth fly in all directions with an improbable amount of blood, and there’s the noise of breaking wood. However, this rule can slow fights down, so the author recommends saving it for the Big Bad.

Roles. As well as their archetypes, characters have roles; the hero, the sidekick, the love interest, the plot twist. Who is which can be assigned by the GM or emerge in play, and can change each session, but each role has a couple of special abilities. For example, the Love Interest can spend a benny to exhort the Hero: “Do it for me!”, in which case he rolls at +4, but if he succeeds, the next scene must be about their relationship. The Plot Twist can spend a benny to gain narrative control and reveal the real motive for a major NPC, or a previously unknown fact about another PC.

The rules done, we now segue into advice to the GM, which is much like advice to a screenwriter – in fact, some of it is advice to a screenwriter. How to set up an episode (i.e. game session), story archetypes, stock scenario ideas.

Familiar Faces (62 pages): There are no monsters or aliens in Bedlam; just humans, although to be fair some of them are monstrous and alien. This section is split into three.

• Key characters are the iconic ones who appear in the interior art. They are NPC instances of the archetypes, and could be used as ready to play PCs.
• Major players are the best-known and best-connected NPCs; the crime lords, the wealthy, the famous.
• The public directory are the bit players; cops, crooks, contacts and citizens.

A lot of the NPCs are named for people who backed the kickstarter that funded Streets of Bedlam, which I think is a nice touch. I lost track of how many NPCs there are; I can’t imagine ever needing that many.

The Things We Do For Money (46 pages): This chapter is about noir screenwriting as a tool for creating adventures. Basic story structure, setting the scene, different types of scene, linking the scenes into a story. This explanation is followed with an introductory scenario, 34 pages long, showcasing the techniques; it’s a kind of plot point campaign, in a way. A young girl is found murdered, and for their various reasons, the PCs unravel a tale of extortion, violence, abuse and poor decisions; but there is no happy ending, not even for them.

We also find half a dozen adventure seeds, and rules for randomly generating episodes using card draws.

…and as is traditional for SW settings, we close with some quick reference sheets and a couple of forms; episode sheet, investigation sheet, character sheet.

The chapters do have numbers, by the way, it just felt more in character not to use them.

FORMAT

Very basic, single-column black text on white, with comic-book style illustrations every few pages. No colour, no page background, easy on the printer.

SUGGESTIONS FOR IMPROVEMENT

If it were me, I wouldn’t repeat so much of the core SW rules for character creation in every archetype. After the first couple of PCs, the players will know their attributes start at d4.

I didn’t really get the Investigation rules; a detailed example would be good.

CONCLUSIONS

I confess, this one got to me. I had to rewrite this post several times because I was channeling Raymond Chandler by chapter three as I read it, and that’s not the best style for a game review, at least not unless you’re a better writer than I am; but it shows how easily I slipped into the mood. It’s clearly a labour of love by someone with a deep knowledge of the genre.

Overall Rating: 4 out of 5. I probably won’t run this. But I want to.

SG-13: Third Time’s the Charm

It’s only been 8 years since the Stargate campaign folded, and I’ve already almost finished painting the figures!

Left to Right: Major Kastra (Giulia), S/Sgt Stoner (NPC), Dr Nathan Matthews (Anna), Topah (Esther), the General (NPC), Lt Jack Mendoza (NPC).

Actually, Mendoza is for another campaign entirely, but he was in the same painting batch.

All of them except To’pah are from the Copplestone Castings Future Wars range, which are my favourite science fiction miniatures in 28mm. I’m not sure who made To’pah’s mini, I bought him off eBay already painted with a group of colleagues. I love Copplestone Castings SF figures; I like the poses, the level of detail is excellent, and they are more realistically-proportioned than GW figures. They paint up nicely, too, as long as you don’t change your mind about the colour scheme too often while you’re painting them.

They’re mostly painted using Tamiya acrylics, those being what I could find on New Year’s Eve: X1 Black, X2 White, XF10 Flat Brown, XF55 Deck Tan, XF67 NATO Green, XF7 Flat Red, Reaper MSP Flesh (a sample bottle I got with my last order of Legendary Encounters). I mention this mostly so I have the colour scheme written down somewhere in case I need to match it later.

Stoner’s beret really ought to be maroon, since he is a pararescueman, but I didn’t feel like mixing that up – I always need more, and I can never match the shade. The idea behind using the same colours on the clothing and armour was that I could pass off any errant splodges as part of the camouflage scheme. The camo scheme wouldn’t be much use as actual camouflage, but the purpose of camo on my figures is to exude military cool at arm’s length; realistic camo schemes make it hard to see details at any distance, and hard to see the figures on equally realistic terrain – that is, after all, the whole point. The scheme is inspired by the USCM uniforms in the movie Aliens, one of my all-time favourites.

I said almost finished, because the wash, dip, base and varnish stage went horribly wrong, and they’re back in the stripping jar. I swear, those painting services look more attractive every year.

I like the paint scheme though, so I think I’ll just paint them like this again. Except this time I’ll miss out the wash/dip stage and go straight to varnish; if I can get back to this state again I’ll be happy with them.

Third time’s the charm, right?

Review: SW Horror Companion

I wasn’t sure whether or not to get this, but then it rocked up as a freebie on RPGNow for Halloween, so… Yoink!

In a Nutshell: Genre supplement for Savage Worlds, 145 page PDF.

CONTENTS

Characters (9 pages): There are no major changes to the existing character creation rules, apart from a new derived stat – Sanity, which begins at half Spirit plus two; we’ll come back to that shortly. The chapter has 11 new Hindrances and 13 new Edges; they’re appropriate to the genre, but none of them leapt out at me and made me think I had to build a PC around them.

However, the main rules expansion in this section is monsters as playable races. You can be a demon, an angel, a half-vampire, Frankenstein’s monster, a ghost, a vampire, a werewolf, or a free-willed zombie.

Tools of the Trade (8 pages): Here, we find specialist gear for hunting monsters; from the simple stake to the Atomic Ghost Hunting Pack. I’m still not that interested in equipment chapters, but the specialist ammo for werewolves (silver nitrate bullets) and vampires (glass capsules full of UV-emitting chemicals) caught my attention. Sneaky. Those and the motion tracker might make it to my table.

Setting Rules (12 pages): These are focussed on bringing the party an atmosphere of doom and dread. Magical backlash is nastier than usual, with particular times of year influencing the casting chance too; the Vices rule simulates the monsters preferentially picking off people with specific behavioural traits.

The main addition, though, is Sanity. When you fail a Fear check, you lose a sanity point – bear in mind you only have five as an average PC; once it drops below 3, you start picking up extra Hindrances, and start creeping people out. If it reaches 0, you start picking up psychoses – while at San 2 you might have a Minor Habit of carrying a rabbit’s foot, at San 0 you might need to kill a rabbit in a grisly ritual every few days and harvest fresh feet yourself.

Sanity grows back if you triumph over evil or stay well away from it, preferably under psychiatric care, for a long time. (Good luck with that.)

Naturally, no horror setting is complete without rules for books of forbidden lore and ritual magic, including human sacrifices, and you’ll find those here too. Reading books of forbidden lore does not bode well for your sanity, incidentally, but does get you bonuses; more of them if you deliberately sacrifice points of sanity.

There are also rules for signs and portents, fortune tellers and prophecies, warding and binding evil creatures. These are more fluff than crunch.

Magick (9 pages): A quick recap of the backlash rule changes, and we’re into 14 new Powers, which for the most part you’re better off not admitting to anyone you know.

Arcane Items (12 pages): Just over 30 magic items for you to inflict on your players; a good chapter to play Spot the Movie Homage in.

Creatures (73 pages): Horror is all about the monsters, right? There are over a hundred monsters and stock NPCs here, from the beat cop to the veteran monster slayer, from the fiendish stuffed toy to the killer clown to the xenomorph. ‘Nuff said, you don’t want your players reading what these can do.

Game Mastering (15 pages): The GM is encouraged to decide initially what kind of horror he wants to run. This is partly to do with the underlying setting – fantasy, historical, present-day, sci-fi – but also whether you want action horror, Cthulhoid Elder Gods, or dark and gritty, and how much the general public knows about what’s going on.

Advice is offered on creating atmosphere, maintaining the sense of the unknown which is crucial to good horror, and scripting encounters, for horror is not a genre (and SW is not a game) which lends itself to random encounters.

FORMAT

Two-column black text on textured cream background, but fortunately you can suppress that by tweaking the PDF layers. Headings are in a faux-typewriter font which suits the genre.

Colour illustrations every few pages, ranging from about 1/6 page to a full page.

Straightforward, legible, gets the job done. I don’t much like the heading font, but that’s a personal preference.

CONCLUSIONS

As usual with things written by Wiggy (yes, this is another of the prolific Paul Williams’ books), you can leaf through this thinking “Oh yeah, I know what movie that’s from” – and that’s a good thing, in my opinion.

Given how many zombies appear in this blog, it may surprise you to learn that horror isn’t really my bag; but put that together with not wanting to creep out my more squeamish players, and it becomes unlikely this Companion will join us anytime soon.

Overall Rating: 3 out of 5.

SWD vs Test Drive v6

I’m drifting back to using the Test Drive version 6 as my portable quick reference for Savage Worlds, and that led me to compare it to the current core rules, Savage Worlds Deluxe. (The Wild Hunt uses the same rules as the Test Drive, but I prefer version 6 as it has a slightly larger font and rules for character advancement.)

Obviously, SWD has more stuff in it, but the Test Drive is also based on the previous edition of the rules (Explorers’ Edition); so what things are there in the Test Drive that are different in the core rules?

It turns out, not many. Here are the ones I know about:

• SWD drops the Guts skill.
• Shaken characters can only move at half Pace in the Test Drive, but since they are permitted free actions in SWD, they can move their full Pace.
• If Shaken while On Hold, in SWD you lose the On Hold status.
• Incapacitation works differently, and needs a lot more column inches to explain, so I won’t go into it here.
• Raises on an area effect attack (like Blast) cause an extra d6 of damage in SWD, the same as for any other attack.
• You can fire three 3d6 bolts in the Test Drive, but only one in SWD. (Actually, this was so central to the Warforged’s style of play that I let him keep doing it when we switched to SWD, and the game didn’t suffer a bit. Especially after he reached Seasoned rank and upgraded to Blast.)

So there you have it. There are more changes than I expected, but none of them are game-changing, you should pardon the pun. Still, it would be nice to see a Test Drive version 7 at some point – preferably one that uses layers to make printing the colour page background optional.

The only thing I’d want to add to the Test Drive is how many powers beginning characters have, but I can understand why it doesn’t go there, as if it did it would need to explain the differences between Arcane Backgrounds, and that would take too much space. If it came up, I’d use three, which is what Magic and Psionics get, and settle up later when I had the core rules to hand.

Do you know about any differences I’ve missed?