Savage Pathfinder, part 3

I was sorting through my library and saying yea or nay, to different books on my shelf, and I came up with a few more to add to my list for the ones that would be helpful for Savage Pathfinder. 

Inner Sea Races

This is an odd one, low rated on the store because there aren't many rules here, making it great for Savage Pathfinder. This is the place to start if you want more lore-friendly race options. This is a beneficial book on lore, how their culture works, how others see you, and a lot of other soft data useful in roleplaying. You also get a wide variety of human subtypes and a great selection of the more rare races such as aasimar, tieflings, drow, and many others.

This is highly recommended just to get your mind out of generic D&D style races and into the Golarion and Pathfinder mindset for how everyone lives with each other and gets along. This is an excellent book and can be seen as the hidden "race expansion" for Savage Pathfinder. And if you dip into the race design rules of Savage Worlds and remember Savage Pathfinder races are 4 points instead of 2 - you can design them pretty quickly and have a vast expansion in both lore and options.

As a supporting resource for the Inner Sea World Guide, this is excellent. I would consider this book, the Inner Sea World Guide, and the Inner Sea Gods books as the three must-haves for running Savage Pathfinder beyond the core rulebooks. No other book puts you in a world like this and gets you excited to live there. This is truly an underrated gem of a book and a must-have for Savage Pathfinder.

Advanced Race Guide

The previous book's sister book, the Advanced Race Guide, has more variety, far fewer background data, and more rules. This is a good add-on book for the above if you want many options and subtypes. This is sort of the book the community wished for, more rules options, more powers, but way less on actual roleplaying and cultural data.

For Savage Pathfinder, the Inner Sea Races book stands head and shoulders above this one, just in the background data that excited you to get into the world and play. This one is more 3.75 rules-focused but has some rare and uncommon options that may appeal to some. Honestly, you could do without this book and be fine since it is a "more races" sort of "stuff book" that massively expands options and does not really do much for lore and roleplaying opportunities.

This is not on my supporting books shelf, but it is notable for the expansion of types and the discussion of subtypes offered. When I have my support shelf loaded up, I only want the best of the best. This is a third-tier reference-only book for me for running the game. If I were using Pathfinder 1e rules, this is on my second-tier list of nice-to-haves. For Savage Worlds, I look for books with less 1e rules crunch and more background since we have little use for the original rules.

GameMastery Guide

This one is easy to overlook, but the plethora of world-specific advice, adventure-building tips, world creation, NPC advice, rewards, play tips, and GM tips are excellent. And you get a bunch of random tables for ideas. While I would not say this one is a must-have, the book is mainly free of rules and packed with good advice in the Pathfinder style, so it will be handy in running your games. In its time, this is one of the better "dungeon master guides" out there and a handy book on running Pathfinder games, all while keeping the great art and style of the books that inspires me whenever I open it.

This is another that is heavy on the advice and inspiration, much like the Inner Sea Races book, but more for game masters and adventure creation. This is a nice-to-have, not critical, but a good resource and will improve your games and play.

I would be careful and still lean heavily on the original Savage Pathfinder GM section with this book since there are many Savage Worlds ceremonies to maintain and encourage the use of, such as dramatic tasks. I saw dramatic tasks used in the Rise of the Runelords conversion adventure, and  I was like, "Oh yeah!" So things like allies, chases, dramatic tasks, creative combat, downtime, fear, hazards, interludes, mass battles, networking, quick encounters, social conflict, and the travel/encounters system should all be encouraged and used by Savage Pathfinder GMs when appropriate.

I dare say even treasure and reward generation can be done with the deck of cards if one gets creative enough. This is the Savage mindset; if you see a "ceremony" type activity in another game, try and turn that into a Savage Worlds style minigame given the tools you have - dice, raises, tokens, cards, result charts, random tables, and all the other cool toys in your Savage Worlds toolbox.

There is a "corruption" system in the Pathfinder 1e book Horror Adventures that is pretty simplistic with just three stages, some saves, and some manifestations. I could pull open the old Savage Worlds Horror Companion and look for something that works there, or I could create a unique Savage Worlds ceremony around corruption using resistance rolls, a corruption token system, and random tables or cards to determine the specific corruption effect. Put a system in for removing the tokens through good deeds, penance, purification, or other things that could remove these tokens.

Now, instead of a ported in Pathfinder 1e system for corruption where you make a note of a number and move on, players are accumulating "corruption tokens" and worrying about what happens when they get the next one. They look for ways to get rid of them. Bonus points if you use little skulls, curios, or evil eye tokens from a craft store that look like they signify corruption.

Use your Savage toybox!

It is easy to go to this book first and lose your way in the Savage GM-ing style, so default to the original rules and use this book as a secondary inspiration source. A good exercise is to read this book and think about how the Savage gaming conventions can be used to make things work in a more Savage Worlds fashion from different sections of this book.

All in good jest, my friends! Now go and adventure!

And it is Aroden, the God of Game Masters approved. I am keeping this joke going because this is how my campaign rolls. In my game, he is the one responsible for all this.