Playtest Report: Fantasy Age

Fantasy Age is an interesting game. It is sort of a spiritual successor to True 20, minus the d20 and many of the fiddly d20-ish based rules. We sat down and playtested the game the other night, and these are our first impressions.

3d6 Fantasy is Fun!

It has been a while since we used a 3d6 system for fantasy (since SBRPG 1.0), and it was cool. I loved the break from a d20, and getting a bell-curve back made modifiers meaningful again. There is a big difference between a +1 and a +3 with 3d6 versus 1d20, and it felt good.

v1.0 Skills

Why are separate "search" and "sight" skills needed? Where is the survival skill? We ran into a bunch of problems with skills, and players started attempting actions the skill system was unclear about or did not have the skills to cover.

Also, the regularity with with stunt rolls came up forced us to the stunt tables with a pretty regular frequency, and players started dreading rolls with stunts because nobody wanted to reference the book. We adopted a system where if you rolled doubles "something good happened as determined by the referee" and we ignored the stunt die's magnitude. It was a patch and ignored one of the game's key mechanics, but it sped up play and kept players from searching the tables and trying to invent something cool happening after the fact.

Three Main Classes

We didn't mind having three main classes that could specialize into different areas. It felt like a good balance or fighter, mage, and rogue with mages being able to fill in for a dedicated priest class with a healing specialization. I don't mind this sort of structure in a world where this is the norm, and it worked for us.

We wanted some sort of official world (other than Dragon Age) that supported this three class structure. It is different enough from Dragon Age to support a unique world, though making one wasn't a part of our playtest (nor did we want to check out the worldbook mentioned in the rulebook).

Four Spells per School?

While I like magic to be meaningful and not take over the game, only having three mastery levels and four spells per school felt really thin. Mages get two schools (start with four) and they can get new schools and spells as they level, but four spells under fire and the other various masteries felt like mages couldn't really do too much with spells and magic. We want more spells, deeper schools, and more stuff for mages to do.

It hurts, because this is one of the big things we felt would hurt the long-term interest in the game for us. A game like Pathfinder gives you a reason to stick around and play with spells and magic until you just don't want to read anymore. This is admittedly a more simple game, but we felt the lack of the high end magic options and selection would keep us interested at the lower levels and not the higher ones. yes, the classes have build options and choices at every level ,but there is something to be said for a great spell selection as well.

Action!

The game worked well in play, although 3d6 per combatant initiative dragged down the start of combat. There is something to be said for one-die-per-combatant initiative, because before you know it, with just 10 people in the battle, you are rolling 30d6 just to figure out who goes first.

Stunting dragged combat down, but other than that, the system worked. We enjoyed some of the options that classes gave at level one, but we didn't get a chance to level up before the night ended, so we need to keep testing to get a feel for levels and powers as you advance.

We liked the simple combats, but we felt the gravitic and realistic pull of Legend hovering over us. The games are enough alike. Once you experience Legend in its brutal and visceral glory, it is hard to want to play a simple game with stunts like this and not compare the two. This is more lighthearted, fast and easy adventure more aimed at a audience looking for a simple and quick game. We also thought of Savage Worlds when we played, and how that game has the same sort of adventure and simple system feel.

It is faster and easier to learn than D&D 5 or Pathfinder however, and it does get the job done for fantasy roleplaying.

What Would Hurt This?

For us, what would hurt this becoming a go-to game for us is the lack of character options, spells, and magic items. It is a simple-enough system, but the game feels like a really basic fantasy game that doesn't have a really great depth of options for supporting long term play. As a pick-up-and-play game, it is great and good for groups new to roleplaying and fantasy gaming. It does share some of the 'shallow class options' problems that D&D 5 has, but this is a lot more straightforward that D&D 5, so it feels like a better fit for new gamers or those looking to simplify.

This was a game I wanted to like and had higher hopes for, especially since it will be used for the Blue Rose reboot coming next year. I have a slight bit of remorse, but I am hoping to houserule that away and then convince others the changes are needed. With roleplaying, anything can be fixed, the work comes when you try to convince others that these things need fixing. Some games are more difficult than others to houserule, since there is a lot of 'by the book' play and fandom out there in tabletop gaming. Stunting would be one I house-rule, as we shall see.

Stunted Post-Roll Stunting

I like Legend's take on post roll stunting, but Fantasy Age's implementation leaves something to be desired. Let's begin by describing post-roll stunting.

With post-roll stunting, after you roll if you roll good enough, you get to perform a special stunt based on the roll's result. This is something like do extra damage, push an opponent, stun them, or do some other cool extra special effect.

In Fantasy Age, stunting is done through rolling doubles on any of the dice, and the magnitude is determined by the random result of the "stunt die." You don't really announce your cool stunt before you roll, you announce an attack, roll, and then if the dice come up doubles, you then describe your stunt.

With Legend, it works like this, at least for us. With Legend you start with a base percentage to-hit. You describe your stunt to the referee before you roll, and the referee modifies your chance to-hit. You roll the dice, and your opponent may make a defensive roll. The difference in success level of the roll (success vs. success, success vs. failure, crits vs. failure) determines the power of the stunt. Now, if you are being really cool and swing across the pirate ship on a rope to deliver a kick to the Pirate King, the referee will likely reward you with a +10 or +20% chance to-hit, which will raise the chance to stunt and likely the level of stunting success. If you just succeed normally, no stunt happens, but you still connect and do some damage. Otherwise, it is obvious what happens, and the Pirate King goes flying.

In short, what you do before you roll matters. Players push it and try crazy things to get roleplaying bonuses. Those bonuses matter and increase the chance for something cool to happen.

What you put in increases the chances for cool stuff to happen.

Fantasy Age takes the English out of the stunt attempt, and does not really allow a player to pre-declare a stunt. Sure, you could give the rope-swinging player a +3 to-hit in Fantasy Age, but that does not affect the chance for the stunt to happen, nor does it affect the magnitude. When it happens is random, and what happens is point-bought off a Chinese menu of effects, further slowing play down. With Legend, there is still a list of effects to choose from, but they are simple and what you want to do is usually one or two of the picks from the list. It is a simpler system, and it does not force you to the charts every time you stunt.

In short, roleplaying bonuses do not contribute to post-roll stunting. Stunting happens at random. You are not encouraged to do cool stuff before the roll (only to-hits), and the cool stuff happens at random.

What you put in only increases your success chance, and not the cool things.

The Sample Adventure

We didn't enjoy the sample adventure as much as we would have liked. It was a Hunger Games style sort of 'young adults on an isle of mystery' sort of thing, and it made some balance and motivational missteps that we struggled with. There didn't seem to be a great motivation other than 'sit out the night' and when the fun started, the fight was with a magic creature that couldn't be hit by normal weapons. Guess what most starting characters start with? You got it. There was a stunt (costing 3 stunt points) that allowed you to 'hit' this incorporeal shadow creature, but it took a lore roll (thank you, smart players) to figure out. I don't think an average group would have had an easy time with this, so it came off poorly for us.

There was no real motivation to get out and explore the island, so the NPCs went off like lemmings to explore while the PCs built camp for the night. Trouble happened, they handled it, and a ghost appeared with part two of the mission - kill five other spirits. Five is a lot, especially without magic weapons, but a quick temporary enchant by the ghost solved that in sort of a 'make things easy' way. It wasn't rewarding or really cool, so we have a group now with depleted resources and health going down to take out five other ghosts they really are going to have problems with. Three felt like a good number and would have been a great challenge without wearing out its welcome, but we are now stuck with taking out five ghosts by sun-up or it is the end of the world.

The sample adventure also had a lot of fluff text describing things that we would have never encountered, and lots of little irrelevant detail on the valley that we found a bit on the fluff side. Yes, this sort of detail is good to know if you are planning a campaign here, but the 'walled valley' wasn't interesting enough for us to want to, so we would have rather had more adventure and a little less background trivia.

We also wanted a more classic style of adventure, with some rescue the princess, swing from the chandelier, and smash the orcs stuff going on. You know, a basic game needs a good basic adventure with some meat-and-potatoes fun to it. We also compared this to the Star Wars Beginner Sets' adventures, and would have loved for a tutorial to have been written into the encounters.

Character Sheets Needed

We didn't find the printable character sheets all that useful, and we wanted dedicated places for all the different aspects to a character. This kinda got in the way as we designed characters, and we wanted a sample filled-out character sheet in the book to crib from on what goes where.

Immediately we wanted to make our own character sheets.

Other Bits

There are enough monsters to have fun with, and the equipment selection is good and fits the needs of characters. I wanted more in the way of magic and magic items, and we also wanted some great survival rules. A couple more level-up options would have been cool as well.

There are no paladin options, but you can buy an expansion PDF with these and other builds. My feeling? Make it all fit withing the three class system, and put those options in a basic fantasy style game at the start. There was a chance here to break from the traditional Dragon Age style of game, and it did not feel they went far enough to support some of the non-Dragon Age standards, such as paladins, druids, bards, warlocks, and others. These classes would have complicated the basic three classes in options and rules, but I feel they would have provided a great break from Dragon Age's feeling and catered more to the MMO and D&D crowds.

More to Come, I Hope

Fantasy Age is a fun game and we like it, it just has some v1.0 feeling issues and a lack of options to make this a go-to system for us. I am hoping we get to finish the adventure, perhaps I will level up the characters pretty quickly to keep things going and players coming back. The game needs a worldbook and an expansion to provide some better options, and the stunting needs to be rethought to provide more of an incentive to say what you are going to try first, and then roll. Stunting after the roll feels like an afterthought, and it plays like one too.

I want the players to be pushing me for bonuses, trying silly stunts, and taking chances and rolling the dice to see what happens after the dice are thrown. Getting a stunt when you didn't even want it feels very strange and backwards to us, and that forced to stop play and sift through charts asking, "Well, what can he or she do?"

I like the system though, it is 3d6 and simple. It gets play started quickly. It creates interesting characters. It levels up nicely. It is straightforward and focuses on action and story. It is a strong system, but we feel it has a couple issues that a second version needs to work out. Hopefully by the time Blue Rose rolls around, some of the depth and other sticky issues will be worked on and the game shines as much as it deserves to.

A great simple system, it is just a little sticky and underdeveloped in some areas. I have high hopes for this one, but I want to see more. I also want to see an open license so some of the rough spots could be filled in by the community and others. But overall, a great beer-and-pretzels RPG wthat is simple enough to grasp the basic concepts for quickly, and get you adventuring within 10 minutes of prep. Not bad, and a fun one I look forward to seeing more games from.

D&D 5: Ranger Revamp

It's time to fire 150,000 play-testers, or at least just the group that played rangers (so roughly about 12,500 playtesters by my math). So D&D 5's ranger class is getting a Pathfinder Unchained rogue style class revamp in the upcoming Unearthed Arcana book, according to this article over on the main D&D site. Part of me sits here and wonders how something this basic was missed, I mean, this playtest group was three times as large as Pathfinder's, right? Does nobody play rangers? How did this happen?

I hear the voice of one of my old bosses echoing through my head. If we let something like this slip and ship there would be hell to pay.

But really, when you are in the realm of quality testing, the larger you get the worse your feedback gets. You cannot throw three times the people at a problem and think you are getting a three times better test; it is actually quite the opposite, as smaller groups tend to produce better-thought out designs. There is a point in quality assurance where you have so many voices nothing gets heard, and you spend most of your time sorting through feedback instead of designing and improving. Too many cooks is a real problem in quality assurance and playtesting.

But a D&D 5 ranger revamp? Part of me feels, "and so it begins." Because you know once the UA ranger revamp is done, it will be another class that is seen as the 'problem.' This will continue until my shelf is filled with more D&D 5 books (or web supplement fixes) than Pathfinder, with book after book introducing 'fixes' and then creating more problems with power creep or relative power changes. Until, that is, calls for a simplified and streamlined D&D 6 start being heard.

What about fighters? What about rogues? There are complaints about those as well. We need a new Martial Guide to fix those!

MMOs as Tabletop Games

Stop it. No. Bad game designers. I hate the MMO-ification of pen and paper games, because frankly, MMOs do this better. I log in, all the changes (hate them or not) are auto-downloaded in a patch, and the world goes on. My shelf isn't littered with the mistakes of a version 1.0 game. I bought into Shadowrun 4.0 heavily, and I am hesitant about buying 5.0 because it's fixed now. Get it right the first time, especially if you print a book.

I can sympathize with the game designers, because you can never get things right on the first version. It makes me think that all games should be a PDF exclusive for the first year or two, and then print a book later after all the bugs have been worked out. This may be the answer I would like the best. I could support a model like that, because it feels honest to how game development works nowadays.

Admittedly, Pathfinder has a lot of books, but the base classes went through a couple versions of D&D 3 before they ended up how they are today. Where Pathfinder stumbles is typically in the new classes, those are version 1.0 designs that need fixes, but the basic book's set (except for the rogue, but I know players who like the non-Unchained rogue better) were tested across 15 years of design and feedback and are pretty solid. If I am going to play a game where the D&D power curve has been balanced and perfected, I will play the foil-covered D&D 3.5 books or the basic book of Pathfinder.

Paid Beta Tests

I don't need or want to buy in to another beta test, because my old games work and I own them. There is a point where I stop admiring 'new and shiny' and put more value in 'what works.' You see this 'flight to quality' in cars, computers, tablets, and many other things. Some big new thing will drop on the market. It is cool and all the rage. But, it has problems. They promise in version two they will work those out! If you are an Apple fan you know what I am talking about. So you either live with something that has issues, or go back to a slightly older model that 'just works' the way it was designed. Or you are an 'early adopter' and suffer through a paid beta.

We Can Do Better

But this whole MMO-style class re-balancing is a part of where I think the entire pen-and-paper industry has just went so wrong. We are better than MMOs. We do everything they don't and can't do. We don't need to sit here and worry about class roles, power curves, class balancing, and DPS. It feels asinine, like we could do better than this, and the entire 'story based' and 'shared roleplaying' experience part of our hobby is enslaved to the power gamers and the number crunchers.

I just get this feeling, as game designers we can do better than this. If your game design model is MMO, then don't ship printed books. Make your game subscription based, design characters electronically, and store character sheets in the cloud. Auto-update and fix my designs if you patch. D&D 4 went this way, but they made the mistake of printing books. It is kind of ironic that the printed books will outlive the electronic errata and character designer, but that is how they designed that game. If you are going to follow the MMO model, then you can do better than shipping books that are full of errors and you will errata out of existence later.

Let Storytelling Rule?

Or better yet, don't chase the MMO model at all. Let pen-and-paper games be pen-and-paper games, and stop trying to live up to the fantasy that pen-and-paper roleplaying is just an MMO played on the tabletop. Design games where story comes first, and de-emphasize the entire 'character build' culture. Put the story first, and take the power curve out of the game. Basic Fantasy provides a fantasy gaming experience without a steep power curve, mind you, the curve still exists, but it isn't as dramatic where a dragon has hundreds or thousands of hit points.

It feels like a viscous circle where D&D started the roleplaying ball rolling, videogames copied D&D, and now D&D is copying videogames. It feels like an invisible power curve controls everything behind the scenes and it is constantly being tweaked and refined, with our books being left by the wayside.

It is frustrating. Part of me wishes they would have fixed D&D 4. Another part of me just wishes they would have settled on a cleaned-up but unchanged AD&D 2nd Edition and said "this is the game we love." Why we need to keep reinventing the wheel in terms of fantasy gaming is beyond me.

Savage Worlds: Playtest Report #1

We sat down and played Savage Worlds Deluxe: Explorer's Edition last weekend. This was an interesting game for several reasons, and we wanted to give some first impressions of how things went.

First off, get the PDF copy should you order this. I spent some time with my duplex printer and heavy-duty stapler, and made booklets out of the chapters, and man did play go a lot smoother. Call me strange, but I do not like physical books during play, and I only found myself picking up the book when I needed to reference something in the index. Otherwise, I had a printed booklet for the game rules, character creation, gear, and other chapters that I could reference, toss to a player, and keep open to important pages during play.

Unlike a book, I could have multiple booklets open to different pages at the same time. I could take notes on my printed copies and not care. If they get damaged or torn I don't care, as I can always print another for cheap.

If you play the games and not collect them, go for PDF and print copies. Actually, if you collect them, use PDFs to play and store your book in a plastic bag somewhere. There are some games (Pathfinder, D&D 5) where it is hard to use PDF print copies, due to the lack of availability or the length of what you would have to print, so your mileage may vary. But games I play with people? I am finding my use of D&D/Pathfinder type "library-style" games fading, and my appreciation for compact, PDF style rules makes my life easy and my player's enjoyment of the game much greater.

Polyhedral Dice Lovers' Dream

If you love playing with polyhedral dice, play Savage Worlds instead of D&D style games, where polyhedral dice are really only used for damage. Savage Worlds makes full use of the dice range, and you will be rolling every shape during play. I enjoyed this part of the game's design, and different shapes were flying and being used throughout the session.

D&D games in recent years have been upping the damages, and really making the base set of polyhedral dice irrelevant. D&D 4 was a high water mark with huge damage rolls, but even Pathfinder and D&D 5 are on the higher side of damages and hit points when compared to something like Labyrinth Lord or Basic Fantasy. When your character or the monster you fight only has 6 hp, a d4 to d8 difference in weapon damage matters a lot. When a fighter has 20-30 hp to start (D&D 4) or even 10-20 hp (D&D 5), die choice matters less than fixed attribute modifiers do.

But yes, this game makes good use of all the shapes, and it is nice to see that for a change. The d20 is used for charts as a randomizer, and d100 isn't really used much at all (so you can do without the 00-90 "tens" die).

One possible issue is that high ability scores are still a bit random. Even with a d12 in an ability or skill, you can still quite often roll below a 4 with consistent regularity. The game does feel a bit slippery on rolls at times, at least in our experience. Since a d12 is the highest die in the game, there is a cap on how powerful characters and monsters can become. It is very much a human-centered game in terms of power and ability, but given its focus, that doesn't seem to be a problem.

Organization

The basic game of Savage Worlds is poorly organized. It took us a while to get proficient with the system, and we were wrestling with basic concepts all the way to the end of our first session. The Index helps in cases like this, but too many rules felt hidden all over the place, especially in skill descriptions. The system feels a little like a game that has been out a while, with all sorts of special cases cleared up and patches in random places to cover special cases.

That said, when we did understand what was going on, the rules system worked fairly well. We were able to make judgments on what roll needed to be made for what action, combat went quickly, and the system worked as we felt it should. It is a great pulp-action system for quick play, one-offs, playing "Pick a Movie or TV Show: The RPG" and groups more interested in playing a fast and fun game. It does what it does very well, and the generic quality to it reminds me of the old d6 System games where you could just pick a setting, roll characters, and play.

Skills and Attributes

The basic attribute die for an attribute NOT being used for an unskilled check threw us. No matter what your agility is, if you are unskilled, your chance of success is only d4-2 (exploding dice and also that wild die applies). You could have a d12 agility and try to throw something, and your chance of success is only d4-2.

This also led to a situation like this when determining if a particular roll was a skill check or an ability check:

1. FOR (1 to MAX_SKILLS) DO:
1. IF (skill[x] COVERS action attempted) THEN:
1. ROLL SKILL CHECK (unskilled or skilled)
2. RETURN result
2. //NOTE: no skill applies!
3. ROLL ATTRIBUTE CHECK (action attempted)
4. RETURN result

I hope you can read code, but that procedure basically is iterating through the entire skill list in the game each time a test comes up, and determining if a skill would cover the action. If no skill covers it, then the test falls out and is covered by an attribute roll. This throws you a little, especially when it comes to acrobatics (not covered, ability roll), or climbing or swimming (covered, skill roll). Most all social interactions are skill rolls, so base spirit rolls are very rare (except for resisting fear, removing shaken results, or internal willpower tests). Smarts tests are common with common knowledge rolls. Vigor rolls are also semi-common with health and resistance rolls.

This makes skills like Notice, Persuade, Streetwise, and Stealth must-buy skills, since they are very common to see in play. Notice is especially powerful, because this is one of those "gateway" abilities that measures you character's ability to "see " the world. Fighting and Shooting are also other must-buys skills if your group is doing any sort of combat.

The social skills are interesting since Streetwise is used to get information from NPCs, Persuade is used to convince NPCs, Intimidate is used to coerce NPCs, and Taunt is used to get NPCs into disadvantageous situations. Charisma is very powerful, and our 'charmer' PCs greased the skids for any type of social interaction with NPCs. If you referee this game, make sure to apply negative interaction modifiers when NPCs are hostile, and don't be afraid to load these up to make charming your way out of everything a too easy option.

Exploding dice did make the game "critty" for us, as some players have reported. DarkgarX thought the d4 was especially critty, as it had a 1 in 4 chance of being rolled again and again. We did have a couple d4 chain explosions in our game, which raised a couple eyebrows on the 'lowly' d4 die when used for skill rolls. He would love me to write a computer program to explore the exploding d4 die and the effects on statistical probability versus d6/d6, but I told him I have better things to do. I would love to know myself, but it would take a while to test and collect data.

The Wild Die

PCs and important characters throw a d6 "wild die" in addition to their normal skill and attribute dice, and the highest of the two are used. Both are modified and can explode, but the highest of the  two final totals are used. We always used a different color 'pipped' die for the wild die, and normal numeric dice for skills and attributes to keep what die was what clear, because sometimes the rules would tell you a "1" result on the skill die was important for some actions - so we needed to keep things clear.

DarkgarX did not like the wild die mechanic as much as I did, saying he felt it was 'player protection' for lower skill levels, and made the d4 skill level matter less. I felt there is actually a bell curve out here that matters more and there is a difference between a d4/d6 roll versus a d6/d6 roll. I liked the wild die mechanic, and I felt it gave the game a heroic feel instead of a straight one-die system for rolling where a straight 'heroic' +2 to +3 modifier would be applied.

Cards Needed!

One note, you will need a deck of cards for this game for initiative. We felt the game did not go far enough in it integration of cards into the systems of the game, as there are some systems that use the cards well (chases) and others where they could be used more (social interaction and conflict).

The game is also soft on using the optional 'action cards' product for narrative events, as these are mentioned at several parts of the rules, yet are not really strongly supported.

We played the game as-is with the normal initiative cards, but we saw an opportunity to enhance narrative events through their use, so we created a system where these cards could be used during play to control the timing of roleplaying action and also add some fun randomness to story progression and random events. The system worked extremely well, and we would love to publish this for other groups to play with this and other games someday.

Damage and Combat

The damage and wounding system actually worked quite well for us. The game has a 'first hit' shaken result that is like a stun (that turns into wounds if you get stacking shaken results), and this worked well enough to simulate all sorts of battles. I was worried that having that 'first free hit' would be unrealistic, but it turned out to be realistic from a movie and TV-show simulation sort of feeling. It worked well, and combat overall was balanced and enjoyable.

The exploding dice, where you roll the highest number and your roll again and add the total up, no matter how high you go, made combat critty. We had a single stick of TNT vaporize an entire group of enemies with an exploding 27 damage total roll off a 3d6 roll. While yes, this could happen, those players who prefer a more simulation and structured approach to damage and effects may be shocked at some of the roll and damage outputs in this game. To me, it is a crit, and fate and the show's writers hated that group of bad guys and wanted the scene over with, so one stick did them all in with a single fait accompli.

You have to accept the "will of the crazy invisible pulp writer" when dealing with the dice in this game. Sometimes things will go really crazy, but really, pulp writers of the time were known to exaggerate and write in silly and unrealistic results, so let it be and live and let live with the crazy dice results and have fun. That's just me though, and that is just this game - if you want something more simulation-style and realistic, please play another game. It's important to understand what you expect in a game versus what a game delivers when you review and play it. Sometimes a game doesn't deliver what you prefer, but that doesn't make the game any less fun or valid for people that do like that style of play.

How It Plays

The game is a pretty standard 'rules light' system. Compared to Mongoose's Legend, this is a more 'pick up and play' system geared towards pulp and movie style adventures. Legend is a Runequest-y style system more for fans of medieval combat simulators, and not really a generic game. From the book, the game does a good job of providing the framework of a night's fun.

We found the sample adventures a bit on the simple side; at two printed pages, all they could do is lay out a couple combat encounters and background detail, so a lot had to me made up. With our hand-crafted adventure and situation cards, the system played a lot better, and filled in some of the missing details quite nicely.

I can see why people like this, it does a good job at being a simple 'anything' RPG. You could play in a standard D&D game world and reasonably simulate mages, fighters, thieves, and clerics and just hand wave the rest. It makes me think that the D&D tropes are just some part of a big circus tent of 'rules and spells and content you must accept' that you are forced to enjoy a high fantasy game. Here, you don't need any of that, and the Savage Worlds system just keeps happily tossing the polyhedral dice around and having fun like those other games don't exist.

I feel the pulp nature is what does this. Plenty of games try to be pulp adventure, but many just say they are and don't live up to the ideals. You could play a pulp adventure with Pathfinder, and in fact, a lot of the new classes and source material for Pathfinder are pulp-inspired, but it isn't the same thing. It's pulp adventure through the d20 AC/hit points/classes glasses of 3.5 D&D, and it is not rules light, and you are still playing lip service to pulp while worrying about the same-old attack bonus and CR d20 D&D magic and hit dice sort of thing. It is the same feeling of playing Steampunk with D&D. It's still D&D.

With a game system that is more malleable and setting-neutral, you don't have D&D or Pathfinder's character builds, Golarion, Faerun, or anything else hanging over your head. Yes, there is that whole thing "you don't have to learn a new system" thing but there is also that thing "the new system really ain't that hard to learn and it fits the feeling better" thing. In the past, D&D simulated generic high fantasy roleplaying. Today?

I feel D&D more simulates D&D, as Pathfinder is just starting to simulate the world of Pathfinder.

But with Savage Worlds, the game is designed to fit a pulp-action feeling. Now this feeling crosses genres and stories. You can find pulp-action in fantasy settings as well as you can Indiana Jones or Star Wars. Jurassic Park. The Road Warrior. Movies and television. You can find pulp-action everywhere, and a game devoted to a universal genre is a fascinating concept with a wide appeal. It does such a good job at doing everything (more so than say GURPS) because it is simulating a feeling rather than a specific genre.

Support

Savage Worlds is a widely supported system, with many different worlds to play in, along with a remarkable amount of third-party support at places like RPG Now. It is nice to see a company support third-party development, and the game's publisher, Pinnacle, does a good job at keeping quality high while keeping the doors open for people to add options and worlds to the game. This feels like the D&D of the early 00's in terms of support and the worlds available to play, and that is a good thing.

Our Experience

The game has its quirks, but it is a good system. We played through the first two adventures with our cast of characters pulled from Scooby Doo, and things worked well. The investigations worked nicely, the narrative clicked, and players were able to contribute and take part in different parts of the adventure. Exploding dice rolls took out enemies with surprising regularity in both of these scenarios, and since our group wasn't as combat focused they had trouble with the combat encounters.

DarkgarX hated the constant d4 rolling, as having to pick those things up every turn got to be a pain. I swear the game industry needs to do more to redesign that particular platonic solid for ease of use, as the d4 is the Windows 8 of roleplaying.

The third scenario where the characters had to check out an abandoned spaceship never got off the ground for us, and that one did not click with our group. Yes, this is sort of an Alien and horror inspired design, but in the spirit of blasting space bugs, give me my laser pistols and cool sci-fi weapons and let my players blow off some steam. We did an spooky investigation in the first scenario, a survival game in the second, and my group was ready for a bit more action.

It is also a game good for beginners and new players, as it gets you up and running and it doesn't have a deep system complexity. There is such a thing as good system complexity versus bad, of course. With Mongoose's Legend, the complexity is rewarding to players that dive in, and we found ourselves ranking that game higher than this one in terms of how the game rewards you in terms of special rules and character advancement. This was a great 'pick up and play' system, while Legend was a great system for those who wanted to shine and take it to the bad guys at higher levels of play.

Would we keep playing this after the playtest? For one-off games, I don't see why not. I sense a hesitance from some of my players, as they are a more experienced group and appreciate a deeper system complexity that rewards progression and complexity of combat and tactics. As a universal 'house system?' Probably not for us. This is simple and no-fuss enough to do the job for many, and it works well, so many groups would probably need little else than the starting book.

I enjoyed this game, and I liked its simplicity and unified mechanics. It did everything I threw at it well, despite some bad choices by characters (in character design) for the adventures we had - they were able to contribute and survive. Not every player wants such a simple game, so your experience may vary. To me, I could enjoy playing this on a regular basis with friends, as it gamemasters well and it is expressive enough for worlds of adventure.

Missing that High-Level Smell?

George and I had a fun discussion this morning about the 'power level' of PCs in different games, especially as they level. Some games rocket the PCs into 'The Avengers' like superpowers, such as Exalted, many superhero games, and also MMOs like World of Warcraft. Many other games take things more slowly, and never really end up with more than stacked incremental buffs on multi-attacks (D&D3), where a +5 sword is as good as it gets. In WoW, characters typically start with 30-100 hit points, and end up with 100,000+ by the end of their career - with weapons and armor to match.

D&D4 takes it differently, with power level (relative to challenges) capping out about level 10, and then a lower advancement curve on up to 30 (with monster power creeping ahead of the characters steadily). There are some serious play testing and balance problems with D&D4 post level 10, with stun combos and other tactics making blowing out monsters easier than it should be. Some of this was rectified in D&D Essentials, but really too little too late for many of the groups we played with.

It's important for the players to feel powerful, but on the other hand, it is important for them to feel challenged. The system needs to supply the fantasy-fulfillment of that power curve, without totally blowing up and turning into a numbers game, aka Zynga's Mafia Wars (or yes, even WoW), where the numbers, attack values, and AP values don't mean anything after a while. If the game plays the same at level X as it did at level 1, with the same balance and feel, you have a game designed on a spreadsheet, with no real change in character power.

The key is changing how the game is played every so often, and letting players get better at the new set of rules and challenges at these change-points. The game should change every so often, and players will have to get better at these new systems, adapt, equip, and excel. Games need to build in this play-style progression and change in order to keep interesting and make the high levels feel truly different than the low levels.

Delta Breaks Down, and the Rebuild

More play-testing reports today from Project Delta, and we hit the game pretty hard last night. We nicknamed our play-test exploiter group 'The Gank Squad' and they really dug into breaking rules. We had an exploit with a reaction-charge power that allowed one player to activate, and zig-zag zip around the map attacking enemy after enemy. It was perfectly legal, and supremely horrible to watch. We ended up putting triggering conditions on the reaction powers to limit when they could activate, and that helped a lot. Now the power allows a charge on enemy move, and this brought the power back to its intended use, and also eliminated the exploit.

We also had a situation come up with figures subject to fear that gave us a heated argument, and made me have to time-out and walk around the room to thiunk about it. We had a mechanic where feared figures were controlled by the referee during a special phase, and by design, when a figure 'activates' (by the GM) special activation-only resources for the figure reset. I said they should, since the referee is 'activating' the figure during the GM phase to move it under the fear effect, George said it was an exploit since this would essentially reset resources for the figure after fear broke.

We came to a compromise moving the figure activation out of the GM phase, and a side must check for fear break and move their feared figures first, without formally activating them. I got what I wanted was to not break the resource reset on activation rule, the last thing I wanted to have happen is have special cases for activation: where some resources don't reset, and in other cases they do. The
'sanctity of activation' resource resets were kept, and George got his 'feared figures do not gain a benefit' ruling, so it all worked out.

We had another situation where a side could basically shut down the other side's turn with the use of sleep or stun powers, given careful resource management by your team. We are modifying the activation rules to account for this, and there is still some heavy thinking going on here. General challenge is being addressed too, if you are skilled enough, it is easy to blow-out the other side. While masterful and a hoot to watch; it is not fun in the long-term, and we need to have more balanced fights to keep the game exciting and interesting.

Play-testing is hard, and having professional experience as a QA person under your belt helps too. Play-testing should not be fun or pleasant; you are exploiting, breaking, twisting the intent, finding cheats, arguing hard for obvious loopholes, and generally trying your best to be an ass in regards to the rules. You then have to be able to remove your feelings from the process, and then step back, take notes, and be objective despite having just fought tooth-and-mail with each other. The process is hard and sometimes exhausting, but it really produces superior, battle-tested, and well-thought-out rules.