Has anyone thought of combining PbtA with Savage World? I run Savage World for a few years and while I like the system, I didn’t find it all that fast and furious that I hoped. Now I’m very excited about PbtA and how it runs, but I really like a lot of the Savage settings there exists. Trying to avoid excessive amount of work converting settings into PbtA, I’m trying to think if there’s a simple way to use Savage stuff in a PbtA game (eg. Simple World). So, if you’d like to run a Pirates of the Spanish Main -game, you could look at the archetypes, select a few edges and convert them to work with PbtA rules (perhaps on the fly).
Any thoughts?
I am not sure I know how to answer this (especially having only read, not played, Savage Worlds games), but I can at least share what it’s like to make lightweight PbtA hacks for home use inspired by other games.
I have made personal PbtA hacks of a bunch of different settings for my own group’s use. They’re mostly in the vein of World of Dungeons – a page to a few pages long, just explaining the dice mechanics, with short lists of equipment and special abilities grouped by class/specialty. I tend to replace the damage/harm amounts with the numbers used in Urban Shadows and Monster of the Week so you get very small, fixed numbers that don’t go up over time (e.g., PCs with 5-6 health, weapons that tend to do 2-4 harm).
Every time I do that, I end up putting more work into it than I expect to, mostly when it comes to make special abilities. I always think to myself, “I’ll just have them look at some other game book, and then convert the special abilities on the fly,” and then I realize that there are so few mechanics to differentiate different abilities that there’s not much sense in showing them an entire book of special powers to choose from. (Note that if you’re converting from a game where Edges/abilities/perks/whatever actually have important distinctions in numerical value, like a +1 versus a +2 or a d6 versus a d8, you’ll probably lose that in translation, with mechanical bonuses being collapsed so much on the 2d6 scale.) So, I mostly just end up making really short lists of abilities.
I am really curious how other people do this so I can steal their secrets.
I think you just tell your players which setting you’re going to be playing in, and then you do it. There can be a lot of player input but if you all agree to play in setting X, then all their input will match and it will be cool. No problem.
So the thing to remember is that Apocalypse World and Savage Worlds are almost entirely opposite in their approach to game design. SW tries to cover every setting with a flexible and generic set of rules. By contrast, AW rules are remarkably specific to genre and setting. For example, “Go Aggro” isn’t just the move for attacking, it’s the move for attacking in a violent and apocalyptic world that says a lot about the role of violence in the setting. It’s very different from “directly engage a foe” in Masks, because that move is all about what violence means in a dramatically charged world of teenaged superheroes. And that in turn is different than “Open Fire” which is all about the role of violence in a Guy-Richiesque world of small-time criminals.
I think it’s basically a mistake to say “is there a Savage Worlds hack of Pbta?” because of that. Instead, pick a specific SW setting you’re excited about and look for a game that can do that. For example, I think core Apocalypse world can do Deadlands pretty well, while Monster of the Week is good if you want to play Rippers. I’m not especially aware of a swashbuckling hack, so I think you might have a harder time adapting Pirates of the Spanish Main.
Apocalypse World rules are that specific, sure, but the OP started from Simple World (buriedwithoutceremony.com – Simple World | Buried Without Ceremony). I guess there’s an argument to be made that the heart of PbtA games is actually in their genre-specific moves, but I think there’s still something valuable about even just taking the concepts of complications built into dice results, agenda/principles, and MC/GM moves. (See also John Harper’s World of Dungeons, which just saw a new “Turbo” version: https://www.patreon.com/bePatron?u=53415&rid=39675&patAmt=1&redirect_uri=/posts/breakers-world-6842364)
Going with 2d6+stat does mess with the math of Savage Worlds, so I wonder if you can get a similar effect by using its usual dice by interpreting then differently. Like, instead of success/failure with a target of 4, say that it’s a partial success when within 4-6, and a full success when above. Or, its a full success if you have 2 dice rolled both succeed, but partial if only one succeeds. Not sure how many edges or other abilities rely on “defense rolls” that you won’t really get to use in a system where opponents don’t roll for themselves, though. (This is what I meant when I said this part always takes me longer than I expect. There’s always some exception I forget at first…)
Thanks for your comments, this is really fascinating! Jason Tocci, I know your pain of getting carried away from simple plans… I’d like to see the hacks you’ve made if you care to share them! That’s a format I’ve been moving towards.
Savage Worlds is made generally for pulpy, cinematic play, something I like quite much. There’s several optional setting rules in the core book order to tweak the setting, and most settings use one or few of them. In addition, settings have rules and/or descriptions to features that are important part of the setting. And all settings have their share of edges, which I guess are pretty much my biggest interest here – they can be used as basis to allow making characters with special abilities fitting to the setting.
In PbtA, Player Moves are important, but I think they are critical only in some points where you want to have focus. In combat, they actually feel to be breaking gm rules (hard moves vs. a PC on partial or even 10+!), and therefore need to be formed into moves. If you want players to have more control, you need to be more specific for them. For GM moves, I think even a list of things that can happen can help a long way. I think the dice system is excellent for pulpy/cinematic play. Partial successes and failures (And GM moves!) lead into juicy situations that fill Adventure movies like Pirates of the Caribbean, Indiana Jones, Star Wars etc. Maybe this is even better approach for pulpy action?
I don’t think being accurate with bonuses is important if trying to convert Savage edges, eg. my idea of First Strike would be “If an opponent moves to melee with you and you eliminate him, the opponent can’t hit you with a melee attack” (GM must create some other complication). More important is to go with the spirit.
You might get interesting results using Savage dice, but it isn’t what I have on my mind. I like how fast and simple 2d6 is.
What I might want to do is making a ‘Simple World’ of my own, taking parts from here and there to make up the core. AW damage doesn’t feel very cinematic/pulpy; I like Uncharted World’s version, perhaps something could be taken from Savage Worlds or maybe The One Ring (what I’d like to run with PbtA too) damage system sounds interesting too – you get only endurance damage until you really get hit hard, but then it’s bad.
Antti Lusila: Here are a couple hacks I made to play RPGs based on video games my friends and I enjoy. (I am still working on putting together edited versions of these based on the stuff that didn’t work in playtesting.)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7nAXUqkUHp0eHlET3FyS0VDT0k/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7nAXUqkUHp0eENKZkdJQzY1LWM/view?usp=sharing
And here’s a sample from a hack of In Nomine in which I tried and failed to rethink the dice system so I could keep 3d6 from the original game without adding all the dice together. Ah well. Back to the drawing board.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7nAXUqkUHp0MUk2RFNHc1pHRXc/view?usp=sharing
I need to take time to read them with thought, but I like the format of those 🙂 I played in a InNomine campaign once, it could be quite fun with PbtA! I don’t know if it would be an issue to keep the same principle with the dice?
Antti Lusila: I will definitely hijack your thread talking about PbtA hacking approaches for In Nomine if I am not careful, so for now I’ll just say: additional a third die to the mix does not improve “2d6+stat,” but we still want to be able to roll a 666. Still figuring that one out. 😉
Jason, you Fallout hack is masterful. I love it. Same goes for Mass Effect, but I could care less about that game. These are brilliant things to bring to a con or something. I would encourage you to post them somewhere as a pay what you want product. They’re quite good.
Gregory Daily: Aw, thanks, but I’m definitely giving away for free anything based on somebody else’s IP. 😉