New setting for the Savage Worlds system ...

[wotmaniac]

... is now in publication. It's called Temporal Probability Agency (or "TPA" for short).
Some of my players are the ones who designed/published it; and if the playtests were anything to go by, then this really is a blast.

Just thought I'd share. Thanks.

edit:
For more reading, see the Pinnacle Peak forums.
(though, to be fair, the Apathy site is infinitely more informative)

[Username17]

Number one question: why the fuck would you use Savage Worlds for this? Or for anything?

-Username17

[wotmaniac]

Number one question: why the fuck would you use Savage Worlds for this? Or for anything?

-Username17

Why not?
Well, it's a pretty simple system; and the TPA design philosophy fits the motto of "fast, furious, and fun" -- which is exactly how TPA plays.

Just curious -- what, pray tell, is the problem with Savage Worlds? What other systems would you have recommended?

[Username17]

Savage Worlds has the problem where it is a shitty clunky system that doesn't do anything well and can't even be fucked to have underlying math resilient enough to make sure that being better at a task makes you more likely to succeed rather than less in all cases. Savage Worlds can eat my entire asshole. This is the 21st century and you are not allowed to be taken seriously if your random number generator has epicycles in it.

The underlying concept seems like a natural for FATE. Goals are abstract, even surrealistic, and you've been sent by a fucking probability generating super computer that has determined that sending you to perform a task will set in a rube goldberg series of implausible events that should lead to that goal being realized. In short: there is a fucking in-game justification for the collection and expenditure of Fate points in their fucking back story. I mean, you could do this in Feng Shui, Mouseguard, or TFOS, (or any other rules-lite story-driven game system) but the core setting conceit is essentially that you have and spend FATE points to make weird coincidences happen that the player characters were not necessarily expecting.

-Username17

[sabs]

Burning Wheel, and Dresden Files would also work pretty well.

They're both Fate derivatives.

[wotmaniac]

well, hell ... I didn't design the thing; I just participated in some of the later playtesting. By time that came around, it would have been way too late to change systems.

can't even be fucked to have underlying math resilient enough to make sure that being better at a task makes you more likely to succeed rather than less in all cases.

you'll have to explain this; I'm just not seeing it. don't get me wrong -- I understand the concept, I just don't see how you're applying to Savage Worlds.

to be honest, I'm not even sure if the guys at Apathy are familiar with FATE. I think it was an issue of "hey, this Savage Worlds thing is pretty cool; what can we do with it?" (though, this has prompted me to want to talk to Paul about it in more detail this weekend).

Anyway, it's a bit too late for all that now.
Besides, I'm not even sure what you mean about clunky -- I barely even noticed the system while we were playing it.
But, as with most things, YMMV.

[Sashi]

In Savage Worlds, whenever the difficulty is the max result on your die, you're better off rolling the next smaller die because of the exploding dice.

If the difficulty is 8, a d8 will equal/beat it one time in 8. A d6 will equal/beat it one time in 6.72.

[wotmaniac]

ah, oh yeah.

[wotmaniac]

to be honest, I'm not even sure if the guys at Apathy are familiar with FATE. I think it was an issue of "hey, this Savage Worlds thing is pretty cool; what can we do with it?" (though, this has prompted me to want to talk to Paul about it in more detail this weekend).

okay, talked to Paul about this, and this is what I got:
1) never heard of FATE
2) Jeff really likes Savage Worlds
3) they were able to actually get Official Licensing from Pinnacle, as opposed to having to negotiate some OGL
4) Savage Worlds being a product you actually have to pay for, its customers are actually willing to pay for their stuff (and in surprising numbers, as it is turning out)
5) given the above, SW is easy to teach and run. Hence the motto "Print.Pour.Play".

In Savage Worlds, whenever the difficulty is the max result on your die, you're better off rolling the next smaller die because of the exploding dice.

If the difficulty is 8, a d8 will equal/beat it one time in 8. A d6 will equal/beat it one time in 6.72.

1st, just a bit of needless nit-picking of minutia .... 5/6th of 1/6th = 1:7.2, not 1:6.72. but whatever, I get your point.
hmm .... you, et. al., seem to have found the one hiccup in the system. You're right -- if you are regularly imposing enough penalties on yourself to have your target # = skill die +2, then increasing your skill die by 1 size decreases your chance of success. (never mind that the default target is exactly 4)
I guess that means that I will only be increasing my skill die by two steps at a time
I wonder if Pinnacle knows about this?

[Username17]

It's not "the one hiccup in the system" - it's a fucking epicycle in its RNG. A hiccup in the system is something like having unclear difficulties for a task such that doing the same thing is wildly easier or harder under the same MC from one attempt to the next. Savage Worlds has that kind of shit in spades.

The fact is that there are really three ways to get a good probability setup. You can:

• Roll a flat RNG, add a bonus, and check against a TN.
• Roll a set of dice, add them together, add a bonus, and check against a TN.
• Roll a pile of dice of variable size checking for a fixed number on each one and counting hits.

You'll note that "vary the RNG you're using from one task to the next while the TNs also vary" is not on that list, because that is fucking terribad.

Edit: I should really also point out that "if you max out the RNG, roll again and add" is fucking awful and has been given up by every major game. If White Wolf stops doing something because it is a bad system, you shouldn't do it.

-Username17