[Savage Worlds] Sell Me/Unsell Me

Neurosis · Post by **Neurosis** » Tue Aug 30, 2016 6:33 pm

I really want to like Savage Worlds because it's popular, it's quasi-open source, and it's philosophically a lot like HERO System, only without enough crunch to cause brain paralysis in halfwits that can't do maths.

Tell me why you think it's good and/or bad.

angelfromanotherpin · Post by **angelfromanotherpin** » Tue Aug 30, 2016 6:40 pm

FrankTrollman wrote: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.

Neurosis · Post by **Neurosis** » Tue Aug 30, 2016 6:46 pm

Fair enough except that Frank Trollman hates fucking EVERYTHING ALL THE TIME (except Ends of the Matrix, After Sundown, Doubt, Cyberpunk Fantasy Heartbreaker, Robert Derie, being mean, and booze).

Don't get me wrong, it's one of the reason I find reading his musings so entertaining.

***

More importantly, I will Paypal anyone who can explain to me what an "epicycle" is in a way I can understand $10.00 USD. Fair warning: I failed a 101 level Statistics class in college, but mainly because it was at 8AM and I only went to it four times.

Does this "epicycle" bullshit have something to do with "exploding/progressive" dice in Earthdawn and how they don't work?

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Tue Aug 30, 2016 7:20 pm

An epicycle is a smaller circle whose center moves along the circumference of a larger circle.

In the context of Savage Worlds, there are difficulties that are easier with smaller dice than with the larger. A difficulty 6 test is easier with a d4 than a d6, for example. A diff 8 is easier with a d6, a diff10 is easier with a d8, etc. The reason why is because whenever you roll the max value of a die, you reroll it and add, which means your probability curve jumps from X-1 to X+1 (on a dX). This overlap can metaphorically look like an epicycle.

Neurosis · Post by **Neurosis** » Tue Aug 30, 2016 7:53 pm

OHHHHHH....I GET IT NOW.

I see why it's problematic, but it's not a deal breaker for me.

@virgil: PM me your paypal deets if you actually want the $10.00 USD.

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Tue Aug 30, 2016 7:59 pm

Mask_De_H · Post by **Mask_De_H** » Tue Aug 30, 2016 8:19 pm

You forgot Munchausen, Neurosis.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Tue Aug 30, 2016 8:37 pm

Savage Worlds is indie hipster bullshit that only sold at all because the equivalent of the mesozoic extinction event hit the RPG industry killing the giant flesh ripping reptiles and letting the tiny mammals thrive, and the Brilliant Gameologists gushed way too much about it.

I don't have any actual insight into the game system itself.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Tue Aug 30, 2016 8:38 pm

Savage Worlds doesn't do one good thing. Combat is grindy and swingy. Resolution isn't fast. The difference between skilled characters and unskilled characters isn't a lot and way too often the arrow of competence points the wrong fucking direction.

I don't even really like FATE that much, and I literally can't come up with a single reason to use Savage Worlds over FATE. It's just a worse engine. It's worse on resolution times. It's worse on giving appropriate outcomes. It's worse on letting people get their late 80s "you can play anything you can imagine" funk on. It's just worse.

-Username17

Mask_De_H · Post by **Mask_De_H** » Wed Aug 31, 2016 12:28 am

It looks and works more like D&D and people know D&D, Frank. That's a reason people use it over FATE.

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Wed Aug 31, 2016 6:02 am

So... is RIFTS using Savage Worlds rules an upgrade or downgrade to RIFTS using RIFTS rules

pragma · Post by **pragma** » Wed Aug 31, 2016 7:00 am

I gave Savage Worlds a reasonably thorough test drive and can corroborate everything Frank has to say. I'd like to add that getting on the edge of someone's RNG really fucks their ability to affect you in combat. Defense 6 vs. Attack d6 lasts forever.

I also want to point out the dreary mess of combat options available in Savage Worlds. https://www.peginc.com/freebies/SWcore/ ... 0Guide.pdf I think some of these are degenerate in goofy ways: Wild Attack maybe.

However, I don't bring up this table because it's mathematically unsound, but because you need a summary table to explain all of your combat options. The game abjectly fails at staying light once your start looking at the details.

erik · Post by **erik** » Wed Aug 31, 2016 9:56 am

OgreBattle wrote:So... is RIFTS using Savage Worlds rules an upgrade or downgrade to RIFTS using RIFTS rules

It is a failure certainly to the extent that you may be tempted to use the rules. Rifts is a clusterfuck but many of the rules are so bad and unclear that you aren't likely to use them. Lots of skills are adjudicated by "oh you have the skill? You pass" since the guidelines are so thin.

This part is a guess but combat is sadly probably better in Rifts for Rifts. I haven't seen how SW deals with mega damage/armor tiers but given their track record I suspect they didn't deal with it well.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Wed Aug 31, 2016 10:21 am

A d4 beats a d12 about 18% of the time when explosions are involved. It's difficult for me to imagine a system that is worse at representing giant robots and leyline walking dragons alongside maverick inventors and shit than Savage Worlds. The disparity in competence that you want just can't fucking exist in that rule set.

-Username17

Orca · Post by **Orca** » Wed Aug 31, 2016 11:27 am

There are vehicles and big creatures in SW which can only be damaged by weapons/spells with the 'heavy weapon' tag. It's a simple yes/no cutoff but it does exist.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Wed Aug 31, 2016 11:53 am

Orca wrote:There are vehicles and big creatures in SW which can only be damaged by weapons/spells with the 'heavy weapon' tag. It's a simple yes/no cutoff but it does exist.

Savage Worlds has set difficulties which grind the game to goddamn halt. The toughness of things is often well off the chart. If you need to roll a 10 on a d10 just to get a hit in, it is going to be a long time of plinking away for no effect before anything happens. That there exist tags that say "actually, just don't even bother trying" is pretty much just a formality.

No, the issue is setting difficulties for nominally powerful characters necessarily involves:

The supposedly power character failing constantly like they were a character in a 3 Stooges short.
and
Nominally weak characters, including characters for whom the task at hand is specifically a weakness outshining them on a regular basis.

If you roll the big die (a d12) and another person rolls the smallest die (d4), then 19% of the time they are going to roll higher than you. A Difficulty of 7 is a fail parade for the d12 50% of the time, but success for smaller dice isn't exactly rare. The d10 succeeds 40% of the time, the d8 25% of the time, the d6 17% of the time and the d4 12.5% of the time.

It fails every way it's possible for an RNG to fail. All the outputs are bad. And embarrassingly bad to boot. You simply can't demonstrate absolute or relative competence in any field. Every character in the game is a clown who fails at their nominal core competencies yet manages to outshine other characters at actions they are supposed to suck at with distressing regularity. The only settings I would even consider doing with Savage Worlds would be Toon or Paranoia. And that only because having a core system that was obviously crap is part of the joke.

-Username17

erik · Post by **erik** » Wed Aug 31, 2016 12:02 pm

What do heavy weapons do to non armors? Some things have hundreds or thousands of Damage Capacity to even take some megadamsge hits. I'm only morbidly curious since it has little impact on the overall picture since to paraphrase Frank, the system is shit at handling proficiency disparities.

And Rifts is all about imbalance.

I learned to hate SW early in its life when I bought the SW Deadlands book and found it worse than original Deadlands.

Rawbeard · Post by **Rawbeard** » Wed Aug 31, 2016 2:25 pm

Ah, Savage Worlds, I remember blowing shit away with one decent Bolt after the entire party did jack fucking shit to it in what felt like forever. It was kinda funny when we noticed combat lasted longer than Shadowrun or D&D. This game really only somewhat works in the "pulp" range of "regular humans with extra ordinary skill".

AVOID AT ALL COST!

momothefiddler · Post by **momothefiddler** » Wed Aug 31, 2016 7:48 pm

FrankTrollman wrote:If you roll the big die (a d12) and another person rolls the smallest die (d4), then 19% of the time they are going to roll higher than you. A Difficulty of 7 is a fail parade for the d12 50% of the time, but success for smaller dice isn't exactly rare. The d10 succeeds 40% of the time, the d8 25% of the time, the d6 17% of the time and the d4 12.5% of the time.

I feel like while the d4 having a higher chance of hitting DC5 than a d6 does is a fundamental problem, the statistics you've outlined above just mean that there's a pretty narrow range of proficiency, which isn't necessarily bad - just a design choice. For comparison, that 19% of the time is the same probability as 7 points on a d20 (an Int 6 char outsmarting an Int 20 char, for instance). And while that's definitely a stupid design decision for D&D, and very possibly for whatever Savage Worlds pitches (which I haven't at all been paying attention to), it's not indefensible in the way that "higher numbers sometimes make you worse than lower numbers" is.

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Wed Aug 31, 2016 9:53 pm

T'be fair, Frank doesn't spare any heat when I write stupid shit. Just sayin'.

Dogbert · Post by **Dogbert** » Thu Sep 01, 2016 3:07 am

1) It has jackshit to do with HERO and everything to do with d20.

2) It's written with the kind demagogy Paizo excelled at during PF's launch.

3) It appropriates d20 Star Wars' Force Point system, which is rather sad given how by the time Savage Worlds came about, we already had both FATE and M&M providing examples of what actual metagame currency looks like.

It's basically a tardtrad game that wants to pass itself for "avant garde," kind of like Numenera. Both written with the same kind of unintentional duplicity because their respective authors spent so long inside d&d's bubble that they're no longer able to produce anything different.

Neurosis · Post by **Neurosis** » Thu Sep 01, 2016 4:01 am

First thing's first: I literally actually just paid virgil $20.00 USD for helping/making me understand epicycles.

***That Said***

In spite of the awe-inspiring hate pile that this thread has turned into, I think I'll give SW a shot and see how it thinks, because I really need a go-to System for Shadowrun that is not SR4 or SR5, and I personally hate FATE and anything rules-liter than FATE with every fucking fiber of my being.

I know, I know, trying things and then forming my own opinions, boo, hiss.

: P

Omegonthesane · Post by **Omegonthesane** » Thu Sep 01, 2016 7:44 am

What's wrong with SR4?

...Specifically, what is sufficiently wrong with SR4 that throwing out the bathwater, baby, and bathtub and starting all over again would be quicker than fixing it?

Blade · Post by **Blade** » Thu Sep 01, 2016 8:54 am

@Neurosis: If you're interested, I've made a home system for Shadowrun. It aims at removing what I consider to be cumbersome and useless, focusing on what's important, speeding up the game while not losing too much granularity and options. It doesn't try to be "lite" it tries to be lean.

It's also meant for Shadowrun, not a generic system, so it's based on mechanics that serve the kind of stories you'll want to tell in Shadowrun, and it is also meant to be adaptable to the kind of Shadowrun you want (from technothriller to 80s cyberpunk to post-cyberpunk).

Neurosis · Post by **Neurosis** » Thu Sep 01, 2016 8:20 pm

Omegonthesane wrote:What's wrong with SR4?

...Specifically, what is sufficiently wrong with SR4 that throwing out the bathwater, baby, and bathtub and starting all over again would be quicker than fixing it?

The short answer is:

SR4 has given me PSTD.

I was on the design team for SR5. I tried so hard, fought so hard, to make it into an actual good game, into SR4+. I lost the fight, and JMH et al made it into the trash fire that is SR5.

Hence...thinking about SR4 literally triggers me, because I tried SO HARD to evolve it, and it then DEVOLVED so hard.

It's hard to explain. Imagine that SR4 was my Jedi apprentice that I was trying to groom to be even more powerful than his master...then instead he lost all his powers and became a child rapist (SR5). Even thinking about SR4 is painful for me. Playing it is right out.

Also the matrix rules are whack and I don't like Ends.