Necessary Evil: Third Time's the Charm - Session 2: Why is it Always the Sewers?

 

Our Villains:

• MEGASTRIKE - Strong, radioactive Russian mobster brick. Played by Paladin Steve. A returning character from the prior attempts at this campaign.
• LEGION - Demonic leader of a criminal organization. Face with a sidekick and a lot of resources. Played by Grognard Mike.
• NIGHT BLADE - Sword-for-hire, a mix of melee offense and melee defense. Played by Shootist Will, another returning character.
• NIGHT TERROR - Intangible assassin, stealthy with a side order of ranged combat capability. Played by Variable Dave and yet another returning character.
• Y2K BUG - AI in a stolen robot body. Tech-guy and mainly good at ranged combat, not terribly strong or tough - for now. Played by Battletech Terry.
• THE MIGHTY XYZZIFAX -  Wizard who traveled here from another world. Ranged combatant, heavy defense, and a lot of flexibility. Played by Blaster - a character returning from a completely different game!
• PHANTOM BLADE - Yet another sword-guy who eventually broke out of the same prison camp and followed them to the warehouse. Whole bunch of melee offense, not a ton of defense - but he can self-heal. Played by Invisible Paddy.

We begin with MegaStrike stealing a house. Half-jokingly. He's not really strong enough to carry a house - at least not very far. He's the only one staying in the warehouse at the moment as everyone else relocated to Legion's much cushier safehouse. He decides a mostly empty place is not good and so starts stealing furniture and decor (and possibly a house) to brighten the place up. 

At the safehouse Legion is busy analyzing and judging the other escapees and reaching out to various contacts to figure out how badly damaged her organization is after she was arrested. Night Blade is doing katas or some other sword guy thing, Bug is checking out the internet connections, Night Mist is calling some contacts as well while Xyzzifax starts trying to figure out how this world works.

Dr. Destruction soon calls with a "request" - he needs the team to grab that heavy box in the warehouse (guess who will be carrying that) and head down into the sewers to find another villain's secret lair and plug it in to a power source there. Looking for a suitable entrance - the box won't fit through a regular manhole - they believe one can be found in Miner's Hill a neighborhood a short distance away. The group makes some preparations, gathers again at the warehouse, appreciated the new decor, and heads out. 

Getting into the sewers is a simple enough task but finding a secret entrance to a villain's lair is not and so it takes a couple of hours of sloshing around to find a likely passage and it happens to be full of G'roks! These are an alien creature, sort of a gator-hound monster, that the V'Sori dumped into the sewers recently to thin out the resistance that keeps using the sewers to move around. 

These things are fairly tough and Phantom Blade, leading the attack, is chomped-on pretty well by several of the beasts. Then the strange wizard demonstrates the power of fireball in any universe and blows most of them away with a massive detonation. Phantom Blade uses his mystical meditation powers to recover from his brief experience as a chew-toy and the party begins examining the dead-end passage.

They soon discover that a) there is a concealed door here and b) they have been followed for some time by members of the Underground. There is a brief conversation in person between the resistance members and the villains and via radio with their leaders but it all works out and they then travel through a maze of caverns and tunnels that are not part of the sewer to make their way to an Undergrounder outpost. 

The leader they meet is ... Valerie Ramirez, the woman they helped bring out from the prison. Nightmist had been thinking they might have a bit of a thing before she left that day so he especially is thrilled to reconnect with her. After some discussion about what they are trying to accomplish Valerie agrees to have her people guide them to Terron's old base. Yes, they do know where it is but no, they are not going to enter it - they lost people when they found it and she's not interested in losing more. 

Two of the Undergrounders lead the party through a maze of yet more tunnels to a passage that ramps up into a lighted room. The guides will go no further so it's time for the villains to take the lead. Phantom Blade leaps on up, Legion (and bodyguard) fly up, as do Megastrike and Bug. The space is limited to a single room and not a huge one so they spot the power generator right away. They also spot the mean-looking robots spaced around the room, plugged into the walls - especially when their eyes light up and they begin moving towards the group!

The visual on these is "metallic robot with swords instead of hands so I'm going with some Necrons here.

Phantom Blade once again takes a serious beating (4 wounds!) and the bodyguard is injured as well but the villains are no pushovers themselves and while it does take more time than the g'rok fight - and they suffer more injuries - the villains do eventually wreck Terron's robot guardians with magic, swords, and guns. MegaStrike manages to do little during this, missing his swings, and this earns him some grief from the others. PB also takes some grief for both his performance in the fights and his attitude in general and decides to change his name to "Edge Lord" - might as well own it.

After the fight MegaStrike and Y2K Bug connect the device to the generator and call it in to Dr. D who congratulates them on getting it done.   

GM Notes

This was a good run with the players settling into their characters more and more and everyone getting more comfortable with the rules - including me. During the session (for any game) I jot down any rules questions that come up and then look them up before the next session so I knew where our rough spots had been in Session 1. We all know Savage Worlds pretty well but it can still take a session or three before it's instinctive again.

Structure-wise I'm starting off every session with some time for the players to do what they want. It's been an indeterminate number of days since the prior run, what has your character been doing, what are you doing today, is there a project you are working on, etc. I feel it's especially important here because this campaign is very much built as "NPC gives missions and PC's go do them" and I want them to feel like they have options. They are, after all, super-powered individuals of some capability living in a modern high-tech city. Even though it's living under alien occupation they can pursue or investigate ideas or schemes of their own so I'm trying to ensure there is room for it every session. Now some of my players don't care that much about it but some do and I'm hoping they pull the others along. I'd like them to develop enough contacts, rivalries, and familiar locations to make it feel like a living place - we shall see. 

Necessary Evil: Third Time's the Charm - Session 1

 

Our story begins in Star City, U.S.A. in the year 2004. The world has been conquered by alien occupiers for a couple of years now and hope is dwindling. The superheroes were blown away in the surprise attack that announced the V'sori's turn from savior to conqueror. They didn't have much trouble after that. As the bootheel grinds down though, other forces on the planet begin to reach their limit - they can only tolerate so much. So the villains find they have a new nemesis now - not the old ones in capes but the new ones who think they are the rightful rulers of the world, who didn't account for the egos, the megalomania, contrariness, greed, and immense capacity for violence that had been laying dormant for the past two years. Deals were made, old grudges put aside - for now (mostly) - and a new resistance began to rise.

Our Villains:

• MEGASTRIKE - He's big! He's strong! He's ... radioactive! The nuclear-powered enforcer for the Russian Mob has been stuck in Star City since the invasion when he was sent here to teach a lesson to a rival criminal organization. Played by Paladin Steve. A returning character from the prior attempts at this campaign.
• LEGION - She's hot! She's smart! She's well-connected ... she's the deal-making demon! On assignment from Hell and busy tending to her rising criminal organization based in Star City and trying to work things out with rival criminal organizations when the invasion hit she was inconvenienced more than anything else. Played by Grognard Mike.
• NIGHT BLADE - He's from the East! He has a magical spirit-infused sword! He's an "independent contractor"  and while he may not have a heart of gold he does have a code of honor! He's newly arrived in Star City as he was escorting an important shipment into the city that needed to be kept quiet and not interfered with. As it turned out it was not kept quiet and it was interfered with and that led to some personal complications ... Played by Shootist Will and another returning character.
• NIGHT TERROR - He's stealthy! He walks through walls! He's ex-CIA now gone independent contractor as a paid assassin! He moved to Star City after the invasion to get away from the heat he had generated in Europe and because the aliens seemed to take a lighter hand there - starting with not flattening the city. He's looking forward to new opportunities. Played by Variable Dave and yet another returning character.
• Y2K BUG - It's artificial! It's intelligent! It's stole a military grade humanoid combat chassis and downloaded itself into it! Only recently awakened it has some technological abilities and is very tough but is frankly terrible at actually doing most things. I'm sure the hardened criminals around it will totally not take advantage of its lack of experience... Played by Battletech Terry.
• A MYSTERIOUS ROBED, BOUND, AND GAGGED FIGURE UNKNKOWN TO ALL- at least that's how it begins. Played by Blaster.

The session opens with the aforementioned troublemakers restrained and drained on an alien craft. They are being transferred between secure facilities and they know the journey likely ends with a trip off world and death at the hands of alien scientists. Those who are not gagged begin to talk about what got them into this situation. Some of them know each other but do not necessarily like each other and shots are taken as often as possible. With the nullifiers on there's little else they can do ... until ... 

Suddenly the M’buna flies into the air! It flips end over end, sending you tumbling into the other captives. The world is a jumble of color and cursing before you finally come to rest. The M’buna is ripped wide open and you see blood and smoke everywhere. A massive explosion rocks the wreck, killing the Fin guards as they stagger forth. You’re

stunned, trying to gather your senses, but the nullifiers keep you weak and useless.

Then a familiar figure strides through the smoke holding a massive gun. There can be no mistaking the famous form of Earth’s most powerful supervillain — Dr.

Destruction!

“You want to live?” Destruction asks

Everyone says yes to this except the Mysterious Figure who can only nod. They are lifted out of the wreckage of the craft and into a new flying carrier . Dr. D begins to explain his plan. In short he doesn't really care about them but he needs a new Omega cell in the city and their job application for this is to break another villain out of a V'Sori prison nearby. As he shoves them out the rear ramp of the craft our team agrees to the deal and so he detonates their nullifiers and their powers return on the way to the ground - or in this case the roof of the main building. 

Yeah we all know what it is but I'm going with this for a visual on the M'Buna for now

Freed and looking extremely angry the mysterious figure blows a large hole in the roof with a flaming blast and much of the rest of the party drops inside, getting the lay of the land. As the guards rush to the opening, firing along the way - to no effect - the stranger screams "IMBECILES! YOU FACE THE WRATH OF THE MIGHTY XYZZIFAX!" and begins blasting every potentially hostile thing in sight. 

A bit more mission-focused, MegaStrike and Night Terror begin looking for Mindjack, the prisoner they are supposed to rescue. Legion searches for her sidekick Kasha, a particularly violent cat-person from another world. Night Blade and Y2K Bug start dealing with any guards still standing amid Xyzzifax's fiery rampage.

In short order the guards are down, various cell doors are melted, ripped open, or phased through, and both Mindjack and Kasha are found and freed. Another wave of guards, this time in the form of war-spheres, is dispatched as the team prepares to leave. While doing that Night Terror, always with an eye for the ladies, frees a woman named Valerie who seems to be more together than the rest of the prisoners, and Xyz recruits a trio of minions in a fairly similar way to how this team was just recruited. 

Emerging into the courtyard another squad of war spheres goes down and then Dr. Destruction's craft appears overhead and takes the party & their picked-up strays up and away, leaving the other freed prisoners to fend for themselves. The Arch-Villain drops them off in a not-great neighborhood in Southpoint, points to a nearby warehouse, tells them they did better than he was expecting and that he will be in touch, and zooms off into the night sky. 

She's more "business suit" than "tank top" but I just recently played this so she's going to be appearing as Legion a lot.

Still ruffled, the group begins to debate their next move. The Russian and the Demon are not sure about working together (well he's not anyway), others are not keen on taking orders, and many are concerned about the consequences of having been arrested. 

Valerie thanks Night Terror and heads out on her own  - she seems to have a plan. Half the group thinks she's a spy for the aliens and will rat them out but they end up letting her go. Xyzzifax's three newly acquired minions agree to work for him - for now - and stick around

In the end MegaStrike decides to stay in the warehouse while the rest of the crew head off to one of Legion's safe houses. Once there, she goes to another room and brings a nice gun back which she hands to Y2K Bug - "I saw you fight back there - please take it. You'll need it."

GM Notes

Yeah this was fun. Old characters returning was already going to be fun and then Blaster decided to bring in his wizard character from the Temple of Elemental Evil and it just went nuts. He is using the regular superpower, not any kind of amped-up "normal" arcane background option, but the superpowers are probably more on-target for a high level wizard from modern D&D.  The campaign premise is still good, my players were enthused, and we already have intra-group rivalries taking shape. We do have a 7th player but he couldn't make it to the first session. Not super-excited about having this many players in a superhero campaign but he will probably be an intermittent player - we will see. Even six is probably too many but I'm just going to roll with it - there are six of you, you all have superpowers, and you've all played RPG's for years - there will be no whining at this table.  

Next session is later today and I expect it to be a ton of fun too. 

Savage Worlds vs. Mutants & Masterminds and the Importance of Dice

 

I know, but we'll get to it I promise ...

Let's talk about two systems for a minute. I'm prepping to run a Savage Worlds game and I just finished running a short M&M campaign in May. At one point I figured I would still be running M&M for most of this year but given a break point and an off-ramp my players chose to change to a different system. Why might that be?

In general, M&M is a more abstract system than many but Savage Worlds uses a lot of similar concepts so it may be the most similar game to M&M mechanics-wise on the market. Comparison points:

• M&M stats are a bonus to a d20 roll, SW stats are the type of die you roll
• M&M skills are a bonus to a d20 roll, SW skills are the type of die you roll
• M&M has Advantages and Complications that help customize your character. SW has Edges & Hindrances that do the same thing.
• M&M Powers are abstract effects-based abilities personalized by Descriptors - it's not just "ranged damage" it's a "fire blast". Savage Worlds has Powers as well and they are generic effects-based abilities personalized by "Trappings" in the same way.
• In both games Powers can be modified by various bonus effects or reduced effects that can increase or decrease the points cost (talking super powers here for Savage Worlds).
• In M&M points are spent to purchase stats, skills, advantages, and powers. SW has separate pools for each but points are spent on stats, skills, and powers and taking hindrances allow one to add edges. 

As you can see they work in very similar ways. M&M in general can be more complicated and more detailed - SW is more broad strokes - but they are not that far apart in approach. 

Then we get to combat. With M&M one rolls a d20 +/- relevant modifiers to equal or beat a target's defenses. In SW one rolls the relevant skill die (typically Shooting or Fighting). In melee the roll has to equal or beat a target's Parry defense. For ranged attacks one has to beat a fixed number (4) modified by range, speed, light conditions, size, and other possible modifiers or abilities. They are similar but SW treats ranged combat differently from melee to a degree though it ends up being a roughly similar process.

The effects of that hit though ... that's where our paths diverge.

• M&M hits mean the target rolls to resist the incoming damage. That damage is a static number based on the power or weapon used - this is the target number for the defender. The defender rolls a d20 modified by the relevant defense and the degree of success or failure determines how hard they were hit. It is possible, though unlikely, to take out another powerful opponent in one shot if they roll badly enough  and they are hit hard enough. 
• Savage Worlds hits have the attacker roll dice based on the power or weapon used. The total of those dice is then compared to the target's Toughness (plus any armor) and meeting or exceeding that Toughness will impose a Shaken or Wounded status on the target. It is possible, though not likely, to take out a powerful opponent in one shot with any attack or weapon in the game because damage uses exploding dice. Your pistol does 2d6? Roll a "6" and keep on rolling a "6" and you can inflict 5/10/20 wounds in a system where most things will not exceed a 3 wound capacity.

I think this is a basic, visceral difference and one that is not readily apparent just reading the games. Having run and played a lot of RPG sessions over the last 40+ years I can tell you players like rolling big numbers!  Having run a long Deadlands campaign in Savage Worlds in the last few years I can tell you players get very excited when that one damage die just keeps exploding. It's a triumphal moment that everyone can see and it's hard to replicate when your damage system depends on someone rolling low to fail rather than rolling high to succeed and I think that's where M&M loses some people. 

 It's not just in comparison to Savage Worlds. Most RPGs these days have some kind of stat & skill system and have players roll to hit in combat and then roll for damage - and higher is better. This is from D&D (going all the way back) to related offshoots from Runequest to Pathfinder to other approaches like Traveller, Champions/Hero System, GURPS, and various Star Wars games. Even Powered by the Apocalypse games tend to use a fixed damage system where a bigger Harm number hurts more. There are RPG's where both attack and defender roll - one to hit and one to dodge or deflect a hit - with opposed rolls, but the attacker, if successful, tends to be the one rolling for damage. 

M&M is one of the few RPGs where damage is a) the result of a defense roll and b) directly determined by the result of that defense roll and with experience in both approaches over the last few decades I would say it is just less satisfying to most players. With M&M you know that your possible results are 1-20 plus your Power level. A critical hit can make it worse for the target, and of course you can build up that effect level in as many ways as possible before you strike, but it's still the other guy rolling vs. a target number. It's a big deviation from the way RPGs in general work and I think it mutes the excitement people have in M&M combat scenes.

A more specific example:

• Strong Guy in M&M has a +8 Fighting and a +12 Strength. Enemy Robot has Toughness 10 so if hit it rolls a d20 + 10 to beat a 27 target number in M&M 3E. Most likely he will take a bruise and maybe a stun. Maybe some Knockback too. A 27+ means it takes nothing but a 7 or less means it is out of the fight, with various damage conditions popping up in between.
  
  Odds here are not too hard to figure if it matters to you. A critical hit will shift things up a bit but the basics there are a 35% chance to knock out the robot and about a 20% chance to do nothing. 

• In Savage Worlds Enemy Robot might have Toughness 15 while Strong Guy punches for 3d10. a 14 or less total means Guy does nothing, a 15 shakes the 'Bot, a 19 = shaken + a wound, 23 ups it to 2 wounds, and a 27 ups it to 3 wounds and most likely out. 
  
  Odds are trickier to figure in Savage Worlds as a few 6's in there can jump the damage up a lot and a raise on the to-hit roll adds another d6 into the pool for damage so it can snowball quickly. That said multiple dice also makes it a bell curve so it tends to stay in the middle range
  
  
• Then just for fun let's do it in Champions: Strong Guy has a 60 Strength so punches for 12d6 damage - that means you get to roll a fistful of dice and add them up looking for the total (for Stun Damage) and for specific numbers (for Body Damage) figure out some knockback (and see if that did any more damage) then compare those numbers to Robot's Physical Defense and start marking off Stun and Body if you exceeded it. Then you also compare it to it's Con score and see if you Stunned them. It's great! With tons of dice flying around the table and multiple calculations on each roll it feels like every swing that connects is impactful to say the least. Is it faster? No. But sometimes speed is overrated.  
  
  

  

  See?!

Now I love M&M and this is in no way a call for a hit point system to be added to M&M. Savage Worlds , though, does show that a non-hit point system can still embrace a "roll your damage dice" approach . I suspect that if there were ever a radical shake-up with M&M that this would be a good area to consider for a change. I don't know exactly how it would work* and it would take a big rethinking of how defenses work in the game. With 2nd - 3rd - 4th editions really being refinements of a solid framework I would not expect to see anything like this soon - but it's something to think about. 

*First rough idea: Attacker rolls to hit like now and if they do hit then we flip the Toughness roll around from how it works today: attacker rolls Effect level + d20 vs. a target of the opponent's Toughness + something. Yeah, it looks a lot like Savage Worlds, I know - but I know that works and it keeps things fairly similar to the current M&M approach. The main problem is that it means everyone is "rolling a d20 for damage" all the time and I'm not sure that changes it up enough to get people excited. The real jump would be rolling a fistful of dice based on power level of the attack but that's a whole other level of change. 

Necessary Evil Session Zero Coming Up

 

This weekend we will wrap up or expedition to deal with The Emerald Enchanter in Variable Dave's Dungeon Crawl Classics campaign. It's been a lot of fun and since the 0-level funnel we've only lost one character. It happened to be the guy with the possessed sword so that initiated an immediate debate on who was going to pick it up to be the new unpredictable combat monster - right as we head in to the final confrontation (we think) with the Enchanter himself. Hopefully it all goes well.

Once we finish that we will put DCC on the shelf for a while and have our Session Zero conversation for Necessary Evil. I don't worry about this kind of thing before every campaign kicks off but I do like to have an official one with a supers campaign to a) work out technical power details and make sure everyone understands how their characters work and what some of the limits might be and b) to work out everyone's connections to the setting. For example, here are the ten questions I am hitting my players with for this one:

Questions about your character:

1. Origin Story – how did you get your powers?

2. Why did you become a villain?

3. What did you do before the invasion? What kind of villain were you? What kind of jobs did you do or what kind of schemes did you plan?

4. Were you part of a team or mostly solo?

5. Who did you work with? 

6. Did you have any villainous rivals?

7. Did you have a nemesis or archenemy hero?

8. Were you ever caught and imprisoned?

9. What did you do during the invasion?

10. What have you been doing since the invasion?

I don't expect everyone to have ready answers to all of these. Some may not want to commit to everything and others will just not have thought about it all but I want to get the wheels turning and start making some connections between the PCs, other villains in the setting, and the heroes who may or may not have survived. Also, with the game starting after a lot of big events I want them to think about how their character reacted to them and how it changed their life.

I don't think we will be rolling dice on Saturday but I'll be ready just in case. There has been some chatter in the group this week as people start figuring out their character but there is some work yet to be done and that's my priority. 

Longer-term  It looks like I have 7 players lined up and we have 20 weekends left (after this one) so I think we should get 12-15 sessions done in what's left of 2026. Being a supers campaign I won't be cancelling if even half the group is out - you're supers, deal with it - but the holidays will interfere down the road so we will see how far we get. Once I get a feel for how quickly the various plot points move with this group I'll be able to figure it more accurately but the main thing is let's get rolling and see where it goes!

I also need a good name for the campaign that isn't "Necessary Evil" again. Still working on that. Open to ideas if anyone has any.

It's a cool adventure

Laying Some Groundwork for Necessary Evil

 

As much as I am enjoying the DCC campaign - and being a player for a change - I did commit to running NE as the next big game so it's time to start digging into it. I have tried to run it twice before - my notes say 2010 and 2014 - though we did not finish it either time. 

The first one we made it maybe halfway through. It was a lot of fun with an interesting mix of characters and encounters. The concept is glorious and everyone was enthusiastically on board with it with the brutes going around bashing objects and aliens and the vampire charming everything in sight. Most of them went into City of Heroes and made character portraits . This was one of our earlier runs with Savage Worlds for a longer term campaign and it worked really well. We eventually had too many schedule interruptions and had to put it on hold.

The second run was shorter and I was distracted trying to adapt it to Paragon City, the City of Heroes MMORPG setting, as we had all played it and had a ton of screenshots and would give us a reason to revisit something we all loved after its shutdown in 2012. Most of the players were the same and we carried over a few of the same characters but generally treated it as a reboot of the campaign. Looking back through my notes had me tempted to try the same thing for this new run but I'm going to hold off, run this one in its original setting, and see how it goes. If I get a chance to run this another time with a different mix of players then I might give that option a try. Plus with the game back online screenshots would be easy to work in as needed.

For this run though I am going to focus mainly on the adventure in the book and in the setting as it is written. Now the core of the campaign is the set of 11 Plot Point adventures that form the links that connect the whole thing together. You need to work them in as they are the spine of the game. Beyond that there are 25 other "Savage Tales" that can be worked in during the campaign to really flesh it out. Then of course there are whatever side adventures or shenanigans you cook up for your players or that they cook up for themselves. I don't feel the need to use all of them so I will pick out 10-12 that I like and start figuring out how to work them in - some might fit better in a certain sequence, others might be useful as a reaction to something else in the campaign. Assuming we're looking at each of these taking around one session then I'd like to start with around 25 sessions worth of material reviewed and ready - a rough outline for how the game might go. If the players are really into it then I can always work in more and if it starts to drag I can drop some side chapters and focus in on the main event. 

Action-wise the PCs start off being "recruited" to join a resistance movement against alien invaders in Star City, an island city with some unusual qualities off the east coast of the U.S. As things progress they get more deeply involved, make some friends and some enemies, and become more and more of a concern to the local alien warlord. There is a lot of freedom in that middle part of the campaign. They are super-villains so things can get pretty ridiculous but trying not to pull down the entire alien invasion force gives an incentive to keep some of it quiet at least. Eventually things come together and a confrontation is inevitable. 

I'm going to be running low on "generic superhero art" before I even start this campaign ...

Now I will say here that I do not like the official finale of the campaign. I never have and part of what I will be noodling on is coming up with some other options for it that I like better - we will just have to see how that goes.

So as I finish up reading back through the material I need to put together an initial outline, get the bad guy stats printed out, look at my cheat-sheet options, review my properly themed Savage Worlds assets*, get the players minds rolling on their characters, and think about how I want to kick things off. Also have to think about doing an online recap or not like Obsidian Poral. 

Anyway, more to come here. 

*I'm not a big "props" guy with my RPGs but Savage Worlds does draw me in a bit with the trappings built into the game system itself just begging to be themed for a campaign. Plus cards and bennie-type trinkets are cheap and widely available. 

My RPG List Ten years On - 2016 vs. 2026

 

I keep track of my RPG and miniature purchases as I go each year and I have done this for more than a decade. I was updating my list for this year and it occurred to me I ought to go look at what I was buying and what I was playing and compare it to now plus mix in some hindsight.

What I was playing:

• The year started off with some Marvel Heroic
• Most of it was spent running my Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous campaign into the ground
• Lots of talk about the new Savage Worlds Rifts books that were getting Kickstarted back then. Lots of Savage Worlds talk in general from cards to using it with different settings.
• Managed to work in some Deadlands and some d6 Star Wars
• Later we managed to work in some FFG Star Wars
• Holiday time meant it was time for the Time of Crisis in Mutants & Masterminds!

It's funny that it took me ten years to finally finish Time of Crisis - at least it was with a couple of those same players! Otherwise this year it's been playing DCC and then hopefully in a bit it will be back to some Savage Worlds. I do have some consistency I guess even a decade later.

Miniatures-wise it was Eldar ... so much Eldar. This was the year I built what is still the core of my Eldar army.

What I was picking up:

• Perhaps not surprisingly it was a lot of Savage Worlds stuff
• There was also quite a bit of Pathfinder
• A fair amount of d6 Star Wars
• A little FFG Star Wars - they were still putting out new material then
• Some Mutants & Masterminds books
• Some DCC books and dice
• A few 5th edition items

It is good to see that most of what I was adding was being driven by what I was playing or thinking about playing. This year was effectively the end of that Pathfinder campaign as it just ran out of gas after 3 + years. I officially ended it in January 0f 2017.  Both Star Wars games and M&M and Deadlands remained intermittent occasional games for years.

For 2026 so far it's been a few DCC books, catching up on some 5.5 D&D books, and then weirdly picking up some old GURPS books. I don't know exactly what bit me there other than some long talks with Blaster about old school non-D&D grittier systems where I mentioned GURPS as a very different flavor of fantasy campaign compared to modern D&D. I then went to look for it on my shelf and at some point, maybe in a move, I lost half of my old GURPS books - I didn't even have an old 3rd edition core book anymore. So I went on a tear for a bit here recently filling in some of that stuff - you know Magic, The Grimoire, High Tech, Ultra Tech, Supers, a core book or two. They are not particularly pricey especially if you can find several of them in a lot and I wanted them back on the shelf.

Considering how much of what I am doing now is similar to (or the same damn thing) I was doing then I guess I can claim a "consistency" medal. Some might whisper "stuck in a rut"* but I prefer to think of it as being at a point in my life where I know what I like and I prefer to spend my time there. I still do a little exploring now and then. We try new games via one-shots or short limited campaigns, get a consensus on them, and then either put them aside or consider them for a bigger campaign down the road. I see people online struggling to find people and places to play - well, I have time, a place, and a group of friends that are interested so let's spend most of that time playing stuff we like. It makes sense to me, anyway.

* Considering the number of games I've run and played over the last few years it's a pretty wide rut.

Deadlands: Dark Ages Crowdfunding in September

 

So they have been talking about this one for a while now but Pinnacle made it official this week: the next setting for Deadlands is coming next month. Weirdly enough I have mixed feelings about this one. First, let's review what's out now:

• Deadlands: The Weird West - this is the original setting and the one where we met the whole concept of the Reckoners creeping in around the edges of reality, Servitors helping them do it in exchange for power, and a need for people to take a stand against them. It's one of the greatest settings in RPG-dom and one of my personal favorites. It gives a good set of reasons for cowboys and other old west types to fight monsters without having to transport them to a D&D campaign and it is brilliant. We've had original flavor, a second edition of that, a d20 version, a GURPS version, and then a couple of editions for Savage Worlds. There is a ton of supporting material, much of it with a regional focus so you can pick up the core book, figure out what area of the west speaks to you, grab something on that and get to rollin'. I've run multiple campaigns with it and will run more in the future.
• Deadlands: Hell on Earth  - The other original system game and the one that bumped Gamma World and Twilight 2000 aside as my favorite overall post-apocalyptic RPG setting. It was also ridiculously well-supported and made the jump to d20 and then Savage Worlds as well. I haven't run nearly as much of this as I have Weird West games but I want to. I suspect it has been overshadowed a bit these last few years by Rifts as the other big post-apoc setting that seems to get a lot more attention. I ran through the basics here, Reloaded here,  and then the supplements here, and here.
• Deadlands: Noir - In my opinion the first big misstep for Deadlands. It's the 1930's as the future of the Weird West setting which seems on the surface like a fairly rich vein with gangsters and weirdness (to start with) but from what I've seen it largely ignores the world-hopping Indiana Jones type options which would really amp it up. This is in keeping with the Deadlands games as a line being focused on America, particularly western America, and not really going beyond Canada or Mexico as the more distant parts of the setting. It makes sense in the prior two games but here we have a functioning society, the potential for international intrigue, and airplanes! This is the one setting book for Deadlands that I do not own as the concept just never clicked and never pushed my buttons for wanting to run a campaign - given the chance I'd rather run either of the two other games. There are only a few supporting products for it so I assume I am not the only one who felt the same about it. I remember thinking it sounded super-niche-y when they first announced it and I've seen nothing since to change my mind.
• Deadlands: Lost Colony - A spin-off from Hell on Earth that is set on a distant space colony that is dealing with ... a lot of the same problems we were dealing with in Weird West and the Wasted West. It's pretty self-contained as it's cut off from earth - it's more Weird West with lasers or tech guns instead of six-shooters and native aliens instead of native Americans, plus more Reckoner trouble. I appreciate it's potential for being the place where you finally finish off the Reckoners but I always saw it as more of a supplement for HOE than as a setting on it's own. I've never run this. I likely only would as the finale to a Wasted West campaign where you could really close things out. 

Such a great take on this genre

So there we have two great settings and two less-great settings in my eyes. Now we get the apparent awakening of the Reckoners in the new prequel where we're going back to Camelot to fight them:

From the Weird West to the Dark Ages

Dark magic rises in the time of kings and knights.

Ride with Merlin’s Paladins, battle Morgana’s minions, face the Great Wyrms, and confront horrors from beyond history. From Pictish undead to the Cult of Dagon, the Reckoners are stirring for the first time -- and Britain’s fate hangs in the balance.

Dynamic melee combat, legendary heroes, ancient ruins, and terrifying abominations await in Deadlands: Dark Ages, a brand-new setting for Savage Worlds from the creators of Deadlands, Deadlands: Noir, Deadlands: Hell on Earth, and Deadlands: Lost Colony.

Well, I am just not sure how to feel about this. Sure, it's a new Deadlands setting and there will probably be some cool stuff in it but ... it's a fantasy campaign. The very heart of tabletop RPGs! Calling it "saturated" is an understatement. My initial question is "what makes it different from all of the other fantasy rpg's out there and especially all of the other Savage Worlds fantasy games out there? Hellfrost, Beasts & Barbarians, and Shaintar are off the top of my head, not to mention Pinnacles own Pathfinder conversion line! I get that it's "Deadlands" so we will be fighting Reckoners and Servitors on some level but is that enough to really set this one apart?

I'm also not at all sure about that note on "Merlin's Paladins" - I don't think I've ever seen it phrased that way. Is this post-Camelot's fall? But it sounds suspiciously like a forced PC-aimed do-gooder organization which is something I am not a fan of in my games. Hopefully it's not "the PC organization" but we will see. 

Such a great update on the original

I know they've been working on and wanting to do this for a long time and Mordred does tie in to some other Deadlands history - don't ask, but it's a thing - so I get the need to get it out there. Speaking as a longtime fan of Deadlands and Savage Worlds too I'm just not all that fired up about this one. I'm also not lit up with anticipation for yet another Pinnacle crowdfunding effort - especially when I am still waiting on the last Deadlands campaign for "The Abominable Northwest" which was supposed to deliver books this month but has been delayed, and still waiting on "Rifts Europa" for Savage Worlds as well which is supposed to deliver in October. Then there is their about-to-complete Kickstarter for Doom Guard which I did not buy into but which is still being managed by this same team of people along with a couple of other efforts. I know crowdfunding is the way things work these days for small publishers but it still feels like there are a lot of balls in the air right now.

It's also up against the "if I decide to run a new Savage Worlds campaign am I going to run this over Deadlands, Hell on Earth, Rifts, Necessary Evil, or one of the other campaigns I already have on the shelf?" Not to mention other RPGs in general.

Maybe as some details emerge I will feel better about it. Time will tell.

Deadlands: The Flood - Things I Could Have Done Better as a GM

I had one last topic I wanted to cover here after running the latest Deadlands campaign to completion - what I could have done better. Anytime I have a campaign wind down I inevitably think of some things I could have done differently - and likely better. Some of this is perspective looking back but sometimes I realize things and try to course-correct while the campaign is still running. 

• System Mastery - I've been running and playing Savage Worlds to a lesser or greater degree since it was published over 20 years ago. Casually, I know it like the back of my hand. When it comes to certain details though I rely heavily on my players to share their knowledge as things come up in play. I could be better at this and next time I will be.
• There are some general rules that get tweaked when a new edition comes out like Shaken, the various conditions that can be imposed, or how backlash works, and those tend to catch me the first few times they come up. The chase rules change with every edition and those take a while to re-learn each time. 
• Edges and Flaws are where a lot of the chrome comes in with this system and they get revised in every edition - sometimes even within a single edition - and more than once I have run a monster or NPC as though one of these worked like it did the "old" way. 
• Powers are another area that gets tweaked quite a bit. The power itself may not be dramatically different but the extras and options often do and I should really pay more attention to these kinds of details before I start throwing dice with them.  

Lots of good pics from movies and TV out there for a western campaign

• NPCs - I made an effort to individualize NPCs in this campaign and made sure to have images to show my players for many of them and this campaign was good about having names for almost every NPC one could encounter, but I am not sure many of them really stuck with my players. This is strictly a thing in my head, not something they have mentioned, but I do wonder about it after the fact. Anywhere the party is going to spend a lot of time it would be beneficial to work on more of this in advance.
• For example, the Shan Fan run has a lot of distinctive NPCs built-in as it's a core part of the storyline here and I think it went pretty well but the Perdition election arc is presented in much less detail and I did not really fill out the townspeople beforehand like I could have done. It would have made for some more memorable characters at least.
• That said my own award for "unusual NPC of the campaign" goes to Born in a Bowl's severed finger which had a definite personality while it was with the party. Holding a grudge against the character who botched the knife work that created it gave us some humor opportunities that most campaigns don't see.

• The Setting - Deadlands has some very distinct qualities as a setting, both mechanically and just as a supernatural old west campaign. I think I hit a lot of these in play but I could have done more.
• I did not emphasize the classic tale-tellin'-to-offset-the-fear-level part of play that figured a lot in old (and in some new) Deadlands adventures. I don't think my players missed it but I could have paid more attention to he fear levels of various areas and made that a bigger part of things. 
• The Flood in particular is also heavily affected by Famine and I could have played this up more too as it's supposed to permeate the whole region. It was a factor in one of our adventures regarding the only decent ranch in the area, and it did come up in talking about the appeal of Lost Angels food program to the common man, but I don't feel like I made it ever-present as they were traveling through the state. I don't know that the campaign suffered from it really, but it's a part of the flavor of the campaign area that I could have used more frequently.

Those are my take-aways from this one - now on to the next game!

Savage Worlds - Deadlands as a Game Setting

 

I wanted to make one more point after wrapping up our campaign and that was to discuss Deadlands as a setting for an RPG because after running these 30+ sessions I am  somewhat unexpectedly - not tired of it. I've thought about why so let's talk about that.

I've been picking up Deadlands books since the game was released in the late 90's - 1st edition, 2nd edition, and multiple Savage Worlds editions. There are a lot of Deadlands books out there with campaign material in them but each edition has done a pretty good job of presenting the whole setting in just one of the core books. It was "The Quick and the Dead" first, then the Marshal's Guide, Then Deadlands Reloaded covered it and added some updates, and now the current "Weird West" book paints a nice broad picture with some more timeline updates and some changes to the past as well. 

The early material had a healthy dose of that popular 90's thing "The Metaplot". In this case the Reckoner's machinations to turn the world into a deadland by upping the fear level everywhere over time. This would enable them to enter the world and do even worse things to it directly. 

One of the fun parts of the Deadlands settings is that the Deadlnads: Hell on Earth campaign is a depiction of what happens if they succeed and it's rare to see a game company put that kind of thing out as a real product. 

The general direction in a Deadlands campaign is the idea that the PC's will become aware of this larger scheme at some point and take an interest in opposing these plans. That's the big picture, anyway. In the meantime your PC's can do pretty much whatever they want. 

• Want to do classic western things? There's a campaign built around a cattle drive (Blood Drive). There's a big adventure built around figuring out what's going on in one town and solving their problem (Trouble at Headstone Hill). Plus there are various shorter adventures that involve tracking down criminals and getting into gunfights.
• Want to focus on particular parts of the west? The four big plot point campaigns from Reloaded edition each focus on a different region of the U.S. with various complications tied to both the power groups in the area and the particular reckoner casing the most trouble. The Great Maze is awesome but classic Tombstone, Deadwood, and Dodge City are all pretty amazing too. 
• Looking for a particular type of adventure? Gunfights are certainly easily available but there are creepy horror encounters, political intrigue, and chases/hunts out there too. A little bit of online research can guide you to an adventure that will likely cover a variety of opportunities for any determined posse out there.

Just as an example in our Flood campaign we opened with a gunfight, then got involved in a train derailment and robbery, tangled with some religious fanatics, did a prison break, defended a ranch from raiders & rustlers, spent a fair amount of time involved in Shan Fan triad politics, snuck into a pirate city and blew up an ironclad, came in 2nd place in a martial arts tournament, helped defend an area during a local warlord's invasion of a city, and helped set up and run fair elections for mayor in a new and growing town on the coast of the maze! Note that this is outside of the main plot of traveling Deadlands California to set up the conditions for the Flood that will wipe out a major evil - these were the things that were happening "along the way".

To me a good setting should get a GM excited about the opportunities they see and Deadlands does this every time I dig into it thinking about running a new campaign.  A lot of what I have listed above is tied to published adventure material but that's not a limiting factor. Just looking at the general setting notes followed by a flip through the critters section has me jotting down notes for future runs and it has been this way for years This last campaign let me finally pay off some of my notes like this from years ago.

The last point I will share is that I ran this game for about two years and there is still probably a third of the "Flood" book that I didn't even touch. It's full of cool stuff and I ended up not having a good place to use some of it as the campaign developed - but I still want to. That, to me, is a sign of a strong adventure. I think of all of these creatures, locations, and NPC's I didn't use and I can't help but think that we need to revisit this one at some point, even if we wait a while in between.

So there's my ringing endorsement of Savage Worlds as a system, Deadlands as a setting, and The Flood as an adventure. I normally am tired of a setting and a campaign by the time I wrap them up and ready to move on but this time I was not and it's a very welcome surprise and I am looking forward to my next walk through this world.

Savage Worlds Combat

 

I'm pretty happy with Savage Worlds as a system and I am glad that it seems to be more popular than ever now. One area I do see people questioning online is combat - particularly initiative and the damage system. Typically these people are coming over from D&D and don't really grasp that there are other ways of doing things but let's talk about these two things:

Initiative is done in Savage Worlds with cards. The GM deals out a card to each player and the high cards go before the low cards. This is a holdover from original Deadlands and Rail Wars but it just works. It's a physical reminder of when you go - once you go you toss in your card. Want to delay? Just hold onto it until you want to go. The game supports this mechanically through related edges - want to be faster? There's an edge that lets you take 2 or even 3 cards when initiative is dealt and you keep the best. For a level-headed character you can take an edge that lets you trade in your card if it's below a certain value. 

And yes, initiative is dealt every round. No it's not a big delay and yes, we played D&D for at least 20 years this way until 3E changed it to static initiative so it's not some radical new idea.

Finally the cards are another physical object that can help enforce the genre for your game. I've posted about it before but there is almost always some kind of card deck out there that is thematically related to whatever your running - pirates, cowboys, soldiers, superheroes, well-known space setting IP's ...

As an example of the impact this approach has on play I typically had 5-6 players per session in the Deadlands campaign I just finished. One started off with the Level-Headed edge, then pretty soon another one had it, and by the end one had the basic edge while two had the improved version and one of them had Quick as well. This means on a combat round with only 5 of them I am dealing out 10 cards for the players, plus (typically) 1-3 for the opposition, with one player possibly re-drawing several more cards. Jokers are an important card in Savage Worlds and this approach let my players mill the action deck by 10-15 cards per round from a 54 card deck. This is double what a normal party would be doing and it meant those Jokers popped up very quickly. Every Joker drawn is a package of "go first", "+2 for all actions that round", and a bennie for everyone on top of that! Towards the end there were combats where both Jokers were drawn in the same round - and that was not a good round for the bad guys. The existence of these mechanics opens up an interesting set of options for a player to explore that you don't see in other games. 

Damage in Savage Worlds is the other "rough spot" I see - mainly because it's not like D&D and does not use hit points. There is not a direct "wearing down over time mechanic" like that really. A deliberate design goal was that combatants would be up, down, or off of the table with no tracking of hit points or health. Most opponents are taken out by a single wound. Only Wild Cards, a status reserved for the PC's and major opponents, can take up to 3 wounds and still be standing. There is a "Shaken" status to indicate some kind of degraded status and there are optional rules for an intermediate type of opponent that can take multiple wounds but is not a wild card but that's it. 

Attacks involve a hit roll which, if successful, will generate a damage roll - so far just like D&D right? The next step though is to compare that roll to the target's Toughness. Meeting it or exceeding it = Shaken, exceeding it by 4 or more = a Wound for each increment of 4. It's that second part that really throws people at first. There are some nuances to it but it's really not -that- complicated.  

However this sometimes freaks people out as they bang away on an opponent and seemingly do nothing for several rounds. You might Shake them, or inflict some kind of condition with a power, but it bothers some people that there's no counter ticking down with every hit. This despite the truth that in D&D those hit points flying off have no impact on most NPCs or Monsters either - until the last one. In Savage Worlds if you are fighting an opponent who can take multiple wounds then each one of those will inflict a penalty on actions that creature takes. There are edges to offset these penalties, and powers that can do the same thing  -"Numb" was a regular player in our campaign - but again that's another way to flavor a character or monster. 

The closest thing to hit points in a Savage Worlds game are bennies. When someone takes damage they can spend a bennie to try and soak the damage - it's not a sure thing - and the supply of bennies is limited. Over the course of this campaign  I was reminded again and again that the GM's bennies are effectively the big bad's supply of hit points as once those ran out the bad guys tended to drop fairly quickly. There is always the temptation to use them as "rage bennies" to reroll an attack or damage roll, but most of the time you want to keep your opposition around for another round of troubling the party. 

This just seems to be a hard thing for people coming in from D&D in particular to get over. Shadowrun and Mutants & Masterminds have some similarities to this approach where you are comparing damage to another number and then generating results based on the comparison. It's different from D&D for sure but it works just fine and is a lot of fun.

So in my opinion combat in Savage Worlds does live up to the Fast, Furious, and Fun tagline. 

• I don't think I had a fight last more than 7 rounds in my entire campaign and once players have a little bit of experience the pace of those rounds is pretty quick. D&D 3E and Pathfinder in particular tended to have long combats made up of long rounds where players might get bored waiting for their next chance to act. That was never a problem here. Also, in spite of this faster flow, combat is still rewarding as many different approaches and tactics can be tried - it's not a static regimen of "hitting for X damage" round after round as you whittle away at the dragon.
• Furious comes into it when characters are doing things every round - there's not a lot of need for multi-round actions. Also, the rules allow for multiple actions beyond the basic move + act as much as a player wants to push things by imposing a -2 cumulative penalty to additional actions with no actual cap on how much one can try.
• Fun is a factor with interesting abilities from Edges and Powers plus mechanical things like manipulating the cards and facing tough choices on how to spend those bennies when things hit the fan. Also, exploding dice - particularly damage dice -  add some excitement and occasionally some despair, depending on which side of the roll you are on. 

It's just a really strong system that runs smoothly and is fun to play. I've run it many times over the years and I expect I will be running it again fairly soon. 

Savage Worlds - Post-Campaign Thoughts on Characters

 

I wanted to write this post because I was expecting that after running Deadlands for two years - and having played in a 50 Fathoms campaign before that one - well, I was expecting to be feeling some system burnout. That feeling when the mechanics of a game system start to grate, characters and monsters start to feel samey, and the game's possibilities narrow down to what you've already done. It's a feeling that means it's time to change games for a while. This has happened to me with various versions of D&D, Pathfinder, and Traveller, among other games. Often it comes up near the end of a long campaign.

Unexpectedly though I do not feel this way about Savage Worlds. I've run or played a lot of Deadlands, a little Hell on Earth, quite a bit of Necessary Evil and 50 Fathoms, and a fair amount of Rifts - and that's just the published campaign stuff. There is a bunch more that I want to run from books on the shelf to homebrew ideas that demand attention. The system really does hit a sweet spot for me between playability and flexibility and having characters that are just detailed enough to feel unique. A lot of lighter systems are either OSR where one low level fighter looks a whole lot like another low level fighter or else they use such light mechanics that some kind of trait or tag system is the only differentiator between characters and mechanically they tend to all do the same thing. There's a place for all of these of course but a lot of times I end up wanting a little more crunch to build on for both my players and my NPC's and creatures. Savage Worlds apparently hits that just right for me. 

That said it's not a skinny rulebook anymore. The current Adventure Edition is 200 pages long BUT the biggest section is for building or advancing characters at about 60 pages. The gear section is about 15 pages and that covers from medieval weapons to guns to vehicles to armor. Combat is 10 pages. The powers section is about 30 pages and that's where a lot of the chrome is for certain character types and monsters too. There's a whole section called the Adventure Tool Kit which covers special cases - chases, mass combat, travel, wealth rules - stuff that won't come up every session but is useful to have.  So around half of the book is character-focused rules and the rest is running the game - I think that's a solid balance. Earlier thoughts on it here. 

The main thing for me is that it just runs well - the playability factor is high. Characters have a lot of options but you typically do not need to consult a long list or a long chapter just to do what your character does. Despite being simpler in a lot of ways characters still manage to feel unique. My Deadlands party has a Shaman, a Martial Artist, a Mad Scientist, a Hexslinger, and 3 non-magic using gunslinger types that have each specialized in an area: one is the "put a lot of bullets in the air" guy, one is a sniper (and a bounty hunter), and one is a pistol-focused gunfighter (and a Texas Ranger). That means three of my players could be stepping on each other's toes constantly yet they don't. There is some occasional friendly competition between them and comments when the dice are just not with someone but no one has complained about a lack of options or a lack of mechanical individuality.

The only time there was some mention of a lack of options was at Legendary as there were not a ton of Legendary-specific edges. To be fair though this is where most games will spend the least amount of time - in my experience, anyway - so it's not nearly the problem it could be. Still, there's an area that could be improved. I would especially like to see setting-specific Legendary edges as that would give players something to aim for within a specific  campaign and show what the heavy hitters in a campaign world are supposed to look like. It would also help with flavoring them at the higher tiers.

The way characters are structured and advancement is handled is also a part of this. There is a rough level type structure in that there are 5 character tiers from "Novice" to "Legendary" which are based on the number of advancements the characters have received and stat advancement and certain edges are gated by tier. So while it is pretty open and loose it is possible to gauge a group's power level this way. Also, while there are definite Archetypes in most of the published settings there is nothing as formal as the way classes are handled in most class and level games. There are benefits to specializing in certain skills and combining certain edges to enhance whatever area you want to excel in, but there is nothing mechanically making you do this. The closest thing you see to 3E-style Feat trees are that some edges may have a prerequisite and there may be an "improved" version of a particular edge so you're looking at a string of 3 edges at the most to really dig into something. This means that your character can be good at more than one thing or in one area! Not all games accommodate this. 

The one area the game does restrict to a notable degree is Arcane Backgrounds. This is the magic/psychic/super option where you can have special powers and you can only take one. So your Mad Scientist cannot also be Blessed or a Huckster. I have no problem with this as it serves as both a balancing control (no getting around the particular trappings or restrictions of on AB by taking another), a playability control (no having to figure out any weird interactions between spells or magic items when you're both a wizard and a cleric), and it also enforces some niche protection in a game that is pretty open otherwise. It's one of the absolutes in the system and I've never had a player complain about it. Considering that there are typically few or no restrictions on the kinds of powers you can take with each one, it's not terribly restrictive mechanics-wise. Flavor counts for a lot so under these rules a Blessed doesn't have to be the party healer- he can throw holy fire or turn invisible or whatever else he wants to do.

So throughout this campaign my players never felt constrained in their options and neither did I when it came to NPCs and critters both. Edges, Hindrances, and Powers all provided enough variety, when skinned the right way, that there was plenty of flavor to go around. 

More on some other aspects of the game tomorrow.