Tommy's Take on Camp Terror, an Actual Play Review

 So this weekend I talked my group into taking a detour from D&D 5e to return to an old friend of ours: Savage Worlds. Not for an established setting such as ETU or Deadlands, both of which we love, but to try out a horror one shot from a friend of mine called Camp Terror.

 

 

So we fired up Savage Worlds and had us a brutal, throwback horror adventure.

Degrees of Horror: An East Texas University Post-Mortem Part 2 - Freshman Year

 Welcome back, friends. Last week, I laid the ground the work for this series, a recap of one of the best campaigns I've ever ran. Now I'm going to pour over my notes and go back to the very beginning of the campaign, and run through the adventures we played through, starting with Freshman Year.

I put a lot of thought into just how I wanted pace this, as I knew I wanted the campaign to have time to "breathe", and so I made the decision to aim for 13 adventures per school year. The idea being that it would be 3 adventure per half semester, with one adventure taking place on break. This meshed well with the idea of ETU's advances coming at the end of mid-terms and end of semester. This incorporated every Plot Point adventure from the Plot Point Campaign, every one of the original 12 to Midnight Adventures, the Class Ring adventure from the ETU GM screen, Owen Lean's Horror for the Holidays, and a number of my own creations, some using the Adventure Generator and some just crafted whole cloth.

Some of my notes are a little light. And we started this campaign 6 years ago, in person, at my dinner table, before moving online to Roll20...and we played The Curse of Strahd in between. So my memory may fail in places.

And again, be advised that spoilers will be unmarked.

Tommy's Take on Tricube Tales

On today's docket is a really light, narrative RPG by Richard Woolcock (Zadmar Games).

Tommy's Take on 50 Fathoms: Fire & Earth

Last week, in my 50 Fathoms review, I mentioned that there was a new release: 50 Fathoms: Fire & Earth. So this is my review of that adventure.

Tommy's Take on 50 Fathoms Explorer's Edition

This seems like odd timing, but there's a reason for that. I've owned the original 50 Fathoms for years, and but never ran it. However, I was approached by Pinnacle last week about reviewing their new 50 Fathoms book, Fire & Earth, and thought that before I did so, I would tackle the original (or at least the version that was revised for Deluxe Edition) for posterity, and also to refresh my memory about 50 Fathoms.

Tommy's Take on The Ninja Crusade 2nd Edition

Longtime readers of the blog know I've been a pretty big fan of Third Eye Games' Wu Xing: The Ninja Crusade. A while back, they released a second edition - now just called The Ninja Crusade - and I thought I'd take a peek inside.

Tommy's Take on The Covey (D&D 5e)

Over at The RPG Pub (my preferred home for RPG discussion on the internet), I was asked by one of our regulars to review something from their catalog. And so I am.

Tommy's Take on Zombie World

A novel concept: An RPG featuring zombies!



All snark aside, Zombie World has a couple of unique hooks that caught my eye during their Kickstarter, so I decided to check it out.

Tommy's Take on Savage Worlds Adventure Edition

So a new version of Savage Worlds came out.




















I took a look at the Essentials Boxed Set a while back, but I thought I'd take a look at the book now, if it's all the same to you.

Clock is Ticking on Solomon Kane

In case you hadn't heard, Pinnacle is losing the Solomon Kane license at the end of this year, and so your chance to buy the books or PDFs (if you haven't yet) is on borrowed time.

While Solomon Kane is not fully updated to SWADE, there is a free separate conversion document on Pinnacle's website. The rulebook itself is completely standalone, so you can even run it without a copy of the Savage Worlds rules, since they are already included (though an earlier version, as noted above).

The Savage World of Solomon Kane is one of my favorite books by Pinnacle, and I wouldn't sleep on this one, personally.

Bundle of Holding for Wiggy

Hey all,

Wiggy Wade-Williams, RPG writer and longtime friend of this blog, is in bad shape after suffering *three* strokes this year, and Bundle of Holding has released a Necropolis 2350 bundle to support him.

If you're not familiar with Wiggy's work, he was foundational in the early days of Savage Worlds (including the Savage World of Solomon Kane, which is a bonafide masterpiece in my book), before going on to create Triple Ace Games, where he released Hellfrost and Necropolis 2350 for Savage Worlds, as well as a slew of great games for the Ubiquity System, such as Leagues of Adventure, Leagues of Gothic Horror, and All for One: Regime Diabolique.

He's also spoken very highly of me as a reviewer, citing me as one of his only three reviewers he reads, because of my objectivity in my reviews, and how I "review games for what they are, not what he(I) would like them to be".

He is a ridiculously talented, and prolific, dude, and hopefully he can get back on his feet. His contributions to my gaming, and his vote of confidence in my blogging and reviewing, cannot be understated by me.

Tommy

Tommy's Take on the Savage Worlds Adventure Edition Essentials Box

Got my Essentials box. Thought I'd do a deep dive.

It's a very nice box.

Sentinel Comics Starter Kit - Second Impressions

Second round of the Sentinel Comics Starter Kit tonight. See Part 1 over here.

So, the way this kit works is there are 6 adventures. One is an introductory adventure that can basically be played standalone. You can even double up the first two without moving on. The next three can be tackled in any order, leading up the grand finale, the sixth adventure. We played The first two last week in Part 1. We played 3-5 tonight. I'm going spoiler lite, but providing my thoughts here.

- I still like the game system. The group has gotten used to the mechanics. Their Green-Yellow-Red abilities are starting to become second nature. They are watching for them, and ready to use them when available. That's a good thing, IMO. There's a lot on a given character sheet, so it can be daunting...but none of my players seem bothered by them.

- There's a LOT of metagaming going on here. They've figured out how to utilize their Principles to farm for Hero Points. They bend their solutions around their powers and qualities to get the best possible dice combinations they can come up with. I'm real accommodating, but I'm also not afraid to say "no" if it doesn't make sense. My players are cool with this. We're also cool with metagaming. Savage Worlds has a bit of that. I like my games to have a lot of "game" to them, or we're just telling stories. That's my take, doesn't have to be yours. If you like systems to "get out of the way"...this ain't it. You decide if that's a feature or a bug. (I call it a feature.)

- The three adventures tonight, frankly, were not very fun to run. Two of them were not much more than just a series of Overcome actions. That wasn't by player decision, that's how they are structured. In fact, they outright failed the last adventure, and I don't blame them, because the Overcome actions being called for were, frankly, silly. It required multiple overcome actions to make it through a maze...but the thing they were overcoming were...hieroglyphics. Not giving directions, but telling a story. It didn't work, and it sucked the energy out of the group. Yes, an experienced GM can circumvent this stuff. But I tried to run the Starter Kit as a starter kit, as close to the rules as possible, to decide how I feel about the product. Tonight's adventures felt incredibly one dimensional.

-  I'm not a big fan of how the information in the adventures is laid out. Part of it is on me, but there are points where the necessary information felt very lacking. I'll get into more detail in Part 3, after we finish off the Starter Kit, and that one will be a little more spoiler heavy.

- I didn't back the Kickstarter, funds being the reason...but I still want the core rulebook. One of the designers told me that one of the qualms we had about the system had already been addressed, and I'm genuinely excited to look at character creation and see how it plays putting your own characters together.

- My feeling right now is: The game is great...I'm just not sold on 3/5s of the Starter Kit adventures (jury is still out on the final adventure until we play it).

Sentinel Comics RPG - First Impression from the Starter Kit

Hey, look at that. A new blog post. But I gamed about something I wanted to talk about, so here we are.

TAG @ Ten Sales

In case you hadn't heard, Triple Ace Games turned 10 years old, and they are celebrating with a pair of "Greatest Hits" style bundles for Savage Worlds and Ubiquity.

SAVAGE WORLDS BUNDLE

This includes all four main Hellfrost books (Player's Guide, Bestiary, Gazetteer and Land of Fire core rules), the Arcane Lore and Atlas supplements, Necropolis 2350 and Incinerator's Handbook, All For One Savage Worlds version and Sundered Skies. And this is all for $30.

There's some great stuff here. Hellfrost is especially brilliant, as I opined in my reviews, and I'm actually using a lot of Hellfrost stuff in my current Savage Pendragon campaign.

Hellfrost Player's Guide

Hellfrost Gazetteer

Hellfrost Bestiary

UBIQUITY BUNDLE

The Ubiquity Bundle is also $30 and includes some great stuff, like Leagues of Adventure (plus Plateau of the Ape Men and the Weird Science Compendium), Leagues of Gothic Horror (plus the Ministry of Unusual Affairs, the Guide to Apparitions and the Guide to Mordavia), Leagues of Cthulhu and the Ubiquity version of All For One: Régime Diabolique and Adventure Companion 1.

This may surprise you, but I own more books in the Ubiquity Bundle than I do the Savage Worlds bundle.

I previously reviewed All For One.

The upside is, these bundles are a GREAT deal for the price. The downside is, they are not set up like traditional RPGNow bundles, meaning you don't get a discount for the books you already own, which is an unfortunate decision.

Still a great celebration of a great publisher.

DISCLAIMER: The links in this article contain my affiliate link. Purchases made via that link may provide me with a percentage of the sale in store credit.

Swords & Sorcery Six-Pack

Inspired by the adventure generators in the Sharp Swords & Sinister Spells RPG by Old Skull Publishing, I generated a half dozen Swords & Sorcery adventure seeds. These aren't full adventures, so you'd need to flesh them out with your own stats and stuff, but I love playing around with random generators, and I thought I'd share them with you all.

Heck, if you changed out some of the names, you could probably drop them in Lankhmar (the DCC or Savage Worlds versions) easy enough.

 And pick up Sharp Swords & Sinister Spells. It's a rules-light swords & sorcery RPG that is Pay What You Want right now on RPGNow. Can't beat that price.

Legendary Edges in Necessary Evil

No, this isn't a general, all-purpose fan thread about suitable Legendary Edges for Necessary Evil. This is about the Legendary Edges that I gave my PCs and their NPC teammates when the campaign reached Legendary. Had some folks ask me about it, found the notes recently, thought I'd post them.

Since there are spoilers for Necessary Evil, the Edges are after the jump so no one gets it spoiled for them on the front page of the blog.

Wiseguys Demo Kit and Forces of Light: The Savage Guide to Heaven and The Wild Die Podcast

Hey guys,

I have some RPG News, and it's all kind of having to do with me, at least in part.

Two new Savage Worlds products were recently released, and I had a hand in both of them. So, y'know, I thought I'd mention them to you and encourage you to check them out if they tickle your fancy.



First up is the Wiseguys Demo Kit from Just Insert Imagination. This one is completely free, and has a sample adventure and pregenerated characters for playing Savage gangsters in a Las Vegas that never quite was. Again, at that price, why not check it out? It's getting some strong praise over on RPGnow. Wiseguys was written by Eric Lamoureux and edited by me, and the Kickstarter for the full setting should be coming later this year.



Forces of Light: The Savage Guide to Heaven is published by Gun Metal Games. It is the companion piece to, and stretch goal from, the Codex Infernus: The Savage Guide to Hell sourcebook that was funded on Kickstarter. I edited this as well, and contributed to the writing, including the Streets of Bedlam-style heroic archetypes. Hell is a scary place, so Heaven's warriors need to be ready for it. PDF is only $5.99, and the POD version is coming soon.



Lastly, I was on The Wild Die Podcast with Eric Lamoureux, Harrison Hunt, Manuel Sambs and Gary McCallum, discussing making and playing interesting characters. It'll be my last podcast for a while, as the next day I had all but three of my teeth extracted, and am now struggling through life with dentures at the ripe old age of 39.

So anyway, check those things out!

Tommy's Take on Lankhmar: Savage Seas of Nehwon

Pinnacle has a new Lankhmar book on Kickstarter, with a couple of days left to go. They asked me to take a look and provide an honest review, and I'm, always down for cracking into a new Savage Worlds book, so here we go.

Savaging Pendragon

So, ever since I've read The Great Pendragon Campaign, I've wanted to run it. However, as many of you know, my group plays a LOT of Savage Worlds, with detours to Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition, so The Great Pendragon Campaign in the King Arthur Pendragon system was...unlikely.

And then I sent out the new poll to my players and, to my surprise, this was the runaway winner.

I got to work wrapping my head around the system and getting prepared, devouring as much of the game as I could, and the more I read, the more I thought the system was seriously going to clash with my group's playstyle.

And then I watched Guy Ritchie's King Arthur: Legend of the Sword and joked to one of my players that I should just convert it to Savage Worlds. He was all in.

The main thing that really pushed me in the Savage direction is that the bookkeeping seemed...a bit much, at least for half my group. Plus, I read something that said mass battles in Pendragon took *hours* and I didn't want to find out for myself. So I called an audible and decided to convert to Savage Worlds. After all, my group loves Savage Worlds, and - all presumptions to the contrary aside - it is a malleable system that can achieve multiple feels. Plus, mass battles in Savage Worlds take minutes, and I know this from experience (any additional time comes from narrating it to make it epic).

And so I set to work on adapting King Arthur Pendragon to Savage Worlds. Since some of you have asked, here's a breakdown of my notes.

What I Swiped

First, I let other people do the work for me, and I borrowed liberally from other sources.

From Rippers I took Status, as it serves a similar function as Honor does in Pendragon. Mechanically, it functions as it does in Rippers, allowing a PC to throw their weight around on social rolls at the risk of losing Status if they fail. From Pendragon, it also has the effect of causing the PC to potentially lose their station if their Status falls too low. To compensate, I started the PCs with higher Status than in Rippers.

The next trait carried over from another book is Glory, from Hellfrost. Aside from tweaking it away from vikings and more towards knights, it was again a pretty straightforward port.

The next, and biggest, resource I swiped was the Hellfrost Resource Management book (see a theme here, Wiggy Wade-Williams does great work) to replace the Manor/Estate system from Pendragon. It's as close to a Fast! Furious! Fun! set of rules for running a guild/kingdom/barony/anything as you can get, and there's not so much going on that I can't help my players along that are apt to struggle with such a thing.

As of the first session, I also used the Jousting rules from Daring Tales of Chivalry, and I'll likely use the Petitioning rules as well. My players loved the Jousting rules, by the way.

What I Changed

I switched around the skill list a bit. I used the new Athletics, Thievery and Perform skills from Flash Gordon, and added an Animal Handling skill. I also revised the Knowledge skills a bit, to focus on things the players were likely to need. Lastly, as a flavor thing, I renamed Streetwise into Intrigue, because they'll be spending a lot of time in various courts.

I won't get into all the changes to the Edges and Hindrances list, but I did a massive revision, adding a bunch of Edges from multiple sources (especially Hellfrost) and trimming ones I didn't think would work.

Setting Rules I Adopted

From the Savage Worlds core I found a few Setting Rules to use:

No Power Points seems to fit, even though Arcane Backgrounds are so rare that PCs may likely not ever have one anyway.

Critical Failures is one we use in most games anyway.

I also opted for Gritty Damage, as combat in Pendragon is meant to be pretty harsh. This won't be that harsh, but will still be rough.

New Rules

Two big ones:

Pendragon is a generational game. To emulate that, I adapted the Pendragon aging rules to Savage Worlds, so they face a chance of Attributes fading once they hit age 35.

The other, huge rule is Virtues and Vices. So I took the Traits from Pendragon and adapted them into Virtues and Vices. Each character must take a Virtue and must take a Vice, and they can't take the Virtue and Vice paired opposite each other in the list (like Chaste and Lustful). In-game, they are like supercharged Hindrances. If I, as the GM, invoke the trait in a situation, they can only act against it by spending a benny. However, if they argue that the trait can help them in a situation, and I agree, they can spend a benny on the relevant roll and add 1d6 to the result, based on how the trait fuels them in the situation.

Character Creation

Character creation was a mix of regular Savage Worlds creation, the family lineage rules from the Pendragon RPG, and the Savagely Useful character creation tool by Sean Patrick Fannon. The ultimately wind up a little stouter this way in normal creation, but it probably works as the required skills for a successful knight are a lot bigger.

And that's it, a breakdown of the tweaks I made to Savage Worlds to get Savage Pendragon!