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.

The Middle-Earth RPGs are heading into the West...(for now?)

In case you hadn't heard, both The One Ring and its D&D 5e variant Adventures in Middle-Earth are falling out of print soon as Cubicle7 and license holder Sophisticated Games have ended their agreement suddenly.

I ran The One Ring for my group and quite enjoyed it (and reviewed it here), and used the Mythic GM Emulator Deck to try Adventures in Middle-Earth. I think both are great systems and I can't make a strong recommendation for one over the other, but Cubicle7 has offered both in charity bundles:

The One Ring collection is available in two Bundles of Holding: The One Ring and The One Ring Journeys.

Adventures in Middle-Earth is simultaneously available in a Humble Bundle.

Sophisticated Games has hinted on social media that the games are not necessarily dead, but either way, both lines of plenty of material to support your campaigns, and this is your best bet to get them cheap (AND support charity!).

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.

Tommy's Take on Knights & Legends

After this game came to my attention on The RPG Pub (my online gaming hangout of choice), I decided to give it a peek, see what's inside.

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.

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!

Shaintar: Thundering Skies Campaign Ending Soon

The Shaintar: Thundering Skies Kickstarter is 6 days away from ending, and could use your attention.

The Kickstarter is for a full campaign book, the first plot point campaign for Shaintar, which is pretty much the gold standard for fantasy in Savage Worlds. It kind of pioneered, if informally, some of the higher powered mechanics that Sean Patrick Fannon brought to bear in the Savage Rifts adaptation. After Sean moved on to other projects, the setting landed into the capable hands of Darren Pearce, who has exhaustively detailed seemingly every nook and cranny of the setting.

The Kickstarter is still more than $3000 away from funding, and the full PDF can be had for the $20 pledge, while the physical book is a $45 pledge. You can bump up your pledge to get anything currently available for Shaintar, if you're new to the party...and, if you're a Fantasy Grounds gamer, you can sign up for the Fantasy Grounds version of the campaign for $20.

Shaintar is explicitly heroic in nature, which actually kinda separates it from the pack in this age of antiheroes and dark settings, and if you sign up for one of the collaboration tiers, you can make your mark on the setting by helping create villains, allies or even plot twists.

I'm a big fan of the Shaintar setting (especially loving the higher powered slant of the Legends Unleashed book), and would love to see it carry on into the future with this campaign, so check it out, see if it's your thing, and sign up if it is!

Tommy's Take on Arthur Lives! 2nd Edition

I do like Greek Myth, and  I like Arthurian Myth just as well. So it makes sense to end the week reviewing Arthur Lives! 2nd Edition as it closes in on the halfway mark of its Kickstarter.

A Pair of Kickstarters From a Pair of My Favorite Writers

Two of my favorite writers have Kickstarters running right now, so I thought I'd bring them to your attention.

Arthur Lives! 2nd Edition



Powered by Fate Core, Arthur Lives! 2nd Edition is an urban fantasy RPG by Jason "Doctor Comics" Tondro. Jason, who was actually my first (technically only) D&D 5th Edition DM, is a big Arthurian nut, and wrote Arthur Lives! for the True20 system.

Arthur Lives! is an RPG about aspects of the Arthurian legends returning to life via reincarnation in modern times. The interesting hook is that it is only aspects that are reincarnating, meaning that there are multiple "Arthurs", multiple "Lancelots" and so on kicking around.

I read the old first edition years ago, but haven't had a chance to read the Fate Core version yet. You can - sans art and layout, by backing at the $5 level (the full eventual PDF release requires a pledge of $20 or more).

The Kickstarter is a little over 50% funded with 24 days to go.

Leagues of Gothic Horror: Ministry & Mordavia Books and Dice



Paul "Wiggy" Wade-Williams - whose impressive resume includes Hellfrost, All for One: Regime Diabolique and Leagues of Adventure - is expanding the Leagues of Gothic Horror line with the Guide to the Ministry of Unusual Affairs and the Guide to Mordavia: Land of Horror books.

Leagues of Adventure is a pulpy, globetrotting game, powered by the Ubiquity system. The Leagues of Gothic Horror line expands that pulpy adventure into darker, more horrific places, and is already supported by guides to Apparitions, Mummies, Black Magic, Vampires and Shapeshifters. This Kickstarter will shed light on the Ministry of Unusual Affairs, the Crown's response to the horrible things in the world, and the land of Mordavia. The Mordavia book promises flexibility, as each major character will have two backstories, and you pick the one that applies in your campaign.

The campaign is just over $1000 away from reaching its goal, and has 11 days to get there. A stretch goal is out there to unlock a Guide to the Walking Dead as well.

Tommy's Take on The One Ring

Apparently the announcement of Adventures in Middle-Earth for D&D 5th edition sparked a run on The One Ring. I alllllmost bought Adventures in Middle-Earth because I love D&D 5e, but ultimately got The One Ring, which I've now ran two sessions of.

Tommy's Take on Army of Darkness

So I recently started watching Ash vs Evil Dead thanks to Netflix DVD, and it took my mind back to another older RPG: Army of Darkness by Eden Studios, powered by the Cinematic Unisystem.

Hail to the King, baby.

Tommy's Take on Crown of Shadow

So one of my favorite "dead lines" is the Midnight line by Fantasy Flight Games. While everything is out of print, you can probably find most of it for cheap somewhere online (or inflated, I haven't checked), and it all remains available digitally. Including Crown of Shadow, one of the first titles released for Midnight, being an introductory adventure.

Tommy's Take on Adventurers! Revised Edition

So close to three years ago, GRAmel released Adventurers!, touted as being an RPG in only two pages. They recently hit me up about reviewing the upcoming Adventurers! Revised Edition, and so here I am.

Tommy's Take on Bloodshadows Third Edition

Evverything old is new again, as classic games rise from the dead with a growing frequency (throw in retroclones, and there are increasingly few classic games that you can't get your hands on in some capacity now). Joining that list is Bloodshadows Third Edition, the latest release by Precis Intermedia, dispensing with both the d6 and Masterbook systems and instead powered by their GenreDiversion system.

Tommy's Take on Adventure Most Fowl

Old school adventures are all over the place in the post-3rd edition retroclone wake, and Grey Fey brings us this adventure, involving goblins and pilfered chickens.

Tommy's Take on the Savage Rifts Player's Guide

So to my surprise, I had an email waiting for me, with the Savage Rifts Player's Guide (part of the Savage Rifts Kickstarter, coming Tuesday) inside.

Intrigued, I opted to take a look...