Great commentary. I'm a big fan of the players succeeding, too . . . most of the time. Under certain circumstances *cough* Night Train *cough*, failure should be just as interesting for the players. And the simplest way I know of to accomplish that is to be stingy with Bennies. But this tactic should be used sparingly at most.

I think Quick comes into play with Level-Headed only if all cards are 5 or lower. _Source: Ron Blessing on Gaming and BS episode about Savage Worlds_

Couple of thoughts for GM's who feel like they're struggling to challenge their players. As many tools as SW gives the players to succeed, you as the GM have plenty of things in your toolbox to give your players real uphill battles to make their victories feel even sweeter. Firstly, let me say I don't believe in adversarial GM'ing, but I also don't believe in pulling punches, fudging dice or handwaving rules to go easy on players either. If you're constantly going easy on your players, you're taking away from your players' feeling of achievement when they do succeed. Let's get into some examples of simple stuff that can help you get this balance right. If you want a TLDR: Know the Rules. Even if SW is supposed to be Fast Furious Fun, if you half arse your rules knowledge as a GM, you're going to struggle. Use challenge modifiers and tell your players up front what the penalty or modifier for a roll is and why so they know what they need to roll. 1: Use all the modifiers as intended in ranged combat (and combat in general). Range penalties, darkness penalties, cover penalties. These add up, and even if the max penalty is a -4, that's still a big change to ranged attack probabilities. Even with Marksman edge or taking Aim, they would still be shooting at a penalty if firing at medium range, light cover and dim light. 2: Likewise, not every trait test is a TN 4 either. Think about environmental or other difficulties for the players. Maybe there's a thunderstorm and their notice rolls and night vision gear are going to be affected (-3). Maybe corporate guards got wind of an enemy op and have upgraded their security and put in fancy new locks (thievery -2 to unlock). Sometimes it is a simple TN 4, or you give the player's situational bonuses. Point is, don't get lazy and just flat 4 every test. Reward creative play and ideas that help them overcome these difficulties outside of just spamming bennies at it. The more you hint and reward, the more they'll do it. 3: Read the first 5 pages of the Bestiary chapter and use that knowledge to modify simple enemy stat blocks to make challenging, interesting foes. In your example of the T-Rex that gets one shotted by a pistol, give the damn thing Heavy Armor so pistols and small arms (dad joke done) can't hurt it normally. Watch your players shit themselves as they scramble to stay alive long enough to figure out a plan. A player who takes a moment to do a Nature, Notice or Battle roll might learn that the beast has a weak spot from the right angle and a Called Shot to the eye or from under the neck might bypass that heavy armor, or better yet they might come up with an ingenious plan to overcome the beast using fun stuff from the environment. GM, are there fuel drums in the supply shed? You bet your ass there are! Also look up some creative combat design videos here on YT, there are many great GM's who have fantastic advice about creating interesting and challenging combat scenarios that don't rely solely on more and harder enemy hordes. Let your smart enemies act smart and not walk into a wall of player bullets. 4: GM bennies. You get one bennie per player at the table, your wild-card enemies get 2 bennies each and enemies that get a joker initiative card get a bennie to the GM's pool. Don't be afraid to use these from time to time when an enemy flops a damage roll and to soak some damage on heavy foes.

I apologize for not turning off the music during the stream. It is supposed to be part of the process, but I clearly missed it. I should really make a checklist.

thanks for the time stamp! great vid, keep rolling aces :)

I have enjoyed your show, but as an honest critique; turn off the music once you start talking. It was very distracting and I ended up letting it play for the algorithm, but stopped actively listening. Sorry.

Can you share the link for the dice calculator you posted in the chat?

I havent even seen the video, just the title made me say... "great!" I love when my players succeed. I just want them to feel challenged.

I switched over to SW from D&D just before COVID and haven’t looked back. I 💯 agree with you on each of these reasons. As a DM, I’d add that it’s much more manageable to run a game. At higher levels, dnd combats become a CHORE and insanely long. Coming up with an NPC, or combat encounter in SW is SO EASY to do on the fly compared to dnd because of how stats are done. “Oh, this goblin is the leader, and he’s a bit smarter than the rest. Let’s give him d8s across the board and these two edges.”Boom, done. I could go on and on. Great vid.

I may be in the minority, but I think the "Fast, Furious, Fun" branding has always been cringe. Let your customers decide what adjectives to use, particularly whether or not they are having fun.

By any chance, do you have a podcast?

I've been playing with the idea of creating a side XP "Setting Rule". Where XP is rewarded basically using the 1/2/3 system... Where 5 XP can be traded in for a Conviction and 5 Conviction can be traded in for an "Extra Advancement" This is separate from standard Advancement which is still Milestone and Convictions can still be earned and spent like normal (including those they get via XP). Mind you I tend to run Campaigns that start at Novice and aim towards Legendary over a year or two. This is also still just a concept idea, so I haven't tried it out yet.

I agree.

Kristian's book is an excellent addition to SWADE. 🍻⚔️

I have been using wound levels with hit points. At 75% you are Wounded and get a -1 to all d20 rolls. At 50% you are Bloodied and have -2 to all d20 rolls. At 25% you are Very Wounded and have -3 to all d20 rolls. Of course, at 0 you are incapacitated. Classes have a serious problem in that each level is not worth the same across the classes and subclases. Savage Worlds mostly does this with Edges, but some of the more recent stuff, like Rifts and Pathfidner for Savage Worlds, there are Edges that are worth WAY MORE than they should be. They break the math of Savage Worlds.

I despised 5e right from the start for mainly balance reasons and was happy for a while with PF2, but ... the HP and magic system are beginning to bother me there too. The main problem I have with Savage Worlds is that it doesn't have an official mechanic for solo bosses - wild cards alone just aren't tough enough to withstand a party with way more actions than it for more than one round. I've found a few fan-made mechanics, but I would have preferred if the makers had thought of them. Once in a while you want one strong enemy taking on the entire party for at least three rounds in a true boss fight.

Potassium

I'm up for playing ANYTHING but D&D. My reason is every time I play it we have a teeny tiny bit of role play between battles, battles take way too long. Also, D&D attracts a lot of rule lawyers, if you get two in a group they argue endlessly about rules. They are usually the people you picture good at math and not socializing. These people don't play anything else because most other systems focus on the story rather the math of the game.

One thing I think would be a really cool topic that I haven't been able to find for Savage Worlds is GM 'hard won advice' that maybe not as obvious of a mistake but still good to know. Things like how in D&D 5e you don't really want to mess with concentration and attunement since so many things are balanced around them. Or types of effects that can very easily be abused or snowball out of control if you don't know their potential. But I do love this video. I know a lot of players also want the seratonin drip of 'oh piece of candy!' so finding ways to provide that same feeling without using XP (as a big lover of milestone leveling myself) can be a challenge

My favorite exp system is one for showing up and one per goal accomplished. 5 exp to advance.

The Eberron conversion book is great. I was pleasantly surprised at the price for the hardcover from Kristian's website with shipping to Oceania. I've now converted my Eberron 5e D&D campaign to Savage Worlds and my table absolutely loves it.

I'm currently working on adapting the Fading Suns universe to Savage Worlds, so this is definitely of interest to me. I've mostly been using other resources as inspiration, and kind of kit-bashing them together. For example, the Fading Suns Manja cult basically allows cultists to use Ritual magic, so the Ritual rules from East Texas University work well ... though cultists would need to have the Nobility edge rather than any magical background edge. On the other hand, the psionics rules in earlier versions of Fading Suns remind me strongly of the Broken Earth rules, and the magic of FS has always been strictly limited by the cult or Church faction to which a character belongs, so placing controls and limits on the magic and psychic edges has been a priority. It makes these edges less powerful (you can't literally do *ANYTHING* with a single skill), but I feel it's more appropriate to the setting. Cybernetics has also been weird, since (for the wealthy, anyway), enhancements are readily available just by spending money in FS. I've mostly gotten past this without requiring the Weird Science edge by making most cybernetic enhancements equivalent to normal technological advances (like communicators, various weapons, some armors, and gadgets like telescopic sights) that have simply been grafted onto the cyborg's body rather than being separate pieces of equipment. THEN somebody with the Weird Science perk can, if (s)he wishes, add powers to the mix. Of course, there's also a cost to the character who uses cybernetic enhancements, just like there's a cost for *ANYTHING* out of the ordinary in Fading Suns. 😈 The hardest thing so far has been creating the various player character races. The Vorox, especially, has been a stone-cold *B!TCH* to create without screwing over anyone who *DOESN'T* want to play a Vorox.😉

To be honest, I have always avoided Eberron because it was just a D&D setting. I don't play D20 anymore. So to see that there is a Savage Worlds conversion, needing lore books of course, I would now be all over this. With that said, I would love to see a version of 'The Midderlands' to Savage Worlds. If the creators of that setting did one, I would buy the whole package and even help to promote it however I could.

I am always happy to hear more about converting other settings to SWADE. Kristian's book is excellent. Could've been bigger for my taste, but he did a great job with it. I hope that he converts some other settings down the road. ⚔🍻

"Reasons why" is redundant. Health levels > hit points. HP is bad game design. Classes are stupid. You might like DC20 (an improvement of D&D). #BoycottWotC

FYI, I made sure to include 'Super 8' on my list of "Inspirational Movies" on pg. 206 of the 'Pinebox Middle School' core book! :-)

i would love to see time stamps in your videos :) keep up the savage work!

As someone who's recently dived into a lot of your videos thank you for making stuff like this! I've been a 99% custom adventure GM for my entire time running games, and recently getting into Savage Worlds for a Fallout game a lot of your videos have been really helpful!

The game that's taught me the most about reacting to the players is Godbound by Kevin Crawford. Running that definitely spills over into other systems and genres, especially since the PCs are so unpredictable.

Thanks for having me on to discuss this topic. I had a blast. I look forward to our future discussions!

Fyi, weary means tired. Wary means cautious.