Adventure Monday! - Planet Qalesh

Not exactly a nice place to go skiing...Planet Qalesh!

 This one explains the difference between a spacesuit and a pressure suit.

GM Wednesday - Shaken Effect

Let's talk "Shaken". There are people out there who are playing Savage Worlds and believe that Shaken means "Stunned". This is a mistake.

Stunned is usually interpreted as the character loses the ability to act as a result of loss of physical or mental faculty.

Shaken does not mean that you have to stand there dumb-founded with drool coming out of the corner of your mouth. You can still take free actions when Shaken. You can still dive for cover.

Here's some examples of what Shaken can mean.

• The enemy unloads the full magazine of a Machine Gun in your direction. Your sense of self preservation is prohibiting you from poking your head out to return fire.
• The boxer who is being pounded by savage blows from his opponent finds that he can only curl up defensively against the ropes until the referee calls for the fighters to separate.
• You get clocked upside the head and are dazed for a moment.
• You are a victim of a Taunt so withering that your brain locks up for a moment as it is overwhelmed with rage or shame.
• You see something so horrific that your brain decides that running away is smarter than getting within it's reach.
• You are attacked by a man wielding "poo on a stick". It's not scary, but you can't override your revulsion to counter attack.

Shaken is the name of the mechanic used to simulate all of these responses because mechanically they can all be handled with the same rule, and because the cure for each of these conditions is for your "chutzpah" to override your brain's fear or shock and get you back into the action. Thus a Spirit roll breaks you free.

Stun-Lock

There has been accusations that the Shaken mechanic can keep a player out of the fight by keeping them perennially Shaken. I experienced this as well when I was a novice GM. There are ways to mitigate this.

1) Spirit is not a dump stat. There are no dump stats in Savage Worlds.
2) Combat Reflexes is an edge that grants you +2 to your Spirit roll to get out of being Shaken. Leadership Command grants a +1 to all of your allies within a certain range.
3) A player can roll Spirit, and if he fails he can then immediately spend a Benny to remove the Shaken status and act that round. You don't have to choose to spend the Benny before you roll. You can always spend that Benny, even if you fail the roll.
4) As GM, you should not be stingy with awarding Bennies. I'll talk about Bennies more in my next post, but suffice to say that they shouldn't feel the urge to hoard them for soak rolls.

That said, I have had player succeed on his Spirit roll but have to wait for the next round to get unshaken. In the meantime they get shaken again by the enemy's attack. Yes it can be frustrating and there are a couple of house rules you might like if you are having this problem with your group.

a) Character's can take actions, except at a -4 penalty while Shaken. It's a harsh penalty but some people like the idea of having an outside chance as opposed to no chance at all.

or

b) Have a Success on a Spirit roll remove the Shaken status so that characters can act immediately instead of requiring a Raise.

Despite the outcries of "Stun-lock", I find the Shaken mechanic a valuable rule set. It allows suppressive fire to work, the heroes to keep a very tough enemy on the ropes while they formulate a plan, and it gives the creative loudmouth a way to contribute in combat. Remember that before you decide to remove the Shaken mechanic as a fix.

Speaking of system fixes, I give Savage Worlds props. I tinker with every system I get my hands on because they do stuff that just didn't make sense or could be done better. Savage Worlds really didn't look like it made sense when I first read through the book, but every change I made to the system I ended up reverting because the way it was written in the rules just worked better.

Adventure Monday! - Planet Ashara

Welcome to the Nightmare World of Ashara. I hope you've notified your next of kin.

I was inspired to make Ashara first as a hunting preserve, but then it occurred to me that any habitable planet would be exploited in no time, unless it was a planet that chewed-you-up and spit-you-out like Klendathu (ala Starship Troopers), or Australia.

So here you are, a beautiful world on the outside and a meat-grinder on the inside.

Updated Planet Sonti PDF

I just realized that I forgot to add the Wild Card star next to Chitter and Saski. That has been corrected and the new PDF is available for Planet Sonti.

GM Wednesday - Behind the Screen

Aaaaaah the ever versatile GM's Screen. Serving the triple function of hiding your rolls, hiding your notes, and giving you quick access to the charts and tables you'll need to run your game. I've used them as far back as Advanced Dungeons and Dragons (where they were a godsend because of THAC0). In time I've bought a few, made more than a few, and even bought the most excellent Savage Worlds Customizable GM Screen.

I don't use them anymore, and here's why...

1) It created a barrier between me and my players. Not just a visual barrier but a social barrier. It sent the message that I am separate from them and not a part of the group. I think that on a subconscious level, removing that barrier also removed some of the player-gm adversarial perceptions.

2) It encouraged either fudging my dice rolls or the perception that I was fudging my dice rolls. Now I roll on the open table, with jumbo dice that my players can read from one end of the table to the other. I no longer need to announce that I have critted somebody. They can read and I privately relish the gasps and outcries. And of course their faces light up whenever I roll a fumble.

3) GM screens aren't always that helpful. I had a friend loan me the GM Screen for Star Wars Saga Edition and it was so crammed with tables and tiny type that I couldn't find anything. There reaches a point when the game system is simple enough that you don't need the reminders, or it is so complicated that a GM Screen just doesn't have the real-estate to print everything you need to look up. I am better off just printing retypes of the tables I feel I actually need into a chair-side booklet for quick browsing.

4) If all of my notes are on note cards, I just have to keep them face down for privacy. If my players intend to peak while I am having a bio-break, then a GM Screen isn't going to stop them either. At least my note cards will be so short and obtuse that the info will be useless to them.

BTW, when I am done with a particularly good adventure, I put all of the note cards and npc cards in a sandwich bag. Very easy storage!

More and more I'm hearing about GMs either coming out from behind the screen or at least making all of their rolls openly. Good! I say "Stop cowering behind your walls and face your players as God intended; with your dice on one side and a bottle of Dr. Pepper on the other!"

Game on!

Adventure Monday! - Planet Sonti

It's time for a new Planetary One Sheet so leave the kids behind because Planet Sonti is the world where any seedy fantasy can happen, if the money is right. What happens on Sonti stays on Sonti. The local authorities guarantee it. Just make sure it doesn't happen to you.

GM Wednesday - Savage Big-Bads

When I played Savage Worlds, I often made the mistake of thinking of the Big Bad in D&D terms, i.e. there is one monster or villain and he is tough enough to take on the whole party.

Then one of my players gets a lucky roll and aces the damage and down goes my Big Bad before he's had a chance to do anything. Sooooo anti-climactic. This is a complaint I have heard from others around the net.

We don't need a rules change or increasing the Toughness of the creatures to the point where there is little to no chance of hurting the creature without Acing every die. What's needed is rethinking the entire Boss Challenge.

Extras As Hit Points

Your Big Bad is the evil Dr. Infamous, super-scientist and twisted madman but basically a squishy human. One good shot could drop him. Sure you could throw him into power armor but again, one lucky shot... and the players have him outnumbered with a lot of attacks versus Dr. Infamous's one or two attacks.

But Dr. Infamous would certainly have lab assistants, guards, robot prototypes, and/or pets that are "abominations of science!" You can guarantee a longer battle if the heroes must wade through Dr. Infamous's minions before they can get to him.

Also remember, he's a doctor. Doctors aren't usually on the front lines of combat (unless they are in a super-hero universe). No, that's why they make or hire minions. Dr.Infamous is more likely to throw his guards, pets, and mechanical behemoths at the heroes while the he makes his escape. Now it's not just a combat, it's a race to get past the Extras and catch Dr. infamous before he can slip away!

"Was That a Bullet of Dragon Slaying?"

"Why no, it was just a .22"

One of Savage Worlds strengths is that a good shot can drop a thug in one round as opposed to taking 4 rounds to whittle away at his Hit Points. It also means that a huge monster can be dropped with a lucky shot, or has its Toughness set so high that the heroes will just keep whiffing their damage rolls. After the first few whiffs, my players got tired of hitting but dealing no damage. In the meantime, the dragon is in perpetual Shaken status. It's frustrating and many times the players will keep attacking head on because that was how they did it in D&D. 

I have a different concept for dealing with Huge monsters. Let's mock up a new Dragon for example.

First I give it Heavy Armor. Your sword has no hope of penetrating that hide and neither does your .45 Colt service revolver. You don't expect to kill a person by flicking grains of sand at them, don't expect to bring down a dragon with a bullet. Go get yourself a Bazooka.

So how is a hero supposed to bring down a dragon without Heavy Weapons? First, its head has some weak spots that can lead to its brain, such as the eyes or the roof of its mouth. Those will both require Called Shots (which will bypass the dragon's armor) and you will still have to overcome its high Toughness. 

Sound unfair? Not really. It's what you would need to do with the Dragon "as-written" anyways. The difference is that I'm letting the players now that just shooting at its hide isn't going to help and they are going to have to focus their attacks on a vulnerable area as opposed to just hoping for a lucky shot. That way we bypass the elation of "I hit!" followed by the constant crash of "but I deal no damage..."

Second method, find some way to use the environment to deal Heavy damage to it, like dropping a castle tower on it, or leading it into the giant dwarven forges where you can dump molten gold on it.

The basic idea here is that the heroes should not even consider going toe-to-toe with this dragon. They should be running, hiding, and thinking about how to use teamwork and surprise to bring this thing down. Unless of course they have a magical blade of Titan Slaying (blade ignores all armor, including Heavy)... Ahhhhhhhhh? See what I did there?

A Beast of Many Parts

I like to use this concept for Giant Octopi, Kraken, even Star Cruisers. 

Example: The heroes have entered the temple of an elder god, too late to stop the summoning ritual. Now they have a mass of tentacles to contend with.

Well this is an elder god so I may not want my PCs to be able to actually slay it (that kind of knowledge will just make them cocky). But if I treat its tentacles as individual Wild Cards or Extras then not only do I get at least one attack on each hero, but I can have the heroes drive out the elder god once all of the tentacles are defeated/ severed.

"Wait, your Star Cruisers have Tentacles?" No, but I do subscribe to the idea that Star Cruisers are fortresses to be avoided (as described in Daring Tales of the Space Lanes by Triple Ace Games, check out the DTotSL Free PDF of the setting rules). If the heroes must engaged a Star Cruiser, then they can hardly expect to destroy it with their weak little weapons. It's just too massive. But what they can do is target specific systems, like the Star Cruisers port-forward laser batteries or the ships aft maneuvering thrusters. By taking out these systems, they whittle away at the cruisers effectiveness and maybe give themselves an opening to escape. So to me, a Star Cruiser is a conglomeration of Wild Cards or Extras and as each system is lost, the Star Cruiser becomes more crippled.

Look at the Battle of Endor from Return of the Jedi. The Executor (Super Star Destroyer) wasn't taken out by one hit. It lost its forward Deflector Shields first when pilots took out one of the power plant towers. Then it lost control after an a-wing pilot kamikazed into the bridge. Then it crashed into the Death Star II which ultimately destroyed it.