Really bad pseudo pun....

Savage Worlds: Explorers Edition - $9.99
Savage Worlds Adventure Deck PDF - $9.95
Dice exploding the right moment - priceless

Sorry for that post! But sometimes it really feels that way.

Nyrondria - What happend before the break

What the DM told us as recap:

You went to check on the seal to the south of Kinmar
Met a not-so-nice "druid" on the way and told him where you were going
Got captured by weird-looking Orcs
Druid turned out to be a not-so-nice wizard
Nailo went into a fit and killed almost every Orc in sight
Went back to Kinmar
Town was under attack
You went below the tavern to find the blue-skinned elf fighting over a green gem with Lord Orgrim
You distracted Orgrim enough to let the elf take the gem and disappeared
Orgrim went north after him, making sure to stall you
You went after Orgrim

Treenenwelt for Savage Worlds

Human wish powers

Humans are kind of Neverending Story powered in the Tyrsworld. They can get any wish fulfilled, but loose memories from Earth for it.

So you stat with Earths Memory d12 and Arcane Knowledge: Wishes d4. You use your lower stat for Wish Magic. You can basically do any spell. Your Knowledge level decides which rank of spells you know: d4=Novice; d10=Heroic; d12=Legendary
Every time you roll a 1 on your Spell die, you loose one level of Earths Memory though!!

Savage Fate - Newest Version

You got the 5 Savage Worlds stats.
Successes are a 4 on the roll. 8 is a great success.

Instead of skills like in Savage Worlds you have something similar to Edges that give you a bonus in a specific field or under specific circumstances.
For character creation you choose:

A +1 environment modifier (e.g. city, wilderness, scholars/university, high society, orc culture, animals, swords, guns)
One primary +2 skill modifier (e.g. fighting, shooting (=throwing), athletics (=climbing, swimming), people skill (= persuasion, intimidation, taunt, streetwise), trace (=investigate, tracking), Stealth, dexterity (=pick locks, pickpocket), vehicles (=boating, driving, pilot), knowledge, arcane knowledge, repair, riding (incl. animal handling), survival (=streetwise), notice, guts.
One secondary +1 skill modifier (same categories as primary skill modifier)
A +1 psychological modifier (Aspect-Spirit of the Century style: friend, loved one, great nation of X, fear of snakes,...)


On each rank you can use one level advancement for one more primary skill and one for one more secondary, one attribute raise and one psychological modifier.

Stack Up maximum for any roll is Rank+3. => Novice: 4; Legendary: 8

[Even simpler solution:
Instead of environmental and skill modifiers, they are all aspects.]

Arcance knowledge is split into Powers and Rituals (á la D&D4).

And there are defined rules for skill challenges (x success vs. 4 failures).

Brulus' Long Term Goals

3 options (he does not know or think about):

1. Make himself beautiful (Boost Charisma spell under his hood)
2. Make everyone else ugly (Poison the well) - maybe only temporary
3. Get a following of freaks

Like I said this is from a meta point of view

Savage Century Light - New Version

You got the 5 Savage Worlds stats, but there are no skills.
Successes are a 4 on the roll. 8 is a great success.

Instead of skills you have something similar to Edges that give you +1 in a specific field or under specific circumstances.
For character creation you choose:

A +1 environment modifier (e.g. city, wilderness/scholars, university, high society, orc culture, animals)
Two +1 skill modifier (e.g. fighting, shooting (=throwing), athletics (=climbing, swimming), people skill (= persuasion, intimidation, taunt), investigate, Stealth, dexterity (=pick locks, pickpocket), vehicles (=boating, driving, pilot), , knowledge, arcane knowledge, repair, riding (incl. animal handling), tracking, survival, notice, guts.
1 conventional edge (or something else I come up with)

Variant (too strong??):
1 Primary skill +2
1 Secondary skill +1
On each rank you can use one level advancement for one more primary skill and one for one more secondary.
Solution: Stack Up maximum for any roll is +4 (or +6?)

Links to the RPG sites of members of my gaming groups

The new blog in town:Dicer

Our Savage Worlds Campaign: Luftenwelter

Billie Bob Autumn - Firefly/Serenity character

Imagine a handsome and friendly space Hutterer. Except that his religion has a much darker underbelly. Crazy nature hippie bible rewriting lunatics they are.
He is young and out in space from his backwood world the first (and probably last) time to find a wife and generally recharge the lifestock of the Ranaoke Commune by a little bit of preaching.

For him there is no disconnect between his general amicability and certain rites he takes part in. After all doesn't every farmer love his animals and still slaughter them, when it is time? No, it is not that extreme (99,9% of the time).


Concept: Space Hutterer

Attributes

Strength d8
Agility d6
Vitality d8
Alertness d8
Intelligence d6
Willpower d6

Derived Traits

Life Points 14
Initiative d6+d8
Endurance d8+d6
Resistance d8+d8 ???

Skills and Specialties

Animal Handling d4
Artistry –
Athletics d6
Covert d6
Craft –
Discipline –
Guns d6
Heavy Weapons –
Influence d6
Knowledge d2
Linguist -
Mechanical Eng. -
Medical Expertice –
Melee Weapon Cmbt. d2
Perception d6
Performance –
Pilot -
Planetary Vehicles d6
Ranged Weapons –
Scientifc Expertise -
Survival d6
Technical Eng. -
Unarmed Cmbt. d6

Complications

Armorous (min)
Memorable (min)
Easy Mark (MAJ) - Trusts People
Superstitious (min)
Loyal (min) - Mother

Assets

Nature Lover (min)
Allure (MAJ)
Religiosity (min)
Sweet and Cheerful (min)
Steady Calm (min)

Equipment
Black suit.
Ranaoke-Call Bible. (Called the Bat Shit Bible by 'heretics' ergo everyone else.)
Ritualistic dagger made out of a digger tooth. DMG d4W
Rifle, Assault DMG d8W; Range 150; ROF 3(40)

Synnibarr Actual Play

I was finally able to run my Synnibarr one shot.
I had created the chars for the 3 players, following their basic character concept description.

I got a "pretty fairy that throws bombs" by a casual gamer girl (And),
a samurai with laser sword and a werman that actually is a cyborg in wereman decoy and absorption powers. Those 2 were played by guys (Ser and Vla) from my regular gaming group.
The fairy named Sprinkle had the master mutation Super Speed (which equals Mach-1), because that also gave her great armor. Otherwise she would have been stomped quiet easily.
Follow the link to find the one shot Synnibarr character sheets as pdfs!

The adventure was set on a small volcanic island (as you can read in earlier blog posts). I sketched a small cave map on a single A4 piece of paper and wrote down some NPC and location details on the back, as well as a few notes of rules summary.

You can see the scanned pages here:


These notes actually would have been enough for two sessions (or a long 6 to 7 hours one).

The adventurer started with the PCs arriving in the only harbour village of the island. It was noon and from the ship bringing them there (I did not detail that at all) they could see a single volcano rising from the sea. Its slopes were covered in jungle and some fog was covering that area. Around the volcano flocks of flying deer were circling. What would Synnibarr be without this kind of stuff?
Obviously there was steam coming out of the volcano.

The harbour village (I never introduced its name "Winterhaven" because it is quite nonsensical for a tropic village, but actually it was a reference to D&D4's KotS) was mainly constructed out of stone houses with straw roofs and obviously there was an inn next to the harbour square.

I came up spontaneously with the idea that only a few old people were outside the building at noon. The characters were supposed to find their contact person Dusk in the village.

The casual game girl playing the fairy started intimidating people to get information where Duke was and when they could not really help, she started to attack them.

The talking raccoon who was hanging out in the inn and should have been their contact person, noticed that and prepared her bazooka to save the villagers. In the following fight the fairy/flygirl dodged the bazooka shell and was actually able to alter its direction to fire back at the inn. A bomb later the inn was aflame and the fire was nearly starting to affect other buildings.

The other two player character had in the meantime examined the mansion of the mayor and found a part of a robot there that had "Dusk" engraved in it. When they returned to the village they were able to stop the fire from spreading.

The most important rule part I did not really use was the multiple attacks each round. In the end I skipped the phases and let everyone act following their advantage bonus. The super speed fairy could act first when she wanted to use her 5 actions.
I did not want to take the pace out of the action by calculating who could act when. Although it would have made players loose their proactive play style. Who had an idea could normally act right away.

What was obviously confusing was the roll-under, roll-over mess for different actions - especially, because some roll-over skills are stated in percentages and I accidently marked other roll under stuff as +xx.

Generally the system was quite fast though.

One problem was the scaling. A lesser (= level 5-10) monster like a Gremlin can easily kill a level 1 character with one hit.

When I our time was nearly over, I dropped a hint and the players finally moved all up to the top of the volcano. For whatever reason-even though there was little time left-(actually it was because I wanted the wandering being risky), I rolled a random encounter. It turned out that they encountered "Rock Weird" (p.433). This is a fog creating 6m tall creature that I image as a whale like thing camouflaged as huge rock. While the rule book stats that it leaps up and unfolds a huge mouth, I misinterpreted that-reading over it fast-as a more Sarlacc like creature. So it swallowed the wereman who was walking over the trap door like mouth. The Rock Weird jumped up only after swallowing him and the fairy following the wereman in the maw to help him. I changed the 6 meter vertical jump to one that hurled the creature with its prey (and the other PCs standing on top) hundreds of meters in the air - right up to the cloud of the Gremlin "final boss".

I also ruled that there was acid inside the Rock Weird, but can't find that info in the creature description. So I must have made that up on the spot.

I described flying deer flying away in panic when the Rock Weird thundered by - up to a "hard" cloud. This was the place were the Gremlin kept the 2 baby raccoons. They were supposed to be the McGuffins by the contact person, but it played out different now.

The samurai still standing on the "flying" Rock Weird was able to split this creature with one amazing slash of his katana and saving his comrades.

Next they landed on the solid cloud of the Gremlin, which hovered over the lava lake of the vulcano. After some short interaction, the Gremlin slashed at the samurai and killed him with one hit. This I mentioned above already. If this would not have been a one shot and we were already over time, I would have probably changed the result, but in this case I was happy I had one less player to worry about.

The fairy went all suicide bomber and blew herself up next to the Gremlin. The monster survived that though, while the fairy was annihilated. Game over in any other system, but the Fairy had a minimal chance for a God roll success - the direct intervention of her deity.
And guess what: the player was able to pull that roll off - despite the less than 5% chance.
So I decided that the a huge golden shining flyhead would pop up in the sky and reassemble his flygirl follower. Somehow the Gremlin was nearly pushed off the cloud in the following chaos.

And that was the moment when the wereman followed up and finally pushed down the creature in the volcano. Would have been a happy end somehow, but the fairy decided that she had to kill the baby racoons. All the other players were grossed out, but And gave me exactly what I learned to expect from casual gamer girls: brutal bloodshed. :) She shot the 2 babies and the adventure ended here.


Picture material (added only now):
Volcanic Island
House in Winterhaven
Baby Racoons

Synnibarr One Shot Part Deux

I got a second character concept in the meantime. It is:

Samurai with a laser sword...

I thought you could create that as a Shadow Warrior. At least that is the best fitting class. Otherwise you could do it as a non-classed character obviously. The biggest problem is that the light saber will already cost most of the starting money if you don't roll really, really well. So how to get the armour?

But back to the adventure:
We need an easy hook.

That should be the story about the mayor's mansion.
If the PCs won't investigate it, they can also go up to the vulcano and find a cave or even further up and find the gremlin.

The cave connects to the underwater base of the slavers and the secret gambling room in the mayor's basement. So all the hooks are leading to the same structure. Simple right?

I am just not sure if a game of Poker is the the right thing for Synnibarr. Maybe something like the video game out of James Bond Moonraker instead? Called Telepathker??

I also noticed that the Lesser monsters (gremlins and the slavers) are too strong for starting character. While I could have changed them, I think there are more elegant ways around the problem of their 2 tenth. The Gremlin is on shaky terrain and I think in the cave there is a room where lizard people are treated in one cave room with something that disolves their scales...


If you want to know how it played out, and if the Gremlin's strength was a problem, have a look in the Synnibarr actual play post!

Synnibarr One Shot

Finally the big thing will happen: after waiting since 1994, I will be able to play Synnibarr. Actually I already had reached the point of character creation once with Halbi and Roman around 1998...

At the moment 1 have one character concept:
"Fairy that throws bombs" I created that as a Flyman/Flygirl with Superspeed mutation. Only the skill points for skills are missing, because that power is so expensive.

But now the important part: the adventure:

I want to use different inspirations:
Song titles by the bands Chrome Hoof and the Apes
Winterhaven, the city out of D&D4th Keep on the Shadowfell
The Savage Worlds of Solomon Kane adventure generator on deadlands.info/
Namely: Villain: Avenger (Noble) Goal: Conquer Hook: Rumor Locale: Exotic Land Henchmen: Combat Veteran Twist: Discovery

So it plays on an isolated vulcano island in the Sapphire Deep. There is a small, boring village called Frosthaven near the coast, where the Giants' come with a ship (500m length) every 1 months. There is an inn called Lazermead, some fishers and some farmers and an alchemist's tower. There is also a temple to Yanak, god of time (p.446).

Important NPCs:
Abon - Blood Orange (p.408) and Heal Spring Melon (p.402) farmer & trader, wants to become mayor, as the current one never leaves his mansion
Simera - female Talking Raccon (p.411) who is living in a cabin (!), hunter
Goto - Cyborg barman
Sam - Old, somewhat crazy dwarven fisherman: has seen Tenjohussan slavers in their whale. On one table with Abon...
Irpine - mayor (see adventure), lives in mansion build straight in rocks

The vulcano is most of the island and is surrounded by fog in the middle part. It is smoking at the moment. There jungle in the fog part. Flying Deer is normally circling the island.
There is also a cave to the magma with stalactites.
There are 4 traps (pit trap, hidden gun, mine, room filling with lava) and 1 monster there. Maybe also 1 wereman adventurer... Treasure: p.335!
Random encounters island: p.345+

Also: Octopus! Flying Deer, Flying Grizzly. Shark.. Tenjohussan slavers (p.426) in whale!!!

Basic outline - I hope it is crazy enough for Synnibarr: The mayor started to gamble with a Gremlin (p.382) who lives on top of the vulcano. He lost all his money. He contacted Tenjohussan slavers (p.426) traveling in a whale nearby. They plan to enslave all the village. The mayor sold his people...
But Simera, the raccoon, found out. The mayor told the Gremlin that there was danger the money would get lost and the Gremlin was able to kidnap Simera's twins.
If she tells about the secret of the mayor and the Gremlin, they will be thrown in the vulcano.
So she tries to plant subtle hints for the adventurers.

The gremlin is probably too strong to be beaten directly, but could be thrown into the volcano.

Here is a map I created from this outline:

You can read part 2 of the Synnbarr one shot preparation here.