Author: HappyMonsterScott
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Blog to Blog
For those who might be interested, there are multiple sessions of actual play documented at my old blog, Savage Salem.
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Art as Far as the Eye Can See
As I get ready for the January Kickstarter of Children of the Apocalypse, I’ve been reading the excellent advice at Jamey Stegmaier’s blog over at Stonemaier Games. (Stonemaier, by the way, publishes amazing board games, including one of my favorites, Viticulture, and another I’m dying to try out, Scythe.) One piece of advice was to make sure you…
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Eclipse Phase and Adaptations
Before embarking on my Savage Rifts campaign (my most recent in-person game), I ran a Savage Worlds conversion of Eclipse Phase. I fell in love with the world of Eclipse Phase, but the game system was a bit much for me – too much crunch and detail for my players to learn or for me to enjoy running.…
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The Blackwood Codex
The Blackwood Codex is a new setting from Eli Kurtz and The Mythic Gazetteer. Savage Worlds settings are full of mashups (military and monsters! Wild West and Horror! Cthulhu in space!), and the Blackwood Codex delivers a really unique combination of Western fairy tale adventure and high-flying Chinese wuxia action – your woodsman can be running up…
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Why Savage Worlds? The Lazy GM
I’ve been playing RPGs on and off for almost 40 years now, and I tend to end up as the gamemaster more often than not. Usually, that results from the fact that I’m willing and able to run games, and most of my players aren’t. No disrespect to the players – you need both to…
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Blood Rage Monster Painting
Kudos to Sorastro for his amazing painting tutorials! These monsters wouldn’t look nearly as good without his tutelage. Get Blood Rage here.
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Improvisational Gamemastering
A recent discussion on Google+ got me thinking about improvisation as a gamemaster. Some of my favorite experiences running Savage Worlds have come directly from a player haring off in a random direction that I didn’t plan, and needing to adapt on the fly to what they wanted to do. As an example, here’s the…
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Character Building in Savage Worlds
Outside of a few specific settings like Savage Rifts, the implied order of build for characters in Savage Worlds is Race, Traits, Skills, Edges and Hindrances, Gear, and Background Details. This approach is sound from a game mechanics perspective; it minimizes any iteration on the character design. However, it may not be optimal from a…