The last one reached capacity, so here's part two...

In reply to Cripple X (msg # 1):

Wow. That was quick!

Continuing the discussion from the other OOC thread, I found when I recently ran my first FtF SW game with players totally new to the art of RP'ing, that they didn't expect to be able to do everything. They learned teamwork right off the get-go and it was cool to see them work through their challenges that way. I didn't really need to shine the spotlight on an individual, because they were doing that for each other. With the concepts of Bennies and Adventure Cards and the Playing Card initiative, they struggled just a bit on how to best use those concepts, but as far as characters were concerned, they caught on quickly and did great!

The other cool thing about SW is that each setting has its own Edges, etc. which allows for really cool setting-oriented character customization and uniqueness, but often an Edge from one setting will work equally well in any of the others.

I'm new to SW, but I'm already a fanboy!

On topic, I've been reading a /lot/ of threads for SW lately, and I gotta say...you can easily min/max, but it's only in one area. Derfinsterlin's Strength/Fighting d12 melee monster? Shoot him in the face with an arrow. Or throw a rock at him. And the best part is, you can also just throw a bunch of melee mooks at him and let the guy go to town doing exactly what he told the GM he wanted to be doing. Those high skill levels are a flag to the GM "I want the character to shine here", and that's perfectly alright. Yeah, you can throw his weakness at him, and boy howdy will he have a few of 'em, but only do that when it adds to the fun, which isn't always.

If he starts to outshine somebody else, then they shine elsewhere and you should highlight that as well. But one of my basic principles as GM is to always look for ways to make the players' characters look like badasses. Even when they're having the tables turned on them. /Especially/ then. (The more awesome their opponents, the more awesome the players will feel when they come out on top.)

But yeah, min/maxing with SW is really easy and in fact expected explicitly. Put a bunch of points in one or two areas you're really good, dump a lot of other areas, and don't dump any of those precious Attributes. Then it just becomes a matter of knowing that there are some things you can't do, and that just takes player buy-in to the system. Pathfinder, /any/ edition of D&D, they all offer so many options to nickel and dime all opposition, I've seen several builds that really do allow a single PC to do anything anyone else can do, and better. But it's all very obscure stuff that those GMs probably shouldn't have allowed in the first place, and definitely a case of the GM not looking over everyone's sheets and approving them before play. Granted, there's usually things you can do about any one of them, but it tends to involve killing the character in ways they didn't see coming, rather than shaping the game so it's still fun for everyone.

Savage Worlds does not have the "killer build," the way of making a character that is completely OP (overpowered) that may be fun as a geeky, intellectual exercise, but should be rejected by any GM with two neurons to rub together. This is also true of any relatively simple and transparent system.

Amen to that! However...



That's not min-maxing. That's building a specialist, a character that is very good at one thing to the point where it might be the only thing he's really useful at.

Min-Maxing, to me, only occurs on the meta-level, when a player specifically builds a character by searching for loopholes in the roles to exploit them and/or to counter the most common NPCs/monsters he knows he's going to encounter.

That's not a barbarian armed with a stone battle axe, rolling d12 for fighting, and an insane amount of damage due to his high strength, heavy weapon and the No mercy edge.

It's more the barbarian who comes down the mountain with not one but *two* nicely engraved rapiers and a plate armor helmet as well as an arcane resistance background hindrance. You know, clearly created with a different mindset than the axe-wielder.
This message was last edited by the player at 12:28, Sat 14 Mar 2015.

I just think it is a matter of degrees. Min-maxing is minimizing something to maximize another. The easiest example is taking a dump stat what you don't expect to matter so that you can max out a stat that is important. On of the things I really like about Savage Worlds is there is not really a dump stat (though I'd say Strength is less important in some genres than others). The line between what is a loophole and what is a synergy can get a bit fuzzy, especially if the latter is obscure and convoluted. Min-maxing run amok creates feedback loops where now the minimized bits truly no longer matter or have a work around. For some people, it's a fun mini-game to play, which I respect, but I wouldn't want to play with those characters.

So Lankhmar: City of Thieves is out and now Rifts is coming out ... exciting times for Savage Worlds

So now the question... who will run a Lahnkmar game? ;-)

I don't have the book/pdf myself but won't mind tagging along for the fun.

I bought it on day one, but I don't have time to set up a new game just now... maybe in six mos. or so when work slows down... I'd be eager to play though if anyone else gets off the ground with it...

Have Lankhmar on my list, just trying to decide on the maps.  Thought I'd wait a bit and see if they do a bundle.

If anyone is planning on running a game. I'm in.

...looks like we got lots of players, no DMs...

:/

Same ol' story. I'm not as familiar with the world as I'd like and the time required to run even a play-by-post, oh the time....

There's also a Lahnkmar coming out for Dungeon crawl Classics; which i am looking forward to.

But Rifts...now that is another thing entirely. I think of all systems Savage Worlds could definately give rules to realize the setting better than the original!

Now I know what I want for Christmas!

Everyone see the update to shaken?

http://www.peginc.com/forum/vi...rder=asc&start=0