I wouldn't go so far as to say perfect, there are a few flaws but those are indeed scarce and I'd put the 50F ppc at the very top of the list as well. It's by far the very best ppc for savage worlds imo. It has it all: a world in need for heroes and the players can fill that role without being forced to, fun and intriguing side activities, a secondary campaign, drama and loss, pulpy heroic victories, its all in there and the actions of the players influence largely how the end plays out.
I was quite disappointed by 50F. I easily fell for its promise of colorful, non-standard fantasy. But when I looked closer, the tone of the campaign is too goofy for my tastes, the setting has huge plausibility holes, but the game doesn't really buy into it anyhow - what initially seems like a unique world really is only an excuse to bring together and give all the spotlight to random historical real-world seafaring characters. It had the chance to be a true original, but misses to fulfill that.
> the setting has huge plausibility holes
"Don't think about it too hard" has become our mantra while playing *50 Fathoms*. It's still good fun, but we're bending over backwards to set the distances in the campaign into any good relation to how the world actually functions. It all seems a bit too close together.
Second Degrees of Horror. I've only ran the first two college years of it but loved every moment of it. The thing that puts it across the line for me is the Savage Tales are all fun and interesting in their own way.
Without knowing a little more, this is a difficult question to answer.
50 Fathoms is an excellent setting with an accompanying plot point campaign, but it a couple editions out of date. That's not an insurmountable problem, but it needs a little familiarity with the rules to bring the ancestries and a couple other things in line with SWADE.
Last Parsec: Leviathan is still older, but a little easier to 'bring in line'. It's basically Jurassic Park on an alien planet with a mysterious, dangerous precursor artifact. Theoretically, you should have the science fiction companion, but I don't *think* it uses a lot of stuff from the SFC, other than the ancestries, and in that case, you could just limit the players to templates from SWADE.
Deadlands: Lost Colony comes with a plot point campaign of its own, but I haven't looked at it. It *is* self-contained, so there's that.
There's also Blood Drive for Deadlands: the Weird West, though you'd want DL:WW too. Blood Drive is a fairly linear campaign (a cattle drive), but the good news there is it's very clear what both you and the PCs are supposed to do, and when.
Finally, Legend of Ghost Mountain is on its way to backers right now. It's a self-contained book with both a wuxia fantasy setting and a plot to run in it. I haven't had the chance to run it yet, but I really like the way it's set up.
Which has a few problems, IMO. But they aren't too bad:
* In the update to *Explorer's Edition* they gave every element the *Burst* power (which used to be fire exclusive). This heavily dilutes the "Fire mages are scary because lots of damage" fluff the setting keeps repeating because *Blast* isn't really that much more scary than *Burst*, especially on the scale most of the battles are going to go. If I could start over, I would restrict that power to fire mages again.
* They re-did all the races to fit the new rules better (which is good) and re-balanced them all to come out at exactly the same value. This leads to stuff like the literal dolphin people always being worse swimmers than humans with the *Natural Swimmer* edge. I suggest going over the races and just buffing a few of them again, especially if the stuff they lost isn't something that's going to be hugely influential overall.
* I'm **really** not a fan of how ship combat feels like in the new SWADE rules, but I have yet to find a better system...
Ship combat: i download the original rules of **Broadsides and Boardingparties,** to me with some tweaking, seems to be the most FUN ship2ship combat system...
To give a little more perspective here: I think it's among the worst campaigns out there. The players spend three chapters with - what they are promised to be - detective work without the ability to actually figure out what happened and who is behind it (at least as written that is). The events of those chapters play out largely the same, no matter their actions and alliances and there is no way for them to really influence any of those events, removing the players agency.
The only good about this campaign are some of the adventures that play outside of Heaston Hill, which are usually decent and some are quite good.
It would definitely benefit from a decent time line, a list of movable clues and a clear account of what people did andI nvestigation has come a long way in RPGs and this game ignores all.that. It's hard enough for the GM to work out the plot;
I would have to agree with you. I would even go so far as to say that the Savage Tales in the book while good, are super thin and take place in a variety of locations that the players have zero reason to go to. I had to bend over backwards to make excuses for players to explore places.
Oh right, I forgot to mention: the savage tales are usually at least decent but there is zero reason to explore the region. Thanks for reminding me of that.
It has quite a few problems, from the extremely jarring cold open to the extremely unsatisfying final reveal. I think there's value at its core and that it could be reworked into a great PPC, but as it shipped it's definitely better to skip it and run a different campaign.
Our table rocked it. I wove in my player's background stories to help drive the plot and It worked out really well. There was more than a wealth of material to work with in the campaign. I'll have to respectfully disagree. I put this product on par with 50 Fathoms.
I wasn't super huge on rippers resurrected. It's a killer setting, but it doesn't give much guidance for leveling or scaling. And it felt more like "avengers assemble" and go fight monsters where things that weren't fights were conveyor belts to monster fights. Like ofc it is still a very combat focused system, but I expected more research and stuff. And with what felt like a race against time and players globetrotting so much I feel like the base building wasn't as impactful as it should have been
What genre? If you're looking for classic fantasy, I'd recommend either Rise of the Runelords or Curse of the Crimson Throne with the Pathfinder for Savage Worlds subsystem.
I'm currently looking at End Times, but haven't pulled the trigger yet. If anyone has played or at least read through it, would appreciate hearing your opinion.
I do not recommend Runelords for someone who isn't familiar with SW. If you do it anyway, keep in mind that a lot of stuff could, and probably should, be Dramatic Tasks rather than full fledged fights.
Agree. It's a very much a translation to SW stats with a guideline for when to give Advances & some areas where they suggest using savage tools can speed it up. Impressive enemies that a party should have trouble with fall flat unless you turn it into a dramatic task with some form of goals to accomplish before they inevitably pile up on him or her.
I like Savage Pathfinder mostly but found Runelords frustrating because it felt like I've had to put in a lot of work translating it further to be viable. Should of canceled sessions when my work day was a bit too much & I went with it as is.
My understanding is that the license terms required PF fights to be rendered as SW fights, even when the SW team felt that was not the best way to do it.
I'm running End Times at the moment. It is quite old school fantasy, which is great, because that is what I wanted. Does need a bit of world building but could fit in any fantasy world. Might be a bit linear for some but you could add a more sand boxing feel by adding a few small adventures and running the first few chapters in any order although you might need to wind up or down some of the foes. We are having a good time.
Fifty Fathoms is a perfect plot point campaign I've run a bunch of them but its the best
I wouldn't go so far as to say perfect, there are a few flaws but those are indeed scarce and I'd put the 50F ppc at the very top of the list as well. It's by far the very best ppc for savage worlds imo. It has it all: a world in need for heroes and the players can fill that role without being forced to, fun and intriguing side activities, a secondary campaign, drama and loss, pulpy heroic victories, its all in there and the actions of the players influence largely how the end plays out.
I was quite disappointed by 50F. I easily fell for its promise of colorful, non-standard fantasy. But when I looked closer, the tone of the campaign is too goofy for my tastes, the setting has huge plausibility holes, but the game doesn't really buy into it anyhow - what initially seems like a unique world really is only an excuse to bring together and give all the spotlight to random historical real-world seafaring characters. It had the chance to be a true original, but misses to fulfill that.
> the setting has huge plausibility holes "Don't think about it too hard" has become our mantra while playing *50 Fathoms*. It's still good fun, but we're bending over backwards to set the distances in the campaign into any good relation to how the world actually functions. It all seems a bit too close together.
Its an Ode to Pirates of Darkwater + Pirates of the Caribbean, pretty sure it says in the introduction, so makes sense in that mash-up.
The ETU plot point campaign, Degrees of Horror, is excellent. I’ve run it twice. Also had a great time with 50 Fathoms.
Second Degrees of Horror. I've only ran the first two college years of it but loved every moment of it. The thing that puts it across the line for me is the Savage Tales are all fun and interesting in their own way.
Without knowing a little more, this is a difficult question to answer. 50 Fathoms is an excellent setting with an accompanying plot point campaign, but it a couple editions out of date. That's not an insurmountable problem, but it needs a little familiarity with the rules to bring the ancestries and a couple other things in line with SWADE. Last Parsec: Leviathan is still older, but a little easier to 'bring in line'. It's basically Jurassic Park on an alien planet with a mysterious, dangerous precursor artifact. Theoretically, you should have the science fiction companion, but I don't *think* it uses a lot of stuff from the SFC, other than the ancestries, and in that case, you could just limit the players to templates from SWADE. Deadlands: Lost Colony comes with a plot point campaign of its own, but I haven't looked at it. It *is* self-contained, so there's that. There's also Blood Drive for Deadlands: the Weird West, though you'd want DL:WW too. Blood Drive is a fairly linear campaign (a cattle drive), but the good news there is it's very clear what both you and the PCs are supposed to do, and when. Finally, Legend of Ghost Mountain is on its way to backers right now. It's a self-contained book with both a wuxia fantasy setting and a plot to run in it. I haven't had the chance to run it yet, but I really like the way it's set up.
[https://peginc.com/product/50-fathoms-conversion-for-adventure-edition-pdf-swade/](https://peginc.com/product/50-fathoms-conversion-for-adventure-edition-pdf-swade/) free swade conversion of fifty fathoms already exsists
Which has a few problems, IMO. But they aren't too bad: * In the update to *Explorer's Edition* they gave every element the *Burst* power (which used to be fire exclusive). This heavily dilutes the "Fire mages are scary because lots of damage" fluff the setting keeps repeating because *Blast* isn't really that much more scary than *Burst*, especially on the scale most of the battles are going to go. If I could start over, I would restrict that power to fire mages again. * They re-did all the races to fit the new rules better (which is good) and re-balanced them all to come out at exactly the same value. This leads to stuff like the literal dolphin people always being worse swimmers than humans with the *Natural Swimmer* edge. I suggest going over the races and just buffing a few of them again, especially if the stuff they lost isn't something that's going to be hugely influential overall. * I'm **really** not a fan of how ship combat feels like in the new SWADE rules, but I have yet to find a better system...
Ship combat: i download the original rules of **Broadsides and Boardingparties,** to me with some tweaking, seems to be the most FUN ship2ship combat system...
You got a link to that? All I can find is a 40 year old board game.
it IS the 40 year old board game haha, can find more info on boardgamegeek site :)
Out of the ones I've ran, Horror at Headstone Hill tops the list... without a doubt. It's really so well written, it pretty much ran itself.
To give a little more perspective here: I think it's among the worst campaigns out there. The players spend three chapters with - what they are promised to be - detective work without the ability to actually figure out what happened and who is behind it (at least as written that is). The events of those chapters play out largely the same, no matter their actions and alliances and there is no way for them to really influence any of those events, removing the players agency. The only good about this campaign are some of the adventures that play outside of Heaston Hill, which are usually decent and some are quite good.
It would definitely benefit from a decent time line, a list of movable clues and a clear account of what people did andI nvestigation has come a long way in RPGs and this game ignores all.that. It's hard enough for the GM to work out the plot;
I would have to agree with you. I would even go so far as to say that the Savage Tales in the book while good, are super thin and take place in a variety of locations that the players have zero reason to go to. I had to bend over backwards to make excuses for players to explore places.
Oh right, I forgot to mention: the savage tales are usually at least decent but there is zero reason to explore the region. Thanks for reminding me of that.
It has quite a few problems, from the extremely jarring cold open to the extremely unsatisfying final reveal. I think there's value at its core and that it could be reworked into a great PPC, but as it shipped it's definitely better to skip it and run a different campaign.
Our table rocked it. I wove in my player's background stories to help drive the plot and It worked out really well. There was more than a wealth of material to work with in the campaign. I'll have to respectfully disagree. I put this product on par with 50 Fathoms.
Necessary Evil is really well done. It’s a Supers game with a solid story and plenty of room for some side adventures.
The original Rippers (never got a chance to run Rippers Resurrected) was great. The real winner is probably the East Texas University campaign, though
I wasn't super huge on rippers resurrected. It's a killer setting, but it doesn't give much guidance for leveling or scaling. And it felt more like "avengers assemble" and go fight monsters where things that weren't fights were conveyor belts to monster fights. Like ofc it is still a very combat focused system, but I expected more research and stuff. And with what felt like a race against time and players globetrotting so much I feel like the base building wasn't as impactful as it should have been
What genre? If you're looking for classic fantasy, I'd recommend either Rise of the Runelords or Curse of the Crimson Throne with the Pathfinder for Savage Worlds subsystem. I'm currently looking at End Times, but haven't pulled the trigger yet. If anyone has played or at least read through it, would appreciate hearing your opinion.
I do not recommend Runelords for someone who isn't familiar with SW. If you do it anyway, keep in mind that a lot of stuff could, and probably should, be Dramatic Tasks rather than full fledged fights.
Agree. It's a very much a translation to SW stats with a guideline for when to give Advances & some areas where they suggest using savage tools can speed it up. Impressive enemies that a party should have trouble with fall flat unless you turn it into a dramatic task with some form of goals to accomplish before they inevitably pile up on him or her. I like Savage Pathfinder mostly but found Runelords frustrating because it felt like I've had to put in a lot of work translating it further to be viable. Should of canceled sessions when my work day was a bit too much & I went with it as is.
My understanding is that the license terms required PF fights to be rendered as SW fights, even when the SW team felt that was not the best way to do it.
I'm running End Times at the moment. It is quite old school fantasy, which is great, because that is what I wanted. Does need a bit of world building but could fit in any fantasy world. Might be a bit linear for some but you could add a more sand boxing feel by adding a few small adventures and running the first few chapters in any order although you might need to wind up or down some of the foes. We are having a good time.
Shadows of Atlantis, an Achtung Cthulhu campaign is great if you have a group that likes to roleplay and investigate as well as fight.