Monday, January 27, 2014

Savage Worlds Science Fiction Companion and The World of Grey

Pinnacle Entertainment Group released the Science Fiction Companion to an eager audience looking for Savage adventures in the far future. It contains new races, Edges and Hindrances, Setting Rules, gear, cyberware, and numerous new races and creature. It also includes rules for players and Game Masters to create their own robots, power armor, vehicles, starships, walkers.

PEG packs a lot into 98 pages making it will worth the PDF price of $14.99. I was curious how well it handled custom settings. I recently released a science fiction novella titled World of Grey and was curious as to how well the ships, characters, gear, and races of that book translated into the new rule set.

Ships

The Green Dawn is a Seminole class Assault Scout that exists somewhere between the Medium and Large ship types presented in the SFC. It but most closely matches the Medium template. I inferred a bit between the two sets of stats.


Medium Green Dawn Large
Size 8 9 10
Acc 45 43 40
TS 600 550 500
Climb 2 2 1
Toughness 25 27 30
Armor 6 6 7
Mods 25 27 30
Crew 5 15 50

I used our Ship Builder spreadsheet from a previous post to generate the Dawn. Here's the result.

Ship Name Green Dawn
Size Medium/Large
Acc/TS 43/550
Climb 2
Toughness 27(6)
Mods Remaining 2
Crew 15
Energy Store 200
Cost $26,540,000.00
Systems AI, Atmospheric, Deflector Screens, FTL, Hanger, Sensor Suite Galactic, Shields, Targeting System,
Weapons 2XLight Lasers (2X Linked), 2XMedium Lasers (2X Fixed and Linked), Torpedo 1XLauncher with 8xLight (1X Fixed),

The Dawn has the characteristic of Large ships in that it can take a maximum of 2 wounds per attack due to air-tight compartments. It also has a Marauder Drop Shuttle attached to the airlock behind engineering. Its meant to sneak past detection, survive a landing, and provide some direct fire support of the Hellhound squad.


Ship Name Marauder Drop Shuttle
Size Small
Acc/TS 50/700
Climb 3
Toughness 20(9)
Mods Remaining 0
Crew 1
Passengers 10





Energy Story 25
Cost $3,165,000.00
Systems AMCM, 2xArmor, Atmospheric, Deflector Screens, Passenger Pod, Sensor Suite Planetary, Shields, Stealth,
Weapons 1XLight Lasers (1X Fixed), 1XHeavy Slug Throwers,

Sarge's Hellhounds encounter a Slug ship during the story. Slugs are technologically advanced. I manifested this by giving them 50% more mod spaces on Blasphore's ship.

Ship Name Blashphor's 'Freighter'
Size Huge
Acc/TS 35/400
Climb 0
Toughness 35(8)
Mods Remaining 27
Crew 300
Passengers 0





Energy Story 500
Cost $89,280,000.00
Systems AMCM, Deflector Screens, FTL, Sensor Suite Galactic, Shields, Tractor Beam,
Weapons 8XLight Lasers (8X Linked), 4XSuper Heavy Lasers (4X Fixed and Linked), Torpedo 2XLauncher with 16xLight 4xHeavy (2X Fixed),

The slug ship used 20 of the mod spaces for this adventure with two superstructures. You'll have to read the story to find out what they were. 

So, with a little GM fiat, I was able to represent the ships fairly well using the base rules. The SFC applies a logarithmic curve to ship sizing so getting exactly what I wrote took a bit of fudging.

Characters

Next, I tried to interpret the characters.

Doc is a cyborg who was once a doctor at a colonial hospital. An attack left a third of her body destroyed. I was interested to see how she would translate. Here's how she turned out as a seasoned character.


Doc
Agility d8 Parry 4
Smarts d8 Toughness 8(2)
Spirit d8 Charisma -2
Strength d12 Pace 6
Vigor d8







Hindrances



Mean Minor –2 to his Charisma for ill-temper
Quirk Minor Flares cybereye during conversation
Vow Major To protect the Dawn
Bad Luck Major 1 less bennie per session





Edges



Cyborg Doubles Cyber Allowed
Healer +2 Healing
Ace +2 Boating, Driving, Piloting - Can make craft soaks





Skills



Driving d4+2


Fighting d4


Healing d8+4


K – Astrogation d6+2


K – Biology d6


K – Electronics d6+2


K – French d4


Notice d6+2


Persuasion d4


Piloting d10+4


Repair d4


Shooting d4


Throwing d4







Cyber



3xStrength(6), 1xAgility(2), Improved Vision(1), Improved Hearing(1), Trait Bonus -Piloting(1), Healing(1), Piloting(2), Knowledge (Electronics)(1), Knowledge (Astrogation)(1)





Gear



Smart Suit, Laser Pistol, Comlink, Personal Data Device

Races

Arvins are a race of lagomorphs (rabbits) from the planet Arv. They've been conquered a number of times so being taken over by the Federation was nothing new. In fact, they considered a real step up from being conquered by the Kurr, who used them as game animals.

What most races call cowardice, Arvins see has just plain common sense. They are one of the few non-human races that are seen throughout the Federation.

  • Fleet Footed(+1) - Arvins have a base pace of 8 and a running die of d10
  • Enhanced Hearing(+1) - +2 to hearing based Notice Checks
  • Leaper(+1) - Doubles normal jumping ability.
  • Night Eyes (+1) - ignores penalties for bad lighting
  • Yellow (-2) - All Fear checks made at -2

Conclusion

I was able to easily convert my fictional universe from World of Grey into Savage Worlds. I was quite impressed by how little work it took. All the concepts seem to flow easily into the the new ruleset.




Saturday, January 25, 2014

Science Fiction Companion Ship Builder

I created a quick spreadsheet to help you design custom ships for the new Savage Worlds Science Fiction Companion much like the one I did for Space 1889: Red Sands.


It has protection and validation rules in place to keep erroneous data to a minimum. Let me know if you find any bugs. You can find the spreadsheet on drop box.




Thus Far I've enjoyed the Science Fiction Companion a great deal. Hope to have a full review out soon. In the meantime I'm going to give a shot at transferring characters, races, and ships from World of Grey into Savage Worlds.



Wednesday, January 22, 2014

Savage Worlds Super Powers Companion Released

Also released today, the Savage Worlds Super Powers Companion. Pinnacle says this and the Science Fiction Companion were co-developed so the rules can cross from one to the other allowing a SciFi based setting like the Green Lantern Core.

You can find the Super Powers Companion on DriveThruRPG or the Pinnacle web site store.

Review to come after the SciFi Companion.

Savage Worlds Science Fiction Companion Released

The anticipation was horrible but the Savage Worlds Science Fiction Companion has finally released. You can find it on DriveThruRPG on on the Pinnacle web site store.

I can't wait to turn my Hellhounds setting into a Savage Setting. Soon Sarge, Angel, Doc, and the rest will by playing their way through a new Savage Setting.

Expect a review soon.