As I mentioned previously, our Conallglen campaign came to an end (a pause?) because one of the three players, Todd, had a change in work schedule and so wouldn’t be able to play for awhile. We also took a bit of time off for the holidays. When we started back up again, RJ had recruited a new player, Dustin, and we started a new campaign using my DIY D&D rules. The campaign was set in the Lonely Coast mini-setting from Raging Swan Press. The central adventure revolved around one of their adventures as well, Retribution.
We played four or five sessions before we had to take a bit of a break again. Dustin got married and for some strange reason thought that attending his wedding, having a honeymoon, and then spending some time with Kirsten should take priority over gaming! Really?!? I mean Kirsten certainly seems like a very nice person but to ditch gaming for…sheesh (you all know I’m just joking here, right?).
In our last session before the hiatus, the topic of other games came up and we got to talking about Savage Worlds. A bonus Benny to anyone who sees where this is going. 😉
All the talk of Savage Worlds really got me missing it. The time we spent playing it really “clicked” for me. The system is very simple to run and simple to run on the fly. I also find it so easy to make sense of the results of the mechanics. So, as you probably already guessed, we picked it up again. Rachel, RJ, and I played a couple of practice sessions with a modified version of The Secret of Jub Jub Lake that resulted in a TPK of sorts but that’s all it took.
This should be no reflection Raging Swan’s products as the are very good products but we’re going back to Savage Worlds! Again!
We played a session last night with our current full group which includes Rachel and RJ as well as Dustin and Kirsten. The intent is for a couple of sessions to give Dustin and Kirsten a taste of Savage Worlds as neither have ever played it. I made up some pregens and dusted off an old adventure and we had at it last night.
Although the idea was to give folks a taste of Savage Worlds as a game system, we spent nearly the entire night in roleplaying interactions with very little use of the game system or dice rolling. Kirsten, despite being largely inexperienced with tabletop RPGs, dove right in like a pro as did everyone else. It was a lot of fun but didn’t do much to show of Savage Worlds. On the plus side, we didn’t get far at all into the meat and mechanics-driven parts of the adventure (e.g., combat) so we’ve got some good stuff left for learning the system.
There’s been some talk about going back to one of our prior Savage Worlds campaigns and picking it back up. In our prior Known World campaign, Todd’s character, Niccolo, was very central and his friendship with one of the NPCs, Quintus, was a very defining element of the campaign. I’d prefer to not pick it back up until Todd can play again.
The other Savage Worlds campaign we could pick back up would be our Hellfrost campaign. Rachel’s character, Wulfwynn, was the central character in that campaign so I’d fine picking it back up if that’s what the players want to do.
The other option is to start a new Known World Campaign. That could be easier for Dustin and Kirsten since everyone would be starting fresh in the campaign instead of trying to work themselves into a campaign from almost two years ago.
The current players get to vote between picking up our Járn Vale Hellfrost campaign or starting a new Known World campaign. If it is a tie, I’ll be the tiebreaker.
