I've only played Savage, never GMd it, but in my experience we've never got bennies for xp, only xp! The GM (usually Gaz - I'll see if I can summon him) does give bennies out during play for making him laugh or doing something particularly cool.

Young Iain

Bennies are rolled for at the end of a session – if you have any left roll a d6 for each and on a 5 or 6 you get an XP. I think it's a rubbish rule as it encourages hoarding and rewards players who sneak about at the back and don't do anything. As a result I don't use it. I’m currently engaged in an altogether more egalitarian method of letting the players blind vote for who they thought was best and giving that person extra.

Give out bennies for ace stuff that happens. You can be tempted to throw them out constantly or forget completely, but aim to give everyone at least one or two throughout the session to keep them motivated and more if you’re going to hit them with the big guns as they’ll need the soak rolls. Note its Fate Chips in Deadlands too…

Read up on your rules. Savage is easy, but things like test of wills and other bits are worth boning up on so you can use them fluidly. There are crib sheets all over t’interweb. Check out Deal with the Devil if you’re using a Huckster. Duels look really good, but I’ve not had chance to use them yet and would need some advanced prep and note taking to make them move smoothly. Seems like there’s plenty of chance for steely stares and description and all the atmosphere building with some added crunch that all you hippy indie types should love as a package. No AP experience, but on paper I’m excited about trying it out.

Baddies in Savage have d6 in things that matter and thus parry and toughness 5. Ergo, 9 damage kills them. That’s mooks dealt with, if you want a bit of a bigger monkey give d8 in shootin for the bandit leader or maybe an edge or hindrance here or there to flesh them out a bit. End of level baddies and recurring villains are worth statting out like a character. I’d go crazy and make them a full rank higher than the PCs. Always give them mook support or your big final encounter with end swiftly with the players hading you your NPC’s @ss. You might want to have a pretend fight to see how things go. Remember in a game with firearms, things like cover are a God send. Also, don’t neglect Taunts or Tricks, plus Ganging Up to add interest to conflicts.

Pick one aspect of the weird west and hit that as a theme. Currently I’m sending my players to Deseree and going all Steampunk on their @sses. I’ve precursored the City o’ Gloom with an Automaton already and varies other bits.

Playing the game have someone act as card monkey and deal out initiative cards efficiently to keep the pace going and get FFF. You shouldn’t need to spend all night on conflicts, when you can bash out a big fight in half and hour and get on with the story and plot.

What else do you need to know?

Gaz (Evil)

Ah, Savage Worlds...

As Gaz says, there's a rule in Savage Worlds where any bennies left over at the end of the session can be rolld for and might be converted to XP. This rule is shit, for the reasons Gaz suggests. It's so shit in fact, that it's been left out of the new edition. Which might explain why you can't find it.

Deadlands: Reloaded uses Fate Chips, which are a variation on bennies. I'm going to assume that you're up on that since you've read the DL:R book. I'm sure you have poker chips and a bag for people to draw them out of etc etc. As props they rock mightily. As Gaz says, you want to make sure you're giving out the fate chips for people doing neat stuff. Don't be a twat and give them to people who just roll well or anything lame like that. I'd suggest you give them out to people playing up their character's hindrances in a way that genuinely makes life harder for the PCs.

Gaz has covered a lot of stuff already, and there's not much I can add really, but lets see:

Start the game with a fight. Just do. Have the players attacked by a bunch of mooks. Give the mooks d6 in everything and make there as many mooks as players. Bandits work well. It gets everyone into the rules and gives them an idea of what their characters can do. Mooks with d6 in everything really aren't a threat to anyone who's got more than one Fate Chip, so really go to town trying to kill the PCs. You won't, but the system makes it look like the PCs might die. Minis help if you have them, the game works well with them and I love to use them with the system. The game works just without them too though.

Make sure people remember that they get a Wild Die on most of their rolls.

Get cards with a a large index and use those for the initiative deck. Makes life easier.

Check the errata. There are some un-fucking-forgiveable errors in the DL:R book, at least in the early print runs.

I dunno if you have a plot or whatever in mind for the game, but this works well: Treat it exactly like a Dogs game, except instead of Demons, insert the word Reckoners. Create a town, insert NPCs and enough conflicts and have the PCs turn up and let things play out however the players make it.

Make sure you have plenty of dice about. You'll need them. Everyone needs at least one of each poly type really, then they need a couple more D6s and another D8. Because Rifles do 2D8 damage ;)

Character creation is easy, but remember this: the PCs start out pretty competent, but probably need to take the full complement of Hindrances to do so. That's fine, it's pretty much to be expected. Strating characters ought to have a d8 in one or two things they're good at (usually Fighting and Shooting, but sometimes a magic skill or whatever) Occasionally they'll have a d10 in something at the start, but not often.

Gaz's theme advice is very sound: Weird West is a massive buffet of stuff and you can't eat it all at once. The steampunk stuff and the martial arts didn't really appeal to us, so we left them out. Just didn't include them much in the campaign. Or at all in the case of Martial Arts. Player's character concepts are like massive flags for this stuff: leave out everything they don't have a character for except the horror/monsters.

DL:R makes a great Monster Smackdown game. Don't fight it if it looks like that's what the campaign is turning into.

Use Wild Card enemies very sparingly until you really have the hang of the system. They're considerably tougher than mooks. They should be big baddies.

Don't forget those other Combat moves. Tricks and Intimidation are all useful and stuff like Wild Attack and Full Defence need to be embraced by the players if they're going to take down some of the badder badasses. Actually, given the amount of gunplay you're likely to see, that's probably less important in DL:R than it was in the 50 Fathoms game I ran, but hey, can't hurt. Claire's DL:R character had an Edge which let him use Persuasion in a fight, don't forget stuff like that.

If you're going for long term play, ditch the experience points altogether and just let the character have another advance every other session (or thereabouts).

If you have any specific questions I'll see if I can answer them.

The basic plot is going to have the characters all new recruits to the agency. They have had some training and are now field ops, but have to prove themselves in the field. Off they go to a small town, attacked on the way probably to give them a taste of things, and then into some investigative stuff. I am thinking the Agency will setup a cover story for them as repoters for the epitaph. Every small mission they complete will gain them an advance.

Oh I should have mentioned that I ran deadlands in the old system so am very familiar with the setting. I will check up on the errata like Rich suggested. Any idea what the errors were?

Does using miniatures make the game flow better? Should I use them for all skirmishes or just for larger scale things when there is a lot going on?

It is interesting you mentioned Dogs, I actually thought about using it instead of savage worlds to run my agency game. I was going to start them off as seasoned with the agent edge but I think I am going to make them take a vow hindrance at the start instead.

I am going to use chips in roleplay context only. Nice idea on encouraging people to roleplay hindrances.

Cheers

Iain

Mob Justice now available!

'The Giant Brain':Small games, big ideas.

Heavy weight ceramic poker chips are great for bennies, wound counters, shaken, fatigue, power points. Having three colours of fate chips messed up my system but we worked round it. High definition cards also rock (I'm just not using them at the minute due to beer spillage in the pub and I like to keep them nice)! You can scan across the table and see three red chips in front of a player and know they're in a bad way. Sometime players don't act this out, so its useful to have the queue as a GM and know not to dish out the big hitters against someone who's already staggering. High def cards let you see quickly who's go it is without the need for note keeping too. Rock.

Maps? Personal preference. As Robin Laws said in Feng Shui chapter header "The Map is Not Your Friend". I go for sketch maps, so people have an idea where they are in relation to everyone else and I can cross baddies off easily. Its useful to have a guide in a game with firearms, so you know what cover to hide behind. I hate battlemaps as players can't help counting squares and playing it like a war game... "oh, if I stand seven squares away he'll have to multi-action to move and attack me in the same turn..." or working out relative ranges and staying in their own short, but enemies mid range for example. If you've got good players, you should avoid it, but some people can't help themselves and then you lose all the drama and description from your scene and you're playing a wargame. But its horses for courses. Some sort of visual guide is good, but I prefer to keep it a little loose.

With three hindrances each, your player's characters are a gold mine of plot ideas.

Guns hurt. Make sure there is some way of seeing a Doc or having a healer of some sort about, as otherwise your players are going to get sulky about being laid up for weeks (unless you can fit that in the plot down time or whatever). As well as guns, the Way of The Brave close combat damage can really hurt too (D6+D4 for a knife rather than D6+1 for your average mook).

More random thoughts as they occur...

G

Errata: One error makes Blessed characters pretty much unplayable and utterly useless. Another make Voudou characters equally pants. One is to do with "Deal With The Devil" in an example and makes a right arse of the whole concept.

Minis: I'm not sure that the game is easier or flows better with minis, but we certainly had a lot more fun when we played with them. For example, they permit a lot more tactical opportunities which simply wouldn't present themselves otherwise. Like the Gang-Up bonus when more than one person attack's the same target. With minis, it's obvious who's ganging up on whom and both players and GM can use that sort of thing tactically and have fun with it. Areas of effect for spells and such too. Without minis, I dunno, that just never really seems to happen and I think that aspect is more abstract and not as much fun. The game really does work fine without the minis though, but having them, adds a layer of tactical meat that we enjoyed a lot.

Decide if you want to emphasise the horror mechanics.

Personally, I have very little time for horror/terror/fear/sanity mechanics full stop, and zero tolerance of same if they are not the sole focus of a game. When I ran 50 Fathoms for example, we quickly ditched all the fear rules and the Guts skill, because it was a swashbuckling game about fantasy pirates kicking arse and taking names.

We pretty decided that fear was a part of Deadlands and not something to ignore. But we still couldn't see any reason for the Guts skill to exist, so everyone made Guts checks against Spirit, as if everyone had Guts equal to their Spirit stat. It made life easier.

YMMV etc etc, but what Savage Worlds does best is larger than life character kicking backside in a totally awesome way, so I tend to make that the focus of the game.

I've always ditched Guts - as if its a learned skill anyway. Being inured to horrific things is covered by Grit, so its I can't see "whether you're scared or not" being a skill. Go for Spirit rolls every time IMNSHO. You've too few points to spread about and make a rounded character as it is, making people puts in a skill like Guts is silly.

Iain - starting off at Seasoned is not a bad idea. Especially for a limited-run game. All my convention games have characters that are at least Seasoned, sometimes Veteran, or ocassionaly Heroic. Seasoned is a good entry level point that allows you to round out characters with the right skills and edges. At Novice they might not be quite different enough straight off the bat, but it can work if your players put effort into their roleplaying their characters well enough.

Lots of great advice.

I'd add that it's super easy to run henchmen, followers and the like in Savage Worlds so give them liberally to your players. This also has the benefit of meaning you can throw more enemies at them for epic battles, and also means the henchmen soak up the damage if you get it wrong and throw something too tough into the mix.

If you don't fancy starting everyone at Seasoned, perhaps just give them a free edge. That'll make them more different from one another straight off the bat.

voidstate