"savage Worlds or Fudge" Topic

Fudge including variants like Spirt of the Century.

Looking for an easy system but with flavour

Which do you prefer?

Why?

How do they differ?

I know about fudge dice +/0/- is that the major difference?

Without reading the rules they seem very similar.

When I've played Savage Worlds I was never quite satisfied with it. It favors 'cinematic' aesthetics and PCs that have plot immunity from serious consequences.
In a multi-year campaign we played not a single PC was ever killed… despite a general wahoo approach… kick in the front door with guns blazing.
Without the real possibility of character death I just don't enjoy the 'thrill' of combat… why not just tell us we won the fight rather than all the pointless die rolling?

I don't know Fudge but I've played fate.. which, like Savage Worlds, is also on the 'players always win!' end of the continuum.
The most interesting thing about Fate that I noticed is the concept of 'Aspects'… which are kind of like the character notes I've always kept on my character sheet… except in Fate they have actual mechanical weight.
They're a bit like combined advantages/disadvantages in games like GURPS… but can be a kind of open-ended. Aspects are also where I saw the most problems in play… as some of us struggled to implement them and others tried to use them for everything to insure their success.
I really think it requires the right group of players who are NOT the sort to optimize ever bit of their character and always be looking for ways to twist the rules to their advantage.

I favor Chaosium's Basic Role-Playing system (Call of Cthulhu, Stormbringer, Runequest)… which is fast and simple like Savage Worlds but grittier by default (though it does have options to turn on 'fate points' similar to Savage Worlds and Fudge/Fate… which are a resource to spend on success or mitigating damage).

Still, the most important thing at the table are the players and an imaginative GM can mold any system into good play.

they are aesthetically VERY different beasts. Savage Worlds is a conventional RPG with normal mechanics and an experience system that makes characters more powerful over time. Fudge/Fate encompasses systems that generate great player rpg involvement, but it is required that players are aggressively involved in creating play. Players must contribute as much to the shared setting as the GM. In Fudge/Fate players are creators of the session, not reactors to the GM setting. Also, in this system players change but do not really improve.

I think that you can easily play Savage Worlds with any group but Fudge/Fate needs a tight group of friends.

I think that you can easily play Savage Worlds with any group but Fudge/Fate needs a tight group of friends.

Yeah, I'd agree with that assessment. I'd really want to be sympatico with any group I considered playing Fate with.

One nice thing about Savage Worlds is that it is based off a miniatures rules set, and actually plays very well for large set-piece battles with dozens of combatants on each side.

My last Savage Worlds camapaign had two very large battles that were the most fun aspect of the whole campaign.

Therefore, I've your a secret miniature wargamer (or not so secret) and want to inject some mini-battles into your campaign, Savage Worlds is a good bet.

Check into Hollow Earth as well.

Also, Fate is anything but easy.

CPBelt I'm a fan of Hollow Earth Adventures, too!

Characters can die in Savage worlds, not to mention that they can be permanently injured. I had one sniper that was critically injurres and lost and eye. The depth perception hinderence really effected his effectiveness.

However, I will say that it gives a really overthe top feel at times, particularly when the opponents or run of the mill grunts. Just remember that if players min-max, the week stat can really be a major hinderence when they run up against somethings……. (For instance we had an indian that was a nasty piece of work in melee, but shooters from a distance made his life misserable and kept him hunkered down many time. I just point out to my players that if they min-max, I'm going to aggressively target their weakness. Many play down "Spirit", but once they come under attack and "break", they are often out of the fight as they can not recover their morale.

You can also manipulate the danger level by reducing/increasing bennies or using a d4 as the wild card die……

What about the D6 system used in West End Games' old Star Wars RPG? I used to recommend it to people who wanted to get started in role playing games, instead of Dungeons & Dragons.

Ron

OK I must say I'm shocked at the replies. As I said I've not read either set but from various bits I had thought they were quite similar.

Savage Wars is based off a miniatures game? Which one?

I had thought Savage Wars had a similar mechanic to fate/fudge aspects. Guess that was totally wrong.

Perhaps you could walk me through some differences? Or are they so different there is no point to that?

Really flailing about as my expectations are shown to be utterly wrong.

Which would do sfrpg best? Why?

How about Pulp?

Maybe you could point to a website with examples of a game from one of the rules set and another from the other but in the same genre.

It really depends on what you're looking for in an SFRPG or what you think 'Pulp' is (it's really a medium, not a genre).
There is no 'best'… just the one that comes closest to what you're after.

One difference, from my experience, is that FATE based games are a bit more meta-gamey then Savage Worlds. FATE seems to involve a lot more 'out of character' discussion compared to Savage Worlds… and thinking more in terms of implementing the rules than just 'what does my character do'.

What about the D6 system used in West End Games' old Star Wars RPG? I used to recommend it to people who wanted to get started in role playing games, instead of Dungeons & Dragons.

Yeah, I really like the D6 system too… and the generic fantasy/scifi versions of it are free PDFs now.
link
link

FYI, Savage Worlds evolved from Pinnacle's "Great Rail Wars" miniature game.As for it being A "pulpy" game, the latest incarnation of the rules (Savge Worlds Deluxe) features options where you can make the game as "cinematic" or "gritty" as you wish. The large number of official and listened settings along with numerous fan conversions are a testement to the game's versatility.

I only own one FATE/Fudge RPG (i.e. Nova Praxis), but I can assure you it is a whole different in system in style as well as mechanics. The nature of FATE, with its use of invoking "Aspects," encourages greater GM/Player interaction in campaign development. SW, on the other hand, is a much more "traditional" RPG experience.

You can download Savage Worlds' Showdown rules for free, just to give you a taste of what the RPG is like. Showdown is a set of miniatures rules, but it is 95% identical to the RPG: link

It's a trend that's been going on for years that role playing games are balanced so far to the players that death of a PC just doesn't happen anymore. What's worse is that the fear of maybe losing a character isn't there. Savage Worlds is a lot like that, and although I will play in a game of it, it's a game I'm not won over to or will own because it is too PC oriented and too simplistic as well. I have the Hero system or will use GURPS for multi-genre games that I like to run. However, I know gamers who think GURPS is way too complicated so I would guess Savage Worlds is an alright choice…but not much more than just alright.

Mechanically, Savage Worlds uses die type to describe ability or skill level. If you have a d8 in, say, shooting you are better than someone with a d6 skill. FATE uses a skill level system added to the roll of 4x Fudge dice. for example, If my character Span Bolo with Pilot-5 (the best possible skill) is trying to fly through the asteroid field in his ship the Centurion Penguin, I would roll 4 Fudge dice (generating a result from -4 to +4) and add my skill level, comparing that to the result needed.

I think Diaspora (Fate based hard sci fi rpg) has a free download of the space combat section of the rules.

Savage Worlds appears to be easier for players to wrap their brains around imo. There are settings for 30s pulp as well as Sc fi and pulp sci fi. (Slipstream comes to mind).

Characters can't die in Savage Worlds? I wanna play in your games. : )

My response is quite biased as I'm not a fan of Fudge/Fate and I have worked on several Savage Worlds settings as well as contributing to the current version of Showdown.

That said, SW can be quite deadly, especially with some of the options in the Deluxe edition, I think it all depends on the GM. I have played in quite a number of one off con games that were total party kills and they were a blast and have had characters die easily in campaign play as well. As has already been stated minis play blends easily into your RPG as well. At first blush they look really simple and "rules light" but once you really look under the hood it is quite an elegant system.

I think others have summed up some of the differences quite well. It will ultimately depend on your groups play style. I suggest checking out the free versions of both sets. I'm not sure where to find Free Fate at the moment but it is out there. Here is a link to an offical page that contains the free
Savage Worlds Test Drive rules. link Give them a look. Won't cost nothing but time.

Thanks for the info

I guess I need to look into this much more than I thought

Diaspora, from the bit posted on tmp, seemed interesting

Diaspora is very well done, IMO.
I've considered using it to generate a setting… and then play in that setting using… something else.

Savage Worlds….. While not in the FMA fork of games it has a lot of the same concepts in that dice define skills and attributes. And it handles NPCs and secondary characters very well.

Fudge on the other hand is a fine game if you have a group of ACTIVE players while there are dice involved kinda the base ethos is centered around High Role Playing.

If you can kill a wild card, I'm sure you can kill PCs. Roll on your Vigour when incapacitated. Critical failure means dead; failure means rolling on the Injury Table as well as Bleeding Out. Roll vigour again every round after the injury; to fail is to die. Try using Setting-specific rules, like the one in Realms of Cthulhu which prevents PCs using bennies to reroll snake-eyed results.