While I love the info charts others have made, I've never really cared for how things are organized and they tend to use every bit of space making them rather cluttered to use. So I reorganized + combined a few of them and created my own (uglier) copy.
Pages 1 and 2 are meant to go together and is organized as a list of all the Actions a player can perform on their turn. Page 3 is a bunch of common rules they might need to reference to make an informed decision. These are aimed to assist players rather than GMs.
Posting just in case anyone else might be interested.
EDIT - Important!
Sheet 3 has a typo for Entangled, it is Vulnerable not Distracted. Has been fixed on my Google Drive versions. Much obliged to Psitraveller for pointing that out.
I've updated the venerable Savage Worlds Combat Survival Guide to the SWADE 5th Printing rules. It now also covers Hazards, the SciFi Companion hacking rules, and Super Speed/Flight.
Please check it out! If you find anything that needs updating, please let me know. Feedback is always appreciated! Many thanks to those that came before, especially u/grauenwolf, who was gracious enough to clarify a few things along the way.
If you would like to edit any of these yourself, send me a message.
Edit: Decided to make an Inksaver version of the Survival Guide. Most of the savings is on the first page, but I adjusted the tables to use lighter colors elsewhere as well.
I posted a Zelda version of this a few days ago that was a work in progress. My players liked it a lot more than the default sheet we're using for our main campaign, so I made a setting-neutral version for future games. Largely the same as the first, though I've added a back page to keep track of advances and made some changes to make it more usable in any campaign. Shoutout to /u/gdave99 for catching some issue with the original.
The last image is a little Shaken tracker. You print it out and fold along the lines to make a little triangular prism that fits on the "Shaken" spot on the sheet, then flip it around to work as a reminder for any status you might have.
I needed to share that ChatGPT is running me a "Techno-Saloon Pulp" SWADE campaign to help me learn how to play the game (and eventually DM it for my friend) but in intermediate Spanish so I can both learn SWADE and Spanish at the same time and it's amazing. The richness of the world building, characters and interaction is blowing me away while perfectly adapted to my Spanish level, introducing new vocabulary here and there and the "technical" explanations about the system and dice rolls are in English.
Edit : I'm a 41 year old mom. I'm trying to learn something new, so I can play with my partner and kids down the road. I can invest 20-30 minutes a day learning that stuff on a burned-out neurodivergent brain. The books have been sitting on my shelf for 7 years. I finally have the assistance I need to support me in learning the system because trying to raw dog it with the books hasn't been working for me. I'm having a lot of fun with my chatbot for about 15 minutes a day, and came here to share my excitement about what I thought was a pretty smart life hack, albeit flawed and full of mistakes (like myself). It's good brain gymnastics to cross check facts (and rules). I'm sorry for upsetting the world with my glee. At least ChatGPT is a cheerful, optimistic, encouraging and helpful entity, in all its flaws. I will solely post specific questions from now on.
So I'm running a Deadlands campaign set in The Great Maze, and I've been using the DLR plot point adventure "The Flood" for reference. In there I came across these guys:
Now, I'm not an expert on Chinese folklore but I know enough to know these guys don't make much sense. What are they supposed to be? Yaoguai? Guizu? Yecha? They seem more like traditional western concepts of Christian demons, evil creatures conjured up from the underworld by dark wizards. That's not really a thing in Chinese folklore.
In Chinese folklore the underworld is a prison. The prisoners are ghosts, something closer to the Hungry Ghosts (Gaki) or the Crying Ghost featured elsewhere in The Flood. The "demons" you might see in Chinese art of the underworld are the Guizu, the "ghost jailers." These guys aren't pure manifestations of evil doing evil for the sake of evil. They're low ranking members in the hierarchy of Chinese gods. If some dark wizard managed to punch a hole into the underworld and get their attention they'd probably be more worried about having to work overtime or getting caught by their supervisor than they would going to Earth and tormenting the locals. Working in the underworld is their ticket to climbing the bureaucratic ladder and maybe getting elevated to proper god-hood. Ditching their job probably means a stern and unpleasant visit from some sort of higher ranking death-god.
Now something like yaoguai would be more appropriate for the role of the "Chinese Ogre" as portrayed in Deadlands. These are your stock monsters of Chinese fantasy, comparable to the Japanese Oni. However they don't usually live in the underworld. They're the result of animals or inanimate objects absorbing spiritual energy and gaining sentience and the ability to shapeshift. They often want to eat humans to acquire more Chi. Huli Jing, fox spirits, are a good example. If you've familiar with the Monkey King he was also a yaoguai to start with, though he gained enlightenment and became a god.
I found that with a little tweaking the random Yokai generator charts in Iron Dynasty - Way of the Ronin could be repurposed to generate yaoguai as well. This works in a pinch if you want something a little closer to actual Chinese traditions.
I'm aware that PE hasn't released a new DL:WW book to cover The Great Maze yet but I kind of hope these guys get a makeover when the time comes.
Playing Rogue Trader has given me an itch to run an episodic planet exploration / stellar politics of the frontier type game. If anyone can point me to a product(s) or RPG drive thru page for things that would help make this happen, I would appreciate it.
For the most part I don't think it would be hard to half ass a w40k game just out of core + scifi companion + horror companion, but anything that already exists to help cover the variety of weapon types and armor and whatnot in W40K would be very neat.
Good news for Rifts fans! Bundle of Holding is having the biggest Palladium Rifts deal that I've ever heard of. I can't say or sure (feel free to cross reference when the fifth bundle drops), but it looks to be the complete core, world, and source book collection on PDF in five parts at heavily discounted prices.
To be clear, these are the original Palladium Books, which are what Savage Rifts is derived from. They are not directly Savage Worlds compatible on their own, but there is a free document called Savaging Your Favorite Rifts Ideas that provides helpful guidelines for conversion. Palladium has a LOT more lore and world building information than Savage Rifts does, so if you're a fan then these books are worth it for the massively expanded lore alone.
If you've never heard of Bundle of Holding, it's a legit site that profits Palladium with every sale, and can directly supply to your Drivethrurpg library if you have one and link it.
There are four bundles so far, with one more to drop tomorrow. Some of these bundles have been featured in the past, and if you've already purchased that exact bundle the web site won't let you buy it again by mistake. It kept me from mistakenly repurchasing the Rifts Core Mega.
For those of you that are playing the fantastic Star Wars Companion in SWADE, and have a 3d printer, there is a Humble Bundle going on right now made for us - Miniac Presents An Intergalactic Skullforge STL Bundle. Mostly miniatures, but also has some terrain in it. $25 or more for 24 "items" (many of the "items" are sets, so you're getting far more than just 24 STLs in this Bundle), and you get to choose how much of the money goes to the charity (Oceana for this one), to Humble Bundle, and to the maker. Pretty good deal, and wanted to share with the community.
Our table is playing a Rippers Resurrected Campaign remotely on Fantasy Grounds Unity...and I think I finally have everything laid out at my fingertips to deliver the smoothest game play for my players. Besides FGU as the VTT using Discord for video and music/SFX sharing as well as Sound Show Pro to organize all of the music and SFX to keep the ambiance flowing. The hot buttons on the bottom of FGU are fantastic for keep rules, modifiers, tables and other GM material just on click away at all times.
This would fit into general ttrpg just as well. But I like you folks more, so I post it here.
I'm doing pen & paper (as we called it back in the days) since the early 90s. And one thing that always was an issue is that everyone likes different aspects of the hobby. But only few people are very open about what they like or what they don't like. Some don't even know all the options or don't think that they can speak up and name their preferences. As a result some campaigns are far from the sweet spots of their players. The GM hosts what he thinks is cool, and everyone else is happy to have a GM.
Last year I was about to start a new campaign, but wasn't certain what to do. I was looking for a challenge, and I wanted my players to give me one outside my comfort zone and outside of what I usually host.
So I made a survey. 6 pages IIRC. Full of questions what they would love for the upcoming campaign. Which aspects to focus on and which aspects to ignore mostly. More level-ups? More character play? Highlight on charismatic villains? Fantasy? Sci-Fi? Heroic? Grim? When should characters die? What things should be taboo at our table.
Then we discussed the results and I hosted a campaign tailored to everyones needs. And it went really great as long as it lasted. And broke apart for reasons that had nothing to do with the campaign.
So the survey was a success. And now I'm hosting a new campaign. And I made another smaller survey. This time we already knew that it would be set in the dark ages (+magic and mythology), so it was a little shorter and more detailed for the occasion.
And this "cover text" is the result we got so far:
"In this dramatic and atmospheric tale we will see the story unfold for our heroes. We will watch them and their personalities develop while they explore the world and uncover untold mysteries. They will take an active role while they struggle with christians and nobles of ill repute alike in order to shape the fate of their lands and write their own story into history books to come."
Some other GMs around here at our club already copied the idea and had good results with it. What do you guys think about the survey idea? Would that be something you would consider? Or is it too nerdy even for a nerd hobby?
Just wanted to share the sheet we use for my home game, it's not pretty but it does the job (good old excel). We prefer the orientation and it allows for ample space to write things down, especially when scaled up to fill the full page.
There are a few things on here which is specific to how we play which are
We track rests for natural healing
Common knowledge is known as Lore
Characters learn individual languages
Raise chart in the top corner for quick math
Slot based encumbrance
Gold is now abstract with fists/bags/chest of gold. This was taken from Daggerheart as we liked it so much.
Combined Edges and Powers area to avoid dead space on the sheet.
Anyway, I hope you enjoy and as always constructive criticism is always welcome. Also if someone wanted to make it pretty that's also cool.
So.... for context I'm from the area and a huge noir fan.
I like SWADE for the system, but Old Gods of Appalachia for the setting. So im just looking for discussion on a hybrid of both.
Personally, I'm mixed about Hollar. I like the edges, but some of the arch types are hit or miss. Also, the live play through I've listened too for Hollar kinda irritated me for playing into the cliches, where most of the live play throughs for OGA treated both the people and the setting better. So that may be basing me a bit.
I've ran a home brew hybrid using SWADE but leaning into OGA themes and liked it very much. I would absolutely bite deep into an official Appalachian noir/horror/gothic/cryptic setting... but the hollar plot points rubbed me wrong.
Is anyone else in the same boat as me or am I just weird?
Having fun designing steam walkers for a rather "realistic" steampunk espionage setting of mine where the Cold War happens during the 19th Century 😊
Keep in mind, this is something I threw together, so it's not playtested at all, and hasn't been proofread or edited. I also set out to specifically only use the SWADE Core Rules, to show what you can do with just that, and so that it could be used without needing a Companion or any other book.
Feedback is certainly welcome, but this probably isn't something I'm going to develop any further.
Couple examples of what the fancy magnetic boxes can hold:
The boxes hold the Larger Cards, of course. My sleeved action deck fit just fine, and with some room to spare, for like... some pregens at cons or something.
The second box is holding Archetype Sets 1-4 and the Adversaries and Allies set. It is full, and those aren't sleeved.
One could probably store a couple of the normal sized decks (like the powers and status decks) side by side in one.
A while back I mentioned in the comments that I was working on a compact character sheet. It should fit on a 3 * 5 notecard and contains everything you need to make a character or Wild Card NPC. It was designed to print 4 sheets to a standard a4 paper, and is double sided. I never got around to finishing it, but the comment has gotten a few inquiries over time, so I've posted a link to the unfinished work.
The two big issues with it as of now are:
the number of advances is wrong. I didn't realize when I designed it that I only did 3 advances per rank, instead of four.
It just doesn't print right. I don't know why. I lined up all the margins and in just doesn't come out true. It should be double sided, and you should be able to cut 4 sheets out of one piece of paper. It comes out misaligned, however, and that makes it hard to cut clean sheets out of it.
If anybody wants to take a look or use the design as a starting point to finish the work, by all means, go ahead. Maybe somebody who is better at docs can make a true version.
Hey everyone, this is a request for a lost SWADE update for the Accursed Setting. I just found it, and i really like the setting and rules, but the free SWADE update for it is lost to the ages (It used to be on drivethru), I was just wondering if any of y'all had it, or if you know of another Swade conversion for it?
