Initial Impressions of SWADE

Savage Worlds Adventure Deluxe Edition (SWADE) is a flexible and fast game that, I believe streamlines many aspects of the role playing experience. Currently on it's fifth edition, SWADE uses a combination of polyhedral dice, with the exception of the d20, a deck of regular Poker cards, tokens, and lots of imagination!

The first thing I really like about this system is the lack of "numerical stats", that most games have. There is a Stat Block, called Attributes, but the term Rank is coming to mind here. Each of your five Attributes (Agility, Smarts, Spirit, Strength, and Vigor) are defined by the size of dice (d4, d6, d8, d10, or d12), and this defines not only your raw ability to roll higher with larger sized dice, but also defines how much you are able to spend for your Skills. Skills are also defined by these five dice, they work the same was as Attributes do. The higher the number of sides on your die, the better probability that you'll land a success. It's simple, and there's like no math (so far!)

To determine a Successful result, you just have to roll over a four. That's it. And you'll be rolling at most is two dice. One for either your Attribute, or one for your Skill. Never both. The second Die comes from your Wild Die. This is always going to be a d6. You're goal is to roll over a four (4). If you manage to roll higher than a four, you've succeeded! But wait, there's more....

You've got something called a Raise. This is simply a multiple of four (4). So eight (8), twelve (12), sixteen (16), twenty (20), etc are all Raises. And you determine any Raises after you've subtracted any of your Target's defenses/modifiers. You get extra things because of a Raise. In Combat, for instance, you add one extra damage die. Your typical 2d6, becomes a 3d6. Note that if you received more than one Raise, you are still only adding one extra die. I translate this as any additional Raises beyond the first, translate into world events happening to your opponent.

There's also something called an Ace. Every die has a maximum result. For a d6, that maximum is a six (6). You can't roll a seven (7) on a six-sided cube. It's impossible. Don't argue with Physics. You'll lose. Anyway, what happens when you roll a six (6) on a d6? You keep that six (6) and roll again. Adding the new result to your total. This is otherwise known as Open-Ended Rolling, or Exploding Dice in other games. And as long as you keep rolling the maximum result, you keep re-rolling and adding to your final result. It's actually pretty cool, considering you're only rolling two dice.

The combat chapter is pretty hefty. There's quite a few modifiers for different situations. The people over at Pinnacle have really thought of everything. There's a lot to remember, but luckily there are cheat-sheets laying all over the Internet. And most of the modifiers are either +2 or -2 (or multiples of two (2). Combat is designed to be fast and fairly painless. Just don't forget all those twos!

SWADE, like many other games utilizes Tokens. Called Bennies in this game, these are a form of currency that can be traded to do a number of different things, such as re-rolling task challenges or damage results, negating damage taken, even changing the plot. These are designed to be handed out like candy on Halloween. Basically whenever a Player does something cool, funny, or they resolve a plot point in the campaign.

One thing that stands out in SWADE is the use of Poker playing cards. These are used to keep track of Initiative, which I find pretty interesting. One cool thing about this mechanic is that there is never an issue with ties. Basically the way this system works is that the Game Master will start with the Ace, and then start "counting down", by running through the card's value in descending order. So Kings, then Queens, then Jacks, 10, 9, 8, etc. If the same value comes up between two Players, then the card is ordered by Suit. Spades are of the highest priority, then Hearts, Diamonds, and finally Clubs are last. It's reverse-alphabetical order (also happens to be the same order defined in Bridge-- you know, that old lady's card game.) Which I find is a great alteritive to defaulting to a Stat, (Attribute) like your Agility or something, which could be just as ambiguous.

Savage Worlds has a hefty listing of Advantages (Edges) and Disadvantages (Hindrances) so that it makes it easier to role play with cool effects. There's also quite a nice listing of Powers (very similar to the Attributes listed in Big Eyes Small Mouth), and there's even more listed in the Super Powers expansion book. So, it's very possible to create a finely-tuned character by using this game system.

Is it the perfect system? No. At least not in my eyes. I can already spot some flaws, but that's just because I'm fussy, which defines the reason why I have 200+ role playing games in my library... But, I'm still going to be giving this system a try. It looks to be a good fit for my concept of the Magical Girl Cat Fight campaign that I'm going to some day run-- espeically with many of the Powers only consuming one Power Point-- and there's even an option to eliminate Power Points entirely.

Anyway, what are your thoughts?