How to improve the Savage Worlds ruleset

[NEPHiLiX]

Before I begin, let me say again that this ruleset is stellar.

I did, however, encounter an oddity the other day while gaming--and I'm not sure if it's just a rookie mistake.

We play Deadlands Reloaded for SW and so we tend to have to use cards a lot more than is perhaps usual, given that one of our players is a Huckster who sometimes has to "deal with the devil" via a card hand to cast a spell. The problem is that the ruleset will only allow me to deal out 5 cards, and then it says "public is at maximum hand size" and won't deal anymore. And no matter what I do I can't deal any more cards to that player (he should have 7 altogether).

Any ideas?
Thanks!

[phantomwhale]

Thanks for the kind words - flattery will get you everywhere

Your mistake was no rookie one - it's just one of the remaining quirks of the ruleset.

However, assuming you are playing with the Deadlands: Reloaded extension, it's currently recommended to use the Poker Table to do Huckster deals with the devil (and all non-initiative card dealing, to be honest)

Simply share the table, pop the Huckster in one seat, and deal cards to his seat. Or I normally put the first 5 cards in the centre of the table, then deal the rest to the Huckster's Hand (1 per grit, I believe), as this does the same thing, but with a clearer view of the cards.

This will let you deal as many as you need, and also auto-calculate the best poker hand too, changing it as each card is dealt. This adds tension when card #6 comes out and it's clearly displayed that you've still only got King High...

If your not using the extension (why not ?!) or would rather use the standard card dealing mechanic in the core SWEX ruleset, then yeah it's still got the 5 card limit (amongst other problems). However ! I've already given it some time and love for version 3.2, so when that comes out later this year, it should support what your after also.

[NEPHiLiX]

I have no idea how I missed it, but I didn't even know there *was* a Deadlands: Reloaded add-in...wow. Thanks for that...I'm off to the store!

[zackspacks]

From my similar post on the main forum:

After watching one of Xorne's D&D vlogs, I notice that in the D&D version the Personalities attacks are in the combat tracker, and he just clicks on their weapon attack and it rolls the attack. Is this possible in the a future SW version ? I appreciate that several attacks are possible, but a Fighting and a Shooting line would be nice, and encompass a lot of your average mooks, and cut down on the amount of open windows, and more importantly having to keep referencing them all. cheers Paul

Added to tracker here:
https://savagefgii.idea.informer.com/proj/?ia=26498

[ShotGun Jolly]

Been following your blog... when.. when do you think it will be released?

So excited about it, and the work you are doing thus far looks great!

[phantomwhale]

It's a great question. How much is enough ! I've got a couple of people play testing what's done so far at the moment, and there are a couple more "must have" features, but would be nicer to "release early, release often" rather than wait 9-12 months between versions.

That said, the testing for FGII is still very manual (see https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forum...576#post111576 for my investigation into ways around that). So getting each release to the point where there are no significant bugs is labour intensive, and not an effort I'd want to repeat too often.

I hope to get something ready in a couple of months, to tell the truth. Got some new "real money earning" contracts on the horizon, so would like to clear my FGII plate down a bit before the two collide

[phantomwhale]

Oh, forgot to say that I really want to make sure it's a 2.8 compatible release, hooking in some of the new features such as Kick Player, and the opened up Slash commands.

So yeah, kind of waiting for a "finalised" 2.8 release before I start doing those last few bits too.

[krb243]

to piggy-back on to what zackspacks said, which i was going to mention, i'd also like to add to the mimi screen for the weapon and character health section from the combat panel. as of now, when i click on the ammo bullet, it subtracts from the available ammo, which is cool, but can that button also roll the combat to hit? kinda like an all-in-one combat attack button for that particular weapon. and can you also add the melee weapons on the same panel?

i know, i'm asking a lot and you've got lots on your plate already, but just thought i'd ask thanx!!!!

[Doswelk]

to piggy-back on to what zackspacks said, which i was going to mention, i'd also like to add to the mimi screen for the weapon and character health section from the combat panel. as of now, when i click on the ammo bullet, it subtracts from the available ammo, which is cool, but can that button also roll the combat to hit? kinda like an all-in-one combat attack button for that particular weapon. and can you also add the melee weapons on the same panel?

i know, i'm asking a lot and you've got lots on your plate already, but just thought i'd ask thanx!!!!

I like the idea but how would rof 2+ weapons work?

maybe be it could be done like the shooting skill, click rolls the dice holding down the left mouse button and right clicking adds extra skill dice?

That said i just drag the weapon attacks to my quick bar much easier, but to each their own.

[phantomwhale]

I've often thought of more automated ammo "countdowns" - e.g. having an attack button that decrements ammo as the same time. The issues are:

• Many weapons use variable amounts of ammo (even the humble pistol often has a "double-tap" variant)
• Some players may still just roll their shooting skill, and then when reminded to adjust ammo, need to be able to do that easily

E.g. for the last point, you don't want to say "just click the bullet icon to do the ammo adjustment, and I'll ignore the extra shooting roll" - it'll be confusing.

That said, an enhanced Mini-sheet (or separate weapons one) that has more of the weapon attacks on it could work.

Would suggest keeping ammo bullet as just an ammo decrement function, but perhaps a menu option could enable automatic ammo reduction when the weapon is fired ? Or an enhanced hotkey that allows combination actions (shooting roll + reduce ammo count) ? And of course, what should the behaviour be if the gun is empty - roll the dice ? Put a message on the chat log ? Or just silently go to -1 ammo ?

Once we've thrashed out a good idea, add it to the tracker (see my sig.) and then other's can vote on it. Always good to incubate those ideas on the forums first though, I think - to gather other user's ideas, and put together something more concrete. Concrete ideas get implemented first