Savage Settings - Edges and Hindrances - A discussion

I was forwarded an email today by Smiteworks, the person was complaining that the Hellfrost Bestiary required the Hellfrost Player's Guide to know what some of the Edges did.

I checked the back of the Physical book and this fact is made clear, I checked the store page here (and steam) and that line is missing, I expect this will be rectified by Smiteworks. I can clearly understand the annoyance the buyer must have felt at this.

But this got me thinking... Any Savage Worlds setting book will require other books in the setting (except of course the actual original setting book), as EVERY Savage Worlds setting adds its own Edges and Hindrances, it does not stop you using the product just not knowing what that particular edge is.

I have not bought a book for a setting without getting the original setting book first but if I did I would not be surprised that there were Edges and/or Hindrances unique to that setting in the book.

What are your views on this?

Has anyone bought a book for a setting they did not have the rule book for?

I personally buy a lot of 5E and Pathfinder PDFs to Savage them for my game sessions, but I do own the Pathfinder and 5e rulebooks.

I'll stop typing rubbish now....

Bottom line is the data needs to be somewhere and duplicating the data would be inefficient, among other things. The missing line needs to be added to the Store page, sure.

Like you, not sure why someone would buy a bestiary for a setting without having that setting, but who knows what was going on.

One of the things that I don't really like about 5E is that everything is duplicated over and over and over again. If you have the PHB, DMG and SCA loaded you'll have like 2-3 copies of every inventory item. I get how that is not really something that can be filtered and you can't just assume that someone has all of the above. It's the same with classes, while the sub-classes are different it necessitates having multiple versions of each class every time a new sub-class is added.

Anyways, my thinking on the whole subject of edges and hindrances is they are better in the original source module and not replicated everywhere. Plus it seems like having the player's guide is sort of a necessity unless you are just using the bestiary for some other setting.

As for settings, nope. If I buy a setting I generally go all in. After watching the Saving's Throw people running ETU for the kickstarter I bought Savage World, ETU and the plot point module. It seemed the logical way to go.

Not sure how much effort it would be but maybe instead of referencing an edge could you just build the edge effect into the creature in question or is it a lot of creatures and way to much work?

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Originally Posted by Talyn

Like you, not sure why someone would buy a bestiary for a setting without having that setting, but who knows what was going on.

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My assumption is that they are using material with a different setting or just the core rules...

Personally I think the issue here is that there is/was no FYI prior to purchasing that content references another product's content, so it comes as a surprise after the fact. If notice is added to the product description, some will still miss it but that's a good way to allow someone who actually reads before they click to make an informed decision (and/or post questions about it in the forums or on Discord).

The person identified himself (he's own of our own, the clown!) and stated the end goal was simply to get QA to add the missing line to the store page that the Hellfrost setting is required to use the bestiary. The PDF flatly states it but the FG store page does not.

I quite agree that the line should be there, was not trying to excuse that, but was curious of the wider thoughts about this in general.

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Originally Posted by esmdev

One of the things that I don't really like about 5E is that everything is duplicated over and over and over again. If you have the PHB, DMG and SCA loaded you'll have like 2-3 copies of every inventory item. I get how that is not really something that can be filtered and you can't just assume that someone has all of the above. It's the same with classes, while the sub-classes are different it necessitates having multiple versions of each class every time a new sub-class is added.

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This is because of the additional character build automation in 5E.
When you add different features, skills etc to a 5E class you cant shoe-horn them in you have to add them with the class.

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Originally Posted by damned

This is because of the additional character build automation in 5E.
When you add different features, skills etc to a 5E class you cant shoe-horn them in you have to add them with the class.

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Yeah, I know why it does that. I was just giving that as an example of why I think that repeating an edge or hindrance would add lots of unnecessary clutter. :)

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Originally Posted by Doswelk

I quite agree that the line should be there, was not trying to excuse that, but was curious of the wider thoughts about this in general.

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I don’t think that FG developers should start to go down the slippery slope of including data from other products - even if the products are closely related.

Provide a link to the relevant record (wildcard if needed, so people can create their own module with linked data if they like).

And then make sure the store description is accurate and appropriate. This is one thing FG developers should also be a bit more proactive about - checking that the store description is accurate for the product delivered, with any FG specific info added to the (usual, but not in this case apparently) blanket copy/paste of the original product description (amended as necessary).