First Time GMing SW

[mr_h]

Last night my group played their first test session with Weird Wars. All in all, it went rather well. Everyone figured out the rules pretty quick and I Was able to (mostly) keep a handle on the init tracker.

We did have three questions that popped up.


1) Untrained + Wild Die: Apparently a PC still gets their wild die when doing an untrained skill. Besides creating an 'Untrained' skill on a character sheet, is there any other way to handle this?

2) Holding: Is there any trick for handling a player character who 'Holds' on their turn? The rules state "If a character has a held card when a new round starts, he's not dealt in". Is there a way to 'hold' a card?

3) Auto Fire - Assuming I am reading the rules right, when someone auto fires they roll a number of attacks equal to ROF + 1 Wild Die. For now I had the players turn off the Wild Die, roll shooting 3 times, then manually roll a d6.
Is there a better way to handle this? Specifically, a macro so they only have to press a button once and have it go.

[Doswelk]

We did have three questions that popped up.


1) Untrained + Wild Die: Apparently a PC still gets their wild die when doing an untrained skill. Besides creating an 'Untrained' skill on a character sheet, is there any other way to handle this?

We create an untrained skill and add a -2 modifier use the radial option.

2) Holding: Is there any trick for handling a player character who 'Holds' on their turn? The rules state "If a character has a held card when a new round starts, he's not dealt in". Is there a way to 'hold' a card?

Remove the tick under their name on the combat tracker.

3) Auto Fire - Assuming I am reading the rules right, when someone auto fires they roll a number of attacks equal to ROF + 1 Wild Die. For now I had the players turn off the Wild Die, roll shooting 3 times, then manually roll a d6.
Is there a better way to handle this? Specifically, a macro so they only have to press a button once and have it go.

Left click the shooting skill and do not let go of mouse button, to a ROF 2 right click once, for a ROF 3 right click twice.

You'll end up with 2 or 3 skill dice and one wild die.

My videos cover all of these I believe (if not let me know and I'll make one!)

[phantomwhale]

We create an untrained skill and add a -2 modifier use the radial option.

I guess you could always create a hotkey die code too :

/die d4-2 Untrained Skill

It's less obvious what your rolling, but hopefully context for the roll should make it clear, and then you only need to set it up once for "any untrained rolling"

Left click the shooting skill and do not let go of mouse button, to a ROF 2 right click once, for a ROF 3 right click twice.

You'll end up with 2 or 3 skill dice and one wild die.

Oddly enough, was just talking about a possible improvement to the output of such rolls over here :

https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forum...2&postcount=50

Be interested to get both of your opinions on this potential improvement. Any code ideas for untrained skills would be welcome too, but suspect the above two strategies cover it pretty well ?

[mr_h]

We create an untrained skill and add a -2 modifier use the radial option.

This is what I had the players do for now, probably the best option. It might be nice to have a 'permanent' Untrained skill on the character sheet somehow. After all, pretty much everyone will have an untrained skill. Maybe just a dice in the corner of the skill sheet or something like that.

Remove the tick under their name on the combat tracker.

Aha! I knew there was a way to do it, I just forgot where I heard it. I forgot it was in your video.

Left click the shooting skill and do not let go of mouse button, to a ROF 2 right click once, for a ROF 3 right click twice.

Sweet, I wasn't aware it worked like that. Your videos are good, I just watched them a while ago and probably just forgot little things like that.

Oddly enough, was just talking about a possible improvement to the output of such rolls over here :

https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums...2&postcount=50

Be interested to get both of your opinions on this potential improvement. Any code ideas for untrained skills would be welcome too, but suspect the above two strategies cover it pretty well ?

Well, my group has only played once so far and we haven't really looked that hard at the formatting/output of the rolls at the time. Next time we play I'll look at them more. Just off the top of my head, I would like to know where teh wild dice was applied. If that means each attack roll and then a seperate wild die roll, I could deal with that.

[nethru]

Instead of starting a new first time running SW thread figure I'd add to this oen

I just ran my first game for SW through FG and was a blast! One complaint the players had was when I opened a new grid map if it was larger than the default window and they tried to scroll over it would not stick untill i updated the sheet. Is there any way to make the image frame bigger or make it so they can scroll over and it stays put without me updating it?

[Griogre]

They can make the map frame bigger by holding down control and dragging the lower right corner of the map frame. The GM is the only one who can scroll the overall map viewpoint if the map is bigger than the size of the map frame. Allowing clients to scroll the map is on Smiteworks list of things they want to do in future releases.

[Robbo]

I too am going to piggyback on this thread with a question.

I have been teaching myself how to run a Savage Worlds game with my poor brother (who hasn't played any SW or ever used FG) as my guinea pig player. He's a good sport thank goodness. The video tutorials have been helpful but I have a couple of questions that are mostly a result of my time spent playing 4E in Fantasy Grounds.

Is there a way to drag a token onto the player character sheets? I don't see a place for it. Or do you just give them one on the combat tracker and FG will remember it from then on?

Is there a way for the GM to target a player? In 4E there is a handy target icon on the combat tracker, but I see nothing comparable in SW.

Does the SW ruleset automate the combat? Again, in 4E, when a player rolls an attack, the ruleset determines if it is a hit or not, and when the player rolls damage it is automatically assigned to the opponent. In SW, do the players and GMs compare the fighting number to the parry number and determine hits themselves? Does the GM always determine the damage results based on the damage roll?

My apologies for the last question as I'm sure it sounds daft, but I wanted to be sure that I'm not missing something. I've been trained as a 4E zombie and change is hard, especially for zombies (moon wizard is the necromancer!).

[phantomwhale]

Is there a way to drag a token onto the player character sheets? I don't see a place for it. Or do you just give them one on the combat tracker and FG will remember it from then on?

Players get an auto-created token from their portraits when added to the combat tracker, or simply dragged onto maps. These auto-generated token can come with sizing issues, and another odd image loading semi-bug (https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forum...ad.php?t=11578) though, so I think that might be why rulesets like 4E and BRP (I think) allow you to assign tokens to players now.

The auto-generated ones should work, for now, but I'll look into adding tokens onto sheets too.

Is there a way for the GM to target a player? In 4E there is a handy target icon on the combat tracker, but I see nothing comparable in SW.

No. Added to the wishlist

Does the SW ruleset automate the combat? Again, in 4E, when a player rolls an attack, the ruleset determines if it is a hit or not, and when the player rolls damage it is automatically assigned to the opponent. In SW, do the players and GMs compare the fighting number to the parry number and determine hits themselves? Does the GM always determine the damage results based on the damage roll?

No, it doesn't. That said, I'm not sure auto-applying damage is a feature we'd want to add to savage, as there are a number of edges that change the meaning of damage (e.g. for constructs, a shaken result ontop of another doesn't equate to a wound, as it would for others).

Can't see any massive harm in comparing rolled attack to targets parry and declaring raise, hit or miss though. My players often miss off modifiers (non-techies getting used to interface still) so I'd probably have to say "sorry no, as it's a multi-action and at medium range, it's a miss", but I'm pretty much chatting that anyway.

But then again, there are quite a few temporary parry modifiers in Savage (-2 parry for wild attack or when victim to agility tricks) that are not easily tracked currently, so I suspect you'd want to have this better tracked first. Having hit declarations that are not right 90%+ of the time would probably just be unwelcome noise.

In this situation, I think Savage's strength has been hit / damage rolls are quite quick and easy to compute, so the benefits of automation are lower. Which is not to say it's not something we should think about adding to the ruleset, but without all the effects tracking and no doubt other clever trickery underpinning it (like the 4E probably has - I really should play with it more someday) it probably won't add much value. Yet.

[Robbo]

Players get an auto-created token from their portraits when added to the combat tracker, or simply dragged onto maps. These auto-generated token can come with sizing issues, and another odd image loading semi-bug (https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forum...ad.php?t=11578) though, so I think that might be why rulesets like 4E and BRP (I think) allow you to assign tokens to players now.

The auto-generated ones should work, for now, but I'll look into adding tokens onto sheets too.



No. Added to the wishlist



No, it doesn't. That said, I'm not sure auto-applying damage is a feature we'd want to add to savage, as there are a number of edges that change the meaning of damage (e.g. for constructs, a shaken result ontop of another doesn't equate to a wound, as it would for others).

Can't see any massive harm in comparing rolled attack to targets parry and declaring raise, hit or miss though. My players often miss off modifiers (non-techies getting used to interface still) so I'd probably have to say "sorry no, as it's a multi-action and at medium range, it's a miss", but I'm pretty much chatting that anyway.

But then again, there are quite a few temporary parry modifiers in Savage (-2 parry for wild attack or when victim to agility tricks) that are not easily tracked currently, so I suspect you'd want to have this better tracked first. Having hit declarations that are not right 90%+ of the time would probably just be unwelcome noise.

In this situation, I think Savage's strength has been hit / damage rolls are quite quick and easy to compute, so the benefits of automation are lower. Which is not to say it's not something we should think about adding to the ruleset, but without all the effects tracking and no doubt other clever trickery underpinning it (like the 4E probably has - I really should play with it more someday) it probably won't add much value. Yet.

Thank you for the quick response. I'm sad to hear about the problem with the tokens, but I suppose the work around (dragging from the token box) is fine until there's a fix.

From what I understand about Savage Worlds, I don't think it needs anywhere near the automation that 4E does. 4E combat is heavily reliant on conditions and effects that become a bear to track. Do you find it worthwhile to prepare conditions like prone, wild attack, beserk, etc to help the players remember?