Dungeons & Dragons or Savage Worlds?
My gaming group has been playing Savage Worlds Adventure Edition (SWADE) in my homebrew world since 2021. I am going to be passing the Game Master baton in the near future. We have 1 or 2 more sessions left. We will be playing Star Wars SWADE next. I'm excited to be a player again. I love being the GM. I really enjoy writing the world and the adventures. It is a lot of work, but it is so much fun.
I am looking to the future for when I will GM again. What should we play? I want to work on preparing for that. I want to have stuff ready when it's time. Since I like doing this so much, it should be a lot of fun. I love my homebrew world. But I am interested in playing in a different world. Just to change things up.
I picked up the D&D 5E Planescape boxset a few weeks ago. We loved playing Planescape back in the day when it was first released. I'm going to check it out and see how it looks. I am also interested in running a game in Forgotten Realms or Southlands. But that begs the question...
Do we switch from SWADE to Dungeons & Dragons?
It would certainly be easier to play D&D, since the Planescape set was written for D&D. But is D&D the superior game? Even if it isn't, is it worth playing? Pathfinder is an option too. SWADE has a Pathfinder conversion book. I've never looked at it. I thought about it briefly before coming up with the answer.
Stick with SWADE. There is a single reason that makes it better than either D&D or Pathfinder.
Hit Point Slog.
I absolutely hate TTRPG combat that uses hit points. I hate the idea of players slowly chipping away at a 230 HP dragon for hours. It. Is. So. Boring. It works in video games. Sitting at a table, rolling dice and doing math is not fun. Even dramatic descriptions of combat peter out after a while.
SWADE's combat system is superior. Players get 3 wounds. Average enemies get 1 wound. Tough enemies can have more than 1 wound. A successful attack makes the target Shaken. They can move, but can't act until they Unshake. If you are hit again before you Unshake, you take a wound. If the dice rolls are especially good, the target can take multiple wounds in a single attack. Players have the opportunity to Soak their wounds. They can make them go away if they roll well enough. It is all a bit more complicated than I described, but that is the gist of it.
You might think that this makes combat short. Yes, it does. You might think that a player's character can be 1 shot killed by an errant arrow. Yes, this can happen. It's actually quite rare. The rules work to make sure this doesn't happen too often.
In one instance, the players were facing the boss of a dungeon. It was supposed to be a difficult fight with many areas of concern for the players to worry about. What actually happened was that they walked into the room. One character threw a plate at the boss's head. His dice rolls were SO AMAZINGLY GOOD that he one shot killed the boss with a dinner plate.
A dinner plate.
This is frustrating for the GM at the time. But since that moment at the table, it has become a supremely epic moment that has been retold many times. Our real lives were brightened by this moment. That is what tabletop role playing games are all about.
On the other hand, there was a time where the players decided to assault a stronghold by themselves. Their army attacked the front. They tried to sneak in through the back door. It didn't work. They ran away from the stronghold. Unfortunately, the wall was manned by numerous archers. Twenty arrows cause so many wounds that you can't soak them all. This isn't the rules breaking down though. This was simply player error.
I have decided to stick with SWADE and convert a D&D setting to work with those rules.