After a trial run with the Tomb of Terrors a while back, yesterday we finally had time to run the first adventure with Savage Legend – my Savage Worlds / Dragon Warriors hybrid. First job was to complete the character conversion that I’d prepared in advance for the players (just to recap, we have a small family group with a couple of friends, only two of whom are RPG conversant). I read through the (huge) list of Edges which the PCs could ‘buy’ with their unalloted advances with everyone noting down those which they might be interested in and then making their choices.

The last adventure had left them at the top of a mountain having defeated the third of three hags but leaving the knight and the assassin incapacitated, so it was a chance to run through the healing rules. Astoundingly with a d6 and d4 healing Skills it was relatively easy to get both characters up to full strength within a few minutes. The princess was whisked off to her father and the rewards cashed in; a shield with a Saint’s bone embeded in the pommel for Sir Elathan (+2 Parry vs undead and demonic), a chainmail of free movement for Lady Elowyn, a ring of Advanced Avoidance for Nab’han the assassin and Isembard the dwarf gets to choose a free rune.

Now they have to escort Lady Caitlin back to Albion for her wedding to Sir Alric. Caitlin’s father, Conall, is providing them with an honour guard of six of his warriors. Before they set off, the six warriors (Huw, Huw, Hew, Hugh, Hew and Hugo) challenged the four intrepid adventurers to a fight on the battlegrounds in front of the Dun Falas fortress. There followed three set fights to test out the system:

Fight 1 started there, all pulled their initiative cards. The assassin and the mystic went first and started charging up the hill. Then the men of Dun Falas were up. A collective intimidate roll as the warriors broke into their ancient war song (war cry affecting all the opponents); everyone except the dwarf was shaken! Result! Sospan Fach has always made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up and it had the same effect on the players. Next was a concerted shield bash and knockdown. After that it was all downhill for the Six Huws.

Fight 2 was arranged for dawn the following morning in a nearby valley. The party were wise to me by now. Although the valley appeared empty, Nab’han the assassin decided to sneak through the woods at the edge of the map whilst Elowyn created an illusion of him to walk with the party. At last, they were using their brains! The Huws had been hiding in the bushes and Nab’han spotted them at about the same time that they launched their surprise flight of spears. However, the surprise attack of six extras was never going to overcome four seasoned Wild Cards. As they were collecting up their spears, a messenger arrived from Dun Falas; a nearby village was under attack from a giant and whether the 10 of them could deal with it.

from http://rathe.hourglass8.org/images/f/f0/Hill_Giant.jpg

Fight 3 took place in the village. Unfortunately the giant didn’t stand two rounds against the ten of them.

Obviously the three fights were set pieces, designed to give both me as a GM new to Savage Worlds and my players (also new to SW) to get a feel for how the translated player characters would work and how tactics can be employed in combat scenes. We all learned a few things, wrote a few notes about things we needed to look up and got to try out some new skills in the form of combat Edges. Not sure I’ve got the balance right yet on the way I’ve translated the mystic to the Savage Worlds – Elowyn was successfully blasting left, right and centre and the enemies never had a chance. Still, we’re living, learning and, most importantly, having fun.