Great White Games/Pinnacle Entertainment Group

[The Dread Polack]

So, my Anima: Beyond Fantasy campaign continued last weekend, this time using the SW rules. Everyone seemed good with the way their characters worked. My pickiest player had some issues, as expected, but still had a pretty good time.

It was kind of a short game. They had a short chase with an illusionist/thief. At first, it was through a building and into an alley, on the battlemat, where she summoned an illusory troll that 2 of the PCs stayed to fight, while the theif PC used the chase rules (after playing an adventure card that brought in an ally) to chase her down the street. The chase rules didn't play out well, but I think I know what I did wrong. If it comes up again, we might give it another shot.

Interestingly, the SW rules seem to fit the play style of the original material surprisingly well. People mention the "swingy" aspect of SW mechanics, which is also true of Anima. Anima has exploding dice and critical fumbles, which means anyone can score great successes or terrible botches. The counterattack edge works just like counterattacks in Anima. The power system takes away a lot of variance between the different magical paths, psychic disciplines, and ki techniques, but that is something I will not miss. Trappings seem to cover all the difference between them that I am concerned with.

There's not much up on the site yet, but I'm collecting my conversion notes on a site:

https://sites.google.com/site/animasavagefantasy/

I'm hoping that if I get enough material together, some SW fans might give this setting a try, when they wouldn't have under the actual rules.

I'll keep you updated on the progress of the campaign and the conversion material. In particular, I'm still trying to decide how I'm going to scale up the power level of PC capabilities to reflect the capabilities of high-level Anima characters.

[The Dread Polack]

Playing the game:

I've had another session now. The PCs fought some "Ice Wolves" which I based on D&D's Winter Wolves. They had burst with an ice trapping, and anyone who was shaken or wounded by a bite made a vigor roll or take 1 fatigue. I actually had them attack the horses. Due to an excellent stealth roll for the wolves, they were able to get a round of attacks and down 2 of the horses. Travel for the PCs would have been pretty slow after that, but one player had the adventure card which revived and healed an extra, and the other horse passed its vigor check to survive.

After that, it was pretty solid roleplaying. You can read about the adventure here: http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaign/gaia-shadows-and-light/adventure-log

We're all still pretty happy with how the rules work. The mentalist in the group uses the No Power Points rule, and tends to prepare powers a lot, which feels like a fair balance to his abilities. The Ki-user runs a lot faster without all the complicated rules. And, the thief is actually much more useful in a fight now that he has more options with tricks and taunts.

Converting the material:

As for the conversion. I'm working on magic and psionics. I've started with magic and read through all the rules regarding actual magic use. I'd say I've disregarded about half the rules in order to keep it FFF, and the other half I have either matched up with existing rules (like using No Power Points), or am considering new rules for. I would say that this means maybe 2-3 fairly simple original setting rules, which isn't bad.

My big consideration, right now, is exactly how I'm going to convert magical "paths" and psychic "disciplines". These are basically themes, like the elements, Light, Darkness, or Necromancy for magic; or various -kinetics for psionics.

I'm fairly set on how I'm going to handle this mechanically in the game in regards to edges and such. Characters will choose a path or discipline when they take their AB. This will determine what powers are available to them, and what their trappings are. There might be some additional restrictions appropriate to the theme. Edges will be available to expand their available trappings.

So, here's the question I throw out to the SW community: how close should I stick to the source spell/power lists? I see three possible ways to do this:

1) I could convert each spell/power directly into a SW power. PCs won't end up with any spells/powers that don't exist in Anima, but it will mean tweaking SW powers a lot to fit them.

2) Give a list of what powers are available, and some notes on how certain powers and their trappings work.

3) Let players take (almost) any power they want, with a trapping appropriate to their path/discipline. This might be a little too open, since it's actually a significant part of the original setting that certain paths/disciplines are only capable of certain things.

I'm leaning toward option 2 at this point. 1 seems like more work than it's worth, and 3 is just too wide open. However, there's no reason, even in the source material, that players can't conceivably discover or develop noew spells/powers, so if a player wants to propose something new with an appropriate trapping, I might let them work it into the story.

Anyway, that's a long post. Any thoughts are welcome, especially from those with experience converting other settings, and anybody familiar with Anima: Beyond Fantasy. Thanks.

[Virgobrown72]

I would rock with 2...
_________________
"Anything smaller is just fiddly, and fiddly is not one of SvgW's three Fs..."

[ValhallaGH]

[The Dread Polack]

Yeah, and I kinda knew what people would say. I've got you savages pegged.

[The Dread Polack]

So, I've made some progress toward this conversion. I've actually played 8 sessions of it already, and it's going well, but I haven't statted a lot of stuff out beyond what my characters need.

You can read the short version of my conversion here on the Anima: Beyond Fantasy boards here:

http://cipher-studios.com/AnimaBB/index.php?topic=5755.msg72342#msg72342

Here's a small selection of creatures:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/47455822/Anima/Savage%20Worlds%20Files/Bestiary%20-%20PDF.pdf

Pretty much all the gear. I still need to add the stats for poison, which I managed to convert:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/47455822/Anima/Savage%20Worlds%20Files/Gear.pdf

And here's the races, or the Nephilim, as they are called:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/47455822/Anima/Savage%20Worlds%20Files/Races.pub

Here's some character sheets:

Axel Doth, "The Frost Giant of Haufman":

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/47455822/Anima/Savage%20Worlds%20Files/Characters/Axel%20Doth%20-%20PDF.pdf

I made cards to quick-reference his powers:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/47455822/Anima/Savage%20Worlds%20Files/Characters/Axel%20Doth%20Powers%20-%20PDF.pdf

And Smooth Goodrich. Yes. Smooth is her name. it was taken directly from the poorly-translated selection of random names. We were so amused we went with it. There's also a character from the same nation named Akira Dangerfield. We decided his mom was from Japan, and his dad was from Caddyshack.

Smooth Goodrich, a "Technician" or Ki Master:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/47455822/Anima/Savage%20Worlds%20Files/Characters/Smooth%20Goodrich%20-%20PDF.pdf