Great White Games/Pinnacle Entertainment Group

[FatGoblinGames]

Hey everyone!

Fat Goblin Games has mainly been creating material for the Pathfinder rpg, but have had plans to do some Savage Worlds material since we launched. A couple drinks with Shane Hensley and we were convinced and even more excited to switch gears.

We have two setting planned for Savage Worlds. Our Vathak setting (Fantasy- lovecraftian/survivor horror) and Steampunk Musha (Victorian/Asian steampunk).

We are also accustomed to producing several smaller supplements a month, and are very curious what type of products you feel are missing in your Savage Worlds line-up. We see a lot of adventures and setting books being made, but beyond that, what do you want to see?

Anyways, we are excited about being a part of this community and look forward to sharing our own products with you soon.

[sablemage]

Welcome, guys!

Personally I would like to see more One Sheet adventures - there are many good ones, but most of 'em seem to be for Deadlands (understandably), which I don't play.

A classic fantasy or SF setting with a Plot Point campaign would be good too.
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Andy
Halfway Station

[ValhallaGH]

[FatGoblinGames]

Hey, thanks for the response and welcome.

These are the things we are actually curious about. We are definitely going to explore the setting/adventure content as it's something that generally doesn't sell well for other systems, and it makes us happy that we can stretch those muscles and have some creative fun with Savage Worlds.

I think we have a good idea of what we want to do and what seems to work for other publishers. But continued feedback on what you want to see and what you think is missing or want more of from SW 3pp is awesome, and we welcome more and any feedback.

So, thank you, and please keep it coming.

[thurak]

As a fellow publisher, I'd encourage you to make sure you create at least one plot point setting that serves as a capstone for your company and gives you a firm identity in the savage worlds community.
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David Jarvis

Gun Metal games

[Cable Hogue]

Many licensees do not deliver a proper Plot Point Campaign for their settings.

Many Savages have rather limited time to create their own campaign materials from scratch.

One of the critical success factors of SW and Savage settings is the availability of Plot Point Campaigns. - This special kind of campaign allows a GM under time constraints do deliver the whole campaign play experience to his playing group while still being able to customize and tailor it to the group's interests.

I am much less interested in gaming material, where I have to invest quite a lot of my time into developing a whole campaign myself. - Therefore I buy cheerfully any kind of PROPER(!) Plot Point Campaign.

("Proper", because in some licensee SW-products rather "normal, linear, scripted" campaigns are mislabled as Plot Point Campaigns. - In each and every case I'd bought a setting book which promised to contain a PPC, I have been very strongly disappointed, when it turned out to be just a normal scripted campaign or even just a lengthy scenario and not a campaign at all. )

So, please, licensees, read the Plot Point Campaign article on the Pinnacle homepage, take a look at one of the best PPCs ever: 50 Fathoms. And then develop a proper Plot Point Campaign for your roleplaying setting!

Currently, there are quite many SW settingbooks available - the vast majority by licensees. - But looking at the gaming support for a typical SW GM, the products are lacking the typical SW-features. Especially: Adventure Generators, lots and lots of stand-alone Savage Tales and - no surprise - a proper Plot Point Campaign.

This is not a "must", but for me it makes the difference, whether I am to buy follow-up products for this setting at all. No Plot Point Campaign and not enough premade adventures equals "this book will rot in the shelf, unplayed" for me.

So, no toolkits - that kind of product is firmly and solidly delivered by Pinnacle themselves already.
No "fluff-novels" without any kind of readily playable material.
No collections of monsters and even less of Edges and - even lesser than Edges - of Powers.

This kind of "Feats/Spells/Classes"-creep - wellknown from D20-products - just doen't work with SW. (Take a look at the character development rules: you only can take so many edges, powers and skills per level-up/per rank until you are solidly in the Legendary region. - So less, and quite strongly focussed is more in SW than a plethora of second-rate choices that could scarcely compete with the basic rules' edges, powers, skills regarding their usefulness.)

Ideally (for me and my gaming requirements, of course) a new setting delivers the following:
- A settingbook with a proper Plot Point Campaign, lots of Savage Tales and Aventure Generators
- One or several sets of Figure Flats depicting all common and even uncommon character types and creatures for the setting.
- Possibly several Region Guides/Trail Guides to bring more depth to some region of the setting, BUT delivering a lot of Savage Tales and a (mini-)Plot Point Campaign as well (best example: The Trail Guides for Deadlands:Reloaded - take a look at them. That's what I call a very good supporting product for a savage setting.).
- Possibly some more, separately playable Plot Point Campaigns (like the PPC books for Deadlands:Reloaded - again a very good example).

Other kinds of products depend on the actual setting, but might include Adventure Deck Cards, Paper Models for setting specific vehicles (tanks, space ships, whatever), support for online-gaming like TabletopForge, RollD20, MapTool etc.

That's what I would buy.

[77IM]

Are you asking what I, personally, would buy? I think I am a fairly tough customer, so let me tell you what sort of known products I am looking forward to, in no particular order:

1. The rest of TPA.
2. Interface Zero. (This has pretty much been my "2nd priority purchase" since it came out. I always want it, but there's always something I want just slightly more.)
3. Sci-Fi Companion; print+PDF bundle.
4. Fading Suns; print+PDF bundle. (Well, I'm an easy sell when it comes to Fading Suns.)
5. More Old School Fantasy, should such a thing ever come to pass.

I guess I am looking for two sorts of products.
1) Things that inspire me. But I'm tight for cash so it has to be something really super awesome, so that can be a tough sell for me.
2) Resources that I can use in my game tonight. (I am usually the GM, and when I am a player, I don't really want to buy any player-focused books.) This is a tough sell too, though, because the "resources" have to be unique enough that I don't already have something that fits the bill, yet generic enough to fit into my home-brew setting and adventure; simple enough for me to grasp right away, yet complex enough that it's worth purchasing instead of just making it up on the fly.

-- 77IM
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Stuff I made: Arcane Abilities · Talent Edge · Savage Fading Suns · Savage Wuxia!

[Sadric]

[Boldfist]

[Tavis]

[fanchergw]

[haterofshame]

Welcome fat goblins!!! ( has a Nice ring to it )

Both settings sounds cool actually. As a consumer I world urge you to do what YOU think is COOL, to hell with everything else

But do it the savage way... Do not try to invent the wheel when the system is very modular. Look at reviews and see what works for the community and what does not.. Take Realms of Cthulhu whose sanity system worked like a mental tougness, pure genious and easy to grasp for savages.. On the other end of the scale is Sw Earthdawn which have received a lot of critique and in my book someone dropped the Ball on that one...( please do not repeat the slaughter with Fading Suns sw )


Also playtest a lot, with playtesters used to sw...

Read: Realms of Cthulhu , Day After Ragnarok, solomon kane, totems of the dead (Nice expanded solomon kane magic system) my faves:-) but most of the settings are in fact very cool..

[doctorduckbutter]

I agree with what many have said above, personally I would like more small time adventures that I can plug in at a moments notice. Some times I have more time to prepare then other times, and a nice simple adventure that works for multiple settings is awesome. An entire book of one sheets would be great, but I am not sure how profitable this route is at this time?

But welcome to the family.

[DGMiller]

Welcome, Jason and Rick! Good to see you here. If you need anything, let me know.

[J Gregory]

Ditto all above - one sheets and a solid Plot Point campaign.

If you're planning to turn out regular supplements, keep them small and cheap enough that I don't have to think about the purchase (ala Misfit Studios).

[Sitting Duck]

[Lee_Szczepanik]

[kronovan]

I think the very 1st thing Fat Goblin Games should do is convert your Shadows over Vathak setting, as I think it has the makings of an excellent Savage Worlds setting. My advise for you is to take the lead from the Fantasy & Sci-fi Horror challenge on pg. 128 of the Horror Companion:

"We've mentioned that horror can be combined with fantasy and sci-fi to make a cool setting, but we haven’t given you much in the way of fantasy and sci-fi notes.
Well, there’s good reason for that. You see, unlike horror, fantasy and sci-fi are much wider genres.
If we were to put in all the notes you’d need to create a complete fantasy or sci-fi horror game, including thing like gear and beastiaries, this book would be really huge.
However, help is available. By combining the material from other setting and supplement books, […Pinnacle products shamelessly plugged here…], with what we have given you here, you’ll be able to create a fantastic setting, full of all the fantasy and sci-fi goodies players expect, but with a horror twist."

Take out the Pinnancle plug in the 2nd paragraph and insert Shadows Over Vathak, and work to make it the Fantasy setting that delivers on that promise of Fantasy+Horror.

Something I like as a fan is if a setting ties into an existing SW toolkit product (i.e. Horror Companion), so on that note I'd recommend you ensure your Dhampir race lines up to some extent with what's in the HC and anything else in your settng that's applicable. I noted that apart from your 6 core races, you also have entries for tradition races such as Elves, Dwarves, Halfling, etc. My personal feedback is that 6, what look like to be very unique and interesting races -bare in mind I'm only going by the mini preview on drivethrurpg- is enough and the traditional ones might be seen as a watering-down of the settings flavor by some SW fans. BTW: the Svirfneblin and Gambion look way too cool!

Going by the content listing alone in the eye-strain inducing preview, it look s like you'd need to expand on some of the setting background - at least if you want to make it more in line with what other SW settings provide. I also think you need an adventure generator as its really a standard for SW settigns. If you plan on producing a plot point campaign (as a GM I'm personally content with PP ideas/bullets) I'd recommend taking one of the bulleted ideas on pg. 134 of the HC and expanding from there. Maybe...

"The evil has always been there, hidden in myths and legends, but now they have formed a coalition, and seek to conquer the world."
or
"A powerful relic which has kept evil at bay for millennia is failing. As the energy weakens, more and more horrors are released into the world."

As stated above I'm very excited about the possibilites of this setting and would love to see it for SW. Wish I could give you more feedback, but there's only so much I can get from the preview. I'll just say that it looks to me to be the kind of setting that thurak alluded to earlier - a setting that could become your SW capstone and something you could produce a number of products for.

[jpk]

In response to Lee's discussion of the marketing merits (or perils) of Plot Point Campaigns as seen by licensees, I'm not going to do quoting in the interests of space and brevity.

But, it does sound a little like you're over-estimating how much thought Pinnacle puts into the financial merits of including a Plot Point Campaign in a book. Our decisions on that front are more often made on page count (Can we put one in here and still make the book affordable?) and "general feel" (Is there a single PPC that could be representative enough of the genre to suggest it's the definitive one?).

Some of our settings were actually conceived as Plot Point Campaigns that then had setting materials worked backwards from the PPC. Our thought processes are definitely a highly mixed bag.
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Joel Kinstle
Pinnacle Entertainment, www.peginc.com

[jpk]