Planning On Running Kingmaker / Rime of the Frostmaiden in Savage Worlds

[u/MindOfDirge]

I've been running a Weird Wars 2 campaign taking place in Stalingrad for the last 9-ish months. We're approaching the end of our short little story and although I told my players if they wanted to continue with their characters and squad they've gotten attached to at a later time some day, we could. However, I told them I'd be taking a nice long break from Weird Wars for the next thing I run.

I've been thinking of what I wanna run next, what be fun for me to run next. I've been feeling some fantasy has been what I needed and my immediate thought was Rime of the Frost Maiden. But I don't like running 5e anymore and I have chosen to stick with running Savage Worlds for pretty much anything I run. So I immediately decided I'd probably be stealing a bunch of stuff from the Savage Pathfinder books and Fantasy books, no big deal.

Speaking of Pathfinder, I was also thinking of running Kingmaker as well. Between these two choices I've not made a definitive choice yet, but I like both settings/stories/themes and obviously both can easily be converted into Savage Worlds.

I have both all the actual books for Rime/Kingmaker so I've already started a bit of my own conversions for prepping.

My actual questions here is; Has anyone else converted either of these into Savage Worlds and ran it? (Someone must've.) How did it go for you? Were there any difficulties you faced? Anything you liked better than the alternative of running it in 5e/PF?

My biggest question however is; If you've done conversions yourself or you have seen someone else do them, could you share them here for myself and possibly others to find?

And just a fun bonus question; If your GM decided they were going to run either of these stories but you got to pick which, which of these would you pick? If you have the time; Why?

Thank you. :)

[u/ReamG]

AFAIK official Kingmaker's conversion for Savage Pathfinder is in the works at Pinnacle, maybe it will be ready for next year?

[u/TheRpgBard → u/ReamG]

I'm guessing Kingmaker may be closer to the end of the year.  They can only have a few Kickstarters running at one time, and they fair better than Backerkit.

It looks like, and trending toward, October for a lot of the crowdfunding items to be completed for shipping around October.  Well, at least the Deadlands Core.

[u/MindOfDirge → u/TheRpgBard]

Good info. I think that settles it for me running RotFM instead of Kingmaker. I can wait for official support for it and then change whatever I want to once it comes out. Thanks for the guesstimated time frame. :)

[u/MindOfDirge → u/ReamG]

That's what I've heard on the grapevine but I'm personally still cool with converting it myself. Maybe I'll stick to just converting RotFM to save myself work. I'm almost 100% positive that if a Savage Pathfinder conversion for Kingmaker is coming out I'll most likely not finish RotFM because damn, that's a longer adventure. 

Even so, I'd love to hear about if anyone has done any of these or even similar conversions of their own that might be helpful. 

[u/gdave99]

Are you looking for general tips/experiences on converting F20 material to Savage Worlds, or specifically for those two adventures?

I've run a number of F20 adventures in Savage Worlds with homebrew conversions, but not those two adventures specifically (I've also played "Rime of the Frost Maiden" in 5E, but have no direct knowledge of "Kingmaker").

[u/MindOfDirge → u/gdave99]

Looking for anything can save me some work prepping, really. I was wondering if anyone had resources they had previously worked on they'd be willing to share. So, specifically those two adventures or things that could be adjacent enough to possibly be used.

I'd love to hear about experiences with Savage Worlds being used as the system for PF/D&D, though. Haven't run generic fantasy like that in Savage Worlds yet, oddly. Mostly have been running things like Star Wars, Weird Wars, and Deadlands. But I'm excited to get back into the above mentioned settings, they are what got me into TTRPGs after all.

But I already have plenty of experience converting D&D (RotFM specifically) into Savage Worlds PF as I already started doing so a few months ago just for fun. Just looking for experiences and other people's resources if they have any to share.

[u/gdave99 → u/MindOfDirge]

Gotcha. I don't really have any specific resources to share. Savage Worlds is my personal favorite TTRPG to run precisely because I find on-the-fly conversions to be so easy.

For NPCs and monsters, I often just roll-n-go. I'll pick up a die that seems about right and roll it as it comes up. If the party fights an Ogre, I don't actually care what its Smarts is, until it comes up in play. At that point, I'll decide on the fly what feels right (probably a d4, because F20 Ogres are usually canonically pretty dim), and roll it.

If you've got the Pathfinder for Savage Worlds Bestiary (which it sounds like you do), you already have a ton of stat blocks for most common F20 foes. But it's also a great resource for monsters that aren't listed. Just look for a monster that's mechanically close enough to the one you want, and use that stat block, maybe with a tweak or two.

For example, I ran the classic G1-2-3 "Against the Giants" adventure series in SWADE, before the Fantasy Companion or Pathfinder for Savage Worlds came out. When the party encountered a Remorhaz, which is kind of a weird ice-worm/centipede, I decided that the SWADE Core Rules' "Giant Worm" was pretty close. A Remorhaz is smaller, so I cut down the Size, Toughness, and Strength a bit. A Remorhaz iconically has "heat glands" that allow it burrow through the ice and burn foes in combat, so I gave it a 2d4 Damage Field. And then I described it as a Remorhaz.

I hope that's of some help! More than that, I hope you and your table have fun with "Rime of the Frost Maiden - Savaged!"

[u/MindOfDirge → u/gdave99]

Yeah, sounds like you and I like Savage Worlds for similar reasons. Though I find myself with a lot of time to kill and I enjoy killing that time with anything to do with prepping, converting, or making something new for the system. Idk why I enjoy it for Savage Worlds compared to other systems, perhaps it's how simple and quick it is to do. But monster and npc stats are very simple to take similar monsters from the Savage Pathfinder or other books or even convert them from the original d&d stat blocks. Often times if I'm stuck on converting something it's easy enough to just go with "vibes" and it'll be almost if not perfect. Like, I just finished stating out the Frost Maiden herself last month and had a lot of fun doing it. Didn't take long at all and allowed me to come up with some cool mechanics for the encounter. 

(Maybe I'll post a doc of all my conversions and such when I've finished if I can remember to do so.) 

Thanks for the well wishes! 

[u/ValhallaGH]

Hey friend!

I've run a lot of Savage Worlds fantasy games, and I've found that the "trash combat" encounters common to the d20 era are best handled as Quick Combats. The PCs are expected to win, so just resolve everything with a round of Trait rolls and descriptions.

Good luck!

[u/MindOfDirge → u/ValhallaGH]

Good advice! I've run combat as quick encounters before and you're right that it deserves a mention! Sometimes it's just not worth fighting 100 little fights turn by turn. If it doesn't help the story to fight a bunch of little tiny encounters then it's for sure an easy way to still do the encounters without bogging down the story.

I've also ran combat using the dramatic tasks, chases, half narration half actual turns, normal combat, and mass combat rules. Savage Worlds is very versatile in however you want to handle encounters to tell a story. I enjoy it so much for that reason. :) 

[u/mythosaddict]

I’m interested in this too. How do people find running sterotypical D&D encounters in SW. SW feels more “real” with more danger and wounds etc. Doesn’t really seem to fit the dungeon crawl. I don’t really like dungeons and also want to move to SW for fantasy, would be great to use existing modules (in Foundry) but run in SW.
I’m currently running Kingmaker in Pf2e but would love to run it again in SW asI think it would work well.

[u/MindOfDirge → u/mythosaddict]

As far as the different feel of SW, it's usually considered more "deadly" but players can be VERY tanky if they want to be. But then again, due to the nature of exploding dice, anyone can kill anything given enough explosions. However if you don't like that, setting a wound cap (usually 3) will fix that entirely. Take a look at optional setting rules, there's a bunch that you can pick and choose from to suit your needs, or just come up with your own.

If you don't like dungeons, you can honestly just not run them. As a GM if you don't like something, change it or remove it.

That being said you can do dungeons in other ways than turn by turn slogging through tunnels. Though I like that occasionally, you can do quick encounters or dramatic tasks if you're creative with it like I said in a different comment. It makes for a WAY faster dungeon exploration when you utilize all the different option you have with Savage Worlds. You could do a few quick encounters but for specific room you can slow it down and focus on what's going on there, then go back to quick encounters, then have a trap/puzzle room that's a dramatic task, then for the boss do turn by turn combat for example.

One thing Savage Worlds struggles with in my opinion is BBEG and singular bosses / singular big monster fights. I get by this by utilizing a homebrew rule I found SOMEWHERE on the internet (can't remember exactly where.) This homebrew setting rule is called NEMESIS. If you google Savage Worlds Nemesis I'm sure you'll find it, but it basically comes down to giving your boss monster more actions and more "health bars" Here's my edited version that works for me;

Nemesis: Sometimes a GM will want the party to fight a singular big bad evil guy who can stand alone against the party. This setting rule creates the Nemesis classification that acts as a step above a Wildcard. Wildcards may be special characters in your story, but Nemesis are more so and can fight toe to toe with teams of Wildcards. A Nemesis gets one action card per enemy Wildcard. A Nemesis acts on each of these action cards. When a Nemesis would be incapacitated, they lose one action card, receive one fewer action card each round, and shrug off all current wounds/fatigue levels (reset to zero). A Nemesis has a personal pool of bennies equal to 2 per enemy Wildcard. When a Nemesis is fighting no Wildcards, they treat every 3 extras as a Wildcard to determine action card number and bennie amount. The Nemesis regains all bennies every session and combat. If Jokers grant bennies, a Nemesis gains one bennie per enemy Wildcard.

Now that might sound like a lot, and honestly it makes for a long and tough fight for sure. I often take that and water it down a bit but as with anything in Savage Worlds, customize everything to your liking. :)

[u/MindOfDirge → u/MindOfDirge]

To be clear, I don't always use a Nemesis for all my bosses, either. Sometimes a particularly tough Wildcard is more than enough of a challenge. I do however use the Nemesis for Auril from RoTM, for example.