Experiment 5: Beasts & Barbarians Redux

“Literal translations of game mechanics from other systems usually just result in cumbersome sub-systems that don’t add one minute of fun to the Savage version.” – Savage Worlds Deluxe

I think that comment applies just as much to converting Savage Worlds settings between editions as it does to anything else.

By the time the Aslan Route campaign wraps, I will have been running SF or modern spies for 5-6 years, and I might well be ready for a change. If so, sword & sorcery up next, I think, and in the same way that I instinctively turn to Charted Space for an SF setting, my default fantasy world is Umberto Pignatelli's Beasts & Barbarians, written for Savage Worlds Deluxe and published by GRAmel.

I don't know if there will be another edition of B&B, but I can still use what I have. Any sword & sorcery adventure will fit into the Dominions, and Umberto wrote adventures faster than I could run them for years, so I still have some left that we never got around to playing.

Rules

Assuming we don't get a new edition of Beasts & Barbarians, I have a number of options here, each of which would need me to put in some effort.

• Savage Worlds Deluxe. The setting was written for this edition, which is probably my favourite version of SW; certainly it's the one I had the most fun running. However, I'm seven years deep in Savage Worlds Adventure Edition, changing to it was harder than I expected, and I'm committed to it for probably another two years because of various campaigns I'm running and playing; so rolling back to it looks like too much work for not enough benefit.
• Savage Worlds Adventure Edition, core rulebook only. This is fairly straightforward; Setting Rules are Dynamic Backlash, Multiple Languages, Unarmoured Hero, and Wealth, the only permitted Ancestry is Human, the only permitted Arcane Background is Magic (i.e., evil sorcery). I might unbend far enough to allow NPC alchemists who can make healing potions. The Bestiary needs a bit of pruning, but apart from that we're good to go. Definitely good enough for solo play.
• SWADE plus Fantasy Companion. This is probably the way to go for group play; Setting Rules the same as if just using the core rulebook, the only permitted Ancestry is Human, and permitted Arcane Backgrounds are Alchemist and Sorcery, although the Mystic Powers (Monk) Edge is also necessary for the Enlightened. Having looted the Arcane Backgrounds from the FC, I think we need to back away from the rest of it slowly without making eye contact.
• Tales of Argosa also works pretty much as is; as ever the Bestiary needs work, and possibly spells too, but the main changes needed are dropping artificers and demi-human races, and either dropping cultists or saying they can only be NPCs.
• Barbarians of Lemuria is attractive for its simplicity and should also work well. I'd have to swap out all the setting material, about half the book, as well as priestly and druidic magic (and sky pilots), but the core rules should be fine.

None of those have much in the way of detailed mapping for hexcrawls or dungeon crawls, so I might need to invoke Shadowdark for those. Mind you, B&B says you shouldn't do detailed mapping at all, but I have always struggled with mapless play, although SW seems intended for it.

Setting

There were three editions of Beasts & Barbarians, and I prefer the middle one, the Golden Edition; it's the one I had most fun running, and also the one most of the adventures were written for.

B&B's Dread Sea Dominions are essentially a fantasy mashup of Rome and her neighbours through the ages, and the part of it that calls to me the most is the Borderlands, which if you squint at it sideways looks a lot like Transalpine Gaul a little after the Legions pulled back. That's partly because it's where I started, thanks to the adventure Wolves in the Borderlands; partly because it was never fleshed out in much detail, so I'd have a free hand with the geography and factions; and partly because of Gundobad Games' series of posts on Merovingian Gaul as a points of light sandbox - I've been itching to try out that out since I read the series, and if Umberto can add Vikings, Mongols and Constantinople to early Imperial Rome, I can add Merovingians.

Also, since we're going with fantasy Rome and some of my potential players think Powers are overpowered game breakers, let's adopt Roman laws on magic; books of magic are to be confiscated and burned, and those found guilty of practicing magic are to be burned alive or torn apart by wild animals. As always, money talks, and a wealthy aristocrat could expect that sentence to be commuted to exile on a remote island.

The obvious part of the setting to use for open table episodic play is Jalizar, City of Thieves, which has multiple factions and plotlines already worked out. However, at least for solo play, I'm tempted to begin by exploring the Count of Felantium's black ops team. The Romans had people called speculatores, deployed singly or in small groups and used as spies, scouts and couriers. Sounds like an historical version of the Traveller scout service, doesn't it? Sign me up...