Road Hogs (Tricube Tales)

Last month's Tricube Tales one-pager was Road Hogs. This one was actually inspired by the artwork -- I knew I wanted to turn it into a micro-setting the moment I saw it! It was one of the pieces I received through Rick Hershey's stock art Patreon.

However, it did take me a while to decide how to approach it. I eventually decided to set Road Hogs in the same world as Goblin Gangsters, because I liked the potential for crossovers. I drew inspiration from TV shows such as Renegade, The A-Team, and even Reacher. Specifically, I liked the idea of flawed heroes wandering from town to town, fixing a problem or solving a mystery before moving on again. As Goblin Gangsters is a humorous setting, I tried to keep the same vibe with Road Hogs.

As usual, there are also a few nods to whatever I've recently been reading or watching on TV (in this case, The Dead Don't Die).

I even added a little town generator to this one, as I wanted to emphasize the idea of the characters moving around a lot.

In terms of trade dress, I decided to add a tire track across the page, in the same way that Conniving Cat Burglars has little paw prints. I'm not sure if anyone else really notices those little details, I still enjoy adding them!

Savage Worlds: The removal of Charisma in SWADE isn't a big deal

Whenever people talk about the changes between SWADE and SWD, there always seems to be someone who describes the removal of Charisma as being one of the main differences. I don't agree.

There are hundreds (if not thousands) of sweeping changes between SWD and SWADE, and some of them are massive rewritings that can fundamentally change the way the game is played. But the removal of Charisma? That's nothing more than a syntax change, and it has absolutely no impact on the game.

In SWD, Charisma was simply a modifier that applied to Persuasion and Streetwise rolls. That's it. For example, Attractive gave you +2 Charisma, but it could just as easily have been written as "+2 to Persuasion and Streetwise", and it would have been functionally identical. I'm guessing "Charisma" was included to make the game easier to grok for players from certain other RPGs, and it made it a little easier to track on your character sheet if you stacked up a lot of Charisma modifiers. But generally, it was an unnecessary extra step, and I would have preferred to see it removed in earlier editions as well.

In SWADE, Streetwise was effectively merged into Persuasion (the mechanics from the old Streetwise skill became the Networking rule, which primarily uses Persuasion, although you can use Intimidation instead now -- note that there is also a Streetwise Edge in SWADE, but mechanically that's more like half the old SWD Investigator Edge, which was split into two for SWADE).

That means if SWADE had kept Charisma, it would have just been a modifier to Persuasion. So Attractive would have given a bonus to Charisma, and Charisma would have given a bonus to Persuasion. At that point, it becomes obvious how superfluous it is, and I imagine that's why they decided to remove it (and perhaps also the fact that there are now fewer Edges and Hindrances with generic Persuasion modifiers that you can stack).

But in my opinion, in terms of describing the changes between SWADE and SWD, the removal of Charisma is barely worth mentioning, and only really of historical interest to someone who picks up an older character sheet.