Swift d12: Roll20 Playtest Summary

I ran Dungeon Squat for a couple of friends at the weekend, using Roll20. Both friends were experienced Savage Worlds players, but neither had played Swift d12 before, so I tried to keep things fairly simple. This was also my first time GMing with Roll20.

The "Boastful Tales" rule worked well. I originally added it so that I'd have a parallel for Interludes when converting my adventures from SW, and I think I actually prefer it without the cards. I'm not quite sure why SW Interludes even use the action deck, to be honest, it doesn't really add anything.

I found that the Ambush Cards didn't work as well online as they did at the table, but they're still quite nice. This particular mechanic is something that might even be worth expanding into a full deck of custom cards in the future.

The combat encounter worked pretty well, although it was once again made clear that Champions can withstand quite a beating before going down - one-shotting a Champion is very unlikely in Swift d12, it usually takes a few hits to incapacitate them (although it's still far less predictable than hit points). I don't think this is a bad thing (combat resolution was still nice and fast), but I will definitely need to do some number-crunching at some point.

I tried to keep things simple, so we didn't go into maneuvers or stunts, and I think that was a mistake. Some of the maneuvers would have sped things up, particularly Aim or All-Out Attack, as one of the players had a lot of bad luck with his damage rolls. The other player used a Provoke stunt to intimidate one of the enemies, but I think a larger variety of stunts would have made the combat more interesting. I definitely need to expand the Cheat Sheet to include maneuvers.

We didn't have time for the chase at the end, but that was mainly due to technical issues with Roll20. Otherwise I think I would have fit everything into the three hour window.

Overall I thought it worked quite well, there were no major problems with the system, and everyone had fun. But there are definitely some things that need further work.