Went overboard (also WoD 2.0)

So I went and did up individual Savage Worlds stats for every two-bit punk in "Big Al" Tolino's mob. It was only after I started work on the hardcases in the outfit (the guys who are seasoned, veteran, and/or Wild Cards) that I realized what I had done. I had individualized all the mooks! Not only would that be a pain in the ass to run, but it runs contrary to the spirit of both SW and my planned game. Functionally, most of these guys are lumps of goon with pistols, nothing more. Why knock myself out fiddling with individual stats when they're going down like flies anyway? Still whipping up that many NPCs was a good exercise, especially since this is my first go at GMing the Savage Worlds.

In other news one of the releases at Gen Con (happening right now, in case you didn't know) is the new version of the World of Darkness. Preliminary reports indicate that the new "Storytelling System" is signifcantly more streamlined than the old "Storyteller System". This is a Good Thing. At one time I had significant interest in Exalted, Adventure!, and Street Fighter. Some of the old WoD product line looked interesting I suppose, though it was never real my cup o' tea. But I could never wrap my head around the friggin' system. I was driven nuts by the dice pool system in which some modifiers alter number of dice rolled and some modifiers altered the target number for each individual die. In the new system only number of dice changes, the target number is fixed. That is one of my favorite features in Ron Edwards's Sorcerer, the easy to track modifiers. Also, Storytelling has a nice explodey-die mechanic. Each 8 or 9 on a die is a 'success' but a ten is a 'success plus roll that die again'. I like explodey-dice.