Savage Worlds and custom game of Hell on Earth. How?

New user to Roll20 for the most part and recently got the SWADE bundle set. How would you go about creating a custom game of say Lost Colony or Deadlands Hell on Earth? Would every player have to create custom skills, edges, hindrances, etc?

well, you (the GM)  could start with SWADE, and then add deadlands, or skip deadlands and simply use the pdfs. as far as the skills, the swade sheet has most of them, plus both the ability to add custom skills, and the ability to rename skills, which will be very useful for arcane backgrounds. I would suggest you make a base character sheet like you want it, and then stick that in a folder somewhere, then make copies of that and give it to the players. as far as edges and hindrances, if your players like to be able to look up their abilities, I suggest handouts. they can link directly to them, and everyone will be on the same page.

Dalton said: well, you (the GM)  could start with SWADE, and then add deadlands, or skip deadlands and simply use the pdfs. as far as the skills, the swade sheet has most of them, plus both the ability to add custom skills, and the ability to rename skills, which will be very useful for arcane backgrounds. I would suggest you make a base character sheet like you want it, and then stick that in a folder somewhere, then make copies of that and give it to the players. as far as edges and hindrances, if your players like to be able to look up their abilities, I suggest handouts. they can link directly to them, and everyone will be on the same page. Thank you for the reply. I will give some of your ideas a try.

Dalton said: well, you (the GM)  could start with SWADE, and then add deadlands, or skip deadlands and simply use the pdfs. as far as the skills, the swade sheet has most of them, plus both the ability to add custom skills, and the ability to rename skills, which will be very useful for arcane backgrounds. I would suggest you make a base character sheet like you want it, and then stick that in a folder somewhere, then make copies of that and give it to the players. as far as edges and hindrances, if your players like to be able to look up their abilities, I suggest handouts. they can link directly to them, and everyone will be on the same page. A couple things to be aware of, if you want a skill renamed, you do that from the Game Settings page, too.  Updating that, should update it for every character sheet in the game. As for Dalton's suggestion for Edges and Hindrances, that should only be necessary for Edges/Hindrances that aren't in the compendiums already. You can drag and drop Hindrances, Edges, Weapons, Powers, Armor, Equipment, etc. from the compendium right onto the sheet and it'll update all the necessary fields for you automatically (with a few exceptions) Also, since you're new to Roll20, a couple other pointers: 1. Bennies - set them up as a card Deck. I'd set the deck to Infinite, so you don't have to keep recalling/shuffling bennies as you're playing the game. 2. You can use deal cards from a deck directly to the Turn Order / Initiative Tracker.  If you do that, you can also go to the settings for the turn order and have it auto sort your cards for you. 3. If you have characters who have initiative modifying edges (like Quick or Level-Headed), I find it easier to just deal all the cards to the turn order first and then deal individual cards to the table top (actually, I click and drag to the turn order, but that's a bit tricky and not easy to explain on the forums, because you need visuals, which I can't give at the moment). Then you can manually update the turn order as needed.  Alternative, I know some people will put a character with those edges in the turn order multiple times; that way, when you deal to the turn order, those characters are already cared for and you can just pick and which one goes at the top and ignore the other instances of that character.

Finderski said: As for Dalton's suggestion for Edges and Hindrances, that should only be necessary for Edges/Hindrances that aren't in the compendiums already. You can drag and drop Hindrances, Edges, Weapons, Powers, Armor, Equipment, etc. from the compendium right onto the sheet and it'll update all the necessary fields for you automatically (with a few exceptions) Thank you. On this point on dragging and dropping Edges...when my players do this their character sheet dissapears as soon as they attempt to drag an Edge over. I have played with checking an unchecking "character sheet pop up" in seperate window but to no avail. As a GM i have had no issue with this. As a side my compendium is shared. Any idea how to fix this for my players?

Ken D. said: Finderski said: As for Dalton's suggestion for Edges and Hindrances, that should only be necessary for Edges/Hindrances that aren't in the compendiums already. You can drag and drop Hindrances, Edges, Weapons, Powers, Armor, Equipment, etc. from the compendium right onto the sheet and it'll update all the necessary fields for you automatically (with a few exceptions) Thank you. On this point on dragging and dropping Edges...when my players do this their character sheet dissapears as soon as they attempt to drag an Edge over. I have played with checking an unchecking "character sheet pop up" in seperate window but to no avail. As a GM i have had no issue with this. As a side my compendium is shared. Any idea how to fix this for my players? If they are popping their character sheets out, that is likely the problem.  The Compendium Drag and Drop doesn't play well with sheets that are popped out.  If that's not the issue, the only thing I could recommend would be to open a Support Ticket with Roll20, because I have no idea what would cause that issue and it's also not something I could fix,  unfortunately.

The popping sheets out option is by account in each game.  Each player will need to disable that option in their own settings. (Just thought I should make sure that was clear for Ken.)

also, there are a few scripts that can make your life easier: !dealinit is my favorite by far for savage worlds. i also suggest !chatsetattr. these two can synergize nicely, in that you can use macros to set up your initiative edges easily (with a click, basically) and other neat tricks, too. if you would like to see my version of what you are doing, let me know, i'll let you look around my savage pathfinder game.

Dalton said: also, there are a few scripts that can make your life easier: !dealinit is my favorite by far for savage worlds. i also suggest !chatsetattr. these two can synergize nicely, in that you can use macros to set up your initiative edges easily (with a click, basically) and other neat tricks, too. if you would like to see my version of what you are doing, let me know, i'll let you look around my savage pathfinder game. Agree on !dealinit. I didn't mention it, because Ken D. is a Plus sub instead of Pro, but it's definitely worth the upgrade for me. I use !chatsetattr as well, but not as often...I'm horrible at using the APIs, even though there are some great ones out there.

Thanks for all the suggestions. My group seems to be having a great deal of difficulty initially, and I may have put the cart before the horse. Them making characters online seems to be out of reach, even with the compendium. They are having trouble with all sorts of things, even giving themselves skills. I fear it's more unfamiliarity with PC knowledge in general for them. Thanks again for all the tips, I appreciate them. I fear there isn't much I can do with teaching them how to do simple navigation etc.