January 25, 2015 – Dicehaven

After having played in Shane Hensley’s Savage Worlds game at ChupacabraCon II in Austin recently, I wrote up my observations of his game in a series of four blog posts:

In summary, here are the specific things I plan to do differently in my games going forward after having observed Shane’s techniques:

Extensively use Fatigue in scenes — for example, dealing fatigue as a sort of ‘wound’ if the player fails an Agility check.
Use the Initiative Countdown technique for card initiative.
Use an Indecision Countdown when players have analysis paralysis.
Keep the Bennies flowing and award bennies very liberally, even for actions that aren’t based on a Hindrance.
Use Triggers, especially at Con games.
Use the Critical Failures setting rule (not allowing you to benny snake-eye rolls). I will attempt to create a Critical Failure table for my different settings with ideas on what happens narratively in those circumstances.
Manage Wild Cards and Extras differently in terms of up/down/off-the-table status (Extras are up/down/off-the-table, Wild Cards are up/up-with-status-markers/down.

Stan Shinn playing in a Shane Hensley game

Stan Shinn (far left) playing in a Shane Hensley game

The Target in Wylie has an amazing Starbuck area with LOTS of seating around the corner. It’s smoke free and might be an OK place to meet. It could seat 70 people I think — no joke! You just have to walk around the corner to the back where there is a long strip of tables and chairs. Jeff and I had coffee there this morning and checked it out — great seating and very quiet!

Here are directions: http://www.mystore411.com/store/view/33097/Starbucks-Wylie

Here are photos to give you a feel for the place.