I've seen repeated mention of Savage Worlds... what is it that attracts you to that system?
For the record, I'll buy 5E for the collection and maybe to play a one-off or two, but I am currently not very hopeful that it will be my go-to RPG. Then again, I currently don't have a go-to RPG. I like FantasyCraft (best d20 variant I've seen) but my group is not happy with d20 anymore. I am currently a backer of HERO Fantasy and ENWorld's OLD/NOW/NEW as well as a few smaller indies that I hope I can find a common ground system out of.
I got interested in Savage Worlds primarily out of a desire to find a good system with which to run sci-fi campaigns. I really hadn't looked too closely at Savage Worlds prior to that. I knew it had a vocal fanbase but I told myself "not buying another system" and "multi-genre never really seems to pan out in the long term".
Boy, was I wrong!
Reasons for liking Savage Worlds:
1. It lives up to its tagline of "Fast, Furious, Fun". I ran a trial session for a group of players whose only prior RPG experience was Pathfinder and they were relative newbies to PF as well. They picked up the mechanics within minutes. The gameplay is very fluid. Mechanics are simple to understand. You don't waste a lot of time looking up rules in the middle of dramatic scenes. Exploding dice are always exciting and once players realize that tactics matter and exploding dice can swing the tide of battle, the players' excitement and enthusiasm increases as well. To use a poor sports analogy, imagine the intensity difference watching a hockey game in overtime vs. a baseball game in extra innings. Both are fun. Both have moments of excitement but with the hockey game the intensity is almost constant. Savage Worlds can be like that.
2. It embraces Player imagination. I've heard Savage Worlds described as a "Yes, try it" rather than a "No, not without X" system. Want to aim for the zombie's head? Go for it. Want to try and pull a stunt to roll past the enemy and come up behind him? Go for it. Want to intimidate you foe to throw down his arms? Go for it. While you can do those things in other games, they're typically handled as very difficult, requiring a subsystem, or they're optional or bolted-on rules to address something the rules never intended. In Savage Worlds, it's all slight tweaks of the target number and easy to GM on the fly.
3. Bennies. My players love this and we've incorporated it into our Pathfinder session. Bennies are a concept for granting the players some control over the story. Other games have mechanics like Hero Points and such but they're optional or add-ons. Bennies are ingrained in the SW game and its cool to see the PCs weighing when to spend and when to hold onto a bennie. Also, the GM gets bennies too!
4. Heroes from the start; Legends at the pinnacle. Savage World starting characters tend to be able to support fully-realized concepts even at the "Novice" tier. That is, PCs are more capable than your traditional low-level PC where you have to pay your "level dues" to start to realize the character concept you envisioned. Conversely, as they gain experience, even when they reach the "Legendary" tier, while they're butt-kicking bad-a$$es, they're not invincible. Unless you're playing a Supers game, you're not doing the zero-to-demi-god progression. The progression is more like you would see in a novel, a movie, or TV show. You're skilled, you're tough, and you're powerful but if you don't use tactics and think nothing can touch you a single gunshot or a goblin with a dagger can still be a real threat. That "sweet-spot" style of play most people think about when talking fantasy RPGs? That lasts through the entire campaign. You don't "Level out" of earlier threats and don't need to "Level into" more powerful ones.
5. Easy to mod In my experience, the downfall of most multi-genre games is that it takes a lot of GM work to tailor it to a homemade setting or adapt a licensed property that you want to set you game in. It's very easy to do this in Savage Worlds and a quick Internet search will show you an incredibly impressive list of adaptations of settings to Savage Worlds. As a test run, I created characters from a bevy of different video games of different genres just to see how hard it would be. It was very easy and I was floored at how closely one could represent the spirit of the character and have mechanics that felt true to the game abilities. (Dragon Age characters, Halo aliens, Cole McGrath from infamous, and Nathan Drake) I've never found a single RPG that could cover that range without making some serious trade-offs in the adaptation or required the characters to be ridiculously high-powered.
For the first time in 30 years of playing RPGs, developing a home-grown Sci-Fi setting doesn't involve a ton of work. The mechanics are easy to adapt, especially with the recently-released Sci-Fi companion and I've got mechanics that support the setting and adventure elements I'm developing.
6. Much easier to embrace the strange character concept. A lot of Savage Worlds' customization comes in the form of "Trappings". Mechanically, an arcane attack may differ little from a weapon or other spell -- until you apply trappings. Now, while 2 characters may both have the Bolt spell, trappings apply additional mechanical nuances that differentiate a Fire Bolt from a Shock Bolt or a Necromantic Bolt. This can be applied at the character level as well. Want to run a game of mixed standard fantasy races but some players want to be a "monster" race? That's a whole lot easier to pull off in Savage Worlds than in a D&D-style game where you can't play the monster because now your power level is out of whack with the power level of the non-monster characters.
There's a ton more but those are my top-of-mind differences. Savage Worlds has really changed the way that I look at RPGs, in general, and in setting design and character concepts in particular. It's becoming my go-to game of choice.
Also, if I were introducing new players to RPGs, Savage Worlds is now the only RPG I would consider for that entry-point. When you can go from "here's a set of dice" to "While Rorik is fighting the beast, I'm going to try and aim for its eyes" in 20-30 minutes, it's tough to wade through a D&D-style intro to RPGs.
