SAVAGE WORLDS – Exactly as advertised!
2013 turned out to be a banner year for me on the RPG front. In addition to gaming more frequently, my oldest son and I expanded his Pathfinder circle of friends into a second “Kids-campaign” and Paizo’s crunch broke new ground with things like Ultimate Campaign, a style of topics and material I’ve wanted pretty much forever, and Mythic Adventures, which managed to introduce “epic” play in a way that an avowed “Epic-level despiser” could get excited about using.
However, the best surprise on the RPG front was purchasing Savage Worlds Deluxe Edition. I’d long since given up the rpg gamer grail of the One True System. Pathfinder more than satisfies my fantasy-RPG itch, and although fantasy is my mainstay genre, I always want to play other genres, most notably science fiction and most of my “Grail-chasing” over the years were done in an effort to scratch that itch. (Star Frontiers, Alternity, SpaceMaster, Trinity, Blue Planet, GURPS)
So after reading numerous reviews and seeing many excellent fan-conversions of sci-fi settings, I purchased Savage Worlds. The system was strikingly complete in a minimum of pages. The mechanics seemed simple to grasp and character creation seemed much faster yet still had enough crunch to differentiate characters from one another.
My son and I took it out for a test drive one afternoon and we enjoyed it. However, since I hadn’t finished reading the rulebook and was double-checking rules a lot, I felt we didn’t really get a good assessment in the limited time we had to play that day.
At the end of 2013, however, we had a chance to play some RPGs with one of my son’s group of friends but we wouldn’t have the full Pathfinder complement of players. So I through together a basic one-shot: a generic sci-fi game that would morph quickly into a zombie survival horror game.
It was glorious!
Everything I needed was in the core rulebook and the rules are intuitive enough that I was able to come up with some home-grown equipment tweaks and creatures. I made a pile of pre-gens in short order (60 minutes for about 10 characters and most of that was character concepts and background info) and the kids all felt that their characters were distinct from one another. Prepping the actual adventure took about 2 hours – 75% of that was making and printing handouts, making maps, and plot development.
The thing that impressed me the most, however, was how all of those reviews I’d read accurately captured the enthusiasm that the mechanics generated around the table: the flow of bennies, dealing cards for initiative, exploding dice, called shots and deadly wounds all generated excitement in the players. They grasped the mechanics in minutes – to the point that at times they were telling each other, not asking each other, what they needed to roll before I could chime in.
The action was Fast, the combat was Furious, but most of all, it was a hell of a lot of Fun. Just as advertised.
It’s not a Holy Grail of gaming, but it's pretty darn great and belongs in every RPG library, IMO.
And it appears my timing is good, too, with a Sci-Fi companion coming out mid-Jan. I’m looking forward to developing my one-shot into a sci-fi kitchen-sink campaign utilizing Mass Effect, Killzone, and Dead Space as the primary influences. Unlike all previous attempts at sci-fi campaigns, I’m optimistic that I can actually build to suit rather than trying to couple square-pegs setting traits with round-hole game mechanics.
2013 turned out to be a banner year for me on the RPG front. In addition to gaming more frequently, my oldest son and I expanded his Pathfinder circle of friends into a second “Kids-campaign” and Paizo’s crunch broke new ground with things like Ultimate Campaign, a style of topics and material I’ve wanted pretty much forever, and Mythic Adventures, which managed to introduce “epic” play in a way that an avowed “Epic-level despiser” could get excited about using.
However, the best surprise on the RPG front was purchasing Savage Worlds Deluxe Edition. I’d long since given up the rpg gamer grail of the One True System. Pathfinder more than satisfies my fantasy-RPG itch, and although fantasy is my mainstay genre, I always want to play other genres, most notably science fiction and most of my “Grail-chasing” over the years were done in an effort to scratch that itch. (Star Frontiers, Alternity, SpaceMaster, Trinity, Blue Planet, GURPS)
So after reading numerous reviews and seeing many excellent fan-conversions of sci-fi settings, I purchased Savage Worlds. The system was strikingly complete in a minimum of pages. The mechanics seemed simple to grasp and character creation seemed much faster yet still had enough crunch to differentiate characters from one another.
My son and I took it out for a test drive one afternoon and we enjoyed it. However, since I hadn’t finished reading the rulebook and was double-checking rules a lot, I felt we didn’t really get a good assessment in the limited time we had to play that day.
At the end of 2013, however, we had a chance to play some RPGs with one of my son’s group of friends but we wouldn’t have the full Pathfinder complement of players. So I through together a basic one-shot: a generic sci-fi game that would morph quickly into a zombie survival horror game.
It was glorious!
Everything I needed was in the core rulebook and the rules are intuitive enough that I was able to come up with some home-grown equipment tweaks and creatures. I made a pile of pre-gens in short order (60 minutes for about 10 characters and most of that was character concepts and background info) and the kids all felt that their characters were distinct from one another. Prepping the actual adventure took about 2 hours – 75% of that was making and printing handouts, making maps, and plot development.
The thing that impressed me the most, however, was how all of those reviews I’d read accurately captured the enthusiasm that the mechanics generated around the table: the flow of bennies, dealing cards for initiative, exploding dice, called shots and deadly wounds all generated excitement in the players. They grasped the mechanics in minutes – to the point that at times they were telling each other, not asking each other, what they needed to roll before I could chime in.
The action was Fast, the combat was Furious, but most of all, it was a hell of a lot of Fun. Just as advertised.
It’s not a Holy Grail of gaming, but it's pretty darn great and belongs in every RPG library, IMO.
And it appears my timing is good, too, with a Sci-Fi companion coming out mid-Jan. I’m looking forward to developing my one-shot into a sci-fi kitchen-sink campaign utilizing Mass Effect, Killzone, and Dead Space as the primary influences. Unlike all previous attempts at sci-fi campaigns, I’m optimistic that I can actually build to suit rather than trying to couple square-pegs setting traits with round-hole game mechanics.
. Just take a look at Hellfrost (Triple Ace Games - sort of Greyhawk/Winter is Coming), Shaintar (kinda FR-ish), and Beast & Barbarians (Hyborian in nature) when you want to look at fantasy with the system crunch built in.
