Mini Review: Savage Worlds

Savage Worlds is a morphic pen-and-paper roleplaying game system birthed from the minds of Pinnacle Entertainment.

“Morphic?” you query, what does that even mean? Quite simply it means that every rule, spell, character, monster and weapon can be themed to fit whatever kind of adventure you care to run, whether you’re creating an ambitious Star trek+Lord of the rings cross over world or a fantasy world where candy is sentient, the system will accommodate you.

Interestingly, this gives it the ability to be both lightweight and “number crunchy,” at the same time giving gaming satisfaction to a large selection of players. Wargamers, Larpers and even D&D purists; Savage Worlds has something for everyone because it’s so customisable! The simplicity of the system is in direct contrast to other games such as GURPS, which focus on detail and full simulation.

Savage World, Accursed: Because playing a witch cursed mummy in a ruleset was never easier!

Dice, Dice Everywhere

To begin with, since most people reading this will most likely have played Dungeons and Dragons, I’ll use that as my point of reference. In D&D, almost everything uses a 20-sided die for resolution. If Groknar the brave wants to bash open a locked door with his thick orky head, the GM would ask him to roll a d20 and add his Strength modifier in an attempt to beat a target number or difficulty class.

It takes quick easy math to get there, but that’s basically how D&D works. You roll, add or subtract based off how good you are at what it is you are doing, compare numbers and see what happens. It’s not a bad system and the fact that it’s been running since 1974 with only slight variations on this theme tells us this. But what about all the other lonely dice in your dice bag? Sure they may get used occasionally for specific weapons, but what if we could tie them to regular use for eveything?

This is where Savage Worlds comes in. The first RPG system I’ve seen that uses all of the polyhedral dice except the 20-sided die. (Almost as if to spit in D&D’s eye) There are five commonly-used dice. They are 4, 6, 8, 10 and 12-sided. When you create a character in the game, your character will begin with an array of stats that will run from d4 to d12.

Unlike D&D, the number needed to successfully hit something rarely fluctuates. The much vaunted magical number?

Four, (plus or minus any modifiers.)

Yes, it’s that simple, you just have to beat four.  but it doesn’t stop at just one die, the system is based on the idea that it’s more fun for players to roll several dice at once. For this reason, all players will actually be rolling their statistic die PLUS a six-sided die. Thus, even if your a wimpy wizard with a measily Strength as low as it can be (a four sided dice), you’ll get to roll the d6 along with it and take the highest of the two to try beat four or better. Then, on top of that every die in the game is capable of “exploding.” much like the World of Darkness mechanic. This means that if you roll the highest total on any die (a 4 on a d4, a 6 on a d6, etc.) you get to reroll the die and keep adding.

Strangely, from a Statistical point of view, The tiny little d4 has the highest chance of “exploding” because it has fewer sides. It also has the lowest chance of standard success. Conversely, the d12 will very rarely explode, but will often succeed. And yes, both the attribute die AND the additional d6 can explode and the player can take the highest of the two.

Overall, it’s a very elegant way to make sure everyone in your dicebag is getting a go (Except of course that fatcat the D20, but I’m guessing he get’s enough use anyways)

Fighting Zombies in World War 2? Yeah sure, Savage world has that

 

Roleplaying Encouragement

One of the clever ways the game has kept character generation so variable are the Edges and Hindrances system they use. These are small mechanical or narrative things about your character that when put together actually form a good roadmap as to why your character is the person that they are today. During the game, these traits will help or hurt you in various ways. Pinnacle are actually very good at listing this large list of choices on their website too. Read over them to get a feel for how the system works.

As you might expect, Edges are things that give your characters an advantage, usually due to birth, past experiences or training. Things like Noble will give your character a bonus to Charisma, whilst the Woodsman Edge will give your character a bonus to Tracking, Survival and Stealth, but only when they’re in the wilderness. If you’re character comes from a rich start, the Rich edge will give you triple the starting cash, but obviously doesn’t really help you during the rest of the game.

Then we have hindrances. These things are optional and added to your character when you make them. You don’t HAVE to have them, but, as always with RPG’s, you’ll be awarded with more points to purchase better stats if you take at least three. Plus you get the added effect of some cool roleplaying prompts. Hindrances come in two flavors, Major and Minor. They can be horrendous drawbacks like Blind which essentially hampers all sight related tasks and Wanted, which may range from a few unpaid parking fines to a prisoner escaped from deathrow. To much smaller problems like Quirk (Bragging) which just makes you annoy the hell out of everyone you meet. Setting books of course have their own setting specific edges and hindrances, which is one of the clever ways characters can be customised to fit any world

Want some sci-fi? Yup, Savage world has that too

 

From the get go, the game has been designed to resolve everything as expeditiously as possible. There are several highlights to how it’s been put together.

• Diversity:  Once again tying to it’s morphic nature, There are dozens of campaign “settings” that are diverse and original gems just waiting to be played. There is even a local South African author who has a campaign setting called Winter Eternal
• Quick and Easy: As a GM, a game requires with very little prep. Not only is there are huge amount of resources available for the game, but the ruleset lends itself to intuitive and quick creations on the fly using the same system.
• One book: The core rulebook (Savage Worlds Deluxe) is all you need to know the game and (at time of writing) is very cheap at about R100 on Amazon (without shipping)
• Adventures Everywhere: The internet is choc full of adventures for the system, although granted, the selection is so varied you may run the risk of having to wade through other genre’s to find what you want.
• Community support: The Savage Worlds community is very large and has a well-earned reputation for being well-mannered and kind to newcomers. If anyone has a question about rules or custom conversions of other games, they’ve been known to give respectful, constructive feedback.
• Conversions: Speaking of which, a great deal of time has been spent by the aforementioned Savage fans converting just about every other type of RPG, book or movie into a playable game within the system. Without ever buying a setting book, you could conceivably play for years within hundreds of settings, all without having to learn a new ruleset.
• Dice rolling: Based on the psychological principal that people enjoy rolling several dice at once, Savage Worlds gives players multiple chances of success with each roll and uses a vast array of dice.
• Unique combat mechanics: The system does away with the laborious tracking hitpoints on players and monsters, instead using a unique three-hard-hits method of tracking who or what is dying. Some find this a little abstract to deal with but in my opinion it models real life a great deal better (You’re generally dying if someone shoots you three times after all…)
• No crazy power bloat: In some game systems (*Looks over in D&D’s direction*)  players rise in power and attain very potent abilities at the higher levels. This makes it much harder for a GM to prepare challenges for players aside from throwing ridiculous monsters at them to fight. This doesn’t mean Savage Worlds heroes are weak, it just means they stay “more human” when they’re high levels.

Running a Private Eye campaign in Savage Worlds: Deadlands is as sure a thing as a tall drink of a woman stepping into my office

What I dislike about Savage worlds:

Alas, whilst Savage Worlds has a good many things going for it, there are other sides to it’s strengths.

• Rules: The rules can be very open ended, as the system attempts to minimize as much “rules lawyering” as possible, simply encouraging the GM to make a quick call. Some players may get the feeling that this leaves the ruleset “Less defined”
• Damage to monsters: With the innovative health system having only a “Three hit” system, I can see often a player will attack a monster and effectively do zero damage. Thematically of course, the monster can be scraped or damaged in some minor way; but mechanically, nothing happened, which will bother players (some only on a subconscious level) and frustrate them, as it will feel like they aren’t contributing.
• Lower Budgets: While very respectable, the books are published by a company with a much, much smaller budget than Wizards of the Coast or Paizo. The result is the overall production values and art are reduced in quality and less consistent. (but never entirely bad.) If you can overcome your desire for eyecandy on every page you’ll manage.
• Drowning in choice: Now this may sound strange, but the fact that the system is so diverse actually discourages me from using it fairly often as I wouldn’t know which setting to begin with! With so much choice I feel somewhat overwhelmed. Perhaps with a campaign idea to begin with before choosing the system it would be a little easier.

 

Those who know me will understand why I’ve included this module here as a prime example.

 

Final Thoughts

Savage world has the amazing ability to be exactly what you want it to be. It’s the perfect system to keep in the back of your mind for “one day” when you want to run that smash up of My Little Pony and Dr Who smoothly without fuss or having to create an entire ruleset from scratch. Obviously the ability of the system to cater for any eventuality may lead to some extra layers of abstraction in your game, which could potentially ruin one or two player’s levels of immersion, but if this is the price you have to pay in order to get that Wild West Steam punk campaign going, then perhaps it’s worth the effort?

 

Perpare to fire the Steampowered Octopus cannon!