A psuedo-review
Savage Worlds is a RPG designed for fun and fast play. The definitive difference is that you advance stats and skills by increasing the value of the die related to the stat or skill. It's almost like White Wolf (or U5D) where each pip is not an additional die, but a better one. The rules are a mix of ideas and seem to be strongly influenced by tabletop wargaming play. Up to 4 Players has a really good primer on the basics in comic form and illustrates a campaign with rules as well.
There's not much wrong with Savage Worlds' rules, but they doesn't feel cohesive. A well tuned game system scales and is intuitive to the point that a GM or player can guess what the rules are for a new situation. This is not that. While the rules are clearly written, they are disjointed and poorly organized.
There are some thematic issues with it as well. As a pulp rules system, it is subject to all the old stereotypes and prejudices coming through in the games. In the end, this is on the individual GM to solve, but you should be aware that it is shaded to encourage play and characters that have sensibilities set in the 1930s. If the inherent colonialism, classism and bigotry of Steampunk bothers you, this is probably the wrong system for you. Again, a decent GM and good setting will avoid this. But the defaults are Wild West, Pulp Sci-fi, Steampunk and Lovecraftian horror.
To sum up, I'm glad I purchased it, it's a good game for what I'm trying to do, but I can't recommend it unreservedly. It's close to the old White Wolf system in ease of play and character creation, and is much simpler than D20, Shadowrun, Palladium, or GURPS. It is not as tight and easy to play as 5e. If there was a good resource for 5e Modern, I'd have gone with that for my game.
Due to previous experience I've tweaked and modified Savage Worlds, the beginning of which you can see below, and more to come in future Blog Posts.
One of the failings of Savage Worlds is that they don’t provide context for the dice you buy as your attribute or skill. I’ve made this handy chart to act as a guideline to help you in character creation and give context to your stats and skills. Reading the source material ad making some educated guesses from RPGs past, please find below my interpretation of the dice.
By default if you don’t have a skill, you roll the attached attribute at -2. However, if the GM declares that the particular thing you are doing is “Common knowledge” you may roll at the bare stat. Alternately, if the task is too complex, it may fail no matter what. No Skill can be contextual as well. A time traveler from the future will have common knowledge of medieval swords, but the knights of the time will not be able to understand his tablet or blaster. Or in modern times a scroll written in Ancient Babylonian will not be readable to anyone not skilled in Knowledge Ancient Babylonian.
Rory wants to bandage a wound. He has a bandage and has seen ER, but no Medical or Healing skill. He rolls Smarts with no modifier and on a success, has bandaged the wound.
Rory wants to drive a car, but has no Drive skill. Using Common Knowledge, he rolls Agility -2 for even the simplest tasks, and the GM will probably narrate all the little things that he’s getting wrong and failing at.
Rory wants to fly a fighter jet but does not have the Flying skill. He climbs into the cockpit, and rolls Smarts. The GM knows that fighter jets are incredibly complex and Rory automatically fails, regardless of the roll, wild die, or raises. A terrible role might be a spectacular failure.
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