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At it's heart Savage Worlds is an engine which seems to fit those settings where the heroes are slightly larger than life, but still vulnerable to a mook with a knife, and the stories are action oriented. If I had to pick one word, it would be Pulp. In other words, it'll work for most games and settings that the gaming public has played in. On the other hand, at 144 pages, it only includes those things that remain the same for most settings.
All of the above could be said about other games though, so the question is: Does it avoid the pitfalls that so called "simple" games before it have not? For example:
Does it leave critical areas to GM fiat? Does it allow for adequate and timely character advancement and growth? Can it run combats involving high powered characters without bogging down due to ever larger handfuls of dice or complicated character write-ups? Will a player character eventually become so powerful that the pistol wielding alley way mugger with the drop on him is of no more concern than a gnat?
After reading the Test Drive rules (available for free at www.peginc.com/savage_worlds.htm) a few times I had my doubts, but knowing that judging a game by how it reads is like judging a video game by waching a trailer, I decided to run a few sessions before coming to any conclusions. I was pleasantly surprised. In 22 years of gaming I've never seen this many good ideas in one place. After buying the book and trying the full rules, I have to say that the Test Drive doesn't do them justice. This is one of those games where you have to play it to appreciate how much loving care was put into it. Many of the things that looked like they wouldn't feel right when I read the book actually worked great in play.
Our gaming group ranges from 1 to 22 years experience (13 to 34 years of age) and while we like to roleplay, we also take great glee in action scenes and the time honored tradition of number crunching during character generation. As the GM I'm a thirty something with a wife, kids and a house payment to make. When it comes time to relax I don't care to spend a lot of time dickering around with rules, prepping a game session, when I could be playing with my kids, my wife, or my Xbox. When we game, every player character is in danger, overt or covert, every session (that's the goal anyway.) Roleplaying occurs during important scenes where lives are at stake, not as characters shoot the breeze while the GM waxes poetic about the scenery. I realize some people may not play that way, bragging about how entire sessions go by without them making a die roll, and that's fine - I'm not here to tell you how boring your sessions are ;) All kidding aside, my point is that if a game system can handle our style of number crunching combat mongery, chances are it can handle a more roleplaying heavy style of play as well. Why do I mention all of this? Because Savage Worlds handles our style of play with ease. Climactic battles that used to take the entire session now take half an hour. Fast, furious and fun? You bet.
I won't go into the basics of the system, that information can be found in the Test Drive rules mentioned earlier. Better yet, check out the "Making of" series of articles found on the same page mentioned above. They're way down at the bottom of the page, and they're an interesting look into what sort of thinking went into making Savage Worlds - perhaps the best indicator of whether this game is for you. On the other hand, I will cover what's not in the Test Drive rules so you know what to expect for your hard earned money.
It's a hardcover book with pages in various shades of black and white. Interested parties can sample the cover at the website. I'm not much on art myself, but the art provided seems more than adequate. The book lays flat on the table without having to crack the spine, which is much appreciated, but the character sheet is too close to the binding to photocopy well, which is not. Fortunately, most of what you may want to copy is available in the form of pdf files on the website.
There's eight pages of introduction and the aforementioned Test Drive rules. I'm not sure why the Test Drive rules are in here, those pages could have been used on more gear or more guidelines to the GM on how to bend the rules without getting into trouble. These pages are the only fat, if they can be called that, in the entire book. The rest is nothing but meat.
Following that is 24 pages of character generation. The section includes examples of 11 different races, 80 edges (including professional and weird edges not included in the Test Drive), 35 hindrances, the attributes and skills, etc. along with all the explanations. Character creation is point based, involving small numbers, and even the most dithering player should be able to create a character from nothing more than a concept in about 30 minutes. GMs tend to be less picky and could do the same thing in about 5 minutes.
The next chapter contains 15 pages of gear to equip characters with. It covers a little bit of everything, presumably to give the GM something "close" to base his or her own creations off of. As a tiny example of the breadth of material covered, you'll find stats for: the chain hauberk, the chainsaw, a laser machine gun,handcuffs, an SUV, the M1A1 Abrams tank, the P-51 Mustang, and a Spanish galleon. Like I said, a little bit of everything. While not exhaustive, there's enough here to start a campaign in a variety of historical settings, fantasy, modern day horror, and so on.
After the gear chapter comes 19 pages of game rules covering everything from initiative to healing to character advancement. The Test Drive only covers the tip of the iceberg that is this chapter. Along with the standard fare can be found rules for: getting the drop on someone, suppressive fire, multiple action penalties, using tricks to gain an advantage, taunting and intimidating your opponent, called shots, and so on. The end result in play is that a smart combatant is far more dangerous than a big, strong one. No more standing in one place and swinging your sword or pulling the trigger; in Savage Worlds that sort of play will get your character killed(or maimed thanks to the injury table). Much like the heroes of the pulp-adventure stories that seem to have inspired the game, PCs will find themselves on the move and using every trick in the book to defeat their villianous enemies. Because the system is wound based, there's little or no tracking of health status by the GM: non-Wild Cards (the nameless masses) are "up, down or off the table," the important villians need more attention, but even then there's only three wounds before they're incapacitated (the PCs get to roll on a nifty table to find out the nature of their wounds and whether they're permanent or not.) The only problem we had here was that we had all been playing too much d20 and had developed a "stand and fight" mentality. In Savage Worlds, equally tough opponents whose luck of the dice is about equal, and with both players and GM firmly entrenched in the d20 combat paradigm, can fight for a long time because there is no hit point attrition. We ran into this with the Test Drive rules, as none of the combat options mentioned above are in there, but once we all had spent some time with the main book the light bulbs came on. Suddenly everybody was trying special combat maneuvers and coordinated attacks; carnage ensued and long combats were no more.
The Arcane Background chapter is 11 pages explaining how Savage Worlds handles such things as magic, miracles, pulp supers, and weird science. It then goes on to explain the 24 powers that cover all of the above via the idea of trappings. As explained in the Test Drive, trappings are simply what a power looks like and this allows a GM to learn a small number of powers and create a very large number of effects. Noticably missing are the more powerful and setting specific powers like Resurrection, Ask God a Question and other "pain in the neck for the GM"-type abilities. I can't say that I'll miss them.
The largest chapter in the book covers "Situational Rules" in 21 pages. This is the sort of stuff that's nice to have, but probably won't get used all that much: mounted combat, allies, fear, environmental hazards, vehicle rules, chases & dogfights, mass combat, and skirmish rules. The allies section has a table of random personalities, how to divvy up xp for them, and how to keep track of their ammo without it becoming a bookkeeping nightmare. Environmental hazards covers cold, drowning, heat, hunger, sleep, thirst and bumps and bruises. There's also rules for falling, catching on fire, smoke inhalation, diseases, poison, and radiation exposure. The vehicle rules cover ground vehicles, air and watercraft. Maneuvers, crashes, repairs, collisions, fighting with a vehicle, fighting from a vehicle, jumping from a moving vehicle - it's all there in six pages. For those who prefer a more abstract form of vehicular mayhem, the chases and dogfights section keeps track of vehicles relative to each other using cards to determine both initiative and relative starting position. It covers some of the same ground as the vehicle rules, in terms of what role it fulfills in the GMs toolbox, but it does so in a less detailed and more cinematic way. For those roleplayers with little experience or enthusiasm for wargaming, the mass battles rules give them the opportunity to participate in a climactic battle of thousands, have their characters make a real difference (or even get killed) and it can all be done in the same time it would take to resolve a regular combat. The skirmish rules are the wargaming rules for those who want to run a more detailed, large scale combat without the need for a GM. It's only three pages and requires a free download from the website to calculate the point values of your armies, so it's not worth the price of admission if you're thinking about buying this book just for the wargaming aspects.
The game mastering chapter is 9 pages and contains information generic to any game mastering as well as assistance with the nuances of running Savage Worlds. Of particular help are tips on creating your own races, edges and hindrances.
The villians and monsters chapter is an 11 page bestiary with 29 critters of a mostly fantasy bent ranging from alligator to zombie. There are also 22 generic "monstrous abilities," much like those found in Wizards of the Coast's Monster Manual, to help GMs make their own monsters. The selection covers a lot of ground, much like the equipment in the gear chapter, and the simplicity of the system makes it an easy thing to make new monsters using something close, or tweaking an existing one into something unexpected.
The index is located before the 8 page Quick Summary section, which makes it a little slower to get to and is only one page long. I'm a stickler for a good index and initially, 2 out of the 5 times I looked for something it wasn't in the index. On the other hand,once I got a feel for the terms used and what term to look for in the index, I had much better luck.
I have to give Savage Worlds an enthusiastic thumbs up. Easy enough for beginners to understand, it also does an excellent job of lightening the GMs load. It captures the feel of pulpy danger in a simple, easy to use package that's fun to play. Perhaps most importantly, it shifts the time spent on prepping a session from looking up rules and doing character write-ups to developing memorable scenes and powerful story lines.
