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Shane Lacy Hensley's
SAVAGE WORLDS
I recently picked up Savage Worlds and decided to give it a playtest. So my group got together and I ran them through a simple playtest adventure called Jared's Folly. You can find it on the Savage Worlds site as The Red Swamp Adventure.
Afterward, well... let's go over the basics first. Then I'll go over the playtest results, below.
Savage Worlds is a 144 page hardcover book with color front and back covers and strictly black & white interior art. Retails for $29.95 and already has a lot of support available. There's the above-linked website, a mailing list, and they've just recently opened up an online forum. Since it's a generic game system, there are lots of people trying to convert their favorite settings over to Savage Worlds and experimenting with house rules and add-ons. There is no standard setting in the book. It has limited support for all sorts of settings... the equipment section covers medieval weapons up to modern cars and planes. Of course, that means no spaceships, no cyberware, etc., but that's not that big of a deal; the basic system is pretty darn generic and simple enough to customize.
Their "spokeshead" is a skeletal jester named "Smiling Jack" who makes little sidebar comments that are occasionally useful and often lame. For example, the alternate rules for initiative are announced by Smiling Jack saying "Hey, freak! You say you don't like using cards for initiative? You can't please everyone, so here's an alternate way to do it." I suppose it adds a bit of "punch" to an otherwise boring sidebar with an optional rule, but I personally preferred the sidebars that just had useful info, and no in-character dialog. He doesn't show up that often, though, so if the attitude bothers you, he's easy to ignore. Still, how many game companies sell a knick-knack that compares to this?
Both stats and skills are normally represented by a single die, possibly plus an additional bonus. So a character's Strength could range from d4 up to d12 and then beyond to values like d12+1, d12+2, etc. Human average is defined as d6.
The standard stats are Agility, Smarts, Spirit (inner wisdom and willpower), Strength and Vigor (personal health and endurance). These are used to calculate some additional ratings such as your Parry (how hard you are to hit in melee) and your Toughness (how hard you are to hurt if they do hit you). Stats don't directly affect your skills, so if you're agile, you won't necessarily be any good at fighting. Instead, they determine how good a skill can get before the cost doubles. If you have a skill that depends on your Smarts of d8, for example, it costs the normal amount (1 point to acquire it at d4, +1 point per die-size increase) until you get that skill up to a rating of d8. If you raise it any higher, the cost will be double normal, because it now exceeds the stat that influences it.
The skills are very broad... very, very broad. That is to say, all melee combat (with any weapon) is covered under a single Fighting skill, while all ranged combat is covered by your Shooting skill (with a Throwing skill to cover stuff like grenades). The only social skills are Persuasion and Streetwise. There are only 24 skills in the basic game, although the generic Knowledge: [Pick a field] could be taken multiple times to represent knowledge of different things. Their philosophy (spelled out right at the beginning of the skills section) is to keep the list small and get with the game rather than keeping track of a shopping list of skills. A few skills have example modifiers for specific situations, but for the most part the GM will have to wing it. Another way they cut down on the skills is the "Common Knowledge" check. If you need to see if a PC knows something that isn't particularly esoteric, just have them make a Smarts check with an appropriate modifier for their background. This is actually a really good suggestion; it reminds me of Call of Cthulhu's "Know Roll".
If you like extensive skill lists, you probably won't like Savage Worlds.
Action resolution is pretty simple. If you need to make a stat or skill check, just roll that die, apply any modifiers and see what you get. For a normal (unopposed) check, a roll of 4 or higher is a success and every additional 4 points that you make it by gives you a "raise". Each raise normally improves your result in some fashion. For example, if you shoot at a target and get an 8, you'll do +2 damage. Opposed rolls are handled the obvious way, by having both folks roll and using the lower result as the difficulty for the higher. For combat, they speed stuff up a bit by pre-calculating your Parry and setting it to a flat number rather than rolling Fighting every time you get attacked in melee. Savage Worlds is all about speeding things up... which is cool, but unfortunately always comes at a price.
Now the above sounds like characters fail a whole lot. And normal folks do. A rating of d4 in something only gives you a 25% chance of success with an unmodified roll (where the difficulty is 4). A rating of d12 is still only a 75% chance of success. So normal folks (even skilled ones) tend to suck at stuff. But that's okay; PCs aren't normal folks. PCs are Wild Cards, which doesn't really mean anything except that they're the important characters so they get a Wild Die to represent their larger-than-lifeness. Basically, the Wild Die is a d6 that you can roll with any stat or skill check; if it rolls better than the other die, you can use it instead.
Furthermore, all trait and damage die rolls are open-ended. So even the pathetic feeb with d4 Fighting could theoretically hit someone by 24 points and score a whopping 6 raises on his attack roll. It'll require rolling a 4 repeatedly, but each time a die maxes out you roll again and add the values together. So it's always possible for anyone to beat any difficulty. Even damage rolls (which are often a flat amount, such as a gun that does 2d6+1 damage) are open ended. So if you roll 2d6+1 and get a 2 and a 6, you get to add another d6. If that one comes up 6, you get to add another. Etc. Basically, this means that it's always possible for any attack to get through any armor (or even kill any foe outright) unless there are special rules in play. Don't forget that Wild Die! It's open-ended too, so those open-ended rolls occur a bit more often than you might expect.
If you don't like open-ended die systems, you probably won't like Savage Worlds.
To add more customization of your PC, they have advantages and disadvantages that you can take, here called Hindrances (minor or major) and Edges. Edges are special advantages sort of like D20 Feats. Each time you "level up" (every 5 XP acquired indicates that you've gained a "level"), you'll get to improve your PC in some fashion and one of the choices is to acquire a new Edge. This can be any Edge you qualify for. For example, if your character has reached the "Seasoned" level (at least 20 XP) and has a Shooting of at least d8, they qualify for the "Rock and Roll!" Edge, which lets them ignore recoil penalties for full-auto fire if they are standing still. There are a lot of Edges... 8 pages worth. They're mostly combat oriented (like "Trademark Weapon", which grants you a +1 bonus to use a chosen unique weapon) but there are also Professional Edges which give you bonuses based on some sort of chosen career. For example, the simple "Woodsman" Edge requires a Spirit of d6+, a Survival skill of d8+ and a Tracking skill of d8+. Once you take it, you get a flat +2 to all Tracking, Survival and Stealth rolls made in the wilderness.
There are also Power Edges, which let you purchase magical abilities. For the most part these all work the same way. You have to choose an Arcane Background Edge, which will determine how many powers you get and how many power points you get to run them. For example, the Magic Edge gives you 10 power points, lets you start with 3 spells and tells you that the skill used to invoke them is called Spellcasting. If you roll a 1 on your skill die when using Spellcasting, you'll be "Shaken" and probably lose your next action as well as failing to accomplish anything. The Miracles Edge (for priests and paladins and such) gives you 10 power points and only 2 powers, but the only downside is suffering penalties if you start offending your deity. They also have Psionics (exactly identical to Magic, but with a different skill) and Superpowers (which give you more power points but only 1 starting power; on the upside, there's no penalty for failed rolls besides wasting the power points). Oh, there's also a Weird Science Edge for duplicating powers with gizmos, the primary disadvantage being that they break down a lot.
To divide stuff up a little more, they suggest restricting certain powers to specific Backgrounds... like only Miracles can heal, or only Magic can fly. Your GM will have to develop these limits themselves, or buy one of the settings coming out for the game. There are too many powers to go over, so I'll just give an example. The "Armor" power costs 2 points, requires you to touch the target, and grants them +2 to their Toughness (+4 if you roll a Raise on the casting roll) for 3 rounds. After that, it'll cost you an extra power point each round to maintain it. So... that's really specific for a generic game. There aren't any "ranged" Armor spells, nor any powers that grant boosted armor for hours or days. The powers will definitely require a lot of customization for any serious campaign. As a cute bit, though, each power also lists some common "trappings" to help you design your own. For example, that Armor spell might make you glow, visibly harden your skin, create magic armor around you, etc.
Then there are the usual load of rules for handling Combat, Damage & Healing, etc. Here's another way in which Wild Cards are special... they can take up to 3 wounds without being incapacitated. "Normal" folks (the ones who don't get a Wild Die to help their skills be more reliable) only have 3 states in combat: Fine, Shaken (stunned; roll Spirit to recover, if Shaken again, you're out of action) and Incapacitated. This does make combat simpler; the vast majority of the folks in any big battle will just have those 3 states... basically fine, stunned or dead.
To further make sure that Wild Cards do well compared to normals, PC Wild Cards get 3 Bennies per session. These are basically "Luck Points" and allow you to reroll a test or make a special "Soak" roll which can partially or completely negate the damage from a hit. NPC Wild Cards get 2 Bennies of their own, and the GM gets 1 "villain Bennie" per player that he's supposed to spend to make the fights against the villains more dramatic. There's also an odd rule where any unspent Bennies at the end of each session have a 1-in-3 chance of granting you a bonus experience point. Since we just did a single session, we didn't bother with XP, but getting up to 3 bonus XP seems like it could get out of hand. On the other hand, at least there's some benefit for the conservative player who never had to spend any Bennies.
There are a lot of other areas in the rules, like the section on vehicle chases, handling autofire weapons, general adventuring hazards and a bestiary of stereotypical monsters with rules to help you design your own. But let's go on to the playtest section, because there are some areas where Savage Worlds shines... and some where it doesn't.
The Playtest
(Warning: Contains Spoilers for The Red Swamp / "Jared's Folly")
"Jared's Folly" is a pretty simple freebie adventure that involves a group of 4 stereotypical fantasy adventurers (the Paladin, the Ranger, the Barbarian and the Wizard) being sent to the tiny village of Dyrinak to investigate rumors that the local lord's stolen magic sword has been seen there.
Since I only had 3 players available, I made the Barbarian into a reclusive hermit in the Red Swamp, whom the PCs could recruit during play if they needed him. The Wizard's player wanted to exchange his "Curious" Hindrance in for "Cautious" and we changed the Paladin's Intimidate skill to Shooting, since he was listed as carrying a firearm but didn't actually have the skill to use it.
I added some foreshadowing to the trek there (mostly trogg footprints) but otherwise used the first part of the adventure as written. There's a scene where the PCs have to wade across a river (the swimming skill would have helped, but none of the example characters had it) and get attacked by a vicious alligator. This fight went pretty painlessly, and the simplicity of the combat system meant that I didn't even have to write anything down for the gator. A few blows bounced off, it missed the PCs, and then the Wizard unloaded on it with a powerful Bolt spell (2 attacks at 3d6 damage each) and one of the bolts open-ended and did two wounds. Since the alligator wasn't a Wild Card character, even one wound would be enough to incapacitate it and it fell back into the water and vanished from sight. So far, so good.
After that, the PCs soon reached Dyrinak and get to learn the full story. It turns out that one of the peasants there (the Jared of the title) "borrowed" Lord Redspar's magic sword to help them fight off some swamp monsters without actually asking permission first. He was able to defeat a few of the humanoid fish-folk troggs with it, and recruited a handful of volunteers to go off into the swamp to take care of the rest. He hasn't been seen since.
Moments after the PCs sit down to eat with the locals, a dozen troggs come rushing out of the swamp and attack! This is the big "mass combat" demonstration of the adventure and it shows off how well the super-minimal book-keeping can enable you to run big fights. I actually only used 10 troggs in my game, since the party still hadn't met the Barbarian.
The village has a barricade of sharpened spikes between them and the swamp, so the troggs first have to get through that in order to reach the locals. Since getting through took a Agility roll (and troggs had an Agility of d6) this meant that only 50% of them would get through on the first attempt. Any that failed took 1d10 damage and had to make a Strength check to get free. Well, here was the first spot where I had qualms about the system... not a single trogg was ever even stunned by impaling themselves on a spike, because they had a toughness of 10. That meant that anything that did less than 10 points was harmless to them. Only rolling max on that die could possibly harm them... and if that had ever happened it probably would have killed them outright, because rolling a 10 means rolling again and summing up, so if any of those spikes had ever rolled a 10, the odds are that they would also have ended up with a 14+ and killed the trogg outright. That sort of trend was to continue through the fight.
Another rule that makes this kind of combat easy is that you're supposed to divide up all of the allied NPCs and let the players run them. That way, the GM only runs the bad guys and has less to keep track of. Naturally, I could have overruled them if a player had ever had a peasant warrior do something totally out of character, but no one did. Definitely made my job easier.
The system definitely supports big fights like this very well. The troggs each got two attacks per round... with 3 PCs, 6 peasant warriors (including the very slightly superior Janus Strang, the local heroine) and 10 monsters that attack twice per round, this fight would have been a major headache in D20 or a similar system. At the very least it would have been time-consuming and would probably have occupied the rest of the session. Instead, we blew through it pretty quickly, with the troggs fleeing when the fifth one was incapacitated.
The fight seemed annoyingly random, though. The peasants all had Fighting d6 and the troggs all had a parry of 6... so again, only rolling max could succeed and because of the open-ended die rolls getting a Raise (rolling a 10+) was just as common as getting a regular success. Furthermore, the peasant spears did 1d6+2 damage... and the troggs had a Toughness of 10. Again, only by rolling max and open-ending the roll could they possibly hurt them. Even with a Raise, they'd only do 1d6+4 and would still need to roll max. The peasants did slay several troggs, but it was largely due to sheer randomness... given enough tries, they'd eventually roll a 17 or so on damage and take one out. The PCs were more impressive, but we were spending a lot of time making futile attacks on the behalf of the peasant militia.
Since the peasants seemed nearly useless in the fight, I skimmed through the combat section and brought up the "Ganging Up" bonuses, where folks who work together attacking the same opponent all get a bonus equal to one less than the number of folks involved. This helped a little, but also proved problematic. See, if four folks gang up on a single foe, they're all supposed to get +3 to hit. But if they act on different initiatives, how do you determine ahead of time how much of a bonus they should get? Suppose you give the first attacker a +3 for the other three, but when it gets to be their initiative the other 3 all run off and want to attack a different opponent at +2 (for 3 attackers)? Anyway, I ruled that you had to stick with one target for multiple rounds to claim the bonus, which seemed to take care of the problem.
The initiative system was a little awkward. You shuffle a deck of cards and deal one to each PC, one to each group of NPCs being run by particular player, and one to all NPCs being run by the GM. Then you count down from Joker, Ace, King, Queen, etc. down to deuce, with people acting when their card comes up (ties are broken by suit). The Joker is special; it grants whoever draws it +2 to whatever they do that turn (including damage rolls) and immediately after that round of combat you're supposed to reshuffle the deck so that there are always two Jokers ready to be drawn. It didn't cause any problems for us, really, but it seemed like more trouble than it was worth.
Anyway, after a mighty tussle, the troggs were repulsed and the PCs decided to interrogate one of the survivors. The scenario didn't cover this, so I decided that being able to understand troggish was just a General Knowledge check. The Wizard rolled something impressively high, so he questioned the trogg and found out that they were being driven out of the swamp by an enormous, dragon-like creature. They had attacked the village in retaliation for Jared killing a couple of them. They had last seen Jared and the other humans heading towards the center of the swamp where the dragon lived.
So the PCs decided to keep the critter alive and force it to guide them there. They also (after a bit of nudging from the locals) decided to seek out the reclusive hermit-warrior living nearby and see if he knew anything about the situation. That was good, since the Barbarian looked like the best fighter in the example characters and I didn't want them facing the swamp dragon without him.
With a bit of roleplaying, they convinced this warrior-hermit to aid them. Since he claimed he could lead them to the center of the swamp safely, they let their captive trogg go free (they felt a little bad about killing so many, since it sounded like it might have been Jared's fault that the troggs were attacking the village in the first place) and trudged on to the final battle.
Incidentally, the running rules seemed rather odd; whenever a character wants to exceed their base movement rate, they can take some action penalties and add another 1d6 of movement. So sometimes running will barely move you any further and sometimes it will double your movement rate. That level of randomness seemed rather out of place to me. Since it's not a trait or damage test, at least it's not open ended.
The big final fight involves the PCs grabbing the magic "Dragon's Tooth" sword from where Jared dropped it (the dragon had eaten him and his companions, you see) and fighting the monster. Now this uber-boss had a Parry of 6 and a Toughness of 15 and it was a Wild Card, so it got 2 Bennies of its own, plus the 3 GM Bennies that I was supposed to use to bolster villains during the session. Ugh. I really should have thrown one or two of those during the trogg fight, but I hadn't. Since this was the final fight I decided to give it all 5 and see how well it worked.
Dragon's Tooth turned out to be a pretty pathetic magic weapon. It didn't grant any bonuses to hit although the scenario implied that it did (maybe that bit got left out?) and it did Strength+1d6 damage if you hit a large monster with it. That's roughly equivalent to the Strength+3 damage that a large non-magical weapon does, but it has a better chance of getting an open-ended roll.
Well, the fight was more frustrating than exciting. A Toughness of 15 meant that none of the party's weapons were likely to do anything to the dragon without rolling max and open-ending the roll. The Wizard emptied all of his Bolt spells into it and did nothing. Worse, when it did get hurt, it would just spend a Bennie and make a Soak roll, eliminating the wounds. Since a Soak roll is a Vigor check (and it includes your Wild Die), that dragon was rolling a d12 and a d6 and taking the higher result. Every Soak check it made stopped all of the wounds, making it rather frustrating since it took a really good damage roll to hurt the thing at all. The Barbarian was Berserk, but even his +2 bonus to attack and damage still wasn't enough to enable him to hurt the thing without rolling max on his 1d10+3 damage.
The dragon smacked the Barbarian twice and the Barbarian blew a Bennie to Soak, both times stopping multiple wounds and remaining upright. Only once he ran out of Bennies did the dragon one-pop him. It just couldn't seem to hit the Paladin, but that's okay, because the Paladin spent about half of the fight trying to cast a simple Armor spell (roll 1d8 and 1d6, you succeed if either of them comes up as a 4 or better) and failing repeatedly. Dragon's Tooth was pretty useless because it never rolled an open-ended hit.
In the end, they finally managed to take the sucker out, but it was the Ranger's arrows (2d6 damage) that did the most because she hit more often... and if you hit often enough, you eventually get those open-ended rolls where you do 27 points or something. It took a lot of tries before a hit would actually wound it, and then the hits just got negated by good Soak rolls until the thing finally ran out of Bennies. In the end, they defeated it, but none of us were particularly thrilled with how the combat system handled big, super-tough creatures. In fact, we thought it sucked. I had blown some of the Bennies on rerolling attacks, so the dragon didn't get the full 5 Soak checks it could have, but it was annoying anyway.
The post-battle cleanup showed another interesting bit about the system. Once you've accumulated 4 or more wounds, you're out of action, but not necessarily dead. In fact, what determines how bad of shape you're in isn't the damage you'd taken previously, but only the damage done by that very last blow. Since the Barbarian had taken 3 wounds from that last hit, he was "Bleeding Out" which meant that he had to make a successful Vigor roll at -4 (his total number of wounds) each round (a raise stops the process). If he failed, he'd go to "Mortal Wound" and repeat the process, but if he failed again he'd die. He ended up rolling a raise right away and stopped the process... partly because I forgot to apply his wound penalties to the roll. I think I was too used to other game systems where wound penalties never apply to wound-resistance rolls. In Savage Worlds, your wounds do make it harder for you to Soak or survive future injuries.
All in all, it seemed like blowing Bennies on Soak rolls was a very good idea. Like Shadowrun, there's a substantial death-spiral here... once you've been wounded, it's much easier to get wounded again.
Final Opinions
(Warning: Contains Highly Subjective Personal Opinions / Flamebait)
So, in the final analysis, was Savage Worlds the right game for my group? Well, considering that one player said he'd rather gnaw his hands off than convert our current campaign to this system, I'd say the answer was a definite "no". It might still be appropriate for your group, but honestly the things that it was really good at were aspects of play that we didn't care about.
Where it shines:
Mass Combat. We ran a fight with 3 PCs, 6 village warriors and 10 monsters that each got two attacks per round, and it never really bogged down. There were 3 fights in that adventure and we blew through all of them, plus the intervening plot and roleplaying, in a single session. That's fast. Fast was one of their biggest goals and I think it was one of their successes. If your campaign features 2-3 combats per session, you really ought to give Savage Worlds a serious look. If it features one combat every 2-3 sessions, like our Ironclaw campaign, forget it.
Simplicity. A total of two combat skills, two social skills... a really simple Hindrance/Edge system... they keep the system relatively clean (you do still need to look up what all those Edges and Hindrances do, of course). You won't be using much double-digit math here; 4 wounds will take out any Wild Card, while just 1 wound will take out normal NPCs. I'd say that it covers much the same ground as D20 does, but keeps stuff simpler and easier to keep track of.
Wargaming. The system evolved out of a miniatures game and it's quite suitable as one. There are folks on the net figuring out point values for various units and using Savage Worlds as a straight miniatures combat game. If you adore the wargaming aspects of games like D20 (Attacks of Opportunity, 5' steps, and all that), give the Test Drive rules a whirl.
Where it... what's the opposite of shines? Sucks up all the light? Okay, where it sucks:
Details. If you want to easily distinguish between someone who's skilled with daggers vs swords, or who's better at etiquette than leading troops, if you want different skills for haggling, oratory and seduction, well... you can simulate some of it with appropriately limited Edges, but all in all you'd be better off with a more detailed system than one that says that if you have training in knife-fighting, you can use a flail just as well.
Human Limits. Like most games with open-ended rolls, there's no real support for tasks that are impossible for novices but doable by experts. The open-ended dice means that if you allow someone a roll, he could theoretically roll as high as you like. Also, if you want a system where the PCs are "normal folks" instead of "superior hero-types", look elsewhere. Maybe you could hack the game system to support "grim & gritty" low-powered games (I'd probably limit the open-endedness to a single additional roll per die, never multiple, so that a die could never roll more than double its face value)... but it would take a lot of hacking.
Handling High Difficulties. Ugh. Trying to kill a critter with a Toughness of 15 was a long, frustrating exercise in futility. All throughout that playtest, we ran into situations where only an open-ended roll could possibly succeed. This means a whole lot of failed attempts, because the best way to succeed is to try again and again and again and again and again... Eventually, inevitably, you'll roll a 19 or a 27 or something similarly incredible compared to the normal "4" and succeed. Angling for a +2 bonus seemed pretty pointless; a +2 is nothing compared to the potential bonus that you get from rolling a 12 on a d12. A 19 would actually wound that dragon... whereupon it'll probably blow a Bennie and soak it all, negating the whole effort and forcing you to start over.
The Card Based Initiative System. Color us unimpressed. Part of the problem was that our gaming group doesn't play around a table; rather, we're scattered around the living room in individual chairs. In the beginning I would get up to deal out the cards to people... at the end, I just dealt them out on my little card table and called on folks in the appropriate order. The intermittent pauses for shuffling seemed like they could interfere with play, too. I'd keep a second, already-shuffled deck on hand at all times, so that play can continue while someone gathers up all of the used cards and shuffles the initiative deck. Well, no, actually I'd dump the card-based initiative and try the "Everyone rolls a d12" alternative listed in the book, but that's just me.
So, all in all, while none of us were particularly enthralled by Savage Worlds, I don't think it's a bad game. Just a very poor fit for our group. None of us like the unpredictability of open-ended die systems and my campaigns at least are rarely combat-heavy. I also think we would have been happier if they had handled huge, super-tough creatures by allowing them to take more wounds before dying, rather than making the difficulty to wound them phenomenally high. That would have enabled us to at least see some progress during the fight, instead of it feeling like a crapshoot.
The use of GM Bennies is an interesting idea, but one that I'd definitely need a little time to get used to. I ended up being torn between using the dragon's Bennies effectively (saving them all for Soak rolls) and blowing some of them on "useless" rerolls so that the fight wouldn't take forever. If I ran this game regularly, I might not use the GM Bennies to help NPC Wild Cards at all, instead only using them for "normal" foes and limiting the Wild Cards to their own Bennies. I'd have to play repeatedly to see.
The art and layout of the book is fairly good. I haven't really found any major typos or anything. The index is dishearteningly small (and located right before the rules summary pages rather than being at the end of the book so you often have to flip through some pages to find it), but at least they have one. Unfortunately, since it is intended as a purely generic system, the setting specific examples inside tend to be pretty bland, but they're a good example for making your own extensions to the game.
For my group, I'd rate Savage Worlds as Style 3 and Substance 3 (and some of my players would put it lower than that), but for the right group, the ratings could be much higher.
