Like many, my entry into the Roleplaying game hobby was through Dungeons and Dragons. But after listening to an actual play podcast game using the Deadlands setting of the Savage Worlds system, I decided to investigate this alternate ruleset.
The Savage Worlds system is a generic rule set supporting multiple genres: fantasy, superhero, modern, sci-fi, and historical. It has no classes but uses attributes, skills, and edges/hindrances instead. The game is also known for its character-deadliness with its exploding-dice mechanic.
The motto of Savage Worlds is Fast! Furious! Fun! And its true. Character creation is quicker then more modern editions of Dungeons and Dragons by using a point-buy system. An exception is picking Edges and Hindrances from long lists. The skill system encompasses both combat and out-of-combat skills. The magic and powers system provides the basic mechanics, but leaves it to the player to add flavor.
Attributes & Skills
Character creation is a point-buy system. Starting characters, referred to as Novices, have a set number of points to use between buying levels in attributes and skills. Attributes are your core descriptors of your character: Strength, Agility, Smarts, Spirit, and Vigor.
Skills vary from setting to setting and some from edition, but the core ones include, Athletics, Notice, Investigation, Common Knowledge, Persuasion, and Stealth. Each skill is associated with a specific Attribute.
Under the current edition, called The Adventure Edition or SWADE, every character starts with 1 level in each attribute and core skill. This is a change from the prior editions. Attributes and Skill levels are represented by a different polyhedral die from d4 to d12. Thus all starting characters have a d4 in their attributes and core skills.
There are a lot of non-core skills. Which ones are available in any particular game depends on the setting. Interstellar navigation is not something a Greco-Roman Fantasy game typically uses. The points are used to buy these skills starting at a d4. Shooting (guns and bows) is a nigh-core skill, but still requires its purchase to start at a d4.
With your points at character creation, you use them to buy up your levels, which increases the die-type. A d4 becomes a d6 and then a d8, etc. With Attributes, each step up becomes increasingly expensive. That is not the case with skills so long as the skill die is equal to or less than its associated attribute. If you want to push your Shooting (Agility) die higher then your Agility die, the point-cost increases.
All characters are required to take a certain number of Hindrances, which are classified as Major or Minor. Major Hindrances give you more points than Minor Hindrances. This then gives you points for taking Edges. Major Edges cost more than Minor Edges.
Certain Edges are only available to more advanced characters. All characters start as Novices. As they gain Advances (prior editions termed this Experience Points), then can rank up to Seasoned, Veteran, Heroic, and Legendary. Advances are the points that let you increase Attributes or Skills, buy an Edge or buy off a Hindrance.
A word or five about Magic (Fantasy) and Powers (Superhero). To be able to use these abilities, the character must take an Edge to unlock these powers, plus take buy an associated skill at a d4. With that you can then select between a limited number of spells/powers available to Novice characters.
Those spells/powers just have a bare mechanical description and are not very evocative by themselves. However, players are encourage to add all of the flavor elements they want to their spell/power to customize it, without altering its mechanical effects. This includes name, visual effects, casting methods, appearance, and damage type (frost versus fire versus force, etc.).
When I first read the magic section, I was seriously underwhelmed when compared to the evocative description of spells in Dungeons and Dragons. On a second reading is when I figured out the sheer flexibility and creativity that is player-created.
Combat & Skill Checks
There are fivethings that I find special with how Savage Worlds handles Combat and Skill Checks:
- Initiative
- Wild Die
- Exploding Dice
- Multiple Actions
- Bennies
Initiative: In Savage Worlds, it uses a standard 52-card, plus both jokers, deck of playing cards to determine initiative. The deck is used in other sub-systems too. At the start of initiative, the deck is shuffled.
On each turn, players and opponents are dealt a single card, which determines when they act in that turn. There are Edges you can take so you are dealt more than one card. The Suit and Face of the card determines the order.
Suit Order is reverse alphabetical: Spades before Hearts before Diamonds before Clubs. Face Order is standard Ace high, 2 low. Jokers permit that player to go whenever they want (Joker’s Wild) and they can add +2 to all Trait (Attribute or Skill) and Damage rolls for that round.
When a player acts, they hand their card to the Marshal (Savage Worlds’ Dungeon Master). Once all the cards are collected, the Marshal deals the next round. The deck is only shuffled after a Joker is dealt.
Wild Die: Player Characters and Wild Cards (unique or special non-player characters or monsters) get a Wild Die. Whenever they make a Trait roll, then can also roll an extra d6. If you have a d4 in Stealth and you try to sneak past a guard, you roll a d4 and a d6. You do not add the two dice together. Instead you keep the higher result! It is recommended that all players have a uniquely colored d6 to use as their Wild Die.
Exploding Dice: Whenever the highest value on a dice is rolled, the player or Marshall gets to reroll that dice and add it to the total result. For example, rolling a 6 on a d6. This process continue until you do not roll the highest number!
Exploding Dice applies to Trait Rolls and Damage Rolls. This allows for some ludicrous damage numbers, which can make the game deadly. This high variability can be unsettling to some players, but others enjoy the danger. Remember: Fast! Furious! Fun!.
Exploding Dice and Wild Die does require some mental gymnastics. If, from the example above, the player rolled a d4 Stealth and a d6 Wild Die and they both came up as a 4 and 6 respectively, then they are both rerolled. If on the following roll the result was a 4 and a 4, then only d4 is rerolled. If that resulted in a 1, then the two totals are 9 (4+4+1) and 10 (6+4). The stealth roll was a 10.
Multiple Actions: The action economy in Savage Worlds is simple. On your turn you can move and take an action. What if on your turn, you want to Run (move further then your speed allows) across open terrain and hide behind a rock, while shooting your Colt .45 at two different enemies?
That requires four different Actions: Run Check, Stealth Check, Shooting Check #1, and Shooting Check #2. Savage Worlds allows you to do that, but you will take a -6 to each of your rolls because you’re performing 3 more actions than allowed.
But wait! My first action shouldn’t be penalized you might argue. The rules are very clear on this point, see page 103 of the SWADE Core Rules book. You must declare all of your actions you plan to take on your turn before you take them! The multi-action penalty is then applied to all of your actions.
Players are not allowed to to just say that they are moving and running to a rock, and when they get there say they now also want to hide! All actions you plan on taking must be declared at the start. If your Run roll wasn’t high enough, because of the -6 penalty, to reach the rock, then you won’t have the opportunity to Hide. But the -6 still applies.
Bennies: Bennies are simply different poker chips. In the Core Rules, the color of the chip doesn’t matter. Each Session, each player starts with three chips. The Game Master starts with one chip for each player at the table. Any Wild Card NPCs or enemies have two. No one gets to keep Bennies for the next session. Use them or loose them.
Bennies can be used for the following:
- Reroll a Trait Check (Attribute or Skill)
- Recover from Shaken (you’ve been grazed in combat)
- Soak Rolls (you took damage, but you’re trying to ignore it)
- Draw a New Action Card (dealt another card at initiative)
- Reroll Damage
- Regain Power Points (Used for Magic and Powers)
- Influence the Story
Good Game Masters will freely give Bennies for when Players lean on their Hindrances, have a good roleplaying moment, or had a creative idea or solution. We want the players to use the Bennies and if the Game Master doesn’t give them out, the players will hoard them.
Settings
Savage Worlds has, over its publishing career, produced a lot of different setting books. It also licenses its system to third-party publishers. In addition, it has published several generic setting books such as:
- Fantasy Companion
- Horror Companion
- Science Fiction Companion
- Super Powers Companion (they have a Second Edition published in 2013)
So the following is not an exhaustive listing or discussion of their setting. But the settings that I find interesting. If you’re interested in purchasing these products, please visit my Resources Page for helpful Amazon Affiliate links.
Deadlands: This is the original setting for Savage Worlds. The entire rules system was created out of the original Deadlands book. Called The Weird West, it is set in an America where magic suddenly entered the world in 1863, up-ending existing power structures.
In Deadlands, General Lee did not surrender at the Appomattox Courthouse to General Grant. Instead, the war ground on past 1865 for three more bloody years. But in 1868 a massive earthquake hits the West Coast, shattering it from Mexicali to Oregon, and the Pacific Ocean wash in as the tectonic plate suddenly dropped below sea level. President Lincoln leaves office, succeeded by President Grant.
Then a new mineral was discovered, black as coal. But it burns five times hotter than coal, giving off a ghostly white vapor and screaming sound. It was quickly dubbed Ghost Rock. Engineers, scientists, and chemists soon found new and strange uses for Ghost Rock. The Union and Confederacy also discover new weapons powered by Ghost Rock.
The Americas of the 1880s is a house divided over multiple lines. Strange new science and magic have entered the world. Players play as gunslingers, preachers, charlatans, shaman, frontiersmen, and hucksters. Hucksters wield magic by playing cards with the Devil himself.
Rippers: Late 19th Century, Victorian, Gas-Lamp London. Your are part of a secret society whose job is to keep those things that go bump in the night from coming out into the light. Werewolves, vampires, possessed madmen and the like are the hunters and the hunted.
As a Ripper you are a member inducted into a Lodge. Your Lodge is responsible for a certain geographic area: to investigate strange occurrences, hunt down monsters, and fend off incursions by the Cabal. The Cabal is the evil organization trying to destabilize society through nefarious means.
Characters can be Alienists (18th Century shrinks), Clergy, an American Cowboy, Detective, Gadgeteer, or Officer. There are a lot of similarities between this setting and Deadlands, but they technically exist in different universes.
Game play borrows heavily from Cthulhu Mythos, combined with spirit possession, werewolves, and Frankenstein monsters. As Rippers, you have access to Rippertech, transplanting biological materials from monsters onto yourself. To fight monsters, sometimes you have to become one.
Another aspect of game play is your Lodge. It has its own resources and expenses. You can hire additional NPC Rippers, expand its facilities, and strengthen its defenses. This resource building and management puts this setting apart from Deadlands.
Weird Wars: This is also a war-horror themed setting, but not necessarily part of the same timeline as Deadlands or Rippers. Within this setting are four sub-setting books: Weird War I, Weird War II, Weird Wars Rome, and Tour of Darkness (Vietnam). Your enemies are not only the soldiers across the battlefield.
Those with the right knowledge know how to harness the power of death. But if that death happens on a mass scale in a confined area, then the power gained would be nigh-unimaginable. The New Dawn seeks to unlock these powers for their own end.
You play as part of a secretive and select group of agents for various national and international organizations. Your job is to stop the supernatural horror New Dawn will unleash. The carnage of the Somme is bad enough, you do not a worse horror. The secret organization might be the Twilight Legion, the New Templars, or the newly formed English MI-13, the French Bureau des Phenomenes Mysterieux Non Expliques, or the German Abteilung zur Weiterentwicklung Spezieller Waffen und Truppen.
While war ravages France, you play soldiers in the Shadow War against New Dawn. You find and fight the supernatural enemies spawned on the battlefields and trenches. But like all armies, there is order and a chain of command.
The players are a unit in this Shadow War. Typically, one player is the commanding officer of the group. The rest figure out their role in the unit. You must also decide whether you are an infantry squad, a tank crew, or a colonial militia.
Or you can be a group of irregulars, like most adventuring parties. Now you’re a mixture of soldiers and civilians from across the services. You will have to figure out how you came to exist and who you is your chain of command.
50 Fathoms: This is a sea-faring, pirate fantasy adventure setting. While your characters are from Earth, your ship was tricked or lead into a storm where you have crossed into the alien, water world of Caribdus. Its almost-human and alien natives have their own agendas.
Do you and your shipmates try to take over and become Pirate Kings and Queens? Or do you attempt to unravel the mystery of your passage here, while seeking the power to return home? You will have to contend with the Sea Hags who have cursed the world and who drawn unsuspecting Earth ships into their world. But if the Sea Hags have magic, then you may learn it too.
Slipstream: A 1930s Pulp Science Fiction setting, lets you ignore such pesky problems as the silent vacuum of space, the immense distances between solar systems, and communication barriers of modern science fiction.
Instead, you have rocket ships and ray guns! Pew! Pew! Don’t have a spacesuit? Don’t worry, the air in space is breathable, just a bit thin the farther out you go.
You play maybe a common citizen of this universe, or a diplomat, a ships engineer, mad scientist, or a psionicist. You can be a number of different strange alien races that all surprisingly walk upright on two legs!
As proven by Star Wars and Firefly, outer-space science fiction stories are just futuristic Westerns. Are you travelling lawmen or vigilantes seek your own form of justice? Maybe you’re travelling merchants seeking to make a quick buck on the fringes.
Evernight: What seems like a typical fantasy realm, is turned on its head when a scourge of savage spider-like creatures return, decimating century-old kingdoms and cultures. Entire cities have fallen and their residents turned into slaves for these spider-like monsters. Where the invaders have taken over, they bring with them Evernight.
You and your friends are survivors of the invasion. You must learn how to survive, grow in strength, and figure out how to defeat these invaders. Or you and your friends have escaped the Evernight a generation after the invasion. You find yourselves free of slavery, but squinting at the harsh light of day.
If you want to explore the wilder (and wider) world of tabletop roleplaying games go there! If you want to start to learn on how to paint miniatures, click already! Or maybe you want to read more of my posts about Dungeons and Dragons, then click away here!
