A Fast and Furious Review of Savage Worlds: Deluxe Edition
Savage Worlds isn’t a first choice. It’s not one of those super-massive RPGs that pull you out of a normal existence and into the orbit of Planet Nerd. As most “settingless systems” are, Savage Worlds is an alternative for those that have had their fill of the popular RPG dynasties. It’s one of the best niche RPG products out there and it has a cult following that is well deserved. Encounters taking too long but you don’t want to lose the grid? Page flipping subsystems causing players’ eyes to gloss over but you still want a satisfying level of crunch? Then drinking the Savage Worlds Kool-aid might be worth it.
Because this game is not particularly for “new gamers”, it’s more for those that have a well informed guess about what they enjoy in gaming, I’m going to keep this review in the spirit of Savage Worlds itself. I’m going to keep short and sweet with a Wild Die’s (d6’s) worth of “what it is” and “what it isn’t”.
What Savage Worlds Is
It is “Fast, Furious, and Fun”. The game’s tagline couldn’t be more accurate. The system minimizes book keeping while keeping all the the action and die rolling of more traditional games. Action resolution is fast, combat is a breeze to run while remaining visceral and full of interesting choices, and character/bad guy creation takes about 2 to 10 minutes. It scratches all of the traditional game itches, but it does it with much, much less baggage.
It’s crunchy and combat oriented. Savage Worlds is the king of pulp adventures. It spend the majority of its pages describing tactical combat where the heroes are larger than life and so are the villains. Combine this with open-ended exploding dice and you have a game primed for high flying action on a grid without tons of rules bloat. This is not a game of social combat, its roots are set squarely in the shadow running, dungeon crawling games it’s meant to be an alternative for.
It’s made to be skinned. Savage Worlds is a dream for GMs that want to take their current fiction obsession and turn it into a working table-top game with zero fuss. I ran a game in the world of Final Fantasy Tactics Advance with just enough house rules to define new the new races. (That’s a Gameboy game you guys.) As long as you have Grand Adventure in mind this game has you covered no matter what you want to do.
What Savage Worlds Isn’t
It is not a story game. When people see a small 6″x9″ rule book they might think “story game”. Savage Worlds is a reduction of what makes traditional games fun. It is structured like a traditional game and, more importantly, feels like a traditional game. It’s just way fucking easier.
It is not ready out of the box. Starting a new Savage Worlds game can take work. Even if you’re not introducing any house rules, getting everyone on the same page is extra work that a game like D&D doesn’t take. While the Deluxe Edition attempts to minimize this by offering a buffet of setting rules to choose from it’s still a major consideration. (There are Savage Worlds settings available for purchase, but none of them turn my crank.)
It is not for people wanting lots of options. The “bolt” power is every magic missile, eye-laser, energy blast, stinging bee cloud, lance of ice, lightning bolt, and ectoplasm gun your group will see. The game is made to be both fast and generic and that means reducing options. While you can skin the “bolt” spell to anything you want, Savage Worlds is not a game for those that want a robust suite of mechanical tools for running a game or building a character. (The Deluxe Edition does include more options, but not nearly enough.)
Join the Savages
I’m going to gush for a second: Savage Worlds is amazing. It’s not perfect; its design space can feel limited. But it is the most traditional functional game I’ve ever played. I have yet to get a better ratio of effort to fun out of any system, it is truly effortless to play/run a game in Savage Worlds while keeping things fun and fresh. And at $10 for the print 6″x9″ Deluxe Edition, there is no excuse not to take your regular D&D group, Shadowrun group, Vampire group, or Warhammer Fantasy/40k group and give Savage Worlds a spin.
