Savage Worlds is a generic system written by Pinnacle Studios, and published by Studio 2 Publishing it has won the award "The People’s Choice 2003" for "Best Roleplaying Game".
Savage Worlds is a generic system and as such tailors itself to that genre of gaming. Although the game system has uses outside of table top roleplay, (and can be used in table top war games) the difference is that on a roleplaying game, the games master describes everything, on war games the players can see the models on the table and don’t need to describe everything.
Savage worlds has five attributes which it calls "traits" they are as follows:
Agility - Which governs speed and thief like skills and of course your dexterity.
Smarts - The next one in this list, Smarts is the measure of your characters intellectual ability.
Spirit - This is the measure of your willpower and the ability to use magic if your setting allows it. Strength - Your characters raw physical power, high levels of this will make you like Conan the barbarian.
Vigour - This ability affects your endurance, and your toughness against physical damage/disease and poison's.
In character creation you have an initial point in each stat, with 5 points to spend in character creation. This can lead to an all-rounder character who has 2 “dots” (A dot is a dice type 1 dot equates to D4 2 dots D6 and so on) in each stat or a character with a realistic strength and weakness. Some who have 3 “dots” in one stat and other stats with less “dots” in them, no stat may be raised above five “dots” this is including the initial “dot” you start with.
Moving on Savage Worlds uses derived stats there are and affects the game as flows. Pace is the movement for the game, this is represented by 2 yards in the real world, or by 1 inch per 1 pace on a table top war game, in a role play game this would help the GM measure who was chasing after who (and how fast people would catch up to each other).
Parry is the ability to avoid being hit, the higher the parry the harder it is for you to be hit in a fight, during hand to hand combat.
Charisma is a stat that governs looks/personality and as such is only able to be purchased as a background edge or as a hindrance.
Finally there is toughness, this is based on your vigour and is what stops small blows from hurting you, making it like a pain threshold.Then there are edges and hindrances, which are background
abilities and disabilities. These abilities can range from magic to quick draw, the hindrances range from missing leg to no luck.
Skills are as expected, meaning a large selection of skills e.g. driving covers all land driven vehicles, guns cover all forms of guns and so on. The beauty of this system is that you can chop and change the skills to be more realistic if you wish.
Game mechanics
Savage Worlds used 6 dice D4,D6,D8,D10,D12 and a D20. Players only roll D4 to D12, the GM is the only person to use D20 and that is on encounter charts in homebrew and possible published settings.
The good thing to this use of dice system is that if you have played dungeons and dragons you will feel at home using this, however if you are new to the whole role playing side of table top gaming; it is a daunting sight seeing different types of dice (I have seen new players become confused
over the various dice types).
Players roll the skill they are testing or their attribute along with a wild dice, this is represented by a D6 and you take the better result of the two dice. So if you’re a bit lost on how this works, here is an example: Billy tests his gun skill against a paper target and rolls his skill (D4) and his wild dice (D6) he then rolls a 2 on the D4 and rolls a 5 on the D6. Bill takes the 5 as it's a high number and hits the target.
Another mechanic of the game makes dice rolls open ended if you roll the max number on the dice (an ace) you rolled; you roll it again and add that to the roll. Again if your lost, here is an explanation: Sarah rolls a D6 for stealth and D6 for her wild dice, she then rolls a 6 on the normal dice and then rerolls it and gets a 4 for a total of 10. On the wild dice she rolls a 3, in that scenario Sarah would take the 10, and pass her stealth check.
There are mechanics in the game for opposed rolls, which are a contest of "Who rolls highest?" to see who wins. Co-Op rolls are there to add a bonus if a group is searching for something, or trying to help each other.
Bennies is the cosmic luck in Savage Worlds with each character getting three Bennies. Bennies can be used to reroll bad rolls or for soaking up damage.
Combat
Combat in Savage Worlds is very quick for this you need a deck of cards with the jokers left in, this is unusual, as most RPG systems normally use nothing but dice. There are a couple of exceptions in the roleplaying world, with games like Savage Worlds and Tokyo Nova for example.
Combat works by dealing cards out to players, and one to the GM for the NPC's. Special NPC's called "Wild Card's" get dealt a card as well. The cards go in reverse order (from the standard suit order) from Ace down to 2 in priority. Unless you use the joker, at which point you can choose when you go or interrupt someone and get +2 to all your rolls that turn.
Combat is strange as there is no HP, instead you have to roll over the toughness of the NPC you are fighting, and then you put them in a status effect (shaken). From then on they roll to recover, if they don’t, any hit will cause wounds and enough wounds will kill the NPC (wild cards have 3 wounds before dying).
This is a interesting, but may cause an issue with players who tank up, all they have to do is take a high combat score and take a high intimidation, which means you get a -2 for multiple action but if you successfully intimidate this puts them as shaken. Then you hit them up with your combat skill, (which is at a -2) if you hit, you kill them. This is simple enough to fix however, have tank players fight none human NPC's, who are not affected by psychology.
The system deals well with mass combat, so if you setup a big zombie game, it is easy to deal with because of this simplicity. At the end of the day, the combat system is an interesting change from your general DnD hack and slash HP combat, because its semi realistic. I would say with the shaken status effect, they go down in combat quickly, but if you’re in an iron slugger sort of fight, it could last a few rounds.
GM’ing Savage world
GM-ing this system once you have read the rules is simple enough, (with it being easy to learn) and as a whole, is a useful addition to the role player’s shelf. One pit fall to avoid is new players mixing up the dice types but apart from that, I can't complain really. I personally feel that the combat system would have been better with HP, instead of what it currently has, but then again that is what makes this system unique, so its a matter of personal preference.
As a whole the system is really simple, which aids the GM in cutting run time down and allowing for more roleplaying. Overall it is down to the individual GM's ability to run a game, and how well he knows the ins and outs of the system.
2 comments:
Hi Joy and welcome to CTD, the first thing I would like to say is that I think you may have misunderstood Raksha, in that his point about dying easily was not based on PC's but actually on our NPC opponents. I think its quite clear from your post you are a fan of savage worlds, on the whole i do agree with you but I do concur with Raksha that the combat system could do with reviewing.
hay kremlic onw of the mian guys for the site has asked fi you can comback more offten
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