RPG Addict: Savage Worlds - The Love and The Hate.

I've been putting this post off for ages. Is it because I am pretty sure most of my players hate to read? No. It's that there are so many really good and exceptionally bad RPGs that I want to review. Picking the first was a tough choice, but I thought I'd start off with Savage Worlds as it has a special shell of hate wrapped around the love I once had for it. When I first found this system, I thought I'd found a system I could use for every game I ever wanted to run. The more I read of the system though the less and less I thought of it as an RPG and the more I thought of it as a game that wanted me to make it interesting by writing my own fucking set of extra rules to prop up the bullshit they say is an RPG system.

The bare-bones nature of the system makes it hard for new players to understand how to get the most out of the game and does not favor those interested in the RP part of RPG. It is doing it's best to be a core system for any type of game you might want to play, so it has to cover a lot of bases. Doing this means it doesn't really cover any of them well. The core Savage Worlds setting is setting neutral, so any game played with it needs to have a world written. More than likely after writing the world you will need to write some house rules or design your own skills/edges/hindrances/spells for the game. Essentially you'll need to write half of the game yourself. 

Alternatively, one could shell out further ducats for a setting book for the system, but then what's the point of a universal core system that can't function without it's supplementary parts?

It's also pass fail skill system with the possibility of doing exponentially better with a good roll. The problem is failing still just means you don't succeed. That works fine in combat, but not so much outside of it during ya know, the rest of the game. Nothing in the rules as written implies the GM should take a fail as an opportunity to twist the story in a new direction due to unexpected consequences, just that the character does not succeed at there action. 

Every time I think of this game I think of the example of picking a simple pad-lock. It would be a standard difficulty since the lock isn't fighting back. Let's say the player succeeds with many extra successes on top of the require difficulty. Well the rules say it should mean something extra, so the pad-lock is picked extra well, at an impossibly fast speed for no reason, or some other nonsense. Let's say they fail at the test. Well the rules say they don't succeed so that pad-lock stays locked. Does the player just keep rolling until they succeed? If that's the case what the fuck is the point of failing in the first place?

I've run a few different games with the Savage Worlds system, both pre-made and home-brew. Both types left me with mixed feelings about the overall usefulness of the Savage Worlds system. The system is largely a core mechanic that I don't like that much that wants me to either write my own world for it or shell out some ducats for one of theirs. It has always felt like it was good for maybe a one shot, but awful for extended play.

The Savage Worlds core book offers some ideas on ways to add different elements to your game to try to make it unique (things like Magic, Super Science, Psionics, etc), but they all use the same mechanics so it ends up feeling like the exact same action. So if a character is blasting an enemy with a magic missile, gyro-bullets, or a psychic blast they roll the same thing, have the same result, but just get described differently.

Not to say the supplemental worlds aren't great, but they aren't. When I read through them it feels like I could have come up with something similar without spending the money given that whatever the supplement offers doesn't fundamentally alter anything from the core book. In other words, all the supplements offer is a different flavored fireball.

This fluff wrapped mechanic is where I take issue. It's a system that uses as many different types of polyhedral dice as it can without really adding anything to the game play except that the GM will have to point out which dice are which to new players.

Character creation is geared towards very one dimensional characters. It favors those that enjoy min/maxing their characters for optimal combat readiness. The attributes, skills, and the edges/hindrances all end up on your character sheet as a list of words with + or - to some sort of roll on them. There is no effort in the system to help new players understand how to use their list of words in a way that will make the game fun for them.

For example: if you want to make a wizard, you can just dump all your points into the magic skills and you're set. Want to be a charming wizard detective that rides a motorcycle? Okay you can do that but they will be a moderately charming, mediocre wizard, newbie detective, that can ride a motorcycle reasonably well until you start advancing your character to a much higher level. Then you get a list of your character's attributes, skills, and other nonsense that don't really help a new/shy player get into their character.

The core for Savage Worlds is not a complete game. The company that publishes it would prefer you purchase their supplements (as anyone can plainly see by the two page ad spreads they do for a bunch of their supplements in the beginning of the book). They also want you to buy their gaming minis and their maps and everything else. This gives you an alternative to spending hours and days creating your house rules and world story to ruin with Savage Worlds clunky-ness.

All this leads me to believe that if I want a game with any sort of substance to it whatsoever, I'm better off finding a system with a setting to match what I need. Even if I can't find a setting with everything I want, I'm still better off finding something with most and then house ruling the rest. 

The Questions I promised (as objectively as possible)

• What is the goal of this game?

The game's tagline is "Fast! Furious! Fun!" If you are looking for a system to run quick superficial one-shots with then this may be perfect for you. The game aims to make getting to the actual play quickly. It does that coldly and brutally.

• What type of story can you tell with this game?

One without an immense amount of depth. It isn't bad at tactical combat on a gaming map. It's just the bits between the combat that leave something to be desired mechanically.

• What type of player will enjoy this game?

Players that want combat, but don't want it to take a long time. It's a great game for players that are recovering from a crunchy system with hour long combat chunks. It is not a great system for someone brand new to role-playing as it doesn't really have much focus on how to actually use the system to have a personality or role play the person your supposed to be in the game.

• How easy is this game for new players?

Depends on how new. Generally it's fairly easy for people familiar with role-playing, but brand new players will get confused with constantly switching to different types of dice and not ever getting clear direction on how to act. The concepts of role-playing a character are not really addressed in this game. There is nothing in the rules to breath life into the characters as people. The broad strokes during character creation don't connect the concept to the gameplay as anymore more than a roll modifier to very rolls.

Final Verdict

Save your money and buy something that's closer to the setting you already know you want to play. Tweak something that is most of the way there, then starting from scratch with this bare-bones garbage.