Savage Worlds - What's the big deal?

[wpeters]

As you may know I've been listening to a lot of roleplaying podcasts recently and all of them without exception are raving about Pinnacle's Savage Worlds RPG. Apparently it's incredibly simple, versatile, universal, makes the GM's life an absolute breeze, allowing them to sit back and merely enjoy their plots and, if the reviews are to be believed

Comments

[k_matic]

Bah, another load of hype for yet another same-old, same-old system. This is why I only stick with the 3 or 4 major systems and ignore all the flavours of the month.

Shame though, as £6.50 sounded like a bargain.

[wpeters]

Er... well, I was planning on running a short campoaign using it between our current Basic D&D and 4th ed D&D - mind you you might not be here by then anyway :)

[thewhitespider]

Actually, I really like Savage Worlds. I think it's unfair to lump it with FUDGE. FUDGE is a nice idea but it's really just a dice mechanic, not even a rule system; the GM has to pretty much write the game system as well as the setting. Unless you want to adjust the magic or psionics rules for a particular setting, there's no need to change the SW rules.

Any game system has to strike a balance between crunchy numbers and ease/flow of play. That balance will tend to drive what sort of game the system is good for; d20 is excellent for high fantasy dungeon hacking, a bit rubbish for modern day espionage, 7th Sea is awesome for swashbuckling adventure but fails to adapt to the Star Trek setting. I think Savage Worlds just happens to hit a balance which works very well for a type of game I like.

[wpeters]

Perhaps I was a bit vague in my ranting. I actually really like the look of it and I am going to buy it and use it. It looks like a really nice rule system and just the right level of rules for my tastes. I also like the idea of using bennies, wild dice and even playing cards to call initiative.
What rankles me is the gushing praise for it when I feel that a number of systems have done exactly the same thing already and years ago.

I agree with your comment about Fudge. I was going to mention Risus too but I thought that was a bit unfair as that's a gimmick game to be played as a one-off when inebriated :)

As you've played it, I wanted to ask about the initiative system. Can the 'Wild Cards' effect the cards in any way? Just pulling cards from a deck is completely random and means that a Ninja wouldn't be able to react any faster than a Mountain Troll. That seems a bit unfair.

[thewhitespider]

Actually, the initiative system is the one thing I don't like about the rules - as you say, it just feels too random.

There are - umm...are they advantages? - that you can buy which let you draw two initiative cards and keep the best, or redraw if you draw below a five, for example. But I can't help but think that a dice roll for initiative might just be easier.

I think the initiative system was inherited from Deadlands, where everything was about building a poker hand.

[epocalypse]

I''ve been intrigued by this for a while, Dom Mooney over at BITS has been running a few Savage games set in GDW's 2300ad universe at various cons.

[wpeters]

That actually sounds like it could be intriguing. I never got on with 2300's rules, but the setting was appealing.