Retrospective Review: Savage Worlds

"Fast! Furious! Fun!" - Savage Worlds

This game was designed for the busy GM juggling family, job, and hobby, and is intended to be fast to prepare and to run across multiple genres. For me, it delivers on those promises, and it has been my go-to RPG since the late 2000s; I've been running it nigh on 17 years, and playing it solo almost as long, although it was only last year I started playing under another GM.

Core Mechanics

Roll a die, apply modifiers, try to meet or beat a target number; that number is usually 4, but is the target's Parry when rolling to hit in melee and its Toughness when rolling for damage. More experienced characters roll a die with more sides, giving them a better chance of success; PCs and other major characters also roll a d6 and can take the score from that instead if they prefer.

Most NPCs can take one solid hit, PCs can take three. PCs and the GM also have a number of Bennies, tokens they can spend to reroll dice or trigger effects.

The Editions

The general trends are for each edition to be larger, with more options, spells, and monsters; but you could say that for any game.

Savage Worlds (2003, 144 pages). I have a copy of this, but purely to complete my collection; it was already obsolete at the time I discovered the game. This edition received the 2003 Origin Gamers' Choice Award for best role-playing game.

Savage Worlds Explorer's Edition (2007, 160 pages). This was the one I started playing, and the main change from the first edition is that melee weapons now roll a die for damage instead of adding a fixed amount to the user's Strength die type. It was relatively basic by the standards of later editions, with only human characters and a single sample adventure.

Savage Worlds Deluxe (2011, 192 pages). This edition added a lot of World War II era weapons, sample scenarios for multiple genres, rules for social conflicts, nonhuman races, and a selection of archetypes, partially pregenerated characters needing only the allocation of some Hindrances and a skill point or two before being ready to play. This edition also had the best quickstart rules; I could, and did, run entire campaigns using only those. I was also very fond of the digest-sized softback rulebook, which was small enough to stuff into my holiday bag and cheap enough that I could buy it for all my players. In many ways, this was the edition I enjoyed playing the most, and sometimes I still wonder if updating to SWADE was really worth the effort.

Savage Worlds Adventure Edition (2018, 208 pages). SWADE made a large number of relatively minor tweaks, which taken together make it quite a different beast. Gone are the pages of WWII gear and the character archetypes; skills are modified, the Charisma stat is gone, there's a new Arcane Background. While SW has always been intended to cover multiple genres, this version of the game is also intended to cover multiple play styles, and largely succeeds; it does this by replacing the earlier tables of die roll modifiers with general guidance for the GM, and by adding a range of new tools like Quick Encounters. However, there are no sample adventures in this edition, and I think the changes to the Powers system have made spellcasters overpowered; they were underpowered earlier, and I think the designers over-corrected.

Pathfinder for Savage Worlds (2024, 384 pages across two books). As it says on the tin, this is a Savage Worlds implementation of Pathfinder, and the publishers are slowly converting Pathfinder adventure paths to this system. It's based on the SWADE rules, but includes some elements from the SWADE Fantasy Companion; the increase in page count is largely driven by a tenfold increase in the size of the bestiary. The most significant changes, not found in other editions, are the Class Edges; each of these is a bundle of features allowing a PC to closely emulate how a Pathfinder class works, although it's entirely possible to ignore them and use more normal character builds. I haven't run this yet, but someday...

Pros and Cons

Minimal prep. More than any other game I own, this is low effort for the GM. I have in the past built an entire campaign in half an hour while the players were generating characters, and I routinely create NPCs, monsters and vehicles on the fly, often not feeling the need to record their stats. I guess this is about the confidence I have in the game system, and in myself when I'm running it.

Fast play. This is the only game I own where I have run battles with fifty or more figures per side in an hour or two using the basic combat rules. The changes in SWADE make play even faster, allowing the GM to run combat at any one of several levels of abstraction, from detailed gritty fights up to a single die roll.

Multiple genres. SW succeeds in being able to cover multiple genres with ease, although once you add automatic weapons and explosives, full fat combat slows down quite a bit. The built-in Setting Rules allow you to tweak the core system to match your setting.

Pulpy. There are some genres it does better than others; I find it perfect for pulp, but the further you stray from Conan, Indiana Jones and Star Wars, the less good the fit. You could do Savage Pride and Prejudice, but it would work better for Savage Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.

Legalistic. You have to read the rules as if they were a contract; usually, the designers only mention something once, not necessarily where you would expect them to, and it takes some time for the GM to get far enough into their mindset to be able to make spot rulings confidently.

Changes Over the Years

These have been relatively limited, although SWADE is a different beast to earlier editions; I moved from Explorer's Edition to Deluxe seamlessly, but it took me several years before I stopped mistakenly recalling Deluxe rules and using them in SWADE games, and I learned the hard way not to change editions in mid-campaign.

Character options. Each edition has provided additional character options, adding races, Powers and whatnot; as an example, there were 30 Powers in the Explorer's Edition, 50 in Deluxe, and SWADE has 54 (Pathfinder for Savage Worlds has 64). Initially, the designers took the view that there should be no way of reading minds, as it made mystery scenarios too easy to solve; but they relaxed this restraint later.

Gear. This ebbs and flows; Deluxe added a lot, and SWADE took most of it away again. I'm not sure why. However, the longer I play, the less I feel the need to add any gear beyond what's in the core rules.

Chases. These are obviously a difficult area for the publisher, as they change significantly in every edition. They're difficult for me too; I've struggled with them in every edition.

My Future with Savage Worlds

SW is such a good fit for the way I run games that it's difficult for me to imagine finding anything better; and at this stage of my life, there would need to be a massive improvement in gameplay to justify starting over with a new game. For the games I want to play and run, I don't need anything beyond the core rulebook, although that hasn't stopped me buying a ton of supplements and settings.

It's good enough for what I do, and I think it'll see me out.