First, a disclaimer: this is an entirely personal opinion that is definitely not meant to attack other systems… even if some of my reasoning is driven by comparisons to those other systems.
If I do poke at any systems or their communities it is entirely in gest. I can’t help myself sometimes… twenty years in the military… ribbing my friends is sort of habitual now. I’ll preemptively apologize to the Dungeons and Dragons community (who may currently be struggling with the idea that there are, in fact, systems other than Dungeons and Dragons out there).
I’ve been playing Dungeons and Dragons since I was a teenager, so that’s (counts on fingers) thirty-ish years now. I started with Advanced Dungeons and Dragons in the 80s and have played most of the iterations since. I’ve played most other major systems, as well as many Indie systems, and have sincerely enjoyed the time I spent playing each of them.
However, since discovering it a few years back, it’s the Savage Worlds system by Pinnacle Entertainment Group that has best kept my interest.
I won’t claim that it’s a perfect system. It’s notorious for its sometimes odd dice probabilities. Its “swinginess” (apparently that’s not a real word). It can be unexpectedly deadly for player characters (arguably it’s more realistic). Some love its unique initiative system, but others admittedly hate it. That is to say, I recognize some of its mechanics are polarizing. Regardless, it’s the system I keep coming back to.
Why?
Savage Worlds is Comparatively Easy
Savage Worlds is, at its core, designed to be fast, furious, and fun (their tag line). The mechanics are kept easy to understand and unobtrusive, but they still have enough depth to satisfy those who like a little crunch. Rules-medium as it were.
- Character creation takes little time to learn.
- The core mechanics are easy to pick up.
- Combat never seems to get bogged down.
- I rarely need to comb through a manual looking for a rule.
I love introducing people to tabletop roleplaying games. I’ve had the pleasure of being able to do so for many people. It is my genuine experience, that for new ttrpg players, Savage Worlds is significantly easier to learn than other more popular but also more complicated systems.
This translates to Savage Worlds being a game that’s easy to learn and easy to play. Due to the easy-to-grasp rules games tend to run faster creating a feeling of fast-paced action-adventure excitement, especially during combat (especially compared to Dungeons and Dragons where after level 5 there’s often time for a nap between turns).
Savage Worlds is Setting Agnostic
I don’t like being limited to a single setting. Never have. I enjoy the High Fantasy settings of Dungeons and Dragons… but I also enjoy Urban Fantasy, Horror, Post-Apocalyptic, Sci-Fi, etc.
Typically a tabletop roleplaying game is designed around a specific setting, and the players learn the system that favours the setting they most enjoy. For example:
- Dungeons and Dragons for High or Epic Fantasy
- World of Darkness for Urban Fantasy
- Call of Cthulhu for Horror
- Palladium Rifts for Post Apocalyptic
- Firefly RPG for Sci-Fi
- Cyberpunk for, well, Cyberpunk
But for someone like me, who likes to bounce between settings with each new campaign, learning the often complicated rulesets for six+ different systems is overwhelming.
Often what you end up seeing is players taking the system they know best and modifying it to handle the settings they’re interested in (Dungeons and Dragons players are notorious for this). This never works as well as simply using a system already designed for the setting they want, but I get it.
Savage Worlds is an exception. It’s officially setting agnostic, meaning that it is designed to offer a core set of rules that can accommodate almost any setting. Subjectively it will never do so as well as a specialized system… but it is “good enough” at doing everything.
This means I can run a modern-day horror game, followed by a sci-fi game, maybe followed by a fantasy game, all under a single ruleset. No relearning a system every time I decide to change things up. I like that.
Savage Worlds Settings are Amazing
Simply put, Savage Worlds has some of the most unique and memorable settings you could ever possibly imagine.
- Want to play in the Wild West, but a fantasy version that’s been overrun with demons, monsters, magic, and more… Deadlands.
- Want to relive your time in school, become a student who attends a university with a history of occult activity… East Texas University.
- Want to sail the high seas as Pirates on a cursed, flooded, world filled with mysterious creatures born from its depths… 50 Fathoms.
- Want to explore the depths of space, visiting strange planets and meeting exotic aliens, as part of a starship’s crew… The Last Parsec.
- Want to fight the forces of evil in Victorian times, hunting monsters, stealing their powers, and implanting them into yourself… Rippers.
The Savage Worlds system has developed a reputation as a strong ttrpg system capable of handling any setting you can throw at it. This reputation has attracted several well-known brands who have licensed their content as official Savage Worlds settings.
- Rifts is a post-apocalyptic setting made famous as part of the Palladium system (a system I used to enjoy when I was young).
- Recognize Flash Gordon, Lankhmar, or The Goon? Each of them is popular on its own, and each is a playable Savage Worlds setting.
- Pathfinder. Yes, that Pathfinder. Piazo is still going strong with its Pathfinder system, but Pathfinder is now also a Savage Worlds setting.
It’s not just the settings themselves that amaze me either. It’s the diversity. Each Savage World setting is wildly unique and original. An advantage of a generic ttrpg system is that it can handle any setting you can imagine. You can break out of the proverbial moulds.
Classless Character Design with no Hit Points
Few things frustrate me more in a ttrpg than classes and hit points.
Class vs Classless Characters
With class-based character design, you decide at character creation whether you’re a fighter, mage, rogue, etc. Your character’s skills are derived from the class you chose, and no deviation is possible without implementing often complicated multi-class rules. Want to create a character with a combination of rogue and paladin skills… perhaps a street kid taken in by the church and now employed as a holy assassin… sorry, most class-based systems don’t allow for that kind of hybridization. You’re either a paladin or a rogue, not both.
Classless systems on the other hand do allow this kind of freedom. You don’t pick a class, but rather decide what skills you want to invest in. Nothing is stopping me from creating a character whose initial skillset includes rogue skills combined with faith casting… the holy assassin I mentioned. The only limitation to who and what my character becomes is my imagination, the rules in no way hinder me from trying anything.
Hit Points vs Wounds
Now hit points; I hate tracking them as a GM. I despise the trickle-down damage mechanic… hit a person, you did 1d8 damage out of 80 hit points. I hate that a character can be hit by ten+ arrows and still be perfectly fine. And I especially hate that losing hitpoints carries no consequence; as long as you have 1 hit point left you are full fighting strength… but lose that last hit point… … …
Savage Worlds replaces hit points with wounds. Important characters can take three wounds. Other characters can take one wound. Get hit successfully and you’re wounded. Lose all your wounds and you’re down. This system is silly easy to follow and track. Further, wounds have consequences. Characters receive a -1 to any rolls they make per wound they suffer from. The more wounded you are, the harder it is for you to do things. Makes sense.
This plays out as more realistic action combat. If you get stabbed, it hurts. Because most enemies have a single wound if you stab or shoot someone… that’s it… they’re out of the fight.
In every measurable manner, the Wound system is better than the Hit Point system. Unless you like your ttrpgs to feel like mmo bullet sponge style combat, but I don’t.