Ask The Readers Other Systems Random musings RPG Savage Worlds

The one RPG I wholeheartedly recommend to any gamer is …

In my case it’s Savage Worlds. Savage Worlds is a generic roleplaying game that allows you to run games in any genre, the rules are easy to learn but have a certain complexity that will not disappoint more tactically-minded players. In fact Savage Worlds can easily be used as miniature strategy game, or you can play it without any miniatures at all.

The latest version of the rules is the Savage Worlds Explorers Edition, a 160-paged digest-sized book which contains everything you need to run a game in almost any genre. Everything else is just optional. Basically you can run endless campaigns using just this book.

And what amazes me the most is that this great game sets you back mere $10 for a full-color paperback book! That’s another reason why anyone should give it a chance.

What is the game you would recommend to your fellow gamers? As always I am very interested in your thoughts, so please post your comments below!
Stargazer

Michael Wolf is a German games designer and enthusiast best known for his English language role-playing games blog, Stargazer's World, and for creating the free rules-light medieval fantasy adventure game Warrior, Rogue & Mage. He has also worked as an English translator on the German-language Dungeonslayers role-playing game and was part of its editorial team. In addition to his work on Warrior, Rogue & Mage and Dungeonslayers, he has created several self-published games and also performed layout services and published other independent role-playing games such as A Wanderer's Romance, Badass, and the Wyrm System derivative Resolute, Adventurer & Genius, all released through his imprint Stargazer Games. Professionally, he works as a video technician and information technologies specialist. Stargazer's World was started by Michael in August 2008.

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8 comments

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Dane of War

Savage Worlds is a very good system, but I've found that it only seems to work very well for "mostly human" characters. When you want to play characters which are deviating significantly from the human norm – supers, extra-dimensional entities and so forth – the system itself tends to break down.

So – for the aforementioned "mostly human" campaigns, Savage Worlds is really hard to beat. But IMO, GURPS is far better suited for all-around any-genre campaigns, even though it is a bit crunchy.

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Kristian

Dane of War, you mention that Savage Worlds breaksdown with supers, but I have to strongly disagree. Necessary Evil and Super Powers Companion are two Savage Worlds products from Pinnacle that really make supers work. Granted, it's not as granular and finely tunable as HERO, but it works really well.

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Siskoid

I recently converted to Savage Worlds (we're playing Evernight) thanks to recommendations such as these. We're liking it enough that I think we'll continue to do so after Evernight wraps up. Ideally, I play three "series" a year (though usually closer to 2), and while I want to keep delving into other games, I think SW will be used for at least one of them each year.

It takes GURPS' spot, simply because of how intense GURPS' character generation process is. I had become a chore to make characters, especially with new players. And for the record, I disagree that GURPS does high-powered campaigns all that smoothly. Maybe 4e, I'm not too sure, but 3e Supers were pretty grounded compared to more dedicated super-systems like M&M, DCHeroes, etc.

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Questing GM

$10? Now this is definitely going into my buying list.

I had always been intrigued about the fast plug-and-play aspect of Savage Worlds. I will definitely need to read this for myself.

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Jeff Moore

It's hard for me to participate in these: "What one game would you recommend?" kinds of questions, because as a designer I want to pimp my own stuff and I feel a moral obligation to resist that inclination. Given that, I like to recommend "free" games whenever possible, just because I know how hard it is for a gaming group to part with their monies these days. In the spirit of Savage Worlds, I think I can pretty strongly recommend Anti-Paladin Games: Mini Six. It's the Open D6 game system compressed into a 36 page document and I believe it's as versatile as Savage Worlds. And since it only uses 6 sided dice anyone should be able to locate the tools they need to play without a trip to the store.

Regards,

Jeff Moore

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    Stargazer

    I have to agree that MiniSix is great. It's definitely one of the best free games available right now.

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Ray Wenderlich

I love Savage Worlds as well – it's also a great system to introduce people who are new to RPGs to. We played a neat zombie-based campaign with Savage Worlds once, it was a lot of fun – until we all got eaten! :]

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migo

Mine is Reign Enchiridion, for much the same reasons as you recommend Savage Worlds (minus full colour interior), and I simply prefer Reign's system to that used in Savage Worlds.

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