I’ve noticed a rather curious trend since Savage Worlds opened up its licensing this year: Everyone and his brother is producing Savage Worlds compatible games and/or settings. This frenzy reminds me a lot of the early D20 craze in which a glut of products, many of which were very poor quality, appeared when the OGL was made available.
I realize Pinnacle is trying to maintain some quality control over the licensees, but it doesn’t really extend too far beyond the concept stage. To quote their policy:
Once we grant your company the license, you can make whatever you want without submitting it for further approval, as long as you follow the guidelines below.
Am I over-reacting? Maybe, but take a gander at just a few of the SW games/settings that have shown up within the last 18-months or so:
- Strike Force 7
- Mars
- Day After Ragnarok
- Sherwood
- Hardboiled
- Dawn of Legends
- War of the Dead
- Cursed Empire
- Legends of Steel
- Lost World of Hador
- Savaged Freeport
- Sticks and Stones
- SpirosBlaak
- Realms of Eldrath
- Winterweir
- It Has To Be Done
- Blackhole
- Agents of Oblivion
- Runepunk
- Realms of Cthuhlu
- Iron Dynasty
- Wonderland No More
- Ravaged Earth
- Shaintar
- Suzerain
- Hellfrost
- Necropolis 2350
- Sundered Skies
- Savaged Vampire Earth
A couple of others that are rumored, in the works, or supposedly coming out someday:
- Degrees in Horror
- Darwin’s World
- Space 1889
- SpirosBlaak
- Interface Zero
- Aetherbound
- Titan Fall
This is just the tip of the iceberg – if you peruse the Pinnacle forums you’ll find a lot of others in the works. I also haven’t even mentioned all the supplements, adventures, or even the Savage Fans material that’s now out there. Oh, and let’s not forget PEG, Inc.’s own offerings:
- Deadlands Reloaded
- Solomon Kane
- Slipstream
- Rippers
- Pirates of the Spanish Main
- Low Life
- 50 Fathoms
- Necessary Evil
- Evernight
- Weird Wars
- Weird Wars II
I applaud Pinnacle’s attempt to take advantage of the void created by the GSL. I also think Savage Worlds is a pretty decent, generic system. It’s something that can be applied to a variety of settings pretty effectively. That said, it’s not really universal in my opinion. No matter what you do, it has a pulp feel to it and thus things like low fantasy and gritty, realism are not really its forte. For example, I really like the products put out by 12-to-Midnight but Savage Worlds is a poor fit for the horror/supernatural investigation genre. Savaged Cthulhu? That’s another setting it doesn’t do well because the feel is all wrong unless you want to play a pulpy, tommy-gun blazing, Old One killing type of game. Low Life is another setting that I really love (Andy Hopp’s art and twisted concept is awesome), but which stinks (and I say that after running it using SW) as a savaged product because it doesn’t capture the setting’s flavor at all. Instead it just feels like every other SW Fantasy game only with different races. It works great for Solomon Kane in comparison because it’s got that pulpy feel to it. Conan too.
Of course, this is my opinion: I like my games to capture, mechanically & thematically, the feeling of the setting. Sometimes this means more crunch and sometimes it means something much more free-form and narrative. System matters to me and thus I’m left scratching my head about some of these settings.
What I’d like to see is more serious reviews of some of the licensed products – most of the information I’ve seen have either been press releases or interviews on podcasts which generally amount to little more than a sales pitch from the creators. The Game’s the Thing podcast has reviewed a couple of products: Sherwood which got a lukewarm review at best and Legends of Steel which received a slightly better review. I’d love to hear from people who’ve bought and played these settings: What they liked, what they didn’t, and whether they think they got their money’s worth out of the product, because without some sort of quality control, whether from the company or from the gamers themselves, history is liable to repeat itself.
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I recently commented on this exact thing while talking to some friends. I love Savage Worlds, but recently I am getting the same feeling in my gut about the game, and PEG, that I got from D&D 3e and WotC.
I was recently mystified by the release from TAG of the player’s guide to Hellfrost prior to the release of the setting material. Everyone runs out to get the players guide before they realize that you could only sort of half ass a game without that actual setting Gazetteer (I think it was some mess up at the distributor or something).
Either way, SW is giving me the old butterflies-in-the-stomach feeling, and not in a good way.
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They need a flagship product other than Deadlands that is more mainstream. Savage Worlds has been big in my circle for a while, but there isn’t one setting that the majority of the players/groups agree on. I’ve picked up a ton of Savage World settings books, read through them, and realized there was one or two things about it that either made it unplayable for me or my players.
Personally, I love the rules-lite aspect to the system. If I ever created my own homebrew system, I’d probably use that as my base system. The only thing I’ve found comparable is the Cortex system. It has the same rules-lite feel and some similar mechanics.
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I have a love/hate relationship with SW. It’s a great vanilla system and is very adaptable. The problem is that it’s too vanilla me – every campaign I’ve run with it (and there have been more than a half dozen at this point), irregardless of setting, feels the same. It gets even worse as the game progresses because all the characters seem to “regress towards the mean” so to speak as their abilities and skill levels all begin to look the same. There’s no niche protection at all in the system, with the exception of edges and those don’t do much.
I also find combat gets old because it’s crunchy and tactical, but then not crunchy enough to really feel tactical… if that makes sense.
I understand why people like the system & it’s very easy to teach, but every time I’ve run/played in a longer-term campaign (3+ sessions) I start wishing I was playing something else. I honesty can’t imagine playing campaign after campaign with it, even if we were switching settings each time.
And yet, I own a lot of the books.
(
I would agree completely that they need some more mainstream settings, although I’d disagree that even Deadlands is mainstream…. it’s weird west which is definitely a niche setting IMO. Slipstream is cool but most people don’t really like pulp sci-fi. Necropolis was a cool idea but got old fast and wasn’t nearly gritty enough to really feel horrific (not sure about the new version but I bet it’s the same). Evernight suffered from a similar problem – it doesn’t feel like low, dark fantasy at all because of the game. It’s a good, one-time campaign setting though. Low Life is freaking weird and ultra cool to me but sucks as a SW game. Solomon Kane and PotSM – those are their best settings IMO. 50 Fathoms is also pretty cool, but could use some of refinements introduced into PotSM. Most of the other settings just seem like a different spin on the Deadlands kind of idea (e.g., Tour of Darkness).
For me, I find FATE much easier to use as a base system for almost anything if I want something cinematic or pulpy. PDQ works for lighter stuff. For example, I’ve used PDQ to run the 12-to-Midnight adventure “Chickens in the Mist” and it’s MUCH better than SW because it comes across much more campy and tongue-in-cheek which is what that adventure is all about.
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I’ve got three of the Savage Worlds settings. I’m really not that fond of Savage Worlds – I feel it lacks settings but the three supplements in question looked interesting so I purchased them.
Necessary Evil was disappointing. I probably expected too much of this supplement. The illustrations are great. Unfortunately the Superhero rules are just adequate and the mini campaign is one of the worst cases of poorly hidden railroading I have ever seen.
Sundered Skies probably suffers from the fact I read it about the same time I read Swashbucklers of the Seven Skies. S7S is what Sundered Skies might have been if there had been any inspiration or excitement behind it. As it is it feels very bland and terribly uninspiring. The majority of the book is given over to a large number of mini adventures which will probably serve no purpose and the new rules feel aimless and unfocussed.
By contrast Kenneth Hite’s the Day After Ragnorak is astounding. Its one of the best pulpy settings I have seen and I would love to run a game here. The thing is though its the settings which is brilliant and I feel it would have worked just as well with SotC, Hex, or Pulp Hero. Interestingly enough I note that Atomic Overmind Press announced a version for the new HERO 6th Edition rule set today so obviously they agree with me.
I like having Savage Worlds because its so easy to carry around and the rules are simple. I do feel though that its roots in miniature wargaming show through though and there are far better games on the market.
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Re: Necessary Evil – I own NE too (in pdf) and I echo your issues with it – the super-power system is very blah (just like the magic system in core SW) and there’s no real scalability in the system for attributes since the scale is so limited. I also found the plot point campaign very railroady and almost nonsensical since you’re supposed to be playing villains who save the Earth…cool idea but anyone who’s ever read comics knows that Dr. Doom would join the aliens and then try to screw them, not fight them.
I was interested in Ragnorak but it’s one more setting I don’t have time to play.
(
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As a Savage Worlds licensee, I can tell you that we feared the exact same thing. We all saw what happened with D20 and we did not want to repeat history.
To combat this, PEG and all of its licensees have banded together behind the scenes to help one another and make sure we’re all on the same page. We now can review each other’s products, get advice from one another and make sure we’re not inadvertantly stepping on each other’s toes. This also provides us with a source of playtesting beyond what might normally be available.
That’s something D20 was lacking. Everyone seemed to simply be off doing their own thing and it was we consumers who paid the price with poor quality products.
The goal is to see SW continue to grow and prosper. No one wants history to repeat itself.
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The issue of quality has been a recent concern of mine, specifically in regards to brand recognition and quality. I have a background in public relations and marketing, and perception of brand quality is critical to the continued success of any product or service.
PPCs have their value. Remember that Savage Worlds is designed for the adult gamers who have other responsibilities competing for their time, energy, and money. PPCs allow those gamers to pick up a setting and run a campaign “out of the box” without too much prep. It also allows them to capture most of the setting’s main points. If you visit PEG’s forums, you’ll see fans practically demanding PPCs. Perhaps the middle ground could be to leave the PPCs out, reduce the cost of the setting book, and sell the PPCs for a cheap cost as a separate product.
I think the point of Savage Worlds isn’t so much about being the end-all-be-all RPG system as much as it is about allowing busy gamers to play some type of RPG with minimal investment in time and effort. As long as that expectation is kept in mind, the game doesn’t disappoint. The issues are also a factor of a classless system and the type of game a GM runs.
If you want something more meaty with more character distinction, a class-based system with distinct abilities per class and race will be your better option.
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@ Kristian: Actually as someone who craves ‘character distinction’ I can tell you now that “a class-based system with distinct abilities per class and race’ ticks none of the required boxes at all.
When I think of some of the distinctive characters I’ve seen in play games like Spirit of the Century, Burning Wheel, InSpectres, and Heroquest spring to mind – you’ll note none of these are class based. I tend to find that class based systems are more likely to produce cookie cutter builds where all the characters become stereotypes. The only class based game I can think of which has escaped this problem is True20 (and I’ve no idea why – it just seems to in play).
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@Declan: I see what you’re saying, but I think my statement needs some clarification.
Characters of the same class can end up looking the same depending on the class. Take D&D v3.5 for example. Rogues, Wizards, Clerics, and Druids have some versatility to make each character taking levels in those classes all different. Fighters, Sorcerers, Barbarians, Rangers, and Bards pretty much look the same. However, characters of different classes, combinations of classes, or levels in prestige classes look differently enough and play very differently from one another. This means that if you choose to play a Wizard, your character will look and feel very differently from a Warlock. A Favored Soul will play differently from a Cleric.
Essentially, the class abilities really set the character concepts apart from one another when compared to a system such as Savage Worlds.
Kristian´s last blog ..Gaming with Blogger
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[...] Harnish asks “Is Savage Worlds the new D20?“. It’s an interesting question– given the love that Kurt and other gnomes have [...]
Great article. You bring up some very good points, especially the question of sustained quality. I think we’ll ultimately have to let the market sort out that question, but it is a good one.
I do have to politely disagree with some of the complaints here. (BTW, I’m the “Kurt” mentioned in Comment #10.)
Background: I feel that rules-heavy gaming has done an unintentional disservice to the gaming world by stifling the open-ended creativity of players, who now look to their character sheets to solve problems instead of to their imaginations. In other words, more rules = less creativity.
Savage Worlds is a bare structure; it is not the sum total of the world. Fill in those blank spaces with imaginative Trappings and Hindrances, and use them creatively. Borrow heavily from other Savage Settings or even from such innovations as the group chargen process from SotC.
As to the pulpy nature of the game; that is very true. However, I’ve been toying with the “What happens at 4 Wounds?” question, and the game can get gritty pretty quickly if your answer is “You are permanently dead.”
Telas´s last blog ..Herding Links Across The Web
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Thanks for chiming in. I actually agree with you about the trend for rules heavy gaming (especially those that provide rules to simulate every possibility) to be very encumbering in most cases. Similarly, I love player input and creativity – the cool part about SotC’s character creation process isn’t IMO the players tie each other together (that’s only a bonus), it’s that in the process of creating their shared backgrounds, the players provide the GM with tons of stuff he can use in game – arch-enemies, scenes, or locations. That’s awesome because it links the characters instantly with the setting and makes them feel like they’re part of the story.
What I meant (but communicated poorly) by “the need for more mechanics” in some cases was that for some settings you really want a mechanic that brings out what the setting or game theme is all about. For example, guts checks and random charts for psychological disorders do not do Cthulhu style horror justice – you want a sanity mechanic where a character’s grip on reality slowly erodes away. Similarly, you could play a Battlestar Galactica game using SW rules but the game, if you understand and want to emulate the show, isn’t really about fighting the enemy – it’s about not knowing who the enemy is and the sense of anxiety, or outright terror, that can cause. SW doesn’t capture that.
Those are the types of mechanics I’m talking about which a lot of SW-adoptees seem to miss. Instead, you just get generic SW with a new setting, a few edges/hindrances, and some flavor text. Most troublesome to me are the ones which are now simply porting their poor D20 products over to a SW version.
Of course all this is just for my tastes and I am certainly not the average gamer, nor a huge fan of Savage Worlds (though I do think it’s a solid system). My hunch is a lot of people are just looking for a new skin (or in SW parlance, trapping) to play the same game in different settings in which case some of the SW-based products are probably a good fit.
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What I meant (but communicated poorly) by “the need for more mechanics” in some cases was that for some settings you really want a mechanic that brings out what the setting or game theme is all about. For example, guts checks and random charts for psychological disorders do not do Cthulhu style horror justice – you want a sanity mechanic where a character’s grip on reality slowly erodes away. Similarly, you could play a Battlestar Galactica game using SW rules but the game, if you understand and want to emulate the show, isn’t really about fighting the enemy – it’s about not knowing who the enemy is and the sense of anxiety, or outright terror, that can cause. SW doesn’t capture that.
I could have sworn this was the DMs job. You can’t stat away fear. Rolling dice isn’t scary. You have to put the fear into the story. You want something that no RPG can provide, and that’s the ability to inspire fear in your players.
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Thanks for the reply. I see where you’re coming from: SW hasn’t really been pushed to the limit on custom, genre-specific mechanics.
I think this would be an excellent challenge to the SW licensees: Can you really customize Savage Worlds to make the gameplay emulate some genre that’s not pulpy?
Now you’re making me think; always a dangerous activity…
Telas´s last blog ..Herding Links Across The Web
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I think another issue that hasn’t really been touched on is “genre duplication.” When SW was in its pre-”open” licensing stage, there was almost no genre overlap, so it was pretty easy to make decisions as to what product to buy. Now, there are often multiple products in the same genre, so people have to decide which setting to get when considering a given genre.
Also, the cost-benefit ratio is harder to maintain in duplicated genres. If I have Hellfrost, for example, almost by definition I will get less “value” from buying Winterweir, and vice versa, since certain rule concepts will be at best duplicated and at worst contradictory.
I believe that is a greater danger of licensing: too many choices so I’ll make none, or I’ll base my opinion on the reduced value I got from a duplicated genre.
When I was given the opportunity to work on Gaslight (after I had converted Sherwood), I thought very hard about making sure that the rules representation did not overlap too heavily with Rippers, and in fact could be seen to complement same. From comments I’ve seen on the PEG boards that seems to have worked.
As the editor of Shark Bytes (the SW fanzine) it’s obvious to me that the appetite of SW fans for new and diverse material has not changed, but rather shifted from an unofficial fan-based approach to a licensee approach, since both interest in and submissions to Shark Bytes severely plummeted once a more steady stream of licensee products became available.
I’ll second Mike Dukes comment that there is a bit more communication among licensees than it seemed like there was for d20.
Finally, just to play devil’s advocate, I think the list above contains both announced but not released products (e.g. SpiroBlaak & Realms of Eldrath) and products that were clearly in the pipeline before the opening of the license (e.g. Sundered Skies was in the works for a long time and is a hybrid PEG/TAG release and Vampire Earth which was from 2005.) This ends up covering a larger span of time than the 18 months.
But thanks for the thought-provoking article which reminds us to continue thinking about such things.
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I can’t believe I just saw this now, but I’m not the only one so here’s my two cents.
The majority of things that “just showed up” have been in development for years, and were in development long before the licensing changed. The same can be said of the fan created material. Savage Worlds fans have never been shy about generating conversion, or full settings for the game. I speak from experience from 2004 when I created The Last Shifter War. That was the only setting I put on the internet for SW, but I have a hard drive full of other material, including material that expands on that one document.
In the list above Sticks and Stones, Runepunk, Iron Dynasty, Wonderland No More, Ravaged Earth, Shaintar, Sundered Skies, and Vampire Earth were all in production or even produced when the licensing was more restrictive. Necropolis was a Pinnacle baby originally, and was published by them first, the new version is published by the author under his own imprint. Realms of Cthulhu and Agents of Oblivion are both being worked on by an original (ie. when it was more restrictive) licensee. Freeport and SpirosBlaak are from another game company and each has a proven pedigree. Cursed Empire and Suzerain are from smaller companies. Lastly, the way I understand it, Space 1889 is being done by Pinnacle.
If you look carefully you’ll see some overlap between the Savage Worlds developers and the True20 developers. Now that Pinnacle’s license has become more open, a lot of them are coming over and gaining publication interest in Savage Worlds. Thus Interface Zero. I think it’s a good thing that the license is less restrictive, and I think it’s a really good thing that the publishers are working together.
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I just had to let you know just how incorrect you are about Realms of Cthuhlu “Savaged Cthulhu? That’s another setting it doesn’t do well because the feel is all wrong unless you want to play a pulpy, tommy-gun blazing, Old One killing type of game.” You couldn’t be more wrong, I have been running this since it came out and my players have only gotten into combat 3 times each time walking away grievously injured, hoping that they will never have to see combat again. Most of my games are social or pure investigation, the added rules to make the “Pulp” feel of Savage Worlds turn into a gritty downwards spiral work wounds and I use them in my rippers game to add to that Horror feel. I own and have played or I am currently playing Realms of Cthuhlu *****, Deadlands Reloaded **** (I hope the changes in the new releases will address my problems with the feel of Mad Science), Rippers ***1/2 (My favorite setting but as it stands feels to pulp for my taste once I incorporated the additional rules from RoC the game felt perfect however, Slipstream **1/2 (My least favorite as it is just to over the top and to generic of a feel. I alos own Solomon Kane, and Necessary Evil but have not be able to get my group to play them.
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I agree with Jeremey,the gritty style of play that Realms of Cthulhu brings makes it so every wound players take can kill them,which is very much how Cthulhu games should be.
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