Savage Worlds

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

Savage Worlds is a universal, award-winning role-playing game and miniatures wargame, written by Shane Lacy Hensley, and published by Great White Games doing business as Pinnacle Entertainment Group. The game emphasizes speed of play and reduced preparation over realism or detail.

Although Savage Worlds is a generic rules system, Pinnacle has released "Savage Settings" - campaign settings or modules designed specifically for the Savage Worlds rules. These have included Evernight, 50 Fathoms, Necessary Evil, Rippers, and Low Life. Pinnacle has also published setting books based on the company's earlier lines, including Deadlands: Reloaded as well as the Tour of Darkness and Necropolis settings based on the Weird Wars line.

Beginning with 50 Fathoms, the majority of settings released by Pinnacle feature a concept known as a "Plot Point Campaign". In such campaigns, a series of loosely defined adventure scenarios are presented. A main storyline is presented as a series of "Plot Points" and additional side-quests (or "Savage Tales") expand the scope of the campaign. This format allow a group of characters to explore the game universe while playing through (or disregarding) the main storyline in a manner similar to that of computer RPGs (such as Morrowind).

A licensing system is in place for electronic and book publishers to release material for the Savage Worlds game. Such "Savaged!" licensees are allowed to use the Savage Worlds mascot "Smiling Jack" as a logo on their products. Multiple PDF adventure scenarios are available using this licensing system, as well as setting-related supplements like the Vampire Earth RPG Sourcebook, the Shaintar Player's Guide, and Winterweir.

Official Savage Worlds settings include:

  • Fifty Fathoms - Swashbuckling Fantasy Pirates
  • Deadlands - Horror Western. (Pinnacle Entertainment)
    • Deadlands Noir - 1930s in the Deadlands world, it's time for hardboiled Film Noir style.
  • Evernight - Fantasy with a twist.
  • The Last Parsec - Early space exploration age. (Pinnacle Entertainment)
  • Leagues of Adventure - Steampunk and Victorian adventures. "Welcome to Professor Pennyworth’s Weird Science Emporium".
  • Low Life - A post-apocalyptic... something. Very weird.
  • Necessary Evil - Supervillains in charge of saving the Earth from aliens.
  • Necropolis 2350- Sci-fi Horror.
  • Pirates Of The Spanish Main - Exactly What It Says on the Tin: Pirates. Welcome to the Caribbean, Mon.
  • Rippers - Victorian Horror with a League of Extraordinary Gentlemen vibe.
  • The Savage World of Solomon Kane - Pulp-Action Purtians.
  • The Sixth Gun - The Damned comics: RPG. (Pinnacle Entertainment)
  • Slipstream - Zeerust Sci-Fi Fantasy. (Pinnacle Entertainment)
  • All For One: Régime Diabolique - The Three Musketeers, but with magic. "The year is 1636 and France is a troubled nation. A great and terrible evil gnaws at its core and darkness stalks the land..." (Triple Ace Games)
  • Beasts & Barbarians/Dread Sea Dominions - A Conan-like fantasy world. (GRAmel)
  • Blackwood - "Grimm's Tales meets Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, The Witcher series meets Kung Fu Hustle". (Mythic Gazetteer).
  • Daring Tales of Adventure - Pulp and/or Indiana Jones style. Join the Hollow Earth Expedition to meet the new peoples and be eaten by them or strap your rocket pack on and steal MacGuffin from under the noses of Those Wacky Nazis. (Triple Ace Games)
  • Daring Tales of Chivalry - Medieval European Fantasy (Triple Ace Games)
  • Daring Tales of the Space Lanes - Sci-fi Pulp Action. (Triple Ace Games)
  • Daring Tales of the Sprawl - Cyberpunk. (Triple Ace Games)
  • Guild of Shadows - More sneaking around in a special Thieves Guild campaign setting. (SPQR Games)
  • Hellfrost - Epic Heroic Fantasy. "Fight frost giants and ice goblins, search ancient tombs and discover precious treasures!" (Triple Ace Games)
    • Hellfrost: Lands of Fire - Much the same, but Arabian Nights style rather than Nordic.
  • High Space - a far future space opera. (StoryWeaver)
  • Kronocalypse - Time travelling salad. (Sneak Attack Press)
  • Nemezis - Monsters from the dawn of time destroyed the Earth, but the humans already have spread beyond it. Let's nuke Cthulhu! (GRAmel)
  • Ravaged Earth - Remember how in 1898, the Martians came, but died out? They have some very interesting stuff left behind. This isn't necessarily a good thing in the big picture. (Reality Blurs)
  • Space 1889 - Steampunk. In Space! (Heliograph Incorporated/Clockwork Publishing)
  • Streets of Bedlam - "A Savage World of Crime + Corruption". (FunSizedGames)
  • Sundered Skies - Post Apocalyptic Fantasy in a Shattered World. (Triple Ace Games)
  • Tropicana - Welcome to the Caribbean, Mon. This time, the underworld. (GRAmel)
  • Ultima Forsan - . Books with names like Dead in Venice, Iberia Macabra, etc. (HT Publishers)
  • Winter Eternal / Ehlerrac - Post- post apocalyptic. (Just Insert Imagination)
  • Weird Wars - World War I, gas attacks and zombies and Cthulhu. World War II and, uh, zombies and Cthulhu. (Pinnacle Entertainment)
  • Wonderland No More - Alice in Wonderland all the way down the rabbit hole. Unlike that other setting dedicated to love-hate relationships with Carrol's books, steps back for the Shrouded in Myth approach (there are priests of Alice and St. Dinah). (Triple Ace Games)

Licensed Savage Worlds settings include:

  • Dawn Of Legends
  • Dead End - Zombie Apocalypse (Atomic Ninja Studios)
  • Interface Zero
  • Iron Dynasty - Warring States period plus some fantasy and steampunk. (Reality Blurs)
  • Monster Hunter International - B Horror movie, but the protagonists aren't idiots and instead heavily armed professionals.
  • Lankhmar
  • Runepunk
  • Shaintar
  • Suzerain - It's not Ragnarök quite yet, but things start to get lively, with returning gods and all. (Savage Mojo)
    • Millennium Knights - "It's 1999 and monsters don't exist. They're the stuff of legend and myth, right?"
    • Noir Knights - It's 1930s, it's America and the truth is out there.
    • Set Rising - Invasion from another world, Egyptian Grimdark style.
  • Totems of the Dead - Sword and sorcery, war of everyone against everyone. (Gun Metal Games)
  • Winterweir

Conversions include:

  • Spelljammer, as Tales from the Glittering Void. (fan)
  • Savage Rifts (Pinnacle Entertainment)
Tropes used in Savage Worlds include:
  • Badass: All player characters are this by comparison to other types of characters. Any other "Wild Cards" as well, they run on the rules slightly different than "Extras" and are unaffected by some things up to low-grade mind control.
  • Badass Normal: The default state for characters without Powers.
  • Character Level: Known as 'ranks' here, mainly limiting attribute increases and available Edges.
  • Commanding Officer Powers: The "Leadership" series of Edgesimprove the combat abilities of Extras ("unimportant" characters, including all nameless ones) within 10 yards of the character that holds them. An edge that lets these bonuses apply to everyone, including player characters, is present but requires the character have reached the Seasoned experience level (the first after the starting level of novice) so it can't be obtained by a new character.
  • Hermetic Magic
  • Magitek
  • Mook: Extra rules facilitate this.
  • Pulp Magazine / Two-Fisted Tales: A major influence on the style of play.
  • Point Build System
  • Psychic Powers
  • Stock Super Powers
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