Savage Worlds is an award-winning, universal 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.
The core mechanic uses a mixture of dice and playing cards. Both attribute scores and skills range from d4 to d12, with a roll of 4 or better on a "task" normally counting as a success; rolling the maximum value of a die results in exploding dice. Every 4 points over the target number counts as a "raise", granting additional effectiveness. Characters are subdivided between "Wild Cards" (Player Characters and important NPCs) and "Extras" (redshirts and mooks), with Wild Cards rolling an additional d6, the "Wild Die", on tasks and counting whichever result is higher. Initiative in combats is decided by drawing each round from a deck of playing cards with both Jokers left in; drawing a Joker allows a character to act whenever they choose.
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, Deadlands: The Weird West 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 allows 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:
- 50 Fathoms — Swashbuckling Fantasy Pirates
- Deadlands — Horror Western
- Deadlands: The Weird West - Updated with an entirely altered setting.
- East Texas University — Supernatural horror at a rural college
- 12 To Midnight — Same setting, but takes place in the town proper
- Evernight — Fantasy with a twist.
- The Savage World of Flash Gordon — borrowing liberally from the 80-plus years the franchise has existed, including the newspaper comics, the film and the serials.
- Lankhmar — Low fantasy underworld
- Holler: An Appalachian Apocalypse — Applachian folklore meets horror and fantasy, where ordinary mountain folk attempt to subvert the plans of the terrible "Big Boys."
- Necessary Evil — Supervillains in charge of saving the Earth from aliens.
- Pirates of The Spanish Main — Wooden Ships and Iron Men.
- Rippers — Victorian Horror with a The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen vibe
- Slipstream — Zeerust Sci-Fi Fantasy
- The Savage World of Solomon Kane — Pulp-Action Puritans
- Space 1889 — Steampunk Space Opera
- The Last Parsec — Sci-fi space exploration
- Weird Wars — a series of games that make a Weird Historical War out of various conflicts. So far the line covers World War II ("Weird War II"), World War I ("Weird War I"), The Vietnam War ("Tour Of Darkness") and the conquering campaigns of the Roman Empire ("Weird Wars Rome").
Licensed Savage Worlds settings include:
- Achtung! Cthulhu — Allied heroes vs. Nazi occultists and the Cthulhu Mythos.
- Crystal Heart — based on the webcomic of the same name, with changeable superpowers in a Schizo Tech fantasy setting
- The Day After Ragnarok — Pulp-Apocalypse setting where Those Wacky Nazis summoned the Midgard Serpent.
- Fear Agent — After the End pulp science fiction
- The Goon — "Gangland Horror" or depression-era Fantasy Kitchen Sink
- Hellfrost — the titular threat being a continent-sized glacier that is becoming larger as an Ice Age comes ever closer.
- Heroes of Terra — Nintendo game inspired pulp sword-and-sorcery
- Interface Zero — Cyberpunk
- Iron Dynasty — Oriental Adventures in a Fantasy Far East.
- Low-Life
- Mutant Chronicles: Released by Modiphius Entertainment alongside their own 2d20 system.
- Ninja High School: The Roleplaying Game, co-written and with art by series creator Ben Dunn.
- Pathfinder: Savage Pathfinder is an official Paizo-written conversion of the originally d20 System-based game to Savage Worlds, including full rewrites of the Curse of the Crimson Throne and Rise of the Runelords campaigns.
- Red Earth — after Red October, supernatural powers emerge and the following events go horribly wrong.
- Rifts — Everything
- Runepunk — Dark steampunk fantasy
- Shaintar — Epic high fantasy
- The Sixth Gun — Weird West setting of a different flavor than Deadlands, based on the comic series.
- Sundered Skies — Post-Apocalyptic Fantasy
- Time Zero — police the timeline.
- Titan Effect — Metal Gear Solid-inspired setting with themes of espionage and biological augmentation
- Totems of the Dead
- Winterweir
This tabletop RPG system provides examples of:
- Badass Normal: The default state for characters without Powers.
- Character Level: Known as 'ranks' here, mainly limiting attribute increases and available Edges.
- Glacial Apocalypse: Hellfrost is set in a standard swords-and-sorcery land that is facing an incoming ice age, with the titular mega-glacier growing bigger and bigger and sweeping over the land at a slow, relentless pace.
- Littlest Cancer Patient: Art in the book depicts the players of the iconic characters as children in a cancer ward and the GM as an adult volunteering to GM for them.
- Magitek: Multiple settings make use of it, such as "Weird Wars". For the most part, the way the system is made, a gadget can be purely magic, purely technological, or in between, and the only true difference would be details like what it takes to disrupt its functionality.
- Mook: Extra rules facilitate this. For the most part, a powerful enough Player Character is expected to be able to sweep through regular mooks with ease, have some more trouble with Boss in Mook's Clothing "Wild Cards" and really have to play smart with Named Characters (such as the Big Bad NPC).
- New Perk Every Level: The core rules grant Advancements, a.k.a Character Level ups at game-master's discretion. Advancements can be spent to increase one attribute die or up to two skill dice (one if already greater than or equal to the die for its linked attribute) by one step, purchase an Edge, eliminate a Minor Hindrance, or reduce a Major Hindrance to Minor. The only case where this would result in Empty Levels is if the player chooses to bank an Advancement in order to later have two to spend to eliminate a Major Hindrance (some lack a Minor form).
- Pulp Magazine: A major influence on the style of play and mood.
- Point Build System: By default, every Wild Card gets 5 points to spend on attributes and 12 points to spend on skills. They can also select up to four points' worth of Hindrances (Major Hindrances are worth 2, Minor Hindrances are worth 1), which are used to purchase Edges (costs 2 Hindrance points) or additional attribute points (costs 2 points) or skill points (1 point), or extra starting funds (1 point per multiple of the default amount).
- Skill Scores and Perks: The skills list includes all the tabletop RPG standards, with every character automatically starting with a d4 in the "core skills" of Athletics, Common Knowledge, Notice, Persuasion, and Stealth, and getting to improve them up to the die size of the linked attribute with one build point or advancement, or two if past the attribute. Perks are called "Edges" and allow for everything from mundane to magical abilities. The game also uses a drawback system, called "Hindrances", that can be used to buy additional build points at character creation.
- Sourcebook: A pretty hefty amount of them, covering everything from The Vietnam War to Flash Gordon.
- Splat: For the most part a template to show how to place various skills and feats, but also has a unique ability or two.
- Title Drop: Not surprisingly, many of the sourcebooks and system adaptations have "Savage Worlds" somewhere in the title, such as The Savage World of Solomon Kane.
- Token Aquatic Race: The game has many playable races and an explanation of how to best generate your own races for play, but only comes with one aquatic race: Atlantean. In sci-fi games, Atlanteans are generally seen as coming from water-dominated planets.
- Weird Historical War: No less than three official settings explore this Trope, and one even has this trope by name!