Savage Worlds is a role-playing game written by Shane Lacy Hensley and published by Pinnacle Entertainment Group. The game emphasizes speed of play and reduced preparation over realism or detail. The game received the 2003 Origin Gamers' Choice Award for best role-playing game.
Settings
Although Savage Worlds is a generic rule 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, Necropolis, and Weird War II 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 role-playing video games.
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 licensed PDF adventure scenarios are available, as well as setting related supplements like the Vampire Earth RPG Sourcebook and the Suzerain Legends RPG meta setting.
System
Character creation
Player characters are built using a point allocation system, though gamemasters are encouraged to design non-player characters to the needs of the game rather than to fit the system. Characters in Savage Worlds are composed of a variety of statistics, including Race, Traits, Edges, Hindrances, and sometimes Powers.
Race
A character's race usually refers to their species, which may apply positive or negative modifiers to characteristics. In some settings (such as the Pirates of the Spanish Main RPG), this may instead refer to nationality. Nationality-based differences may occur in campaigns where certain skill specializations, edges, and hindrances are affected by cultural or technological differences or are included to add flavor to a character. For instance, in Deadlands: Reloaded, a non-Chinese character may learn Chinese martial arts but cannot acquire and use its chi-based Powers. In Weird War II, American, British, or French soldiers have special edges and hindrances to reflect their different national and military cultures.
Traits (Attributes & Skills) A character's traits are characteristics that are rated by a single polyhedral die. The larger the die, the better the character is at the trait, ranging from a 4-sided die (d4—the lowest) to a 12-sided die (d12—the highest). For example, a character with a strength trait of a ten-sided die (d10) is stronger than a character whose strength trait is rated with a six-sided die (d6). Traits are divided into attributes, which are inherent, and skills, which are learned.
When creating a new, novice-rank character, the player gets 5 character points to spend on attributes and 15 character points to spend on skills. Some game worlds offer more or fewer character creation points to reflect the world's overall difficulty or the characters' overall experience. After character creation, unused points are lost. During play, characters earn experience points, which they subsequently spend to acquire new abilities or improve existing ones.
The five attributes used in Savage Worlds are agility (physical precision and speed), smarts (mental power), spirit (willpower), strength (physical power), and vigor (physical health).
In addition to attributes, a character has the following derived statistics: pace (ground speed), parry (the ability to defend oneself in melee combat), toughness (resistance to damage), and charisma (presence and charm). Some setting supplements add a fifth derived statistic such as reason (problem solving), sanity (mental health), or grit (mental fortitude) to reflect the special needs of the game world.