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Review: Space 1889: Red Sands
Red Sands was the first setting I ever ran in Savage Worlds, and the one I’ve run the most often in convention games. The premise is simple; Thomas Edison invents an “Ether Propeller” that allows the 19th century imperial powers to conquer the solar system. The original Space: 1889 setting was steampunk before that was a…
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Children of the Apocalypse Sneak Preview: Bastelin Race
The Bastelin are four-armed masters of artifice. Jonas, God of Tinkers and Scientists, gifted them with exceptional skills at craftsmanship, and their extra arms can also make them formidable warriors. Bastelin tend to be city-dwellers, working on complex mechanisms in manufactories, and also often take up Tinker Magery (Weird Science). Bastelin are also large, averaging…
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Character “Same-y-Ness” Part 2
In my previous post, I talked about selecting Edges to build different kinds of ranged combatants. This time, I’m talking melee. What are some of the classic melee archetypes? You have your martial artist, your fencer, your greatsword fighter, your hammer and shield wielder, and your two-fisted knife fighter. What Edges would suit each of these, on…
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Firing into Melee
Savage Worlds has very little to say on the subject of firing into melee. The only rule is the Innocent Bystander rule – if you roll a 1 (or a 1 or 2 when firing full-auto), you hit someone other than the target. With Bennies in play, this doesn’t happen very often, which means that…
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Character “Same-y-Ness”
I like podcasts to make my commute more entertaining, and one of my favorites is the Secret Cabal Gaming podcast. On a recent episode of their Lords of the Dungeon RPG podcast, they talked about having become tired of Savage Worlds because a combat-optimized character was basically always the same. This is not an original criticism…
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Arisia Plans
We’re one month out from my favorite local convention, Arisia! This year, I’ll be running Savage Worlds: Children of the Apocalypse and debuting my upcoming superhero setting, Legion of Liberty. No word on scheduling yet, but I plan to be in-con Friday afternoon through Sunday evening. If you’re in Boston and free on MLK weekend, come…
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Review: Pugmire -Savage-able?
Full disclosure – I am a pug owner. So when I stumbled across Pugmire, a post-apocalyptic RPG in which you play various breeds of dog, I had to check it out. Full disclosure again – Pugmire is not a Savage Worlds setting. The ruleset is basically a simplified version of 5th edition D&D, with some fun…
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Third Rail Time – Shaken Rules
On a snowy Saturday afternoon in New England, I decided it was time to tackle one of those third rail rules topics – the revised Shaken rules. In the original printing of Savage Worlds Explorer’s Edition, a character could remove the Shaken condition either by spending a benny or making a Spirit roll on her…
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Review: Ultimate Ground Warfare
The Mass Battle rules in Savage Worlds are a great way of abstracting large-scale battles, allowing the player characters to influence the outcome (albeit at great risk) but also simulating the clash of armies. Unfortunately, they can look a little strange when applied to some of the situations that come up in RPGs, because the…
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Superfight – Round 2
Last night the Roll20 gang and I ran the first playtest of my forthcoming supers setting. As I thought might be the case, the No Power Points rule resulted in a lot of “squib” superpowers, with the players often invoking their abilities and failing completely to achieve anything. One idea I had to mitigate this…