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Tabletop Game / Low-Life

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Okay, this one is just bizarre.

A campaign setting for Savage Worlds, Low Life is technically a post-apocalyptic fantasy setting, in that it takes place on Earth, after the fall of human society, and injects fantasy elements into the world rather than sci-fi. That's about where the similarities to anything else end.

In Low Life, the ancient Hoomanrace has long since died out as a result of several back-to-back cataclysms. Mutha Oith has been inherited by the descendants of cockroaches, worms, snack cakes, stranded aliens and other mutated freaks. Magic has come into the world (one of the cataclysms created a temporary portal to the world of Middle Oith, through which various magical creatures immigrated) and holy rollers with fanatical enough faith can summon miracles of their own.

Players form a "heap" of characters and then basically get turned loose in the middle of all this insanity to make their own legend - and the rulebook even notes that what qualifies as "legendary" for these people isn't necessarily as epic as we might think.

Like most Savage Worlds settings, Low Life uses the plot point system, with a host of interconnected adventure seeds in the back of the book. But often players might have more fun just bumming around Mutha Oith taking in the crazy at their own pace.

This is not to be confused with notorious London drunkard Jeffrey Bernard's "Low Life" column in The Spectator, the basis for Jeffrey Bernard Is Unwell, nor is it to be confused with the 1985 album by New Order or the Judge Dredd spinoff.


Contains examples of:

  • Apocalypse How: Almost every way imaginable.
  • Compensating for Something: There's actually a trait for this.
  • Crapsack World: And more often than not, that's literal crap.
  • Cult: To take a line directly from the book:
    "If it exists, someone on Oith probably worships it."
    • Do enough cool things and you could even get one worshiping you.
  • Cute Monster Girl: Averted. The females of each race are just as disgusting as the males - in the rare cases when you can even tell the difference.
  • Future Slang: On every page, in every paragraph!
  • Jesus Was Way Cool: Not surprising since his legend has been merged with that of Elvis.
  • Mix-and-Match Critters: Tizn'ts are named for their mix-and-match nature, as in: "Tizn't a Bodul, tizn't a Horc, tizn't a toy car, tizn't a rubber ducky, tizn't a...
  • Our Monsters Are Weird: Along with what was already mentioned, there are also sentient lumps of crap, Mix-and-Match Critters of just about any possible configuration (yet who are still one single species), goblin/orc things made of or constantly covered in snot, and "elves" that look like ugly big-nosed smurfs with a huge chip on their shoulder. Once again, those are just among the PC races.
  • Player Archetypes: This is one setting where loonies can fit in very well.
  • Proud Warrior Race Guy: Horcs. Then again, maybe they're just a**holes.
  • Religion of Evil: Stanismists wear their selfishness and amoral behavior with obsessive pride.
    • There a Stanismist sub-sect that venerates pain - other people's pain, mind you, not their own.
  • Solid Gold Poop: One famous site in the Low Life world, is a place where a giant has died. It has since been turned into a mine, where Low Lifers go to harvest the giant's earwax. Is the earwax magical? Nope. It's just plain earwax, but there's tons of it and in a world as impoverished as Mutha Oith, all that earwax is a treasure trove of goodies.
  • Talking Poo: A playable race.
  • Telepathic Spacemen: Oofos, the descendants of stranded aliens, are the only ones who can learn Dementalism.

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