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.
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 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
- 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
- Necessary Evil — Supervillains in charge of saving the Earth from aliens.
- Pirates of The Spanish Main — Exactly What It Says on the Tin
- 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:
- The Day After Ragnarok — Pulp-Apocalypse setting where Those Wacky Nazis summoned the Midgard Serpent.
- Fear Agent — After the End pulp science fiction
- Hellfrost — the titular threat being a continent-sized glacier that is becoming larger as an Ice Age comes ever closer.
- Interface Zero — Cyber Punk
- Iron Dynasty
- Low-Life
- Mutant Chronicles: Released by Modiphius Entertainment alongside their own 2-D-20 system.
- Ninja High School: The Roleplaying Game, co-written and with art by series creator Ben Dunn.
- Red Earth — after Red October, supernatural powers emerge and the following events go horribly wrong.
- Runepunk
- Shaintar
- Sundered Skies — Post-Apocalyptic Fantasy
- Totems of the Dead
- Winterweir
- Rifts — Everything
- The Sixth Gun
- Time Zero — Time Police police the timeline.
- The Goon — "Gangland Horror" or depression-era Fantasy Kitchen Sink
- Titan Effect — Tactical Espionage Action
- Heroes of Terra — Nintendo game inspired pulp sword-and-sorcery
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.
- 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).
- Pulp Magazine: A major influence on the style of play and mood.
- 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.
- Stock Super Powers: The "Super Powers Companion" includes many of these. The general power level of a Savage game is somewhere in the more powerful side of "street" level (read: Spider-Man).
- Weird Historical War: No less than three official settings explore this Trope, and one even has this trope by name!
