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In 2003 Shane Hensley and Pinnacle Entertainment released a brand-new generic roleplaying game. The game was called Savage Worlds and it kinda made a splash.

The game emphasized speed of play over detail. That may not seem like much today, but at the time it was revolutionary. You see Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 was also released in 2003, which would go on to birth Pathfinder. Steve Jackson Games had 5 years’ worth of source books available for their Generic Universal Roleplaying System. The market at that time was filled with games like Hero, Shadowrun, and Rolemaster,

In other words, in 2003 we were at the height of crunch in our roleplaying games.

And when I say crunch I am not talking about the candy bar.

I’m talking about games with rules, hundreds of pages of rules. I’m talking about math, lots and lots of math. I’m talking about tables to cross-reference everything your characters might do. You see at the turn of the century most TTRPG’s were focused on simulations. Trying to make the games as real as possible and to do that, you gotta lean hard into the rules.

Shane Hensely changed that with Savage Worlds. By focusing on streamlining the systems and making sure your games were moving fast and your players where having fun he opened the doors for massive changes in how we see our roleplaying games.

I would argue that Savage Worlds help bring about D&D 5e, Blades in the Dark, Powered by the Apocalypse, Mork Borg, and basically anything today that is considered rules light.

I’m not the only one that thinks Savage Worlds is an impressive game.

The game received the 2003 Origin Gamers' Choice Award for best role-playing game. Scott Taylor for Black Gate in 2013 rated Savage Worlds as Honorable Mention #1 in the top ten role-playing games of all time.

But now I have to admit my own stupidity.

When Savage Worlds came out in 2003 I wasn’t interested. I saw it as a direct attack against my favorite game GURPS so I lifted my nose and kept playing GURPS. It wasn’t until recently that I started diving into Savage Worlds and man did I miss the boat on this one.

In this episode we are going to review Savage Worlds and talk about the game, the game system, why it’s cool and why you should give it a shot.

Mike, when did you first play Savage Worlds?

[Kick to Mike]

Christina, What about you?

[Kick to Christina]