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A couple of weeks ago, Pinnacle Entertainment Group made the amazing announcement that they would be working with Sean Patrick Fannon and Ross Watson of Evil Beagle to adapt Kevin Siembieda’s Rifts to the Savage Worlds system. We first discovered Savage Worlds in late 2012 after the rise (and immediate fall) of my Rifts: New West game, so it seemed like an appropriate time to discuss my feelings about each.

Disclaimer: Savage Worlds is one of two properties (the other being Firefly) that I gush over to the point of fanboydom.

Adventures Across the MEEGAAAVERSE™!!!!!

I spent my high school years playing Rifts, and part of me has never fallen out of love with the world. It’s a ridiculous setting. In a magic-rich, postapocalyptic earth, dimensional rifts (get it?) occasionally open, allowing beings from all kinds of planets and dimensions (and genres) to pop through. Dragons, Faeries, aliens, cyborgs, and psychic dog-men fight for a piece of the post-apocalyptic territory. But the mash-up alone doesn’t makes it Rifts. The whole thing has a kind of ’80s, spiked-armor, bullets-and-babes machismo, as if Paul Verhoeven made a movie about Judge Dredd and Thulsa Doom fighting for Bartertown.

No other game is as jam-packed with cool things to play. While I wouldn’t call the system flexible or open ended, Siembieda knows how to make players say, “Oh, that’s awesome.” Rifters go big or go home (and that rift already closed).

Yet…slinging the ol’ 20-siders again, my enthusiasm died. Fast. The game came out in 1990, when D&D was struggling under Lorraine Williams’ meaty chokehold. In that span, D&D has moved through three and half editions, while Rifts has only undergone a singular half-revision, akin to the difference between 3.0 and 3.5. Gaming technology has evolved. Technology technology has evolved. For a game that features robots and laser pistols, Rifts has fallen behind the times.

Enough people have demonized Siembieda in the RPG community, and we have no intention of rehashing or adding to the pile. I will say that Rifts books have…problems…with their layouts. Worse, their clunky mechanics do as much to stall storytelling up as they do to facilitate it. In my Rifts: New West game, I lost half of my players after my first session of character creation (and it took two to finish characters!).

I decided it was time for a change.

Getting Savage

Savage Worlds is immensely popular with the local university’s gaming club. I knew the game had released a new version recently, but I wasn’t really interested. Aside from branding problems (see below), the title Savage Worlds isn’t particularly evocative of a good game. Images of Flash Gordon and Indiana Jones danced through my head, and, as much as I enjoy Harrison Ford’s pre-fridge adventures, they don’t fit my GMing style. At risk of losing the rest of my group, I needed to convert my game to something else (and fast). Tom suggested we take Savage Worlds for a test drive (why not, for $10?). We fell in love from our first game and never looked back. We still love trying other games, but nothing compares to its ease of play.

Savage Worlds is built on a foundation of simple mechanics. So simple that gamers used to spreadsheets of arcane formulae calculating THAC0 and save vs. rods may find themselves taken aback. It’s tempting to compare it to other math-lite systems like FATE or Dungeonworld, but that belies a game that with a surprising amount of crunch. On several occasions, we searched for obscure rules like radiation poisoning, only to find that Pinnacle Entertainment Group had already covered it.

If anything, Savage Worlds resembles a kind of paired-down, classless D20 system (without the d20). Therein lies the beauty: Most of the extraneous, fiddly math has been stripped away. Instead of totaling skills or ability scores, players rank attributes from a d4 to a d12, drastically cutting down on mental mathematics. Here’s where it gets interesting: alongside their skill or ability score (ranked from d4 to d12), players roll an additional d6, called a wild die, and take the higher roll. Dice that roll the maximum face on any die “ace,” which mean they are rolled again and added to the total.

Players make just as many meaningful decisions during character creation as they would in a d20 game. They just make them in less steps. A fireball-wielding evoker still focuses his magic magical mayhem, but he’ll track 3 spells instead of 30. The simplified, streamlined mechanics allow players to modify the game to fit almost any genre with ease. We’ve stretched it into classic fantasy, post-apocalyptic lovecraftian western, investigative horror, modern sorcery, and even space elves.

So why is the game so good? True to it’s tagline of “fast, furious, fun,” combats run quickly and end brutally Sure, you can mow down a horde of goblins with a cleave of your blade, they’ll still take you out of the fight with a lucky hit. You can certainly die, but probably won’t if you’re careful. You can achieve SUPERAULTRAMEGGA™ critical hits, but bennies (used for rerolls) and wild dice diminish the irritating swinginess of the d20. Savage Worlds hits a wealth of design notes in so few mechanics that I can teach it to a 12-year-old. At a price point of $10, I could afford to buy a copy for each member of my gaming group (not that I did or would).

Why This Project Gives Me Tingles

I love both Savage Worlds and Rifts in their own way. Rifts has coolest settings to explore, but, frankly, it doesn’t have a playable system. Savage Worlds runs quickly on smooth, clean mechanics. It has no inherent fluff. The system is basically a customizable foundation for campaign settings, like the weird west horror mash-up Deadlands or the nautical fantasy 50 Fathoms. Rifts and Savage Worlds complement one another perfectly. It’s like someone got chocolate on my peanut butter AND peanut butter on my chocolate!

I have faith that the crew at Pinnacle knows how to do a bang up job converting this material, as long as they’re given the freedom to do so. Quite honestly, this game setting should take over my gaming group like nothing before. The key is to let the new team revamp stuff a bit while honoring the original work and keeping the stuff that makes the game Rifts. Nobody wants to see the game completely re-imagined, but that doesn’t mean they can’t update things a little bit. Here’s an encouraging excerpt of a post by Shane Lacy Hensley, the creator of Savage Worlds :

Finally, we’re happy to be working with Sean Patrick Fannon and Ross Watson on this. Sean got the ball rolling, Ross handles most of the project management, and the two of them together are creating something I think Rifts fans will find both familiar and different enough to open up new tales and adventures. Savage Worlds fans who haven’t experienced Rifts will get to walk in one of the most rich, detailed, and over-the-top settings ever released. So we think this is a win-win and can’t wait to show you our work.

But, like all fanboys, I have a list of things that I hope for:

No character classes! The Arcane Background edge (edges are like D&D’s feats) from Savage Worlds determines what kind of spellcaster or superhuman you are. And that’s as close as they should come to actual character classes. Yes, they are a big part of rifts, but the inclusion of classes would make Savage Worlds into not Savage worlds. I actually don’t have many worries about this, as I’m sure these guys have a better handle on the system than I do.

The Arcane Background edge (edges are like D&D’s feats) from Savage Worlds determines what kind of spellcaster or superhuman you are. And that’s as close as they should come to actual character classes. Yes, they are a big part of rifts, but the inclusion of classes would make Savage Worlds into not Savage worlds. I actually don’t have many worries about this, as I’m sure these guys have a better handle on the system than I do. Dragons and Glitterboys and crazy psychic ninjas, oh my! Players still need to play crazy crap, else it isn’t Rifts. Naturally, we don’t expect them to include everything. Palladium Games has published quite a library, some of it redundant. We don’t need rules for psychics AND psychic gunslingers. But most concepts playable in Rifts (crazies, juicers,dragons, mechs, cyborgs, psi-stalkers, etc.) should carry over to Savage Rifts, which leads to my next point:

Players still need to play crazy crap, else it isn’t Rifts. Naturally, we don’t expect them to include everything. Palladium Games has published quite a library, some of it redundant. We don’t need rules for psychics AND psychic gunslingers. But most concepts playable in Rifts (crazies, juicers,dragons, mechs, cyborgs, psi-stalkers, etc.) should carry over to Savage Rifts, which leads to my next point: Varied mechanics. Steamlining wizards, psychics, and mad scientists into one system has worked very well in all of my Savage Worlds games. Yet…the same system doesn’t feel right for other character types, like cyborgs or Juicers (superhuman steroid speedsters). In fact, the beauty (and horror) of those character types is that they trade away their humanity for nearly limitless power. I’m hoping the Savage Rifts superhuman enhancement sticks closer to the cyberware system presented in the Science Fiction Companion.

Steamlining wizards, psychics, and mad scientists into one system has worked very well in all of my Savage Worlds games. Yet…the same system doesn’t feel right for other character types, like cyborgs or Juicers (superhuman steroid speedsters). In fact, the beauty (and horror) of those character types is that they trade away their humanity for nearly limitless power. I’m hoping the Savage Rifts superhuman enhancement sticks closer to the cyberware system presented in the Science Fiction Companion. Themeparks! With semi-Lovecraftian alien slavers hanging out in the newly-arisen Atlantis, human brains inhabiting robotic dragons in Japan, and giant magical gargoyle empire in Germany, Rifts exemplifies the “themepark” RPG. Culture, technology and magic vary greatly from one area to another, and that’s how Savage Rifts should be. Plus, it gives them all manner of awesome sourcebook opportunities!

With semi-Lovecraftian alien slavers hanging out in the newly-arisen Atlantis, human brains inhabiting robotic dragons in Japan, and giant magical gargoyle empire in Germany, Rifts exemplifies the “themepark” RPG. Culture, technology and magic vary greatly from one area to another, and that’s how Savage Rifts should be. Plus, it gives them all manner of awesome sourcebook opportunities! Art, new and old. Naturally, I want to see exciting new art,I hope Kevin Siembieda is giving Pinnacle access to Rifts artwork because some of their artists have done damn fine work. Namely, this dude. Ramon Perez is a comic book artist who got his start doing art for Rifts and he did their best artwork. While he never achieved the notoriety he deserved in the RPG community, I consider his art to be as awesome and setting-defining for Rifts as Wayne Reynolds is for Pathfinder. At the least, they’ve got to see if they can get some of his old stuff.

Naturally, I want to see exciting new art,I hope Kevin Siembieda is giving Pinnacle access to Rifts artwork because some of their artists have done damn fine work. Namely, this dude. Ramon Perez is a comic book artist who got his start doing art for Rifts and he did their best artwork. While he never achieved the notoriety he deserved in the RPG community, I consider his art to be as awesome and setting-defining for Rifts as Wayne Reynolds is for Pathfinder. At the least, they’ve got to see if they can get some of his old stuff. Fast! Furious! Fun! I don’t need to go on about this too much, but the game has to cling to the principles that make Savage Worlds work.

Regardless of what we have to say, the people involved kick ass and know what to do with the project. I mostly hope that it gets done by Christmas, so I can get it for myself as Christmas present. Or before Christmas, so I can get for myself as a pre-Christmas present. Or sooner. Is giving yourself a Cinco de Mayo gift gauche?