Game RPG Savage:Main Page
1996 saw the debut of an unusual new role-playing game called Deadlands, with a "Weird West" setting of a version of nineteenth-century American frontier haunted by monsters, undead, and powerful evil spirits called "Reckoners". Created by Shane Lacy Hensley and published by a company he founded called Pinnacle Entertainment Group, Deadlands was as quirky in its ruleset as it was in its setting, using playing cards and poker chips in addition to the more traditional dice.
While never in the top tier of role-playing games saleswise, Deadlands was popular enough to endure through several editions and spawn a number of spinoffs. The most immediately relevant to the present article is a game called Deadlands: The Great Rail Wars, published only a year after Deadlands itself. While The Great Rail Wars was more a wargame than an RPG, it had enough RPG elements that in 2003 a revised version of its ruleset was expanded into a complete role-playing game system and published by Pinnacle Entertainment Group (which by then had renamed itself "Great White Games") under the name Savage Worlds. Now Pinnacle Entertainment Group is back to its original name and Savage Worlds has become its flagship product. Currently in what amounts more or less to its third edition, "Savage Worlds Adventure Edition" (or SWADE for short), Savage Worlds has seen considerable expansion since its inception, and Pinnacle Entertainment has released dozens of "Savage Settings" in various genres. Bringing things full circle, one of said "Savage Settings" is a Savage Worlds conversion of Deadlands, and it's the Deadlands setting that's featured in the free Savage Worlds "test drive".
Like Deadlands, Savage Worlds still uses poker chips (or equivalent markers) and playing cards, the former to keep track of "bennies" that players can use for immediate rerolls or other game benefits, and the latter primarily for initiative. Its rules terminology continues the theme, peppered with card-related words like "Aces" and "Wild Cards". Pinnacle advertises the game as "Fast! Furious! Fun!", and says in the marketing speech on its product page that "[t]he emphasis is on less bookkeeping for the Game Master so she can quickly and easily create worlds and adventures for any setting and focus on the players and their actions to keep the action and story rocketing along."
Savage Worlds material in the Wongery is made freely available (or will be, once we get any of it done) under the Savage Worlds Fan License. A link to the fan license will appear at the bottom of each page (aside from this main page), along with the Savage Worlds Fan Product logo and the required legal notice.