Savage Characters Volume One

Savage Characters, Volume 1
By Jim Davenport, Dragonlaird Gaming
Review and Advice: Tom Barlow, Allen Bohannon, Chris Daianu, Mark Daymude,
James Dugger, Joanna Gilicinski, Mark Gilicinski, Norm Hensley, Simon Lucas,
Dave McGuire, Rory McLeod, Josh Minto, Tina Monk, Mark Plemmons, Jeff Rees,
Nathan Rockwood, Paul Vogt, Tim Weber
Editing: Kate Sedon
Layout: Heather S. Miller
Rules Editing: Norm Hensley
Illustrations:
Bart Browne (Theta Ships & Iron Men)
Jesse Griffith (Sixguns & Ghost Lands)
Gordon Napier (Dark Ages & Dragon Gods)
Vicki Moon Spiegel (Demon Streets & Made Men)

The Savage Characters series utilizes the Savage Worlds Deluxe game engine to present TWENTY
ORIGINAL CHARACTERS. Each character is defined with a rich background, full body portrait,
full stats as a Legendary figure, the complete build path to play them at whatever experience level
you choose, and five adventure ideas (one for each rank). Each of them could be friend or foe, PC
or NPC. Used together, they present entwined histories and related adventures.
The characters are grouped into four Dragonlaird Gaming settings with five characters in each
setting. The settings are original but the characters could be easily used in other games of the
haunted west, fantasy, modern horror, or space opera genres.

Overview:
Often character completions are nothing more than a stack of Pre-generated characters with little rhyme or reason for other than to speed up your game prep. That is often is just the reason why so often we pick these products up.  Refreshingly Savage Characters Volume one offers something very much more. Inside what you will find is thoughtful characters with backgrounds, progression advancement and adventure hooks.

PRO’s: 

There is a lot more product here then meets the eye at first glance.  This PDF is also a shocking 155 pages. Not what most would come to expect of a Character compilation book. Containing  several new Skills, Edges and Races as well.  Going a long way to providing you with some fun stuff to bring to your game at a very easy on the wallet cost. The book is laid out well and the even with each of these characters designed for one of the four presented settings. They would be easy to use in any similar setting with Little to no issue or need of modification as written.

The book is a collection of twenty  complete characters. Pleasantly you are presented with the full listed advancement of each character.  Allowing you to throw down all twenty of these characters at any step of progression from 0 to 80 exp. You in fact have far more than twenty possible characters that you could pull from this product because of this.

Additionally each character has a fully realized back story and several adventure hooks. One hook for each Tier of advancement. Character have story connections with other characters presented in the given theme. Further taking some of the burden off the GM.  Lastly I enjoy the fact that I was given 4 themed settings with a bit of background for each of the collections of characters. This helped bring the them and their world to life for me.

CON’s
Really when you present a book like this you have to walk a fine line. You have to strive to hit the tone of presenting characters that you would want to play yet be generic enough that they can fit in any setting. Overall this product smacks a home run in this department. Most all of the Characters in this book could seamlessly be dropped into any appropriate savage world setting and be ready for play as is. The Ghost lands & Sixguns setting Characters would be  harder I think to drop into a Deadlands style game without a raised eyebrow or two. But hey it is the “Weird West”
Hyper-linking at least to each of the settings would have been a pleasant bonus as this product was far larger than I thought it was going in. With these minor exceptions the whole book was overall a treat.

Runkle’s Ranking ?

It is obvious a lot of thought went into the creation of this product. If your group plays savage worlds this book would be well worth your time. Be it a one shot game or a fill in seat when another gamer joins your table for the night. The Gm will have plenty of use of this product to bring story elements into the game with any thing that is pulled from this product.  It’s easy to read and the layout and art is very nice. The added Edges, Backgrounds and Races is always a plus. Overall I would compare this to Pathfinders Codex of NPC’s.  Easily an above average product. 

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