It’s been too long since I touched anything to do with Savage Worlds. It’s no fault of the rules or anything like that. It’s just if I’m tinkering or playing with a game I tend to not thing about it.
I know that Beasts and Barbarians by GRAmel has been out for a while and it’s been sitting there patiently on my hard drive just waiting of the attention it deserves.
First of all, I have a renewed love of Sword & Sorcery. Maybe because I’ve just been too much Pathfinder and am getting tired of all the High Fantasy. Beasts & Barbarians is a Sword & Sorcery setting for Savage Worlds.
First of all, Beasts & Barbarians is damned pretty book with some fine artwork. I know I don’t usually mention that but this one is really nice. Now, on to the crunchy bits. There are plenty of rules for new magic systems and some very nice rules for handling the Ale and Whores rule as well as a good chart for what happens between the adventures. All in all, it’s a good selection of Edges, Hindrances and Powers to add to a Savage Worlds game.
Where this product really shines is the setting. The Dread Sea Dominions is a damned fine setting. It’s well thought our and documented but not to the point of of every little detail. There’s plenty of room and inspiration for game masters. The world is big enough and varied enough to have just about any kind of Sword & Sorcery character you want. And that makes it cool. But here’s the real kicker. Even if you don’t like Savage Worlds. Don’t ever want to play it and just don’t care about it. That’s fine. But you should still pick this up if you’re looking for a Sword & Sorcery setting. It won’t be that difficult to convert the fluffy bits. So yep, if you don’t play Savage Worlds, it’s still a damned good source book for Sword & Sorcery game. Beasts & Barbarians is available thru Drivethrurpg.(Affiliate Link)
No really. OK, not really. And don’t get all grumpy. Already it’s time to step back, relax and see what happens. That’s it. Breath. Chill. Roll dice. Have fun. Kill monsters and take their stuff.
War has fallen on our little kingdom and we come out swinging. We quickly found out that we had two cities that were under attack and that our less than competent (and probably treasonous) spy master was no where to be found.
The battle system was OK. Still just as abstract as the kingdom building but we pushed through two battles during the session with time left over some adventuring. During this time the choices we had made in the past proved to be a great benefit. The boggards we aided previously came in and helped break the siege at Fort Drelev. It’s going to be interesting to see what happens when we get our centaur cavalry, lizardmen and mites on giant slugs into the war effort. Man just imagine what we’d come up if we were evil.
Of course, we also had some fun at the expense of the city building and battle rules. Looking at the city map. “So the town only has one city wall, why don’t the trolls just go around?”
“Because, the humans keep jumping to the other side and confusing them.” We did run across one troll who was an “officer”. We assume he earned his rank by solving “The Great Wall Puzzle”. It’s sort like the troll version of the Kobayashi Maru.
After the dust cleared, we sent our invaders packing with their tails between their legs. Before our boggard allies ate any valuable POW’s, we pulled one of the officers to the side and began the interrogation. In D&D, it’s not that hard. A couple of Charm Person spells and the right words, the guy spills his guts. The only thing of pressing value we learn is that Pitaxe is working on a weapon of mass destruction. Some sort of magical poisonous horn. We have our flunkies muster our army and we head off and do player character things.
We managed to track down where they are supposed to working on the Horn of Death. A rather uneventful trip and we head into the belly of the beast. Except we wander straight into an encounter that kicks our ass. Just some Will O’ Wisps and a ghost. How bad can it be? Let’s just say that our dice mojo was gone for the evening. As a general rule of thumb, you need to roll higher than 5 on a d20 to do anything really effective. Everybody was low on HP except the fighter/cleric who was dead by the time the battle was over.
Being high level player characters, it was time to teleport, resurrect, level and get ready to head back. Here endeth the session.
There are a few authors who have greatly influenced not only RPG’s but also pop culture in general. And one such man is Robert E. Howard. He gave us Conan, Kull and Salomon Kane just to name a few. His tales of Sword, Sorcery & Weird Adventures still shapes the genre today.
Thank you Mr. Howard.
If you like urban fantasy type stuff then just might be up your alley. I’m really glad that this Canadian import has finally made it over the border.
The show is more Dresden like than the Dresden files series. First all the supernaturals are considered Fae. And they have to chose a side Light or Dark. I’m hearing Summer or Winter Court here plus it reminds me a lot of Nightwatch in that regard. And also our main character, her name is Bo by the way, is a succubus. Really, she’s almost identical to a White Court vampire. And one of the other characters. He’s a cop werewolf. And we can’t forget the perky mortal human sidekick Kenzi who is one of the more interesting characters in the show but she does start remind me of Claudia from Warehouse 13.
So go ahead and check it out on SyFy. Hey, they got a cool show, they just had to import it.
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