Last fall, I reviewed Savage Worlds Deluxe Explorer’s Edition and Rifts®: The Tomorrow Legion Player’s Guide sourcebook. As I mentioned in those reviews, I was eager to play, thanks to not just the books, but my fellow-gamers’ enthusiasm for system and setting. Last month, I finally got my chance to play in a one-shot, with more possible in the future. What was it like? Lots of fun, and the mechanics were as easy to pick up as promised.
Our PCs were a Special Exploration Team sent out from Castle Refuge to deliver mail (yes, mail) and touch bases with communities in the area. Our team has 3 heavy hitters: a MARS (Mercenaries/Adventurers/Rogues/Scholars) Power Armor Soldier; a Cyber-Knight, a nano-tech-altered “Jedi Knight” of sorts; and a Juicer, one of the 2 certifiably-beyond-totally-nuts combat monster Rifts Iconic Frameworks. Completing the team is my PC, a MARS Body-fixer/Cyber-doc who, along with her faithful robot horse, hailed from a high-tech Wild West reality, stumbled through a rift, and ended up in Rifts-Earth–which I gather makes her a D-Bee, an other-dimensional being.
Ironically, my PC is the least knowledgeable about this world–but I know the most about the real-world area, the state of Arkansas, where the campaign is set. GM promised he’d make sure it was “all changed!” and he did. Because while Arkansas boasts a lot of mountains, ridges, and big hills, none of them float and/or drop out of the sky onto folks. I swear! But that’s what happened to one cyborg miner we rescued, and his friends, whom we were too late to save. (I tried to keep my real-world knowledge to myself–but I couldn’t help repeating, “It’s pronounced Ell Dough RAY Dough, NOT Ell Door Ah Dough!” every time someone mentioned the Coalition capital of El Dorado. Sorry guys.)
After the rescue we proceeded on our appointed rounds, to Walnut, a small community of woodcutters Castlle Refuge wanted to do business with. This was our intro to non-humans, or non-human-appearing races in the world, Hoovian beaver-men, in a mixed community with humans. This was a fun social encounter (except for our loner, the Juicer), mostly centering around the PCs joining the locals over some Hoovian moonshine. The drinks lead to boasting, storytelling, and my PC, ah, let’s call it, flirting. For the sake of time, most of the interactions were only vaguely described. But all of us–even Juicer’s player–got a kick out of teasing each other about what our PCs were doing. We egged each other on, in and out of character. (I also laughed when the GM appropriated the name of my state’s Beloved & Worshipped Collegiate Football Team for a Trader Gang of dubious ethics.)
We also got some information that would help us in our final encounter, rescuing an oddball scholar (there’s no other kind according to our party) and his entourage, who had recently visited Walnut. We didn’t know right away that they were the duster-clad man and several mages who had been captured by a Coalition (the Rifts version of very vile fascists) patrol. The patrol was made up of several typical Coalition types–Dead-boy troopers, Psi-stalker, and Dogboys.
This could have been a very tough fight except for several factors in our favor: the patrol was lead by that classic military archetype, the Stupid D–k Lieutenant; they were in the middle of a near-mutiny; and our dice were rolling very well. The combat was fast-paced, with some daring and dramatic action, such as the Juicer running straight into the grunts surrounding the prisoners, our Armored Soldier chasing down the Lieutenant, and my Doctor, a crack shot and damn good rider, running robo-horse over another Coalition grunt. The surprise of the encounter was the Psi-stalker surrendering almost right away, with the Dogboys following his lead. With the short combat, we had time for some role-play, learning how the NPCs came to be here, and eventually recruiting most of the survivors for the Tomorrow Legion.
So, how did the mechanics work out for those of us not familiar with Savage Worlds? As I mentioned above, they were easy to learn–and remember. The core mechanic is simple–roll the polyhedral die for your skill/ability plus a D6 Wild Die. If you get the highest number, that die explodes and you roll again and add. Snake Eyes (a pair of 1s) is BAD, Critical Failure bad. No one needed to be talked through rolling a check or damage every round. In my opinion, even FFG Star Wars combats aren’t as fast. In our group, 3 encounters per 3-4 hour session is the maximum for just about any system, and many of our one-shots end up taking 2 sessions, but not this one.
PCs having individual pools of Bennies, the Savage Worlds equivalent of Star Wars RPG Destiny Points, is really good and those pools are generously sized–those of us without Edges (talents) that affected the number of Bennies started with 3. (GMs have a group pool, with some NPCs having personal Bennies.) So it was easy to say, “I’m using a Bennie to reroll” and not worry about running out.
Those of you familiar with Savage Worlds, who are aware my group plays online, may wonder how doing Initiative by drawing playing cards worked out in this format. I’d worried a little about that, myself, but trusted my GM had that figured out, and he did. He shuffled and drew the cards for all PCs and NPCs. For convenience, we typed the cards he called out into our Discord chat. I also typed in the NPCs’ cards. It only took a couple minutes, no longer than in any game using rolled Initiatives.
We really enjoyed Rifts® Tomorrow Legion and will be happy to play it again. I recommended it in my reviews based on the 2 books and word-of-mouth. Now I can really, strongly recommend it after playing: Give one of the Savage Worlds settings a try! It’s fun and fast–as advertised–so you’re in for some good gaming.
Linda Whitson
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No, we use Discord. But there was talk of finding an online card app.