Out of the Box

One of the things Savage Worlds is especially good for is fast, easy conversion of other games and settings. You can do this with most games if you work at it, but SW seems deliberately designed for it, and conversion feels easier to me with SW than any other game I’ve played.

Here are some of the things you can do with Savage Worlds Deluxe right out of the box, no setting books or rules supplements needed.

CONAN

This is more an exercise in cutting things out than adding them in. Reduce available races to humans and available Arcane Backgrounds to Magic, and you’re pretty much there.

Winged apes? Gorillas with the Fly monstrous ability. Acid-spitting giant slug? Giant worm with Bolt power bolted on (har har). Assorted demonic statues? Ogre with Construct monstrous ability, or the Bodyguard from the Summon Ally Power.

LORD OF THE RINGS

Let’s see, we have dwarves, elves, halflings, and humans for PCs; trolls, orcs, giant spiders, dragons, horses, liches and mass battle rules for the opposition. Setting rule of no more than one wizard per party, and LOTR magic feels more like AB: Miracles to me than AB: Magic, but YMMV.

POLICE PROCEDURAL OR OTHER MODERN GENRES

Drop Powers, Weird Edges and almost all the Bestiary. Grab the plot line from the last Bruce Willis or Jason Statham movie you saw. You’re done.

For survival horror, season with occasional items from the Bestiary – vampires, werewolves, zombies.

For Mission: Impossible or James Bond, garnish instead with one or two items imbued with Powers courtesy of Weird Science.

SHADOWRUN

You’ve got firearms, magic, elves, dwarves, and half-orcs in the rules. Cyberware is a trapping on your Edges – you levelled up and got more Strength? Sounds like muscle implants to me, chummer. Drones use the stats for suitable animals, with the Construct monstrous ability and a new description. Hacking is a dramatic task based on a Knowledge skill (and possibly a renamed Scholar Edge to boost it).

STARGATE SG-1

SGC is basically present-day Earth, so that’s easy. Jafar get Slow Regeneration but have a dependency on their Goa’uld larva (treat as the Dehydration -1 racial ability, but with different trapping; only happens if the larva is removed). System Lords have AB: Weird Science and gizmos like the Ribbon Device, which in the show is used with various powers – Healing, Mind Reading (trapping: hurts a lot), Deflection (force field) and Telekinesis. They seem to put New Powers into the same device rather than creating a new one each time.

STAR WARS

All the races, all the time? Check. Laser swords and pistols? Check. AB: Psionics, mostly used for Boost/Lower Trait? Check. Anything that should have wheels gets either legs or repulsorlifts as a trapping? Check. OK, we’re good to go.

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I could do so much with this game, given the time and the players. The main problem I have with it is choosing what to do next…