Savage Worlds

2000 Tales RolePlaying takes you through the basics of Savage Worlds for beginners. This is the first in a series of videos from this channel on how to play Savage Worlds, so be sure to check out the rest of the series for more details!

The basic mechanic of Savage Worlds is rolling your character's Trait Die, the d4, d6, d8, d10, or d12 associated with the relevant trait to the challenge at hand, and the Wild Die, a bonus die representing the player characters' luck, and taking the higher result. Compare that result to a target number, usually 4. If your result is greater than or equal to the target number, you succeed! If your dice roll their highest result, e.g. 8 on a d8, you can re-roll them and add the results together. This is called an "ace" or explosion, and it can achieve results many times higher than the target number.

To help them along, player characters (called "Wild Cards" in many Savage Worlds games) also have access to "bennies," or benefits, a limited resource they can spend for various bonuses. Bennies might let you re-roll a trait check or damage, soak up wounds, influence the story, among other useful tricks! They might also have edges and powers that allow them special abilities that might otherwise break the rules.

In combat, initiative is determined by dealing playing cards, then going down the ranks from ace down to deuce. Jokers are wild and can go anytime, and come with a bonus to the character using it. Each character can move and take an action, as well as spend bennies or take penalties to push themselves to do more during each round of combat.

Learn the basics of creating a character for Savage Worlds in this video, applicable to any setting or genre of the game. Additional videos cover characters with powers or specific to one of Savage Worlds' settings that the basic universal rules don't.

You'll begin with a character concept, the type of person you want your character to be. Next, you'll choose or create your character's race; depending on the game's setting, everyone might be human, or there might be no limit to the fantastical beings you can play as, each of which will give you some advantages and disadvantages. Next you'll choose hindrances, character flaws that grant both penalties to the character and extra points with which to buy advantages later. Then traits, including attributes, where you'll assign points to Agility, Smarts, Spirit, Strength, and Vigor. Each point increases the size of the die associated with the attribute, from a d4, to a d6, d8, d10, and then d12. The bigger the die, the better the attribute. Similarly, players then assign points to skills, which can be increased in die size as well. Once these attributes are settled, derived stats like Pace, Parry, and Toughness are easy to calculate. Next, Edges are where your character becomes unique. Edges are special abilities that allow characters to specialize or gain bonuses in specific situations. Finally, you'll purchase your character some starting gear to help them on their adventures.

The video also explains what it might look like as your character advances!