50 Fathoms
From: Great White Games / PEGInc
Reviewed by: Butch Curry
50 Fathoms is a new Savage Worlds supplement from Great White
Games/PEGInc. If you hadn't noticed, pirates are making a big comeback this year.
With the success of Pirates of the Caribbean, a flurry of pirate-related
game products have been released this year. Coincidence? Skillful marketing?
Copycats galore? Who cares! Pirates are too darn cool to care. If d20 is your
thing, you've got a lot to choose from, but for Savage Worlds fans
there's only one. Don't worry, though, 50 Fathoms is all you'll
need.
From the introduction:
"The visitors are English, French, Spanish, Dutch, and Chinese. Some are
honest privateers - more or less. Others are scurvy pirates fresh from
bloodletting in the Caribbean or the Spanish Main. A few are even corsairs from
the rich Mediterranean. The darkest souls are slavers, trading human cargo
across the merciless Middle Passage. All have one thing in common - they are
here because the Maiden led them into the storms, out of their own world's and
into the Devil's Cross, a tempest-tossed region of mystery and death in the
alien world of Caribdus."
What is it?
50 Fathoms is the first "plot point" book for Savage Worlds.
These provide a moderately detailed campaign setting, and are intended to
allow the players to act as they wish within that setting. The book contains
tools for creating mini-adventures on the fly, based on the characters'
decisions; a collection of standalone and loosely connected adventures; and the
"plot points", a baker's dozen of adventures which cover 50F's
metaplot and which can be introduced whenever you feel is appropriate.
How does it play?
This is high seas adventure with a fantasy twist. It is set in the world of
Caribdus, a land cursed by three evil witches to be drowned in fifty fathoms of
water. With most of the world now consigned to the deep, civilization is
confined to a handful of islands; at their center is a mysterious portal which
occasionally drags ships from other worlds, including our Earth. The humans in
Caribdus are all from here, dragged from the eras when sailing vessels - and
piracy - were at their peak.
The book opens with character creation.
There are nine races to choose from, including the crablike Scurillians, winged
Atani, and the Doreen, a breed of dolphin-like humanoids. It's a fine mix, and a
real break from the traditional elf/dwarf/halfling types common to fantasy
gaming. While the quasi-Neanderthal Half-Ugaks have a pretty direct corollary in
D&D; half-orcs, the other new races stand as clearly unique,
particularly the 'iconic' Masaquani, who do nothing in half measures (strong
Masaquani are really strong, agile ones are lightning-quick, etc.).
You'll find a small collection of new Hindrances and Edges in the character
section as well. (If you take One Arm, One Eye, and One Leg, make sure you save
some money to buy a hook, an eye patch, a peg leg, and a parrot; you'll need the
parrot because at that point your only career choice is going to be pirating.) A
couple of the Edges, particularly Dirty Fighting, are generic enough that they
might have been better served by inclusion in the main rules. The rest are very
genre-specific (Rope Monkey, which makes the character an expert at swinging
around a ship's rigging, is a favorite), and serve the setting well.
Equipment and goods are
covered in the next chapter. All the usual fantasy weapons are included, as well
as black powder firearms and cannon. The best of this section is, of course, the
ships. You'll be spending most of your time sailing from here to there in
Caribdus, so many different types of vessel are described. This segues nicely
into the next chapter, which covers setting-specific rules. The bulk of these
deal with ships (navigation, fighting below decks, upkeep, ship combat) and crew
(hiring them and keeping them on once you've got them). There's money to be made
in more than piracy; if your group is a more peace-loving bunch, you'll find
information here on trading too. I noticed in the course of reading through
these chapters that there's no bias towards earning your living in one way or
another; it would seem that the 'plot point' book design does a good job of
exploring as many options as possible for the players, within the scope of a
specific genre (in this case, high seas adventure).
The Gazetteer offers players some basic
information on the different towns, seas, and VIP's in Caribdus, and the chapter
rounds up with a collection of pirate lingo. The obvious highlight here are
the ships and ship combat, which relies on Savage Worlds' stylized chase
rules. Considering SW's strong rules for minis, this surprised me
initially, but given the nature of the maneuvering and the distances covered in
ship-to-ship combat, it makes more sense to use the chase rules.
The
players section of 50F is wrapped up with a section on magic. The four
elements - air, earth, fire, and water - dominate the spellcasting in Caribdus.
Wizards choose a single element to base their powers on at character creation;
given the nature of the setting, air wizards with their ability to control wind,
are in particularly high demand. There are fourteen new spells offered - a hefty
amount considering that there only twenty-four spells in the core book -
covering a wide range of power levels. You'll also find trappings for many of
the core spells appropriate to the setting (such as growing gills for Wave
Runner).
The players' section takes up roughly the first 1/3 of the
book; the remainder is taken up with the GM's section, covering the different
cities, islands, and seas; the plot points and other mini-adventures; and the
many new monsters introduced in the book.
The area descriptions
themselves are the source of my only real complaint about the book. The
descriptions of many of the various towns - there are a lot of them - are quite
brief. A few more distinctive characteristics of the town, something to set them
apart from all the others, would be nice. Some towns have something like this -
Baltimus features buildings dotting a massive cliffside, while Maroa has houses
built in the treetops by the flying Atani - but too many others don't, I think,
leaving many of the smaller towns little more than anonymous ports.
Moving
on, the adventure section of the book opens with the Adventure Generator. This
is a simple set of tools you can use to create on-the-fly adventures. The
characters choose what they'd like to do, from a list of options that should
cover most of the things they'd want to do in a high-seas campaign: carousing
(your crew will need to do this periodically in order to fight off cabin fever),
exploring the wilds in search of adventure and treasure, pirating or
privateering (the privateers are licensed pirate hunters), salvaging the ruins
of areas destroyed in the flood or the remains of these cities that have washed
up on shore, or trading goods from city to city. If the characters choice takes
them into town, you can roll or choose from a list of subplots - an outbreak of
pox, or someone trying to join the crew, for example - to introduce to help
complicate things. There are plenty of random encounter tables you can make use
of, and some point to the pre-generated mini-adventures.
The plot point
metastory in 50 Fathoms takes the characters from one end of Caribdus to
the other on a quest to defeat the witches who've drowned the world. It's
standard stuff, but does include some rousing fights and ends with a massive
battle at sea. The other mini-adventures run the gamut, including stories of
action and adventure to horror. Most can be wrapped up in one game session
easily, though there are a couple of 'miniseries' multi-session adventures as
well. All in all, its a great mix; if you used only the plot-point story and the
mini-adventures and passed on the Adventure Generator altogether, you'd still
find 50 Fathoms a rollicking good time.
How does it read?
50F makes for some surprisingly compulsive good reading, particularly the
adventures section. The new rules are clearly presented and concise,
conserving plenty of space for the 'good stuff', i.e., the adventures. There's
no wasted space here, either; 50F is lean and mean. Maybe a hair too
lean, in fact; an extra 10-20 pages to give a little more detail on the
locations, as I mentioned before, wouldn't hurt.
How does it look?
Packing a one-two punch of good design and Cheyenne Wright's artwork - a perfect
match here - 50 Fathoms continues the trend of great looking products
from PEG/Great White Games. The grid on the main world map was a bit
difficult for me to make out, but I read the book as a PDF on a less-than-new
laptop with a less-than-stellar video card, so the resolution on so fine a scale
isn't very impressive. I can only imagine that the final, printed version will
be clearer.
Is it worth it?
This is just the sort of thing that Savage Worlds does well: fast,
pulp-oriented action and adventure. If you play SW, you should consider 50
Fathoms to be a must-have, and I'm anxiously awaiting the chance to run it
for my group. Check it out.
For more details on Great White Games and their new Savage Worlds
supplement "50 Fathoms" check them out at their website http://www.greatwhitegames.com, and at all of your local game stores.
(Product Summary)
50 Fathoms
From: Great White Games / Pinnacle Entertainment Group Inc.
Type of Game: Savage Worlds supplement
Written by: Shane Lacy Hensley
Cover Art by: Zeke Sparkes
Interior Art by: Cheyenne Wright
Number of Pages: 144
Retail Price: $ 29.95 (US)
Item Number: 10004
ISBN: 1-930855-63-X
Email: PEGShane@aol.com
Website: http://www.greatwhitegames.com
Reviewed by: Butch Curry
