Savage Worlds: A veritable gumbo of good artwork

Ok, of all the game mechanics I’ve ever played [and there are A LOT!] I’m going to say here, in print, for the very first time, that there is nothing I like better than Pinnacle Entertainment Groups Savage Worlds. 

I once had the pleasure of a forty second conversation with creator Shane Hensley and he unabashedly admitted that he’d designed the system because he was a lazy DM.  Ah, a man after my own heart!  Seriously, the game is incredibly fast, SO EASY TO CREATE SCENARIOS AND ENEMIES ON THE FLY, and absolutely gitch in allowing players to use a deck of cards and poker chips.

But enough on my love affair with Savage Worlds, instead, let me get down to the artwork involved in the Deluxe Edition.

With a bevy of full color artwork provided by twenty-five artists, the game can initially come off as a kind of art gumbo, an absolute jumble of style, genre, and talent level.  However, I’m going to go outside the box on this one and give credit where I hope credit is due.

As Savage Worlds is a cross-genre RPG where any setting is made available in a single core book, then perhaps the mad-scientist kind of art direction here was planned.  With so many artists, and so many possible worlds and timelines, why not show the reader not only the possibility of what they can do, but also inspire them with artwork bound to those particular genres as well?

Contemporary realists like Todd Lockwood are set alongside anime homage artists like Cheyenne Wright and somehow, some way, it works, just like the system that it is built around. 

On top of that, there is a lot of artwork in this book, and from an independent publisher, I have to tip my hat that they had the drive and backing to use so much. 

So again, to both Shane and everyone who helped put this game out, thank you for the design, and well done on the artwork as well.

Artistic Rating: 3 [out of 5]