As people are probably sick of me saying, I'm a recent Savage Worlds convert, too.

I'm an old-time D&Der. The Red Box was my first set, but I played with a lot of people that used the Blue Dragon booklet that came before it. I played Basic/Expert and then AD&D when it came out, and played those for years. Dabbled with other systems, but always came back to D&D.

I took a decade off from gaming, but when D&D 3.0 came out, learned the new system. At first it was great, and a nice evolution of the game. But it just got more and more and more and more rules oriented, with more and more and more supplements, and got out of control. The change to 3.5 really ticked me off.

After some of the constant SW pestering on this board, I mean, hearty recommendations, I finally started checking it out. I ran through a couple of test adventures with my wife and friend, and becamse sold (and bought Evernight, 50 Fathoms, Necessary Evil - even Tour of Darkness and a bunch of the Savage Tales). I just ran our first large group adventure last night for our intro session, and this morning everyone is emailing me telling me how much they love it. I mean, LOVE it.

We had a test combat last night (ye olde tavern brawl) to test the combat system ... only, half the party never struck a blow, but used Tricks, Intimidate and Persuasion, and were successful in removing half the threats that way (which was awesome). We had a couple of great tricks in the brawl, a character pick up a table and use it was a weapon (and knocking one of the thugs on the table off onto his butt and Shaking him in the process), and it all ended when my wife used her Peace adventure card to convince the Duke (hidden in the corner as an old man, observing the fray) to call an end to the combat so no one would get seriously hurt. I can't imagine a combat like that in any other system I've played.

Now, there are some differences in SW from other systems, a different mindset than most other games, and it takes a little getting used to their magic/powers system, but once you do its phenomenal. Its much easier to run a fun, cinematic combat since the rules are oriented that way, and from the DM perspective, the bookkeeping is almost non-existant. But it does all this without losing depth, and that is a big deal to our group.

Anyhow, if you have tried Savage Worlds, download the Test Drive rules. Its only 5 pages of information plus the cover page, and its well worth the time. Despite my investment in D20 books (easily $1000 or more), we don't be going back to D20 ... ever. (And I can convert any of the D20 stuff I want to use to SW - easily - which is what I will eventually do with things like the Scarred Lands.)

Sounds like Savage Worlds is something to look into for a future game. My only problem is when people say "I will never go back to [game system X]. I like the d20 system and other systems, too. There is enough room for all of them in my gaming life (time is another matter). hehehe.

So, should I get the hardback edition or get it in pdf? Comments?

Thanks for all the info guys!