What's New in Pinebox Middle School?

Soft Weapons

Unlike most other settings that have been published for use with Savage Worlds over the past 20+ years, we really needed to approach things in a unique way when designing the new Pinebox Middle School Roleplaying Game. As the heroes in this setting are all kids between the ages of 11 and 14, it didn’t make a lot of sense to have them dispatching opponents in the same way as combat-heavy settings like Deadlands: the Weird West, Pathfinder®, or Rifts®.

We also didn’t want to push to avoid combat altogether and stress fleeing over fighting when squaring off against monsters and other threats. I mean, where’s the fun in that???

Enter Soft Weapons!

In Savage Worlds, there is a Situational Rule known as Tests that allows you to make a foe either Distracted (-2 from all Trait rolls until the end of their next turn) or Vulnerable (actions and attacks against the target are made at +2 until the end of their next turn) as well as Shaken with a raise on the roll. Tests can be anything from verbally insulting an opponent (Taunt) to tossing a handful of mud in their face (Athletics), or anything else you can think of that might temporarily fluster your enemy. One common sense restriction to these kinds of maneuvers is that you can’t use the exact same action over-and-over again without it becoming less and less effective over time. Your opponent steals themself against the barrage of insults (even the especially harsh ones about their mother) or they’re able to anticipate you preparing to throw more muck in their face.

In Pinebox Middle School, we offer a variety of Soft Weapons that may be used for Tests using Athletics, Fighting, or Shooting as the skill your enemy must oppose, but we eliminate the aforementioned Repetition restriction allowing your student to use the same weapon repeatedly without penalty. Additionally, if the target of your Soft Weapon attack rolls a Critical Failure (double 1s) when defending against your Test, they are Stunned (Distracted, Vulnerable, prone, and immobilized) along with any other relevant effects like Shaken if the Test succeeded with a raise.

Our extensive list of Soft Weapons includes everything from boffer weapons (those used in LARPing), to foam dart guns, to water pistols, to fire crackers, each with standard Savage Worlds weapon notes like Range, Rate of Fire, number of shots, minimum Strength to wield, weight, and cost.

While we still offer a wide selection of more traditional weapons in the book (baseball (and cricket) bats, walking sticks, throwing axes, bows, and BB guns), there’s really nothing quite like a brave band of 7th graders squaring off against a snarling chupacabra, all armed to the teeth with boffer swords, Nerf™ dart blasters, and paintball pistols. Hey, whatever works!

Next time, I’ll be talking about how we deal with cell phones in Pinebox Middle School.

Class dismissed! 🔔