Savage Worlds and me… We go a LONG way back!
Like many of you around my age, my first introduction to tabletop roleplaying games was via an early edition of Dungeons & Dragons, which soon led to my brother and I investing our hard-earned allowances and monetary gifts in books and supplements for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons.
For many years (all through high school), I collected, ran, and played several RPGs with friends until various real life distractions (college, work, etc.) got in the way.
In the mid-1990s, I stumbled into the world of board games with my focus mainly on European imports like Settlers of Catan, El Grande, and Tigris & Euphrates. My collection of board games surged, I attended a number of board gaming events around the country, and I co-created SoCal Games Day (which is actually holding its 86th gathering as I write this)!
After a few years of that, I found myself with the desire to revisit roleplaying games again and I started to look back at older releases as well as some of the new stuff coming to market.
Around that time, I discovered the first, flaming orange edition of Deadlands, and loved what I saw, even running it a few times and collecting countless sourcebooks, miniatures, and other materials.
At some point in the early 2000s, while visiting my local (now-defunct) game shop, the Last Grenadier here in Burbank, California, I spotted a new hardcover roleplaying game book on the shelf that had been penned by the same designer who had given us Deadlands a few years before. I scooped it up without hesitation and walked out not realizing that because of that one volume, certain aspects of my life were about to change!
"Shane Lacy Hensley's Savage Worlds" was a generic system "... for Both Miniatures and Roleplaying Games!" The interior was mostly in black and white. And there didn’t seem to be a lot of support material available, but there was something about it that spoke to me.
I vividly recall exiting the shop, sitting down on a nearby bench, and spending a good hour in public flipping through the book.
I was instantly hooked and I soon found myself seeking out everything that had thus far been released including settings like 50 Fathoms, Evernight, and Necessary Evil.
From that point on, there was no going back for me and I was officially and completely a Savage Worlds convert, buying new settings, new editions of the core rulebooks, custom Action Decks, dice sets, and whatever else I could get my mitts on.
Eventually I wormed my way into editing a few licensed products which in turn led to my contributing to a couple books for Pinnacle Entertainment Group (the publishers of Savage Worlds), and then my first full writing gig!
But THAT’S a story for another time!
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