THE LAST PARSEC is Fast, Furious, Fun and...My Next "Family Friendly" Campaign?

Intrigued by the Promise of Fast! Furious! Fun!

I’ve been a big fan of the Savage Worlds since I first saw the cover illustration Cheyenne Wright did for the first edition of the game when I attended the final Gen Con in Milwaukee Wisconsin. That image included references to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Buck Rogers, Conan, Indiana Jones, and so much more. Most importantly, it stated that the rules inside would be “Fast! Furious! Fun!” I’d played a lot of multi-genre role playing games by that time and while many of them were fun (GURPS and Hero System), very few of them were Fast or Furious. Okay, reading Dangerous Journeys’ Mythus Corebook made me a bit furious at vocabulary choices, but the Dangerous Journeys system was pretty slow and cumbersome.

Yes, Dangerous Journeys was meant to be a Multi-Genre Game.

At the time, the games that I thought came closest to achieving the trifecta Pinnacle Entertainment Group were aiming for were R. Talsorian’s Dream Park and Chaosium’s Worlds of Wonder. Games like Crunchy Frog Enterprises’ Duel and Mayfair Games’ DC Heroes could be used to form the basis of an F!F!F! system, but would have needed some work. After reading through the book, I found that Shane Hensley and his team had accomplished there goal. They had succeeded in making the Fast! Furious! Fun! game they advertised while having it provide a solid foundation for a multi-genre system. Sure, if you wanted to handle Cosmic Powered Superheroes it was going to take a little work, but not much. Their later publications like Necessary Evil demonstrated just how flexible the system was. All while remaining easy to play and run as a GM.

But is it “Family Friendly?”

I want you to try a little mental experiment for me. I want you to imagine, or examine, the typical setting for the Savage Worlds role playing game. Have you got it set in your mind? Good. The first ones that come to my mind are Necessary Evil, Deadlands, and the Weird War line of settings.

Take a moment to picture a scale of 1 to 10 and decide how "family friendly" you think the setting is -- and by family friendly I mean "ages 8 and up." Did you come up with somewhere between a 4 and a 6? That's what I initially came up with myself. After all, this is the game that has a number of high concept horror inspired game settings and is from the same minds that created several horror high concept games ranging from Horror and Supers to Horror and Undergraduate Education (which is scary enough as it is). Ever since I first saw Joseph McCullough’s (creator of Rangers of Shadow Deep) Rise Alabama, I’ve connected Savage Worlds with horror high concept campaigns.

But that's not really a fair assessment of the Savage Worlds game and the settings it has to offer. While the Deadlands game, and setting, may have been inspired by a painting of an undead Confederate Soldier, Pinnacle Entertainment Group has created a number of settings that are just right for ages 8 and up family fun. Set aside the more horror associated Rippers (Victorian MonsterOrganHarvestPunk), Weird Wars (Horror and War), Evernight (Horror meets Fantasy) and Necropolis (Grimdark Science Fiction) campaigns for a moment for a moment. Those would get at least a PG-13 from the MPAA for "thematic elements." We can even set aside Necessary Evil as a "12 and up" Comic's Code Approved version of Supervillains that is just outside the kid friendly zone.

When we do that we are left with some great settings available for kids to play with their parents. Slipstream is a perfect combination of Flash Gordon style action and Planetary Romance. Savage Worlds eventually even acquired the rights to a genuine Flash Gordon game. We also have 50 Fathoms a mash up of Pirates of the Caribbean and Pirates of Darkwater that should make any Gen X (or older Gen Y) parent's heart swell with nostalgia. It's clear that Savage Worlds has some settings that are perfect for the family game night.

Not only does Savage Worlds have some family friendly settings, it also has a rules set that is flexible, promotes storytelling interaction, and is easy to learn. It’s easy to teach new gamers to play and is one of the best introductory role playing games on the market today.

As a parent of who started role playing with my twin daughters when they were very young, with My Little Pony Tails of Equestria, I’m always on the lookout for games and settings that I can play with them that have enough "genre geekdom" to keep me interested but aren't so grimtastic that the twins will be put off. I used to worry about whether or not they would be able to sleep at night, but now it’s just about matching the tone of play that interests them.

The two Savage Settings I’ve already mentioned, 50 Fathoms and Slipstream, certainly meet the mark, but there is another on the list that I’ve wanted to play with them for a long time and that’s The Last Parsec. The Last Parsec is Pinnacle's “hard” science fiction setting and it draws from a deep well of stories to present a straight forward SF setting that doesn't reach to horror for high concept additions. One of my daughters, History, is a huge fan of Mass Effect and I’m considering pitching the game to her and her friends as a follow up to our D&D 5th Edition Dragonlance game.

I’m a big fan of Horror films and literature, but I’m alone in my household in this respect. That means I’ve got to find the right fit of setting and rules for my pitch. We’ve got a little while (about four months or so) before we are finished with the Dragonlance campaign, but I’m every much in the mood to play something other than 5th Edition Dungeons & Dragons. My first choice would be to play DC Heroes from Mayfair games, but given that The Last Parsec is similar in tone to Mass Effect I’m more likely to be able to recruit History to try the game out.

One of the things I find striking about my daughters and their friends is how satisfied they are with “just D&D” when it comes to role playing games. Even though I own scads of them, ever since we started playing D&D it’s been enough for them. We haven’t gone back to Tails of Equestria and we haven’t tried other systems. They aren’t as parochial when it comes to video games. They play multiple genres and styles, but D&D so dominates the marketplace that they don’t even peak at the other books on my shelf. They are like weird artifacts of a different age to them.

When I showed my daughter History, who is currently reading the Mistborn Trilogy, that there was an older and now out of print Mistborn game and another one on the horizon there was a brief glimpse of interest, but then it dwindled when she saw the rule book. When I was younger, I was always on the look out for a new game to read and play, but that doesn’t seem to be the case with my daughters and their friends. I think this is more a legacy of the way they discovered role playing games. They were initially games that were played “with dad” and have only recently been games that my daughters play with their friends (both with and without dad). When I was young, my parents didn’t play role playing games so if I wanted to play one I had to learn it myself. Since I’ve “curated” their early game play, I might have instilled a lack of curiosity.

I think that might be changing though. When Mystery saw that you can play a Duck in Dragonbane, she was instantly intrigued. Maybe I can use the Mass Effect connection to get them excited about The Last Parsec. One thing I know for sure is that my time to play with them is growing ever shorter and I want to maximize it as much as possible.