Savage Worlds: 50 Fathoms

January 13, 2009 No comments

Once upon a time, three Sea Hags put a curse upon the fantasy world of Caribdus. It rained for months on end until the world drowned, and the only land left were the tops of mountains, a thousand islands. The aquatic and amphibious races survived, terrorized by the Sea Hags. Then the Visitors came. Humans, from Earth during the Age of Sail, all lured into the mist by the siren song of the mysterious Maiden. Rumor has it that she’s looking for a champion, someone to defeat the Sea Hags and free the world of Caribdus.

50 Fathoms is a setting for Savage Worlds, a seafaring, piratical setting predating the Pirates of the Spanish Main RPG, although sharing many of its mechanics; one could consider PotSM to be an expanded version of the seafaring rules and source material, with added historical content and far less fantasy. This is very much a planetary romance, in a fantasy world, with pirates. Humans sail into this world, unable to sail out, and are destined to be its champions.

There are seven additional races, aside from humans, that can be taken as player characters. The Doreen are dolphin-people, sleek mammals that can hold their breathes for a long time. Peaceful, mysterious, and nearly wiped out as a species. The Grael are sealion people, heavy, strong, tusked, and not so bright. Also mammals, also capable for holding their breathe under water for a long time. The Kehana are fish people, although they look more like the Creature from the Black Lagoon or Deep Ones. They’re vicious, and player character Kehana are assumed to be of a different mindset from the race in general. Scurrillians are sentient crabs. The Red Men, or half-Ugak, are the neandethal-like offspring of the settings orcs, the Ugak. The Kraken are, well, they’re mind flayers without the brain-eating and psionics. They’re elemental mages with squid heads. The Masaquani are essentially anime humans, with skin, hair and eye colors available in any shade. All of the physical characteristics of the Masaquani are exaggerated; a fat Masaquani is going to be 400 to 500 pounds, a tall Masaquani will be 7′ tall, a Masaquani with big eyes will have really big eyes. All of these races are interesting, and look like they’d be fun to play.

All of the magic in the setting is elemental in nature. Air, Earth, Fire, Water. Pick one. There are several pages of elemental spells. The only native race with religion are the primite Ugak, who have a pantheon. Humans, of course, have brought their religions with them. One of the humans to come through to Caribdus is Tomas de Torquemada, the Inquisitor, who has engaged in a campaign to destroy all elemental mages.

There’s a page of basic pirate lingo, and a gazeteer of important and interesting places in the Thousand Isles. The book has an adventure generator, and about half its pages are devoted to adventure hooks. You can easily run a long campaign out of this book, assuming you have a copy of the full Savage Worlds rules somewhere (character creating is included, but not the core rules).

The book is 144 pages, hardcover, black-and-white interior on ordinary paper. I like the book and will mine it for ideas and maybe run a one-shot at a game day or a con, but I’m glad I picked it up used for $5 rather than paying the $29.95 cover price. The content is great, but the production values don’t merit the price tag for me. I bought the Pirates of the Spanish Main RPG for $10 more, and got 256 full-color pages.

Buy 50 Fathoms (Savage Worlds; GWG10004)

Buy Pirates of the Spanish Main RPG (S2P10300; Savage Worlds)