I'm just starting to get into tabletop RPGs, and specifically I've been playing some Savage Worlds, which I REALLY enjoy. I was wondering, has anyone run a mystery game with SW? I've been thinking an RPG would be a cool venue for a noir-detective kind of story, given that the players can go in any direction and follow any lead, as opposed to a video game (like LA Noire) where it is necessarily more regimented and linear for programming reasons.
That being said, my (small) experience with Savage Worlds is that it really shines in combat, allowing for quick enemy creation and speedy fights against large crowds. Has anyone run a more cerebral, clue-following game in SW? If so, how did it go? And if not, do you think it would be well-suited to the concept?
Best Answer
Absolutely, Savage Worlds can run that type of game. There's even an official published setting that might do what you need it to...
Its called Deadlands Noir, a Raymond Chandleresque mashup with horror and magic elements, and contains additional rules for various things that you might find in a mystery game, including:
The default geographic location is New Orleans in the 1930s, and there is a detailed background with districts, individual locations and characters from the city. It's a well supported setting, with a recent companion book that widens its scope to other cities at the time, and there are a number of published adventures.
I've run a couple of mystery based adventures using the setting, where the PCs played Private Investigators, and they went down extremely well.
The only caveat to Deadlands Noir is that it is predictably set in the Deadlands universe, and as such has quite a lot of fluff that you might not want if you want to run a more generic Noir setting. However, it would be pretty straightforward to remove anything you deem unnecessary.