Rippers

Overall score:

Rippers is a campaign for Savage Worlds, Pinnacle’s multi genre miniature and role-playing game. Billed as Horror role-playing in the Victorian Age, Rippers is actually a combination of many Genres and ideas. Like all Pinnacle products the game is available in both hardcover and PDF form, with the added bonus of having a players guide also available for pesky players who complain about price or GM’s who don’t want the games plot spoiled. I bought both the hardcover and the PDF due to the shipping lag to my FLGS (friendly local games store).

In the future I’d probably just buy the Hardcover and a players guide (to print out for players). The hardcover book has a decent price point when you consider its 140 pages long in full glossy color, but some folks may find $29.99 a trifle steep. If thats too rich for you, the PDF is quite reasonable at 19.95. The players guide is a measly $6.95 and gives the GM a license to print out a copy for every player in his group.

The campaign book is divided into two sections, with the first being reserved for the player and the second for the game-master. The players section is short sweet and to the point, with only 28 pages dedicated to new equipment edges and history of the Vampire hunting supernatural butt-kicking organization known as the Rippers. Its a bit of a cross between the movies Van Helsing and LXG, (only better written) with homages to various super heros thrown in. Remember how Hugh Jackman played both Van Helsing and Wolverine... well in Rippers Van Helsing’s son, walks around with Wolverine Style claws and looks a little like Jackman. But I digress, I should be telling you what the game is about. The short version is that its about destroying evil, Victorian Style!

The Rippers used to be lead by a man named Jack, a brilliant scientist, who discovered the supernatural quite by accident. He also discovered that you could dissect the supernatural and implant their organs into human bodies, vastly increasing strength, life, speed and imparting other magical and supernatural traits. It drove him mad. So mad that Jack began cutting organs out of anything that moved. He became Jack the Ripper. Recently Dracula and Jack the Ripper have joined forces to form the Cabal, backed up by the brilliant and twisted minds of Dr. Frankenstein, Dr. Moreau, The Invisible Man and Henry Jeckyll and a horde of beings of the night. Their aim is unclear, but their methods are entirely evil. Your job is to stop them, you are the Rippers. The organization that Jack founded, is now led by his friend Dr. Abraham Van Helsing and made up of a motley collection of holy men, masked heros, mad scientists and misfits who have one goal, stopping the forces of evil.

As I said Rippers uses the Savage Worlds rules set which is very fast, and in my opinion very easy to run. The system uses polyhedral dice for trait and skill rolls (D4-D12) and has a limited skill selection. There are 5 traits (attributes) and a player can take edges (a little like feats in d20). and hindrances to allow their character to get more edgesRippers makes one or 2 additions to the basic Savage World Rules but nothing too earth shattering.

The campaign does introduce Rippertech -- a sort of biological cyberwear made from the bodies of Vampires, Werewolves and demons you manage to capture alive -- and basic fright and insanity rules. If you ask me, Rippertech is what makes the campaign unique. As characters take more and more of this demonic cyberwear they slowly lose reason, making them more prone to insanity and evil. Still going up against a Werewolf by yourself is certainly easier if you don’t have to worry about it killing you in the first few moments, so Rippertech is an attractive draw for players.

The best part of the book is in the GM’s section, which details the true history of the Rippers, and gives GM’s tools for adventure generation, Advanced Rippertech (yes you can discover more in the course of the game) and plot point adventures. The plot points are designed to be slipped in to your adventure scheme and give the campaign a little focus. You could just run from one plot point to another and blow through the campaign, but the GM’s guide allows the players to do a lot, including letting them create their own Rippers Lodges and politic with local sponsors and dignitaries. In short it gives them the option to play for a month or two, or for years. Given the danger of the setting and the brutality of Savage Worlds (which has been described as positively Gygaxian) its unlikely that any one character will survive to the end of the campaign. This is entirely ok given the setting (one of gothic horror) but may dismay players. Fortunately creating a character is quick (you can do it in less than 10 minutes) and you get to use half the XP from your deceased character.

Personally, I love Rippers, but it isn’t without a few faults. The adventures are primarily based off of hunting monsters which could get repetitive if a GM isn't vigilant. The book is short. The whole system is designed to work with miniatures for fights and while you can play it without them, it is decidedly easier to run fights with minis. Finally, it's a new and different system all together which may annoy groups used to other systems. GM’s willing to embrace the Savage Worlds system will discover an easy, quick to run and fun to play system with a lot of flexibility.

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Written by ElJeffe on January 29th, 2006