In May 2019 we presented two offers of Savage Worlds science-fiction starfaring action: The Last Parsec Bundle, about JumpCorp interstellar exploration teams at the starry frontiers of Known Space in the 30th Century; and the Seven Worlds Bundle, featuring the epic Intellistories campaign of the fall of Humanity in 2217.
Each of these space-operatic settings requires the Savage Worlds core rulebook and the Savage Worlds Science Fiction Companion. Both books were part of The Last Parsec offer’s Player Collection.
1. The Last Parsec
The Last Parsec originated in three notionally linked campaign books Pinnacle published to support the Science Fiction Companion. Though the books’ shared background was merely sketched, fans asked for “the setting book,” which Pinnacle dutifully provided in its September 2014 Kickstarter campaign. The line’s success spawned a June 2018 “booster” campaign presenting the setting’s space prison of Irongate.
Open-ended and modular, with no complicated backstories nor canonical history, The Last Parsec may remind you of Guardians of the Galaxy, Farscape, or the recent Netflix remake of Lost in Space. Above all, it’s a loving homage to TSR’s fondly remembered Star Frontiers — a loosely defined galactic society where characters zoom all over the universe on every kind of mission. Player characters can be humans, cat people, walking plants, precognitive Serrans (space elves), dome-headed robots, four-armed Kalian swordsmen, or any of five more races, working together for JumpCorp as bounty hunters, explorers, merchants, security, diplomats, mercenaries, salvagers, entertainers, surveyors, scientists, engineers, or spies. JumpCorp employs everybody, sends them everywhere, and asks them to do everything. Is JumpCorp good or bad? honest or corrupt? sinister or benevolent? The answer is yes — it’s whatever your story needs.
(And if you’re wondering, the term “the last parsec” has no great significance in the setting. It’s a slang expression of loyalty: “I’m with you to the last parsec, and beyond.”)
This Last Parsec Bundle had everything you need to start your JumpCorp career. There were five titles in this offer’s Player Collection (retail value $39) as DRM-free .PDF ebooks, including the complete The Last Parsec core setting book, the Savage Worlds Science Fiction Companion, Last Parsec Archetypes, and the JumpCorp Requisition Kit, as well as the Savage Worlds Deluxe Explorer’s Edition rulebook.
Those who paid more than this offer’s threshold (average) price also got this offer’s entire Game Master Collection with eleven more titles worth an additional $68, including the campaign settings Leviathan, Eris Beta-V, and Scientorium; four poster-size ship maps suitable for The Last Parsec or any space-opera setting (Dropship, Freighter, Pirate Ship, and Research Ship); the introductory adventure Omariss Death Worm; two sets of Last Parsec print-and-fold Figure Flats miniatures (Explorers of Deep Space and Terrors of Deep Space); and The Last Parsec GM Screen Inserts.
2. Seven Worlds
Seven Worlds by Luis Enrique Torres, funded in an October 2017 Kickstarter campaign, brings a hard-sf flavor to Savage Worlds space opera. In the year 2217 we’ve colonized the nearest star systems. Transportation among planets is common. We’ve established contact with one alien species, ancient and powerful. Our worlds are blossoming, our opportunities limitless. However, dark elements conspire to bring everything down. In the Seven Worlds campaign, an epic on the scale of Battlestar Galactica and The Expanse, you become the unlikely heroes who try to avert the fall of Humanity.
Seven Worlds gets (most of) its science right, and explains its coolest concepts in many sidebars about space and physics. Extensive rules for scientifically sound space combat cover lasers and particle beams, cloud projectiles and point defenses, inertial movement, heat accumulation, and radiation. View and navigate the setting’s 3D digital starmap, coded in VRML (Virtual Reality Modeling Language), as a free download from SevenWorldsRPG.com.
This bargain-priced Seven Worlds Bundle had the entire line, including the full-color 216-page Setting Guide and all seven campaign modules. The basic book has plenty of detail on all seven planets, enough for a Firefly-style sandbox campaign unrelated to the epic. Yet Seven Worlds isn’t a setting with a story, but a story with a setting. Its calling card is its compelling full campaign, sort of a Savage Worlds Plot Point storyline on steroids — a well-developed arc with lots of interplanetary conflict, huge battles, and unmatchably high stakes. The story is, with no apologies, a railroad: The player characters are military officers who arrive at each scene in fixed sequence because they’re ordered to. That said, their success is never predetermined — quite the contrary! Pro tip: Run your sandbox sessions before you start the campaign proper, or anyway before you reach Module 2, Divided We Fall. The sweeping Seven Worlds narrative blows up the setting real good.
There were eight titles in this offer’s Starter Collection (retail value $39), including the Seven Worlds Setting Guide; the first installment of the epic campaign, Rumors of War; and the Seven Worlds GM Screen, as well as five full-color Battle Maps. Designed for the Seven Worlds campaign, all the maps in this offer showed generic locations (corridors, docking bays, etc.) you can reuse in any space adventure.
This offer’s Bonus Collection added sixteen more titles worth an additional $66, including the rest of the Seven Worlds campaign modules (2: Divided We Fall, 3: Into the Fire, 4: Broken Circle, 5: Chrysalis, 6: Exodus, and 7: Endgame) plus ten more Battle Maps.
Ten percent of each payment (after gateway fees) went to these two offers’ designated charity, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
