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What is happening @ Savage Sorcery
by Christopher Hardy“Designed by generations of mad wizards and insane geniuses," Savage Sorcery Studios is rumored to have become defunct? Savage Sorcery had a plethora of work on its plate, all touted by industry insiders to be great successes, so just exactly what happened?
Unofficially, well its still going strong in the mind & office of its founder, me. Officially, its ground to a halt; why? Let me break it to you,
Our desire was to give your gaming group a ton of new material to enjoy inspired by the classics!
In late December 2004, Bill Webb of Necromancer Games sent me an e-mail that was both short and to the point: “We want you, interested?” You can bet I did. I was offered to bring my creations to the world in a new 3.5 edition of D&D.
What followed was a year and a half of work. I spent months studying, and thinking about what made the great modules work, and what might be improved or expanded upon. Later on, many of those thoughts went into an expansive design document on what I wanted to accomplish. A 144 page 1st draft was completed by July 2006 on what I imagined would be my inaugural piece; later, feeling some of the text a bit florid and cumbersome and encouraged by friends that there would be time for it, I produced a second one by mid January 2007 that cut the word count a bit. Feeling a bit cornered & definitely pinched as Necro’s plans for my material became lavish, wanting to make it into a sought-after premium products, I wanted to run in the completely opposite direction, accessibility for all! So I/we decided to spin off my work as a “new business” Savage Sorcery. Everything seemed to be lining up and we had material ready for editing and Necro “on board”.
In any event, our projects were hit by one delay after another. Necromancer Games changed the company that produced its books around that time; after some twists and turns, they ended up in a partnership with Paizo, who by that time had established themselves as the most well-regarded d20 company with their adventure paths (Clark Peterson himself was very enthusiastic about the concept, although I was skeptical if the format would work well with Necromancer’s deadlier and more freeform gaming philosophy). By the time the partnership moved into place, Wizards of the Coast had delivered a new project: the fourth edition of Dungeons and Dragons. Plans of publication ground to a halt, as sales of 3.5 material plummeted to near nothing. Promises of the new publishing agreement – the Game System License – were enthusiastically awaited by 3rd party publishers, including Necromancer. Regrettably, the GSL was a mess: delayed and very restrictive, it proved a hard tool to work with, and Necromancer’s bubbly enthusiasm for supporting the new edition was replaced with burnout. I was determined to carry on with this project, as I had belief in its concept,
In conclusion, I moved Savage Sorcery under my own roof and proceeded to muster forward. A year later and many, many hurdles still in our way we have shelved our projects in hopes of one day dusting them off, there is no one to blame for the eventual failure: everyone had the best intentions, but in the end, Savage Sorcery was lost in development hell. I slightly wonder how it would have fared in the market. Those who had expressed their interest in it online were mostly players of old school systems; and meanwhile, mainstream game culture had changed into something more concerned with encounter balance, appropriate rewards for appropriate challenges and a certain interpretation of fair play. My ideas, in whatever form, was an atavism, something from another era. Could it have been successful? Would it have been singled out as an example of horrible design we were better off without? I don’t know those answers, but I do know that slowly I'll release it, in my time, my way, regardless of others opinions...
So are we defunct? No, but we are now just a hobby project. Maybe it will work to our advantage, fingers crossed!
