Woolcock makes some of the best third-party Savage Worlds stuff out there, always has. Sharp Knives & Dark Streets is a micro-setting and toolkit for running urban fantasy adventures, the kind that deals with thieves' guilds and nefarious back-alley plots in a dark fantasy milieu. It's like a cross between Lankhmar and the Blades in the Dark roleplaying game, and packs a lot of good stuff in a small package.

It starts with three new Setting Rules that help capture the flavor of the setting, including one for utilizing flashbacks during a heist and another for retroactively declaring one brought a needed tool along for the job — reminiscent of similar innovative mechanics from Blades in the Dark, and that really improve these kinds of stories.

There's a section that talks about simplified NPCs, which reduces the need for separate stat blocks for every random person the heroes might encounter. Nice.

Finally on this page is a "roll 3d6" mission generator that is similar to the kind used in Lasers & Feelings. It can generate tons of quick & dirty adventures in a pinch. The next page expands on the options from this table.

From here we get a condensed micro-setting: Stormgate, City of Serpents. This is an ancient, corrupt, walled port city, the kind you might find in a typical fantasy world. Twenty distinct locations are summarized in brief, and a full-color map follows.

The last section is a primer on doing some solo gaming in this setting (or any setting, really). Without rambling or overly-complicating things, it tells you how to frame adventures as a series of questions — yes/no, scaled, or complex, each with tips on how to use dice to derive an answer. It talks about scene progression, then ends with a full page of random tables for things like events, people, and places.

Sharp Knives and Dark Streets ends with six pregens, presented in both Novice and Seasoned form.

You'll need Savage Worlds to use this to full effect (especially when dealing with the pregens) but a lot of the stuff here isn't necessarily system-dependent and could be used with other roleplaying games.

Personally, I'd like to see Stormgate expanded into a larger setting at some point. Then again, I'm always a sucker for dark, urban fantasy settings. If you already have Pinnacle's Fantasy Companion this makes a nice supplement, as it doesn't attempt to cover any of the same ground. But the Fantasy Companion isn't required at all. Overall, a great product!

I find this a wonderful companion book if you are not interested in running Pathfinder.

Used this and made a custom AB for a space opera game that was a "Not Jedi™". It worked exceptionally well for that!

Geberally this entire alternate npp ruleset ia very solid.

A fantastic example of low fantasy goodness. Just don't take the anthropomorphic out of it. A lot of good work went into making it seamless and fun, so don't skip it. I can easily use this for any sort of fantasy adventure that I can come up with. I may have to use it for Savage Dolmenwood (a nifty OSR Old School Essentials campaign setting). Great takes on ABs. Great integration with the recent Companions. Just a rock solid book all around.

But you know, if I could make this a basis for a Spelljammer campaign, that would be awesome

i love it, cept for one tiny tiny issue. some parts of the pdf are sticky, and i have a hard time using it, as it either goes slow like molasses, or it zooms several pages down in a heartbeat

Savage Worlds was my first roleplay system and i still love it.

The sheet is a great format to record information from the session and to remember what to plan for next. My only criticism is that it isn't form fillable.

So, I'm a bit disapointed by this product.

To be honest, I am running the Necessary Evil Campaign with the Supers! Revised Edition rules and not Savage Worlds and I already own the Explorer Edition (both PDF and print). I didn't really need the updated version but I still bought it out of curiosity and to see if there was new stuff.

The good : art is very good, I like the random encounter mission complications also.

The bad : well, apparently there is at least one statblock which is incorrect. The Shocklord. His template isn't even an update but a totally different character a lot like the v'sori scientist statblock.

Another issue to me : in Explorer, everything you need for the setting is included like gear for instance. In Revised, the special v'sori gear...is in the SWADE Super Powers Companion (I own it so I checked).

And about that. The v'sori shocklord on the Swade spc has the same issue

Numbers and icons are crooked and misaligned, There are no spaces between the letters for cutting,borderless...Bad product!

Blood drinkers stalk the railways of Deadlands! This is an excellent snippet of material that can easily be used in any Deadlands (or Savage Worlds) game. Am I excited for Night Train? Even more so now!

I am a little late getting on the SW train, but glad I finally did. This is a great system. Definitely worth getting.

Zip file comes with both a PDF and JPG copy of the map so this is nicely set up for VTT use or easy editing in GIMP if you want to add some coffee cup stains or create a torn fragment to use as a handout.

Like ALL Savage Worlds products.....

It's just AWESOME!!

TLDR: A good value and useful tool, buy it!

Peter Rudin-Burgess is the prolific creator of many solo add-ons for a wide variety of role playing games. He has a talent for crafting a set of solo tools for each system that blend seamlessly with the rest of the game's mechanics. His Savage Worlds guide continues by providing everything one needs to start playing Savage Worlds without a GM.

In contrast to Mythic GM Emulator, this system is easier to learn. It provides an extenion to the rules set rather than an entirely separte meta-system for running your game. This also makes this guide an excellent choice for those new to solo game play.

The strength and weakness of this product is that, like Savage Worlds itself, it can be used for any genre. This means that one must use a bit more effort in interpreting open oracle results for their current game setting. On the plus side, you have a single product meaning no additional book/system to purchase and learn for each setting. On the minus, you have less genre specific flavor. These elements cancel each other out in my opinion.

The second adventure in the City Guard Chronicles series keeps the quality level of the first one: The layout is a pleasure to look at and works rather well, important clues are clearly labeled and the linked overview of the whole case makes a return.

The structure of the case is well-made (not too strict and linear, but always with useful clues what to do next) and also includes a bunch of other cases that you can introduce in different ways, which is a neat idea. Also, it doesn’t just follow the same formula as the first adventure, which was a nice surprise as well. Important locations come with their own floor plans. I hope the authors can keep this up!

There’s an quick overview of the setting included which also covers new Edges, should you create your own player characters. If you don’t want that, there are also eight pre-generated characters inside, which are not only an interesting mixture but can also shine in the particular adventure.

If you like fantasy-noir detective adventures, you should pick this up!