I love Savage Worlds. Half of the guys in my group love Savage Worlds. But part of what keeps the other half from jumping on board, at least for a fantasy campaign, is the lack of a Vancian magic system (aka the "fire and forget" memorization system from Jack Vance's Dying Earth series and popularized in Dungeons & Dragons). I know that many Savage Worlds fans see this as a feature rather than a bug, but it's a concern with the Blackrazors, who have 12+ years of D&D 2E/3E under their belts.

So what would a Vancian magic system look like in Savage Worlds? There are two key elements to a Vancian system: discovery and flexibility. Discovery comes from being able to find spells in scrolls and spellbooks, and add them to your own growing library. Flexibility comes from being able to pick the right spell for the right job, and not being locked down to a pre-determined power suite.

Recreating a Vancian system in Savage Worlds requires you to retain these discovery and flexibility while still working with its default power point system. Here's my take on it.

After a few years away, the Blackazor Guild and I returned to MEPACon last weekend, our local gaming convention held near Scranton, Pa. every spring and fall. We used to be regulars at the local convention scene, but over the last few years we been running our own howngrown Nuke(m)Con instead.

We decided to return to MEPACon after Origins, when we had the realization that our local convention might provide the perfect opportunity to run games that we don't normally play in our weekly game. Stuff like Savage Worlds, Mutants & Masterminds and Call of Cthulhu, which we love, but never seem to get to play.

Major Simon Cartwright is a globetrotting spy who’s traveled to all the surviving major cities in the world … as well as most of the ruined ones. He’s a debonair spy, one who revels in the glamorous aspects of the world of espionage: fast cars, high stake gambling and beautiful women.

At the same time though, he also loves the thrill of the mission. Be it smuggling Russian ophi-tech plans out of Hong Kong or extracting a double agent from beyond the Serpent Wall, he finds the challenge of pulling off the impossible exhilarating.

While Cartwright has spent much of his professional life adventuring on his own, in recent years he’s come to appreciate the value of working with a team. As such, he puts his insights and experience to good use in making sure his fellow agents get out alive. That said, he’s not an arrogant commander – he listens to what his colleagues have to say, and works with them to come up with an appropriate plan. It’s just that when that plan inevitably falls apart, he’s got the skill -- and the experience – to pull it back together again.

In another life, Ollivander Ellis might have been a physicist or astronomer, but instead he grew up in the world of the Serpentfall. It’s lead him to dedicate his life to understanding its arcane secrets ... and fighting them when they’re unleashed upon the world. He’s battled latter-day Nazi mystics in Argentina, negotiated with the dwarves lurking in the Alps, and even ventured into the corpse of the World Serpent itself in his quest for knowledge. His quests have left deep wounds in his body and mind, but he refuses to stop because he knows that his opponents – those who embrace the horrors of Serpentfall – will never stop.

He’s technically a professor at Rhodes University, and he maintains and office at that institution. He’s only on campus for three months out of every 12, spending most of the rest of the time conducting field research or special operations for the British Empire.