Noir Knights Review

The Skinny

Noir Knights is a Savage Suzerain setting part of the continuum. That means you can hop from one setting to another with the same characters. This setting is designed for Heroic rank characters in mind and requires both the Savage Worlds core rules and the Savage Suzerain setting book to play.

Savage Mojo calls Noir Knights it’s American Grit setting. Back in 2010, it joined the Daring Tales of Adventure series from Triple Ace Games and Thrilling Tales from Adamant Entertainment as 1930’s pulp options for Savage Worlds players. Deadlands Noir came much later. It has since gone through an update in 2014 to bring it inline with the “continuum”, minor edits and a brand new cover. If you don’t know much about Savage Suzerain this review will not go in depth to explain what it is so I encourage you to do your own research. I will only say that it is a line of Savage Worlds products primarily geared toward higher tiered play with character creation options that caters to that. It offers groups to jump from one setting to another without having to change characters. Caladon Falls, Set Rising, Dogs of Hades and Shanghai Vampocalypse are among the settings you can choose from. Each one has a Plot Point Campaign and character options.

So onto Noir Knights. Take your typical 1930’s Noir setting with gumshoe, gun moll and G men characters and inject a large dose of the supernatural and you get Noir Knights. The player characters are recruited as part of a task force for the SPA (Special Projects Administration), a precursor to the FBI. So in a way, think X-Files meet the Great Depression.

This book deals with themes of the Great Depression, famine, supernatural threat, industrialization and corruption. The Everglades, Dust Bowl and Washington D.C. are the default backdrops where most of the Plot Point Campaign takes place.

Besides the typical character archetypes of the genre you can create a ruizologist which is a weather controlling elementalist; a railworker who uses sigils to wander the railroads of America; or a taximancer, part voodoo practitioner part taxidermist who uses it’s artform to animate specially prepared vessels and pray to the loa spirits. You also get very fun new Edges, vehicles and powers.

The GM is full of behind-the-scenes information on the setting, some explaining real historical events. All that content is very clever and littered with many ideas a resourceful GM can draw on to run his own campaign.

Then comes the 12 Plot Point Campaign tales with 18 more Savage Tales, along with new NPCs and critters of Noir Knights. It’s hard to talk about this section without giving out any spoilers but I will say it is epic and varied. In one mission you’re at the carnival and in the next, in one of Henry Ford’s factories. Yes, it’s crazy like that!

The Good

The production value is top notch. It’s easy to read with it’s layout and nice to look at for it’s artwork. I mean, look at the cover! Savage Mojo never disappoints in that department. You wouldn’t expect any less for a product Aaron Acevedo designed.

The writing is also very good and easy to read. Stuart Gorman doesn’t waste any words in this 146 pages book, Every word is a new idea, a new painting in your head.

The new Edges are varied and fun and help illustrate the setting as it should be. The new Pulse Paths (arcane backgrounds in Suzerain) are wicked fun.

Not necessarily in this book but the fact this is well supported with many one sheets and pack of pre-generated characters really adds to the value of Noir Knights.

The Bad

Artefacts of D&D 3.5 or Pathfinder are still present in the form of secondary arcane backgrounds. You can’t help but think: “prestige classes? really?”. This is more of a knock on the whole Savage Suzerain line as every setting has it’s own set of Pulse Paths. This is however offset by the fact that when you pick a secondary Pulse Path you get two powers and a d4 in the related skill for free. Why not just offer new powers options and give guidelines for the Trappings instead?

Again, another knock on Suzerain in general, the rank requirements. Most groups want to start out as Novice characters and make their way up. I understand that this setting was written for larger than life characters but the plot point campaign is also a large investigation. Surely, an effort could have been made to scale a Novice to Legendary progression. Yes, you could start in Caladon Falls which is a Novice Rank plot point campaign but who wants to play through 30 sessions of another setting when it’s Noir Knights you want to play? This has been a barrier for me for a few years now. That and the “prestige classes for Savage Worlds” are keeping me from totally buying into the Suzerain continuum.

The Savage Suzerain corebook used to be a free pdf download. Not anymore. And if you prefer hardcopies this still meant you had to purchases the Savage Worlds core rules and Savage Suzerain books in order to play Noir Knights. But you can’t even get away from that by buying in digital format now anyway since like I said, even the pdf has to be purchased now. This may be manageable with Pinnacle Entertainment Group digital products since they tend to be $10 or less but Savage Mojo products are usually around $25 each. For print, you’re going to pay between $30 to $50 depending on your desired print quality. To their defense, they often run good sales so be on the lookout!

Conclusion

This is a solid Savage Worlds setting I’ve been meaning to play for a while. I think it’s a very niche product and it’s probably why it flies under everybody’s radar. A lot of it’s new Edges could be mined by creative GMs for other settings. Groups looking for something really different to play will be spoiled by this product.

Right now I’m still trying to find the right angle to approach Noir Knights. I either need to get over the mental hump of starting straight at Heroic and use the article I wrote for Savage Insider, V2I2, Taking Action entitled Character with History (shameless plug) or to start my group off as Novice and scale the opposition down.

If you're interested, Noir Knights is currently on sale on DTRPG as part of the Savage September sale.