5 Questions About Sagas and Six-Guns

Today we are happy to give you an interview with Robert Buckey about his Savage Worlds setting book, Sagas and Six-Guns! I’ve been tracking this project since Robert suggested it on the SW Facebook group, and I’m really hoping it catches your eye too. Of course, as a historian with an interest on both Norse society and the era of Manifest Destiny, my spurs got ringing when I heard this was coming down the trail.


So, Robert, tell us a little bit about why this setting. What about the Wild West and Norse/Viking society aligns to make this an excellent idea?


Well, it’s funny. The way the idea came to me was a total fluke. I was driving to work one day, and switching between Volbeat’s Western themed album, and Amon Amarth (a Swedish death metal band what themes all their music from Norse legends), and it just hit me that mixing the two would be awesome.


Now that being said, there actually are some overlaps between the two cultures. The Norse were hardy explorers, just like many of the men and women that settled the American frontier. There were similar concepts of honor and masculinity, and similar concepts of law and society that they shared. But ultimately, the idea of mead being imbibed from drinking horns in saloons, old west style signs with runic script, and wanted posters for trolls and Jotun just seemed way too cool to pass up.

I’ve noticed instead of our real world West, you’ve chosen to set this campaign world in an unsettled terrain. Was that to avoid some of the problems of the Western genre, or what else made that make sense?


So making this North America settled by the Vikings would have required an enormous amount of work, especially because it would require in depth writing regarding the Native cultures and what happened with them, as well as what’s going on with the rest of the world!

Obviously, North America, or even only part of North America, being settled by the Vikings five hundred years before Columbus made his voyage would resulted in major changes to the timeline worldwide. Trying to come up with any kind of accurate representation of how the Native Americans would have been affected would have been a monumental task, as it would have required extensive research into what group was where and when.

Ultimately, it just made sense to create this alternate world, and give myself a blank canvas to work with, so I could concentrate on what I really wanted to focus on, telling the old Sagas like Beowulf through an Old West lens.

Tell us a little bit more about the social rules systems you’d laid out here, what’s up with Ring giving and why is that important?


There are two major social rules that this setting introduces, Sagas, and Ring Giving. Your characters will have a personal Saga, which will give you certain benefits as it increases, representing your fate changing as you become a more well-known and celebrated hero, in which we integrate the Conviction rules from Savage Worlds, and also gives you certain effects in social situations, such as Jarls and other important people knowing who you are and calling on you and offering you work. It can even give you a negative modifier if you’re trying to go about unnoticed, as people find it easier to recognize you.

Ring Giving takes its name from Beowulf, when Hrothgar bestows rings and other gifts upon Beowulf and his men. The currency in this setting is rings, and this rule represents you gathering warriors to fight under you, and you throwing them a massive feast in which gifts are given and mead and food is consumed. The better your heroes do with this, the more enthusiastic the men are to follow you.

As you know, HLG is an Ace as well so we love SW, but why did you settle on Savage Worlds Adventure Edition as the backdrop for the rules?


I’ve gotten big into Savage Worlds the past few years. Not only that, residing in the Phoenix Area, I’ve had the pleasure of meeting its creator, Shane Hensley, on more than one occasion at local conventions. I’ve even had the honor of playing in one of his games of Deadlands, and he played in a game of mine of another setting I’ve been working on. He’s a great guy, and the Savage World’s community is just awesome. Not only that, the rules are amazingly versatile. It’s a rules system I just know very well, and it was on the Savage World’s Facebook page that Alan Bahr from Gallant Knight Games and I connected regarding this project, so it’s only natural that this would be what we would go with for this setting.


What’s the one thing you want people to know that you think will drive them to back the project?


Vikings are awesome. Cowboys are awesome. This setting lets you play both at the same time. Want to be that steely eyed gunslinger facing down a line of Draugr? You can do that. Want to be a fire and brimstone Godi exhorting your fellows to seek a valiant death so they can sup with the Gods in Valhalla? You can be that too. Want to be a Valkyrie trapped on Midgard, questing for a means to return home, while dealing with this strange new land and era? That’s right, you can be that too. How many cowboys can say they’ve skinned their smoke wagons against a troll?

I truly believe this game will allow you to tell stories that are faithful to both our favorite Viking and Western tropes.


Check out the campaign on Kickstarter now.