A plausible near future. This setting scratches an itch I’ve had for the past few years, specifically a depiction of a post-collapse society without all the mutants and "mind magic" typical to post-apocalypse settings. The cyberware and bioware are believable and not overdone and there is no ultra-tech like plasma or laser weapons. I’ll definitely run something in this setting.

Strictly speaking, more fantasy than real life medievel, these are all very nice female portaits at fairly high resolution. Except for the use of shading, reminds me a lot of Patrick Nagel

Beside 4 pages out of 40 being ads, there "only" being 2 differnt armours and 1 weapon, is this a really good suppliment there are worth every penny!

Had a bit of trouble getting in to review posting options -- but I'm here.

I have the soft cover 2nd edition. I'll start by saying it's stunning. Everything is well organized and concise. If you're into a little bit of dark magic, check out this expansion, ready to go!

I played in this scenario at a convention game hosted by the author, about a week before it released here, so I have the perspective of actually having run through it. This is a challenging, atmospheric, and exciting adventure with lots of nuanced details. For me, the biggest plus is that it does double-duty as a one-shot and a sandbox. The one-shot central quest was playable from beginning to end in a 3-hour convention time slot - though admittedly, we were very lucky to have taken some correct turns. Had we not, it probably would have taken 4 or 5 hours (or a lot fewer, if we'd really messed up :-) ) - at any rate, well within the time limitss of a single evening game. But the book also has enough extra locations, descriptions, and plot hooks to form a good-sized sandbox around the environs of the quest, and could easily form the basis of a campaign. Last but not least, I think the entire package captures the sentiment, style, and intentions of Swords & Wizardry Light-style play: there is light but impactful fun here. Highly, highly recommended.

Ten Years+ we've been looking for our Feylin (think pixie + fanboy/fangirl in post post apoc.) THANKS!

I really like the product. I thought the cards were well done. I can't wait for the full set!

I feel a trifle guilty giving a low rating to this because, well, it's free, but it's also not terribly good either. It's a clear tribute to characters such as Mr. A, the Question, or Rorschach (primarily Mr. A), but it lacks punch. The formatting is bare bones, the character is labeled and pointed at PL 9 but only reaches that level in skills and his Fort/Will save, being PL 6 on offense with his punch, PL 2 on his "blast" (I'm assuming it's Ranged Damage 2, since the only descriptor is "Blast" and a "2" in the equipment listing), and PL 3.5 on defense. The sheet doesn't have obvious faults outside of no elaboration on his equipment, but he's decidedly underwhelming.

I bought Contagion Savage Edition because I am a fanboy of the Savage Worlds system and I just love the World of Darkness setting and, at a first glance at the preview, Contagion looked like an interesting mashup of the two - by the way: why there have been so few attempts to "savage" the WoD (read: monsters as player charatcers) while we have about 200+ zombie apocalypse settings is beyond me.

First thing I read is the character creation chapter and Contagion almost exclusively relies on stock SW rules with some suggested additions taken from both Horror and Fantasy companions, which to me is a good thing: no need to reinvent the wheel. The only relevant exception is the introduction of Contagion Points, which are a new Derived Stat that the characters can spend to do some fancy things like alter rolls, use racial powers/edges, temporary ignore shaken/damage, and so on. Didn't try the mechanic on the field yet but sounds cool.

The character "races" available to the player are many and diverse given the modern urban setting: from the usual humans to monsters like werewolves, ghosts, and vampires (tadaaa) but also demons, angels, drows (?), elves, orcs, and goblins (WTF!?) among MANY others. Now, I can't imagine myself playing a goblin in the middle of a modern metropolis at present day but hey, I guess it's good to know that there's that chance just in case..

The other thing I am interested in when I look for a new game is the setting: Contagion's pitch is about our modern world being the theater of a secret and shadowy "good vs. evil" war between supernatural beings - demons, angels, gods, monsters, mages, and the such while our human society lies ignorant in this soon-to-be armageddon. I don't want to risk spoilers here, so what I would say is that is intriguing enough for me to want to run games in it even though it's probably not the most original idea I've ever heard - btw I keep wondering where do those goblins stand in all this..

Said that I evaluate this product as a win considering me not being familiar with the original d20 setting and my initial idea of it being a sort of toolbox to run "Savage Worlds of Darkness" games successfully with no overhead from my part, which was exactly what caught my attention in the beginning and hoping for. I'll definitely take what I like of it - for sure some character races and the cool looking Contagion points mechanic - and ditch what I don't, simple as that.

I'll definitely keep an eye on this Savage setting, I hope some cool modules or companions will come out in the future to further explore some of the monster races and the setting, if not a full plot-point campaign.

All considered I give 4 stars to Contagion, I take 1 star out because presentation and layout are not top level, even though some of the illustrations are really good, flavour text enjoyable, and the reading experience is just fine.

Keep it up and rock on those goblins.

Great description of the Races, Classes and world of Choe Pho, which seems inspired by the orient. I can't wait for more books to come out.

This product is well written and definately something I'll be using.

My one and only gripe (and reason for 4 stars and not 5) is that there's no table of contents, and no chapter distinctions, and no bookmarks. For example, uner the step 1 of character creation, it says to go to Chapter 7: Races for a history of each race, and Chapter 13: Advanced Races to see what other races someone can play. That leaves me a little confused if page 83 (or is it 81?) is supposed to be chapter 7 or 13. Fix the navigation and this is definatly a 5 star product.

I ran this adventure with my 7 and 9 yo. We had a blast. Love the mix of expected and unexpected monsters. This adventure gives enough variation to make it playable multiple times. My 9 yo plans to DM the next run through. We hope to see more HK compatible adventures!

CONTAGION Savage edition is a new cool setting to SW, allthough there are a ton of stuff for another ruleset.

It brings you into a secret war where you do actually matter to shape the world around you that is unheard of in many settings.

it also seem to utilize Savage Worlds ruleset very good all the while also maintaining the uniqueness of its world (that is originally for another ruleset), im happy to seethat the author really doesn't try to create a whole bunch of new rules to cater its setting but insteadt convert the feeling of the game to SW ruleset.

the art in the book are nice while some stands out as outstanding.

the setting is a horrorsetting with conspiracies as well quite action oriented, thats nice in my opinion. It do utilize the horrorcompanion as well as a few things from fantasy companion.

The only thing I would like to have seen more of is an in-depht description of a few locations to start of in.

All in all, I do recommend people to try this setting!

A interesting introduction and overview of an upcoming fantasy game setting. Definitely worth grabbing for free to see if you'd like to get the final product.

I ran this for the wife and kids yesterday and we all had a great time playing it. It made for a nice change from some of our recent adventures, as my daughter (who's been a bit put off by some of the previous antagonists - werewolves, ghost pirates) loved visiting the fairy realm.

The adventure was at a good level for the characters, and having the NPC Chimera along allowed me to help drive the narrative and help keep the combat on an even keel as necessary. I hate deus ex machina NPCs, but in this instance the character could allow the GM to adjust the difficulty appropriately for new players or more experienced characters.

My family also had a great time thinking of innovative ways to deal with the Sadnesses; a great addition to the story which made for a novel change from just hitting things with a sword or magic bolt.

Best of all, there were only a limited number of combat encounters, which allowed us to play it through in a comparatively short period of time on a Sunday afternoon. Combat always takes a long time to run through, so having encounters that were roleplaying and/or problem solving allowed me to keep the story ticking forward.

On the downside, I agree with some others here that the printed sizes for the character/monster (and equipment from the Armory1 supplement, which I must admit I felt impelled to buy from its inclusion in the story) card elements don't match those of the original Hero Kids game, which is more annoying than a problem.

I didn't appreciate the layout - I run these from my laptop rather than print out the adventure, and the portrait orientation made it difficult to see everything from the same page on screen at the same time. The main font was too ragged to read easily, and the page layout felt cluttered.

I would have liked to see combat location grid pages - I understand it's difficult when the game highlights the chaos of the Mindshatter, but the combat is based around character position and movement, which makes grids essential. In the end, I used locations I'd printed out from other Hero Kids adventures and they worked well so it wasn't a huge issue.

Finally, given the story requires two Sadnesses (I increased it to 3 for my players), it would have been good if there were two of these character cards or stand ups on the one page, so I didn't have to print out the Chimera card multiple times. I tried putting the PDF into Photoshop to create my own single page printout, but it's (understandably) password protected, so that didn't work.

Overall though, these are small things compared to the fun we had playing this game. It's opened up an interesting part of the world of Hero Kids that we hadn't previously considered, and has already started to trip the kids's imaginations for future stories. I'll be looking for more of Travis' work, because it's high quality, a very inexpensive price, and just all round fun for the kids to play.