Pyramid Review
Savage Worlds Customizeable GM Screen
Published by Great White Games
three-panel customizable screen; $24.99
I'm not sure where the GM fetish for secrecy or privacy comes from. I suspect it's a legacy left over from our wargaming roots. It was a more adversarial time and there were secrets that just had to be kept. When the original Dungeon Master Screen for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons came along, there were many cries of glee. The screen gave privacy and also gave handy space for looking up stuff. Feverish DMs would still lose time looking things up, but at least they wouldn't lose time pawing through books.
A really good screen needs several attributes. The material selected for referee look-ups should be clear, commonly needed, and visually savvy. On the player's side . . . well, tradition puts art on that side, plus reference material that's usually printed too small to read across the table. The screen also needs to stand reliably, too. The traditional design had the screen leaves taller than they were wide -- easier to layout and less expensive to print, but also easier to topple over.
Not every publisher hsa the desire to (or can afford to) produce and sell its own screen, of course. And at last we come to the topic of this review, the Savage Worlds Customizeable GM Screen. Savage Worlds is the fast-play action-adventure game engine from Great White Games. One of the key selling points for Savage Worlds is that it can be easily personalized for the desired "Savage . . .
This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.
Article publication date: May 19, 2006
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