Back to the Table Top, Fools.

Alright, I've been on an Xbox binge. Like I said previously, I loaded up on cheap games, and I spend all my free time playing these awesome cheap games. But all the Xboxery has been at the expense of my true love, and that's making up shit for table-top RPG games. And 2012 has seen my RPG relationships rocked to their very foundations by some serious adultery.

First some groundwork:
Back in the day, I dated a girl for many months, and she was a mixed bag. She was great when she was okay, but she was a righteous pain in the ass when she wasn't. In hindsight, her main problem is that she was All About Herself.  Then one day, I met another girl, and she was everything the other girl wasn't: she wasn't complicated, she didn't punish me for not reading her mind, and she went out of her way to make me happy. Once I got to know her, I couldn't ever (ever, ever, NEVER) go back to the first girl, even though all my friends assured me that Girl #1 was 'way hotter'. 

Here's where I tie the analogy together in a flash of brilliance:

Old and Ugly

Here's my  Bad Old Girlfriend, the standard of the industry, Dungeons & Dragons (tm). She's hot, sure, and she meets with the approval of the world at large. I can go anywhere, and somebody in the crowd at least has heard of good old D&D. That's been my go-to since 1980...love some Pathfinder, liked some Tunnels & Trolls back in the day, old school GDW Traveler was a junior high obsession...as far as I was concernced, D&D was the apotheosis of gaming.

New and Sweeeeet
 

But then I met my new honey: Savage Worlds. Better yet, let's call it SAVAGE WORLDS. It's the Linux of gaming, it's my kind and sweet new girlfriend of gaming, it's the be-all and end-all as far as I'm concerned. It's open-sourcey, in that the basic core rules are generalized. I don't mean 'generalized' like d20 was, where you had to buy a half-dozen setting specific books to play anything. I'm talking no-joke general, as in "if you have an idea, here is the basic rules framework to help you make a game of it". No joke.
I started reading it. I started buying some of the products (none of which are strictly necessary). And now I'm hooked. Hooked, I tell ya. Like Rush Limbaugh on Oxycontin, there's no looking back.

I ran an on again / off again 4th edition D&D campaign for the wife and kids. Mainly just a test bed for ideas and working out mechanics, but it was fun. Let me restate that: IT WAS FUN. But now I've gotten Savage Worlds stuck in my brain, and I can't go back to D&D. It feels restrictive. It feels burdensome. It feels like I'm wearing women's underwear, with no room for my junk.
It's a bad feeling.

Savage Worlds doesn't demand that I spend $300 bucks with every new edition. Savage Worlds doesn't tell what I can't do. Best of all, Savage Worlds doesn't tell me that she doesn't know if she really loves me, and then leaves me dangling for months, unable to committ but unable to move on with my life.

Sorry, that's called over-extending the analogy. Got stuck in the wheel-ruts of memory lane.

Upshot: Savage Worlds is cheaper than what you're playing now. Savage Worlds likes you for who you are. And Savage Worlds has an active, supportive community that really enjoys sharing ideas and news. Check Google+ for Savage Worlds, or go to Pinnacle's site. Hell, just Google it and be amazed at the love you'll receive from people who love gaming more than they love bitching about which edition is best.

Don't stay in a bitter, codependent relationship with your game. Move on, already. Savage Worlds is waiting for you, with open arms and a big plate of brownies. And beer.