Question about game variations

[Wester]

Here's a snip of screenshot taken from my wiki. This is a new character based on the "Gemenian Knight" template - I've got common templates for all races and nationalities in the setting.

http://img820.imageshack.us/img820/9017/62487578.th.png (http://img820.imageshack.us/i/62487578.png/)

My question is, how much would you really need to know to play this? Most of it is pretty much vanilla D6, though it might be evident to some that it derived from Sw 2nd Ed. and not the D6 book.

You can see that like many others I have detached Strength from the Fitness attribute, and there's a similar code called Psyche that is derived from Awareness. You can also see there's hit points. You'd need to know how those stats are derived. You'd also need to know how to derive Movement.

Abilities are similar to Feats in d20 - wearing armor or using heavier shields without penalties, alternate Initiative skills, combos and multiple strikes, dual wielding, etc. There are also abilities for magic users and other types of characters - you'd need to know those.

Am I missing anything? You'd need the full comprehensive rules for magic, descriptions of the different nations and races, and so forth, to really campaign in earnest, but I'm just worried about the bare bones you'd need to play using premade characters or templates.

I don't see anything that is significantly different from a standard D6 scheme. You might have noticed that 1D = 4 in this setup, and there are various reasons for that. You may also have noticed there are no character points or equivalent, just Fate. Fate in this scheme is kind of a cross between force points and character points - you can use them to train skills but they are not the primary mechanism for skill development.

Skills actually earn their own experience based on the average roll for a given code, and it can only be spent on the skill that earned it. It can also be pooled into "skill points" for its parent attribute, but at a higher cost.

You may also have noticed that there is no generalized "melee combat" skill -- every weapon class has its own skill. That is largely because this scheme was developed for the fantasy genre, which tends to have a greater emphasis on melee combat.

I'm assuming that any GM will be able to see the gist of it and substitute their own favored scheme, but am I missing something important?

[Wester]

You probably weren't wondering how the scales system works, that I devised way back in 92 or early 93 -- but I'll tell you anyway. :)

The way that SW 2nd Edition crammed all ships larger than small freighters into one all-encompasing Capital scale led to some wonky outcomes and ridiculous die codes. After one of my players took out three Corellian Gunships with a slightly modified Z-95, without taking a single hit, I knew it had to change.

Each scale is a number. Characters were scale 2, starfighters were scale 4, an Imperial Star Destroyer was like scale 12 or something. What you did was subtract the difference between the two scales from 6, to obtain a die cap. So if a starfighter was shooting at a character, 4 -2 is 2, the die cap would be 4.

I immediately noticed that with that system a large capital ship would be unable to hit a starfighter at all, so I gave weapons their own scale ratings, and usually they had a range of settings they could be set to. So an antistarfighter capital ship would be able to dial its cannons down to scale 5, for example, even if the ship itself was scale 9. I notice WEG did the same thing when they revamped the scale rules in D6.

The last step was to ditch all the ridiculously high or low die codes that came about from the scale system, and replace them with standardized die codes. I still have a printout in a box somewhere that has the amended stats for every extant ship as of the Zahn era, if anyone has any interest.

[Grimace]

Okay, there's definitely a couple of things that you need to have explained for people, even if using pre-made templates/characters.
As you mentioned, and this is a fairly big one IMO, the 1D = 4 pips needs to be explained. And unless you want all the old grognards of D6 Star Wars and the 3 D6 core books (and a collection of other D6 materials) to go "Whu?" you might want to explain why the change was made. Explain the Strength and Psyche, since they are the only two that appear to NOT be like the other attributes (they are listed seperately with no obvious space for skills to be under them).
Your scale rules would definitely need to be explained for people to use them, unless you were going to release things where absolutely everything was the exact same scale.
Your movement would need to be explained for sure.
Fate needs to be touched on and your Alignment would also need to be explained if it has some effect within the game.
HP I'm assuming is Hit Points and if this works like just about all other HP then there will be no wound effects in your game. If there is, you'd need that explained too. Basically, you'd need to explain combat, damage and healing.

The thing I'm not quite sure of is this: Does the Ability of Armor indicate the effectiveness of armor? Or is there some sort of weird skill for the armor to be used effectively?

Also, you've got three stats where there's a number in parenthesis listed after the die value. What is this? That would need to be explained. Let me clarify, I believe the (7) after Psyche 1D+3 is the average value because you work the average of a die as 4. But the question is...why is the average listed for just those three? What makes them different from the others attributes or skills?

And I can't speak for anyone else, but I would personally be interested in seeing more about your scale system. Scales is something that I have a keen interest in.

[Wester]

The value in parenthesis is the pips value at 1d=4 for the given die code. It's there in those instances because in some cases it gets used outright or is more convenient than a die code. At 1d=4, 1d+3 = 7 in pips value. 4 for 1d plus 3.

Abilities are like Feats in d20. The Armor ability just reduces Agility penalties for wearing armor, and gives bonuses to maintaining it. All armor has an armor rating which is subtracted from the pips value in parenthesis for determining Agility penalties. In brief you'd use the die code to roll with and the pips value for a modifier in the instances where either came into play.

You probably noticed that the Strength code is somewhat lower than usual, and this is a combat-oriented character. When you see the full ruleset it will make sense - just imagine this guy wielding a longsword that does +3d slashing damage. Strength is half of fitness plus 1d.

Psyche is derived from Awareness and is the basis of the magic system, also used in lieu of Willpower for non-magic characters.

Of the two movement values one is the basic movement and the other is max speed.

As for the HP I devised this before I knew about D6 but I imagine it is quite similar, as it almost has to be. It basically follows the same wound effects as SW 2nd ed. but it's on a sliding scale depending on max HP.

These rules developed over many years and accompany a fully fleshed out fantasy world, and I do intend to make both available under OpenD6. As of now it's all in wiki format, but it's more GM notations than something publishable. I'd like to port it to a more convenient pdf before releasing it, and it could be awhile.

There are also distinctively different melee rules which I feel are particularily suited for fantasy. I can answer specific questions but until I release the full ruleset I think I will avoid using it for OpenD6 submissions.

When I initially implemented the scales system in SW characters were 2, but they're 4 in the fantasy system for various reasons.

[Wester]

I'll have a short PDF supplement available by next week that explains my rules variant, and hopefully you guys can read it over and point out any obvious errors or omissions. It's not a full-on rulebook -- it assumes you're already familiar with OpenD6.

The argument for the 1d=4 rules is basically that which I have already said in this thread:

- the actual average for 1d is 3.5, and 4 is slightly closer to that value than 3 is. On a graph it looks much closer than 3 does -- since of course you can't roll a 0.5 -- and this becomes especially apparent at higher die codes.
- it makes skill improvement take longer and cost more. This made sense even in 2nd Edition, when I first started using it, but in this rules variant skills earn their own experience directly.
- it adds a bit more nuance to a developing character.
- it makes the pips value of a given die code be higher than standard, and these values are sometimes used directly in the game system rather than rolls.

I know that it's probably regarded by most as the major change in this rules variant, but I've been using it since the early 90s and it really does work out well, both in play and in character development.


Finally, what this variant needs is a name. I had been calling it heXad in its fantasy incarnation, but I see that the naming convention most have used is "something"-6 so I might as well stick with that. I've been calling it Snap6 in the supplement, but that's just a placeholder. I'm open to suggestions.

Main differences from stock OpenD6:

- 1d=4
- Only 2 action segments per round, but with Abilities that can give players snap-dodges, counter-attacks, or combination attacks
- Grittier, bloodier, and less forgiving health and damage -- even Conan the Cimmerian goes down if you nail him with a broadsword
- Skill-based XP. Skills can improve simply by using them well, based on the average roll for a given die code

[Grimace]

I'd be up for giving it a read over and letting you know what jumps out at me. Perhaps by looking over it a name can also drift its way into my brain and I can offer suggestions on that as well.