d6 the future of d20?
 

WEG is rereleasing their d6 system made famous (infamous?) when they had the Star Wars RPG license.

It looks like they want to be all things. They have Fantasy, (modern) Adventure, and Sci-Fi handbooks.

I realize people here are biased, but what are the pros and cons of d6? I've never played it myself.

D6 is easily customizable to a character concept, since there are no classes or levels. Is very quick and easy to learn. The one downside is the Bucket o' Dice syndrome... Tallying up 12d6 for every skill check or attack roll can really bog down gameplay.

It's fun, but personally I preferred the d10 system used for the old 7th Sea game. It's similar to the d6 system, except you use d10's, and you've got two numbers... the number of dice you roll, and the number you get to keep to tally up for the check.

I never liked the d6 system. Essentially it is a die pool system. This means that characters with high skills roll buckets of dice. Some people really like it because it is fairly cinematic - all skills default to the attribute upon which they are based (so if you have a high sttribute you can use any skill based on it easily.) However, I found it slow and clunky. Of course, that's my personal bias.

I haven't played it in years, but the d6 system made for Star Wars games that felt like Star Wars. It's a fun system.

d6 is alright, I like d20 better. I played the old occaisonallystar wars which was a decent RPG. And I've played reguarly in past Shadowrun (great game). But I myself like d20 better. I like levels. I like how d20 has lots of strategies to be used in combat and lots of options. I like having having 6 different types of dice.
But I really dislike 7th sea, might've just been a crappy gm.

d6 was ok. i only played it with Star Wars, and it worked ok. I am looking forward to seeing WEG do TORG though.

Star Wars d6 was the second RPG I ever played behind Mechwarrior and I really enjoyed it. I thought the mechanics worked well and I still have so many books for that game it is not even funny. Honestly for me, going to d20 with its levels and classes was a bit jarring.

Back in the mid 90's they released the d6 system as a generic book called 'd6 system' about 96 - 128 pages iirc.

Star Wars d6 was one of my favorite systems. As pbartender said, it is easy and a player could create almost anything they could imagine. The system was very versatile. Although the large number of dice never became much of a problem until u rolled above 10d6 which happened about 50% of the time especially when u were in your specialty. I am waiting for the fantasy game since none of my group wants to play sci-fi.

I think it is a great system, but not without its faults. It is a easily learned, skillbased and loads of fun! My main problem, however, was with the way it handles damage resolution. Quite often I had a situation where the PC had more dice to soak an attack, than I had damage dice. I also had other episodes, witch proves the cinematic parts of the game. Once one of my players manages to kill a Krayt Dragon in one hit with his Vibro Axe. Similar events happened a few times.

Jedi in D6 were also in an odd position. For a very long time, a Jedi really couldn't do a whole lot with their powers, because Control Sense and Alter were attributes and improving them was expensive.

The d20 system makes Jedi more powerful from the beginning with all the force skills that can be used untrained.

WEG's SWd6 system was really designed for a more free-flowing GM/player style, and with the right GM it was ideal for Star Wars, and combat went pretty fast. Heck, with SWd6, there were a number of points in the rulebook where the rules said "don't let this bog down, keep the action moving; if you don't know off the top of your head what the target number is, make something up and keep going."

SWd20 is much more "tactical" with all the options coded into the rules, and it doesn't really encourage creative skill uses, IMO, because of the number of important skills that can't be used untrained. It also lends itself more to "rules lawyering" which puts the GM and player into an adversarial relationship. For SWd20, you need a good GM *and* a good group of players. Otherwise, it ends up feeling like a D&D session, only with blasters and lightsabers instead of crossbows and bastard swords.

D6 is not a good rules-lite system, as such. People who are looking for rules-lite will find it, as you say, clunky. (I recommend Over The Edge if you want rules-lite)
On the other hand, its definitely not a good rules-crunchy system.
The average D20 fan will be left with a "less than full" feeling from it.

So its really not very good on either front.

And from a business standpoint, if they really have delusions of dethroning D20, they're dreaming. More likely its the more rabid D6 fans ( especially the ones that are really pissed off that D20 "stole" Star Wars and made it playable) that are operating under this delusion.

Nisarg

I disagree. It made Star Wars feel like generic space opera, until you involved Jedi in any way shape or form. Then it made Star Wars feel like dental surgery.

D6 never did figure out how to handle Jedi adequately, something that would be an even bigger problem today, when there are settings playable in Star Wars where there are a LOT of Jedi, compared to the old days when D6 star wars was around, and the default setting was the rebellion era when Jedi were rare and could just be avoided.

Nisarg

My big problem is that there are specific bits to the d6 system which aren't found in the other books - what I'd like is a for-sale PDF or for-sale GMs guide - 32 pages'd to it, which, for another $15, gives you all the "unique" rules in the set. Buying 3 core rulebooks for a generic system with so much overlap is just about the only thing that has kept me from buying this system from day one. I play sci-fi, modern-adventure AND fantasy, so while I like the $30 price tag, I'm not hot on paying $90 for all the rules. That's a dealkiller for me.

They could, however, easily redeem themselves if they put out a $30 suppliment called something like "d6 companion" which gives you all the setting-specific rules in one go, as well as some other settings (cyberpunk, comedy, pulp, etc.)

d6 will never replace d20, that's for sure because of D&D. To even think otherwise is just a big waste of timeless thinking.

Now, onto the system itself.

In my opinion, d6 rocks where d20 is stifle and boring. No classes, yippee. Now I can think outside the boxes that most classes bring to the table. No alignments, yippee. Now I can create my own personalities and not be restricted by some stupid out-dated code of personality squashing.

Dice system is simple, but so is d20. But I like dice pools, to me dice pools are a better representation of true skill and knowledge, and not just a bunch of random luck that d20 spouts. In d6, you know that if a person rolls 5D6+2 to strike and the opponent can only roll 3D6+1 to dodge, that second person will normally get nailed.

And I do agree with how the original SWd6 handled damage, it was rather clunky...that's why in the new d6 editions they have incorporated two versions of health: standard health levels, and actual hit points. The GM decides at the beginning which health system he wants to run for the game, and goes with it. WEG did answer that question for some of us who didn't like just using health levels.

They have also redone the magic and psionics rules, and how they function. They are still attributes, but I think they are cheaper to increase than those old Jedi Attributes.

All in all, the new d6 is way better than the old d6, and I really liked the old d6 a lot (it was my first rpg).

I have a personal dislike of the D6 system. Mainly the beyond odd attributes (mechanical is an attribute like strength???) and the clunky dicepool mechanics.

And as everyone has said, in the old Star Wars game Jedi were just hopeless. Couldn't do a bloody thing.

I hope it does well for the sake of the people who like the system, but gah I can't stand it.

Pretty much echo all of the prior posts. It is just not my cup of tea. The only d6-based system that I personally prefer is Fuzion and its successor, Action!

Business-wise, I think their marketing will help revive their lines, but they seem to be missing one thing: a hot brand product that will serve as a "flagship" for the rules system, like D&D.

One can only hope they're bringing back TORG, although I'm not entirely sure if they fully own the IP. I'd rather avoid using licensed products and try to launch an original game whose IP I can call my own.

To digress a bit...

I'm not overly fond of the 7th Sea setting (I hate almost-real-world settings. Either make it the real world or don't.), and the original rule book was terribly disorganized. But once I muddles through that, I found I really liked the d10 rule system. I'd be ecstatic if AEG made a more generic RPG version of that system.

Back to topic...

In my experience of d6 SW, the Jedi had a tendency to vastly over-power the other characters, if anything... The opposite end of the spectrum from the Jedi problems in D20. With the d6 rules, you either had to play an all Jedi group, or a no Jedi group. Anything else quickly turned into 'Jedi with Sidekicks'.

Pros:

• Simple character creation. It's very hard to get it "wrong."
• Square dice.
• There's only one power level: "space opera." A Stormtrooper is a stormtrooper is a stormtrooper.
• EVERYTHING is done on the same mechanic, in the same layout. Non-combat can be every bit as tense as combat. (Storyteller shares the same benefit.)

Cons:

• Simple character creation. It's very hard to have a "different" character who's really any better than anyone else's. Unless you're an alien, in which case you get slightly different numbers.
• Square dice.
• There's no real way to measure characters of different "worth". After a year of constant gaming, your PCs will be amazingly powerful--and the NPCs or a new PC will be a headache to make on par with them.
• Because combat isn't the focus of the game, when combat happens it can be every bit as complex as a game of AD&D used to be.

d6 is my favorite game system.

It's actually pretty simple. The basic mechanic is to roll a number of d6s equal to a characters skill level (or attribute) and compare it to a target number. The average human has an attribute of 2 dice (or called, 2D), while heroes have one of 3D (on average. 4D is generally the human max, and 5D is the max for things like the strength of a wookiie). Skills generally get added to the attribute.

The target number tend to range from about 5 to 35. 5 being very easy, 10 easy, 15 moderate, up to 35 being almost impossible.

Generally speaking, skills for most characters tended to only be about 3-7 dice. In theory, it went up to about 14-15 dice. In either case, I really don't see why rolling that much dice is a problem, but many people don't like it. Still, you can pretty much play it without a book, so I consider it to be a rules-light game.

There is no fixed skill or attribute list - it varies from game to game. Besides Star Wars, there the generic book, Indiana Jones, Men in Black, DC Heroes, Hercules/Xena, and a couple others, sorta. The original d6 book was really more of a toolkit than an actual game. Similarly, there was no damage system set - you can either use a wound system, based on a damage save (which Star Wars d6 used), or use hit points.

The force system in Star Wars d6 wasn't great, but there were a number of other magic systems.

It will never dethrone D&D, much less d20, since it costs $500 plus if you want to put out a product using it (compared to free for d20). But it's a fun alternative, I think.