D6 Star Wars RPG Thoughts

I ran thru a similar re-look last year with 2ER&E and then again last month when I picked up the 1st edition book and while there's a lot I like there are things I would change, especially with 2ER&E.

The skill list is just choked with over-specialized redundant skills and combat is full of modifiers and special cases and clunky concepts. It reads like a Star Wars game that someone has tried to turn into a general space opera system, and that's pretty much what happened. I know some of it was to clamp down on skill inflation - presumably that's why you end up with literally 14 different mechanical repair skills and things like being able to move half of your movement with an action at no penalty but if you move more than half of your movement rating then it counts as a second action. Yeah that's great.

1E may suffer from rapid skill inflation (I am told, I never ran or played it long enough to see it) but it also plays a lot more like the movies. I think a tweaked 1E would make a pretty good game even now.

Delete.

I'm warming to the first edition combat sequence. It reminds me of first edition AD&D and the combat segments it used. Both of those systems play out in more simultaneous style than typical I-do-all-of-my-actions-and-movement then you-do-all-of-your-actions-and-movement by initiative style games (as I was suggesting in the OP!).

I also realized that you don't have to roll every character's first action in each segement--that would be unwieldy. Just take the combat in portions--you're only rolling if a character's action affects another character.

I'm really starting to like the idea of not using a grid, too. I have a big cork board that I lay on the gaming table when we play our Conan campaign. I draw on these big graph paper sheets with a dark marker. Characters are represented by stick pins. It does a great job of mapping combat, but it is a pain in the butt to clear all the food and drinks and paper and dice from the table in order to lay this thing down.

Just playing out the combat scenario in the imagination, with maybe just using a sketch, not to scale, to aid player visualization, sounds like something I'd like to try.





I've been reading the Rules Companion. This is the second rules adjustment for first edition. First, there was the Rules Upgrade--that's only 4 pages. Then, WEG expanded and updated the rules in the Rules Upgrade in a rules supplement called the Rules Companion.

I do like a lot of the new rule adjustments, but it does make the game more complex. Part of the charm of first edition is the rules-lite, speed-o-light system that fits the fast fun of the Star Wars genre so well.

There is a major rule change that I don't like, though. That's the RC version of the combat round sequence. It has been changed from the above to this....

1. Declare Actions and Full Reactions: Both PCs and NPCs, with lowest DEX score declaring first.

2. Declare Combat Reaction Skills: Both PCx and NPCx, with highest DEX score declaring first. Character actions can account properly for Reaction skills. You'll find out your being shot at in the first phase, then in this phase, decide if you want to Dodge.

3. Roll Actions and Reactions: First roll non-movement actions, then roll movement actions.

4. Calculate Damage: Damage is done at the end of the round, after everybody has acted (like Classic Traveller), unlike first edition Star Wars.



I liked the character's skill roll determining initiative in the example above from first edition SW. Here, with the RC, that's thrown out the window, and a new concept called Haste is used. I don't like it. The benefit of declaring Haste is that the hasted action is done before any other actions. The penality is that declaring Haste penalizes all die codes by -1D, just like taking another action.

Thus, if Fred declares that he will fire his blaster twice, he'll do so at -1D each shot. If Barnaby declares that he will also fire his blaster twice, but one shot is hasted, then he fires both shots as if he was performing 3 actions. Both shots would be at -2D. The benefit of doing this is that hasted actions are performed first. Thus Barnaby's hasted shot would happen first, then Barnaby's second shot and Fred's two shots would happen (what is considered) simultaneously.

Unless I'm reading something wrong, I don't really see the benefit of hasting combat actions. A player might want to get a door sealed before the enemy can catch up to him--I can see that action being hasted. But, with combat, all damage is done at the end of the round--so, there's no real reason to shoot first. You will still get your shot.

What are your feelings on Force Points/Dark Side Points and using/getting Character Points? I'm not sure I like the tension between advancing your stats or improving a specific roll using CPs.

LostSoul said:

What are your feelings on Force Points/Dark Side Points and using/getting Character Points? I'm not sure I like the tension between advancing your stats or improving a specific roll using CPs.

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I'm with you. I hoarded my CPs as much as I could and hated when I had to spend them.

LostSoul said:

What are your feelings on Force Points/Dark Side Points and using/getting Character Points? I'm not sure I like the tension between advancing your stats or improving a specific roll using CPs.

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I like them. I think they do a great job of bringing The Force into the game mechanically. A player can do something superhuman, one time, or he can use those same points to improve his character just a little bit.

I made the mistake of awarding CPs after every game session in my 7-year campaign back in the 90's (used R&E rules), and I remember my players using them all the time in the game--usually to save their butts, but sometimes to do some heroric, amazing stuff. Rarely did they improve their characters with them.

First Edition Star Wars does not use Character Points, btw. That's a Second Edition mechanic. And, PCs only start out with 1 Force Point. So, in first edition, there's a lot less use of The Force than you might have experience playing second edition.



In first edition, there is "Skill Points", which work just like CPs except that you can't use them "in game". They're strictly used to improve the character, somehow. They're mainly meant to improve the character's stats and skills, but also, they can be used to improve equipment.

I don't know how I feel about that last bit--using Skill Points in order to add more damage to a blaster, get a bonus on the attack throw, have it hold more ammo, have longer range--or whatever.




The neat thing about the D6 system is that it's easy to modify. It even says, on page 28 of first edition, where advice is given to the gamemaster: Remember, the purpose of the game is to have fun. If our suggestions (meaning the rules) get in the way--toss 'em out. Having a good time is more important than attention to picayune details.

So, if you don't like the uses of CPs, then don't use 'em. Revert to first edition Skill Points. Or, have both: Skill Points and Character Points, using skill points for character improvement and character points for representation of the effect of The Force in the game (along with Force Points).



As for Dark Side Points, I found them very useful in the mega-campaign I ran. My players, all roleplayers, did not want their characters going over to the Dark Side. Most of them were not Force Sensitive, anyway.

We did have a character go over to the Dark Side at the climax of our game: he became Vader's apprentice, known as Darth Raige. The player playing him did not want to go that route, and it was a bit of a tragedy. But, he was truly seduced during the game by the Dark Side. I kept giving him hard choices to make, not unlike Luke leaving Degobah to rescue Han and Leia when Yoda and Kenobi's spirit protested. Like Luke, the character followed his honor, but unlike Luke, he was unable to withstand the pull of the Dark Side.

We never did get around to it, but I always meant to run a follow-up campaign where this character, as Darth Raige, was the primary bad guy. I thought it would have been neat to see if the PCs could redeem him.

But, to answer your question, the Dark Side points were instrumental in this long process of having this character turn to the Dark Side when the player was unwilling to go that route.

Man, that was a fantastic campaign. We all loved it.

Just found this thread and been thinking vaguely for a week or two about running a SW d6 game. I thought I still had the 1E rules but find that all I have now is the 2E Revised edition, and the (ick!) d20 edition. Guess I sold off the 1E books and just about everything else I once had for SW (which was a fair amount). Got no adventures or sourcebooks, so it's probably not surprising that what I started thinking of is essentially a "reboot" of the setting. That'd let me throw in just about any planet, vehicle, alien I care to dream up. Let some smartass smuggler find out that it's HIS father who is the Emperors right hand man. Let a PC Jedi find out that the Sith are an entirely different kind of threat than what the movies said they were.

Been so busy this week that I haven't had time to do much more than give the rulebook a superficial glance to start re-familiarizing myself with the system.

I do remember having a LOT of fun running a 1E d6 game which ended because I was putting so much energy into running the game sessions that I needed a break. I think the simple fact of my advanced age will help there - I won't have the energy to overwork myself in the first place. I remember I started to have some issues with characters becoming a little TOO good. All the emphasis on combat only encouraged dumping all their points into nothing but blasters, dodging, and improved armor (allowing the combat droid PC was an unfortunate move). I only vaguely recall concerns about the Force skills system - whether it was just worries about Jedi PC's dominating play once they got points into their skills or what, I no longer recall. I guess I'll just have to read up on it, stay flexible, and maintain communication with players about potential pitfalls. IF I ever even bring this off...

One advantage - I still have piles of minis, including plenty o' stormtroopers.

Man in the Funny Hat said:

Just found this thread and been thinking vaguely for a week or two about running a SW d6 game.

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Let go you conscious self and trust your feelings. Then, those notions you get will become less cloudy by the calling you've received of The Force!

Got no adventures or sourcebooks, so it's probably not surprising that what I started thinking of is essentially a "reboot" of the setting. That'd let me throw in just about any planet, vehicle, alien I care to dream up.

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The Star Wars universe is rather big...even without a reboot, there's many, many, many stories to be told.

Let some smartass smuggler find out that it's HIS father who is the Emperors right hand man.

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No need for a reboot! I think there's plenty of room to tell a story like that. Plus, your players will never forsee it--a third Skywalker babe! Not Luke and Leia, but...their step brother.

There is 19 years between Episode III and IV, then another 4 years before Vader's death--plenty of time for another birth, that maybe the Emperor commanded Vader to kill (and is believed dead--but isn't).

Or, what about Anakin not knowing a lover was impregnated--this, pre-Episode II?

Or....how about this! Remember that Skywalker's mother had a virgin birth. Maybe...just maybe....she wasn't the only one.

Maybe we really don't know the story of the True Chosen One....

Let a PC Jedi find out that the Sith are an entirely different kind of threat than what the movies said they were.

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Quite possible, if you use a splinter group. The Jedi were guardians of the galaxy for a thousand generations. The comics and books tell us the history of the Sith....some of it.

There is plenty of room, in all those thousands of years, for some permutation of the Sith.

Thanks for the replies. I only vaguely remember skill points; we never used them in our games.

In my favourite SW campaign I changed the Dark Side Point mechanic: you'd only fall if you hit 6 DSPs, and you didn't have to roll each time you got one.

I think that gave the players more space to explore the themes presented in the movies. We had a Jedi who would call on the Dark Side every now and then, and I - as DM - was sure to play that up. The PCs ended up taking views that the movies probably wouldn't have supported, but in our games it made perfect sense: I think I gave a FP and a DSP to the PC who pushed the hated Hutt out of the window to his death in the penultimate session of our campaign.

LostSoul said:

I think I gave a FP and a DSP to the PC who pushed the hated Hutt out of the window to his death in the penultimate session of our campaign.

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If you go back and look at the movies, though, there's a lot of places where the Jedi don't act as "good" as you might think they would.

For example, in A New Hope, when Luke, Ben, Han and the Falcon jump into the Alderaan system, the TIE fighter zooms by. Han's first instinct is to kill the pilot, and Ben does nothing to stop it.

Even with an enemy, you might think that a Jedi might want to find another way, if possible--only kill in self defense, and all that. Nope, Ben just sits there and watches Han try to murder this guy.

Take a close look at all three films, and I bet you'll find more instances like this, usually dealing with some miscellaneous alien or Imperial.

Given the game rules, yeah, pushing the Hutt out the window MIGHT require a DSP...but given the movies, I think that needs to be re-evaluated. Your campaign climax sounds very Star Wars to me.