D6 Star Wars RPG Thoughts

BTW, my question in Post #67 above, is really a question of if movement is considered part of a Dodge.

If a character Dodges, is it just a mechanical thing? Or, must a character dash behind cover, drop to one knee or even prone, to account for the Dodge?

The game rules in all editions of D6 Star Wars seem to support the idea that it's just a mechanical thing. If a character uses his Dodge, then the character really doesn't duck behind a wall or drop low, making himself a smaller target.

Then, again, I have a non-published draft of D6 rules from WEG that specifically state that movement is inherent when the Dodge is used. If a character gets shot at, he must step to the left, or jump behind some crates, or tuck and roll away from a grenade blast.

So, my question is: How do you prefer it. Is using Dodge just another way to create a target number for the enemy? Or, is Dodge a real action that must be accounted for in the game?

Dodge is just a mechanical thing - and yes, you should account for it in the game as well. SWd6 is all about cinematic gameplay - recreating at the table the kind of stuff you saw in the movies. In the movies when the heroes get shot at they get missed a lot, they duck this way and that, are behind cover or whatever. The game mechanic of dodging is just a way to give the attacker a higher difficulty number to have to meet in order to damage the defender, BUT the idea is supposed to be that you are continually describing in cinematic terms what's actually happening to fit the dice results.

Started taking notes last night on my "alternate history" campaign setting and started rewatching the movies starting with Episode I. I won't succumb to the temptation to start going over AGAIN all the awful plotting and story for the prequels but I think I have a good idea of where to start. It WILL start with general parallels to E1, but this being an RPG campaign it will start on a much smaller scale. The PC's won't start by fighting armies, they have to have stuff to lead up to that. They will begin at a point where a schism is growing within the Jedi between those who believe in midichlorians as the source of the Force and those who still believe the Force is a supernatural, ineffable thing. I'm actually considering the midichlorians as a tool the Stih are actually using to engineer the split - like an otherwise benign virus that they've slowly weaponized.

The Clone Wars will be simplified by a step. In E1 the piffle with the Trade Federation and invasion of Naboo is the pretext that Palpatine is using to eventually justify the employment of the secretly created clone army to assume control from within. Screw that. The clone army is the army that the Sith are intending to use to straight up invade and conquer the Republic. The Republic is like Rome - decadent, irresolute and spread too thin. The Sith only needed two things - to cloud the Jedi ability to forsee what's happening and a large enough military force to take on the thinned Republic standing defenses.

So who's the BBEG? The players will naturally suspect it's going to be someone in the senate. I'm going to use that against them and falsely reinforce that idea. However, the betrayal will not be a Sith mole but will come from within the Jedi - someone whose high midichlorian count leads himself and others to believe that he will bring balance to the Force. That will either lead to open conflict between Jedi factions (betrayal and murder) or at least just distract them long enough for the Sith to track them all down and... well, we'll see where the campaign goes from there.

Man in the Funny Hat said:

BUT the idea is supposed to be that you are continually describing in cinematic terms what's actually happening to fit the dice results.

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If you account for it, then it can change what a character is doing--thus the crux of the question.

And, does awareness affect the use of the Dodge?

If a stormtrooper is on guard, facing away from a PC who sneaks up on the stormtrooper, should the trooper be able able to Dodge or use Brawling Parry/Melee Parry (since it's been established that the trooper had no idea that anyone was behind him)?

In addition, it's hard for players to penalize themselves. For example, if a grenade is thrown, and a character dodges out of the way, you typically won't see a player say that his character tucks and rolls out of the way, ending up prone--not when standing up from prone is going to cost him an action and another -1D for the round after the explosion.

A Dodge from a baster bolt can be a simple sidestep--a shifiting of a character's body weight from on leg to the other--just enough to alter stance so that the blaster bolt that would have hit him ends up narrowly missing him. Once players learn this...they tend to do this all the time. Gone are the exciting leaps behind cover and the quick drops prone to avoid enemy fire.

In the past, I've struggled with how Dodge is handled for these reaons, especially with R&E where there is no declaration phase so that a character has no idea who will shoot at him after he acts.

1. Is awareness of the attack required in order to use Dodge skill?

2. If Dodge is used, must the player also describe how the character is dodging--and if so, how do you get the player to describe the dodge as more than a step to the left or right, but a duck, a drop to the floor, a tuck around a corner, or a leap behind cover?

I loved Starwars. After years of running D&D, having to spend 2-4 hours per session in prep-work, SW took about 20 minutes, and if the players decided to fly off the plot, they could. In fact, that resulted in some of our best RP & complications.
However, We used some different rules.
All action is simultaneous. Bad guys were resolved first for the sake of the GM's convenience. If they hit, that would be a problem for the players next round. Then the players could kill them. We just went around the table.
The exception was if someone wanted to haste and action to go first, which cost a 1D penalty.
D penalties for multiple actions applied to ALL rolls. If you Dodge, Shoot, Pick a pocket, and try to slice a computer, that was -3D to ALL rolls.

The game was quick, brutal, and fun.
And I remember several instances of amazing chaotic fun, usually caused by the wild die/d'oh die/FU die.
I haven't seen much comment on this mechanic. In short, whenever you roll anything, 1 die is different (color, size, something) If it is a 6, you keep in and roll another die, still adding, until you get something that is not a 6. If you roll a 1, you lose that die, and your highest remaining die, and that is your total. GM rolls a die. If that is also a 1, well, sucks to by your character--something really bad happens. Thus it is possible for someone to get really lucky, and even a non-jedi could fire a proton torpedo down a 2-meter shaft with turbolasers and fighters shooting at him, and it is possible for Han Solo to step on the only dry twig in the entire Endor Rain-forest.

So fun consequences:
Defel Merc throws a grenade down a hole. d'OH! it bounced from the far wall and went off in his crotch. OK, resist that 5d grenade. d'OH!!!!! well, so much for that character.
Wookie Brawler tackles a 6-yo girl (and serial murderer). Wookie has 9D of brawling and rolls modestly well. 6-yo has 2D in everything and nothing else. 6-yo rolls her 2D of brawling parry. 5+6. 6. 6. 6. 6. 6. 6. 6. 4. So, the 6-yo squirmed out from her jacket, leaving the massive wookie who tackled her holding a scrap of ruined cloth as she ran down the alley.
I spent 30 minutes designing one bounty hunter and writing his back history. He and a bunch of friends show up and ambush the party. The character with the lowest blaster score tags him. Roll damage from the blaster pistol: 12. Roll to resist: D'OH!!! um, 2. DEAD.
StarShip combat was just a variation of Player combat, but used different skills from Mech instead of Dex and Str.
Sure, it's minimum of 3 rolls. Instead of minimum 2 rolls most of the time as people.

8 years ago I but up most of my gaming books on eBay. I kept the SW books.

Oh, we had a few other house rules:
If you burn a force point to do something heroic in character combat at a climactic moment, you got it back. If you wanted a second one, it had to be non-character combat. (Luke firing the torpedo, jousting from speeder bikes, shooting 8 TIE fighters in 1 round with a quad-turret).

I based adventures on the Flash Gordon Movie, 4 different Doctor Who Audio plays by Big Finish Productions, a movie called "Guilty as Charged", ExoSquad, and more. One time I wanted to try an ExoSquad campaign--turns out that wasn't as original as I thought.

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Dodge vs Cover.
Dodge is a skill the players roll.
alternatively, characters can drop prone, drop to one knee, or try to hide behind cover. In that case, the difficulty to hit them is fixed at 13-15, depending.
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Reaction skills: base difficulty for the range and for the weapon. It the target is unaware, he/she is unaware. That is the whole point. Of course, if you can do it to the players, the players can do it to your NPCs.
Imagine 5 snipers firing at Vader. Each one targets a different part of his body (head, chest box, belt buckle, right and left light boxes). Their target number is 30, reduced by sniper scopes, range-modified sniper blasters, bi-pods, and taking time to prep. All 5 fire at once because the spotter makes a decent command roll. Then have 4D blaster, +1d for prep. Their difficulty has been dropped to 20. Chances of hitting aren't great, but oh, they each spend a skill point. No, 2 skill points! 7D to roll a 20 is better than average likelyhood. Sure, one will probably miss. Maybe 2. But just as likely one will beam him with a 6. So, Vader gets hit 3 times. If he d'OH's his resistance roll, or one of those hits rolls really high damage, he is dead.
Guess it was another robot like the one Yoda had hiding in the tree?

sabrinathecat said:

All action is simultaneous. Bad guys were resolved first for the sake of the GM's convenience.

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Like 1E AD&D, the first edition rules of D6 Star Wars do a pretty good job of simulating simultaneous actions.

The game was quick, brutal, and fun.

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Man, was it ever. This rule set(s) stand out as an excellent example of how rules can be extremel fun, easy to master, and not very complicated.

Beautiful design.

And I remember several instances of amazing chaotic fun, usually caused by the wild die/d'oh die/FU die.
I haven't seen much comment on this mechanic.

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That's because we've been mainly speaking of 1E, and the Wild Die wasn't introduced until second edition.

Some people love the Wild Die. Some think it complicated unnecessarily an excellent system.

sabrinathecat said:

And I remember several instances of amazing chaotic fun, usually caused by the wild die/d'oh die/FU die.

I haven't seen much comment on this mechanic. In short, whenever you roll anything, 1 die is different (color, size, something) If it is a 6, you keep in and roll another die, still adding, until you get something that is not a 6. If you roll a 1, you lose that die, and your highest remaining die, and that is your total. GM rolls a die. If that is also a 1, well, sucks to by your character--something really bad happens. Thus it is possible for someone to get really lucky, and even a non-jedi could fire a proton torpedo down a 2-meter shaft with turbolasers and fighters shooting at him, and it is possible for Han Solo to step on the only dry twig in the entire Endor Rain-forest.

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I like the exploding aspect of the wild die but I think the fumbling aspect has the potential to be too punishing. The way that we played is that on a 1 either the GM thought up that "something really bad" or if they couldn't you'd subtract the 1 and your highest die from your total. Often our GMs thought up something really bad but really interesting and fun, so I liked fumbled wild dice. But when the wild die rolls a 1 multiple times, it feel like you do nothing productive on your turn and that can be very frustrating.

A wonderful fumble on the wild die: A crime lord's thugs confiscated our weapons and we were held at gunpoint, waiting to be blasted. Our Force user tried to TK his lightsaber out of one thugs hands but fumbled and the GM had him accidentally turn the lightsaber on and slice the thug in half. This caused a commotion to ensue and resulted in an extremely fun and chaotic combat.

A wonderful explosion on the wild die: We were bountyhunters who teamed up with an NPC bountyhunter because she had the best lead on a target. It turned out that she was friends with the target and would lure bountyhunters to a deathtrap. She was able to get one shot on us before the wookie bountyhunter chopped at her with his vibroaxe. The wild die kept coming up as 6 and he ended up doing enough damage to kill her twice over. My friend who played the wookie reminisces on that story often.

Wednesday Boy said:

I like the exploding aspect of the wild die but I think the fumbling aspect has the potential to be too punishing. The way that we played is that on a 1 either the GM thought up that "something really bad" or if they couldn't you'd subtract the 1 and your highest die from your total.

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That sounds like your GM's call. In the R&E rulebook, one of the examples given for a complication is the scene in Return of the Jedi where Han Solo is on Endor, sneaking up behind the speeder bike trooper. He steps on a dry limb, and there's a loud snap. The trooper hears him, turns around, and the action starts, leading into the chase.

The point here is that the complication was merely that his stealth automatically failed.

Other complications can be something like your blaster running out of Tibanna gas (thus, no more ammo), or perhaps an electrical fire starts when the character is repairing a droid.

The book says, "Complications should be fair and balanced: they may put the character in danger, but they shouldn't be 'death traps' with no possibility of escape."

When Lando was attacking the second Death Star in the Falcon, he made a throw to pilot the ship around all the girders and beams. He made the roll but also rolled a complications. The GM decided that the Falcon hit one of the beams and sheared of the sensor dish, disabling the Falcon's sensors.

Or, when Luke and Leia are running from the troopers, trying to escape the Death Star in A New Hope, they come to a door where the bridge is out. Luke makes a throw to quickly operate and lock the door controls, but he not only fails the throw, he rolls a complication--he can't figure out how the lock works. So, the door will open, allowing the troopers to get them. The player thinks quickly and simply blasts the lock with a shot from his rifle, buying some time with the door closed.





If your GM played Complications harder than that (those are examples straight from the book), then he made a decision to play them harder and more deadly in his game.

Also note that the book gives THREE options for a "1" on a Wild Die. And, all three are the GM's choice.

Choice A. Add up the total normally.
Choice B. Complication occurs, while skill roll total determines success.
Choice C. Subtract the 1 and the highest die from the total.



Choice C is best for simple checks.

Choice A is often ignored, from what I've seen of responses talking about it. Choice A is just to ignore it.

Choice B, a Complication, can happen even if the task is a success. See the Lando example above.

Water Bob said:

If your GM played Complications harder than that (those are examples straight from the book), then he made a decision to play them harder and more deadly in his game.

Also note that the book gives THREE options for a "1" on a Wild Die. And, all three are the GM's choice.

Choice A. Add up the total normally.
Choice B. Complication occurs, while skill roll total determines success.
Choice C. Subtract the 1 and the highest die from the total.

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Don't get me wrong, the complications that my GMs threw at us weren't extraordinarily difficult. As you point out, Choice B often results in either outright failure (Han stepping on the twig) or taking one step forward and two steps back (running out of Tibanna gas before you can shoot). And Choice C often leads to failure because dropping the wild die and your highest means you're likely to miss the target difficulty. When that happens 1 out of 6 times, it can be very frustrating.

Wednesday Boy said:

When that happens 1 out of 6 times, it can be very frustrating.

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Exactly. That's why Choice A is there. Just ignore it. Keep on going. A GM should keep his thumb on the pulse of the game, and if another Complication would be not fun, then use Choice A or Choice C.

For a while, we had standard rules for certain types of throws. For example, on the Perception throw for initiative, if a 1 on the Wild Die popped up, it was automatically Choice C - subtract the one and the highest die.

I also used a chart so that players wouldn't feel like I was picking on them (by arbitrarily deciding a Complication would happen), and I weighted the chart so that Complications were more rare.

Thus, when a "1" on the Wild Die appeared (1 in 6 times), I'd throw on this chart....

1-3 means add up normally.
4-5 means subtract 1 and the highest
6 means complication


This made complications more rare.

When a "1" popped up on the Wild Die, half the time it meant nothing.

I remember in the epic Star Wars campaign that I ran, the PCs were in a freighter, zipping around the towers of Nar Shaddaa. That's the Hutt moon. It's entire surface is covered with buildings, like Coruscant. But, unlike Coruscant, this place is run-down, beaten up. It's a sleazy boom town after its prime. The Hutts control the place, and this is a great place to go if someone wants to get lost--or get his throat cut in the night for the few credits he has in his pocket.

My players were having thier characters zip in through this place with bounty hunters on their tail. Ship's blaster bolts were flying. PCs were in the turrets, swinging around, blasting away.

Each combat round, the pilots of each vessel made a piloting check to avoid all the obstacles. If a Complication was rolled, I gave then an unexpected obstacle.

For example, the third bounty hunter, succeeding on his piloting roll, also rolled a 1 on his Wild Die that led to a Complication. As the PC ship and two Hunters in front of him zipped around a building, he came in too close. I gave him a special maneuver to perform. If he succeeded, then great. But, the check was made as a new action, taking all the appropriate multiple action penalties.

If he failed, he slammed into the side of a building--maybe doing minor damage, maybe ripping off an S-foil, or maybe exploding into a ball of flames or go zipping out of control in true Star Wars style. It all depended on the success of the roll and the random damage taken.

In normal combat, a complication was sometimes a jammed weapon, a comm that lost its battery, a grenade that fell off the character's belt with the pin out (giving the character time to jump free, on a Dodge throw), or maybe a slip, with a failed DEX check meaning that the character goes down on his bum, right there in the middle of the fight (maybe slipping on gore!).

That's how I used complications in my game. I just tried to "complicate" the situation, challenge the character, and hopefully add a little fun and unforseen excitement to the game.