d6 the future of d20?

[MerricB]

As for the art of adventure design being so much easier, well, that's a debate in itself. For myself, I can crank out stats and stuff in d6 in a quarter of the time it takes me to do the same type of stuff in Star Wars d20 or DnD simply because of the vast number of classes, levels, feats, skills and ranks, force powers or spells, monsters, and so on and so on... at least in d6, I can begin with a basic template, add in a few pips and dice in certain skills, compare to the overall capacity of the player group, and I'm done.

Indeed.

However, to a large extent I'm interested in published adventures. The original Star Wars RPG had a lot of enjoyable adventures, but they were almost all made with beginning characters in mind. Characters could diverge too much after that. (Especially in my group... I had three wonderful years of playing in a WEG Star Wars game, and our characters advanced greatly).

Where an experienced GM can modify the stats in the adventure easily, the less experienced (or more timid) GM finds that the difficulty of the checks is too low. There's not really a baseline for any given type of character.

So, whilst you or I would probably have little trouble modifying a published adventure to our tastes, I'm not so sure that's a universal trait.

Of course, D&D 3E does suffer somewhat from the dilution of the level concept, so, especially at the higher levels, balance issues raise their ugly heads!

Cheers!

 

[Staffan]

Anybody know if the new TORG will be using the d6 system, or will it use the original TORG system?

It'll use a revised version of the original TORG. I'm expecting d20-via-bonus chart, skills equalling ability + skill adds, and stuff like that being the same. The new owner of WEG has mentioned that he'll probably use some version of adding result points instead of bonus number to damage, which has the advantage of removing the infamous "glass ninja" problem, but at the same time making Dex a lot more valuable than Str and Tou (unless he has a fix for that too).

 

[Staffan]

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.

Was that in the 2e revised rules? Because in the 1e and 2e rules, they were skills. However, starting with the force skills cost one attribute die each, which gave you 1D in them - but after that, they were improved as skills (possibly with some penalties if you didn't have a teacher).

 

[Zappo]

My hat of d6 know no limit.

Well, not really. But it is one of my most disliked systems. At least in the edition of SWd6 I played, Jedi powers were skills, not attributes, which started at 1d. Since there are only three of them, jedis could raise them very quickly and become overpowered in a rather short time. By comparison, how many skills did you need to be a competent pilot, between piloting, shooting, shielding, communicating, three different repair skills, and a bunch of others? Ten? And then you'd only be able to fly one kind of ship. Making jedi skills into attributes, of course, would cause the opposite problem. Combat is clunky.

But the real dog is: because of the skill problems outlined above, the "versatility" of character creation was a complete joke. Characters were very similar and tended to spontaneously cluster in classes; add to this the lack of any character feature except for attributes and skills, and the end result was that two SWd6 jedis were much, much more similar to each other than two SWd20 jedis.

 

[woodelf]

Believe me, I know a level system when I see one and I know that what I came up with for d6 doesn't make it a 'level system', it at least alleviates some of the complaints that some have for the system, and also gets rid of the situation in which a person normally would spend some of his own character points during the game and instead splits that pool up into two different pools... one which works for just character advancement, and one that refreshes each session (like Spycraft or Mutants and Masterminds) and doesn't increase beyond the 5 per session.

It seems to me that there're two ways of thinking of levels: as a guage of overall power, and as a guage of effectiveness in any given area. What you proposed works just fine for the former: it gives you a shorthand that says "all of these characters are about this powerful". But it's really no different than saying they all have 30d, total, or, in Hero System, saying they are all 200pt characters. D&D does a lot more with levels: not only are all 10th level characters nominally equivalent in effectiveness [i'll just gloss over the imbalances, and we'll assume it's perfectly balanced, for sake of argument], but you know that all 10th level characters can handle roughly the same sort of combat encounter. Obviously, the wizard can't charge up to some monster and start hacking at it, but she can contribute meaningfully to the combat (or at least that's the theory).

The same thing isn't guaranteed by simply making sure everyone has the same number of points, or the like. Frex, i converted our D&D3E game over to a derivative of Ars Magica. The big bruiser was already the toughest one in the group, able to deal out and survive damage easily twice what anyone else could. But even the gypsy (weakest character in the group, in terms of toe-to-toe combat prowess) could realistically engage in melee without being smeared. Freed of the constraints of levels and able to build their characters exactly the way they wanted to, this was no longer the case. The big bruiser, while no more powerful overall, put all his points into combat worthiness. More importantly, several of the other characters put almost none of their points into combat stuff. Suddenly, a monster that was a challenge for the bruiser would hit one of the others almost every time, and kill them with one blow. It would be literally suicidal for the non-combat characters to engage in combat. Now, IMHO, that's a feature, not a bug. But if you don't want to have to worry about what happens if you have a foolish player, or smart monsters, then levels can be a feature, ensuring a minimum level of ability in whatever areas the levels cover (combat ability, hit points, and saves, for D&D3E).

As for the art of adventure design being so much easier, well, that's a debate in itself. For myself, I can crank out stats and stuff in d6 in a quarter of the time it takes me to do the same type of stuff in Star Wars d20 or DnD simply because of the vast number of classes, levels, feats, skills and ranks, force powers or spells, monsters, and so on and so on... at least in d6, I can begin with a basic template, add in a few pips and dice in certain skills, compare to the overall capacity of the player group, and I'm done.

I think you two may be talking past one another. You are absolutely correct that the mechanical side of D6 adventure design is almost an order of magnitude easier than for D&D3E. However, the planning side *can* be harder for two reasons. First, the wider range of ability levels in various areas means you have to be more careful when choosing opponents/challenges. frex, assuming luck with the dice averages out over time, the toughest D&D3E character (barbarian) will only have around 4x the hit points of the weakest (wizard) at around 10th level. With a purely points-based system, there might be an order of magnitude difference, or more. So now you may need to pick a monster that can give the barbarian-sort a real run for her money, but won't instantly cream the wizard-sort should she get in the way.

Second, the wider range of abilities, period, may give you more elements to consider, in general. Taking a simple case, if nobody has a prestige class, you don't have to account for any abilities the core classes don't have, or couldn't have by that level. With a more wide-open system, they might have just about anything.

 

[woodelf]

On top of that, IMHO, it had a key issue regarding advancement--randomly assigned development points for advancement. Basically when you successfully complete an adventure, you gain points to use for character development (or for in-game use). Developing higher-ranking abilities (and sometimes, skills) was very difficult because of high point costs; in addition, it is very feasible for some characters to remain stagnant & others to advance because 1 character burned up a lot of development points in order to survive an adventure, while another character barely spent any points in game at all (if at all).

By "randomly assigned", you don't mean literally random, you mean that the player could put them wherever she wanted to, right? [My book is on loan, so i can't double check, but i'd think i would have noticed if it was literally random.]

As for using one pool of points for advancement and hero points: at least in the genre/setting in question, that's a feature, not a bug. Look at the original Star Wars trilogy: all the main characters go through roughly the same amount of stuff. Yet Luke goes from whiny farmboy to superhuman hero, while Han's only improvement is getting the girl. However, Luke also has tons of bad stuff happen to him, while Han seems to have the luck of the Irish. Star Wars models this perfectly: Luke's player hoarded her points, using just about every one of them to improve her character, while Han's player was burning them left and right to get out of sticky situations, and had almost none left for advancement. If the balance between the long-term value of spending them and the short-term value of burning them is right [i have no idea if this is true in Star Wars], it's a very reasonable trade-off, producing equal character effectiveness, over the long haul, whichever route you go. And, if the GM does it right, the person who doesn't burn points really *is* at a disadvantage over the short term: given that tradeoff, the GM should be at least occasionally throwing situations at the players that are beyond their capabilities, so that they "must" burn some hero points, or accept the bad consequences. (Obviously, you don't kill characters for refusing to burn hero points--you capture them, or torture them, or steal the McGuffin, or whatever.)

 

[LostSoul]

At least in the edition of SWd6 I played, Jedi powers were skills, not attributes, which started at 1d. Since there are only three of them, jedis could raise them very quickly and become overpowered in a rather short time.

Huh, I just checked that out. It's true. I never played that way, though - I had Force skills cost 2x, untrained 4x.

Isn't there a rule in there about only being able to raise a skill by one point per adventure? Anyway, that's what I used.

By comparison, how many skills did you need to be a competent pilot, between piloting, shooting, shielding, communicating, three different repair skills, and a bunch of others? Ten? And then you'd only be able to fly one kind of ship. Making jedi skills into attributes, of course, would cause the opposite problem. Combat is clunky.

To fly an X-Wing, you need two skills: StarFighter Piloting and Starship Gunnery. Starship Shields is nice to have, but not neccessary. And with those two skills, you can fly a Y-Wing, TIE Fighter, A-Wing, or any other Starfighter. If you decide to use a freighter, you have Space Transports Piloting. You don't need to have Communications, or Sensors, and Repair is one skill, and not neccessary if there's a space port nearby.

And I find D&D combat to be much, much more clunky than d6, what with AoO and limited actions per turn.

But the real dog is: because of the skill problems outlined above, the "versatility" of character creation was a complete joke. Characters were very similar and tended to spontaneously cluster in classes; add to this the lack of any character feature except for attributes and skills, and the end result was that two SWd6 jedis were much, much more similar to each other than two SWd20 jedis.

That's a feature, not a flaw. Characters are as different as the Players want them to be. If they are the same, it would be like D&D characters all picking the same classes. And you're also forgetting that, as per the rules, two Jedis can have two totally different set of Force skills.

 

[Sado]

Look at the original Star Wars trilogy...Luke also has tons of bad stuff happen to him, while Han seems to have the luck of the Irish.

Didn't Han get frozen in a big block of carbonite?

 

[LostSoul]

Didn't Han get frozen in a big block of carbonite?

No, that was Wan Solo, his twin brother.

 

[Acid_crash]

I guess the reason why I prefer d6 over d20 is very simple and it's just me, but to see characters gain xp after xp and then reach a magical number in which ALL their abilities go up at one time and the character gaining so much power at one time just bothers me to no end, and it just does not make any sense at all. People just don't function that way, and these games should at least mimic that part of how we are. To me, it's a fundamental design flaw that makes the game boring and lame and hard for me to find any fun in it.

Now, if the d20 system had a core system like in the new book Buy the Numbers, and that was part of the core system instead of what we have now, I would never complain about the system ever.