d6 System, as compared to WEG Star Wars

[Wik]

Alright, so Hellhound's posts about the good ol' games of the past has got me thinking about a personal fave of my own: Star Wars, as produced by West End Games. I'm not much of a Star Wars fan... at all... but I've always loved the system.

It's a cinematic system that really captures the feel of playing in a space opera style movie. The rules encourage players to make up interesting actions, and I've found it runs very smoothly in actual play. The only part of the game I found at all difficult was the spacefighter combat system, but even then, it wasn't TOO terrible (we wound up using a variation of the BATTLETECH AEROSPACE rules for our space battles, but I think we could've managed using the rules as written).

Anyways...

I don't think I'm going to ever run SWd6, simply because a) I hate Star Wars (the setting), b) my players aren't fond of it, either, and c) I'm too lazy to dig out my old books - not even sure I still have them.

So...

I know a year or so ago WEG re-released the d6 system, although they had lost their Indiana Jones and Star Wars licenses. What I heard was they released three versions of the d6 system - D6 SPACE, D6 ADVENTURE, and D6 FANTASY.

All three sound pretty interesting to me, and I was thinking of picking one up (probably d6 Space, although Adventure might work, too).

My question here is this: is the new d6 Space game similar to the D6 Version of Star Wars? Are the rules the same? Is the only difference that Tie Fighters, X-Wings, Lightsabers, and Wookiees are now Starfighters, T-Wings, Energy Swords, and Hairy Aliens? What are your general impressions of these new d6 books, space in particular?

 

[Wik]

P.S. - I had to re-register what with the board crash. I'm a little upset that I lost all my (70-odd) posts. Is anyone else losing posts?

 

[kenobi65]

P.S. - I had to re-register what with the board crash. I'm a little upset that I lost all my (70-odd) posts. Is anyone else losing posts?

As the front page notes, the boards were restored to their state on 12/29/05...which includes post count. I lost 600 or so. C'est la vie.

 

[Crothian]

From reviews I've read it is the same system with more options on it.

 

[Dingleberry]

Yes, d6 is the same (excellent) system - just genericized from the Star Wars setting.

 

[Wik]

Awesome. So, does d6 ADD anything new? I just talked to my players about it today - one of my players has played it before (with me), and loves it. The other two seemed onboard - I showed the "just happy to be here" player the SWD6 book I had and she figured out most of the rules during the "bathroom break" part of our Iron Heroes session. The other player actually said to me "Cinematic RPG? That's pretty much how I think a space game should be ran anyways".

I think the group seems pretty onboard with it all - I'd just like to know what to expect from the sourcebook, now. Are there any weblinks or reviews for it? EN World's Review system seems a little F'ed up right now.

 

[trancejeremy]

Awesome. So, does d6 ADD anything new?

The 3 new corebooks are really just expanded (but less flexible) versions of the old d6 generic book which came out about 10 years ago (which was $10 and 80 pages).

Each one has a different magic system - the space one has the one like the force, the modern one has psionics (sorta) and the fantasy one has magic. All of them have sort of a fleshed out ad/disad system which Star Wars didn't. (Me, I don't really like those). d6 Space also has a broken starship system (IMHO)

So to answer your question, yes, but not all that much. If you have Star Wars d6, then d6 Space won't help that much (I have a review of it over at RPG.net). But the other 2 are useful if you want to run a fantasy or modern day game with it. And there are some supplements that are useful, like a spaceship book (which fixes the problems with the rules in the core book)

 

[Wik]

Awesome, thanks for the info.

 

[kenobi65]

The 3 new corebooks are really just expanded (but less flexible) versions of the old d6 generic book which came out about 10 years ago (which was $10 and 80 pages).

That original d6 book was, IMO, completely useless. I bought it when it came out, as I was planning on adapting the SW / d6 system for a fantasy game. The d6 book had a few general ideas, but was so lacking in specifics that I wound up just chucking it, and more directly adapting the SW rules.

We played the d6 SW system (and, later, my adapted fantasy rules) for many years. It works pretty well, but, like many game systems, it does tend to break down when the characters get to be more powerful. Specifically, the problem is (a) with so many dice (esp. if you're on a Force Point), you can do a huge number of actions in a turn, and (b) the math of adding up so many dice, so often, really is a drag on combat (even in high-level d20, combat doesn't take as long as it did for our "high-level" SWd6 characters).

And, I didn't like how often the Wild Die affected rolls (one out of three rolls is a bit much for "random chance").

 

[Technomancer]

There are a few reviews at rpgnet:

D6 Adventure

D6 Space

Another D6 Space