Tell me about WEG d6
- Thread starter Gundark
- Start date
I've only played the old Star Wars D6 game, and I understand that the system has gone through a few iterations since then, so this might not be entirely accurate.
IME, D6 is a pretty fast game. Rolling dice doesn't take very long once you're used to it. You will learn to find "ten-combos" pretty quickly, and that speeds it up (instead of seeing "4+2+5+3+4+2+2+3" you see "(5+3+2)+(4+4+2)+2+3"). In Star Wars, you could on occasion have quite a few dice to roll - a somewhat experienced character would have 8D on his main skills, which would be doubled with the spending of a force point, but it still didn't take very long. Doing multiple actions would take a bit longer, but that's only to be expected.
It's a great little game, pretty light on the rules (though various supplements of course added plenty of subsystems) and all around sweet.
IME, D6 is a pretty fast game. Rolling dice doesn't take very long once you're used to it. You will learn to find "ten-combos" pretty quickly, and that speeds it up (instead of seeing "4+2+5+3+4+2+2+3" you see "(5+3+2)+(4+4+2)+2+3"). In Star Wars, you could on occasion have quite a few dice to roll - a somewhat experienced character would have 8D on his main skills, which would be doubled with the spending of a force point, but it still didn't take very long. Doing multiple actions would take a bit longer, but that's only to be expected.
It's a great little game, pretty light on the rules (though various supplements of course added plenty of subsystems) and all around sweet.
dmccoy1693
Adventurer
Its a great system. Relatively rules light. Cinematic feel. Modular. And not that hard to mix and match with the Fantasy/Sci Fi versions. Its only real draw backs is there is like no support for it today. WEG practially turned to dust after losing Star Wars. It didn't have any other settings to capture people's imaginations, and now the system's future is really unknown. So if you want a good system to homebrew with, grab them now while they're still there.
Wednesday Boy
The Nerd WhoFell to Earth
All in all, I like the system.
As Steffan says, it's pretty rules light. That always made the game flow pretty quickly to me. I don't remember many times where the game stalled because someone was looking up a specific rule.
I never played them too much but Force-users seemed tricky to balance. Force attributes and powers are established and improved like regular attributes and skills, so they have additional areas where they have to dump character points. From what I've seen that makes lower level Force-users behind the curve compared to non-Force-users. On the other hand, one GM I had gave additional attribute dice that could be used for just the Force attributes and the Force-users were way ahead of the curve.
There are three books that have pretty much all of the alien species that are in the original movies (Ep. IV-VI). It doesn't seem like there was much consideration for balancing the races. Some have high maximum attributes or special abilities and others (like humans) have nothing to compensate for that.
Attribute-wise, Strength can be very wicked. Since Strength checks are compared to a damage roll to see what sort of injury was sustained, things with a high Strength can be very difficult to injure. (It can be hard for a blaster rifle's 5d6 damage to significantly exceed a Wookie in armor's 7d6 to resist Strength.) And melee weapons add the weapon's damage to the character's Strength, so a Vibroaxe (4D+Str, max 8D) in the hands of a Wookie (6D) can do the same damage as an E-web.
The biggest part of the system that I disliked was the wild die. Every time you roll, one of the dice is the wild die. If you roll a 6, it explodes. But if you roll a 1, you get a mishap (I can't remember if you drop the highest die you rolled or if it's something of the GM's imagination). For every roll you make, that gives you a 17% chance of probably failing. This would often stall games or ruin heroic moments. Personally I would like it better if it just exploded without the failure possibility.
Those are just some things that needed work, but even with those faults it was a game that I found was easy to run and fun to play in!
As Steffan says, it's pretty rules light. That always made the game flow pretty quickly to me. I don't remember many times where the game stalled because someone was looking up a specific rule.
I never played them too much but Force-users seemed tricky to balance. Force attributes and powers are established and improved like regular attributes and skills, so they have additional areas where they have to dump character points. From what I've seen that makes lower level Force-users behind the curve compared to non-Force-users. On the other hand, one GM I had gave additional attribute dice that could be used for just the Force attributes and the Force-users were way ahead of the curve.
There are three books that have pretty much all of the alien species that are in the original movies (Ep. IV-VI). It doesn't seem like there was much consideration for balancing the races. Some have high maximum attributes or special abilities and others (like humans) have nothing to compensate for that.
Attribute-wise, Strength can be very wicked. Since Strength checks are compared to a damage roll to see what sort of injury was sustained, things with a high Strength can be very difficult to injure. (It can be hard for a blaster rifle's 5d6 damage to significantly exceed a Wookie in armor's 7d6 to resist Strength.) And melee weapons add the weapon's damage to the character's Strength, so a Vibroaxe (4D+Str, max 8D) in the hands of a Wookie (6D) can do the same damage as an E-web.
The biggest part of the system that I disliked was the wild die. Every time you roll, one of the dice is the wild die. If you roll a 6, it explodes. But if you roll a 1, you get a mishap (I can't remember if you drop the highest die you rolled or if it's something of the GM's imagination). For every roll you make, that gives you a 17% chance of probably failing. This would often stall games or ruin heroic moments. Personally I would like it better if it just exploded without the failure possibility.
Those are just some things that needed work, but even with those faults it was a game that I found was easy to run and fun to play in!
Wednesday Boy
The Nerd WhoFell to Earth
I've heard rave reviews about Savage Worlds but I have no experience with it.
Henry
Autoexreginated
IMO, Savage Worlds is the stronger system for two reasons:
1) Better support. Savage Worlds has tons of books for different genres (fantasy, modern, sci-fi, etc.) as well as licenses for some settings (Solomon Kane's RPG license is the first one that jumps to mind right now).
2) The game itself doesn't tend to very high numbers results, leading to quicker die resolutions that don't break the game flow as much. One problem I used to have with d6 was dealing with scores over 7D or so; Say you have a hero with about 10D in a firearms skill; they can pile off four or five shots in a round, leading to rolling about 30 dice (10D shooting five times = five pools of 6 dice in a round to figure up).
Where d6 shines, though, is in making adventures for one or two players. Because of the way multiple actions work in d6, you can fire the grapple line, climb the AT-AT, blow a hatch, toss a grenade, rappel down, and run away, all in the same round -- and still see a chance of success.
Savage Worlds to me, though, is the better game, despite the more mundane limit on one or two actions a round it puts on its PCs.
1) Better support. Savage Worlds has tons of books for different genres (fantasy, modern, sci-fi, etc.) as well as licenses for some settings (Solomon Kane's RPG license is the first one that jumps to mind right now).
2) The game itself doesn't tend to very high numbers results, leading to quicker die resolutions that don't break the game flow as much. One problem I used to have with d6 was dealing with scores over 7D or so; Say you have a hero with about 10D in a firearms skill; they can pile off four or five shots in a round, leading to rolling about 30 dice (10D shooting five times = five pools of 6 dice in a round to figure up).
Where d6 shines, though, is in making adventures for one or two players. Because of the way multiple actions work in d6, you can fire the grapple line, climb the AT-AT, blow a hatch, toss a grenade, rappel down, and run away, all in the same round -- and still see a chance of success.
Savage Worlds to me, though, is the better game, despite the more mundane limit on one or two actions a round it puts on its PCs.
Henry
Autoexreginated
IMO, Savage Worlds is the stronger system for two reasons:
1) Better support. Savage Worlds has tons of books for different genres (fantasy, modern, sci-fi, etc.) as well as licenses for some settings (Solomon Kane's RPG license is the first one that jumps to mind right now).
2) The game itself doesn't tend to very high numbers results, leading to quicker die resolutions that don't break the game flow as much. One problem I used to have with d6 was dealing with scores over 7D or so; Say you have a hero with about 10D in a firearms skill; they can pile off four or five shots in a round, leading to rolling about 30 dice (10D shooting five times = five pools of 6 dice in a round to figure up).
Where d6 shines, though, is in making adventures for one or two players. Because of the way multiple actions work in d6, you can fire the grapple line, climb the AT-AT, blow a hatch, toss a grenade, rappel down, and run away, all in the same round -- and still see a chance of success.
Savage Worlds to me, though, is the better game, despite the more mundane limit on one or two actions a round it puts on its PCs.
1) Better support. Savage Worlds has tons of books for different genres (fantasy, modern, sci-fi, etc.) as well as licenses for some settings (Solomon Kane's RPG license is the first one that jumps to mind right now).
2) The game itself doesn't tend to very high numbers results, leading to quicker die resolutions that don't break the game flow as much. One problem I used to have with d6 was dealing with scores over 7D or so; Say you have a hero with about 10D in a firearms skill; they can pile off four or five shots in a round, leading to rolling about 30 dice (10D shooting five times = five pools of 6 dice in a round to figure up).
Where d6 shines, though, is in making adventures for one or two players. Because of the way multiple actions work in d6, you can fire the grapple line, climb the AT-AT, blow a hatch, toss a grenade, rappel down, and run away, all in the same round -- and still see a chance of success.
Savage Worlds to me, though, is the better game, despite the more mundane limit on one or two actions a round it puts on its PCs.
Actually, it can be either, at the GM's discretion or subject to a second roll (1=mishap, 2-6=remove highest die).
On the other hand, mishaps do happen in the movies. The one that immediately comes to mind is from ANH, where Han and Chewie run into some stormtroopers, and start screaming and charging. This scares the bleep out of the troopers, who start running away, with the Dynamic Duo in hot pursuit. That's pretty much textbook intimidation/bluff. But then, the stormtroopers run into a dead end, and have to turn around and defend themselves... and see that hey, it's just two guys, not much to be afraid of. That's Han & Chewie failing - not through any fault of their own, just plain bad luck that the stormtroopers had to call their bluff. Classic mishap.
Wednesday Boy
The Nerd WhoFell to Earth
Good example! Or Han stepping on the twig as he snuck up on the scout troopers on Endor.
I like the concept of the mishap because a they can lead to a more exciting scene (like the speeder chase through the forest). But in practice they come up so often that a scene can get bogged down with mishaps or failed rolls.
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