Tell me about WEG d6

[The Green Adam]

Oh yeah!

One of my all time favorite systems, I am particularly impressed by some of the variations that have been generated over the years. Compare Star Wars D6 with Men In Black or DC Universe and you'll see what I mean right away. I haven't used it too often for homebrew campaigns but I would think it perfect for nearly any cinematic, fast paced action campaign.

I would also like to add that I think the wild die is awesome and I've adapted its use in other systems. Ever since Ghustbusters I've loved the idea of this random twist adding drama to the game.

Consider, rolling a total that far exceeds the target difficulty number but getting a one on the wild/ghost/force/drama die can mean you succeed dramatically but something unlucky still occurs. The same holds true if you fail your roll but get a 6 on the wild die. You may fail miserably but the wild die's 6 means all is not lost.

Once you get the hang of it you get inspired by the roll to improv more readily.

AD

 

[amysrevenge]

There is one thing to watch out for, depending on the nature of your gaming group.

If your group is accustomed to playing level-based games, then the PC advancement will seem geologically sloooooow. If your group is accustomed to playing other sorts of non-level-based games, you'll have a great time.

In my own experience, my group of gaming friends back in college was a (somewhat Monty- Haulish) D&D group that liked to branch out now and then. We'd break out the WEG Star Wars, make up some characters, and play 2-3 times before getting bored with the slow character advancement. We'd go back to D&D after this for months and months, and then give WEG another try for 2-3 sessions. The first session was always very fun, and the last would be very difficult to get through.

 

[Badapple]

All the above posts are true.

It is really simple to make a character. You pick a template, assign a couple skills and boom you are ready to go.

Most standard d6 characters are heroic "jack of all trades" characters, that can do just about anything, and then naturally are specialized and really good at a few things. Anyone can try to pick a lock, hack a computer, pilot, bluff, etc and still have a decent chance to succeed unless you pick an alien race with higher max/minimum attributes.

It's a good system for quick paced, cinematic games.

There is almost no tactics or really deep options involved in combat, which of course could be good or bad depending on what type of game you feel like playing. If you want to push minis on a map and manage resources and choose which of many game balanced abilities you want to use this isn't the game for you. If you want to sit in chairs and couches and shoot your blaster and roll a fistful of dice every round, but play a game without needing a table or minis this game works great. It usually comes down to rolling dodge to avoid the npc attacks and then rolling your weapon skill to attack. There are some weird quirks like it's better to have 6 different people firing at you (one dodge roll vs. all 6) than to have one guy shoot you and one guy stab you (now you need to roll dodge for the shot and roll parry for the knife, but since they are seperate skills each are penalized 1d), but whatever.

In my opinion d6 is great to play for a couple sessions as a breath of fresh air, then go back to D&D... then bust out the d6 characters for a break later on. Too much d6 games consecutively and the shallowness of the combat kicks in and the fights start feeling the same.

Characters start out heroic right out of the gate, and improvements happen at a slower pace. Having a brand new character join a game with experienced characters isn't game breaking (plus the GM can simply just give the starting character more points). Also, there is a lot of flexibility in what skills the players can improve. Improvement happens fairly slowly BUT it is really easy to improve one or two skills to a very high level. For example improving a blaster skill of 5d costs 5 points, improving a blaster skill of 8d costs 8 points. If one player continually puts all his points into combat skills (favorite attack and dodge, parry) then over a longer campaign he will turn into a combat beast that will greatly overshadow the other characters if they put their points into stuff like computer repair, piloting, droid programming, con, etc. So it becomes a challenge to balance combat encounters and the GM has to constantly be on his toes to include a variety of different challenges, especially non combat ones to keep the game interesting.

 

[Bullgrit]

Quick? Simple? Easy? These adjectives surprise me. I played SWd6 extensively last year and about 15 years ago. The rules are not simple, running the game is not easy, and playing the game is not quick. There's *lots* of dice rolling -- you're supposed to roll a skill check for movement.

I like the game, but it's not quick, simple, or easy. Combats took a very long time -- longer than any version of D&D for my groups.

The only thing I really hated about SWd6 was having to announce your actions at the beginning of the round.

Blog post on SWd6 play

It's not a bad game, but it is definitely not quick, simple, or easy in my experience.

Bullgrit
Total Bullgrit

 

[Baumi]

It's quite a looong time ago that I played the d6 System (Star Wars) and while it was a quick and working system it didn't have enough gamist Rules (like Action Points or Powers) for me to hold my interest (but luckily the GM did).

But if you are looking for a system that simply work and stays in the background as a tool for your storytelling then you could do worse than picking the d6 System

About the dice-rolling ... the new Version seems to have a table that cuts your max rolled dices to 5 and the rest give you a fixed bonus, which should make the game quicker.

 

[Wednesday Boy]

There's *lots* of dice rolling -- you're supposed to roll a skill check for movement.

It's been ages since I've played it but I thought movement (for characters) was only if it was over some sort of difficult terrain.

Regardless, that is a good point because I'm pretty sure the real way for using vehicles included a piloting check for each movement. I think it was our lack of a detailed reading of the vehicle combat section but we never required piloting checks for simple vehicle movement. This didn't seem to impact the game negatively. If anything, I think it cut down on time spent on extra checks and let the pilot be a part of the action instead of focussing only on piloting.

 

[pawsplay]

I strongly prefer D6 to Savage Worlds. They are both similarly fast, and both are modular systems that can be used for many different campaigns. I just find d6 to be consistently better built, and characters more differentiated from each other.

That 17% chance of failure thing is not true... first of all, the GM has the option to simply swipe your highest die. This should probably be the default for non-dramatic situations. You might still succeed. Second, even if he doesn't, rolling a 1 is not an autofail. Only failing a roll can cause you to fail. It's a complication, which could be anything from something that embarrasses you to an inconvience to a less then perfect result. For instance, if you shoot someone and roll a 1, but still hit them, the GM might rule that their gun discharges and shoots out a nearby window. There is a bad example in one of the old Star Wars books about a twig snapping that is NOT how this should be played. Now, if you fail AND roll a 1, the GM may rule you have some kind of fumble result.

Honestly, I played first edition Star Wars, which did not have a Wild Die, and sometimes I think I prefer to play without it. But it's not as big a glitch as some of the above posts imply. And it can add a lot of interest to a fight scene if the GM is periodically called upon to narrate something.