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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Wik" data-source="post: 2904465" data-attributes="member: 40177">So, I've run my second d6 game, and I think I know enough now to contrast d6 to D&D.  I don't really want to get into a rules argument here, but I do want to explain how the play experience for us was different.  That, to me, is the real fascinating thing.Our session was pretty much a three-hour (we run shorter games) session that encompassed a sort of simple "shadowrun" in a large city (Tokyo, 2400 A.D.).  The PCs did a lot of legwork, after vowing to not get into any more needless firefights.  That didn't go so well, since one of the characters figured he ran into a brick wall when the hacker screwed up on one of her hacking runs, and picked a fight with one of their informants.  There was also a "pickup" where the PCs abducted their target, although the plan was botched (Thanks to the informant that got his face kicked in calling to the authorities).  This culminated in a high-speed chase over an oceanic train line.  The final scene involved the knife-fighter crazy jumping from one flying car to another at 200 mph speeds, setting up a plastic explosive on the vehicle, and jumping back into the PCs' car before the security car exploded.  All in all, it was a helluva lotta fun.There were a few major differences that I noted.The first was the timing of the game.  I'm used to D&D timing, where non-combat scenes rush by fairly quickly, and combat scenes seem to take longer.  In fact, in most D&D sessions, I can run an average of three "scenes" per hour, with the average scene being 45 minutes, and the rest of my time being used to string the scenes together.  In d6, I ran  five scenes (legwork, casing out an airport, a quick combat with the informant, the failed abduction that turned into a running gunfight, and a high-speed chase scene).  This puzzled me a little bit, since there is actually MORE dice-rolling in d6 combat, it seems.  After all, in D&D you roll to hit a static armour class, and if you hit, you roll damage.  In d6, you can generally make more dice rolls per round, and everytime you hit, your damage is opposed by the target's strength roll, and compared on a chart.  In reality, though, the combat was much quicker, and - as I've mentioned before - a lot more open.  As an example, in the abduction scene, one of the players wanted to blast a limo driver in the back of the head (hoping to stop the limo from escaping) with his shotgun, and then roll over the roof of the car so he could get to the driver's side backseat and pull out their target.  He succeeded on his attack roll, but failed on his acrobatics check - miserably - and fell flat on his ass.  In D&D, that scene would have been possible, absolutely - it's really just a single attack followed by a move (That might provoke attacks of opportunity, had anyone a melee attack).  Maybe a tumble check would have been used to enable the move.  But, knowing my players, no one would have even thought of doing that, unless a player had invested points in tumble, in which case he'd be vaulting over cars whenever he had a chance to.Our role-playing is definately picking up, too.  During the "legwork" phase, our hacker player (who isn't too fond of investigation-style scenes as a rule) made her character go to the airport's arcade, and we played out a quick scene involving her and a twelve-year old kid jockeying for the high score on a space video game.  It was simple, but the scene worked, and kept the player in the game while everyone else was doing more important things.  In fact, throughout the d6 game last night, I was able to inject many "tiny" scenes that I wouldn't have felt comfortable doing in D&D - there was a scene in the women's washroom that was sort of funny, a bribery at a limo kiosk that had the group laughing (even if it wasn't really funny), a conversation between two rent-a-cops that the group really latched upon, and our drugged-out knife fighter having a conversation with two "lizard aliens" over tattoos.  Now, these were all scenes that didn't involve a die roll, and as such, would have worked EXACTLY the same in D&D.  But they never would have;  maybe it was because I was afraid they would turn into larger scenes that would slow the game.  I think it's probably because there is a lot more characterization in this game than in my D&D games, and as such, I feel more confident in throwing the group chances to show off their characters' personalities.THe more I think about it, the more I realize that really, the scenes in the game would havebeen similar had I been playing D&D (or d20 Future, or whatever).  After all, players still fell into roles - we had the hacker doing all the computer work, the hit man is still our gun guy, we have a driver, and we have a crazy acrobat character.  They all tended to latch onto things that they knew they were good at, generally speaking.  The difference, I guess, is that everyone just felt a lot more confident.One last thing I want to mention.  It's probably a small thing, and I think  a lot of you will laugh.  In most of my games, there's been a tendency as of late to forget your character's name.  You think "What's this half-elf fighter's name, again?  It starts with a Y, I think" and that's that.  This session, one of the players forgot the name of Julianna, our hacker.  He eventually asked for it, and wrote it down on his character sheet, so he could use it while talking in character.  The funny thing is, everyone else KNEW the names of the other characters in game, and absolutely knew their own character's name.  Hell, it's the second session, and two of the four characters already have detailed backstories that are getting e-mailed to me, and the other two are very well-developed (for our style of play) as well.OH, and my brother, the rules-lawyer?  He told me the other day that he actually loves this game a lot more than D&D, simply because he feels he can do more with it.  That was pretty cool.***In short, I've found that the d6 game doesn't really change how the game goes down, in theory.  But in reality, it's changed the way that the players think of their characters, and frees them from "do the rules allow that" thinking that has been hindering us for a while.  I think I'm going to miss d20, because I like playing in it, but I don't think I'm going to GM it for a long while yet.  Tomorrow, I'm buying d6 Fantasy and I'm going to loosely convert a lot of D&D material to d6.  I'm a total convert.Your opinions may vary.</blockquote>

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