Design Log 1

Design Log 1

Character Generation and Attributes

I have been wanting to do this since they put out the 3 books of d6 Fantasy, d6 Adventure, and d6 Space (what I will call the d6 Series).  I ran d6 for years and love the base mechanic. However, I ran it long enough to discover many of the problems it has. The primary problem it has is that it really is meant for short term campaigns or one-shots and not long term campaigns. The shortest campaign I ran was two years, I think. The game seemed to devolve after a few months of gaming, as all the characters lost their individualityand character concept. Characters just started to look the same over time. Also the supernatural characters (Force Users in Star Wars) dominated over the non-supernatural characters. Eventually, it did not seem like I could throw anything at them that challenged them. We had fun but at some point it just got ridiculously redundant.

The core mechanic is one of the best out there.  It’s the first to use the concept of a wild die or exploding dice.  I would never change that.  As I state in my goals in the intro of this section of my web site, I just want to streamline the system, make a more solid core system for all genres and deal with some of the issues I ran into to make it a more long term game.

One thing I liked about the d6 Series of books was that it integrated some mechanics of the Masterbook System, which I was also a big fan of.  It too had its problems but it had some great innovations.  So knowing both systems very well, I plan to enhance those existing integrations to make it even better and in the end, I hope to make the Card Play system more relevant and fun in the d6 system.

To start with, my attempt to make my own version of d6 (RonD6 for lack of a better name) started with character generation and skills.  The d6 Series presented three ways to make characters.  I am not a big fan of Templates but I did not want to make them obsolete so I just basically picked one of the systems and made that the core.  I picked the Point-buy system to make it simple and flexible.  With this, I plan to add in a simple class system as an option.  That’s still under development and is inspired by the two attempts at a d6 Class System I have previously attempted.  But that will be an add-on and not part of the core system.

The Attributes were one thing I really wanted to change.  First off, they were not balanced between mental and physical.  Secondly, the character generation system was designed for a 6 attributes point-buy and when you throw in the Extranormal stat, it seems a little out of balance for me.  So the first big change I made was to make Extranormal to a derived stat (derived by averaging two mental attributes).  I also drew Willpower as a skill and made it a derived Stat as well.  Willpower was usually the defense against a lot of  supernatural stuff, so to balance this out, I broke willpower out to a few skills to help defend against Extranormal attacks.  So basically there are two new Attributes that are both derived from mental attributes.

Secondly, I balanced the attributes to 3 physical and 3 mental.  I rolled all Reflexes (d6 Adventure) skills up with Coordination (d6 Adventure) skills because I have always found that having to Agility based attributes was redundant.  I also rolled Stamina out from skills and made it a new Attribute.  So there is Agility, Strength and Stamina as physical attributes and then there is Presence, Perception and Intellect for mental.  I felt that would balance things a little more.

The skill list was a serious issue.  I’ll get into the skill list in my next entry.