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Vexen
2007-08-06, 11:51 PM
I apologize if someone has already asked this question. I know i saw it in another forum but no one had responded. So here it is:

Has anyone played D6 Fantasy by WEG?

I loved their starwars game and was sad to see it turned into a D20, though i do admit this made it easier to make games like knights of the old republic.
I liked the D6 system primarily for its ease of play, the versatility of character creation, no class restrictions etc. And best of all after becoming slightly familiar with it you didn't even need the rule book to play. My friends and i had often created our own low tech versions of the system but the difficulty is always majic.

Looking at the new D6 book it appears that they have added feats, special abilities etc to provide more unique characters. this looks great, the spells appear to be similar to D&D in that you learn certain defined spells that you can cast.

I am seriously considering buying this book, however, it is only available on-line so i haven't had a chance to really browse through it. And I really want to know if it is really an improvement on the original D6 system or if i should save my money and spend my time making my own homebrew fantasy game, from the original D6 style?

MrNexx
2007-08-07, 01:09 AM
I've never played, but you have me intrigued!

Vexen
2007-08-07, 08:41 AM
Yes, it does have me very intrigued as well. I was playing AD&D with my friends the other night, 2nd edition mind you. We didn't have the new books with us and it gets quite expensive buying all the editions. Anyway i am sure D&D has improved their system but we were complaining about how hard it is to do something that isn't a basic attack. Rolling sneak for a druid or fighter, there were other issues but i don't recall them.

I liked the D6 system because you simply picked a difficulty rolled your skill, if you didn't have the skill than the attribute it fell under and if you beat it you succeeded if not, no. It was easy.

That and it was a whole lot less confusing explaining to Newbies as to when you have to roll higher than the number or roll lower. or which die you are supposed to roll. I have been introducing my wife and some friends to roleplaying games and the problem with the D6 system i have is that it is for Star Wars. And they are more interested in high fantasy then in space opera. This is why D6 fantasy intrigues me.

ALOR
2007-08-07, 10:03 AM
I didn't even know WEG was still around. Thier d6 system had it's flaws but it was so much better for star wars than d20. WEG star wars didn't feel like D&D in space

Vexen
2007-08-07, 10:18 AM
As far as i can tell, from visiting their site, etc. WEG is a really small company now, with very little staff and no retail outlets. The only place to get their books is online.
I get the impression that they do not have many printed copies on hand at any given time but do print jobs with respect to orders. That's just the feeliing i get from the way the website reads, i could be completely wrong.

I thought they were out of business until someone showed me the website: http://www.westendgames.com/
But i am having dificulty finding anyone, not affiliated with their website, or forums to voice an opinion on their games.

Matthew
2007-08-07, 04:59 PM
I downloaded a free preview of Septimus D6 from RPGnow. Quite an interesting Space opera type of setting. I was aware that they were going to power a Fantasy version, but I haven't read anything about it yet. Nice to see them back in business, though.

Vexen
2007-08-08, 10:55 AM
Septimus isn't Fantasy, but . . . have you had a chance to try to play it yet? did you play the original D6 system? if so how does it compare? if not what do you think? I may just have to buy it myself and guinea pig it, if no one has seen it.

MrNexx
2007-08-08, 11:03 AM
It's by Bill Coffin. That means its good.

Matthew
2007-08-08, 10:19 PM
Septimus isn't Fantasy, but . . . have you had a chance to try to play it yet? did you play the original D6 system? if so how does it compare? if not what do you think? I may just have to buy it myself and guinea pig it, if no one has seen it.

I played Star Wars D6 2e back in the day, but I haven't for a long while (still got all my books, though). This looks pretty much mechanically identical, but I find it attractive that I am not playing in the Star Wars universe, as I found it a bit distracting and hard to perpetuate a meaningful story. (not that I don't like to play Star Wars one shots).
Force Points have been replaced with Fate Points, which is nice, but worrying, as I remember it being alarmingly easy to break the game using Character Point/Force Point combinations (we might have been playing it wrong, but Bosh says he had a similar experience). Ikkitosen also plays Star Wars D6, he might know better.
I will definitely be keeping an eye on this, though a new edition of Traveller was recently released...

Diggorian
2007-08-08, 11:12 PM
Most of my early GM experience came from runing D6 SW in the mid to late 90's. It was a nice rules light system that let me focus on the basics of storytelling. I do much prefer d20 now.

Star Wars is already very fantasy in theme so I find it hard to believe they can screw up a full Fantasy game. Magic could follow the generalities of the Force system, maybe a skill for each school of magic: Evocation 4d+2, Illusion 2d, with spells balanced by difficulty and point cost.

Bosh
2007-08-08, 11:27 PM
but Bosh says he had a similar experience).
Ya, the basic mechanics were great but there were some glaring problems:

1. Character advancement was borked since if you started out as a jack of all trades it took WAY more points to advance to being a more powerful jack of all trades than if you started as hyper-specialized.
2. It was a bit wierd that being good at things that seemed related like shooting different kinds of guns had no synergy. IIRC depending on what kind of gun you were shooting you'd base it one of three different stats. So you could be a rifle sharp shooting but be the worst in the party at shooting a bigger gun or vice versa. This made some characters either really good or basically useless depending on the situation (specifically if they were in space or on the ground).
3. Jedis were way too powerful, especially with force points being too powerful. How it worked out my pilot character was worse at piloting, worse at ranged combat and much worse at melee combat than the Jedi character, which are really frustrating.

Vexen
2007-08-09, 08:35 AM
I think that the option of being a jack of all trades is part of what i liked about D6 system. That and the no class limits.
After playing/GM'ing the Game (SW D6 that is) I found that you are right, if you specialized a character, especially NPC's very beginning characters with not many skill points could match up to your PC's. Especially if they were trying to be good at everything. Pretty soon PC's would start realizing that they couldn't start out good at everything but had to specialize and form a party of multiple specialists to get anywhere any time soon.

The Jedi I found out if you follow the rules properly are much worse off characters to begin with then a wizard in DandD. You have to trade attribute dice for beginning force dice, you can only learn force powers when you have a jedi master, and most force skills are multiple disciplines and therefore have a die penalty.

However, you are right i found the Character point/Force point, while friendly to Newbies a little over powerful. In homebrew fantasy systems I began we would seperate character points for advancing your character from those you could use in combat/role play. and we always limited force points to 1 per character, and made them very difficult to get back or earn.

What really intrigued me however, is the idea of adding feats, like quick draw, ambidexterous, Lucky, or hubrises, etc. that could only be gained in character creation. Something that would make each character more unique. I have tried to homebrew this stuff but it takes a while to write out and i find players are more willing to accept rules if they come out of a third party book than from their GM.

Matthew
2007-08-09, 02:55 PM
Looks like there are three D6 Game Settings, D6 Space, D6 Adventure (Modern), D6 Fantasy. D6 Fantasy has some very favourable reviews over on RPGnow.