Sunday, November 28, 2021

DM Comfort Level

 I ran a session of my Star Wars d6 campaign a few hours ago. And while I'm still not 100% up on all the rules (especially the effects of all the Force powers), and should probably make a better cheat sheet for myself...I mean GM reference!...I feel like I'm a lot more comfortable with the system. I went through more than half the game before I needed to look something up in the rulebook, only to realize I'd left the actual books on the bookshelf in the other room. Since my PDF reader was acting strangely, I took a break to go get it, and carried on with the game. But for the most part, I had enough information in my adventure notes to run the game. 

That's a good feeling. In fact, after the game was over, I briefly considered if I wanted to make this game my main game, and wind up West Marches. I'm still enjoying WM, but some of the players seem a little less engaged these days. But then, several WM players don't care to play Star Wars, while one player has decided he would rather play Star Wars and has opted out of future WM games. My boys still enjoy both, so I'll probably keep things the way they are now. But it is something worth considering as I get more and more comfortable with the d6 system. 

Tonight's game almost didn't happen. Jeff had planned to run his weird GURPS/Palladium mashup game this evening, but since I don't play in it, I had no idea. This was my normally scheduled weekend to run West Marches, but I was in a Star Wars mood, and so were my boys. It wasn't until I'd scheduled the game that Jeremy told me about Jeff's game. But since my game started at 8, and Jeff's was scheduled to start at 9:30, he offered to start at 10pm instead. And he showed up to play in my game, too. 

We only had 2 hours, so I tried to start things off as soon as possible. Table talk was at a minimum tonight, which helped things go smoothly.

The heroes were contacted by Bumpomo the Hutt, whose daughter they had rescued in my first d6 Star Wars game (roughly based on the plot of Shaft [1971]). Bumpomo owed a favor to the local rebels, and one of their captains had been captured by the Imperials and was being transferred to the Citadel (Clone Wars fans might remember that place). The mission was to intercept the transport ship, extract the captain, and then rendezvous with a rebel ship in the Concord Dawn system. 

The party used some funds from Bumpomo to improve their stock YT-1300 freighter, adding better shields and a heavy ion cannon. When they got to the Lola Sayu system, they jammed the imperial communications and surprised the transport. Shots from the party's Mandalorian (son #1) on the laser cannon and Bulldogman Jedi (son #2) on the ion cannon took out the transport's two TIE fighter escort. Another blast from the ion cannon incapacitated the transport. 

The party docked, and as they were trying to find a computer terminal port to have one of their droids access the computer, a pair of KX enforcer droids attacked. The KX have strong armor, but lucky shots managed to stun the first one, then it was taken out with an ion grenade from the party's smuggler. Laser shots from several characters managed to stun and then destroy the other one. 


And that was all the time we had. The shopping for ship upgrades actually took the longest part of the session. The starship combat (our first time using the rules) worked really well. I used the simple Close/Medium/Long range zones of ship proximity from the 1st edition rules, rather than playing things out on a grid, and it worked really well. Of course, the party is lucky that they got the drop on the imperials, because the TIE fighters might have done some serious damage to their ship if they'd had a chance to react.

7 comments:

  1. Sounds like a dope gaming session... but what's really sticking in my craw is the idea of a GURPS/Palladium mashup...I...I....I have so many questions...

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    1. Yeah, I played a couple of sessions. Jeff, who runs that game, is a very creative dude, but he sucks at organizing his thoughts, so no one really understands the game's convoluted rules...which seemed to be fluid in play. Not my cup of tea.

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  2. I'm not even a huge SW fan, but I did a successful campaign (set in the KOTOR setting from Knights of The Old Republic video game) a few years ago using Star Wars Saga edition. These days I'm another victim of "too many things I want to run but not enough time," so I'm unlikely to GM the genre again. If I did it would be a simpler system. I have no D6 experience, but I was always under the impression it was fairly uncomplicated?

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    1. The basics of d6 are really simple, but some of the stuff, especially in the original edition (which I have the reprint of) things are often vague. The 2nd edition and the fan-compiled Revised, Updated, Expanded edition (free PDF) change things around in some places, or at least change the numbers around.

      Also, I'm only running these games once every few months, not regularly like I do with Classic D&D.

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  3. I am always happy to hear about someone embracing Star Wars D6 and having a good time with it.

    As it's one of my favorite, if not my all time favorite, game systems out there I find it odd to think that one might need a reference sheet or to get used to the mechanics. The rules are largely simple and straightforward. That said, I am sure I gloss over a lot of the minutiae and I really appreciate the vague interpretive parts.

    As you note in the title, GM Comfort Level am I right? I can easily run Star Wars D6 without a rulebook at this point since I've done it so often for so many years.

    Kudos Dennis! Hope you post some more about your Star Wars outings in the future. May The Force Be With You!

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    1. The basic mechanic is super easy. It's remebering all the target numbers for things that I need cheat sheets for. I also had a cheat sheet for the attack/dodge/damage/resistance thing attack sequence, but we're all getting used to that.

      Next step: getting more familiarity with the Force powers.

      It would have helped if I had gotten the 1e reprint first, rather than starting the game back when I only had the 500+ page REUP pdf.

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