Saturday, December 24, 2022

If I were redesigning Star Wars d6

JB's comments in my previous post, discussing differences between WEG's 1st and 2nd editions of d6 Star Wars were part of the impetus of this post, but the core idea is something I'd actually thought of before that and just had been letting tumble around in the old brain for a while. 

My SW game is, as I mentioned, a slight mishmash of the editions. We started out with the fan-edited REUP (Revised, Expanded, & Updated) rules, this massive poorly organized PDF that contains game elements from the original and prequel series movies, plus some stuff from novels or comics, I assume. It doesn't have anything from the sequel trilogy or more recent Disney+ shows, though. 

While it's a great resource if I need stats on a certain alien species or type of vehicle, as I mentioned it's a bit hard to find the rules you need when you need them, even with PDF search functionality. The rules are mashed together with background information, advice for running games, and sample adventures. 

So when I saw that the 1st edition reprints were available, I scooped it up. And found that I like some of the simpler systems in 1E better than 2E. But since we'd already been playing 2E, we have a sort of mash-up game now. At the moment, I'm pretty much only using the space combat system from 1E, and not allowing PCs to improve their ability scores, only their skills. Oh, and I took this house rule from someone running a PbP game: There are no melee parry, brawling parry, etc. skills. Just use melee combat or brawling for those. Oh, one more thing I I changed is that I went through the REUP list of Force Powers (compiled from various supplements) and eliminated some that were clunky, overpowered, weird, or extraneous (two different Force-assisted Astrogation powers? Why?).

If I were to start over, I'd probably hew closer to the 1E rules. Especially the Force rules. 

In 2E, Jedi (and other Force Users) have to select various Force Powers that they've mastered as they improve their Force Skills. In 1E, there are no "Force Powers" but there are examples of doing things that were done in the original trilogy movies to suggest which Force Skill(s) would be needed and provide them with target numbers for difficulty to help the GM adjudicate the Force. If you have skill dice in Sense, Alter or Control, though, you can attempt to do whatever with those skills that makes sense. 

Or in other words, in 1E if you have trained in Sense, you can try to sense someone's presence, heighten your own hearing, discover something hidden, feel how strong someone else is with the Force, etc. No need to learn those as separate "powers." 

So what would I do different if I were redesigning the game? 

I'd make The Force into a seventh Ability that governs the three Force Skills. 

In the movies, there's a lot of talk of Yoda's species, Skywalkers, and Palpatines being innately stronger in the Force than everyone else. I think it would make more sense to emulate this with this change. Characters who are not Force Sensitive would not get this ability. Those with Force Sensitivity would get 1D. Various Force-user templates would get 2D. Especially strong NPCs would get 3 to 4D. Skywalkers get 5D. 

Yeah, that would necessitate reshuffling some dice from other abilities for non-Force users depending on if they're Force Sensitive or not. But that's not so hard.

3 comments:

  1. Yeah I pretty much came to the same conclusion regards a Force ability. It seems like a strange omission.

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  2. Star Wars D6 is one of my all time favorite RPGs and I am not sure about having the Force as a 7th Attribute. It feels a little strange to me.

    Perhaps it's a situation where being Force Sensitive gives you a Force stat the way being a Jedi related Template normally gives you access to Alter, Control, and Sense. Not sure. Definitely giving me something to think about.

    Thanks Dennis. Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas to you and years!

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  3. What I've gone with is similar, but follows the general d6 version... The Force Attribute is an attribute. While standard d6 is "Spend your attribute dice on three Force Skills", my preference is "Spend your attribute dice on the Force Attribute, and your skills on the three Force Skills." In this version, you are "Force Sensitive" if you have 1D or more in Force... Force Sensitive is a choice with a mechanical cost.

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