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Wednesday, June 5, 2024

My Star Wars d6

The longer I play my side campaign of WEG d6 Star Wars, the more I tinker with the rules. It's a pretty flexible system, after all. Recently, I've been codifying my rules changes for the benefit of my players, especially since there are a few new people in the group. 

When I started the game, I had only the fan-edited Revised, Updated, and Expanded rules document. I've mentioned before what a beast of a PDF this thing is. It's not the most intuitively edited document, but it does cover a lot of material that was never officially in WEG products, which is handy. I've been supplementing that with material from Wookieepedia and sites like RPGGamer.org, and reading what other referees have done with the game. The Star Wars EU Timeline has a treasure trove of WEG sourcebooks, adventures, and whatnot as well.

One of the changes I made early on was to eliminate the "parry" skills and just use the attack skill for both action and reaction. So you only need Melee Combat skill, not Melee Combat and Melee Parry. Not many players were putting dice into Melee or Brawling anyway, so it hasn't been a balance problem. 

I haven't outlawed specializing, but I haven't promoted those rules, either. If a player read about it, and wanted to do that, I'd allow it, but it's a bit easier to just have them put full dice in a general skill. 

That said, the recommended starting 7 skill dice is too paltry. I've doubled it to 14 for starting characters, but still with the limit of no more than 2 dice per skill. And 10 CP on character creation, not 5. No need to be so stingy. My players spend them on rolls all the time!

Since I got the 30th Anniversary reprint of the original rules, I've adopted some of those systems over the ones in the REUP/2nd edition. 

For one, I use abstract ranges (short, medium, long) for starship combat, rather than tracking individual speeds and distances. Much easier. We haven't had a ton of starship combat in my game over the years. It's primarily been planet-side adventure. 

Another thing I've only recently introduced is the 1st edition method of using the Force. Instead of making Jedi characters slowly gain skill dice and slowly add to their power list like selecting feats in 3E D&D, I have a general list of Force power difficulties, and if they try something unusual with the Force, I'll improvise. Right now, there is only one Force-user in the group, my son Steven's PC. And he rarely uses his Force powers, as he's more interested in buying gadgets and droids to help him out (and previous players with Jedi/Force Users drew the attention of Sith Inquisitors...). 

Finally, I've decided that Abilities can't be improved. The rules in 2nd Edition for that are kinda wonky, and are the sort of thing that might lead to player dissatisfaction. I know I wouldn't be happy if I gave up skill improvements or spending CP for a better chance to succeed on rolls to save up for an Ability improvement, then because of poor rolls I waste half of the points I saved and don't get the improvement, I'd be upset. Anyway, it's easier to just keep abilities where they are on the template, and have players improve individual skills. 

I've made some handy reference sheets for my players, and put them in our group Discord server. These are all updated with my most recent additions and changes. 

d6 Basic Rules This covers basic actions and resolution mechanics.

Force Skills Simplified This gives players guidance on how to Use the Force.

Starship Combat Rules Simplified My version of starship combat, trying to make it as simple and easy as possible for the players. 

Star Wars Gear Lists A collection of official and fan-made (some by myself) standard gear to keep from having to scroll through the huge PDF all the time when characters go shopping. Of course, they often ask for things not on this list, so back to the PDF (or to RPGGamer.org) we go...

2 comments:

  1. I've been enjoying your Star Wars series. Thanks for the reference sheets.

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    1. I'm glad that you and a few others (Adam D. in particular) are enjoying it. I'm having fun with d6, and as I think I mentioned in a previous post, would consider designing new games with it instead of yet another TSR D&D retro-clone based game.

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