Wednesday, May 4, 2016

May the 4th be with you


So, in honor of May the 4th, and this recent awesome post on dragonsfoot.org: http://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=73871 I got to thinking about WEG Star Wars d6.

This system might be the perfect system to introduce to new roleplayers. A few reasons for this:
1: It is one of the simplest game systems there is. You have a few stats and skills, everything is just a few d6. You don't have to learn weird polyhedrals, just how many dice you throw!
2: It is a setting nearly everyone knows. While Tolkien fantasy is up there as well, I'm sure most people have a better familiarity with Star Wars. Plus, what if they don't understand your fantasy goblins? you can just easily make up whatever description of weird alien and it'll come across.
3: It is (or can be) fast paced and cinematic once you get it down. You want to slide across the hood of your land speeder while taking a shot at the storm trooper across the way? no problem. 2 actions, make each at -1 dice and boom your done.
4: Templates let you get into the game super quick. No need to walk through character creation except putting some dice down for skills. What skills do you think your character will use? the templates already have the common ones marked for that archetype.

Even for GMs, it is easy to come up with a creature on the fly. You don't need all the stats, put extra dice into whatever you think is relevant, describe it and go. There are things about 1e I love, and there are different things about the fan-made 2e REUP (revised, expanded, and updated, found here: http://d6holocron.com/downloads/gbooks.html) that I love. 1e is so simple there isn't even initiative. Whoever rolls highest on their first action or opposed action goes first. As a GM you don't even need to tell your player your roll. Say you rolled your opposed blaster shot first, but it missed, you could say it missed and was first and it won't affect anything. Just keep the narrative going and have actions happen where they make sense. REUP on the other hand, has the same core mechanics, but has so many extra ships, aliens, droids, etc... You can find nearly anything you want in REUP. I also really enjoy the Wild Die. At times it can slow down the game, but it is nice that it can really help you gain success with something you have a low stat in.

Another great thing, you don't need to use it just for Star Wars. It is easily converted to a generic Science Fantasy (heck you can get the free d6 space if you wanted), or even to normal fantasy. The cinematic rules can work well in any setting, just strip the Star Wars skin.

In honor of today, I had lulu make a set of the 1e rules in 4 saddle stitch booklets for my next face-to-face group. I can just hand the players a few copies of the players section that cost <$5 to have lulu make. I also ordered a new copy of REUP as well (with a different cover than my current copy). Honestly I'm jonesing to run some Star Wars d6. We were playing a campaign online, but my GM quit for some reason.

If you haven't given WEG Star Wars a shot, you really should! It is one of the best systems I've ever played. Sometimes it gets to be an insane amount of dice, but REUP has a nice chart to simplify any roll over 5d.

Here is my current WEG collection (yes that REUP is full color!):

You can find my group playing it in the following youtube playlist: Star Wars REUP one-shot and mini campaign.



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