[Click] to view the 3 min preview video.

The tools, though limited at the moment, are a real game changer. Like the arrival of pubic hair, they give a hint of maturity and of the fun that lies ahead. Critically, they also mark a stage when the child can no longer be protected by its parents.

Up to now, the 6d6 RPG has been my baby. Every rule, every card and every decision about its future taken by me. Access to the game has been limited and I’ve been the gatekeeper. This stage in the 6d6 RPG’s life is coming to an end and it will soon be set free.

Freedom

One of my key goals for the game is something that embraces the way people really play RPGs. A game that celebrates the house rules and the homebrew campaigns and the fact that every gaming group is different. I wanted a game that escaped the limitations of the traditional splat book approach and put players, GMs and game designers on an equal footing.

Fundamental to the game, as important as the rules or the dice, it had to be possible for GMs and players to create their own cards. Without this, the game would cripple the creativity of its players and GMs forced to recycle the same old magic items, monster and NPCs. Playing RPGs is all about creativity and any game that restricted it is bound to fail.

Technology

Gary Gygax first published Dungeons & Dragons in 1973 but he could of done it in 1873. The technology and techniques to create, distribute and play the game were available at least 100 years earlier. This wasn’t a mistake, Gygax simply had no other options but today we do. Content creation, publication and distribution in the digital age is radically different. Even PDFs, which are awkward hybrids of paper and digital, offer far more potential than books alone.

Sauce for the Goose

It was obvious from the beginning that I and everyone writing the ‘official’ game would need a set of tools to create the cards. It was also obvious that players would need something similar. Leaving it a no-brainer that these should be one and the same. Its a simple idea but one with powerful consequences.

It destroys the barrier between official products and home grown campaigns. It places your house rules on equal footing with the game designers. It makes every GM a publisher and creates a situation where adventures and rules become popular because of their quality and not the size of their print run.

Out of Control

Even at this early stage, giving access to the Wednesday night crew takes the game out of my control. They can create new rules and cards at will. They can do their own play-testing, create their own version of the game and there is nothing I can do to stop them.

From here on, the future of the 6d6 RPG is in the hands of its players.

A Problem of Caliber

The big difference between melee weapons and firearms is the range possibilities with guns. All melee weapons have the same basic mechanic – move the weapon towards the target as hard and fast as you can. The size of the weapon makes a bit of difference to the damage or the reach but from the game designers point of view, they are just variants on a theme.

Guns on the other hand range from single shot .22 Derringers to belt fed .50 caliber machine guns. Not to mention Flintlocks and similar black powered weapons. Each gun has its own mix of range, power and reloading times and whilst all are potentially fatal, the energies involved vary immensely.

Throw in rates of fire and things get really complex. An M-16 can empty a 30 round magazine in about three seconds. For a game based on six second combat rounds this means an assault rifle can deliver enough power to kill 30 people in half the time it takes to make a single attack with a sword. Consequently, in any vaguely realistic game, a firearms verses melee fight there should be no contest which makes game balance very difficult.

Bullet Deadliness Quotient

Fundamentally the question is how deadly should guns be? A cinematic game normally involves lots of flesh wounds for the hero but an even vaguely realistic setting puts any gunshot wound as potentially fatal. For a universal system which hopes to address a wide range of game styles, this is a big decision.

As my personal aim is to use firearms in post-apocalypse and Lovecraftian horror games, I’m interested in a level of realism in the guns. This leaves scope for the development of a much simplified system for more cinematic settings whilst still fulling my desire for a game where it matters what caliber of gun you fire.

“Shoot as fast as lightnin’ but it loads a mite slow”

Replicating the reloading of modern military firearms with their magazines is easy in a game but modeling the process for older or more basic weapons is much harder. Traditional RPGs, players simply state they are reloading and that’s it. For slower weapons, this could mean several rounds of doing nothing.

The 6d6 RPG card based approach offers a different way of tackling this. Because it involves moving physical objects around, this enables a more natural, flexible, engaging system that keeps the players involved whilst reloading.

Stack ‘Em High

The underlying mechanic is a Stack – a pile of cards. At the top is the gun card, underneath are the ammunition cards. For a belt fed machine gun, this would be a single card but for a six shooter it would be six individual bullet cards. When the gun is fired, cards are removed from the stack. To reload, the cards need to move from the deck to the stack.

For unskilled characters, this is a two step process. They use one Flow to move a bullet card from the deck to the pool and another to move it from the pool into the weapon. This represents approximately 36 seconds to load a 6 shot revolver which sounds like a long time but for an unskilled person under fire, fishing loose rounds out of a pocket, it is in the right ball park.

However characters with the relevant skill, either specific expertise in the gun or (possibly) a ‘Fast Reload’ feat, the bullets can be moved straight from the deck to the gun. This halves the reload time.

For magazine or belt fed guns, the supply of ammo is represented by a single card. This can be moved from the deck to the gun in one round for the unskilled or half a round for skilled characters. This approach gives skilled characters a suitable advantaged over unskilled characters and modern, magazine based weapons an advantage over older weapons.

It also gives a basis for modeling black power weapon. Rather than having to move a single round into the gun’s stack, additional cards can exist for each step of the process. Cards for ‘Swab Barrel’, ‘Load Powder’, ‘Load Ball’, ‘Tap Down Ball & Powder’, ‘Prime Pan’ and so on will each have to be ‘loaded’ into the gun. These cards add nothing to the damage of the gun but if the gun is fired without all the relevant cards being present, the shot just fizzles out.

Slow loading loading firearms (and game mechanics) such as this are unlikely to have a wide appeal, but as I design the 6d6 RPG, it is a good exercise to push the limits of the system. If I want it to be a universal system, it needs to be adaptable.

Single, Double & Full Auto

Classic wild west era pistols, are single action which means they need to be cocked between each shot. Double action weapons don’t need be but each shot fired requires a pull of the trigger. Automatic weapons fire multiple shots per pull of the trigger. These three different gun systems need to also make their mark on the game.

With single action guns, they card rotates after each use making them usable only once a round unless Flow is used to ready them again. Double action and automatic weapons do not rotate and stay in your pool after use. This allows the guns to be fired as many times in a round as the character wants as a series of distinct attacks. This sounds powerful (and is) but after the first or second shot, the character will be down to using only the gun card’s dice. Their skill cards will have been used up in the first shot or two making the later shots highly inaccurate.

The difference between fully automatic weapons and double action weapons is that the automatic weapons fire multiple rounds per attack. With each round adding to the attack, a five round burst coupled with skill in the weapon can make a realistically devastating attack on a single target. However, in trying to hit multiple targets in a round the shooter will quickly run out of skill cards, just like with a double action weapon, but they can rely on a pray-and-spray approach.

One aspect not yet explored is how recoil will be incorporated. For fully automatic weapons this is important and helps balance out the effects of a pray-and-spray shooting style.

Work in Progress

All these rules are still very much under development and have been subjected to only the briefest of testing so far. Experience tells me they will change notably in the next few weeks but I’m confident that the basics are in place and, most importantly, that the 6d6 RPG can handle it.

This is the question I’m currently pondering as development of the 6d6 RPG moves from focusing on individual abilities to the wider questions that face campaigns and long running games.

Character generation is a points-buy system with starting character having 36 + 6d6 points. A basic 1d6 ability costs four points and an average character starts with around 15 cards and a couple of these cards will be raised to 1d6+1 or 1d6+2.

Progression will also be points based, allowing characters to buy new abilities or increase existing ones. The problem is how fast?

The Miserly GM

A consistent theme in my GMing is a tight control of the power levels. Characters start weak and slowly improve. My adventures tend towards the low-fantasy “realism” reflecting the hardships of life and a scarcity of magical items.

Naturally my gut reaction for the 6d6 RPG is to build an experience system that reflects this. However, I realise that my style of play is not the only one or even the most common. Clearly this is one area of the game where my vision for the game should give way to a more populist view of gaming.

Mechanical Advancement or GM’s Rewards?

Should advancement be based on a game mechanic or purely at the discretion of the GM?

Games like AD&D had a simple experience point mechanic based on the power of monsters killed. More nuanced games such as Call of Cthulhu use a mechanic where successful use of a skill gives the character a chance to improve it. Either approach relied on a mechanic defined within the game and gave GMs only indirect control of advancement.

The alternative approach is to place progress purely in the hands of the GM. Rewards are given out based on the GM’s assessment of the characters or players performance. This could be a goal orientated “complete the dungeon, earn 10,000 xp” approach or a purely discretionary reward.

Both approaches have their own strengths and weaknesses and around most gaming tables, a combination is used. The lesson here is that the 6d6 RPG has to be flexible but this doesn’t help answer the question of how the rules should work.

Power to the GM

One of the aims of the 6d6 RPG is to reinforce the role of the GM as the centre of the game. They should not be roboticaly following a set of rules but be free to, and expected to, use their own GM skills to manage the game. Character advancement is a key aspect to this.

My current thoughts on advancement borrows from the Warhammer RPG where characters get to improve their characters at the end of each session. These are small improvement, e.g. 5% on a skill, but it keeps the character constantly improving. Additional bonuses are awarded at the end of adventures.

One Point Per Hour

The simplest system I’ve thought of so far is to award characters one point per hour of play. With most game sessions lasting around three or four hours it allows characters to gain a new ability every week or two. Alternatively, the same points would increase a skill from 1d6 to 1d6+2 (with one point left over).

Critically it allows the GM to use rewards to manage the game. If the players spend an hour talking about last night’s TV, the GM simply awards less points at the session’s end. If the party is focused and gaming well, reward extra points. Individual excellence can also be reward with an extra point or two without unbalancing the game.

Your Thoughts Please

How does this approach sound to you? Would you prefer a system more focused on achieving goals rather than simply turning up? How would you do it?

I have been playtesting 6d6 for the best part of six months now and Chris has asked some of us to write a little about our playtesting for your viewing pleasure. So let me start by telling you a little about a ‘class’ that we’ve tried to redesign from the ground up: The Cleric.

In the 6D6 RPG the concept of ‘class’ is an odd one. You aren’t forced into a role as many other system but instead allowed to build a character that resembles something you’d like to play. If that resembles a Fighter type, or a Mage, then you can call it that. But the only thing that stops you creating an acrobatic clown* to accompany those two standard archetypes is what you and DM decides fit the universe you’re playing in.

That being said, why would anyone want to play a ‘cleric’? What benefit is there to being the party medicine cabinet? Well, it’s pretty simple. The cleric is SO much more than that.

Divine (or Karmic) magic works in a interesting way in the 6d6 RPG. It partially to do with the way Chris envisioned the concept of karma and it’s partially to do with my stubborn refusal to let this ‘class’ become the party ambulance.

It works like this.

The game is all about the cards in a character’s deck and using them to perform actions. The cleric is all about putting cards where they shouldn’t normally be. The first thing a cleric can do (through a skill called Karmic Transfer) is that they can move cards from their own deck to other decks. So a cleric who has Movement and Karmic Transfer in his pool allows other players to take the card out of his pool and add it to their own, lending his speed to his friends while he stands still.

This is true of other cards too. Want to boost the strength of your friends? Make sure you have a Brawn card is available. How about making sure they hang on a little bit longer? Your Toughness is there to lend.

What it does is mean that the cleric divine powers are an extension of what the cleric can give. If you want a cleric of a paranoid thieving god, you build your cleric with cards like Alertness, Speed and Quick Wits. If you want a battle cleric, stock your deck with Brawn, Toughness and Endurance. If you really want to play the cleric of an ancient god of dance, then you better hope you friends really want to use the Rhythm card. This way, your cleric not only resembles a proper champion of his god, the abilities at he grants to other players are the similarly themed – because they’re the same cards. In short every cleric specialises in granting whatever he does in the name of his god.

But this is just the start. A cleric can also inflict special cards (known as status cards) on others. You can fill an enemies pool by transferring a card like Paralyse on to them, stopping them using move cards until you drop the power or they mange to overcome your ability. For real fun, one of the status cards is called Divine Body and is adds itself to any body card. It’s a status you transfer to your friends. If you spend time putting all your cards in the right order, you can add a Brawn card to a friend and then dump Divine Body on them.

This gives your alley an extra 2D6 dice to roll in his attack, allowing them to punch through the protection of heavy armour and is the sort of maneuver than can turn the tide of a battle.

These actions come with a price. Whilst your Cleric is busy pumping cards into other people, he’s open to attack. Plus, you should see the faces of people listening to the game when you say “Do you want my Divine Body?’ in all seriousness.

The cleric is now far from the character no one wants to play. He’s still a team player but his now options are limited only by your imagination and your ability to get the cards in the right order.

And that’s before he even breaks out the healing…….

* X-humed has tried an acrobatic clown which was proven to be ineffective in combat but did raise all sorts of interesting questions about how to handle distractions, bluffs and feints.

X-humed (aka Ben Jackson) is one of 6d6 RPG most dedicated and imaginative playtesters. He is also a cracking Mutants & Masterminds GM and when he is not gaming or inventing game systems based on the dial of a clock, he finds time to be an actor. This is his first guest post on 6d6 Fireball and I look forward to many more.

I’ll be there all day to chat and demonstrate the system. If you wish to play The Savage Island watch this space for more details about when the session will be starting or drop me a line to reserve place.

What is Game Balance?

A fundamental principal of the 6d6 RPG is that every action should have a cost. Unlike in, D&D for example, where there is no penalty for making five or even 50 saving throws in a round. In the 6d6 RPG, each saving throw you make uses up some of your dynamic pool cards and when the pool is empty, you are defenseless.

This mechanic allows powerful characters or monsters to be brought down the concerted and well timed efforts of multiple, but much weaker, opponents.

Whilst this is a great and a pseudo-realistic mechanic it does make game balance hard to assess. To use D&D for example once again, a fighter with an AC of 23 knows that a 1 Hit Dice kobold will only hit on a natural 20, e.g. 5% of the time. This makes it easy to calculate game balance (at least in terms of a fight). In the equivalent situation using the 6d6 RPG, the probability of hitting depends entirely on what else the target and attacker have done over the proceeding two or three rounds.

Potential, Force and Efficiency

A starting character deck consists of around 15 cards, each worth 1d6 when played though some may be slightly higher at 1d6+1 and one or two may only be 0d6+2. If a character could play all their cards in a single round, they could score 15 x 1d6, averaging 15 x 3.5 or 52.5.

This is the character’s potential – the amount they could score if they could play all of their cards in a single round.

But life is not that simple. As humans, we cannot bring all of our potential into play at once. My knowledge of RPGs games is no use to me when I’m juggling. Circumstances and the limits of our biology prevent us from delivering 100% of potential in a ’round’ of action.

This bottleneck on our potential is modeled in the 6d6 RPG by the concepts of Flow and Pool. Each round a character can place a number of cards into their Pool. This is the Flow and it is two cards for a starting character. The Pool is limited to four cards for a starting character. In a round, a character can play any, all or none of his cards from his Pool. Once played, they go back to the deck where they can be returned to the Pool using Flow.

So, a character can play two cards every round indefinitely as their Flow replenishes the cards they use. Thus a character can score 2 x 1d6 = 2 x 3.5 = a score of 7 per round on average. This is the amount of Force a character can apply on to a situation.

Efficiency is simply the ratio Force and Potential.

A normal starting character has a Potential of 52.5, and a Force of 7 = 7/52.5 = 13% Efficiency.

Now It Gets Complicated

The ‘Do Nothing’ rule allows a character to do nothing in exchange for increasing their Flow by one. This allows a character to take a breath and gather themselves.

Now a character can Do Nothing one round (Flow of three) and the next round the act as nomal (Flow of two). This allows them to play 5 cards overs two rounds or 2.5 cards a round. Thus their Force is 2.5 x 1d6 = 2.5 x 3.5 = 8.75. The character’s Potential has not increased so a 8.75 / 52.5 equals an efficiency 16.6%.

Making use of the Do Nothing mechanic increases a character’s efficiency from 13% to 16.6% measured over two rounds.

Not All Cards Are Created Equal

The Do Nothing mechanic is not the only way a character can increase their Efficiency.

Skill cards have special mechanic that means when a fumble occurs they can effectively get to re-roll the action. This gives characters with the right skill an advantage over characters relying on pure stats. For example, an unskilled character can attempt to climb a cliff with the Brawn & Toughness cards whereas a skilled character uses their Brawn & Climb cards. Both actions are worth 2d6 but if there is a fumble, the unskilled character plummets to the ground but the skilled character gets a Re-Roll chance using the same cards. Effectively giving the character an extra 2d6 and increasing the characters Force and their Efficiency.

Thus, Skill cards are worth more then non-Skill cards but only a small percentage of the time.

More significantly, some cards (mostly weapons) have the Rotate ability. When these cards are played, instead of returning to the deck, they rotate 90 degrees in the Pool to indicate they cannot be used again this round. At the start of the character’s initiative turn, they rotate back. This saves the character using Flow to put them in the Pool and effectively giving the character a free card every round.

A starting character using a Rotate card can, in effect, play three cards a round – 3 x 1d6 = 3 x 3.5 = a Force of 10.5 and an Efficiency of 10.5 / 52.5 = 20%. A substantial boost over the 16.6% of someone with only basic cards or even Skill cards.

Specialisation Versus Generalisation

What happens if a character improves all their cards to 1d6+1?

Firstly their Potential goes up – 15 cards x 1d6+1 = (15 x 3.5) + 15 = 67.5. Secondly their Force increases – 2.5 cards per round x 1d6+1 = 2.5 x 4.5 = 11.25. But their Efficiency stays the same – 11.25 / 67.5 = 16.6%.

This is character specialisation. Instead of increasing the number of cards they have (the Potential) they increase the strength of the existing ones allowing them to deliver more Force in a given situation.

By contrast, what happens if the character purchased more cards instead of increasing their existing ones? This would give the character three extra cards (based on our current character generation / improvement system). This increases the character’s potential – 18 cards x 1d6 = 18 x 3.5 = 63 but it has no effect on the amount of Force they can apply and consequently the character’s efficiency falls – 8.75 / 63 = 13.8%.

This is character generalisation where a character buys more cards in the hope of being able to do something in most situations instead of doing a smaller number of things better.

Ignore Everything Above

The point of everything above is to indicate two things:

Firstly, the fairly obvious idea that different cards and different game mechanics have different benefits in terms of Force, Potential and Efficiency to the character.

Secondly, that calculating the actual benefits is incredibly complicated and dependent on any number of factors. For example, calculating Force based on the character starting with an empty Pool gives a very different result from the idea that they start with a full Pool.

Thus the table below, is not the result of careful calculation but instead ‘eyeballed’ based on some assumptions.

No One Is Reading This

As I said, none of this will make much sense to anyone except me and few of the more mechanically minded play testers but it has been useful.

It points out a flaw in the current Stealth versus Awareness mechanic because Stealth cards are persistent and should cost considerably more than Awareness cards. The process has also confirmed my suspicion that armour is too powerful for its current cost.

Now I need to get back to the game and dealing with the implications of these insight. And if you are still reading, thank you and don’t worry – you won’t need to understand any of this to play the 6d6 RPG.

When you sit down and begin contemplating designing your own Role Playing Game a number of questions arise. One that became pivotally important for myself is . . .

What is the greatest strength of table-top Role Playing Games versus other mediums of entertainment?

Certainly it is not the speed and ease of combat, computer games have far outstripped us there. Wether the graphics of the computer and television have outstripped the graphics of the imagination is something that could be debated, but this is not the revelation that struck me.

The greatest strength of a pen-and-paper RPG is the *collaboration* and the *creativity*. It is the combination of various ideas, personalities and backgrounds into something that is greater than one person could ever create. This depends on the existence of a live human who can react to anything a player comes up with. Be it a combat action, a piece of roleplaying, or a new character concept or backstory. Many pen-and-paper set limits of various kinds on players imagination and contributions to the story.

Thus a primary goal of the superheros game that I designed was to encourage player creativity from the very beginning, that is during character creation. Moreover the whole needed to be very simple and thus flexible.

Because RPGs greatest strength is in the collaboration the game has been designed not to restrict you or your players creativity but to encourage it. It is a toolkit to unlock an interactive story, to build a game universe (with its own unique conceit, rules and limitations) that could never exist without *all* of you. Other games are limited by what the designers were able to imagine and expect, a RPG need not be so. When you and your players brainstorm characters, as GM you should always explore the ideas they present. A concept for a power should always be possible, limitations and weakness should be discussed until it fits within the power frame of all the rest of your characters.

Early ideas from the players on their characters, their background and the world should help you shape the universe. In this way each groups game can and should be different and each new universe created by your group should feel new. Encourage and adapt your universe to your players creativity. This philosophy lowers the burden of being the GM and gives the players a greater stake in your shared universe.

A pen-and-paper RPG is not like a book, movie or play, it is something so much more then the sum of its parts. It is a infinitely flexible story with many authors whose creativity is only limited by what you and your table willingly impose on it. There is no correct way to play a RPG: for its greatest tenet is fun for all participants.

Hence variations on themes and ‘rules’ are encouraged. Don’t shy away from being derivative, for this is a great strength that allows a collective common ground to be easily developed and understood. Originality is merely creative fusion of what has gone before.

(C) Joshua Kitz

My original plan was to be there over the whole weekend but I need today to prepare for Monday night’s session. This will be the start of Return To Savage Island, a full 6 – 8 week scenario in a fantasy setting using magic for the first time. This is a major step for the 6d6 RPG and despite having already delayed the start by a week I still have masses to prepare.

So I’d better stop prevaricating and get on with it…

Monday’s is hosted by Mondo Comico, a great RPG shop in the heart of Nottingham that is owned by Dave. I have five great players with a diverse range of ages and RPG experience. Recently we finished a Roman / Lovecraftian horror game using the 6d6 RPG and are about to embark on a fantasy adventure: Return to Savage Island.

This gave me a great opportunity to try out the character generation process as a group activity. The aim was to make the narrative of the character generation process lead straight into the opening of the adventure’s narrative.

When In Doubt, Steal

A few weeks ago, someone mentioned a character creation process that involved the group working together to create their characters background. Each telling a bit of the story and intertwining their lives until the characters were complete. Giving the characters a reason why they know each other and having fun creating a narrative together.

This fitted perfectly with a core 6d6 RPG idea that it is the process of working together as a group, of deciding things (whether it is game mechanics or the imagined world) that is at the heart of RPGs.

It also fitted with the idea of Path Cards so I decided to steal the concept and give it a go with the Monday night group. [For more about Path Cards, see Part 2].

Five Lives, One Group

To get the players started, I gave a basic overview of the world, which in this case is Twitterville. I also outline a hook I need to work in for the start of the adventure – An badly injured adventurer, the Uncle of one of the characters, returns to the city to die.

The first step was to pick character races and names:

1. Jesus (prononced Hay-Soos) – Human, born in the desert regions of Mendashan far to the East, a nomadic people.
2. Razir – A Rakshasa also from the east.
3. Boban – A Gnome, native to the city of Twitterville, abandoned on the streets at a very young age.
4. Mazvet – A Wood Elf from near Twitterville but his people live a hard life in the snowline of the mountains.
5. Gwylem – A human born in the city to a middle class family, the youngest child and ignored in favour of his older siblings.

At this stage, each character picked their Race Card and the free cards that gave them. Plus they picked two Body / Mind / Soul cards as the basics of the characters abilities:

1. Jesus – [Toughness] & [Will Power] reflecting the tough desert environment.
2. Razir – [Arcana], [Speed] and [Quick Wits], for his cat like nature and spell casting aptitude.
3. Doban – [Manual Dex] & [Quick Wits], the basic survival skills of a street urchin.
4. Mazvet – [Sixth Sense], [Toughness] & [Will Power], another product of a tough environment.
5. Gwylem – [Spite], [Quick Wits], the bitterness caused by his parent’s lack of attention and the brains he developed thinking for himself.

Next the players picked one path and picked another card or two from it.

1. Jesus – Grows to be a warrior in his tribe. [Militia] – [Weapon Expertise (Scimitar)] & [Dodge]
2. Razir – Even though from a poor background, the Rakshasa culture ensure all get good education. [Education] – [Natural Philosophy]
3. Boban – A waif on the streets has to find places of safety for sleep. [Street Urchin] – [Climb],[Hide], [Streetwise]
4. Mazvet – Growing up in the tribe means he has to help find food along with everyone else. [Hunter Gather] – [Survival],[Track], [Climb]
5. Gwylem – Often left to his own devices, he spends more and more time on the streets. [City Life] – [Streetwise], [Persuade]

The players now start to angle their lives towards meeting up and becoming a band of like minded adventures.

1. Jesus – Tiring of the constraints of tribal life, he sets out on the long journey towards the Empire. [Traveller] – [Survival]. On his travels he encounters …
2. Razir – His poor family cannot support him so he leaves and starts to drift towards the Empire. During which he meets a human and despite a rocky start (involving a dog which became a dead dog and then a reanimated dog) they became fast friends. Razir’s player decided that no Path was suitable for this part so he took no cards.
3. Boban – Life on the streets inevitably leads into a live of crime where her small size and climbing expertise lead to [Crime (Burglary)] – [Traps & Devices], [Silent Move], [Sprint].
4. Mazvet – Up in the snow line, life carries on predictably. [Country Life] – [Ride].
5. Gwylem – Pushed into the church as uncaring parents, in its training, he finally finds a niche for himself and the ability to stand up for himself. [Education] – [Language (High Church)], [Brawn] (taken from his Blood card).

The next round, some players wanted something special in their character’s passed.

1. Boban – Tumbles into a long forgotten ruin, buried under the city and finds a tiny, ornate, golden key. Picking it up she finds herself in contact with a long forgotten and talkative god of thieves though which she starts to learn new abilities. [Touch By The Gods] – [Divine Obscurement]
2. Mazvet – His life changes forever when he helps investigate a strange dying back of the trees and wildlife near his tribal home. A strange gem was found but then something happen. Next morning he discovered himself wandering through the woods with the gem embedded in his chest. His flesh was slowly changing, dying and turning into a hard, stone like substance. [Cursed] – [Death], [Diseased].
3. Jesus and Razir arrive in the city where Razir finds a teacher for his magical gifts. [Glyph Mage] – [Glyph of Air],[Reanimate].
4. Gwylem – His career is progressing and he is awarded a small parish in one of the poorer areas of Twitterville. The work is dull but offers him a few chances at earning extra money from the worshippers in exchange for healing. [Karmic Magic] – [Healing].

Finally, they all meet up.

1. Mazvet – Exiled by his tribe, ended up in Twitterville, desperate for help to remove the cursed gem in his chest. As he got off the boot he was spotted by …
2. Boban – Looking for an easy mark among the new arrivals, she spots Mazvet and something tells her that this Elf is different. Maybe it was her god talking to her or just the recognition of someone else who had been abandoned. Rather than stealing what little he had, she made friends with him and took him to a small church where she knew a priest sold healing…
3. Gwylem – His hitherto boring life took a strange turn when a Gnome and a Wood Elf came into his church. When the Wood Elf shown off the strange gem in his chest, Gwylem realised that these people offered him a way out of his boring existence. Not long after, at a dull church social event …
4. Jesus – City life was so different from his nomadic upbringing. In the camp, if one person celebrates they all celebrate. This plus his total self confidence and maybe just a little bit of fate led him to crash a party. He was about to be thrown out by a bored looking priest when in a desperate attempt to remain he claimed that he was a performer booked for the event. The priest looking at this barbarian warrior from the east, must of been doubtful but the priest clearly had a mischievous sense of humor and told him to get started. Thinking quickly, Jesus created the art of Mendashan Sword Dancing and by luck, pulled off a convincing performance. Afterwards the priest and barbarian started talking and soon struck up a friendship. [Performer] – [Quick Wits], [Perform (Sword Dance)].

Finally the group all knew each other and are ready to start adventuring. Any spare points the players had were spent rounding off the character. Starting equipment was awarded, including a [Zombie Familiar (Dog)] for Razir.

Lessons Learnt

Over a fun couple of hours the group worked well together, sharing ideas and building a background for the party. From a GM point of view the process could not be too structured, players must be allowed to skip rounds or have extra cards to suit their story. You also need to be think on your feet to come up with new cards, such as [Zombie Familiar (Dog)], on the fly.

This is a system I will definitely use again but won’t be part of the official 6d6 RPG. It will one of many different approaches players and GMs can use to give their characters background.

6d6 RPG: Experiments in Character Generation Part 1 and Part 2. PDFs of the Path Cards used are here & here. Note these are very rough versions and some were modified during the character generation process as we noticed problems (e.g. Crime has been spilt into different types of crime).

The question is, how to capture this random, nebulous and highly personal experience in a quick and easy game mechanic? [See Part 1 for more information on the design issues].

Trust The Players

The 6d6 RPG is a game of positives. The absence of a card, such as Brawn, does not mean the character is a puny weakling, just that their strength is not an important part of the character. The choice of the Brawn card is a positive action – the player saying to the GM that this aspect of my character is important.

It was returning to this basic idea – of accentuating the positive – gave me the latest breakthrough in designing the character generation.

Previously I had been hung up on a formal narrative. Stuck on the idea that characters picked up their abilities and skills at different stages of their life – pick 2 skills in childhood – 4 skills in their teenage years etc etc. But I could not make this fit to all the different types of characters that players might want in a fantasy setting, let alone what they would need for the very different demands of a super-hero game or a post-apocalypse game.

And then I remembered to trust the players.

Throw away the formal structure, break everything down into parts and let the players pick those bits that are important to their back story.

Path Cards

A path card is a very simple mechanic. It represents an important part of a character’s life or path and it makes available certain abilities and skills. The card could represent something formal such as Education and make available obvious skills such Literacy. Or it can be something vague such as City Life which gives a character access to things like Streetwise. There is no fixed idea of what a Path Card should represent, leaving the door open to GMs to create as many different paths in as many different styles as they like.

In generating the character, a player picks several path cards representing their character’s life. The absence of a City Life or Education path cards does not mean they have never been educated or been to a city, just that they are not important parts of the story.

Each Path Card costs the same number of points to buy as an ability or skill card. This forces the character to make a choice: Spend points getting lots of path cards to gain access to a wide range of skills or limit their path but have a more points to spend on a smaller pool of abilities.

Generating a Character

The first step is to select a race card.

A High Elf race card

It gives the Elf certain free cards, such as movement and sense, but most importantly the Elf Blood card which is the first proper Path card.

The Elf Blood path card

This ‘Blood’ cards let a character select their core Body, Mind and Soul cards based on their race. In my generic fantasy world, elves are not muscle bound creatures so they lack the Brawn and Toughness from their available cards. Players wanting to a physically strong Elf will need to pick up another Path card that does make Brawn available.

The Goblinoid Blood path card

For comparison, the Goblinoid Blood card above has a very different selection of available cards. By combining what cards are provided free by the Race Card and what options are available on the Blood card, a GM can define abilities that every member of a race has and those which that are common. Yet players can still create mold breaking characters, such a strong elf or a sweet, caring Goblin by picking other path cards.

Four sample path cards

Mechanics

Each player starts with their choice of Race card and any free cards that grants. After that each card they buy, whether it is a Path card such as Militia, an ability card such Brawn or a skill like Pick Locks, cost four Character Points (CP). Each of these cards is worth 1d6 when played during an action and can be improved by spending additional CPs.

The player has 36 + 6d6 CP to spend with an average character having 57 CPs and picking four path cards, four Body/Mind/Soul cards and six skill cards. Skill heavy characters like magic users may have to sacrifice some Body/Mind/Soul cards to afford the skills. Conversely, a warrior may focus on one or two skills and take more physical cards as they work as hit points.

GMs are free to tweak this system and can do so easily. For a super hero game or a high fantasy world, all character could start with 150 CPs or more. It is up to the GM.

Design Goals Revisited

In part one I stated a number of design goals:

1. Allow players freedom to create the characters they want
2. Allow GMs to easily define their world by limiting or expanding the player’s range of options.
3. Make it easy for a GM’s house rules to be passed on to other groups
4. Give a character at least a skeleton of a back story

With the current system I think these have been attained and just need the polish of further testing.

Players can create any character they wish by combing different path cards. GMs can control this process by adding or removing Path Cards from the pool players can choose from. Race and Path Cards are easy to pass on to other groups both physically and online allowing ideas to spread rapidly.

Finally, the path gives some idea of the character’s past. A narrative on which players can build character and which prevents all 1st level characters being identical.

But I wanted to push this narrative idea further. Tomorrow I will explain my first experiments with a group character generation process.