Its so awkward and strange that I'm thinking of calling it the 'Terrible System'.
The d6 can give you
- A 1 to 6 range. Nice and chunky, the basis for the LotFP skill system.
- That neat 2d6 curve between 2 and 12, the Apocalypse World roll, and quite story-gamey as it keeps things close to the centre.
- the d66 roll, patchy and swingy as FUCK. 36 numbers between 11 and 66 with big gaps of numbers it won't produce.
Character Generation
The basic concept for Character Generation is inverse or negative stats that you roll over.Roll a d66 for each stat in sequence. Re-roll any results of snakeyes or boxcars.
(I did try to find a way that could produce stats in the middle of the range, in a similar way to the 3d6 system for D&D. Couldn't find a convenient one so ultimately just said fuck it and went with a flat roll.)
The stats are;
WEK - Physical weakness.
CLU - Clumsiness.
FRA - Frailty, a synergy of physical and mental.
ASS - Assholery, your ability to fuck up a social situation.
STU - Stupidity, a synergy of you lack of education, memory and discreet analytical power.
FOO - Foolishness, the gross bluntless of your awareness, both of yourself and of the world around you.
A thing I like about this is that it has some of the neatness of a roll-under d20 system but rolling to beat your own weakness has a pleasurable and slightly silly feel.
Damage is based on the Logan Knight grit/flesh boundary, with grit coming back fast, like modern hitpoints, and flesh requiring healing over time.
Initially, damage suffered is *added* to frailty. This could indicate physical or mental trauma, anything that makes a character less able to go on. If your frailty hits 66 then you either break down, give up or run away.
Any further damage is added to Weakness
When Weakness reaches 66, a character is dead.
Buffs and Boosts
So armour should probably add to your max frailty as it keeps you alive and stops you from gaining weakness. Since Frailty is cleanly has a psychological element then stuff like fashion or particular clothes, drugs, and general other moral elements could also add to this.
Strange Dice Artefacts
So far, like most roll-under systems its kinda neat and tight and a bit strange and awkward when it comes to complex opposed situations.
I'm wondering what other strange dice artefacts you can create with two d6?
There's the idea of a kind of dual-level result where the target is a number between 1 and 6, and you have to match that target with both d6. The first deciding if you get a raw physical pass and the second deciding... something? Maybe the nature of the consequence?
I suppose it could go You Do What You Intended/With the Result You Expected
Though that makes no sense if you _don't_ achieve what you intended and _do_ get the expected result.
Plus it has nothing to do with those funky stats I worked out.
Any of you have any ideas for funky d6/d6 dice mechanics.
Excellent - this is just the kind of thing we need in the OSR.
ReplyDeleteI also want to say that 2d6 is all you really need to do quite a lot of things. To hit rolls, reaction rolls, a 1d6 can be used to determine sneaking, searching, listening, breaking down doors... I only used 2 six siders in Treasure Hunters and they serve me well.
DeleteBut remember it won't FLAILSNAILS so you will have to write conversions for modules and monsters and so forth.
Strangeness with the d6: The d3, rolling 1d4 with 2 d6, the d36 (one die is ones and the other is 6's except for the big 6, add them up to get a score from 1 to 36. You can also do d9 and d18 with 2 six sided dice.
ReplyDeleted6s are fun dice to explode because they're low enough that exploding happens pretty often.
ReplyDeleteExploding dice are fun and should be used more often. They make things feel swingier than they really are, and actually have a negligible affect on die probabilities.
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ReplyDelete11-16, 21-26 ... 61-66 are our numbers
ReplyDelete17-20, 27-30 ... 57-60 are the numbers of the other
0-10 belong to the high powers and their agents
67-99 exist, but no one, not even the divinities, knows who they belong to, or what, or if
no other numbers exist
I have this pet mechanic where the first d6 is actually a reversed, or negative value, with the second d6 a symmetrical positive value. But the only real use I have been able to find for it so far are silly things like describing points on a number line representing, like negative/positive rep and other videogamey stuff. But there is something of utility in that zero sitting there in the middle of the roll. I just haven't quite yet intellectualized it.
ReplyDelete
ReplyDelete"I'm wondering what other strange dice artefacts you can create with two d6?"
There's VSd6.
Multiplying them gets you a weird range of numbers with the same upper bound as d66.
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