Speaking of which: awesomerpg

Getting four attacks would cause going first in initiative to be very valuable due to the mechanics I have in place when you do hit someone. i.e if you daze them any damage they take while dazed is boosted. (weeks of programming and running combat simulators required it for balance).

And I have a player who would always shoot four times if he could.

And I do have a double tap mechanic in place but you have to buy the skill for your character to use it effectively and then for math purposes, it allows you to roll twice with a negative but take the higher of the two rolls. Rather than going the way some systems do and increasing your damage output, I use it to increase your accuracy. It's enough of a boost to validate your choice in spending build points on it but not so much that a player would feel it necessary to take just to keep up with the jones. or that's been my intent. Whether I succeed or not is another story.

The latter example is handled by the "Say Yes" philosophy: if nothing's at stake for failure, the players don't have to roll the dice. They get a straightforward answer. So… "I check the door for traps." There's nothing at stake for failure, so the GM says, "You don't find any." No test. Again, badgering the GM for a test is something that the game explicitly allows him to clamp down on.

"What do you mean, no!? There might be a trap on our tavern door. Remember the thieves guild is looking for us, I should be able to check for traps and it count toward skill advancement."

I really enjoyed this; it was much different than anything else we played, although I find it difficult to narrate my own fights – I'm so used to having a structure in place! Since I didn't actually USE my madness talent or my exhaustion talent, I'm thinking of changing the exhaustion to be something more useful. I'll have to give that some consideration.

I like that approach. I think that, if the GM considers it appropriate to say "no" to a player's attempt to shove in a skill test, this sort of thing is fine. After all, if it encourages the players to reasonably broaden their skill set, I count that as a win.

Perhaps a limit of X skills can be raised per session and then assign a penalty mechanic so that the higher the skill the less of a chance it'll work. The player would try the skills in the order he wanted them to raise and if one didn't raise, he woldn't lose one of his X but instead just have to try another skill. If he looped all the way to the bottom of his skilsl then he'd start over at the top. This would over the course of time though tend to level out the players skills. The high ones would raise less often and the low ones more often no matter how he ordered them until eventually they were all in teh same ballpark.

Not sure if that's a desired result or not.

1) In DnD and most games based on similar systems, it is less than relevant because it is not used as a defense for social attacks and …

2) There are no social attacks.

Look to Earthdawn by FASA (now defunct I think) for a great example of how Charisma can be used to great effect. Making sorcerers deal damage with it is not exactly creative, nor appropriate. It should be devestating in its own way, and more effective versus targets with low charisma.

Thanks!

It modifies the Monster Reactions result, which tells you whether you have any chance of not having to fight whatever horrible thing you encounter. It tells you the number and morale of your retainers, too which are quite important for things like hauling your gold, carrying your kit, and so on. If your torch-bearers flee in terror when somebody shows up, because you couldn’t create loyalty, you are screwed.

I just find it mechanically sub optimal in terms of value and more an amalgam of other stats and skills and the players descriptions of their character. Partially because it's so variable and situational as to what makes a character charismatic to a particular audience. I find it easier to look at their skills, character description, background etc and just play off that in a situation where charisma would come into play.

Even back in the day I found them to be too time consuming "Okay Turn 1, Phase 3, okay who can go? Okay who's dex is higher?" Now when a 4 hour session is about average, any mechanic that takes time away from that without a significant return is suspect.

I understand their intent and see the appeal in a tactical methodology, it's just the time involved to get them set up for each combat and then make sure that everyone has their turn doesn't work for me personally.

I do like how you can invest or conserve resources for defense or offense. At one point I did consider every combat starts with a pool of dice per person and they spend those to shift their rolls either offensively or defensively but discarded it after some play testing. Note that was per combat, not per turn so it's not the same per se.

I have the Rewrite which can be used to interrupt an action in what may be a similar thing to the Drama Dice? The Rewrite is used for, well rewriting the action as it goes along. It's a heavy movie theme for my system. You can take minor narrative control and rewrite the scene, "Hearing all the gunfire a passing patrol car swings into the parking lot" or "A previous occupant dropped a hair clip which fell into this crack. I can use that to pick the lock.", mitigate damage "It's not as bad as it looks.", change your initiative order (interrupts require a opposed roll though), add bonuses to your skill rolls (before rolling) or invoke an Experience/Trait to add bonuses to a skill roll (after rolling) and a few other things that I don't remember off the top of my head.

You then write down your number and iniative goes based on phases (there are 10 of them).

So let's say you've got three characters who are taking actions:

PC One: 1, 5, 7, 9
PC Two: 3, 7, 8, 10
NPC One: 4, 7, 7, 9

Starting with phase one each person who has a die in that phase goes, followed by phase two, etc. If there's a tie it goes to the person with the highest Panache (basically Speed). Here's where the active defense comes.

Say PC One decides to attack NPC One during the first phase. He can do so. The NPC can choose to use a passive defense, which doesn't cost anything. Alternatively the NPC cvan choose to spend two of his action dice from later in the round to use an active defense, but then he doesn't have them to use later on in the round. You can also choose to hold an action to allow for active defenses later, at which point it just costs one die.

There's also Drama Dice which can be expended to interrupt an action, but that's a separate thing entirely.

Move to the 2000's and ennui, deja vu, distractions, other concerns are all competing for the player's attention. At least my current group.

It removes the need for rules about flanking and position because that is built into cards / resource mechanics. If you have no cards left to defend against that third orc, it is because it has attacked whilst you were busy fighting off the other two. Even without a resource mechanic, this can be explained in a dynamic defence as what happens when the player rolls badly.

Getting rid of all the stray +/- modifiers that clutter a lot of combat systems speeds the game up which help compensates for the speed lost by not having a flat target.

Thanks for taking the time to playtest 6d6 and for writing such a detailed report. It is the certainly the longest we have seen and in fact I haven’t read it all yet (sorry, on a bit of a deadline this morning). I will catch up with the rest soon when I add you to our Reviews section [ http://6d6rpg.com/6d6rpg/reviews/ ].

Just to answer a couple points you raise. The search check mechanics are in the adventure [ http://6d6rpg.com/wiki/doku.php?id=open:oneshots:outbreak:oneshots ] though they are missing from the Core rules. This is an oversight and something we need fix. Your house rules pretty much picked the same targets that we recommend for exactly the same reasons.

You mention the idea of giving character’s career cards. These are known as Path cards [ http://6d6rpg.com/wiki/doku.php?id=open:mechanics:universal:usingpathcards ]. They are an optional mechanic that gives character creation some structure and allows the character a versatile card for background knowledge. For various reasons we didn’t use them in the Outbreak! adventure.

Increasing the points value for rotating cards is a workable mechanic but it presupposes that the game will be combat heavy. If you are playing a game that has almost no combat, the Rotate keyword adds nothing to the card’s usefulness. Making a player pay extra for this would be unfair. Of course, the flip side is true. In combat heavy games they are worth more.

In playtesting, we found that the benefit of having all cards the same costs (i.e. easy to learn, no worries about trying to assess the relative values of different keywords) outweighed any concern over balance. Ultimately, as all the characters and monsters have equal access to and pay equal costs for rotating cards, the game is kept in balance.

Again, many thanks for taking the time to review the game.

Chris

Dennis Dollins

I've just come to the belief that every encounter should further your storyline, your plot or simply have something about it that's awesome. If that means that the 100-150 8 hour session campaigns I used to run in the 80's are now 15-20 5 hour sessions because I cut all the fluff out? So be it, I'll just switch genres or systems and do another one of similar size.

The purchased 6d6 Core rule set only includes what you've read for free on the web site. Setting specific rule sets, such as 6d6 Magic or 6d6 Bots will fill in the missing gaps.

Anyone interested in picking up the system should check out our New's Day Sale that features up to 80% off selected products.

http://6d6rpg.com

Assuming you have a wireless connection then there shouldn’t be anything specific to do with the imac at all. You should just have to put the details for your wireless access point into the nook. By going into the wireless settings it should show a list of all the wireless access points it can see around it, this may be just yours or it could be a bunch depending on how close your neighbors are and how many of them might have wireless devices.

Then it should just be a question of selecting your wireless access point in the list and then putting in the access key that should be set up on it.

You may want to just verify that it’s work by going to any Barnes and Noble and it should automatically join their wireless network and should be able to search for books etc. If it’s not working there then it could be turned off on on the nook or it might just not be working.

I have a new Simple Touch Nook and cannot get it to connect to wifi. I have an iMac and am not tech savvy, so trying to add the address to my Mac is not easy for me. Also when I power up the Nook it will not show settings.

So, how do I get my new Nook to connect via wifi with an iMac (linksys) and how do I get the nook to show me the settings box. I have the address the Nook shows me to use on my iMac but I cannot find where to add it. It prompts me to register and go through that whole process but I cannot for the life of me figure this out.

The AI would be more aimed at solo play. You can fake it though. This is how I play it solo, when Z make attacks they draw 1 card per Z, if the card is usable it’s used and if not it’s discarded. Z always move toward the closest hero. If there’s a choice they always go after the one with the least health. They’re always spawn with preference toward spawn points that are closest to the heroes. The rest is pretty much the same, common sense as to what favors the zombies the most.

ps.: i know its your own work, and you do it like you want to, these were just my opinion on how should it look like

Not so on Skype, all players have equal voice weight and the ability to filter out noise is significantly reduced. Instead of processing one guy saying what he’s going to do, and another set of players reminding each other which Lizardman they attacked last, you hear a jumble and everybody has to stop.

I don't know that I usually have the described decision fatigue but I damn sure have a problem with my 'give a damn' as my grandmother used to say being used up when I'm tired.

+Charles Moore I'm going to go without. If I suddenly start typing in braile you'll know I made a bad decision…

I'm going to use IR cameras to set and angle the beams and do it from the safety of always being behind them and with no reflective surfaces.

Now if I can only get Windows 8 to work with the PS3 camera and the CCV software I can have a 60" metro tablet.

I don't know that I usually have the described decision fatigue but I damn sure have a problem with my 'give a damn' as my grandmother used to say being used up when I'm tired.

+Charles Moore I'm going to go without. If I suddenly start typing in braile you'll know I made a bad decision…

I'm going to use IR cameras to set and angle the beams and do it from the safety of always being behind them and with no reflective surfaces.

Now if I can only get Windows 8 to work with the PS3 camera and the CCV software I can have a 60" metro tablet.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/21/magazine/do-you-suffer-from-decision-fatigue.html?pagewanted=all

The leaked video shows an extremely smooth interface with some nice 3d effects. All the carriers will have it, the question is how much of an exclusive Verizon has.

It's also a naked droid experience, no manufacturer's bloatware installed and as a result it'll get updates a lot faster, always a plus. One might even leave it as stock rather than immediately rooting it. Although the droid community has proven time and time again they can work wonders on android phones, increasing performance and battery life in every case and sometimes OMG levels.

Granted I'd rather it had the 8mp/2mp cameras of the SG2 but the increased resolution and screen size make it more desirable at the moment. You use the screen 100% of the time, the camera rarely comparatively.

All the nexus's have had pretty high comfort levels with their users.

The leaked video shows an extremely smooth interface with some nice 3d effects. All the carriers will have it, the question is how much of an exclusive Verizon has.

It's also a naked droid experience, no manufacturer's bloatware installed and as a result it'll get updates a lot faster, always a plus. One might even leave it as stock rather than immediately rooting it. Although the droid community has proven time and time again they can work wonders on android phones, increasing performance and battery life in every case and sometimes OMG levels.

Granted I'd rather it had the 8mp/2mp cameras of the SG2 but the increased resolution and screen size make it more desirable at the moment. You use the screen 100% of the time, the camera rarely comparatively.

All the nexus's have had pretty high comfort levels with their users.

Of course I could just be a cynical bastard.

Given what I know that rooting does I don’t know that it should affect this, it’s not like you’re putting on a new OS, just getting root access.

If another wipe doesn’t work, I’d just call their tech support and say the social thing isn’t working, fix it. Obviously don’t even mention the word root and if they bring it up play the “Uh what is that?” I’m an computer illiterate card.

Thanks

This might be worth a try, I’d love to hear someone with better math skills stat up a 1st level character and few monsters with this system to see how it might look. We use MapTool and a 4E framework that does the math & damage application, but I’ve been interested in an in-person game but have been worried about getting frustrated with the pacing slow with the dice rolls and math.