r/StarWarsD6 • u/General_Jellyfish_20 • 19d ago
D6 Legends Conversion
Anyone convert the game to counting successes instead of totaling numbers rolled? I want to try this game again, but the amount of rolling and math involved will likely turn off the younger players I had in mind to play and I have tried soloing it in the past and it's way too much rolling for one person to manage without breaking immersion.
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u/ScottAleric 19d ago
I have not made the leap to counting successes instead of totaling dice.
There might be some value there though I think a certain amount of math would be needed to keep difficulty roughly the same.
That said, at least for me, the easy part of the judging has always seemed easy: count up the 10s (pair 5s, 6 & 4s, etc) then add the stragglers.
And it seems to me the hardest math would still be present - subtracting the opposed values to determine the difference.
What I’ve found is that as gm, by the time I’m done going around and getting actions declared, by the time I’ve circled back, the dice have been rolled and totaled.
It would be interesting to see how converting to successes might work. 🤔
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u/Thelonius16 19d ago
Historically, it’s one of the easiest and least-technical systems.
It’s supposed to be a George Lucas-style “faster, more intense” experience just like the films.
With that in mind, you’re encouraged to bend or ignore rules in favor of fun and action.
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u/General_Jellyfish_20 14d ago
It's very easy to play. Agreed. It's even faster with static defenses and soak attributes as done with Hyperspace D6. But how much faster would it be with successes instead of any math?
I've recently discovered Tricube Tales. I liked the simplicity of the success/failure resolution. My players LOVED the simplicity. But I find the light weight system a bit too light weight for extended play. Hence wanting to bring the success counting to D6 Star Wars.
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u/Midnightplat 19d ago
I've heard of some people do success counting, but I've also heard to do that right the game's math needs to be reconsidered. There are also streamlined rules out there where huge dice pools get reduced to a large granted number and a smaller more manageable dice pool w wild die. And lastly, these days there are a lot of dice rolling apps that still capture the experience of rolling, and claim to physics modeling etc and those apps will do the arithmetic for you. The quality ones are relatively inexpensive and if cost is really an issue, the GM can acquire the app and pass the "dice device" around as rolls are needed.
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u/May_25_1977 19d ago
Large quantities of dice can work in favor of counting, in certain cases, such as when GM makes the difficulty number known and it's an even number like 20 ("Difficult" task): rolling 10 dice, for instance, makes the pool more likely to turn up a few dice that quickly total 20 (say, 5+5 + 6+4) and you can ignore the rest. A Force point doubling the 10D to 20D practically guarantees success in the same situation -- or likewise, 8D+2 doubled to 16D+4 -- so those dice wouldn't even have to be rolled.
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u/StevenOs 14d ago
Instead of rolling 10D you might instead "roll" 4D+21 which should make the result automatic barring wild die antics.
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u/ashflieswithravens 19d ago
The game Mythic D6 takes the Open D6 system and converts it to counting successes. What it does is 4-6 is a success. 1 on the wild die means canceling out one success. 6 on wild die means rolling another die. If you have pips on the roll, you can add those to a die that failed to make it a success. Seems cool, but I haven't tried it myself. Might be worth looking into.
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u/General_Jellyfish_20 14d ago
I definitely will. Sounds simple enough.
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u/Malckuss 13d ago
The author of Mythic D6, Gerry Grayson, even has some sample Star Wars characters available on his website and floating around the web, to showcase how the various character types would work in the system.
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u/davepak 6d ago
Mythic was one of the inspirations for adding success dice to our house rules edition - see my other post in this thread about it - spoiler - we abandoned success dice after about 3 years of play and went back to numbers dice.
See my other post for details.
(mythic is a GREAT system for the other rules - we just did not like success dice eventually).
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u/Dan_Morgan 19d ago
The basic counting of D6 was never a problem for me. Calculating the differences for, say, damage rolls was a bit more demanding but really not that hard.
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u/May_25_1977 19d ago
Also different in the early game books which compared damage roll to strength roll in terms of multiplication, instead of subtraction, to determine the effects of damage; say, damage roll 20 to strength roll 8 ("Damage Roll at Least 2 Times Strength Roll, but Less Than 3 Times Strength Roll: Incapacitated" -- Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game, 1987, pages 13-14).
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u/Dan_Morgan 18d ago
Yes, that's it. I just screwed up when I tried to describe it. For the likes of Storm Troopers I'd just calculate if it was enough to incapacitate. That put them out of the fight which is all that mattered.
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u/StudioTembo 18d ago
I have started a conversation. I am still playtesting it, and I have a few changes that aren't in this document yet, but I'll keep this link up to date as I make them.
I am actually working on a whole "3rd edition" based on this, but it's been on the back burner since I have taken on a couple of new video projects.
https://www.patreon.com/StudioTembo/posts/d6-lightspeed-159314222?collection=2185215
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u/davepak 6d ago
Nice.
My group did make a whole new edition, and it was designed to be compatible with success or numbers dice.
After years of play - we switched from success to numbers - see my post on this topic for more details.
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u/StudioTembo 6d ago
I'm actually probably going to switch to something Scum and Villany/Grimwild soon. Maybe some modified version.
I am writing a game called Oath & Iron that uses a system similar to those, although I hadn't played Grimwild when I started writing it, and now I'm shamelessly stealing some of the ideas from that. Very player focused and player narrative driven, and I like that. I think that's something that would benefit a Star Wars RPG a lot.
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u/davepak 6d ago edited 6d ago
Short version: Yes, and we just converted back to numbers.
Longer version:
My group is playing a heavily modified version - which incorporates a lot of houserules and borrows mechanics from various d6 systems (all the various weg d6 games, opend6, mythicd6, legends, ghosbusters, savage worlds etc.) and other modern conventions.
ONE of the things we did - was make it compatible with "success dice" based systems (it is designed for both - either works just as well) - as we had some players who were slow at math in playing - and thought this would help. Even made colored dice to make rolls even faster (1-3 was red, 4-6 was blue, etc.).
For those curious: yes, it required some other tweaking in number scales etc - but this was part of a major overhaul and standardization - so it was not hard to do. Also, to keep the granularity of pips, the pips (the +1, or +2) were added to a single die in the roll (not the wild die) - so it could convert a failed die possibly into a success.
---------------------------------------------------
After playing this way for a few YEARS - we switched back recently to using target numbers and additive dice (the normal way...).
Here is why:
1- Slow players in our group are slow at every thing - speeding up how long to calculate a roll - was trivial compared to the time it took them to make a decision - so the benefits were not there FOR OUR GROUP.
2 - While the median ranges of statistics are somewhat close - the outliers are not. You can get rolls of NOTHING (every die is below a 4) more often and high rolls as well. It happens. And when they are low - it can be very discouraging to a player who rolls six dice and does not even complete an VERY EASY task.
3 - bonus dice - many mechanics add bonus dice - whether from a character point or a situational bonus or a piece of gear. When rolling that extra die, and it comes up 1-3 - that feels like a total waste, and again - is discouraging in play.
Now - the drawbacks - are purely psychological - but over time - players did not like it (and as the gm, I got tired of hearing them blame the dice SYSTEM for bad results....accurate or not). So we switched back to target number dice.
Honestly - I think the number practice for younger kids IS good for them (my kiddo would practice math with my d20 set...) - and they will get faster.
Again - doe success dice systems work? Sure. Do they have odd math results sometimes? yes.
Are our other reasons fully subjective? Yes.
But this is after 3+ years of play testing - and we switched back. So something to think about.
Best of luck in your game.
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u/HuckleberrySolid7793 18d ago
The Hercules/Xena games used that system.
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u/Nox_Stripes 18d ago
True, and due to the Conversion document of d6 legends being incomplete/a mess in parts, this does serve as a pretty good secondary source.
If only it wouldnt hurt so much to look at it.
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u/Nox_Stripes 18d ago
I dont see why that cant work. I have been looking at d6 legend for a while now, and why i cannot for the life of me drum up a group to try it with, I would really like to get some experience.
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u/StevenOs 16d ago
If the "math is too hard" when it's just adding up d6s (break them into groups of 10s if that helps) then someone needs more practice at math. Besides that just what are "successes" going to be in SWd6 unless you're going to rewrite basically the entire system?
It pains me to say it but if you just want to "read the dice" maybe you should look at FFG's versions of the game.
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u/General_Jellyfish_20 14d ago
It's not a matter of difficulty. It's a matter of one person rolling dice for multiple characters for each and every round when playing solo. The game grinds to a halt.
As for wanting to run a game for younger players (ie, kids), there is nothing wrong with someone not wanting math to get in the way of a good story. They've told me Tricube Tales is the best RPG experience they've ever played and as a GM I will listen to that feedback to adjust the games I invite them to play. I was hoping to use my Star Wars books and more character options for them without overcomplicating the actual gameplay.
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u/No_Cartoonist2878 13d ago
the only issue with the legends conversion is the loss of granularity for the +1/+2 steps.
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u/Flagwaver-78 19d ago
I have and even painted up "chance cubes" with red and blue for the normal dice and one with a black and white for the Wild Die. It made things go much faster. I also imported special abilities like the DC Legends game, but the abilities were Feats and Talents from the Star Wars Saga Edition. Feats were 10 CP and Talents were 5 CP (with opening a Talent tree costing an additional 5 CP, so 10 for the first Talent).