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Rimmer
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Joined: 14 Mar 2010
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 Posted: Sat Jan 08, 2011 10:29 pm Post subject: 2nd RE or D6 ? |
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Currently running Second edition RE but have been hearing some good things about D6 Space, should I change over ?
I am assuming its nuch like 2nd RE but what has been changed ? is it better at all ?
Thanks in advance |
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Raven Redstar
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Joined: 10 Mar 2009
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Location: Salem, OR
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| Posted: Sat Jan 08, 2011 10:51 pm Post subject: |
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It's just different.
You do know that the D6 Space book has gone Open Gaming License, so you can download the PDF for free. Try here.
It's meant to be able to fit into whatever sort of universe you're trying to run. So, in a lot of ways, it's more flexible, but whether or not it's more "Star Wars" has yet to be proven. Some aspects you may want to adopt, others are a little too lenient in my opinion. |
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CRMcNeill
Director of Engineering
Joined: 05 Apr 2010
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Location: Redding System, California Sector, on the I-5 Hyperspace Route.
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| Posted: Sun Jan 09, 2011 12:56 am Post subject: |
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| Raven Redstar wrote: | It's just different.
You do know that the D6 Space book has gone Open Gaming License, so you can download the PDF for free. Try here.
It's meant to be able to fit into whatever sort of universe you're trying to run. So, in a lot of ways, it's more flexible, but whether or not it's more "Star Wars" has yet to be proven. Some aspects you may want to adopt, others are a little too lenient in my opinion. |
Just out of curiosity, what does this mean for the rest of WEG's lineup? If their D6 line has gone OGL, does that mean their old Star Wars books can now be downloaded too? |
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Grimace
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Joined: 11 Oct 2004
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| Posted: Sun Jan 09, 2011 2:23 am Post subject: |
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| No. The only aspects that have gone OGL are the D6 Space, D6 Fantasy and D6 Adventure (plus the supplements associated with them). This does not make the Star Wars books OGL by any means. |
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CRMcNeill
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Location: Redding System, California Sector, on the I-5 Hyperspace Route.
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| Posted: Sun Jan 09, 2011 2:57 am Post subject: |
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| Grimace wrote: | | No. The only aspects that have gone OGL are the D6 Space, D6 Fantasy and D6 Adventure (plus the supplements associated with them). This does not make the Star Wars books OGL by any means. |
So, just to clarify, WEG is practically out of existence. All of their existing intellectual property is being sold off to other companies, and they lost the license to SW-RPG going on a decade ago. The only place that you can purchase WEG books is used, from the internet or from the occasional local book store. I very much doubt Lucasfilm collects royalties on the sales of used books. But I still can't make them available for free on the internet or download them legally? It's a good thing I find amusement in absurdity. |
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Grimace
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| Posted: Sun Jan 09, 2011 1:55 pm Post subject: |
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And just so you're aware, if wouldn't be WEG going after you for putting Star Wars D6 books on the internet for free. It would be LFL since it's their Star Wars intellectual property that they still own that you're spreading around for people. Would LFL go after you? I guess it depends on how serious their copyright lawyers are at the time.
A copyright is a copyright. Just because a game company isn't putting out material doesn't mean the copyright is any less valid. Yes, they have a duty to defend their copyright, but you also have the expectation of abiding by the law of that copyright.
Call it absurd, call it what you want. This very issue came up a couple few years ago on this very site and all such links to the books were removed. The compilation books seem to be tolerable, but just putting the books available for anyone will likely raise the ire of many people on THIS site as well as gain the attention of LFL. The choice is yours on what you want to do, but since you asked the question I was providing the clarification. Just because it doesn't fit with what you wanted doesn't make it any less valid. |
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Azai
Lieutenant Commander
Joined: 05 Jul 2010
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| Posted: Sun Jan 09, 2011 2:04 pm Post subject: |
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One thing I am curious about is the use of other fantasy or sci-fi settings and adopting them into a D6 system.
An example is a few people have put together Mass Effect D6 role-playing, a video game from Bioware. They have hosted and released a pdf of all their work, but it is all free.
So obviously Lucasarts owns star wars, and anything related to -offical- WEG D6 is still theirs. But if one wanted to just use the D6 system to create pourly fan-made versions of their favorite shows, games, or movies that is in the clear. Or so at least from my understanding. |
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Raven Redstar
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| Posted: Sun Jan 09, 2011 5:02 pm Post subject: |
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Only some of the supplements associated with D6 FAN/SPA/ADV have gone open. Things like Blood Shadows and some of the other settings books are not.
| Quote: | | Call it absurd, call it what you want. This very issue came up a couple few years ago on this very site and all such links to the books were removed. The compilation books seem to be tolerable, but just putting the books available for anyone will likely raise the ire of many people on THIS site as well as gain the attention of LFL. The choice is yours on what you want to do, but since you asked the question I was providing the clarification. Just because it doesn't fit with what you wanted doesn't make it any less valid. |
I'm absolutely 100% in agreement with Grimace on this, we don't want anyone coming around and shutting the site down because of a few people who are downloading copyright materials.
I personally have been considering merging the advantages and disadvantages part of the D6 system into Star Wars.
So people who take social flaws or whatever can have a few extra starting skill dice. Players who give themselves enemies or debt or whatever else can also say, get a piece of equipment, say, a ship? A suit of military grade armor? As long as appropriate flaws are taken into account as well their starting skills won't necessarily be impacted too badly.
I've been trying to figure out exactly how it would work for R1-R4 of equipment. Probably vehicles and space transports would would be in the R3-R4 range depending on value. These all of course are subject to approval of course. |
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cheshire
Arbiter-General (Moderator)
Joined: 04 Jan 2004
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| Posted: Sun Jan 09, 2011 5:36 pm Post subject: Re: 2nd RE or D6 ? |
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| Rimmer wrote: | Currently running Second edition RE but have been hearing some good things about D6 Space, should I change over ?
I am assuming its nuch like 2nd RE but what has been changed ? is it better at all ?
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From whom have you been hearing good things about D6 Space? The system is very similar to the R&E, though there are a number of things that I'm not entirely thrilled about. Namely, the special abilities are replaced by racial constructs as advantages and disadvantages, the rules verbiage favors a "critical failure" presentation of the 1 on the Wild Die, and a starship design in the core rulebook wasn't very intuitive when I was doing my read-through. Also, the pricing system is just crazy. Whether you can buy something or not is dependent on a die roll, rather than an actual accumulation of wealth in any sort of concrete manner.
These are all things that can be patched, but the patches wind up looking more like what came out of the R&E than anything.
The scale modifiers are pretty decent, the calculation of strength damage makes more intuitive sense to me, and suggestion as to how to do double-edged melee weapons makes sense to me. All in all, I'm not sad that I bought the book, but you'll find me using the R&E to do Star Wars.
I've used a modification of the D6 Fantasy for... well... a fantasy setting, and it worked out well. The spell system was wonky so I tossed it for one of my own construction, the NPCs use advantages and disadvantages, and for some reason a domestic cat found its way into a "Fantasy Creatures" book, but it's not a fantasy system.
| Azai wrote: |
So obviously Lucasarts owns star wars, and anything related to -offical- WEG D6 is still theirs. But if one wanted to just use the D6 system to create pourly fan-made versions of their favorite shows, games, or movies that is in the clear. Or so at least from my understanding. |
That's acceptable under the OGL, though you have to be careful about publishing the material. There are two reasons why you cannot distribute official WEG books. 1) the copyright holder is still WEG for those books. Just because they're functionally out of business does not mean that you can distribute them. Eric Gibson could, within his legal rights, hunt down every one of the distributors of the books and either sue them, or see what options are open for turning them over for criminal liability. Whether you think the law is nuts or not, the law is the law. I like Mark Twain's quotes on the matter:
| Quote: | Whenever a copyright law is to be made or altered, then the idiots assemble.
Only one thing is impossible for God: to find any sense in any copyright law on the planet. |
2) Anything that is Star Wars or even likely to be a creative derivative of Star Wars is open to scrutiny of the watchful eye of LFL. Sometimes they are very open with their intellectual property. They have no problem with people creating and distributing fan fic (so long as they're not making money), but they shut down the guy who made a free website that allowed you to make your own Star Wars opening crawl. (Granted, they offered the same service on their own website a year later, but that's beside the point.) Someone created d20 character generating software and they got served a C&D, but a few people have created D6 software and they don't take any notice.
The point is, they own Star Wars. They COULD tell us to stop making fan conversions. (For that matter, WotC could have as well, since SWRPG was their license, and no one else has the right to create even fan-made materials.) They either don't know about what we do, or don't care. But if they do come to know and do care, then we won't be able to produce any more fan material.
The same goes with any other intellectual property owner. If you're making a fan-based RPG based off of 24, CSI, Disney's Tangled, or whatever, you're fine doing so, so long as the property owners don't care. If you want to sell the RPG, you really do need to get the IP holder's permission. However, once you do so, you're fine using the Open D6. If you want to create your own non-property-based RPG, you're fine using the Open version of D6 (which does differ slightly from the R&E). In fact, a few people are doing so.
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Before we take any of this too seriously, just remember that in the middle episode a little rubber puppet moves a spaceship with his mind. |
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garhkal
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Joined: 17 Jul 2005
Posts: 14138
Location: Reynoldsburg, Columbus, Ohio.
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| Posted: Sun Jan 09, 2011 7:38 pm Post subject: |
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| crmcneill wrote: | | Grimace wrote: | | No. The only aspects that have gone OGL are the D6 Space, D6 Fantasy and D6 Adventure (plus the supplements associated with them). This does not make the Star Wars books OGL by any means. |
So, just to clarify, WEG is practically out of existence. All of their existing intellectual property is being sold off to other companies, and they lost the license to SW-RPG going on a decade ago. The only place that you can purchase WEG books is used, from the internet or from the occasional local book store. I very much doubt Lucasfilm collects royalties on the sales of used books. But I still can't make them available for free on the internet or download them legally? It's a good thing I find amusement in absurdity. |
C... Take a look at the sites that got shutdown last year for having PDFs of the various adnd 1st edition books/2nd edition books..
Wizards did it as they hold the copyright for adnd..
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CRMcNeill
Director of Engineering
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Location: Redding System, California Sector, on the I-5 Hyperspace Route.
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| Posted: Sun Jan 09, 2011 8:08 pm Post subject: |
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| garhkal wrote: | C... Take a look at the sites that got shutdown last year for having PDFs of the various adnd 1st edition books/2nd edition books..
Wizards did it as they hold the copyright for adnd.. |
Trust me, folks, I was well acquainted with this argument long before I showed up here, and I know arguing about it here will change nothing. As I said before, I just find amusement in absurdity. |
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CRMcNeill
Director of Engineering
Joined: 05 Apr 2010
Posts: 16265
Location: Redding System, California Sector, on the I-5 Hyperspace Route.
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| Posted: Sun Jan 09, 2011 8:36 pm Post subject: |
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| Raven Redstar wrote: | I personally have been considering merging the advantages and disadvantages part of the D6 system into Star Wars.
So people who take social flaws or whatever can have a few extra starting skill dice. Players who give themselves enemies or debt or whatever else can also say, get a piece of equipment, say, a ship? A suit of military grade armor? As long as appropriate flaws are taken into account as well their starting skills won't necessarily be impacted too badly.
I've been trying to figure out exactly how it would work for R1-R4 of equipment. Probably vehicles and space transports would would be in the R3-R4 range depending on value. These all of course are subject to approval of course. |
I agree. WEG did this unofficially in some stats, like on the Smuggler Template, where the character is given a stock light freighter and a sizeable debt as part of their starting equipment. I've seen a lot of homebrew advantage/disadvantage systems over the years, and the WEG D6 version is easily the most comprehensive one I've come across.
I particularly liked how they made the Force Sensitive equivalent in D6 a stat instead of a simple yes/no. Even before the prequels came out, there was mention in the official material of some Force users being stronger or weaker than others, and having that as a dice rating reflects SWU reality far better. I'd say a good standard would be 1D-2D range for "normal" force sensitives, the 3D-4D range for prodigies like Yoda, and then 5D or higher for anomalies like Anakin or Luke.
This has bearing on another useful potential rule. I never really liked the rule linking cybernetics to DSPs, and there is evidence in the canon to suggest that the actual effect of cybernetics is to reduce a Force Sensitive's connection to the Force. With Force sensitivity as a D rating, it would be possible to apply penalties to a character's Force sensitivity depending on the degree to which they were "cyborged out." I would suspect that a near full-body replacement like Anakin on a "normal Force sensitive might wipe out their sensitivity completely, but an anomaly like Anakin would have so much Force potential that even the replacement of all four limbs plus whatever implants were put into his torso merely diminished it to "normal" levels. |
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Random Numbers
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Joined: 12 Jan 2010
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| Posted: Sun Jan 09, 2011 9:12 pm Post subject: |
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| crmcneill wrote: |
I particularly liked how they made the Force Sensitive equivalent in D6 a stat instead of a simple yes/no. Even before the prequels came out, there was mention in the official material of some Force users being stronger or weaker than others, and having that as a dice rating reflects SWU reality far better. I'd say a good standard would be 1D-2D range for "normal" force sensitives, the 3D-4D range for prodigies like Yoda, and then 5D or higher for anomalies like Anakin or Luke.
This has bearing on another useful potential rule. I never really liked the rule linking cybernetics to DSPs, and there is evidence in the canon to suggest that the actual effect of cybernetics is to reduce a Force Sensitive's connection to the Force. With Force sensitivity as a D rating, it would be possible to apply penalties to a character's Force sensitivity depending on the degree to which they were "cyborged out." I would suspect that a near full-body replacement like Anakin on a "normal Force sensitive might wipe out their sensitivity completely, but an anomaly like Anakin would have so much Force potential that even the replacement of all four limbs plus whatever implants were put into his torso merely diminished it to "normal" levels. |
How would the "Force Sensitive" stat apply to the Force Skills in 2e?
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CRMcNeill
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| Posted: Sun Jan 09, 2011 11:42 pm Post subject: |
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| Random Numbers wrote: | | How would the "Force Sensitive" stat apply to the Force Skills in 2e? |
It gives you a Force rating in dice, as an attribute, that you build your skills on top of, like normal skills. It would be more indicative of how things are in the films, that some beings are more sensitive than others, rather than the WEG rules, where you either are or you aren't. |
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Rimmer
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| Posted: Mon Jan 10, 2011 2:32 am Post subject: |
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| The main things I was interested in is the Scale rules and the Metaphysics rules, especially around the (using SW terminolgy here) "Force" now being n Attribute, and Control, Sense, Alter being skills under this. |
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