Playing RAW

[Cowboy Hat]

I have found from my experience that the general consensus is that the best edition of Star Wars D6 is 2nd Revised and Expanded. However I've also found that most GM's run the game with house rules - especially when it comes to initiative, reaction skills and the force - and to a lesser extent scaling.

My question is, who plays/has played the game exactly as it's written and what are your experiences of doing it, both for good and bad? (considering the amount that people feel certain aspects require house ruling).

-for the purposes of this question I mean "full change of rules as written" as opposed to a different interpretation of the rules from say another GM's perspective.
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[vong]

I wouldnt say I play any system RAW... Im always modifying things for the better... but for D6 I play mostly RAW.

My general theory of Role Playing is that it follows the Pirates Code "More like guidelines, then actual rules"

That being said, I think the only think I modify is the Initiative, and I only modify it to roll once per combat, instead of every round. this only saves time rolling, then any actual power issue I was trying to resolve.

to cut off my rabmling, I think that D6 did a good job with its ruleset as long as your players arent rules lawyers looking for loopholes.
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[Ankhanu]

I actually prefer 2e over R&E, though some of the revisions were good ones. Like Vong, I pretty much play RAW, though I've mix and matched versions or RAW, and use rules as guidelines rather than hard and fast rules.
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[Cowboy Hat]

thanks for your replies so far.

Although this will derail the question and is probably a little off topic:

In combat, RAW your "side" goes as one rather than alternating between high-low initiative irrespective of side (which is seen in most games).

Apart from the obvious book keeping reduction this has, what other benefits does this have over the more traditional rpg initiative?
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"The Force will be with you. Sometimes."

[ZzaphodD]

I cant remember playing ANY game by the RAW ever...

I 'inherited' Star Wars from an earlier GM which had several house rules that we used (I was a player in that campaign). That was 1st ed SW IIRC.

What comes to mind.

-We have 'move actions' instead of 'move speed'. One action = One move up to move stat. Max 4 actions.

-Force skills do not cost as many MAPs to 'keep up'. This depends on your skill level in Control. Also, '3 skill force powers' counts as 2 actions to activate if you have 5D+ in all three skills.

-Before just recently you had to make one parry action per attack you wanted to parry. Now you only do one parry action, but several opponents get +1D to hit per opponent after the first.

-Im thinking of removing the physical/energy damage types and go back to 1st ed armor values and damage ratings.

Man, I cant play anything by the RAW..

[Ankhanu]

I'll hit the original topic again before making other commentary; generally when I'm first playing a system, I play it by RAW. I'll usually keep this up for several sessions before we really get a feel for how the rules are interacting and where the limitations are... and get a sense of how a rule alteration might interact with the rest of the ruleset.

I've been playing Pathfinder (Paizo publishing) for the past year and a half or so (since the Alpha release), and we've been pretty much playing it RAW version to version (Alpha -> BETA -> Commercial release). All in all, it's been working pretty well.

With d6 Star Wars, it was the first RPG I played... it was also the first RPG for the rest of my gaming group, so some of our deviations from RAW are built upon having been complete newbs when we started... we misinterpreted some of the rules, and some of those misinterpretations just stuck with us after we learned our errors

[mdlake]

I haven't run a game without house rules in decades, when I was young and ignorant and scarcely anything but D&D existed.

As for what else, besides ease of play, that might be gained from a my-side/your-side initiative system...not much. It is easier to employ combination tactics, e.g., player A immobilizes a foe, and B hits the foe with a heavy attack that is unlikely to hit a dodging target. It's correspondingly harder to interrupt enemy combos, and to employ tactics that rely on the enemy exposing or committing himself in some fashion first.

Hm. Also, it's hard to quantify, but taking turns by side makes it easier for me as GM to keep track of what the NPCs are doing, and why.

But hey, don't give streamlined play short shrift. The best system is the one that does what you need it to do with the least intrusion possible. "Easy to use" is so important to RPGs that every game claims to be easy to use, even when it's a bare-faced lie. Most games I've seen go side-by-side for that very reason. That's changing as rules-lite systems become more popular and individual sequencing becomes more manageable, but side-by-side remains the norm.

[atgxtg]

Like Ankhanu, I usually start playing RAW and then houserule after playing the game for a bit. Unless I come across something that is easily identified as an error but which the correct answer is not obvious (like, if the STR stat for Ewoks nad been listed as 40D/44D).

How much house ruling I do depends on how bad things look after playing, and if I need to deal with something new that wasn't in the original rules.