In recognition of GM’s Day, Polgarus Games (along with many other companies) are putting our products on sale. Until March 8 you can buy all Polgarus Games products at 25% off. Head on over to RPGNow/DriveThruRPG to take a look (and remember to say ‘thank you’ to your GM the next time you see them!)

Foremost, I wanted to have a system book that I could work off for Polgarus Games projects, both current and future ones. I’m focusing on one setting at the moment (a sci-fi setting not surprisingly), and I wanted to be able to include the rules with the setting book. So the rules are primarily being developed for that setting.

But since the Legends system is a solid one, I wanted the rules to be available as a stand alone book so that others who liked the system (or found that they liked the system) could use it for running their own games.

My second aim (which ties in making STAR6 stand alone) was to present a game that could be picked up and used straight away. The huge strength of the D6 System is that it is very adaptable to many settings and genres. Unfortunately, to do that it has to provide lots of options. I decided I was going to avoid the toolbox approach, and with STAR6 simply say “this is the system, now go play”.

My third aim is a strange one – I’m not trying to cover everything. There will be some things that initially, STAR6 won’t have rules for. Psionics/magic, better-than-human cybernetics (probably), ship construction (see below) and world building won’t be included. I’m sure there are other areas that I’ve forgotten as well. Why? To be honest, because I don’t need them straight away! The one exception to this is ship construction – I haven’t looked at that yet, so I’m unsure at the moment if it will be in the first release of the rules. And even when it is, it will be a simple system (certainly no where near the level of detail that GURPS Vehicles or Traveller’s Fire, Fusion and Steel were).

But the great thing about STAR6 being OGL is that anyone else can come up with and publish (on the web or via PDF) their own rule additions if they like. Or take STAR6 and mould it to their own preferences. The choice is there.

My final aim is to not just limit myself to D6 Legends as a base – there are a lot of neat ideas in the other D6 rulebooks, and in the OGL in general. If they don’t impact the other aims and add something to the game (IMHO of course), then I see no reason why they can’t be used.

So those are my overall aims. What can I say about system details at this stage?

• It (naturally) uses the usual D6 Legend method of rolling dice – a 1 or 2 is a failure, 3-6 is a success, roll your skill+attribute and try to get as many successes as you can.
• It will have the Wild Die and exploding sixes, but rolling a 1 on the Wild Die isn’t automatically a Critical Failure (nor does it cancel out successes like it can in some D6 versions).
• Fate Points are gone, and Character Points are no longer used to roll more dice (just for improving your character). Replacing this is the chance to Test your Luck, which I’ll talk about in the future.
• There are seven attributes – Strength, Agility, Perception, Knowledge, Presence, Health and Luck.
• For humans, starting attributes will be capped at 4D (other species could have a higher or lower cap of course). At the moment, starting skills (for all races) will be capped at +2D.
• Currently I haven’t included skill specialisations, but I’m going back and forth on this point.
• There are advantages and disadvantages, but keeping to the D6 Legend method (not the new ones added to D6 Adventure/Space/Fantasy).
• Robots as characters will be supported (at this stage).
• Rolling well to attack someone increases how much damage you do to them.

Since everything is still being worked on, a lot of other details at this stage are still up in the air (or I just haven’t thought about adding them to the list yet!) For example, should I use body points or wounds for taking damage? I don’t know – there are pros and cons to both (and also people who love/hate one or the other).

So that’s everything at this stage. If anyone has any questions, I’ll be happy to answer them.

This system works great when characters are starting out, but a common complaint about the game was experienced character could be rolling 10 or more dice – adding up all those d6s could be slow.

In the late 1990s, WEG came up with an alternative system that they called D6 Legend (also known as D6 Prime) that aimed to solve this problem. Instead of totalling up all the dice, you counted how many dice had rolled 3 or higher – the number that had were called ’successes’, and the difficulty of the task determined how many successes you needed to roll. WEG even released their own dice that replaced the numbers on the dice with symbols, to (in theory at least) make it even easier to count the successes.

WEG only ended up using their D6 Legend system in two games – “The Hercules and Xena Roleplaying Game”, and (more popularly) “DC Universe”. Later on WEG returned to concentrating more on the ‘original’ D6 System in their games (by far their best known version due to the popularity of the original Star Wars RPG), and D6 Legends become just a footnote.

But with the D6 System now released under the Open Gaming License, the D6 Legend system can live again. Which is precisely what I plan to do via Polgarus Games.

One of several projects I’m working on is creating a new version of the D6 Legends system that I’m calling STAR6. As the name suggests, it has a sci-fi focus (not surprising, since the first setting I plan to use it for is a sci-fi setting!) I’m attempting to create a version that takes into account many of the comments that people made about the D6 Legends system over the years, while at the same time moulding the system to my own preferences in roleplay games.

The rules for STAR6 will be a free release when they are ready (going through a period of testing before the final version is ready). I hope that with my contribution (and the contribution of many others who are working on their own projects), the D6 Legend system will once again be an easy option that people can consider when hunting for a system to use.

I’ll be detailing the design progress in this diary, so be sure to check back regularly.

I hope that this is the start of a good year for Polgarus Games. We haven’t released any new products for the last few years (for various reasons), but the current plan is to end that drought this year. First up will be a revised edition of The Veggie Patch (a few rules tweaks and layout changes more than anything), with new products in the Space Opera Support line following soon after. If everything goes to plan a larger project will also get solidly underway this year, although when that will be ready for release is anyone’s guess. And while all this is going on I also plan to convert all our existing products over to ePub format, to make it easy for people with eReaders to use our products.

Part of the new site redesign is the addition of a Design Diary to the site. This will talk in more detail about the various products that are underway at Polgarus Games, and also some of the decisions that Polgarus Games may face in the future. It’s something I’ve been meaning to add for a while, and the new site design seemed as good a time as any to add it.

However Eric went one step further – in a huge move of generosity Eric made the currently published books freely available for download. The files were hosted on just the West End Games site, but with their site having server problems over the last few days several sites (including Polgarus Games) have stepped up to mirror the files. All the files are listed on the Downloads page, but are also listed below for convenience:

• The D6 System: The Customizable Roleplaying Game (1996)
• D6 Legend
• D6 Adventure
• D6 Adventure: Locations
• D6 Fantasy
• D6 Fantasy: Creatures
• D6 Fantasy: Locations
• D6 Gamemasters Aid & Screen
• D6 Magic
• D6 Space
• D6 Space: Aliens I
• D6 Space: Ships