So let me say first, I’m not trying to start a flame war. Not the disclaimer is out of the way. Let’s get to the meat.
OK, first we’ve got Fantasy Flight Games releasing the beta of their Star Wars RPG. And as I tend to do, I hang out with a lot of grognards. I was seeing a lot of folks reminiscing about the old West End Games d6 version of Star Wars. Happy memories were shared and many folks remarked it was the best of the Star Wars RPG’s to date.
Then Eric Gibson of West End Games returns after that little to do a few years ago. This got me thinking and doing a little searching. There just aren’t that many d6 products on Drivethrurpg . I don’t remember any resurgence of the system after it was made OGL.
So what’s the deal? Thoughts, oh wise and wonderful Internet denizens?
Chuck on 
Philo Pharynx on 
I think the d6 game rocks. I have talked fondly of it on my own blog as my favorite system of all time. The popularity of the system may have declined for several reasons. Some gamers just like new games. The play something for awhile and then move on. Perhaps the lack of hard crunch in the way of choice for the players is a deterrent over time. The crash of the d6 system really hit rock bottom after the release of 3rd Edition D&D which allowed players many options for their characters, not just where to put 18 dice. For Star Wars there was a wealth of equipment books and things for Jedi to do but there was good shot and multiple shot for your blaster really (each being achieved by just having high dice in Blaster). I think the simplicity and flexibility of the system brilliant but I am much more about story than PC power. The best game I ever played in was in this system and I have continuously gamed for more than three decades so that is a lot of games. There are some excellent fan resources for the system on the internet. I have a link on my site in the resources area to a fantastic one if you are curious. This is a great question and is going to get me thinking of the good old days.
Actually, I like d6 for what it is. It’s one of the better rules-lite systems out there. My issue is that I’m not much into rules-lite.
And I think that people’s memories of Star Wars are part of the problem. They can’t see the system outside of that context. And if their game had QJLS* issues, then they would probably not consider it for any game iwth powers.
*QJLS = Quadratic Jedi, Linear Scoundrel. Every time a Jedi raised his force skills, he learned a new trick and got better with all of the tricks under that force skill. This geometric expansion makes it hard for any other character to compete at anything a jedi was good at.
D6 is out there, it’s just quite difficult to find things. Is it the big to-do that it used to be? Not hardly. Why? Well, there’s a multitude of reasons. First, WEG made some mistakes after losing the Star Wars license. Bankruptcy, change of owners, changes to the system, and different directions of the game system all contributed to a lapse in people even realizing that West End Games existed, let alone was making material. This let to a major fracturing of the fan base.
At the same time as all of this, Star Wars, the flagship that put D6 on the gaming map, went on to other systems. This fractured the player base. Many who played D6 went on to other Star Wars game systems.
So a combination of the perceived “death” of West End Games, coupled with a major fracturing of the Star Wars D6 gaming community to various other systems, really broke up the momentum of D6.
The “new” WEG released material to carry on D6, but little of it was attached to a likable setting, so more and more people left D6 in search of games that were ready to be played, setting and all. D6, while a good system that was well remembered as the best Star Wars system out there, didn’t hold up well to becoming a generic system. It didn’t work so well with the “D6 System” book, and it didn’t hold on to the fans with 3 D6 core books that were 75% identical to each other.
A valiant, but rather doomed attempt to bring D6 back into the limelight with a good sci-fi setting: Septimus, resulted in an episode that I’m sure WEG would love to forget all about. That episode did a lot to drive away more people from D6. Couple that with the introduction of a multitude of other “simple” game systems (Savage Worlds, for example) and you had people drift further and further from D6.
Then came the OpenD6 episode. Something that held so much promise was handled poorly, and a true opening of the D6 system that should have happened quickly, dragged on for more than two years. That caused more people to jump ship from the D6 system. People originally really hyped and motivated by the announcement of impending open-system were eventually disillusioned with continued delays. When the system was finally, officially released into the OGL, there were precious few left who were even interested in putting out new material for it. I’m one of them. A die hard D6 fan.
So a small trickle of OpenD6 material has been released over the time since D6 became OpenD6. Sadly all of the material is not heavily marketed. It’s difficult to compete with the juggernaughts in the gaming industry when it comes to impressive games. So word of mouth and limited pimping of each person’s own material was all the marketing done. The amount of interest from gamers has been…limited, to say the least. D6/OpenD6 has become a very niche system. Other people like other systems that are quick and easy to run and, most of all, are much better supported and put out a LOT of material for settings. OpenD6 just doesn’t have that sort of support system in place. Also, OpenD6 lets people tweak D6 just a little to fit their setting. So while it’s D6 in system, there are differences compared to the original D6 Star Wars. So some people who are fans of D6 Star Wars check out the OpenD6 material and find aspects they don’t particularly like, so they don’t buy-in and don’t spread the word even more to get more and more people playing the OpenD6 games.
I would LOVE for there to be a resurgence of D6 love. I just don’t know how to get all those people who loved D6 Star Wars to port that love over to an OpenD6 project. A lot of people say that they remembered the good times, but what they don’t say is that they don’t think they could replicate that “good times” with any new OpenD6 material. Hopefully something will come out that ignites peoples attention again.
One reason might be that there are now lots of systems that work in a similar way to d6 (for example Savage Worlds, although it uses bigger dice rather than more dice).
Sorry guys got stuck in the spam filter but good thoughts!
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