The level of success 

I’ve had a discussion recently with fellow lonewolves (thanks, soypunk) with regards to streamlining the game rolls mechanic on Solo WEG Star Wars(SWD6)/OpenD6.

When soloing you have to make a lot of dice rolls. You have to roll for the PCs, for the NPCs, you have to roll for random game events and you have to roll for The Oracle.
I love rolling dice. It helps with immersion and gives me the old roleplaying feeling, but in those cases it can just become tiresome, especially when coupled with the difficulty associated with the SWD6 system.
For every resolution you need to add up the dice rolls and compare it to the add up of the opposed dice rolls or against the target difficulty number.
The target difficulty number can be chosen from a range, which is hard, when trying to be GM and player, or it can be rolled randomly, which in turn leads to more added dice rolls.

So I’ve heard about D6Legends (mocked as D6 for the “mathematically challenged”) and it’s successor MythicD6.
In D6Legends the dice are rolled and each roll of 3,4,5 or 6 counts as one success. No pips are involved so it’s a no-go if I want to use it as-is for my Star Wars play.
In MythicD6 as described in the free QuickStart document, the dice are rolled and each roll of 4,5 or 6 counts as one success. The pips can be used to change the result of one die to a success. Promising.
I playtested it and it was what I wanted. Easy to use, success count assists with narrative and helps with calculating % of work done.
But, there is a problem. When reading through the rpg forum, I’ve stumbled upon a discussion on the odds of success in MythicD6. It seems that the +2 pip gives a higher level of success than a whole die for the same number of successes.

Example: 2D+2 has higher chance for 2 Successes than 3D.

This may be minor and not bother others, but it bothers me, so I went with a homebrew workaround: the pip die.
If you have a pip, roll a different color die.

  • For +1 pip, a roll of 6 is a success
  • For +2 pips, a roll of 5,6 is a success

This seems to fix the issue.

Now to make sure that the odds between the two systems are similar, I compared the minimum difficulty succeeded at odds of 50% between them. Herein lies another problem. The advancement rate for success with this system is at 50% less than the SWD6. To rectify it I will try with D6Legends chances of success, brewed with pips of course.

DieSWD6MythicBrewLegendsBrew
1DVEVEVE
1D+1VEVEVE
1D+2VEVEVE
2DVEVEVE
2D+1EVEE
2D+2EVEE
3DEVEE
3D+1EEE
3D+2MEM
4DMEM
4D+1MEM
4D+2MEM
5DMEM
5D+1DMD
5D+2DMD
6DDMD
6D+1DMD
6D+2VDMVD
7DVDMVD
7D+1VDDVD
7D+2VDDVD
8DVDDVD
8D+1VDDED
8D+2VDDED
9DVDDED
9D+1HVDED
9D+2HVDH

This seems to be aligned with the original D6 system success odds and it’s what I will be using. Extremely difficult will be translated to SWD6 Very difficult which has double the range than other difficulties.

Difficulty Modifiers

SWD6 has a lot of modifiers to skills depending on the situation. These need to be translated to the new system. I had in mind an advantage/disadvantage mechanic in which additional dice are rolled, and you take the lowest or highest of those, discarding the rest.
In the process of streamlining, this has to go as well. Instead, every 5 points advantage grants one success, or disadvantage, removes one success.

So to recap:

  • Roll a number of dice equal to the skill.
  • One different color die is the Wild Die
  • If you have pips, roll an additional different color die, the Pip Die
  • Any roll of >= 3 on regular or wild dice is a success
  • Any roll of 6 on the pips die is a success if pips = 1
  • Any roll of 5 or 6 on the pips die is a success if pips = 2
  • Any roll of 6 on the wild die explodes
  • Any roll of 1 on the first roll of the wild die removes one success
  • Every 5 points of modifiers is translated to an automatic success addition or removal

The next session I will run (part 13 – I know I am a little behind uploading my past sessions to the blog) will be using those rules.