Saturday, May 08, 2010

Yet Another Retro-clone Idea: 3d6 Fantasy...

Good Afternoon, All:

I have another idea for a retro-variant that keeps bouncing around in my head, which I call "3d6 Fantasy", for lack of a better name. In essence, it combines the Bell Curve Rolls variant rule with Swords & Wizardry: White Box to create a game that runs completely off of d6s. No other dice are necessary. You simply replace the d20 with 3d6 when rolling to resolve a d20-based check. The rest of the White Box variant is very d6-friendly, and it wouldn't take much to rewrite the portions that are not in order to reflect a d6-centric game variant.

Why would I want to do this? I really doubt I would take it beyond the thought stage, to be honest. Why would I think of this? Probably because one of my gamers about four years back came from a strong pro-HERO System gaming background and wanted to roll 3d6 instead of d20 to get rid of the swingy nature of the d20 for attacks and skill checks. We didn't go that route, but the idea got stuck in my head. For some reason, the thought came back earlier this week, and so I'm writing about it here simply to get it out. I'd rather work on and build up MyD20 Lite, as that's the system I'd prefer to play when looking for for a D20-esque experience. Would anyone play "3d6 Fantasy"? Probably not, as leaving behind the d20 would make it not D&D for most people. Still, the game system could be created, and it wouldn't take that much work to do so. It might even be fun for a one-off game sometime, just to see how it plays out, but I doubt I'll even get that far with this idea.

With that being said, if someone out there wants to take this idea and run with it, more power to them. I release the concept of "3d6 Fantasy" to the wild, for whoever desires to take it on as their own pet project. If someone ever does pick this up and go forward with it, I'd love to see a final copy of their work, but that's simply because I'm curious to see where a project like this might go.

Enjoy,
Flynn

1 comment:

Robert said...

Something I’ve long wanted to do is to create a variant of the man-to-man table from Chainmail for a d6 D&D game. I think some of the numbers would need to be tweaked after separating it from the rest of the man-to-man rules. Plus, I’d add some claw/tooth/etc. rows á la classic Traveller.

Like so many of my ideas, though, I never want to do it enough to fit it into my gaming schedule. ^_^