Lacking Natural Simplicity

Random musings on books, code, and tabletop games.

D6 System: The Universal Standard and Standard Difficulties

When I'm preparing for a session using any of the D6 System RPGs (Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game, OpenD6, Mini Six (MS1, MS2) or any of the many others) I like to use the following two charts to set the difficulties for tasks.

The Universal Standard

Die Code

Average Roll

Description

1D

3.5

Below Human average for an attribute.

2D

7.0

Human average for an attribute and many skills.

3D

10.5

Average level of training for a Human.

4D

14.0

Professional level of training for a Human.

5D

17.5

Above average expertise.

6D

21.0

Considered about the best in a city or geographic area. 1 in 100,000 people will have training to this skill level.

7D

24.5

Among the best on the continent. About 1 in 10,000,000 people will have training to this skill level.

8D

28.0

Among the best on a planet. About 1 in 100,000,000 people will have training to this skill level.

9D

31.5

One of the best of several systems in the immediate area. About 1 in a billion people have a skill at this level.

10D

35.0

One of the best in a sector.

11D

38.5

12D

42.0

One of the best in a region.

13D

45.5

14D+

49.0

Among the best in the galaxy.

Note: The wild die adds 0.7 to the average result.

Standard Difficulties

Difficulty

Target #

Description

Very Easy

2−5

Nearly everyone can do it. These checks should only be made if a success is critical to the scenario at hand.

Easy

6−10

Player characters will seldom have trouble with these tasks, but an untrained individual may find them challenging.

Moderate

11−15

Average Characters have a reasonable chance of failing at this level. Consistent success often requires training in the skill or a high level of natural ability.

Difficult

16−20

Tasks at this level are truly challenging. To succeed, a character needs to be well skilled or very lucky.

Very Difficult

21−30

Challenges of this level fall into the domain of masters in the skill being used; few others will succeed at them.

Heroic

31+

These challenges are almost impossible. Only the very lucky or true masters can consistently succeed at them.

Here is a PDF with a nicely formatted version of these tables (5½×8½ inches, suitable for adding to a booklet, or printing two up on on 8½x11 inch Letter paper) , and the ConTeXt source. You can always look at the ReStructuredText source of this page if you want the table in ReStructuredText format - there should be link named "Source" at the beginning of this post if you are visiting the article page (not the index page for the whole blog) what will let you download it.

Mini Six Odds of Hitting a Target Number

I couldn't find anywhere on the net showing the percentage chance of hitting a target number using the Mini Six Wild Die, which just explodes on a 6, unlike the OpenD6 Wild Die, which explodes on a 6, but if a 1 is rolled on the initial roll it instead either removes the highest die rolled or causes a complication, depending on what the GM wants.

I much prefer the Mini Six Wild Die.

So I went off to Anydice.com and came up with the following code:

output [explode d6] named "1M"
loop N over {1..11} {
  X: N+1
  output [explode d6] + Nd6 named "[X]M"
}

If you enter this manually instead of following the “code” link above, remember to click “At Least” to get the right results!

These are labeled “1M”, “2M”, etc., instead of “1D”, “2D”, etc., to emphasize these are Mini Six wild dice probabilities.

Anydice defaults to only exploding twice, BTW. You can change that by adding set "explode depth" to 5 at the beginning of the above code.

(I later found the “Export” view, so I've updated the spreadsheet using that data.)

The Mini Six Wild Die explodes on a 6; unlike the OpenD6 Wild Die a 1 is NOT special.

The blank cells at Target Numbers 6 and 12 are because you can’t roll a 6 or a 12, since those explode again. Not sure why 18 isn’t blank, but if you set “explode depth” to 5 it is blank, along with 24 and 30, but then 36 isn't blank.

The multiple 100s from 6D onward are, after the first, not actually 100s, but 99.x where x is small enough it rounds up to 100.00 when shown with two digits of precision.

The 0.00s that appear from 6D onwards are not 0.00, but numbers so small that they appear as 0.00 when expressed with two digits of precision.

11D and 12D actually extend down several more rows, but to fit everything on one page and since they only show up as 0.00 I’ve omitted that data. (It is in the raw data from Anydice, below.)

Mini Six Odds of Hitting a Target Number

1D

2D

3D

4D

5D

6D

7D

8D

9D

10D

11D

12D

1

100.00

2

83.33

100.00

3

66.67

97.22

100.00

4

50.00

91.67

99.54

100.00

5

33.33

83.33

98.15

99.92

100.00

6

72.22

95.37

99.61

99.99

100.00

7

16.67

58.33

90.74

98.84

99.92

100.00

100.00

8

13.89

44.44

83.80

97.30

99.73

99.98

100.00

100.00

9

11.11

32.87

74.54

94.60

99.28

99.94

100.00

100.00

100.00

10

8.33

23.61

63.81

90.35

98.38

99.82

99.99

100.00

100.00

100.00

11

5.56

16.67

52.47

84.40

96.77

99.55

99.96

100.00

100.00

100.00

100.00

12

12.04

41.36

76.79

94.19

99.01

99.88

99.99

100.00

100.00

100.00

100.00

13

2.78

9.72

31.33

67.79

90.38

98.04

99.72

99.97

100.00

100.00

100.00

100.00

14

2.31

7.41

23.23

57.88

85.20

96.45

99.39

99.92

99.99

100.00

100.00

100.00

15

1.85

5.48

17.05

47.79

78.64

94.03

98.80

99.82

99.98

100.00

100.00

100.00

16

1.39

3.94

12.49

38.21

70.83

90.59

97.82

99.62

99.95

100.00

100.00

100.00

17

0.93

2.78

9.21

29.65

62.14

86.00

96.28

99.26

99.89

99.99

100.00

100.00

18

0.46

2.01

6.89

22.44

53.02

80.23

94.02

98.65

99.77

99.97

100.00

100.00

19

1.62

5.22

16.70

43.96

73.37

90.89

97.67

99.54

99.93

99.99

100.00

20

1.16

3.87

12.35

35.45

65.63

86.78

96.20

99.16

99.85

99.98

100.00

21

0.77

2.83

9.12

27.86

57.34

81.64

94.10

98.54

99.71

99.96

99.99

22

0.46

2.04

6.75

21.41

48.88

75.53

91.24

97.58

99.47

99.91

99.99

23

0.23

1.47

5.01

16.17

40.64

68.57

87.52

96.19

99.08

99.82

99.97

24

0.08

1.04

3.72

12.06

32.98

61.01

82.91

94.23

98.46

99.67

99.94

25

0.72

2.75

8.94

26.15

53.14

77.41

91.61

97.54

99.42

99.89

26

0.45

2.00

6.62

20.31

45.27

71.11

88.23

96.22

99.02

99.79

27

0.26

1.43

4.89

15.51

37.72

64.19

84.05

94.40

98.41

99.63

28

0.13

1.00

3.61

11.68

30.74

56.87

79.06

91.98

97.53

99.38

29

0.05

0.68

2.65

8.71

24.55

49.41

73.34

88.89

96.28

98.98

30

0.01

0.44

1.93

6.46

19.22

42.07

66.98

85.09

94.58

98.39

31

0.27

1.38

4.77

14.81

35.11

60.18

80.55

92.35

97.54

32

0.15

0.97

3.51

11.24

28.72

53.13

75.31

89.52

96.36

33

0.08

0.66

2.57

8.44

23.05

46.06

69.46

86.04

94.78

34

0.03

0.44

1.87

6.29

18.17

39.20

63.13

81.88

92.72

35

0.01

0.27

1.34

4.65

14.09

32.75

56.48

77.07

90.11

36

0.00

0.16

0.94

3.42

10.78

26.87

49.72

71.67

86.91

37

0.09

0.65

2.50

8.14

21.65

43.03

65.77

83.09

38

0.05

0.43

1.81

6.09

17.16

36.61

59.52

78.66

39

0.02

0.28

1.30

4.52

13.39

30.62

53.07

73.66

40

0.01

0.17

0.92

3.33

10.30

25.17

46.60

68.16

41

0.00

0.10

0.63

2.43

7.82

20.35

40.27

62.28

42

0.00

0.05

0.43

1.76

5.88

16.20

34.25

56.15

43

0.03

0.28

1.26

4.38

12.70

28.66

49.91

44

0.01

0.18

0.89

3.23

9.82

23.61

43.73

45

0.01

0.11

0.62

2.37

7.50

19.14

37.74

46

0.00

0.06

0.42

1.72

5.66

15.29

32.09

47

0.00

0.03

0.28

1.23

4.23

12.04

26.87

48

0.00

0.02

0.18

0.88

3.14

9.35

22.16

49

0.01

0.11

0.61

2.30

7.18

18.02

50

0.00

0.07

0.42

1.67

5.44

14.43

51

0.00

0.04

0.28

1.20

4.08

11.41

52

0.00

0.02

0.18

0.86

3.03

8.90

53

0.00

0.01

0.12

0.60

2.23

6.85

54

0.00

0.00

0.07

0.41

1.63

5.22

55

0.00

0.04

0.28

1.18

3.93

56

0.00

0.02

0.19

0.84

2.93

57

0.00

0.01

0.12

0.59

2.17

58

0.00

0.01

0.08

0.41

1.58

59

0.00

0.00

0.05

0.28

1.15

60

0.00

0.00

0.03

0.19

0.82

61

0.00

0.02

0.12

0.58

62

0.00

0.01

0.08

0.40

63

0.00

0.00

0.05

0.28

64

0.00

0.00

0.03

0.19

65

0.00

0.00

0.02

0.12

66

0.00

0.00

0.01

0.08

67

0.00

0.01

0.05

68

0.00

0.00

0.03

69

0.00

0.00

0.02

70

0.00

0.00

0.01

71

0.00

0.00

0.01

72

0.00

0.00

0.00

Here's the Open Office spreadsheet, here's the PDF, and here's the raw data from Anydice in CSV format. You can always look at the ReStructuredText source of this page if you want the table in ReStructuredText format — there should be link named "Source" at the beginning of this post if you are visiting the article page (not the index page for the whole blog) what will let you download it.

Perhaps more immediately understandable is this screenshot of the the results in graph mode:

/images/mini-six-odds-of-hitting-a-target-number.png

(Right-clicking the image might give you the option to open the image in a new tab, where you'll see it at full size.)

Last edited: 2022-05-30 11:56:09 EDT

MIME and Gmail vs other mailers

I composed a carefully constructed MIME message using Mew, which has a nice way to build MIME messages, but Gmail doesn’t know that if you have a multipart MIME message that has a text part, then an image, then a text part, then an image, then a text part then what you want is for the image parts to be displayed inline. In messages like that composed in Gmail, it uses the content type of multipart/related, which then encloses a multipart/alternative, which has a plain text version of the message and an HTML version, which refers to the images with an img tag that has an id that refers to the id in a Content-ID MIME header in following parts of the multipart-related MIME part that is the main body of the email.

I don’t know why Gmail doesn’t display the simpler multipart/mixed messages correctly.

It is very annoying. I don’t mind them using the multipart/related (which I didn’t even know about before looking at one of their messages using wl-summary-reedit in Wanderlust, which pulls it up in the mime-edit-mode MIME composition mode [1], which revealed all the details), but I wish they’d get the simpler multipart/mixed version right. Instead, they don’t display the inline attachments (regardless of whether they are images or text) and put them all at the end of the display as attachments, and display the other text parts smushed together.

Interestingly, if a text part it has a Content-Type: Text/Plain MIME header field it is displayed inline in Gmail, unless it has a

Content-Disposition: inline; filename="JRandomFilename.txt"

MIME header field, and then it doesn’t display it inline, unlike all the other mail readers I tried: Wanderlust, Mew, Alpine, Thunderbird (had to have a pure GUI client for comparison), and mutt.

Interestingly, Wanderlust displays Gmail’s multipart/related messages correctly, which impressed me.

I originally I thought that Mew did not display the multipart/related message correctly, punting to just displaying original MIME-encoded text instead, and not displaying the image parts.

I was wrong about that; I was just confused by its presentation. First it displays the text version of the enclosed multipart/alternative, which is what made me think it didn’t display the image parts; it just hasn't yet! Then if I hit space, it displays the first of the images, and then if I hit space it displays the second of the images.

And you can make Mew display the HTML part, but it doesn’t know how the <img id=“foo”> elements work, so it doesn’t display the images.

I was pleased to see that the Wanderlust (WGH) and Mew (MGH) github repositories both have recent commits.

And Wanderlust and Mew are both in MELPA these days, although Mew’s MELPA package doesn’t include the command line program, incm, that is used to pull emails from /var/mail into MH style files under ~/Mail. Wanderlust and Mew both use MH style files under ~/Mail as their local message store. MH puts subdirectories there for folders, and in each folder the messages are named with integers that correspond to the order in which they were incorporated from whatever mail source you were using (historically /var/mail). MH used command line programs to incorporate mail, list mail messages, display mail messages, and file it into folders. I rather liked it. I used nmh (the New MH, a new implementation of the original Rand MH commands, which ran on newer Unixes) and GNU mailutils (which provided MH-compatible command line programs, if not configured out), sometimes during the same period of time, for a considerable time. At one time, when I was getting mail at a server I had online, I was using nmh, GNU mailutils, Emacs’s built-in interface to MH (MH-E), Wanderlust, and Mew. (Before that I used ViewMail, and before that I used RMAIL) They each had features the other lacked.

I tried using Unison to sync that mail between my server online and my computer at home, but that did not work well, since MH commands change the names of files when they move them from one folder to another (remember, each message in a folder gets a name that is an integer based on the order in which it was incorporated in that folder, and its folder command provided an option, -pack, that renamed all the messages in a folder sequentially, used after you’d deleted messages) so you couldn’t keep track if the message named 32 in one folder on one machine was a new one or just renamed from 976 when you ran folder -pack last. Syncing with Unison just did not work at all. Hmm. I could have changed the Path option in my .mh-profile` file on each machine, so that instead of all the MH mail being under ~/Mail on both machines, on my home machine it could have been under ~/Mail-home and on tkb.mpl.com it could have been under ~/Mail-onlineserver, and then I could have used rsync to copy those from one machine to the other appropriately so I’d have a backup. Huh. Wish I’d figured that out back in the day. Of course, to read email in ~/Mail-home on my online server I’d have had to changed the Path option in my ~/.mh_profile on that machine, and then changed it back when I wanted to use ~/Mail-onlineserver. It would have worked, however.

Completion made me go look at the MIME messages I was testing in MH-E. In the multipart/mixed message MH-E does not show the PNG files inline, though emacs has the capability to do that now. It does have keybindings to open an external viewer for you. If you specify the macOS command open it will open it in whatever app is the default for macOS; in the case of PNGs that is Preview.

I do most of my email reading and sending in Gmail these days, alas. I still use Wanderlust and Mew occasionally, since they support IMAP very well. Now if only Google didn't make it harder to use them: Gmail declares IMAP-over-SSL is a “less secure” application, and turns IMAP access off if you don't use it regularly.

Cobol and Fortran

I know Cobol, and have written it for work, but not for a long time, maybe 30 years? No, I lie, I did some a decade or two ago. It was not my favorite programming language, but knowing it helped pay the bills. At my college in the mid-80s it was taught by the Business department rather than the Computer Science department!

One of my Cobol jobs was porting code from the IBM mainframes to VMS on a Digital Equipment Corporation mini-computer, the VAX. A more recent one was fixing bugs and making enhancements to some student management software at a nearby college.

What little Fortran I've written was in the ratfor (Rational Fortran) dialect, on VMS, using the Software Tools package written at Lawrence Berkeley Labs, which ported a lot of Unix tools to VMS (and IBM mainframes) using ratfor (a dialect that was first invented on Unix to add modern control structures to Fortran 66, and implemented as a preprocessor).

One of my favorite programming books is Software Tools by Brian Kernighan and P.J. Plauger (I first read the Software Tools in Pascal version), which showed how to write Unix like tools in Ratfor (because at the time Fortran was more portable than C!). It was the inspiration for the LBL Software tools package. I wish I still had the LBL Software Tools on the VAX I maintain (running on a software emulator on Intel hardware, at much faster speeds than the original VAX), but it was deleted to save space long ago in an era of expensive hard drives, a decision I've long regretted! I can find the source online, but I can't find a binary distribution, and that VAX doesn't have a Fortran compiler anymore, alas.

EPUB files, Markup Languages, and briefly Unix

What follows is a lightly edited version (for clarity and relevance) of the postscripts from an email that I recently wrote, transferred here for posterity and the general good.


Danger! Danger Will Robinson! Danger! The postscripts and footnotes are much longer than the main body of the reply! And the footnotes are longer than the text of the postscripts!

P.S. H., P. (and H. M., if you are interested, though I admit this combines some of my more geeky interests and thus may be of less interest to all of you, or for Howard and Paul, for that matter):

I actually figured out how to make ebooks (to a limited degree) because I wanted to try an ebook I made of an RPG adventure I wrote for a currently on hiatus[0] fantasy Savage Worlds roleplaying game campaign for my daughter Lily and my niece and nephews (N1). I originally wrote the adventure[1] in three typesetting systems which use markup languages, LaTeX, ConTeXt, and troff[2] (which I usually use in its guise as GNU groff, but this time I used Heirloom troff, part of the Heirloom Documentation Tools, for its easy access to modern fonts) to compare the markup languages and their PDF output to decide which one I prefered to use. Later I converted it to ReStructuredText, a lightweight markup language[3] that I use, to compare it to the other markup languages.

I have used ReStructuredText on and off for many years, but the main drawbacks to it was that (1) the output produced by its original docutils implementation was excessively stark and difficult to customize to have a nicer appearance, and (2) its workflow was somewhat difficult,[4] Some time ago I discovered Pandoc, a “universal document converter” which can read many input sources, including ReStructuredText, and produce output in many output formats, including PDF (via LaTeX, ConTeXt, or troff; in ways easier to customize the appearance of) and HTML, and, as it turns and importantly to this story, EPUB, the most common format for ebooks! I started using Pandoc because it made it easier to generate PDF from ReStructuredText with one command (since Pandoc runs all the intermediate steps and cleans up any temporary files needed). It turned out that the abilities to read multiple input formats and to more easily customize the output was important to me as well.

So, having converted the adventure over to ReStructuredTexT for comparison[5] and at first using PDF through Pandoc's troff -ms output, I soon decided to take a look at Pandoc's other output formats. I started with LaTeX and ConTeXt, and decided that the PDF output via LaTeX was not of much interest to me, but the PDF output via ConTeXt offered greater control over the appearance of the final PDF output and the opportunity of adding via writing Lua filters some features to the resulting documents that lightweight markup languages normally don't offer, such as indexes and cross references that are both hyperlinks and include page numbers and section names in the PDF output, which are features that I didn't need in the adventure document, but which I expect to need in future documents.

But back to the important point, Pandoc can produce EBUB output for ebooks! Since I already had the adventure in ReStructuredText, and Pandoc produces EPUB, and I have an ebook reader, a Kindle, it just makes sense to figure out how to get it onto my Kindle! First I used Pandoc to generate the EPUB. That required figuring out how to generate a reasonably attractive cover. Then wrote a small config file for Pandoc. Then I generated the EPUB output. Then I figured out how to convert that over to MOBI, one of the formats that the Kindle can use.[6] Then I mailed it to my Kindle's email, and it looked reasonably good![7]

I hope you've enjoyed this twisty maze of passages, all different!

And with a Zork reference I really must end this email!

P.P.S. Omitted for irrelevance.

P.P.P.S. Sorry, no deeply nested parenthetical expressions this time!


Here's an addendum with two Apple Messenger messages to P., reflecting on converting this from an HTML email into a blog post:

The HTML dialect Google uses in its MIME emails is very odd. It doesn’t use <p> elements, using instead <div> elements. Unfortunately, pandoc converts those into containers, and nests them according to the nesting of the <div> elements. To fix this I hand edited the HTML to remove the outer <div> elements and convert the remaining ones into <p>s. Also, for some reason when I ran the documents through HTML tidy it converted the unicode characters into incorrect HTML character entities. I see now that it has a -utf8 switch, which I’ll have to remember for the next time I do this. (There will inevitably be a next time.)

OMG, now I have have to put that in the blog post! How many saving throws am I going to fail today anyway?

Last edited: 2021-07-17 00:53:29 EDT

Worlds of Wonder from Chaosium

I just got my Worlds of Wonder box set from Noble Knight. It was published by Chaosium in 1982, and consists of 4 pamphlets — Basic Role-Playing, Magic World, Super World, and Future World, each under 20 pages — and some supporting game aids. It was very interesting to see Chaosium's house system be stripped down so much in Basic Role-Playing, and then built up again slightly in each of the genre specific pamphlets. There are some interesting design decisions there. I'm not sure that all of those same decisions were exactly included in the Big Gold Book version of Chaosium's Basic Roleplaying book published in 2010, which collected rules from most of Chaosium's games into one generic roleplaying game. I'll have to compare them to see. I should also compare it to the BRP Quickstart. I do have Chaosium's 2002 publication of the Basic Roleplaying pamphlet. It was better typeset but was otherwise functionally identical to the pamphlet from Worlds of Wonder.

I'd love to see a PDF version of Worlds of Wonder, even if it was just a scanned version. Even better if it was release as an SRD, like their BRP SRD.

Advanced Fighting Fantasy Renaissance and Troika! and Warlock!

With the release of Advanced Fighting Fantasy, second edition, by Arion Games (website, DriveThruRPG) in 2011 it seemed a renaissance for Advanced Fighting Fantasy had arrived. This has been born out by Arion Games releasing one or more books for AFF2E every year since then except 2015, and by their release of bunches more small products in PDF since then. And most (if not all) of their larger AFF2E products are available in POD at DriveThruRPG now, as well as in PDF. They also have a science fiction game that uses the AFF2E rules, Stellar Adventures, which is good and has several supplements.

I have enjoyed all the the AFF2E products and playing AFF and have just gotten two more, Creatures of Mishna and The Warlock Returns Issue #01, both of which look very good to my cursory glance.

And I also just got Troika! Numinous Edition science fantasy RPG from the Melsonian Arts Council and oh does it look pretty, both from a graphical design standpoint and a rules design standpoint! It has a website devoted to it. It was apparently released in 2019 (though the book says the copyright is 2015–2018), and I really wish I had gotten it earlier. It uses rules obviously inspired by AFF with Skill, Stamina, Luck, and Advanced Skills (similar to AFF's Special Skills), and has a neat and quirky random “backgrounds” system for character creation that provides you with Skills, Possessions, and other Special benefits. (One of the backgrounds has a “Small but vicious dog”, in a neat nod to Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay.) I've read it except for the backgrounds, which I've skimmed, and the bestiary. It is an excellent rules light RPG. My one criticism so far is that there doesn't seem to be a table or index of all the backgrounds, so it is hard to find a specific background if you want to read a particular one, as once rules example in the book requires to understand completely. There is a free version as well, and it contains a license allowing you to publish free or commercial material based on or compatible with with Troika!.

I also got Fronds of Benevolence, which looks good too, on a more cursory glace. I'm probably going to have to look for more Troika! products, too; I've seen that there are more out there.

Getting Troika! vaguely reminded me that there was another new RPG broadly inspired by AFF. Investigating revealed Warlock! from Fire Ruby Design (some of whose games I've greatly enjoyed - Exilim, Summerlands 2E, Esoterica, all of which have supplements I need to get), and that convinced me so I bought it. It too is obviously inspired by the AFF rules, though it does away with the all-in-one Skill of AFF in favor of starting the equivalent of AFF's Special Skills at higher values. It also drops the 2d6 rolls for d20s, and damage appears to by a simple dice roll, rather than AFF's 1d6+mod indexing a different table for each type of weapon, which could have its advantages… It also has Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay style careers. I haven't read much of it, but I'm definitely going to. It has several supplements too.

All in all, I think the AFF renaissance is growing!

Last edited: 2021-08-09 12:22:23 EDT

D&D Dungeon Masters Guide, Appendix N: Inspirational and Educational Reading

(This was originally on my site as a static page, but those don't get added to the tags page, so I moved it here as a post.)

From the AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide (1979), by Gary Gygax.

APPENDIX N: INSPIRATIONAL AND EDUCATIONAL READING

Inspiration for all of the fantasy work I have done stems directly from the love my father showed when I was a tad, for he spent many hours telling me stories he made up as he went along, tales of cloaked old me who could grant wishes, of magic rings and enchanted swords, or wicked sorcerors and dauntless swordsmen. Then too, countless Hundreds of comic books went down, and the long-gone EC ones certainly had their effect. Science fiction, fantasy, and horror movies were a big influence. In fact, all of us tend to get ample helpings of fantasy when we are very young, from fairy tales such as those written by the Brothers Grimm and Andrew Lang. This often leads to reading books of mythology, paging through bestiaries, and consultation of compilations of the myths of various lands and peoples. Upon such a base I built my interest in fantasy, being an avid reader of all science fiction and fantasy literature since 1950. The following authors were of particular inspiration to me. In some cases I cite specific works, in others, I simply recommand all their fantasy writing to you. From such sources, as well as just about any other imaginative writing or screenplay you will be able to pluck kernels from which grow the fruits of exciting campaigns. Good reading!

Inspirational Reading:

  • Anderson, Poul. THREE HEARTS AND THREE LIONS; THE HIGH CRUSADE; THE BROKEN SWORD

  • Bellairs, John. THE FACE IN THE FROST

  • Brackett, Leigh.

  • Brown, Fredric.

  • Burroughs, Edgar Rice. “Pellucidar” Series; Mars Series; Venus Series

  • Carter, Lin: “World's End” Series

  • de Camp, L. Sprague. LEST DARKNESS FALL; FALLIBLE FIEND; et al.

  • de Camp & Prat. “Harold Shea” Series; CARNELIAN CUBE

  • Derleth, August.

  • Dunsany, Lord.

  • Farmer, P. J. “The World of the Tiers” Series; et al.

  • Fox, Gardner. “Kothar” Series; “Kyrik” Series; et al.

  • Howard, R. E. “Conan” Series.

  • Lanier, Sterling. HIERO'S JOURNEY

  • Leiber, Fritz. “Fafhrd & Gray Mouser” Series; et al.

  • Lovecraft, H. P.

  • Merrit, A. CREEP, SHADOW, CREEP; MOON POOL; DWELLERS IN THE MIRAGE; et al.

  • Moorcock, Michael. STORMBRINGER, STEALER OF SOULS, “Hawkmoon” Series (esp. the first three books)

  • Norton, Andre.

  • Offutt, Andrew J., editor SWORDS AGAINST DARKNESS III.

  • Pratt, Fletcher, BLUE STAR; et al.

  • Saberhagen, Fred. CHANGELING EARTH; et al.

  • St. Clair, Margaret. THE SHADOW PEOPLE; SIGN OF THE LABRYS

  • Tolkien, J. R. R. THE HOBBIT; “Ring Trilogy”

  • Vance, Jack. THE EYES OF THE OVERWORLD; THE DYING EARTH; et al.

  • Weinbaum, Stanley.

  • Wellman, Manly Wade.

  • Williamson, Jack.

  • Zelazny, Roger. JACK OF SHADOWS; “Amber” Series; et al.

The most immediate influences upon AD&D were probably de Camp & Pratt, REH, Fritz Leiber, Jack Vance, HPL, and A. Merrit; but all of the above authors, as well as many not listed, certainly helped to shape the form of the game. For this reason, and for the hours of reading enjoyment, I heartily recommend the works of these fine authors to you.


RuneQuest 2E also had an Appendix N, apparently earlier.

Looking at the Mini Six RPG and related games

I'm looking at the Mini Six RPG because I’m planing on running a couple of one shots while my regular online D&D game is on hiatus between campaigns. I’m going to run a Star Wars one shot and a Breachworld RPG (post apocalypse with rifts into space and time with invaders pouring through) one shot, probably using the light Virtual Table Top Owlbear Rodeo with Discord for voice and text chat and dice rolling using a dice bot and maybe image sharing, with character sheets as Google Doc documents.

Mini Six Described

Mini Six: Bare Bones Edition was published in 2010 by AntiPaladin Games. It is available as a PDF for free or POD at a small price at DriveThruRPG.

It is a descendant of the original D6 System Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game by way of OpenD6 (OD6-2).

Organization and Breakdown

Here's how the Mini Six rules are organized, with page numbers for each section. It has 38 pages, counting the front and back covers.

  1. Front Cover (color) — 1 page

  2. Copyright page — 1 page

  3. Table of Contents, Definitions of Common Game Terms, About this Book — 1 page

  4. Dice Basics, How to Make a Character (including Skills, Perks, Esoteric Perks, Complications, and Gear) — 2 pages

  5. Game Mechanics (including General (non-combat Challenges), Order of Actions in a Round, Multiple Actions, Movement, Experience, Hero Points, Scaling, and Healing) — 1 page

  6. Combat (including two variants of combat — Fast Static Combat vs Traditional OpenD6 Combat — and Wound Levels and Wound Level Effects) — 1 page

  7. Vehicles (including vehicle rules and sample vehicles) — 2 pages

  8. The Simple Magic System (including magic rules and about 34 spells, and enchanted items) - 4 pages

  9. Sample Characters by Genre (including All Genres, Modern Stock Characters, Sci-Fi Stock Characters, Pulp Stock Characters, Fantasy Stock Characters, and Fantasy Beastiary) — 4 pages

  10. Optional Rules — 2 pages

  11. Making the Game Your Own — 1 page

  12. Campaigning the TV Way and Converting Between Mini Six & Traditional OpenD6 — 1 page

  13. Sample Settings — 12 pages total

    1. The “Perdition” setting (inspired by series Firefly and the movie Serenity; 9 archetypes, 1 vehicle) — 2 pages

    2. The “Rust Moon of Castia” setting (inspired by the movie Willow; 1 map, 4 archetypes, 3 creatures) — 2 pages

    3. Farnsley's Phantasm Investigators, Freelance Metaphysics Constables setting (Victorian horror, with a occasionally lighthearted, action-oriented, twist; 4 archetypes, 5 creatures) — 2 pages

    4. The “Precinct ‘77” setting (Big collars, bitchin’ cars, side burns, Fog Hat, and Police Detectives; 4 archetypes, 1 vehicle) — 2 pages

    5. The “Imperium in Revolt” setting (inspired by Star Wars, harking back to the D6 system's origins in the Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game of 1987; 11 archetypes, 7 vehicles) — 4 pages

  14. Character Sheet — 1 page

  15. Useful Reference Charts (Difficulty levels, Range Modifiers, How to Calculate Static Defenses, Scale, Sample Gear List, Skill List, Healing, Wound Level, Wound Level Effects) — 1 page

  16. Open Game License Version 1.0a — 1 page

  17. Back Cover (color) — 1 page

It really packs a lot into a small package, although it is generally light on detail.

Thoughts on Mini Six

Mini Six is a stripped down version of the OpenD6 RPG. I like it for many reasons:

  • The base mechanics are easy to learn, and only take up a few pages.

  • Only D6s are used.[1]

  • Characters are easy to create.

  • Characters are relatively terse.[2]

  • Characters start out reasonably competent.

  • It has a metacurrency[3], Hero Points.

  • It includes enough as is to run Historical, Modern, Sci-Fi, and Fantasy games, including a simple Magic/Power system.

  • Attributes, Skills, and Damage are rated by the number of D6s one rolls to use them, which makes using them easy.

  • Attributes and Skills are connected. Skills default to the dice rating of their associated Attribute, so you can always use a skill, except for a very few exceptions.

  • Attributes and Skills are used by rolling them against set target numbers or opposing die rolls.

  • The rules for multiple actions in a round are particularly easy to use, suitable for games where the characters are competent.

  • Since the rules are short and the game mechanics relatively light it is easy to customize for a particular game or genre.

  • Since the rules (but not all the settings) are Open Content you can easily base a new game on it and release it for free or sell it. There are several Mini Six-based games on DriveThruRPG.com.[4]

  • There is a royalty-free Mini Six Trademark License that allows you to indicate that products you make are compatible with Mini Six, and you can sell those products. There are a few Mini Six adventures[5] for sale on DriveThruRPG.com.

I think that several of those reason make it idea for one shots and pickup games.


Last edited: 2021-08-12 19:02:11 EDT