The Big Rules Update

 Not much to see here -- I have updated my Lightspeed D6 rules to now allow for modifications of weapons and starships with specific components, rather than flat bonuses. I made a few tweaks here and there too (I mean, how can you not?) but the main thing was making upgrades to weapons and ships crunchier.

As I told one of my players, I have essentially Tark-ified the weapons of Lightspeed D6 -- though my bigger influence for this new subsystem is the venerable Knights of the Old Republic II - The Sith Lords computer RPG. The starship components & system are a meld of Stars Without Number (I literally cannot stop adapting this game, it is so good) and an old MMORPG that is so near and dear to my heart, Star Wars Galaxies.

Have I lost you?

Escape From Tarkov is a PVP-heavy extract looter-shooter (wow, so many meaningless genre buzzwords) with a shitty interface, shittier netcode, and an absurd focus on gun customization. It was, and still is, very popular with my circle of friends. I hate it. But parts of it are great, and I will steal liberally from those parts -- such as gun customization.

Knights of the Old Republic is, of course, a Star Wars computer RPG series with two entries (we don't talk about the craptastic MMO) set 4,000 years or so before Episode I that was based off the d20 system of yore. It was a formative experience for the VPofTucson and both games are in my top 5 favorite games of all time. Naturally, it is bellwether of my view of RPGs in general and Star Wars RPGs in particular.

Star Wars Galaxies is worth a drunk or high rant or three. It was a beautifully flawed game that I sunk an inordinate amount of time into at the game's twilight. There really ought to be novels written about such a feeling -- joining as a noob an MMO that has been operating for years, filled with the abandoned detritus of max-level players who have long ago quit playing, but their desolate ghost towns still dot the map and the remaining holdouts squabble over an increasingly-worthless market share in the galactic bazaar. 

Once more, an enormous influence on me to this day and the standard by which I compare all other MMOs. None measure up whether due to: nostalgia, married-adult-employed free time constraints, or lack of chutzpah in design. 

I   D I G R E S S.

My new Lightspeed D6 rules (version 0.06) are available HERE. You will also find of course the character sheet template, and a folder containing all of the older versions of the game. I do this not because I want to be roasted for my (many) game design sins, but so that people can see the evolution of the game as I continue to tweak it. 

There are other games that I have been influenced by that do not maintain a version repository (cough cough Hyperspace D6) and I think that's fuckin cringe. If you're going to make dramatic changes to the game, at least keep the older versions publicly available -- it's a damn good thing I kept the older versions of the game that I downloaded and damn good luck they have survived a couple different hard drives.

Once more, I   D I G R E S S.

Let me know what you think about the new version and its changes to how character-scale injuries, vehicle combat, and weapon/ship upgrade components work (or don't work). Or don't, I guess. It does kind of feel like I post into a void but this is cathartic in its own way, rabid comment fanbase or not.

Lightspeed D6

Here it is, in all its glory: my hack of WEG Star Wars D6. Or to be more precise, my Frankenstein game mashed together from parts of Star Wars D6 Essentials, Hyperspace D6, the OG WEG editions, Stars Without Number, and the Cepheus Engine.

You can find a PDF of the most recent version HERE along with a template character sheet for Google Sheets/Excel and the “Planets of Kord Pria Sector,” a gazetteer of planets in which my home game is set. Go wild.


I probably should’ve released this a while ago but just didn’t bother to. My home game is in the midst of an unplanned hiatus and so the time I’d spend prepping is instead spent writing this blog post.


Turns out scheduling around adult lives for half a dozen people is a real nightmare. AKA, a tale as old as time.


A big contributor (and rather unlikely one at that) for why we are stuck where we are in the game is what the table has taken to calling “Jake’s Sidequest.” One of the PCs, J4-K3 (an astromech gunslinger droid), has a very well-written backstory which so very helpfully has given me plenty of plot hooks to work with. As unlikely as that normally would be, even more unlikely is the interest everyone else has expressed in chasing down his very backstory-specific leads.


This has become something of a double-edged sword: I have a lot of organic engagement for a mini plot in what is nominally a sandbox game, at the expense of playing far less frequently. You see, J4-K3/Jake’s player has a pretty turbulent work schedule and has been unable to play in the last few weeks. The rest of the players want to play the game, but they want to continue “Jake’s sidequest” and they don’t want to do it without him.


That isn’t his fault — it’s mine.


Because of my players’ enthusiasm with “Jake’s sidequest” I have prepped the next step and hadn’t prepped much else. Each time we have sat down to play (usually missing 1-3 people, thanks to differing schedules) I have been ready to run the next leg of the side quest and not really much else. We did one “side mission” instead of the regularly scheduled programming, but the players’ intent was to come back next time and continue the sidequest. Although I pride myself on being a good improv GM, I can’t improv my way out of group disappointment at not “advancing the plot.”


This was a ostensibly a weekly game in a Star Wars sandbox, and we had clearly moved away from both of those things. I still like the idea of sessions based around stuff people came up with in their character backstory, but that shouldn’t be the focus. I need to be flexible both in scheduling and running the game, and so I must adapt and overcome. Cheesy as that sounds.


Which means rejecting plot lines and returning to west marches. Not that this was ever really set up as a west marches game, but it’s clear to me now that’s the only way it will survive.


What does that mean for the game? Rather than trying to rope as many folks as possible into one night a week, I’m going to run sessions on Wednesday nights and Sunday mornings, the two days & times we’ve identified as working best with people’s schedules in general. Whoever makes it, makes it — and if we have at least three players, we have a session.


Hopefully, this leads to 1. Actually playing the fucking game; and 2. Moving towards a more episodic kind of structure. Less Andor, more Mandalorian.