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.