D6 Prime Directive scheduled for July 2005.

ADB Inc. has announced plans to do a D6 version of its popular PRIME DIRECTIVE roleplaying universe in July 2005. This will be followed by D6 versions of Klingons, Romulans, and Federation.

The general plan is to take any of our GPD books, remove the GURPS material, and replace it with D6 material.

Like GPD which is designed to be stand alone and not require GURPS BASIC SET, PD6 will including the eight page "quick start rules" for the D6 system, meaning that you do not have to have any other D6 books to use it.

The D6 staff, headed by Scott Palter, will be separate from the GPD staff. The GPD staff will continue to drive and create most of the background, with the D6 staff converting the rules into D6. As time goes
by, no doubt there will be adventures and other things created for D6 which will be translated back into GPD. Also, we will be doing our PD books for other game systems such as D20,
and no doubt some new material created for other systems will migrate back into PD6 and GPD.

The important thing to remember is that the "RPG rules" (be they GURPS, d20, D6, or other systems) are just rules, the background is pure SFU. It isn't a matter of converting GURPS
rules into D6 but adding D6 rules to the background. Think in terms of background created witout any RPG rules and then separate and independent efforts to add RPG rules to that same
consistent background. If you didn't like the Cromarg background in GK4e, you aren't going to get to rewrite it for PD20 or PD6 or PD1 or anything else. The background is SFU and
unchanging between the systems.

The lines between the GPD staff, the PD staff, the PD20 staff, the PD1 staff, the PD6 staff, and whatever other RPG engines we license (just about every one we can find) will in some
ways get blurry and in other ways be sharply defined.

Remember, there is "writing background" and there is "writing rules for a specific system" and then there is "playtest and proofreading" which might be for a specific system or for the
background.

To pick on Loren as an example, he's writing GURPS THOLIANS. Or he thought he was. He is actually writing WHATEVER THOLIANS. His background will be in GURPS Tholians, Tholians
d20, Tholians D6, Tholians this, Tholians that. If it's not a "system specific rule" then the same paragraph about Tholian history will be word-for-word identical in each and every one
of them.

To pick on Gary as an example, Gary is a GURPS staffer and will never work on d20 rules or D6 rules. He will, however, beyond working on GURPS rules, work on SFU background.
Gary's GURPS rule on Tholian weapons won't be in D6, but if Gary wrote the Antarean pages for GURPS FEDERATION these would be identical to the Antarean pages in d20 FEDERATION
and in D6 FEDERATION except for the character stats, which Jonathan Thompson would write for d20 FEDERATION and which Scott Palter would write for D6 FEDERATION.

Capiche?

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, March 17, 2005 - 01:26 pm: Edit

The head writer for our PD6 project is Daniel "Scott" Palter of Final Sword Productions.

It is important to remember that SVC will do the production coordination and probably the page layouts but that he doesn't understand the D6 system at all (and doesn't want to).

We are going to need a couple of D6 experts (familiar with the star wars game) to "check the books and make sure nothing is missing", a problem that has plagued and delayed the GPD projects, and something we desperately want to avoid with both PD6 and PD20.

By David Lang (Dlang) on Thursday, March 17, 2005 - 02:04 pm: Edit

[fixed, thanks]

By Phil Shanton (Mxslade) on Thursday, March 17, 2005 - 03:44 pm: Edit

Cool I can't wait to cross over my old Star Wars characters.

By Nick G. Blank (Nickgb) on Thursday, March 17, 2005 - 06:42 pm: Edit

It has been a long time since I read through the old star wars stuff, and I haven't seen the new D6 at all, how similar are they?

By michael wolfe (Wolfe) on Friday, March 18, 2005 - 09:31 pm: Edit

why do you need experts with the old starwars d6 system?
arent you going to use the newer D6 space system?

Nick,they do differ in several ways..the best people to give you the differences are here
D6

the differences could get rather lengthy to describe

i know of several D6 familiar both d6 space and old d6 starwars folk willing to do a look over (myself included)..

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Saturday, March 19, 2005 - 11:45 am: Edit

Scott Palter told me I was going to have to pick between the new and old space systems. I told him I didn't care much either way, it's mostly which one is more marketable. Thoughts?

By michael wolfe (Wolfe) on Sunday, March 20, 2005 - 05:41 am: Edit

sorry this:

---

Quote:

i know of several D6 familiar both d6 space and old d6 starwars folk willing to do a look over

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By Jeremy Reaban (Trancejeremy) on Sunday, March 20, 2005 - 07:39 pm: Edit

Very cool news! I was a very big fan of the original Prime Directive, but am a huge Gurps hater, so I was put off by the "new" Prime Directive.

D6 OTOH, is my favorite system, and actually what I used for the original Prime Directive instead of the original rules (which weren't bad, but I liked D6 better)

Anyway, interesting choice of author. Mr. Palter was the former head of West End Games, until it went bankrupt. AFAIK, he wasn't really much involved in writing products for WEG, just running the business itself. So I have some trepidation there - no offense to him, but there are a lot of other, better, more experienced D6 authors out there. Though perhaps many left the RPG field after WEG folded.

By William F. Hostman (Aramis) on Sunday, March 20, 2005 - 10:15 pm: Edit

Kewl!!!!

It's not PD1, but it's a system I know and can work with.

Questions rulswise:
Hit Points: (ala MIB/H&X) or Damage Levels?
Fatepoint/Forcepoint Label?
Scaling rules? (Dice multiplication, aka SW1E; Dice Capping, ala SW 2E; Dice Addition, ala SW2RE and D6SO)?

This I would love to be proofreading on....

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Sunday, March 20, 2005 - 10:49 pm: Edit

Scott Palter (besides being a very old friend, we've know each other longer than many of you have been alive) has written several very successful D6 books in the scifi genre.

By Gordon Neff (Baronwaste) on Sunday, March 20, 2005 - 10:50 pm: Edit

I, too, am delighted to hear this: As I mentioned here a week or so ago, I probably would have been using my WEG Star Wars rules to do Prime Directive adventures anyway, simply because I know those rules and like them.

Trancejeremy and I are on the same wavelength re: PD1 vs the new GPD. Seeing the idea survive, whatever game system now harbored it, was the only consolation for seeing it as a GURPS product. Now, of course, this is no longer a problem: I can set up and go ahead with D6 rules with official sanction!

By F. Douglas Wall (Knarf) on Tuesday, March 22, 2005 - 02:31 am: Edit

Of the two new systems being utilized for PD, this is the one I have hopes for.

On the starship combat thing, I'd say the new system. I've heard that it has more detail and more fiddly bits. I'm hoping that means that it has more things that we can tweak with so that it works the way we want it to.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Tuesday, March 22, 2005 - 10:15 am: Edit

It wouldn't be totally impossible to do it both ways. Use one in the main book and the other in a separate starship book.

By William F. Hostman (Aramis) on Tuesday, March 22, 2005 - 02:42 pm: Edit

My personal preferences would be to keep as close to WEG SW 2E (not 2Er) as is practical for the genre.

By Ken Burnside (Ken_Burnside) on Wednesday, March 23, 2005 - 12:41 am: Edit

Scott's preference (and he leaves this ultimately to SVC) is to keep it closer to the original SW 2e/2er space combat system, which focuses more on What You're Doing than tactical play. The theory is that if you want to set up the Great Space Battle, you make a special session to play SFB. If the space combat isn't the finale of the story arc being played, you use the fast narrative tools from D6.

Rationed complexity.

By F. Douglas Wall (Knarf) on Wednesday, March 23, 2005 - 04:30 am: Edit

I don't think I would go through all the trouble of getting SFB to run a ship combat if I didn't have to. I will use the GURPS Space system for my GURPS combats (helpful since all the ships get stats for that system). If I get D6 Prime Directive, I would prefer to have a combat system I can use in that book, rather than having to shell out for a new, big and complex game.

I do agree with your principle of rationed complexity. One of the reasons that I support the new system is because it has a good bit of complexity to ration. I'd rather take a fairly complete system and tweak it a bit than start with a basic system and have to build it up from scratch.

An interesting point to note is that both D20 and D6 have readily accessible starship combat systems. GURPS doesn't really have one right now. GURPS Space and Vehicles are only available for previous editions of the game and a new Vehicles book is probably far in the future. You'll probably have to release a supplement specifically updating every ship previously covered for the new GURPS Vehicles system when it comes out.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, March 23, 2005 - 08:26 am: Edit

Well, by the end of the year (or the end of the summer) you can use Federation Commander which will actually be simpler than the RPG systems.

I haven't decided on the D6 space combat system yet and frankly am not qualified to make that decision.

What I want to know is this: which one will sell better?

As for the GURPs space combat system, the problem is that G4 won't work with the G3 space system (not very well anyway) and G4 space/vehicles haven't been printed yet.

Just personally I still find the concept of RPGs playing starship fleet battles to be crazy, but that's just me. I have played RPGs (still do, but just the modern military ones like DIE IN PLACE) and just don't see it.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Wednesday, March 23, 2005 - 12:43 pm: Edit

SVC: Would it be helpful if you created a short list of questions that us players could take to our local retailers to try and get answers to?

You know, not to the boss but to the guy behind the counter who is also a player.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, March 23, 2005 - 12:55 pm: Edit

Not at this time. Maybe in a few months.

By Phil Shanton (Mxslade) on Wednesday, March 23, 2005 - 08:11 pm: Edit

Actually SVC, when I played Stars Wars we used their mass combat system to fight large fleet battles, they had a scaling system so that you could play them out in detail if you wanted, but all we ever did was use our characters stats to influnence the battle, much the same as G21 and G22 allow for individuals to matter more.

And all the space games I've played in,(Space Opera, Traveller, Star Trek, Star Wars, ect.)

The GMs have run the ship battles with the abstract system provided in the game or with the companies board game on the subject.

To role play a whole fleet battle would make SFB look like rock,paper,siscors.

So if Fed Commander could be used instead, I think most RGPers will use it.

By F. Douglas Wall (Knarf) on Thursday, March 24, 2005 - 02:19 am: Edit

If I were to do a ship battle in an RPG, it would not be a big military engagement. It would be just like a fight scene in space.

By William F. Hostman (Aramis) on Thursday, March 24, 2005 - 02:59 am: Edit

I've in fact used MegaTraveller's vehicle combat for small space fleet actions in traveller campaigns (it's a twist of the rules, but I was using extant rules to do it, just going beyond the scope intended).

In Star wars campaigns, my Space Combats have been occasionally gridded out ala SW2E's movement rules; usually these have been the larger ones. I have had, since shortly after release, had Star Warriors, and only once have I used it in play; the players hated it. So we went back to the SW2E mode.

On the other hand, i have used both the RPG and the minis wargame rules (albeit with my SFB counters on maps...) in SW2E games to resolve combat situations.

Likewise, in Pendragon, i have use the battle system a lot, and have a more tacticalish one deriver therefrom to appease the same 12 individuals desire for more of a tactical picture of the battles.

In one SFU universe game (my homegrown and way-too complex to generate characters engine), the players each had two characters; one an officer on the flagship, and the other a CO of a ship subordinate to the player Commodore. We tactically played, but with very specific skill rolls generating the SFB damage points by weapon, rather than generating a modifier to an SFB die roll.

I've sometimes gone so far as to break out the bridge officer roles, and have the captain prevented from mentioning any SFB-units. I allowed for various officers to receive pools of energy to allocate themselves, drawn from what the engineer delivers them.

as for Fed Commander: if there is not a well done RPG-tie-in, my players are extremely unlikely to be willing to use it. IE, if they are just providing DM's, they will cry BS!

To give an example, in my homegrown RPG rules, built somewhat around the SFU, we used the SFB SSD's, and the miniatures movement templates. We used EA. The Turn Mode was 1 higher than indicated unless skill roll was made, 2 higher on a fumble. If the skill roll was rolled at increased difficulty it might be reduced by one. 1d table weapons were Rolled: Fumble is 6, Fail is 5, Marginal fail was 4, marginal success was 3, full success was 2, and critical success was 1. Roll-to-hit weapons had difficulties derived from range. Engineers could always seek to boost power output; it was hard, and failure had penalties.

I know that that runs counter to the style of SFB, but the original concept of PD1 was not the SFU proper, but the SFU's Trivid portrayal of the Prime Teams; and pulling off the little bit extra, while cinematic, was well appropriate for the SFU's Trivid view of itself.

BTW, PD1 tricode to dieroll conversion, which I've used in play:
fumble (best die less than half low number) is a table entry of 6
A fail (between half low and low number) is a table entry 5
a marginal (low number to mid number) is a table entry 4
a success (mid to high number) is a table entry 3
a total (high to double high) is a table entry 2
a Critical (more than double high) is a table entry 1
The table entry is the number used on the Phaser table. this mechanic worked pretty well, repeatedly. This is the kind of tie in to SFB or FC I'd like to see for ANY of the games; I know people who WILL use it.

Then again, I can't see any reason to play modern RPG's; I don't hold it that others shouldn't.

Conclusion
Please include the option for a tactical play-out mode as well as a narrative only mode. I know that I will use tactical in play, probably both modes. I won't break out SFB, unless I'm using an adaptation which makes skills more relevant than "DM+X"

By F. Douglas Wall (Knarf) on Friday, March 25, 2005 - 09:23 pm: Edit

I have no problem with a tactical "battlemap" set of rules. I prefer having a visual reference to what's going on. But I'd like them to operate within the roleplaying framework. I have a hard enough time teaching my players 1 game, I don't need to teach them 2 (the RPG and then SFB). (I don't know if anyone else has that problem with players, but I've had people with their character sheets and any requisite dice in front of them ask me "what do I roll?")

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Friday, March 25, 2005 - 10:44 pm: Edit

Federation Commander will be perfect. Easy to learn, fun to play by itself and easy to operate during RPG's. Since the impulse chart will be less impulses there is a bit-o-time for dialog each impulse too.

Indeed, battles during RPG play should be very interesting since players now care about the crew, the past and the future.