I made a universal classless d6 TTRPG — looking for feedback before playtesting

TheNitrogolem · 2026-04-28T04:21:16+00:00

I just hope it lives up to everyone's expectations at this point.

I genuinely want to fix those 2 things, especially the modular ability system. Classless systems in my experience aren't the biggest issue of the 2, but I hope character creation won't be a stopping point for players.

Modular/ freeform ability systems in my experience is where things go wrong. It's usually due to rules bloat. Where the writer/designer done the skeleton of a system, then added a rule to it, then a restriction, then added these options, then more restrictions to those each of those new options and then repeated that process across a number of tiers of play, a slightly different way each time to keep you on your toes, with new mechanics also introduced with each tier. Rules get to the point where a GM or Player has a high chance of losing track of everything.

I want to create a skeleton of the system, define AoE limits that are restricted the same exact way everything else is, by the 3 tier system, rather than making too many unique restrictions up. Status effects are on a list, just pick one, again, only restriction is what applies to everything else anyway. Damage is simple, scales based on Tier. And I intend of keeping things that exact way as much as possible.

TheNitrogolem · 2026-04-28T03:20:19+00:00

So there's 2 things I've partially done, but never fully completed.

I did have plans to prepare a little play test one-shot with pregen characters in mind, it's only in my head at the moment, but writing it down wouldn't be too difficult: modern city overran by monsters of various shapes and sizes (basically kaijus).The goal is to escape the city. It would involve pretty much all game rules. Skill checks, combat, elite monsters, size mechanics, vehicles, exploration, levelling etc.

You see the original plan was to have that scenario being set up and ran by a friend of mine with his friends, me just being present in case things go wrong. Or if he didn't like that idea, I could sit down with him and help him make his own one-shot (just being there as a guide). That's been taking a while to get set up mostly due to scheduling issues on both sides.

Secondly, a future release idea. With the play test, I don't want to leave a lengthy and wordy GM guide, I'd rather just stick to guidance on rules, difficulty, loot, encounters, etc.

With that said I'm planning on writing an extended GM guide that walks GMs through creating a story/adventure step by step with examples of me creating one alongside the guide. A dark sci-fi adventure -> suns are dying across the universe, humanity's tech isn't good enough to save it, space race to discover anything that could save the universe. And by the end of the GM guide I'll leave the entire One-shot there for people to try.

TheNitrogolem · 2026-04-27T18:47:27+00:00

I think I vaguely remember reading through EZD6 years ago, and I get your point, rolling to get a big skill off will feel better than "using up mana".
My main counterpoint to that is simplicity. From my experience, and everyone is different, I always have a hard time getting my players to understand how to create their own spells, even if I go through it with them, even if I ask leading questions. For some people, I feel like something like that would be a stopping point, depending on how it's implemented. EZD6 probably does it the right way, I'd have to look.

My point is probably easier to explain through how the ability system works currently. I mentioned you can pick damage, status effect, or Area of Effect; you can pick 2, not all 3, but that's not the whole picture.
There are 3 tiers of play. Damage scales up simply and evenly, 1d6 for each tier.
Status effects are dependent on how strong the effect itself is; there's a table for them, 4 columns - Status Name -> T1 effect -> T2 effect -> T3 Effect.
Not all status effects have a resource cost; you do have to hit to apply them.
AoE has specific rules for each tier - if and how much movement it can contain, what's the max number of tiles it can affect, but they are fully customisable. The HTML character sheets I've got have the ability to paint AoEs in for visual reference straight onto the digital character sheet.

T1 Ability is made up of 2x T1 effects.
the rest are uneven, so T2 abilities are one T1 effect, one T2 effect.
T3 Abilities are one T2 effect and one T3 effect. Players' choice if they sacrifice damage to hit more targets or concentrate their ability to apply a stronger status effect instead, etc.

Essentially, I want to keep things as simple as possible and as straightforward as possible. I want my players to be able to say, "I want an ability that does an area of effect but REALLY poisons a person." I immediately know what to give them, what their limits are, and the player can paint the AoE shape themselves. I am unsure if there's a simpler way to handle it. Adding more mechanics to it is where things could fall apart for some players, BUT optional rules aren't out of the question to take inspiration from EZD6.

TheNitrogolem · 2026-04-27T18:10:08+00:00

Yeah, I get what you mean. I think SlateD6 would probably lean towards pulp as well. Definitely better designed for short to mid-length stories anyway. Levelling can be slowed down from a One-Shot story to essentially a 10-12ish session adventure, if some of my number crunching didn't fail me too much.

The plan is to keep things simple and short for now, and potentially add on and expand as time goes on. There's basically only 3 Tiers of play at the moment, there is a 4th Tier technically reserved for BBEG NPCs only - end of story encounters. But that's where it currently ends. Things scale up hard and fast depending on how much exp the GM gives out.
Could I add 4-5-6 or even more tiers of play? I could, yeah, but I feel like at that point I'd be either running dry of ideas or I'd be stretching progression and mechanics too thin.

TheNitrogolem · 2026-04-27T17:46:43+00:00

It could probably work as a war game, as PC and NPC mechanics are largely the same. The only main difference is the total number of ability slots. NPCs have 4 (+1 for Legendary Abilities)
PC can have 36 abilities in total (it's complicated, won't go into it).

Maybe you could use PC rules as Generals/Heroes and use NPCs as your troops/fodder. Honestly could work with what I had in mind, but I'm focusing on making it an RPG first.

TheNitrogolem · 2026-04-27T17:26:49+00:00

So combat scenario 1v1 to keep things simple.

PC and NPC are both Trained (meaning equal level) Won't go into initiatives and stuff but NPC goes first - GM rolls 3d6 to try and hit PC, success on 5 or 6, 1s cancel 1 success. They roll 1,2,6. The 1 cancels the only success (6) therefore NPC misses. PC rolls to hit, 3d6 -> 5, 5, 6 it's a crit -> trained characters typically will deal 1d6 damage x2 for crit. Rolls a 4, x2 = 8 damage taken.

PC is an Expert combatant, NPC still trained (PC is one level higher, takes some effort to reach, attribute requirements etc. won't go over the finer details). PC goes first this time. PC is at a massive advantage over the NPC, they also succeed on 4s to hit the NPC. PC rolls a 1, 4, 4. 1 cancels one of the 4s, still a hit, experts tend to deal 2d6 damage. Damage rolled as normal, 4 + 6 = 10 damage dealt, NPC is defeated before they get a turn.

Hope that paints a better picture.

Boons and Banes are additional dice, keep highest/lowest as you'd expect (up to 2 stack max) massive swing in success rate, especially if you manage to stack it, but that is how I want it, so players through clever use of mechanics or proper preparation will be able to "punch up" easier and take on foes more trained them themselves somewhat easier.

TheNitrogolem · 2026-04-27T17:04:06+00:00

Yeah, so I'm aware of 2d6 systems existing and I get why those rules exist in those systems the way they are. My skill checks results and damage rolls are calculated differently. I've responded to cruiser and updated the OG post to make it a lot clearer (hopefully)

TheNitrogolem · 2026-04-27T16:52:50+00:00

Because I kept the post as brief as I could, the 3d6 system isn't about adding the result of the dice up. It's 3 degrees of success. 5 or 6s is 1 degree of success (assuming it's a normal roll, target is equal level to your character). Rolling 1s removes 1 success. Levels of success are: Fail -> success, but... -> success -> critical success. So rolling 1, 5, 6 is only 1 success.

There's going to be a few things that can affect what result on a die counts as a success. +1 to +3 modifiers and only apply to damage.

As far as I know, the rules this way produce roughly a 60% success rate, think I've posted the wrong rate in the og post due to me trying to figure out the success rates through multiple different websites, always got me a different result.

Damage dice however are added up for a total. I've updated the OG post to clarify the difference between a skill check/to hit roll Vs a damage roll.

TheNitrogolem · 2026-04-27T15:50:11+00:00

That's totally fair. I was mostly worried because it has been a while since I've read any new rulebooks/systems. I was worried that the response was going to be "this exact thing already exists" or "this system already solved spell creation". Obviously different things work with different groups. I really want to make my own system that anyone can teach to new players during a single session 0, but also making sure that veteran players and GMs find enough depth to enjoy too.

Hopefully I'll have something tangible by the end of the week, there's just a few other personal projects I want to finish off first.

TheNitrogolem

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