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This is a durable hardcover. The cover image is a woman in a skin-tight suit apparently interfacing with some kind of flight control program through cybernetic implants. The image is less cheesecake than science fantasy, and manages to ambiguously evoke cyberpunk, space opera, and exploration science-fiction, something of a triumph. The internal art is attractive and professional, but rarely memorable. The printing is easy on the eyes, very crisp, with a nice serif for the body text and a contrasting sans-serif for the headers.
II. Overview
This is one of a series of generic D6 books, in this case covering genre science-fiction. D6 originally appeared, fittingly enough, as the engine for West End Games's Star Wars. This book includes all the necessary D6 rules, along with equipment and rules appropriate for science-fiction adventures. D6 is explicitly an action-adventure system, cinematic rather than naturalistic.
The basic system is dice-pool based. A character is rated in various attributes and skills with die codes, ranging from 1D to 2D+2 to 6D and so forth. A character with 2D+2 in Strength would roll two six-sided dice and add 2 to the result. If the result is equal to or higher than the difficulty numer, the action succeeds. However, one die is used as the Wild Die. If it comes up a 6, cheer and roll again, and keep rolling and adding until it doesn't come up with a 6. This small amount of dice explosion makes it possible for any character to succeed at any task, theoretically. However, if it comes up as a 1, that's bad news. In a routine situation, the GM will usually steal both that die and your best from your others, probably resulting in a very small total. In a dramatic situation, the GM may choose to leave it, but introduce a complication. For instance, you might successfully shoot down an enemy fighter, only to have it hurl into the path of one of your wing-mates.
Characters are defined by seven attributes, Agility, Strength, Mechanical, Knowledge, Perception, Technical, and Extranormal. Adventurers rate from 1D to 5D in each, with 2D being a typical human rating, except that most characters have no Extranormal attribute at all. Extranormal attributes represent such things as psychic potential, or, in this book, Metaphysics.
Each attribute has a number of skills associated with it. So, for instance, if you have 3D in Knowledge, you would roll 3D any time you use a Knowledge skill. Skills can be increased from the base attribute. For instance, you might have 3D in Knowledge but 5D in scholar. Skills can be further narrowed into specializations, such as scholar: physics. Many skills can be used without training, but others, such as robot interface/repair, take a penalty if you do not have additional dice or pips in that skill.
There are two optional systems for tracking injury. Body Points is a fairly straightforward hit point system. Wound Levels uses a variation on the dice pool and difficulty number system, with results yielding wounds of varying severity. In general, the Wound Level system is more deadly. In particular, while armor is valuable for any character, it is of tantamount importance to powergamers playing in a Body Points game, where it can allow you to absorb several times the punishment an unarmored character can withstand. In contrast to Star Wars, there are no significant penalties for wearing armor.
Characters' dramatic importance is reflected mechanically in Character Points and Fate Points. Character Points are used to buy extra dice for actions, or they can be saved up for character improvement. Fate Points allow you to double your dice pool, but the Fate Point must be used in a heroic manner or it is permanently lost. Because of these mechanics, lethality is fairly low for player-characters, so long as the players behave in a vaguely heroic or reasonable fashion.
III. Character Creation
There are three forms of character creation. The first is template based. You simply assign 7D in skills to a template (either GM-created or one published in the book) and name the character. The second is defined character creation. You are given free reign to allocate 18D of attributes and 7D in skills, and assign Advantages, Disadvantages, and Special Abilities. In the third method, you are given a pool of points, and can purchase whatever abilities you desire. They are mechancially identical, although of course the third method offers the most potential for min-maxing.
Advantages simply cost a number of skill dice (or points), while Disadvantages add them. Advantages are things like Fame, Equipment, or Wealth. Disadvantages are things like an Enemy or a serious Quirk. Special Abilities encompass a variety of talents, from the claws of a powerful alien to a knack for a certain skill. Special Abilities can in turn have Enhancements or Limitations. For instance, a character might have a bonus to sight-based checks that only works at night. The game encourages traits with more role-playing ramifications than rules. The idea is that characters should have motivations and weaknesses to engage and challenge them.
While template-based creation can take literally five minutes, I found defined character creation, working from whole cloth, to be more difficult than I expected. Some of the extra time resulted from unfamiliarity with the system, sampling the various options and looking over the skill list to see what which skills were associated with each attribute. Balancing a character's Advantages, Special Abilities, and Disadvantages was, much like in Storyteller or GURPS, a painful exercise of restraint. For my character creation experiment, I decided to use one of the alien templates, in this case, Felinoid. Since a Felinoid is already down 3 skill dice (or points) due to their natural abilities, I did not want to spend more on options than I received from Disadvantages. After about 45 minutes, I was done, and pretty satisfied with the results, although I ended up splitting my precious skill dice among a dozen different skills that seemed important for a maverick cop. I've placed her stats at the end of this review.
IV. Setting Material
The game presents a fairly extensive section on cybernetics as well as space vehicles. It also boasts a useful selection of weapons, armors, and gear from various tech levels, including ground vehicles, robots, and survival equipment.
Aliens and Mutants covers the creation of species templates. The Special Abilities offer a lot of options, although there are plenty of traits a GM will have to improvise. Generally speaking, you can apply any species template to a character template (such as the ones at the back of the book). There are no suggestions for robot or android characters, and no Special Abilities that cover such traits as immunity to disease or poison. While it would not be difficult to improvise such things, it seems like an oversight. I can't imagine it taking more than half a page to describe a bare-bones system for robotic characters.
D6 Space gives us Metaphysics as an example Extranormal attribute. It is governed by three skills, channel, sense, and transform. Essentially, it's a kind of extremely versatile super-psychic ability, perhaps useful for Lensmen-inspired games. A character with metaphysics can, with practice, teleport objects, hurl destructive energy, or read thoughts. I have some reservations about game balance, as there are a great many options to customize abilities, and there are no limits to the number of techniques you can know. While that's great for freeform gaming, it does raise some concerns, like a character with a number of variations on one technique, each optimized for a given situation, and more effective than a more general technique which fits all those situations.
There is no sample setting, for good or ill.
V. D6 Space and Other Games
The basic system comes from D6 Star Wars, and the authors seem to have intentionally made this game as compatible as possible, right down to the six normal attributes. The game mechanics are virutally the same as the Revised Edition, apart from a few changes in how defenses are handled. I believe, although I have not tried this, that you could probably define The Force as an Extranormal attribute, drop in the three Force Skills from WEG's game, and use D6 Space as a sort of deluxe rules edition.
Metabarons continued to keep D6 in space after the end of the Star Wars license.
In a previous incarnation, West End Games released a slim little book called The D6 System that offered the D6 mechanics as a generic game system. It was highly configurable, to the extent of making the number and names of attributes a choice up the GM. As such, it was more of an RPG toolkit than a game playable out-of-the-box. D6 Space seems to have made good use of the evolution of the system, for all that it resembles its predecessor, Star Wars. D6 Space presents itself as a toolkit, not a bible. However, D6 Space comes "pre-configured" for its genre, with six official attributes and a skill list that requires minimal (if any) pruning and a number of system decisions already made (how piloting andwillpower are used, how damage is rated, and so forth). D6 Space is a member of the Classic D6 version of the system, as opposed to the Legend version used in Hercules & Xena and DC Universe. However, some D6 Legend ideas, like Body Points, appear.
D6 Space has some goodies ported over from the failed Masterbook experiment, mainly Advantages and Disadvantages. Some, like Skill Minimum, are essentially D6 conversions of the mechanics. Many are greatly streamlined and improved from their Masterbook versions.
Note that D6 Adventure, released around the same time as D6 Space, uses an identical engine, but not only different skills, but different attributes. Materials designed for one or the other will require conversion, although of the simplest kind.
VI. Evaluation
D6 is a venerable and versatile game system, and this version is extremely elegant. I am very excited about owning and using this product. However, it does have some noticeable holes, like the lack of rules for android characters. Where would SF be without the android in Alien or R2-D2? The sample Extranormal attribute is unique, and of far less utility to most SF campaigns than some straightforward psychic powers.
In general, the writing is clear and concise, but the book suffers from a lack of meaty examples. Even as a veteran of the system, I had to poke around a bit to grasp all the chances, and some sections required re-reading. In some ways, the book suffers from an excessive textual economy. For instance, I could not figure out what use a Felinoid got from an Extra Part: Tail, until I looked in that section and discovered Extra Part can only be taken in one rank (R1) and the cost is 0 anyway. In other words, it doesn't really do anything. Likewise, I thought I had caught an error in the way cybernetics were priced, until I realized that Cybernetic (R1) was a 0 point Limitation.
There is no sample setting for this game, and only one published SF setting in print for the D6 System: Final Sword Productions' Dead Night of Space. West End Games offers a license for the sytem, which I hope other publishers will take advantage of, but as this time WEG has not stated any intentions of publishing a world of their own.
Thus, D6 Space is not playable out of the box. GURPS Transhuman Space covers everything needed to play in that milieu. HERO System can duplicate virtually any science-fiction tool or power, and thus can be adapted to any home-brewed science-fiction setting. GURPS Space and Star Hero offer a substantial amount of information about world design and genre literature and film. In contrast, D6 Space offers less than a page on "Designing the Setting," and a handful of pages on general GMing tips, which, while excellent in their own right, do not provide any guidance for how, exactly, one makes science-fiction.
As a rules-system, D6 Space is top-notch. But we already knew that. As a system bible, or the foundation of a great homebrew, this game is hard to beat.
The question is, did I get my money's worth when I bought this game? To that, I have to answer, "No." If you are not going to provide a setting, you must provide the tools to make a variety of settings work. There are no world computer network hacking rules for running a Neuromancer game; no psychic knacks for a Starship Troopers game; no robot characters; no random planet generation charts for a Traveller-style odyssey; and no suggestions for handling god-like aliens with super-science powers . This game has huge gaps to fill, which at this time is left to dedicated fans, licensess, and possibly future sourcebooks. While I don't regret my purchase (I am a fan), I feel like I should have gotten just a little bit more. Another twenty pages could have turned this into a magnificent book.
I whole-heartedly recommend this book for fans and tinkerers, but do not think you are buying a complete game.
Appendix A: My Character
She's Azar Meruliin, a maverick cop. She's a Felinoid, either an uplifted animal or a relatively common alien spacies. She's tough, capable, and fast, but her temper can get her into trouble. She drives a police cruiser. Her boss constantly threatens to have her badge.
Agility 4D, dodge 4D+1, firearms 4D+1, running 4D+1; Strength 3D; Knowledge 3D+1, intimidation 3D+2, security regulations 3d+2, streetwise 3d+2, willpower 3D+2; Perception 3D+1, investigation 3D+2, persuasion 3D+2, search 3D+2; Mechanical 2D+1, piloting: hover car 4D+1, comm 2D+2; Technical 2D
Character Points: 5 Fate Points: 1 Movement: 10m
Disadvantages: Hindrance: Arrogance (R2), +3 to con and persuasion difficulties; Hindrance: Reduced Hardiness (R2), -1 to damage resistance totals; Quirk: Hates Water (R2), make a Difficult willpower roll to be wet or will do nothing until dry; Advantage Flaw (R1), her Contact is recalcitrant and often requires bribery or threats; Advantage Flaw: The Shakes (R2), +1 difficulty to all Knowledge and Perception skills for the remainder of the scene if she gains the benefits of her Fast Reactions, not including search and intimidation; Devotion: Good Cop (R2); Employed (R2), she is a police officer, and her vehicle belongs to the force; Enemy (R1), her superiors consider her a loose cannon and are always looking for excuses to write her up or pull her off active duty
Advantages: Authority: Law Enforcement (R2); Contact (R1), Vigo, a small-time thief with an ear to the ground; Equipment (R3), her police cruiser
Special Abilities: Enhanced Sense: Sight (R1, cost 3), +1 to all sight-related checks; Enhanced Senses: Hearing (R1, cost 3), +1 to all hearing-related checks; Extra Body Part: Tail (R1, cost 0); Skill Bonus: Agility (R1, cost 1), +1 to acrobatics, climb/jump, and running totals; Natural Hand-to-Hand Weapon: Claws (R1, cost 2), +1D to Strength damage; Fast Reactions (R1, cost 3), +1D to Perception totals for initative and one extra action per round up to three times per day
Equipment: Laser Pistol (4D damage; ammo 15; range 25/75/175); plasteel armor (1D+2); hover car (move 70/50 kph; passengers 5-6; toughness 4D+2; maneuverability +2D+1)
Notes: Hindrance: Arrogance, Hindrance: Reduced Hardiness, Quirk: Hates Water, Enhanced Sense: Sight and Hearing, Extra Body Part, Skill Bonus: Agility, and Natural Hand-to-Hand Weapon: Claws are from the Felinoid (Cat Person) template.
