AntiPaladin Games came to my rescue with Mini Six, an eight-page distillation of The System That Must Not Be Named (since WEG has released the rules but not the D6 moniker). In a mere seven pages (Page 8 is the OGL blurb), authors Nolan and Morris have managed to squeeze in character creation for multiple genres, combat rules, weaponry, vehicles, monsters, and a magic system. Sheesh, even Risus (ten pages) didn’t do that. How closely it resembles its source material I couldn’t tell you, but Mini Six is eminently playable. Its simple dice pool system initially reminded me of TSR’s Buck Rogers Adventure Game, a product I found easy to play but too limited to sustain a long-term campaign. With its Perks, magic system, and optional damage rules, however, Mini Six provides the flexibility Buck Rogers lacked. Need I mention it uses standard six-sided dice?
Character creation is spread over Pages 1 and 2 (Page 1 also includes the combat rules). Players get 12 dice to divide among their characters’ four attributes: Might, Agility, Wit and Charm. They get an additional seven dice to spend on skills and optional special abilities called Perks. Might is a character’s general physical strength and well-being and determines his effectiveness in hand-to-hand combat. Agility is how agile a character is, affecting ranged combat and tasks such as driving or sneaking around. Wit is a character’s general intelligence; in addition to making him better at knowledge-based tasks, Wit also improves a character’s resistance to magic and mind-control. Charm represents a character’s ability to influence others. The skill list in Mini Six is suggestive rather than exhaustive. Skill dice boost rolls for the associated attribute. A character’s 1D Stealth would add to his 3D Agility for the purpose of moving silently. For non-combat tasks, the player is trying to meet or beat a difficulty target number.
Perks is a catch-all category for unusual abilities; again, the list is suggestive rather than complete. Perks can represent an elf’s racial abilities, a pulp detective’s superior observation skills, or a superhero’s powers. They tend to be expensive; the most useful ones cost three to five dice. With only seven skill dice to spend, most characters won’t be able to afford more than one of two of them, assuming the Game Master allows them. Another option is Complications. These are personal flaws and quirks that can gain a character an extra character point or two (experience points) if they come up during play. Unlike GURPS or HERO style disadvantages, they don’t give a character more dice to start with. Gear is free, subject to the genre and the GM’s approval.
The default combat system uses wound levels rather than hit points. After rolling Agility dice to determine who goes first, a player rolls his character’s Might dice (for a melee attack) or his Agility dice (for a ranged attack) against a base target number of ten. Brawling skill or a hand weapon adds dice to a Might attack roll while the appropriate ranged weapon skill adds dice to an Agility attack roll. The attack roll is also modified by whether the target elects to dodge, parry, or seek cover. If an attack succeeds, the target rolls his Might (plus armor dice, if the character is wearing any) to resist the damage. The amount of the resistance roll is subtracted from the damage done by the attack, and any damage remaining is compared to the wound chart. Mini Six also includes an optional Body Points system for more cinematic games. As with skills and Perks, its list of weaponry and armor is suggestive rather than a full armory.
Page 3 provides basic vehicle combat and chase rules and lists stats for 15 sample vehicles ranging from a motorcycle to a giant starship. Vehicles are defined by scale (how big they are compared to a human being), maneuverability, and movement rate, with additional notes on the skill and personnel needed to operate them, weaponry and cargo capacity. Unlike characters, vehicles aren’t assigned build dice. There aren’t vehicle design rules per se, but the examples are a guide to GMs wanting to create their own.
A rudimentary magic system takes up Pages 4 and 5, including guidelines on creating magic items and a list of 34 sample spells. I’m more interested in science fiction and superheroes than fantasy but I found the spell list useful for constructing my own Perks for those other genres, since some of the spell effects also appear as Perks earlier in the document. Pages 6 and 7 contain a list of 38 monsters and opponents ranging from a typical man on the street to a massive Lovecraftian entity. These creatures aren’t limited to the amount of dice starting player-characters get, although several are built on fewer dice. They’re rated on a one-to-five threat scale. There are no creature-building rules as such but, as with vehicles, the examples give GMs a reasonable guide. Page 7 also includes options for adding additional attributes, separating skills from attributes, or ditching attributes altogether and just having skills.
So, how does it play? My kids wanted to play superheroes and brought their HeroClix miniatures to the table. Instead, I pulled out Mini Six and whipped up a trio of heroes for them to portray in about 10-15 minutes. I used the pre-written Perks and the cinematic Body Points option to create a brawler with a sidekick, a martial artist with a throwing weapon, and a heroine who could hurl energy bolts from her fingertips, all based on the players’ miniatures. For simplicity’s sake I also ignored the “wild die” option, where all sixes rolled on a special die can be re-rolled. Since starting characters, even without Perks, are considerably tougher than the typical man on the street, my three heroes had no difficulty defeating seven pistol-packing thugs without suffering a scratch in the first session. Combat was fast and, for the goons, deadly (I’m still trying to persuade my children that superheroes don’t “kill them and take their stuff”).
Our second session involved only the brawler and the martial artist. They tracked some of the goons from session one to a warehouse, where they were confronted by a sextet of robots. While these were no better shots than the thugs, they were armored (2D), which made it difficult for the PCs to damage them. While the odds were daunting (one of the PCs was wounded this time), the players managed to defeat their opponents through clever role-playing rather than by brute force. As GM, I had to deal with the fact that Mini Six doesn’t have a skill, Perk, or rule for every situation. But the kids and I had fun, and the game never got bogged down by lengthy calculations or chart hunting, even during our first session.
Mini Six is very much a generic point-build (or in this case, a dice-build) toolkit game. But it is a simple, tightly written one that allows you to play characters of multiple genres as-is. And the Perk, spell, vehicle and creature examples practically beg you to tinker with it. Players and GMs (like myself) used to the crunch and endless options of more rules-heavy games may find it limited and not quite complete. But, unlike those heavier systems, Mini Six enables you to come up with powers, gadgets and critters on the fly and run with it. And most other “light” or “quick play” rules sets I’ve run across don’t include vehicle or critter rules at all, much less a sizable list of pre-written ready-to-use examples. Not bad for a free product that is shorter than some games’ indexes.
Substance: Meaty, a complete playable game in seven pages.
Style: Average. The print is necessarily small (but it is readable), there are some typos, and the fancy icons intended for the spell list got replaced by letters of the alphabet. But the layout is attractive, and the rules are generally well-organized despite their condensed state. The silhouettes illustrating the vehicles and creatures are attractive.
