Thy Dungeonman
2014-12-06, 09:48 AM
I had another thread about converting D&D to West End Games' D6 system and the conclusion there was that there could be no cheesy formulas to do it easy. Well, the World of Darkness games from White Wolf are quite different in that the system is simple enough I'm positive this could be done. I'd just like some input if anyone sees holes in it.
First, why? I've long found White Wolf's buncha d10s v. diff / count successes / all die are wild system to result in ridiculous bull****. Usually in terms of how easy it is to have a bunch of 1s or 0s lead to nonsense like people surviving point blank shotgun blasts without a scratch, etc. One simple solution to that would be ditching the rules for 1s and 0s, or designating one wild die per roll, but I just don't like the tallying successes way of doing things in the first place.
But I do like the flexibility and simplicity of the stats numbered 1 to 5, adding abilities to skills to get rolls, and so on. I think all of that could be kept intact and just the way of using dice to resolve things could be fixed. That way you could use WoD character sheets as is and just play it differently when the bones are thrown. And for that, the d6 system by WEG would probably work really well.
Also, my best RP times ever were with WEG's Star Wars, in terms of speed and ease of play. We got so much campaigning in it was bonkers, because we could quickly get things done. That was with their d6 system.
So 1d10=1d6, adding an Ability to a Skill gets a roll between 1d6 and 10d6. Contested rolls are simple high roll wins, defenders get ties. The difficulty scores from the game could mostly get chucked since a lot of them would no longer be needed for contested rolls. What about uncontested?
This is where things could get tricky, because many WoD rolls only require 1 success, but some require more. I'm gonna throw out some numbers & tell me if they're screwy: As a base line, multiply the WoD difficulty by 2 to get the d6 difficulty. For every success over 1 required, add 5 to the DC.
So a typical roll with an average Ability score & modest skill is 3d6 resulting in an average roll of 10-11, that succeeds on a converted WoD difficulty of 5 (becomes 10) most of the time and a 6 (12) often enough. Something that had a difficulty of 10 and required 5 successes in WoD becomes a DC of 40, comfortably in the "Heroic+" category of the WEG DC chart and not impossible for someone with very cool stats.
Honestly, I have no idea how well that conversion holds up when you start doing damage. Fortunately, you can get stats for modern day weapons in a WEG sourcebook and they still work OK with the Ability range in the WoD system. Might have to buff guns slightly to account for higher possible soak rolls in starting characters, or use an accuracy-based damage boost a la WoD. Any thoughts?
For d6 system reference: http://opend6.wikidot.com/ For WoD system stuff, I don't know if there's legit online ref, but any book will do.
Lastly, there's powers. Getting that to work might take a lot of testing. I don't know yet. But as I said at the beginning, this shouldn't be too difficult to implement. Once the formulas are down, you could convert any WoD game in a snap.
First, why? I've long found White Wolf's buncha d10s v. diff / count successes / all die are wild system to result in ridiculous bull****. Usually in terms of how easy it is to have a bunch of 1s or 0s lead to nonsense like people surviving point blank shotgun blasts without a scratch, etc. One simple solution to that would be ditching the rules for 1s and 0s, or designating one wild die per roll, but I just don't like the tallying successes way of doing things in the first place.
But I do like the flexibility and simplicity of the stats numbered 1 to 5, adding abilities to skills to get rolls, and so on. I think all of that could be kept intact and just the way of using dice to resolve things could be fixed. That way you could use WoD character sheets as is and just play it differently when the bones are thrown. And for that, the d6 system by WEG would probably work really well.
Also, my best RP times ever were with WEG's Star Wars, in terms of speed and ease of play. We got so much campaigning in it was bonkers, because we could quickly get things done. That was with their d6 system.
So 1d10=1d6, adding an Ability to a Skill gets a roll between 1d6 and 10d6. Contested rolls are simple high roll wins, defenders get ties. The difficulty scores from the game could mostly get chucked since a lot of them would no longer be needed for contested rolls. What about uncontested?
This is where things could get tricky, because many WoD rolls only require 1 success, but some require more. I'm gonna throw out some numbers & tell me if they're screwy: As a base line, multiply the WoD difficulty by 2 to get the d6 difficulty. For every success over 1 required, add 5 to the DC.
So a typical roll with an average Ability score & modest skill is 3d6 resulting in an average roll of 10-11, that succeeds on a converted WoD difficulty of 5 (becomes 10) most of the time and a 6 (12) often enough. Something that had a difficulty of 10 and required 5 successes in WoD becomes a DC of 40, comfortably in the "Heroic+" category of the WEG DC chart and not impossible for someone with very cool stats.
Honestly, I have no idea how well that conversion holds up when you start doing damage. Fortunately, you can get stats for modern day weapons in a WEG sourcebook and they still work OK with the Ability range in the WoD system. Might have to buff guns slightly to account for higher possible soak rolls in starting characters, or use an accuracy-based damage boost a la WoD. Any thoughts?
For d6 system reference: http://opend6.wikidot.com/ For WoD system stuff, I don't know if there's legit online ref, but any book will do.
Lastly, there's powers. Getting that to work might take a lot of testing. I don't know yet. But as I said at the beginning, this shouldn't be too difficult to implement. Once the formulas are down, you could convert any WoD game in a snap.