As promised, this week I’m gonna discuss my Age of Animus roleplaying game project.
Some time ago, I decided to try to run an adventure scenario set in Pelaria for my friends. Writing the scenario is one thing (not finished yet), deciding how to run it was another. I have fond memories of West End Games’ D6 system, in part because of its simplicity. I could whip up an Non-Playing Character (NPC) in that system in seconds, compared to the half hour (or more) it would take to create an NPC for use in a D20 game. Less time working on stats means more time that can be spent on writing the scenario.
So for this “one-time” session, I decided that I would use D6 and maybe come up with my own system later. I did some searching on the D6 system online and found out that the owner, Eric Gibson has made the D6 system an open license system. That is, people can use it for their own games (so long as the license is respected and the proper credit was given). I could work with that. So now, barring any mishaps or changes of heart, Age of Animus Roleplaying (when I’m finished adapting the text and rules) will be a D6 game.
I’m less than a week away from the date I set to play and I feel there’s still a lot of work to be done. Fortunately, D6 is a forgiving system. If something comes up during the session that I haven’t planned for, I can come up with something on the spot and if it’s a good fix, I can add it to the rules. Otherwise, I can just come up with something better for the official release.
Most of the work so far, has been to develop the character creation process. The Mouse Guard Role Playing Game advanced an instinct system that permitted a mouse to get a bonus when performing actions that are instinctive to a mouse, but required the mouse to maintain balance between their natural instincts and their more man-like behaviours. Straying too far towards either extreme was bad and would result in having to stop playing the character. As the Age of Animus concept deals with animals who have “awakened” versus those who remain wild, I thought a similar system would be good.
I like the idea of being able to depend on luck. You could argue that the very nature of rolling dice for success takes luck into account, but I want to push the idea further. The base D6 system uses a fortune system, which I’m using as a base, rebranding it as Luck rather than Fortune.
Okay, enough talk. I’ve got work to do before Saturday’s game! Take care folks!