Walkin' & Talkin'

My wife Elfgirl and I went for a walk the other night around our neighborhood, and the following discussion transpired. I thought it was interesting and wanted to go ahead and post it here, and to me, this sums up the difference as to why I prefer D6 above all other systems I’ve played.

Enjoy

Me: You know what I don’t understand…you and your sister used to play old school D&D when you were young, where character deaths occurred like, every five minutes.

Elfgirl: True. In the Temple of Elemental Evil we went through a few characters each.

Me: Right. So now, when your characters die, or even get close to dying, you guys act like I just ran over your kitten with a lawn mower. What gives? Shouldn’t you guys be numb to TPK’s and character death by now?

Elfgirl: Well, it’s not the same.

Me: How so? And speed up, you’re lagging.

Elfgirl: Well, in old school D&D you really had no control over your character’s stats. They were randomly generated and you had whatever you rolled. You were basically “trapped” by whatever the dice came up. In D6 you can customize your character- put your D wherever you want and in what abilities you think the character will utilize the most.

Me: Ah…

Elfgirl: Yeah, it makes you more in tune and connected to your character. When you can craft your PC from the ground up, customizing what they are and what abilities and skills they have, it’s a greater investment as a player, rather than having some random rolls determine what your character is good at.

Me: So when your creation is threatened, it’s not just some character that was effectively thrust on you that you had little real control over creating (outside of a name), it’s more disconcerting.

Elfgirl: Right. We, as players, have invested a lot of time crafting our PC’s to be what we want, so when they take a beating or die, there is a greater sense of loss.

Me: Gotcha. Well that makes sense. Still, the game is pretty lethal, so at the end of the day, your PC’s, and by extension, you the players, need to start using your heads a little more and investing some time in studying your inventory and what you have and what you can use in certain situations. It’s not my job to remind you that you have a potion or scroll that would help you out of a bind, it’s YOUR job to remember these things, and if you don’t? Well, I see that as little different than taking an ill-advised course of action that results in a PC’s death. At the end of the day, in my game, as in life, ignorance is no excuse.

So!

An interesting discussion I thought.