Comparing task resolution difficulties across RPG systems (D6 + d20 + more)

I'm hoping someone out there might find it useful to see the side-by-side comparison of skill resolution target numbers/difficulty classes for a small variety of RPGs that are of interest to me right now.

If you just want to see the tables, you can skip on ahead to the figures so you don't get bored by my introductory rambling.  If you want more detail, possibly along with a small word salad, read on.  Either way, please let me know if you see any errors on these charts.

So...when I was beginning my deep dive into RPGs around 20 years ago, I was really intrigued by mechanical systems that lent themselves to covering modes of gaming outside of just crunchy campaign play, like miniatures, card games, or even just more casual roleplaying.  The D6 System from West End Games (WEG) really caught my eye, especially once I realized that it was implemented in such diverse forms as Ghostbusters (its genesis), Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game (perhaps its best-known form), DC Universe (altered to handle superpowers), and Star Wars Miniatures Battles and Live-Action Adventures.

These last two might have been the most intriguing, as they shifted the typical WEG D6 mechanics from a dice pool to [D6 + Attribute + Skill].  And somehow, using pretty much the same values as the standard WEG Star Wars RPG, that shift seemed to work in play.  It almost felt like I didn't know at the time that this kind of adjustment was even allowed in RPGs. :)

As I've looked around lately for a system that I might be able to use for a variety of gaming projects, I found myself looking really hard at Ghostbusters...and liking what I saw, a lot.  Also remembering a message board post where someone pointed out the similarity between the target numbers of the D6 System and one of the major iterations of d20 (I think it was already 5E at the time), I decided to take a look at how some of these systems stacked up in terms of difficulty classes for skill rolls.  Here are the systems included:

1.  Ghostbusters -- The point of the exercise and maybe the greatest RPG ever written

2.  Spooktacular -- A retro-clone of Ghostbusters with an associated OGL-friendly SRD (Sixtacular)

3.  FIE, I SAY! -- A traditional fantasy take on the Ghostbusters core rules, from Tim Snider; clearly constructed with love, humor, and an eye toward old school cachet

4.  The D6 System -- A generic toolkit for RPG system construction, published by WEG in 1996 and often called "the Cookbook" by fans

5.  Mini Six -- The clever and concise universal D6 ruleset released by AntiPaladin Games under the OGL

6.  Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game, Second Edition -- The WEG one, not the WotC one...although the numbers are probably pretty similar considering...

7-8.  Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 and 5E SRDs -- Probably the two most-referenced RPG System Reference Documents

9-10.  Mörk Borg and Shadowdark -- Some darlings of the old school RPG crowd over the past few years (well-deserved reputations, I believe); both d20-based, with toned-down expectations for stat bonuses

11.  Star Wars: Live-Action Adventures -- A system for LARPing in that galaxy far, far away; uses essentially the same stats as the tabletop game but relies on a single D6 for task resolution (same scale as the WEG Star Wars minis game)

12-14.  Live-Action Adventures, +4 and +4/adjusted -- Having found 1D6 resolution to give a narrower range of results than I would like (relative to the possible spread of attributes and skills in the system), I'm looking at using 2D6 instead; +4 accounts for the added die, and the "adjusted" values shift the typically 2-point difficulty bands for 1D6 rolls to 3-point or 4-point bands (shifting "Moderate" downward in order to move toward a standard of 10 as the target number when attacking an average, unarmed human)

Here's the full table:

Here's a quick reference on how closely Ghostbusters and the WEG Star Wars RPG actually line up with target numbers in the d20 System (which would come along around the turn of the millennium and dominate roleplaying for years):

And finally, here are the tracks for FIE, I SAY! and Shadowdark, along with the table that I'm leaning toward as the eventual model for my ongoing Monstrous Matters campaign and its associated endeavors.  I like this scale quite a bit, and it's interesting to me that a dice-pool approach (FIE!) might match up so closely with both 1D20 (Shadowdark) and 2D6 resolution mechanics in terms of skill difficulties.

Thanks for checking these out, and please let me know if you have any thoughts on improving or adjusting these!

On LARPing my way through life and very tiny adventures

 I am 43 years old, and I still play make believe.

If you're reading this blog (which I kind of assume you are), there's a good chance you do too.

I wonder sometimes how common it is for others who enjoy the RPG hobby to apply that love for entering fantastic worlds to daily life.  Maybe I just never quite grew up...?  (Whatever that really means...)

See, I'm not really one to get bored easily.  I can escape into my own head in just about any situation.  Sometimes, though, the task at hand doesn't really allow for drifting off into wholly unrelated thought.  So while I may not get bored, I do sometimes find myself (as I assume most of us do) in the position of needing to focus on things that - due to tedium, or repetition, or just plain old sleepiness - I simply don't "feel like" doing at the time.  And when I do, I like to pretend.

I can remember, as a kid, imagining that I was a member of the G.I. Joe team, mowing the lawn at our headquarters.  Because having to cut the grass is kinda lame.  Getting the opportunity to be a Real American Hero and doing the stuff that has to be done for that team to operate?  Well, that's just fun.

Considering the sort of fictional worlds I enjoy, I have a job now that lends itself to entering a more exciting reality fairly easily.  I work in a lab and get to spend a lot of time doing really interesting science(!) stuff.  When that stuff involves lengthy, repetitive tasks, though - which actually comes up pretty often - I definitely enjoy some impromptu LARPing.  I've worked with Hank McCoy, investigating a mutant "cure."  I've examined the physiology of creatures originating from another realm.  The most fun adventures I've had, though, have probably been as a researcher for the Combined Miniature Defense Force, helping the team prepare for future missions into the wild landscape of human anatomy.

I enjoy this so much, in fact, that lately I've been thinking it's a game setting I should explore more.  (After all, what I really need right now is another setting/adventure seed to distract me from ever accomplishing anything worthwhile in my nerdy pursuits.)  It's actually something I mentioned way back when I was very new to blogging...the idea of adventuring in the tradition of stuff like Fantastic Voyage and Innerspace...

I've never really followed up on it, and I think that's at least partially because I never let my imagination really go on the possibilities of a campaign for very tiny adventurers.  It's easy to think about such a game just becoming a slog through battles with "characters" that don't actually have much character...lymphocytes and antibodies and whatnot.  While there's certainly a place in RPG adventures for faceless foes like gelatinous cubes, I don't think many players want that to be the only sort of menace they face.

In the case of Fantastic Voyage, though, they did manage to make 17 animated episodes' worth of challenges by expanding the scope to include all sorts of missions that can only be accomplished by shrinking.  Maybe that would be the example to follow...?

At any rate, my interest in tabletop Fantastic Voyaging has hit a new high in the past couple of days.  A video made by my coworker Megan just went a bit viral on LinkedIn.  It shows T-cells destroying a tiny tumor and is pretty damn cool.  I could (and do) watch it over and over.

While this is a time lapse video, its sense of action just draws me into the world of the battles that go on within each of us.

Is it the sort of action that's worth springing on a gaming group?  Hmm.  I'm starting to think it is...