This is a beuatifully presented book containing 3 fully illustrated games within the sci-fi genre. One of them is a cyberpunk plug-in for the ICRPG ruleset (also by Runehammer), one is an alien invasion RPG that can be plugged into any setting and the final one is basically the film ALIENS in an RPG - possibly ready to play in a rules-light fashion or perhaps, again, needs plugged into an existing ruleset.

I have not played any of these games as yet - realising that at least two of the three are plug-ins, I actually ordered the ICRPG core rules. But I have read through them and the presentation is top-shelf throughout. Artwork, layout, themes - everything is superb and incredibly immersive and has made me an immediate fan of Runehammer Games in general!

A high recommend indeed. I picked up the hardback and it's a beautiful little A5 sized book that makes a wonderful addition to my collection.

I love this book! However, I messed up and didn't get the Dropbox link when I purchased. How can I get another link?

I enjoyed reading this and it certainly seems like a workable skeleton for a campaign. Although, I don't find the main bad guy compelling (not much depth there) and I am not sure that the final fight is winnable as written unless the players are extremely lucky. I have not read the core book, but it is not difficult to figure out how the system works if you are familiar with other D6-based RPGs.

I read most of this over the last week and a half and had my mind blown. I've been playing 5e for a few years now, and I've run it a handful of times.

Pro: ICRPG is familiar for anyone who can play 5e and easier to learn for anyone who's never played a TTRPG before. For a one-shot game, I'd recommend this over 5e any day. You can build a character in less than 20 minutes and you don't have to worry about optimizing. The system is (really) setting neutral, and the book includes 5 settings that work with it and are fleshed out enough to run. It also has excellent GM advice and guidelines for building monsters that will open your eyes permanently.

Con: The first is kind of obvious, because it's the converse of the pros. Because it is so stripped down, it will not appeal to min-maxers, and anyone who thinks 5e is already too simple will want to throw this out the window.

The hearts system, which Brandish/Hankerin/Runehammer claims is revolutionary, is dumb. A heart represents 10 HP, but you still have to track HP. You just stack them in bunches of 10 when building NPCs. It's a layer of abstraction that adds nothing.

The last con is more severe. The book is much better organized than ICRPG 2e, but still baffling at times. If your players try to read through setting information, they'll run across things that are intended as story hooks for the GM and are not labeled as such. It's kind of a mess.

All in all, though, a game that lets you get up and running in at least 5 different settings this quickly is worth a recommend. Take what you like, throw away the rest, and have fun. My group sure did.

Quality book; rules look extremely fun and flowing. Now I have to find a way to convince my friends to play this instead of our normal Friday night game....

TLDR: The book is beautiful and the mechanics are mostly easy to understand but my players felt the combat and magic / miracle mechanics were too harsh and the rules lite mechanics were sometimes too vague which led to situations of GM ruling and interpretation.

I'm the forever DM of a group of six players, we've been playing 5e together for about three years now every once in a while we will shake things up and try out another ruleset. We will usually diverge from 5e for a single session, sometimes if the players are into it we will dabble again but our main focus is 5e. Most of the time our diviations from 5e is due to some of my players wanting to play with their friends and family who have never played DND or any TTRPG and have no experience with roleplaying. Since 5e is what we usually play we will just walk these newbies through a quick character creation and explain the rules as we go, maybe they understand maybe they don't. This is where EZD6 comes in. I was introduced to it through the Dungeon Craft YouTube channel, I thought this could be the system we use in these situations. I purchased the hardcover and pdf, I opened up the pdf and quickly read through it. The book is outlined well and I feel the way they worded and explained the mechanics were easy to understand. The artwork is amazing and their list of original monsters is very creative. Here is how our session with EZD6 went down: I printed out character sheets and had the players huddled around my computer to create thier characters. I explained the basic mechanics along with the mechanics for magic and miracles mechanics. Right away my players wanted nothing to do with miracles or magic, they agreed that miracles sounded restrictive on the amount you could use them and the chance they failed sounded like a wasted action. The issue with the magic system was that nobody wanted to "make up" their spells, something I thought was creative freedom was daunting and annoying to them. So we had a party of four Brutes and one Beastmaster, the Beastmaster wanted a dog for a companion so we gave it one "Strike" and some dog related Boons. All of them chose to be Human to get an extra Inclination and all of them had the "Victory in Failure" Inclination. My players had a hard time thinking of Aspects for their characters, I would say that the majority of our character creation was spent on them just trying to think about Aspects. My players thought the starting gear was too restrictive and argued why they couldn't have a backpack and a knife at the same time so I just let them have the gear that seemed appropriate to their characters just to move on. When we actually started playing the players got the basic mechanics down in our starting tavern which is where this ruleset shines. We ran into problems during combat, my players all chose Brutes which have an armor save of "6" and my rats just kept hitting them. Our Beastmaster dog was downed in the first round by a rat and ended up dying. We had five players plus a dog against four rats and my players used almost all of their Karma rolls in that combat. After that the players slowly lost interest in the game and we ended up stopping the game and spending the rest of the session drinking beer and talking about mortgage rates in the area. Later on I asked the players what they thought about the ruleset and most of them felt that the success to failure ratio with magic and miracles was too harsh, the combat felt one sided and character creation relied too much on them creating things from "thin air". As the GM I felt like the rules were on odd mixture of being rules lite but with some mechanics but beind very vague on others leaving a lot up to interpretation from me and GM ruling. All in all I believe that this ruleset was made with alot of love and thought and would be great for a particular group or situation but I guess just not mine.

A big congratulations to DMScotty this is a great book, exactly the simplicity I was looking for in ages :)

While EZD6 suffers from vague and inconsistent wording, it's the slickest rues-lite TTRPGS I've ever played.

Friendly & Inviting It has a casual tone like the author is speaking directly to you triyng to teach the game like a friend might. Section headings are often informative while also tongue-and-cheek.

Rules Lite, but sometimes Rules-Vague While I appreciate the simple writing and focus on rulings-over-rules, some of the defined rules are difficult to undertand the intention of them.

Rules-lite doesn't have to mean rules-vague and terminology-inconsistent.

The fact that the FAQ DM_Scotty's Discord server is 15 pages is a sign to me that the intended design isn't always communicated well. Sometimes things are written so there are greatly different possible interpretations, where a few word changes could clarify the intention. Sometimes a few intentions just aren't written in the book at all, and a rule here or there might be spelled out in a seemingly unrelated section.

For example, it's easy enough to assume "wounds" mean "strikes", though it'd be better in my opinion if the rules were consistent about which term it was using. You can't use karma on magick resistance rolls, though, even though the book doesn't say that; it assumes you understand that magick resistance rolls are a type of magick roll, even if though the characters making the roll aren't actually using magick. According to Discord discussions, aspects aren't intended to apply to armor saves, miraculous saves, and other combat rolls, but that's not really stated anywhere in the book, yet I've found the interpretation makes a huge difference on play—both balance and flow, taking time to debate whether an aspect applies a boon in the middle of combat.

As a technical writer and TTRPG game designer myself, however, I understand the challenge of precise-yet-concise writing, especially for a first version, and the support in the Discord server is great.

Mechanics: Fantastic Flow Once you get past the many writing flaws, it's mechanics are fantastic! My players—who mainly play 5e and Pathfinder 2e—gave glowing reviews. We've tried FATE and ICCRPG previously, but all of us were lukewarm on both, and I've read up on and explored a dozen more systems like TinyD6, Dungeon World, Ironsworn, and Cypher. Most of them feel either too bogged down in rules systems, provide too little variety and depth to feel satisfying, or are too wibbly-wobbly in their resolution mechanics, but other than Aspects, EZD6 hits the sweet spot.

One of of them said this: > I loved it so much. It's so fun to play and use that I immediately wanted to GM my own game. I felt like it would be really fun and that I could do it easily.

One of them remarked how intuitive it was using only d6s. It simplifies things yet also offers depth and meaningful decisions with the banes and boons, karma and hero die. They said they definitely wanted to play using it again.

Reasonably Hackable This book definitely focuses on fantasy, though it's reasonably easy to adapt to other genres, like sci-fi, except for equipment, scrolls, and potions, of course.

Mixed on the Monsters The monsters are all very creative, though the formatting relies on bulleted lists, which can get pretty long for some monsters. I wish abilities were given an inline, bold title to make things easier to parse. They're usually short enough, though, that it's not a huge issue.

There is also no guidance on encounter building. I would have rather not have to figure it out myself from scratch. Every encounter I've run so far has been pretty easy for my players, but it'll still probably take me a while to figure out a good balance. I'd like to have some idea, like how deadly a fight might be for X number of player characters based on the enemy side's total attacks-per-round. Somewhere to start.

Overall I wish the book had more consistent and precise writing, and more guidance on building combat encounters, but it's still one of the most enjoyable TTRPGs I've ever played, finding a great balance between quick, defined mechanics, mechanical variety, meaningful mechanical decisions, yet flowing narrative freedom.

EZD6 is an amazing system that I've come to absolutely love. It's simple and can be taught in a couple of hourse and yet it's very interesting, dynamic and fun. It can be further customized and homebrewed very easily as well. The karma, hero die and magick systems are great and a lot of fun! Gives players options during turns, but somehow it doesn't slow down combat and encounters. 12/10 would recommend.

This is a fantastic resource! The minimalistic approach makes each quest easy to grasp, which in turn makes it very easy for me as a GM to just pick a quest, read for a few minutes and then run it. Exactly how all adventure modules should be designed.

Okay so here's a review after playing about 15 sessions of a campaign.

Short version: I love it. Combats are fast. Rules are easy to digest. Magic is free-form within the limitations of your school. There isn't a setting as such, but there is a bestiary with some interesting monsters. Fast and furious. It just may be what you always wanted D&D to be.

Don't expect a lot of worldbuilding or any particular setting information. How commonplace is magic? What are the relations between goblins and humans? Are there any ancient ruins scattered around the land? As the GM you'll have to answer all of these. But this isn't the book's failing, it was designed to fit a variety of fantasy worlds, equip you with tools for telling the stories you want to tell.

What the system sets out to do and achieves gloriously is provide a rules framework for running games where rules don't bog the action down. Get ready for fast combats and quick challenge resolutions. Characters don't have attribute scores - if you're better at something, you roll more dice and choose a higher result. This simple system works surprisingly well. Each Hero Path (Class) has their own advantages and special abilities so they feel unique. A barbarian Brute will be stronger and hardier than the agile Scoundrel but it won't involve anyone doing any maths at the table. You can further customise your character with special perks called Inclinations. Eg there isn't a Paladin class but you can easily make a Warrior (or Brute, or anyone!) with the ability to call upon divine powers.

Throughout the book there's a very strong sense that a lot of work was put into streamlining the system as much as possible. This isn't an undercooked system, this is a system cut down to its leanest, to make the gameplay as smooth and as exciting as possible. There isn't any fat or dangly bits - if a rule exists, it exists for a good reason.

Magic is simply wonderful. There isn't a spell list, so you don't have to pore over the book for hours picking spells or fiddling with spell slots. In fact, making a spellcaster is only a little longer than, say, a warrior. Each magic school gets a description of the general remit of their powers and there's a push-your-luck system where casting more powerful spells also increases your chance of failure. Spellcasters will occasionally be able to take damage if their spell fails to push it through anyway, but that's a risky proposition! Most characters will die if they are hit three times. That's right. Three strikes and you're out. The game does make you feel heroic, you're a badass from the get go, but you never feel like you can't be killed by a group of goblins.

The karma system is a huge part of the "badass" part of the equation. It's basically meta currency you can use to improve your rolls, saving yourself from failure or even making your hits crit in combat. If you roll a 1 however, you can't improve it, no matter how much karma you have. The dreaded 1 is always there. Watching. Waiting.

You gain karma by failing rolls, which subtly guides the GM away from rolling for too many things. This is in line with the central thesis of the game: less can indeed be more. Sure, there's fewer options than in a 300 page handbook but in EZD6 your choices are more significant. If it doesn't have an interesting stake, don't spotlight it with a roll. Just get on to the interesting, meaningful stuff.

Combats are quick and brutal. Your characters are unlikely to die in the first encounters of the session thanks to the aforementioned karma system, but death is a real possibility, especially if you don't hand out healing potions.

There's obviously more nuance to everything I've described above (eg the Hero Die, which you can use to reroll anything, even a 1... but only once per session!) but it should give you the idea of the kind of experience you'll get. If you don't like looking up rules mid-adventure. If you don't like doing maths at the table. If you want to tell stories about brazen adventurers facing dangerous foes, this might be right up your alley!

Probably the most controversial thing about it is the lack of XP rewards. This was the first time I played an RPG without them and honestly while it was met with some surprise in the first sessions, having played through more than a dozen I don't miss it. It made me feel about other kinds of rewards: scrolls (one-time powerful magickal effects, outside of the usual spellcasting abilities!), magical items and wealth are the obvious ones but there's also recognition (players actually love being doted on by NPCs), allies and faction status. In essence it made me focused on the reactivity of the world to player actions. There is an Advantage deck (separate product) you can use if you need some kind of mechanical awards.

Some areas are vague or left completely to the GM (how obvious is spellcasting? does it require incantations or free hands?) which will be difficult for people who prefer a strictly defined ruleset. It pays to read the entire book before running it (it's not long!) as good guidance for rulings can often be found scattered throughout. For example, the Elementalist description contains a nice system for taxing extra powerful spells you can use with any other spellcaster.

Rather than providing a long list of mechanics for every possible scenario (what if the players fights on horseback? what if they're underwater?) it equips the GM with a basic system for setting the difficulty number based on the nature of the task and an additional modifier of boons/banes (advantage/disadvantage). These in turn stack, incentivising the players to stack the odds in their favour and come up with clever solutions.

The game is also well supported by the author. There's a playlist on his youtube channel (TheDMsCraft) clearing up some of the hazy areas. He also frequents a lively Discord community where you can find an excellent FAQ and a bunch of people happy to answer questions or just tell stories about their games and rules hacks.

This system is absolutely fantastic for introducing new players to RPGs, but even hobby veterans will find it refreshing. The less of your headspace is taken by the rules the more you can focus on the story. And if you like hacking, it's a wonderfully modular design.

It runs like a sports car. Get it if you want to cruise down the highways with wind in your hair. Don't get it if you want a slow but incredibly robust delivery truck. In my case it actually made heroic fantasy exciting again, where tension and fun aren't drowned in hours of rolling and slowly diminishing hit point pools. Highly recommended.

You need this. It's such an incredible system that we're running our entire campaign with it! My guys are super excited about it!

These are all wildly good and useful in different campaigns! I've run two of them in the past 3 weeks when I didn't have anythign else planned!

I love the writing and layout of the rules system. My only complaint has to do with the pdf. It's not laid out or formatted very well. To go through it's 120 pages you hasve to scroll, there are no bookmarks. so if you've got the pdf pulled up it's a bit of a PITA to get to a particular page you're searching for.Fix the pdf or add proper bookmarks and it'd be a 5 out of 5 for me. But as is, the pdf isn't nearly as useful as the book is.

Changed my life, I was suffering from the worst case of cooties you could imagine...Doctors said my days were numbered & they said the only hope for a cure is to play DM SCOTTY's EZD6. I have no idea what the hell he was talking about so I looked on DriveThruRPG & there it was, a shining beacon in the darkness, my only way of surviving the death-defying cooties that had riddled mny immune-system. So I switched on my powered armour, prayed to all the respective gods & then braced myself for opening the first page, & then...suddenly, like a bolt of lightning.. ...it happened, the moment that changed my life forever & evermore. THe turning point in this long-winded review that seemed almost gratuitously long-winded & unecessarally vague & opaque. With bated breath I tried to hold back my pre-concieved notions & expectations but nothing...not a single whimper or whisper of logic could even dare hope to prepare me for what happened next. It was like an unending moment of time had passed (something, that no doubt the reader of this review could ever hope to understand or possibly relate to), like I was on the cusp of reaching Shangrilla or the oasis of heaven's keep. It was right there under my nose... So I opened it up a saw the best rpg ever. Highly recommend :D