I'm new to this way of gaming and thought I'd get into it as a learning tool for some kids I know. I know what it's basically about: telling a good story, which I'm not new to as I'm a hobbyist writer, but the actual game mechanics of rolling for stats and numbers and when it's appropriate to role have me incredibly confused.

I'm the GM for this. I use the D6 Fantasy rules ... and I've read a majority of it so many times but, I thought I would come to a forum and get some straight answers. Understanding the rule book is a bit difficult for me, and, from the sound of things, people make up their own rules anyway to what feels better for whatever campaign they want to make. Starting out, I kind of want to just follow the rules in the book and figure out how it all really works.
A couple questions:

When rolling for a particular skill/ability -- do you combine both the skill *and* the attribute or is it one or the other?

When do you decide what attribute/skill needs to be rolled in a given situation?

One of the problems I was having was one of the players kind of just thought he could do whatever he wanted (and kill whoever he wanted) and it became very hard to reign him in without really understanding how to do that, myself.

Any help or advice is heavily appreciated!

Ok.  It's a D6 question.  I'll look and see if I still have a PDF of those rules.

Is it WEG Fantasy D6? If so, page 12:

QuoteAll skills beneath a given attribute begin at that attribute's die code. To highlight skills in which the character has trained or has some experience, add pips or dice to the base attribute value.

That says to me that you build up from the attribute with a chosen skill. 'However many' Ds are on the attribute, and then 'however many' Ds or pips or whatever they are spent/allotted on the specific skill(s).

So, to answer your question: "When rolling for a particular skill/ability -- do you combine both the skill *and* the attribute or is it one or the other?"

Use the attribute unless is it something specialised. This leads to question 2: "When do you decide what attribute/skill needs to be rolled in a given situation? "

Up to the GM. And stopping people killing everything? Actions have consequences....

I think the best way to look at it in D6 is that you only roll on Skills never on Attributes. However Skills generally default to their Attribute so it's kind of the same thing.

For instance if a character has 3D in Reflexes and during character generation spent 1D on Acrobatics and nothing to Dodge he would roll 3 dice for  dodge rolls and 4 dice on Acrobatics rolls.

D6 is a good choice to start with as it is a very simple and consistent set of rules. Still you might find Mini Six (a even simpler version of D6) even more accessible. It's free and you can get it here: http://www.antipaladingames.com/p/mini-six.html

Characters "doing what they want" is kind of the cornerstone of roleplaying games, but this should not descend into mindlessly vandalism. You can try to deal with this in game by showing how the character's actions have consequences (a character that goes on a murder spree will be hunted down by the law) or out of game by talking to the player and making sure they understand their role in presenting  believable characters supporting the premise and genre conventions of the game.

Quote from: Yean;738414One of the problems I was having was one of the players kind of just thought he could do whatever he wanted (and kill whoever he wanted) and it became very hard to reign him in without really understanding how to do that, myself.

Just quoting this to emphasize it.

If you're gaming with youngsters, you will encounter this sort of stuff. The cure is consequences. Law enforcement or whatever takes their character out of the game, and the player is sent home for the remainder of that session. And if they don't learn from that, they don't play in the game anymore.

But that's just advice for a young player. It's simpler with adults.

Yean,

I found my D6 PDFs. No wonder they were free. The rule about untrained skill rolls is the easiest to understand. The rest is just blow hard stuff here and there, so you have to use deduction to figure it out. I'm spoiled by other games that state how skill checks are performed in just a sentence or two. All I can do is quote from page 12 also, but that won't help since I don't understand it either after reading it a few times.

My guess is to find a GM on this forum who has house-ruled how it's done already and it seems to work for them. I tend not to play a game if it has to be house-ruled out of the box because the writer is beyond vague, or wants you to read his mind to get at the rules, or hasn't actually played his own game to see if it works.

But the game was free, so it must be awesome. Heck, I downloaded it. And I only waste my time downloading awesome free stuff.

Quote from: Yean;738414One of the problems I was having was one of the players kind of just thought he could do whatever he wanted (and kill whoever he wanted) and it became very hard to reign him in without really understanding how to do that, myself.

The defining characteristic of all tabletop RPGs is that the player can attempt anything that their characters could do. In that respect what your player is doing is well within the spirit of the game. However as you said it is a problem.

To solve look at what you would do if the player said "I jump off a hundred foot cliff" without any type of flying, teleport, or specific local circumstances (like water at the bottom). The character would die from the fall or if very lucky escape with crippling damage.

The same with the mad-dog character killing anything and anybody he wanted. His character exists within your setting and its inhabitants will not take kindly to his actions. Just imagine the situation as if you are really standing.

Who would react?
Who forces they would bring?
The character is probably not the first to murder, so the locales will some way of dealing with this up to and including bringing out the local army to crush the malcontent.

If you are worried that this will dominate the campaign then don't! The player choose to bring this on his character. The party by their action or inaction choose to support this behavior. The players choose to make this the dominant theme of the campaign. If they don't like the consequence then perhaps they will learn to be more calm with their next character. If they accuse of being biased tell them how things would go down in the real world if they acted like their character. Either quit doing it or rise to the challenge.

Finally if this is really the type of play they want to engage then perhaps what you need a different campaign. A campaign set in a time and circumstance where this type of behavior is expected or even rewarded. A civil war or a collapse of an empire. Vikings like in the new history channel series. And so on.

Quote from: Yean;738414I'm new to this way of gaming and thought I'd get into it as a learning tool for some kids I know. I know what it's basically about: telling a good story, which I'm not new to as I'm a hobbyist writer, (...)

What would you like them to learn via role playing? Social behaviour? History (by setting the game in historical times)? Maths?

Don't let the writer in you get the upper hand when playing. Role playing is not about "telling a good story", it is about role playing, about making choices and seeing what happens - which does not work well with pre-determined stories.

Your work as GM is "merely" setting the stage - the unfolding play is largely in the hands of your players. Roll with it.

QuoteWhen rolling for a particular skill/ability -- do you combine both the skill *and* the attribute or is it one or the other?

Skill and attribute are already combined during character creation. Using Soylent's example from above, if your character has 3D in Reflexes and you allocate 1D to Acrobatics you write down, 4D. Every skill under Reflexes uses (defaults to) 3D, but with Acrobatics you roll 4D.

QuoteWhen do you decide what attribute/skill needs to be rolled in a given situation?

That's something the GM has to decide a lot, and mostly on the whim of the moment, whenever a player want his character to act. But fear not - in the beginning you will probably be very methodical about it ("let's see, you want to jump the chasm, what skill fits the situation best?") but it will become second nature very fast.

Make it a group act, let the players suggest a skill (or lacking a skill that fits, an attribute). That way the players learn to adjucate the chances of their actions and get a better grip of both their character and the game system. ("My Reflexes is 2D... so obviously cannot do whatever I want! Maybe I should try tasks that don't rely on being dextrous or quick...")

(But also remember, no matter how many players are thinking one skill would be best - in the end it is still your decision as the GM.)

QuoteOne of the problems I was having was one of the players kind of just thought he could do whatever he wanted (and kill whoever he wanted) and it became very hard to reign him in without really understanding how to do that, myself.

A role playing game adventure/setting is a "world in motion", and every decision a player/character takes yields consequences. If they get notorious for brawling in bars they will have problems entering bars in the future. If they kill at random they will be hunted by the law. If they help strangers they will make new alliances.

Explain to the players that role playing is not a computer game where entering every house and robbing every NPC is possible and accepted behaviour. Let them put themselves in the spot of their character. "If you were there, now, what would you do? How do you think the world would react to that? Can you jump 20 yards? Can you survive a fall from the 4th floor?"

Quote from: Yean;738414One of the problems I was having was one of the players kind of just thought he could do whatever he wanted (and kill whoever he wanted) and it became very hard to reign him in without really understanding how to do that, myself.

I had an odd experience with that a while ago.

When my friends played the sword-and-sorcery game Dungeons & Dragons, usually out on frontiers or even behind enemy lines, they nonetheless took fairly honorable roles.

I was taken by surprise when I started a science-fiction Traveller game, which put them in an urban setting much like what they know in real life, and they suddenly chose a career of crime (and not for any great profit, either). After they killed a police officer, the pursuit turned into a dragnet. Their escape put them in company as untrustworthy as themselves.

As others have said, it's a matter of actions having having consequences. If the consequences are similar to those in real life, then the spread of outcomes for rampaging public enemies will also tend to be similar. The Gangbusters 1920s game was in my experience well named, since the gangster characters had for the most part very brief careers (and freelance bank robbers and the like even shorter ones) compared with the lawmen and journalists.

We recently played a D&D game explicitly premised on our characters being hardcore bad guys (initially prisoners en route to the mines, then on the lam). The flip side is that you can set up a game with some other explicit premise as to what it's about.

As with a board game or card game, this means there can be behaviors that are permitted by the rules, but don't properly constitute playing the game in good faith. If someone doesn't care about "spoiling the game" for the other participants, then that's an interpersonal relationships issue.

Just want to welcome the OP into the fold and congratulate him on game choice; D6 Fantasy looks pretty boss.

Maybe think of it as "creating a good story" rather than "telling a good story", and you'll have a better game and slightly less hazing at therpgsite.