[RPG] Star Wars D6: How to make different alien races interesting and unique

character-creationstar-wars-d6

The Star Wars universe provides hundreds of species which are feasible for characters (essentially all humanoids and even more). In terms of star wars lore (be it canonic, expanded-univere or from other origins) there is tons of information, background stories, unique traits, skill, culture etc.

For the rest of this question I will assume that it is desirable to have a party or parties which consist out of a variety of different species, which–for me–contributes an important part to the liveliness and the space-opera-feel of the Star Wars Universe


In Star Wars D6 however, alien races which players choose will essentially only influence the minimal and maxmial values of the 6 base attributes. For example while humans (and also many species) must have starting attributes betweend 2D and 5D for some alien species this shifts to 3D to 6D with some attributes.

Given the starting number of dies to distribute, this change in minimal and maximal attribute starting values has only a very limited effect: unless you are building a highly specialized characters (say a wookie which is immensly strong and wants to start with 6D on STR) alien characters look–from a rules perspective–just like humans, and are indistinguishable from each other.

Other systems use things like advantages/disadvantages or species-specific traits (like night vision, …). But Star Wars D6 does not provide for a rules-system way of doing this, so we introduced our own advantages/disadvantages mechanic at character creation.

  • How did you make different alien species feel unique and special to your players? (Assuming that having not all players play the same old boring humans is a good thing. 🙂 )

  • How do you handle canonical traits which give certain species a clear advantage over others? (Some species have underwater breathing for example–which the characters get 'for free' by just picking said species.)

Best Answer

You have a couple of options.

1. Switch Editions

I'm not sure which edition you're using, but Second Edition pretty much fixes this. Basically every race in the Second Edition Revised and Expanded rulebook has at least one minor special ability.

The same is true for Galaxy Guide 4: Alien Races (also a second edition book).

2. Just Do It

Just go ahead and tack on an ability or two that makes sense for the race. The races are only sort of balanced in the materials we used in our campaigns, and that wasn't much of a problem.

In general, if you give each race either a +1D attribute maximum to a specific attribute (compared to humans), or a significant bonus, you should be fine. Races with severely limiting story factors (like the Wookiee) might get both.

Mechanically, humans will lag behind a bit, although not by much. They also get the bonus of blending in anywhere, and not worrying much about speciesism.