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| Cover image via DriveThruRPG |
Tiny d6 is a very simple system that has available variants for a whole lot of settings; it began with a D&D-alike (Tiny Dungeons) and has since expanded to cover a wide range of genres. Including Westerns, in the form of Tiny Gunslingers.
The base mechanic for Tiny d6 is very simple; for a Test you roll a 2d6 pool that counts 5s and 6s as successes, and one success is generally enough to get the desired result. If you're acting at a disadvantage, your pool is one die smaller, and if you're acting at advantage your pool is one die larger. That puts the your chance of success at approximately 33% with disadvantage, 56% without modifiers, and 72% with advantage.
Characters are distinguished from each other by Traits. Traits occupy a design space similar to Feats in contemporary D&D/Pathfinder or Edges in Savage Worlds; they're special abilities that (in most cases) either give you an advantage in certain situations (such as determining when another character is telling the truth) or allow you to do something other characters can't (such as providing skilled medical care). The game provides a list of Traits, and the players can come up with others as needed.
The Tiny Gunslingers game I'm currently playing in began with the PCs seeking shelter in a New Mexico cave, from a sudden storm, in the year 1870. Upon exiting the cave, they found themselves in the year 1874 of an alternate timeline, and have since encountered various other refugees from yet other (mostly similar) timelines. All this dimensional hopping is somehow connected to the machinations of supernatural entities, in whose schemes the player characters have, through their attempts to return home, become enmeshed.
But that all came to light only after play began. We started by creating mundane humans for a fictional/historical Old West setting. And, like so many other players, I found inspiration in pop culture.
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| James Garner as Bret Maverick (wikipedia) |
I'm not a particularly big fan of the western genre, and I wasn't keen on playing Just Another Gunfighter. But I did have one promising role model: James Garner. As itinerant gambler Bret Maverick (and later as modern private eye Jim Rockford), Garner played a wily, charismatic, self-deprecating hero who preferred nonviolent resolutions but wasn't a fanatic about it. This was a frame I could happily build upon. As a tip of the hat to Garner I gave my hero the last name "Rockford;" to further emphasize his wiliness I added the first name "Ulysses."
With a concept in hand I was ready to engage the character-building mechanics, which mostly involve selecting Traits. Our GM provided a customized list, which he had modified somewhat from the one the designers had included with the rulebook, so I'm going to mark those homebrew or imported Traits with an asterisk for the sake of clarity.
Beginning characters start with three Traits. Following the Bret Maverick template, I started with Gambler, which gives our hero advantage on Tests that involve games of chance or making bluffs. I also chose the converse Trait Insightful*, which provides advantage on Tests to discern others' truthfulness. As a plot hook generator, I ended with Nose for Trouble, which provides an extra starting point of Grit (about which see below), but which creates complications each time the character spends Grit.
Although there are combat-specific Traits (which I ignored because "averse to violence"), general fighting ability is covered by Proficiencies, which cover three broad groups of weapons: Melee (knives, clubs, etc.), Light Ranged (pistols, basically), and Heavy Ranged (rilfes & shotguns). You can choose one, then select a more specific weapon within that group as your specialty (or Mastery). Figuring that Ulysses' most likely combat situations would occur over the card table, I chose the easily concealable Derringer as his mastered weapon, which meant of necessity that his Proficiency would cover Light Ranged weapons.
Grit is a metagame currency that can be spent to reroll a failed Test (at a cost of one point), for advantage in a Shootout or formal duel (1 or 2 points), or to evade an enemy's successful attack roll (3 points). The default starting value is 3; Nose for Trouble bumps that up to 4. Grit regenerates between sessions, but in the course of play it can only be regained by capturing or killing bad guys, thereby earning Bounty that converts to Grit at a 1:1 ratio.
Tiny Gunslingers uses Hit Points as an endurance meter for its characters; player characters begin with 6 HP, and when combat or other damage brings you to 0 HP the risk of death rears its ugly head.
After selecting Traits and Weapon Proficiencies, characters can then choose starting Gear. The game's unit of exchange is the handwavey dinero, and in the spirit of minimalist game design the lists of gear and prices are mostly suggestions and divided up into broad categories of scarcity and cost (common, uncommon, rare). There is a starter Cowpoke's Kit, a variation of which our gamemaster provided as the default gear selection--plus a weapon (2, with the GM's blessing). So Ulysses Rockford began his adventures in the Mythic West with a Traveler's Kit that included a bedroll and basic supplies (toiletries, change of underwear, that kind of thing) and two weapons: the aforementioned derringer and a basic revolver. (We assumed he also had a deck of cards, since it seemed like a common item and directly related to his profession.) Ammunition is not individually tracked; instead, characters make Tests after each altercation involving gunfire to see whether they've run out.
In addition, a player character is supposed to have a Profession, which functions as a sort of custom Trait. At character generation, we overlooked this aspect (as well as Drive, which follows), and the GM decided to have us backfill it a few sessions into the campaign. I decided that Gambler suited that slot just fine and selected an additional trait to fill out Ulysses' skill set: Nimble Fingers, which provides advantage on Tests to pick locks or pockets or otherwise engage in acts of larceny that depend on small motor skills.
Drive is a short description of the character's overall approach to life and the problems it brings, and if we had addressed this at the time Ulysses Rockford's would probably be something like "Can't we talk this out first?"
So at the start of the campaign (and excluding both the Drive and the Profession that we retconned later on), the starting statblock for Ulysses Rockford look something like this:
Name: Ulysses Rockford
Grit: 4 HP: 6
Traits:
Gambler: gains Advantage on Tests involving bluffing or games of chance
Insightful*: gains Advantage on Tests to discern other characters' truthfulness
Nose for Trouble: gains an extra point of Grit, but whenever the character spends Grit something bad seems to happen in the vicinity--not necessarily to him, but around him, and not to his advantage
Gear: Traveler's kit (bedroll, basic necessities, deck of cards), derringer, revolver
We've been gaining new Traits after every three sessions played, and Ulysses has found himself developing some medical skills to deal with wounds, poisons, and so forth, so as of last week his statblock looks like this:
generated on HeroForge
Name: Ulysses Rockford
Grit: 4 HP: 6
Traits:
Gambler: gains advantage on Tests involving bluffing or games of chance
Insightful*: gains advantage on Tests to discern other characters' truthfulness
Nose for Trouble: gains an extra point of Grit, but whenever the character spends Grit something bad seems to happen in the vicinity--not necessarily to him, but around him, and not to his advantage
Nimble Fingers: gains advantage on Tests to open locks, pick pockets, or engage in other acts of larcenous manual dexterity
First Aid Specialist*: gain advantage on Tests to heal people, and can make such Tests as a non-action
Sneaky: advantage on Tests to hide or move about undetected. If detected, can act first.
Healer**: can take an action and make a Test to heal another character for 2 HP, or possibly treat illness or poison
Gear: Traveler's kit (bedroll, basic necessities, deck of cards), derringer, revolver (His original derringer was damaged as fallout from Grit expenditure (see Nose for Trouble above), but he was finally able to replace it once the party reached an actual city after several sessions in the boonies.)
Note that it probably would have made more sense to take Healer before First Aid Specialist, and perhaps it should have been a prerequisite (though I suppose one could use it on oneself without the Healer/Doctor Trait).
**called "Doctor" in the original Tiny Gunslingers manuscript.
