You should know that awesome guy called Alan Bahr. You should be aware of his Gallant Knight Game "tiny" publisher with a "huge" well full of dreams and exciting products.
The Tiny d6 engine is something more than a game. It's a mindset, a proper way of thinkin. Mr. Bahr, along with other prime designers, did the less obvious thing: creating a spot into the market without even trying to compete with other publishers. That's part of the concept of being a genius.
Invention is not key: adaptability is key. And when the real necessity of a "non-hyperbolic" minimalist game arises, you have two ways to handle it: design a good game, or design a dumb game.
No reason to stress it more: Bahr definitely stands on the right spot.
What's Tiny d6?
A philosophy, aka "sit down and play, nerd!" It's all about grabbing d6 (even those non roleplaying nerds have d6s... I mean, my mother got some, don't know how, but still...), pencils and a very tiny sheet of paper. Then it's all up to you. Cards? Gadgets? Pure imaginations? Beer?
Tiny d6 is quintessential gaming. It's the reason why I started gaming: having fun with awesome and thrilling stories.
The curious thing is that minimalism is not exactly my bread and butter: Pathfinder 2e, Starfinder, Shadowrun... I love those messy and clunky tomes.
Then I go for the middle ground most of the time, would it be Fate Accelerated (my favorite game of all times), modern mid crunch (Fantasy AGE) or old school madness (Diogo Nogueira).
So why should I take care of Tiny games? Because they are awesome. Because they are a respectful rendition to classic gaming with added guts of being minimalist for the sake of actual joy. Mr. Bahr, as his above mentioned brazilian brother in arm, achieves a difficult level of expertise: designing games that are actually fun and rewarding. They write in first person, they talk to the reader.
The Tiny d6 mechanic is brilliant, I won't dig too much into it since you really need to buy this. Go, I'll give you a minute.
Done? Welcome back.
So: test 2d6 for everything. 3d6 if you have some kind of edge, 1d6 if you've bad luck. A single 5 or 6 is enough to suceed. Plain and simple. If you fight, you test to hit and you deal 1 damage. That's it. Be creative to disarm, cripple or otherwise spam your enemy's brain around.
Folks, it works. You have Traits to make your character unique, defining tests you are good at (like having more chances on hacking tests, recalling knowledge or cooking for your angry capatain).
You have a bunch of hit points that are super quick to go if you play it like diablo and both you and the GM really want to flash out exciting descriptions to make the action shine, would it be TotM or on grids.
So, let's see what the sci fi experience has to offer in tiny d6 terms.
Why Tiny Frontiers?
As any other Td6 game, mr Bahr introduces you to the game philisophy before digging into the genre adaptations.
Don't know why, but I'd consider TFR a mid sci fi in the Mass Effect subgenre. All those weird human like aliens with some "excessive" aesthetics to grant variety and the required level of xeno-goodness.
Each "race" is actually a heritage granting a trait, along your starting hit points (that will generally go downwards only).
Then you pick up three traits, define a setting (maybe taking one of the awesome Micro Setting you find at the back of the book) and decide wheter or not to introduce some optional rules (like variant armor/weapon rules, advanced advancement, or some homebrews of yours). I highly recommend to start as minimalist as you like: do not standardize the Tiny experience too early. Focus more on props: I use cards for loot, ship parts and abstract ship crawling. I create hexed maps for starship battles and such, but sticking to the actual mindset is a refreshing experience.
You will soon notice how the game and the author, simultaneously talking to you throughout the tiny book, pushes you towards the "sit, play, describe, move on" flow.
All the traits are very simple ways to breath life into your toon and that's prefectly fine as is. You ate a Sneaky/Blacksmith/Quick Shooter? Nice! The mechanics let you behave exactly like that in the minimalist and functional system, while the words themselves will always remind you who you are!
An element I love, which is often overlooked, is that Tiny d6 games allow you to do what's in the art. It's not a minor detail. You can stunt the hell out of your descriptions, you can describe how you inject your speed serum, leap forward while shooting with a small gun and then slash the enemy's throat with a xeno bone blade. You have no in or out game invisibile walls. Your armor is aesthetic, your weapon is your device of death: we really don't care about what you wear. We care about how you wear it, your hidden subdermal armor can be as effective as my full powered armor, so it's really up to you and the mood you want to stress.
You wanna be her above, huh? Random sci fi picture from the web... Well, you can.
You can bend the rules as long as your doing it tinyly. A guy asked me to use a special "keen eye" for shooting ability i granted him to focus on the analysis of an event recorded on cam to spot military related clues. That's fine for me. For Bahr as well. So be creative and get your reward; be joyful and you'll just roll dice, the result is the same. You will have fun.
Once you've jumped into the universe you created or chosen among the settings, you're basically feel and are free to go wherever you want, both in and out of game. Tiny Frontiers won't push you anywhere. You are pushing it and it's been extraordinarily designed to behave like a uner toolkit in a small pocket.
The Starship rules are awesome as well, letting you define roles in the crew, each granting a special action. You can build your ship by picking up a base and expanding it, based on the "slots" you have for weapons, bays etc. I created cards for basic and advanced upgrades, so that the players can split them among the roles or coordinate for proper ship use. Nothing complex: some weapons will grant you more damage, some cloaking will let you roll the remarkable 3d6 cap, the special thrusters will grant you more movement. No fancy rules, just more goodness in the two actions economy mindset (used for personal combat as well).
In a way, you will FEEL part of the ship, no matter how "low profiled" the mechanics are. You will feek like you should really not miss with your damn missile, or how you should really think about giving up one of your actions as a Captain to grant an action to another crew mate to change imminent death into hope.
Then you have more stuff: psionic disciplines to add some "magic", the concept of advanced hacking (which is normally "just" a way to preserve machinery from working) if your players are fond of actual shadowrunning and some hints (which I consider part of the basics) to run a super quick zone based encounter system with no frills.
Don't be fooled by the tiny brand: even the minimalist advancement is enough to let you be a long term character preserving its functions: you may have up to 7 traits, or use the optional advancements to increase the HPs, get more weapons you're really good with and so on.
The Xeno aspect of the game is handled through xeno items, like "magic artifacts" with very weird uses, usually granting extraordinary effects at a price. A small list is given, inspiring enough for me to create a 60 cards deck full of mysterious xeno items to loot!
A couple of traits help define the natural distance from xeno and norm, with xeno hunting and xeno expertise to emphasize how difficult is to deal with the alien stuff.
Oh, there are a few super useful tables to use as ispiration and game aid: roll for a random planet, conditions, population and so forth. When randomly roaming, I roll, see what I come up with and create accordingly. That's an inspiring way to play and that's definitely supported by the Tiny rules.
On top of that, consider that you can really create your own roll based tables and effects (I have some scales for random loot, as you may see even in Tiny Wastelands, the post apoc tiny game).
So, what's next?
I'll talk more about the game and my options. I'll play more as well, hopefully. In the meanwhile, be sure to check out the DriveThruRPG page for the game and follow Gallant Knight Games and related publishers/brands for news!
We'll see you in tiny spaces, folks, where 3d6, pencils and paper are enough to dream for the aeons to come.
Starjump!
Tiny Frontiers Revised on DriveThru!!
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/m/product/241651
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