What is Do Anything D6?
Do Anything D6 (let’s call it DAD6 for short) is a generic, standardized system of running challenges in any tabletop roleplaying game. It is based on the x-in-6 system from classic fantasy roleplaying games of the ‘70s and ‘80s. It is designed to be plug-and-play: drop it into your system of choice whenever you need or want to. It is self-contained and relies purely on six-sided dice.
How does it work?
Whenever a Character (ie. player-character or other creature) undertakes a challenge that poses a significant and interesting struggle to complete, use this system to adjudicate that effort and determine its success or failure.
At its simplest, DAD6 works exactly like a standardized version of the classic x-in-6 mechanic. A die is rolled and compared to a target number. If it matches or exceeds that target, it counts as a positive result. If not, it’s a negative result.
Set the terms
To resolve a challenge, whether using DAD6 or another mechanic, it is vital that both the referee and the Character share an understanding of the potential banes (the risks or complications that might arise through failure) and the prize if the attempt is successful. Use the questions below as prompts to shape the parameters of the challenge.
What is the challenge?
Simple question, right? Well, maybe, but putting the actual task into words, and agreeing on those terms, will crystallize exactly what is being attempted. If the challenge is sprawling, should it be broken down into more atomic tasks that are resolved independently? (see “Break down extended challenges into stages,” below, for a method to handle that.) Does the challenge represent a significant and interesting enough struggle to warrant rolling dice?
What does success look like?
What is the Character’s goal? Why are they attempting this task? It may be obvious or it might not be but, as with stating the terms of the actual challenge, agreeing on the challenge’s prize not only defines success, for all parties, but it shapes what failure, and the complications that arise from that, look like.
What does failure look like?
Banes, the consequences of failing a challenge, are immensely important. Understanding and agreeing on those potential banes is vital. A Character cannot make an informed decision about whether or not to face a challenge if they do not understand something about the stakes. What do they have to lose? If we’re going to roll dice, the answer should probably be something. And they should have some idea of what that could be.
Here are some broad categories of banes to act as starting points for discussion (when in doubt, roll a die to find out!):
| 1d6 | Bane |
|---|---|
| 1 | Enemies close in |
| 2 | Collateral damage |
| 3 | Injury |
| 4 | Something breaks |
| 5 | The horizon darkens |
| 6 | What is this new devilry? |
- Enemies close in
- A threat gains ground on the Character; if there is no existing threat, create a new one and put it in motion!
- Collateral damage
- Allies of the Character suffer damage of some kind, be it bodily harm, stress, exhaustion or something else.
- Injury
- The Character suffers damage of some kind, be it bodily harm, stress, exhaustion or something else.
- Something breaks
- A tool or other piece of equipment breaks; if nothing obvious fits the bill, roll a die to see what gets crushed, smashed, horribly bent, or otherwise mangled!
- The horizon darkens
- Whatever has gone wrong here has increased the difficulty of operations going forward.
- What is this new devilry?
- As a consequence of this failed challenge, a new obstacle has appeared that needs to be overcome.
Grab some dice
DAD6 uses six-sided dice. A few of them. Okay, a lot of them. In technical parlance, their called dice pools (I will use this term fairly frequently). Unless you are new to the hobby, you probably have plenty but, if not, raid that old box of Yahtzee from the closet and toss them into a bowl on the table. Whenever a die is rolled in DAD6, a success, called hereafter a boon, is a result, after modifiers, of six or greater. Always. No flip-flopping from sometimes wanting high numbers and sometimes wanting low numbers (I hate that). The target number is always six.
Characters prime their dice pool
A first level (or equivalent, if you’re not using levels) Character begins with three dice. I like to think of them as one for mind, one for body, and one for their vocation (class or equivalent, if you’re not using classes). Characters can gain more dice, as we’ll see below, but this is the foundation of their dice pool.
Characters build their dice pool to mitigate challenges
The base chance to overcome a mundane challenge is roughly 42%. Slightly below even odds. Keep in mind that we’re generally looking to model struggles with interesting and significant consequences, so if those odds seem low for the task at hand, it might not be worthy of a challenge.
With that said, Characters can improve their odds by adding more dice to their dice pool. How do they acquire these dice? I’m glad you asked! Characters increase their die pools by:
- gaining class levels (or equivalents), 1 die per level;
- using tools, 1 die per tool;
- receiving help from other Characters, 1 die per helper;
- taking advantage of the environment, 1 die per advantage; or,
- spending extra time, 1 die for each doubling of time spent.
This is not meant to be an exhaustive list. If an advantage can reasonably be gleaned from some angle, toss a die into the Character’s dice pool. Every eight dice in a Character’s pool can be traded in for a boon. The referee, of course, is the final arbiter of what can or can’t be used to mitigate a particular challenge. It should be a conversation so talk it through!
Roll the Dice
The parameters of the challenge have been set and the Character has mitigated those circumstances as much as they can. What’s next? Let’s roll the dice and see what happens!
Count the boons
Each of the dice that results in a six is a boon, a success. Boons can be used for several things but the primary purpose is, as you can probably surmise, to overcome the challenge. For a basic challenge, one boon is all it takes to succeed. Things can get more complicated than this but we’ll talk about that in the Advanced section, below.
Manage success
If the Character succeeds at the challenge, they win the prize! Pretty simple, right?
Characters can spend excess boons
If a Character achieves more boons than required to defeat the challenge, what do they do with the leftovers? There are are a few options, actually:
- Pay down banes;
- Reduce time (though never to less than the minimum time required); or,
- Roll them forward to apply to the next challenge.
- Pay down banes
- The Character excelled at their task enough to hold any banes at bay or even push them back:
- If any enemies are closing in, the Character opens a gap;
- If the horizon had darkened, the Character finds a silver lining;
- If there is some new devilry, the Character finds a remedy.
- Reduce time spent
- The Character was surprisingly efficient at work and so has cut down on the time spent on task; sorry, but the time can never be reduced below the minimum required, everything’s got limits.
- Roll them forward
- Let’s call it momentum— the Character is able to ride the wave from this task into the next one. Surf’s up!
Judge Failure
If a 6 is a success, then the further the result is from 6, the greater the failure. A result of 1, or less, would obviously be the worst sort of failure.
| Margin of Failure | Meaning |
|---|---|
| 1 | Almost! |
| 2 | Close! |
| 3 | A miss! |
| 4 | Lookout! |
| 5 or more | DUCK! |
If more than one die is rolled, use the closest roll to determine the scope of failure. What this failure looks like, precisely, will be entirely up to the referee but it should align with the potential banes that have been agreed upon (see, “What does failure look like?” above.)
Sell Boons
A Character faced a challenge, lost, and incurred a bane. What now? One option is to just proceed from the failure: write it off and move on. Another option is to negotiate with the player to turn that potential failure into a success, but at a cost. Isn’t this letting the player off the hook? Why would we want to do this?
Here I must confess the joy that I experience, as a referee, in raising the stakes. Allowing players to buy boons puts them in position to, by their own hands and wills, hoist themselves on their own petards. With each transaction, another bane is added to the board or advanced towards a terrible conclusion. This creeping doom is, to me, infinitely more fun, than the sudden and complete stop, jarring as it may be, of a simple failure.
To buy a boon, a Character must accept a bane (see “What does failure look like?”, above, for some general and generic categories). If a bane is already in play, activate it and progress it in whichever way is the most detrimental to the Character. If not, create a new bane and put it in play.
While selling boons to Characters will soften the blow of a single failed challenge, it will both make for more heroic actions (escaping by the skin of their teeth!) and complicate the adventure in deliciously unforeseen ways.
Finally, context is king. If the circumstances of the challenge dictate that it is all or nothing, so be it! Whether it’s to the death or to the pain, sometimes you just can’t buy your way off the hook.