OpenD6
If anyone at your table ever rolled a fistful of six-siders for Star Wars or Ghostbusters back in the day, you already know this engine. OpenD6 is the free, open-license release of West End Games' legendary D6 System — fast, cinematic, dice-pool roleplaying where your skill is simply how many d6 you grab, and a single Wild Die can turn a sure thing into a disaster (or a miracle).
It's powerful and genre-agnostic — but it has an orientation problem: the books are free everywhere, and almost nowhere explains what they are or where to start. So here's the map.
The three flavors
OpenD6 comes as three genre toolkits that share one core engine. Pick the one that fits your table — the rules underneath are the same:
- D6 Adventure — modern, pulp, horror, espionage: now back to the age of two-fisted heroics.
- D6 Fantasy — swords, sorcery, and the fantastic.
- D6 Space — starships, aliens, and the far future.
Learn one and you can run all three; plenty of tables mix them freely.
Where to get it — it's free
OpenD6 is released under an open license, so the complete books are legitimately free:
- OpenD6 at the Open Gaming Library — the core D6 Adventure / Fantasy / Space books, free.
- Gallant Knight Games — the modern steward of the D6 line, with newer printings and supplements.
It's legitimately free. OpenD6 is open-licensed — you're not pirating anything. Download a genre book, hack it, build tools on it (like this one).
Find the community
The subreddit is quiet — but the living OpenD6 community runs on the Gallant Knight Games Discord — the place to ask "how do I start?" and actually get an answer. It's the hub no newcomer stumbles onto by accident, so here's the pointer.
Roll some tables
The D6 System runs on templates and tables. Roll on D6 tables (and hundreds more) for free, no account needed, at the RPGsecrets tables app.
Day one
- Pick a genre book — Adventure, Fantasy, or Space.
- Build a character: spread dice across attributes and skills (you're counting d6, not buying point totals) and pick a few specializations.
- Roll a pool + the Wild Die against a difficulty. That's the whole game.
Build a character
We support D6 Adventure, Fantasy, and Space — roll your attribute dice, allocate skills, and keep a sheet that handles the dice-pool bookkeeping for you.