Cover Art: Khairul Hisham Artwork, Ray McVay, Khairul Hisham, & J. Elliot Streeter Editing and Layout, By J. Elliot Streeter All content, including articles, interviews, and adventure modules belong to the contributing writers as original works under the OpenD6 OGL 1.0a, © 2010- 2011. Contact Us Today at: [email protected] TABLE OF CONTENTS EDITORIAL COMMENTARY – PAGE 1 AN INTERVIEW WITH BILL SMITH – PAGE 2 GAS FOOD LODGING, BY RAY MCVAY – PAGE 12 A CRACK OF THE WHIP, BY MIKE FRALEY – PAGE 19 PINNACLE CITY CHRONICLES: THE FRIGID WINTER OF ’05, BY DAVE MARTIN – PAGE 24 NEVER TELL ME THE ODDS! ARTICLE BY IVAN C. ERICKSON – PAGE 27 ASPHYXIA, A SPACE SURVIVAL ADVENTURE, BY J. ELLIOT STREETER – PAGE 30 SUBMISSION GUIDELINES – PAGE 40 OPEND6 OGL 1.0A – PAGE 43 Page | 1 EDITORIAL COMMENTARY Every article, adventure, and interview included in the I am super happy to have worked with the contributors D6 Magazine is a labor of love, written for fans, by fans, who not only submitted material here, but did it free. I of the OpenD6 gaming mechanic started long ago by want to extend my personal thanks to Khairul Hisham West End Games, Inc., and now released to the public for all his hard work on the cover art for the D6 under the Open Gaming License. The first issue’s Magazine, and Bill Smith for agreeing to do an theme revolves around winter, the cold, and everything interview for our readers. This has turned out as a subzero. I want to thank all of the contributors for their particularly well formed first issue, and I am excited to submissions and hope to see the community grow to work on many future incarnations of the D6 Magazine! love this free publication as it grows in both size and submitted material. I have played role-playing games for the better part of my life, and they have suffered me through some of the hardest times in my life. I enjoy the very social aspect of sitting down to play with good friends, to the mechanics of the dice systems, to the shared imaginary worlds we experience together. OpenD6 Gaming represents the best thing to come to Table Top Gaming in over a decade, since the inception of and popularity of the West End Games product lines such as Ghostbusters and Star Wars. This issue of the D6 Magazine marks the first in a long line of community-produced material that will be sure to bring a little of our imaginations as writers and game developers out to you in the public. Unlike any other form of gaming, OpenD6 Gaming is simple to learn, easy to play, and incredibly customizable and simple, yet robust enough to withstand every genre of game play imaginable. Page | 2 AN INTERVIEW WITH BILL SMITH Author of the Star Wars 2nd Edition, Revised and Expanded, Published by West End Games, Inc. By J. Elliot Streeter 1. Can you tell us a little about yourself? I stayed with West End until Spring 1997, when my Bill: I grew up in a small town in Northern New York, wife and I moved back to our hometown. between the foothills of the Adirondack Mountains to While I haven't written any RPG products since leaving the south and the St. Lawrence River Valley to the WEG, I still write and publish the Outlaw Galaxy series north. With six months of winter, there was lots of of space fantasy stories at www.BillSmithBooks.com and "indoor time" for reading and writing...science fiction www.OutlawGalaxy.com. became a natural escape from a nice, pleasant but fairly Like most writers, I've worked at a number of unusual dull place to grow up. jobs, including at stock car racetracks (announcer, I've been a science fiction fan sinc e about the age of public relations director and promoter -- four or five when my Mom introduced me to Classic MohawkInternationalRaceway.com), ghost tour guide Star Trek...at age eight when Star Wars was released, the (GhostsOfGettysburg.com), and copywriter for a now die was cast and as that Star Destroyer roared overhead, defunct ad agency...in addition to more mundane jobs, I was fated to be a Star Wars fanatic for life, through like driving a school bus and being a Customer Service both good (Star Wars, Empire, Han shooting first) and Weasel. bad (Ewoks, Gungans, one-armed Wompas, an endless Like many writers, I have a day job to support my parade of super weapons masquerading as a plot). writing habit, but life is good: I really enjoy being back I graduated from The College of St. Rose (Albany, NY) in my hometown and being near my family, I have a in 1990 with a BA in Public Communications. West great wife and we have the two greatest poodles in the End Games hired me in January 1991 based on both my world. I enjoy hanging out at the local Borders, going previous publishing experience (running the student to stock car races and racing my radio control race cars. newspaper in college and doing writing and PR for local I spend way too much time on the Internet :) stock car racing circuits) and because I was a fanatic who And I really love writing my Outlaw Galaxy stories. loved both the Torg and Star Wars RPGs. Page | 3 2. What made you first interested in role playing 3. What is it that first sparked your interest d6 games? gaming? I was a huge science fiction fan all through childhood. The Star Wars RPG. In seventh or eighth grade, I was introduced to both I bought the first edition at my local comics shop the RPGs and traditional superhero comics through friends. moment I saw it on the shelves and skipped classes, put I was hooked on them instantly. off homework, and spent all weekend reading through My first games were D&D dungeon crawls. They the book. My girlfriend at the time was bewildered. seldom ended well...there's nothing more humiliating I wasn't so keen on the D6 system at first glance. D6 than being a brave fighter cut down by kobolds, but seemed so abstract and simple compared to the games I that's life (or death, as it were). had been playing: Where are the hit points? What do I was fascinated with gaming. I was instantly drawn to you mean there are no character classes? What do you the excitement of creating my own worlds and mean ONLY six sided dice? And remember how adventures and of imagining what these worlds looked skimpy the original starship combat rules were? and felt like. I loved the idea of participating in But after I'd wrapped my brain around the core ideas something where I could do *whatever I wanted* and ran it once or twice, it seemed to be a lot of fun--I instead of being confined by what an author or film noticed that newer gamers got into Star Wars very easily director had created. compared to other game systems. I was forced to I started writing my own adventures and tinkering with completely ad-lib most of my third or fourth adventure rules almost as soon as I started gaming. I started when one of the new players went completely "off the writing stories when I was about eight years old, so map"--and after I got over my initial panic, I just "went transitioning to writing RPG stuff was pretty natural for with it" and we created a great mini-movie that perfectly me. Once I realized there were other games out there, I captured the feel of Star Wars. All without graph paper started buying and experimenting with different or miniatures, no detailed maps or NPC sheets, hardly systems. even a note or two to reference. No stopping to flip That process continued on all the way through college open the rulebook. It was just "hey, this would be until I was hired by West End Games and actually cool...how tough is this bad guy? Blaster 5D seems started GETTING PAID to do what I had been doing about right..." and so on. And it turned out to be a for fun for all of those years. great time. Page | 4 That's when I fell in love with D6. Torg had such amazing potential...it was kind of a The original Star Wars RPG book absolutely nailed the bummer to see it fizzle out the way that it did. feel and flavor of the Star Wars universe, so it was pretty AD&D (1st Ed). The core game that everybody played easy to fall in love with the game system once I gave it a in high school and college. Yes, the system was clunky, chance. but everybody knew and loved it, and well, the It quickly became my favorite game system because it quirkiness is part of the game's charm. Plus, an endless was so easy to run on the fly instead of having to stop stream of supplements, adventures, fiction, and new every round to look up rules. issues of Dragon magazine every month. I loved AD&D for its feel, but found the ever expanding rules 4. What gaming systems have you used most over packages to be a burden. I never got an "intuitive feel" the years? Obviously, you have a lot of experience for how to handle all of the little special abilities and with different systems to have created and written a odd rules--I always fudged all but the basic core rules RPG.