Let’s learn all about the DL6 Basic System Version 2.0. Join Adam as he explores his DireLands fantasy campaign setting. You can learn more about DireLands here: https://reverendcampbell.com/direlands/
Transcript
Cold Open
Most tabletop games treat health like a countdown timer: you’re at 100% efficiency until you hit zero. We wanted something more visceral. In the DL6 Basic System, heroes don’t just die—they break. Today, we’re looking at a 3d6 engine where every wound you take creates a ‘Death Spiral’ that drags you down in real-time.
Intro
Welcome to this continuation of my DireLands system agnostic, dark fantasy campaign setting! My name is Adam and in this episode I will be discussing the DL6 Basic System version 2.0 for DireLands. If you appreciate the development of this campaign setting, or the features of other games on this channel, I would like to invite you to consider becoming a patron on Patreon. You can even purchase tabletop roleplaying games or get $10 by signing up to StartPlaying.Games using my affiliate links in the description below.
Details
After running through the DL6 Basic System Version 1.0 in the Stop the Spread live-streamed actual play, I identified some issues with the system that needed to be addressed before releasing it to the public. At its core, the DL6 Basic System is intended to have quick action resolution through skill, environment, and combat challenges. It’s also designed to be familiar to the old school renaissance or revival tabletop roleplaying game fans. It blends a simplistic ‘roll high’ on 3d6 (three six-sided dice) game mechanic with an innovative ability and trauma system. The more trauma you take, the harder it is for you to use your abilities.
At the heart of the system are your Three Abilities: Physical, Mental, and Spiritual. Your permanent potential is your Ability Score, but your effectiveness is your Current Score. The math is simple: Score minus Trauma equals Current. If you have a Physical Score of 5 but you’ve taken 2 Trauma, your Current Score is 3. That ‘3’ is what you add to your 3d6 roll. As the blood hits the floor, your chances of success drop with it. We use 3d6 because it creates a predictable bell curve—making your Ability Scores the true stars of the show.
But how do you fight back against the spiral? Every hero has a Focus Pool equal to their primary Ability Score. Focus is your ‘Stamina.’ It allows you to use your Class Abilities without hurting yourself.
Once your Focus hits zero, you can still be a hero—but it’s going to cost you. To use your powers with no Focus left, you must Burn, taking 1 point of Trauma to the associated Ability. You can succeed, but you’ll literally be tearing your mind, body, or spirit apart to do it. You can also use Burn to reroll 1d6 once per check.
Let’s take a look at combat intensity before we continue on with Focus. At the beginning of a combat round, initiative is determined by your current ability score you are going to use in that round. The higher score goes first. Your attack’s success or failure is resolved by a contested check against your opponent. If you beat your opponent’s roll, you deliver an automatic one trauma plus any ability or equipment bonus, minus the opponents ability or equipment bonus. You can choose to increase the intensity of your attack by adding one trauma with heavy or three trauma with deadly at the cost of a minus five or ten penalty to your attack roll respectively. As you can see, everything in the DL6 Basic System costs you something. Nothing is free.
Now, let’s look at how the classes spend their Focus.
The Warrior has Combat Mastery. For 1 Focus, they can take the massive accuracy penalty of a Heavy intensity strike, -5 to their roll for an added one trauma and shove it onto the enemy’s defense roll instead. But there’s an Overextend Risk: putting that much weight behind a swing leaves you wide open. You lose your contested defense roll until your next turn.
The Thief uses Precision Strike. For 1 Focus, if they are Flanking an opponent with an ally, they ignore the penalty for Heavy Intensity entirely. They become surgical killers, provided they have a teammate to distract the foe.
The Priest is the Faith Buffer. They can spend 1 Focus as a Reaction to instantly absorb a point of Trauma meant for an ally. They take the hit so their friends don’t have to.
And the Magi? They are Spell Weavers. They can spend 1 Focus to Burn—re-rolling a single die—without taking the usual Mental Trauma. It allows them to manipulate the threads of magic safely… until the Focus runs dry.
Movement in the DireLands is fluid, but it’s governed by the Half-Move Rule. Your total speed is 10 feet times your Current Physical Score. You can move whenever you want, but if you want to attack in the same round, you can only move up to half of your total distance.
This represents the time it takes to find your footing and square up for a strike. If you use your full movement to sprint across the battlefield, you’ve reached your target, but you’re too breathless to swing until the next round.
Combat is fast because of Instant Resolution. When you hit an enemy, they take that Trauma immediately. If you go first in the round and stagger an opponent, their own attack later that round is already weaker because their Current Score just dropped. As you take Physical trauma, your movement is affected as well.
And a word of advice: don’t turn your back. You can move away from an enemy normally, but if you choose to Flee—using your full movement to run—you lose your contested defense roll. If the enemy can catch you, they get a free shot at your static score. In the DireLands, the only thing faster than a coward is a Warrior’s blade.
How you wield your weapons affects combat as well. If you use a shield, it absorbs one trauma from the front or facing side, and you can brace rather than attack to halve oncoming trauma. If you use two weapons you can attack with each, but you get a minus one penalty to your attack roll with your primary weapon and only half your current ability score for your off-handed weapon attack. If you hit your opponent that’s one trauma per weapon. Using a weapon single handed adds one trauma. Using a two-handed weapon adds two trauma, but gives you a minus one penalty to your defense roll.
If you are using ranged attacks into melee, due to the constant motion of battle, you risk hitting an ally. Each melee combatant adds one to four points to the Chaos Pool, 1, 2, or 4 for small, medium, or large combatants respectively. You make your attack roll, then roll the Chaos Pool ratio die to see who is forced to defend the attack. If the total Chaos Pool is 6: 2 points for a human and four points for an ogre, roll a 1d6. 1-2 is the human, 3-6 is the ogre.
You can also work together to overcome an obstacle or foe. Combining actions adds one temporary point to your current ability score, per individual assisting you, up to a bonus of plus three. This represents coordinated actions that allow you to overcome superior challenges or foes.
The system supports nine playable races from Human, Elf, Dwarf, Halfling, Orc, Gnome, Lizardman, Goblin, or Half-Blood. Each has their own ability like Humans adaptability allowing them to burn a die without taking trauma once per session, dwarves sturdy nature, allowing them to ignore the first physical point of trauma each day, to Goblins Scavenger natures allowing them to spend a focus to burn a die without taking trauma.
Finally, we have The Dice Oracle. This is a purely roleplaying mechanic meant to assist the game master in interpreting the dice when narrating actions or outcomes. When you roll your 3d6, look at the highest single die. It tells the story of the gods. Physical is Bressus representing brute force; Mental is Locaston representing guile and manipulation; and Spiritual is Caelia representing spiritual intuition. The dice don’t just tell you if you succeeded—they tell you how the world reacted to your very being.
The DL6 Basic System is a game of resource management. Every point of Focus is a shield, and every point of Trauma is a scar. It’s a dark fantasy world where the math reinforces the struggle. And every action takes its toll on you, the environment, and those around you.
Outro
Thank you for watching today’s DireLands Fantasy Campaign Setting episode. Please consider subscribing to this YouTube channel, liking and commenting on this video. And if you enjoyed this episode, consider becoming a patron on Patreon.
Thank you Creator Patrons Aaron Hardy & D. Robert Handy and Developer Patrons Chris Androu & Sam Ruiz!
Always remember that evil spelled backwards is live, so get out there and be evil!