EZD6 for Foundry VTT

Most of the games I play would not be considered “rules light”; in fact, I’ve generally leaned somewhat in the opposite direction. I’ve become curious over the years about that style of play, but never quite got to the point where some specific game or setting grabbed me and made me decide, “this is the one to try!”

So a couple of months ago when I heard that DM Scotty, of YouTube dungeon crafting fame (frequently mentioned in the crafting posts on this site) and co-creator of the Quest Givers series of adventures (which I haven’t played but have heard good things about) had just released a game system called EZD6 with a slimmed down set of rules, I became curious. After a variety of reviews praised it, I decided to give it a try and picked up a copy of the PDF.

So what do I think of the game, now that I’ve played it? Well… er… ahem… as of this writing, I haven’t yet. My regular gaming group has had some unavoidable schedule interruptions lately, and between working on prep for my ongoing D&D campaign, setting up a few sessions of Coyote and Crow, trying to put together another Mighty Protectors one-shot, and prepping to eventually finally run a Traveller game, we just haven’t gotten there yet. But in the meantime, since my gaming is still entirely online at the moment, I wanted a way to play it in Foundry that was a little nicer than building it in one of the available generic/sandbox systems.

So I made it myself.

EZD6 for Foundry VTT

Having built a big, relatively complex system like Mighty Protectors for Foundry – and being more familiar with the Foundry API and better with Javascript in general, putting together a simple one like the EZD6 system was comparatively fast and easy. And while I still haven’t run a game with it myself, it’s gone through a few rounds of revisions based on feedback from folks on Scotty’s discord who are now using it regularly.

Using the System

There’s not much to an EZD6 character sheet. The player chooses a Species, Hero Path (class), either by clicking a + next to that section on a blank character sheet or drag-and-dropping from an existing item. These selections open up choices of boons, features, inclinations, and possibly a Circle of Sorcery, added to the sheet the same way. Aspects – short descriptive statements about the character’s background or personality that could become relevant during gameplay – are made up by each player for their character.

These choices determine the short list of stats on the right.

Most items are simply a name and a description. Clicking on an item name in the character sheet will post its description in the chat window.

Actions that require rolls either ask for a number of boon or bane dice (for attacks, saves, and general task checks) or a number of dice to roll (for spells and miracles).

Finally, initiative in EZD6 is simple as well: Players always go first in whatever order they want, and monsters always go after that in whatever order the GM wants. So the initiative tracker has been simplified to simply sort players first and monsters last, and provide a checkmark the GM (or the players for characters they own) can tick off to indicate the character has already acted on this turn.