Ad Astra: PDQ vs. D6 1:0

Yesterday my gaming group assembled to play our first session of “Ad Astra”. Alas I wasn’t able to finish everything I wanted to have written down at that point, but we decided it wouldn’t hurt to give it a try. I initially planned to use D6 Space for Ad Astra, but when we sat around the table, ready to create characters, I had an idea. I have been reading Swashbucklers of the 7 Skies for some time now and I think that the PDQ# system can easily be used for SF, too. So I ask my players if they would be willing to give it a try. So, I pulled out my copy of the PDQ# rules and started creating characters. I haven’t run a PDQ game before, so I am not 100% sure how it will turn out but my players are excited and more than ready to give a narrative game a chance.

Two of my players wanted to play espers, so I told them that one of the qualities they could choose, has to be Esper and that this quality would start at Average (0) instead of Good (+2). This makes espers a bit weaker (they can’t soak as much damage as others) but the versatility of the esper quality should make up for it.

As for vehicular/space combat I think of giving each vehicle/space ship a couple of qualities and a weakness of their own. Or I try to adapt the S7s rules for vehicular combat to space ships, when my approach doesn’t work out. When I remember correctly another S7S fan has already started a Star Trek conversion for PDQ, so perhaps I can borrow a few ideas from that project.

But fans of the D6 system should not worry, I haven’t abandoned D6 altogether. It is possible that we’ll return to using D6 at a later date and perhaps I will at least release some of the D6 stuff I’ve created so far for you to use.