If it was already mentioned and I missed it, I apologize, but:

D6's favor the non-specialty store sales as well.  Barnes and Noble, used book stores, etc.

Quote from: Ladybird;688623I suppose the ideal would be a game that could scale from "lite version" to "full version" simply - build a lite character, play, upgrade them after a few sessions - but that's clearly a design impossibility.

I don't know if it is impossible, but it certainly hasn't been done a lot. I've often heard of people building characters in one system, and rebuilding their characters in another, so clearly players are willing to do it. Having all that in one rpg might be hard, but probably isn't impossible.

Quote from: Ladybird;688623I suppose the ideal would be a game that could scale from "lite version" to "full version" simply - build a lite character, play, upgrade them after a few sessions - but that's clearly a design impossibility.

I don't think it's a design impossibility.  I have not seen it formalized in rules, but it is a common house rule in my campaigns that characters can be re-written during the first 2-3 sessions.  

There are games that definitely have a lite version and full version - like Fudge and GURPS.  GURPS, for example, has an official lite rules as well as templates that in principle are there to simplify character creation.  It's just that it's "lite version" is already heavy compared to some systems, and it's "heavy version" is enormously complicated.

Quote from: Doccit;688647I don't know if it is impossible, but it certainly hasn't been done a lot. I've often heard of people building characters in one system, and rebuilding their characters in another, so clearly players are willing to do it. Having all that in one rpg might be hard, but probably isn't impossible.

The problem is that you effectively end up designing two games instead of one, and a lot of games designers aren't good enough to even design one game properly.

The reason I called out Shadowrun was the "skill grouping" concept in 4th edition; you can buy skill groups, which give you levels in all of the skills there (And at a bit of a saving over buying all the skills individually). You could probably take the same concept and apply it to "attributes", and then, there you are; produce a quick "character sketch" for the first game, find out if you like the personality, then upgrade the sketch to a full character after a few sessions.

jhkim; we play with the same rule, but tend to only limit it to the first (Actual play) session, and within conceptual limits (You can't redo your core concept, but tweaks are fine and almost expected). It's a great rule.

If you're using d20 strictly to generate binary probabilities -- "pass or fail," or such -- then there's a table from The Dragon #7 that can approximate it with 2d6. Here's a link:
http://martianchess.blogspot.com/2011/03/generating-percentages-with-2d6.html

Eyeballing it, the approximation of 60% should actually be 60.1% per the pattern, but I haven't checked the maths.

To get actual numbers (e.g., "I rolled a 13!"), one way is to use a deck of playing cards stripped to A-10, plus a hi-lo dice. Another way (used in Basic D&D sets during the 1970s "oil crisis") is to draw chits from a cup.

I don't know how common this is (or was), but I recall some people back in the 1980s commenting to the effect that Traveller seemed less nerdy for using d6 instead of "weird dice." These were newbs, not old hands at RPGs.

The range of probabilities that I find most useful approximates 1/6 through 5/6. That covers 6 numbers with sum of 2d6, 7 with 3d6, 15 with d20.

You may be able to go with 3d6 if you can do with roughly half the range of modifiers you had in mind for d20 (e.g., +/- 5 instead of +/- 9). Have a look at the curve, and decide whether the decreasing returns as you get away from 50% are acceptable.

If I was desigining a game to be instantly playable I would go for cards.

Ideally custom cards for the game.

So I would have a deck of 20 skill cards a deck of 20 special cards

Each PC gets 3 skill cards
1 special card

They roll stats but I woudl even look at that and say nah deal that as well.

All the stuff you need to know about is on the cards.

the skill cards describe the skill and how to make a skill check
the stat cards describe what he stat is used for.

I wouldn't use 3d6 I would simplify to 2d6 target 8 as the basic mechanic for the game.

This would be an RPG but one where you can literally be playing after 5 mins of sitting down for the first time.

if it was really for novices then I would have a GM deck of cards too to generate an adventure and some bad guys. Adventure Deck + monster deck.

The process woudl remain the same so you don't need to card or board game the rules but you need to strip down the entry point to its very minimum.

If the adventure Deck came up with  - Quest - find the Septre; the location came up as the Tomb of Rasat that just spins off a game the GM ad libs.

How do the skill cards make the game playable after five minutes of sitting down?

Plus the spread is much more evenly centered on 3d6 over 1d20 -- as already mentioned.

I must say I like the Advantage/Disadvantage kicker to the roll. I'll have to steal ... ah, borrow, that

I started gaming playing GURPS, so I've been a 3d6 person all along. Then I got into CoC, which sold me on d100 for skills. It always made sense to me to be rolling to get under the number rather than roll and add this to to get over it. But as I say, GURPS -- it's a bit like having been a scientologist.