Any thoughts out there on EZD6? Is it any good? Is it too rules lite? Can you really use it for a long-term ongoing campaign? How do attribute checks work in the game if there are no attributes? Is it easy to create new classes/professions for it?

It seems really interesting, but as I play solo a lot, or cooperative with my wife (aka I'm both a player and the GM) it's not for me.  It's too subjective for those roles.  Any game the GM can judge character performance can't really work if you are the GM.

It seems good overall. 

Just purchased it a few days ago, actually. I absolutely love the core mechanics. D6 dice pool against a "high card" target number strikes me as a wonderfully elegant system, I love armor saves, and I think it mostly nails the idea of a freeform magic system. Of all the RPGs I've read, I suspect it would be the easiest to teach to a non-gamer.

My preliminary concerns would be that the freeform magic system will make it difficult to emulate certain low-magic genres, and I wonder if it has the flexibility to sustain a longer campaign.

There's an obvious comparison to be made with Index Card RPG (and not just because the author of ICRPG edited and published EZD6). Both are rules-lite fantasy games without leveling up or other intrinsic character progression. Both books are full of quite good DM advice, and both games seem to be geared towards hijinks and "rule-of-cool" over simulation or realism. You can argue back and forth about which uses a better system. There are elements of both which I like more than the other. What I will say for ICRPG is that it provides clearer guidance on how you can maintain a sense of progression through providing the characters with items and spells, and provides a lot more examples of both.

I purchased both looking for an easy system to run high fantasy in, that wouldn't be subject to the rules and numbers bloat usually endemic to the genre. I need to do much more reading of both, but pro tem I'm thinking that ICRPG is likely to be my pick for a weirder fantasy game intended to be played for a longer time. That said, I'm definitely considering EZd6 as being "my game" going forward for short games, particularly if I want to do a more "classic" elves, dwarves and wizards style of fantasy.

By the way, if you're interested in games of this type Viking Death Squad also from Runehammer is a fun one. Very specific in its use, but also very cheap to pick up.

To address specific questions a bit more specifically (and bear in mind, this is just based on my first read):

Quote from: Batjon on January 11, 2023, 06:29:55 AM
How do attribute checks work in the game if there are no attributes?

My reading would be that the DM just assigns a target number and then determines if you should have boons or banes, based on who your character is. This kind of raises another possible latent issue, that being that the game does seem to be heavily geared towards standard fantasy archetype PCs.

Quote from: Batjon on January 11, 2023, 06:29:55 AM
Is it easy to create new classes/professions for it?

I would expect so. All you need is health, armor, what they're trained in, and a couple special abilities.

How would EZD6 work with published OSR adventures?  Can you easily run something like The Keep on the Borderlands with it?

I should be able to answer some of these questions in more depth in the next few weeks or so, as we just did a test session of EZD6 to determine whether it might be a replacement for OSE/BX D&D.  We have a few members of the group that are pretty new to RPGs as a whole, and even the relatively light (to us) OSR rulesets were causing some confusion and slowdowns at the table.  To that end our GM decided to run an EZD6 session (set in the same campaign session and using our same characters) to see if it could resolve some of the issues.  The short answer is YES, it did solve a lot of the issues, to the point that we're going to stick with it for a few sessions and really run it through it's paces.  A couple random thoughts;

We were all able to convert our characters over without much difficulty.  This was made easy as we were all pretty low level and lacked much in the way of any unique features that would fall outside the provided Hero Paths. 

Our GM is working on fleshing out how characters might involve over an extended campaign as that is not really covered in the rules.  There's some obvious use of things like Aspects (which you could add or alter during play) that are easy enough, but thinks like Inclinations and Circles of Sorcery probably need a bit of thought/work before they're added to the mix.

Thr feeform magick is pretty easy and flexible, but doesn't represent some archetypes in various fantasy genres all that well.  I think the existing Circles might need to be tweaked a bit, some additional Circles added, and some rules for practicing multiple Circles of magick be added in order to more thoroughly flesh things out.

Quote from: rkhigdon on February 27, 2023, 12:49:23 PM
I should be able to answer some of these questions in more depth in the next few weeks or so, as we just did a test session of EZD6 to determine whether it might be a replacement for OSE/BX D&D.  We have a few members of the group that are pretty new to RPGs as a whole, and even the relatively light (to us) OSR rulesets were causing some confusion and slowdowns at the table.  To that end our GM decided to run an EZD6 session (set in the same campaign session and using our same characters) to see if it could resolve some of the issues.  The short answer is YES, it did solve a lot of the issues, to the point that we're going to stick with it for a few sessions and really run it through it's paces.  A couple random thoughts;

We were all able to convert our characters over without much difficulty.  This was made easy as we were all pretty low level and lacked much in the way of any unique features that would fall outside the provided Hero Paths. 

Our GM is working on fleshing out how characters might involve over an extended campaign as that is not really covered in the rules.  There's some obvious use of things like Aspects (which you could add or alter during play) that are easy enough, but thinks like Inclinations and Circles of Sorcery probably need a bit of thought/work before they're added to the mix.

Thr feeform magick is pretty easy and flexible, but doesn't represent some archetypes in various fantasy genres all that well.  I think the existing Circles might need to be tweaked a bit, some additional Circles added, and some rules for practicing multiple Circles of magick be added in order to more thoroughly flesh things out.

We also mainly play OSE/BX at our table, so I'm quite interested in hearing more about how EZD6 might work as a substitute for a typical BX style game.

My initial response is that it works really well, unless you're talking about magic users or clerics.  In this case the rules are interesting enough, but they do deviate in pretty substantial ways from old school D&D.  Conjurers start out very capable in a narrow field and have to rely on scrolls and potions to gain capability in areas outside their wheelhouse.  Friars have some of the healing/holy capabilities of a Cleric, but the ability to call on divine aid , smite undead/demons, and such are actually Inclinations that any class can take.  This serves to really change the flavor of play from BX, which may or not be to a particular groups liking.