This build for the #CharacterCreationChallenge uses a very niche, light RPG called Perilous D6. I went with a prototypical rogue-like character, in this case termed a Scoundrel, named Ving Graeben.

Ving is not a nice man. Life has not been kind to him and he has returned the sentiment with interest.

Despite being strong-willed and rather lucky, he found himself gravitating towards the seedy side of life, hanging out in gambling dens and pool halls. When it started looking like he might get some stability in his life with a solid relationship, tragedy struck. A mob boss put a hit out on Ving for failing to pay off a loan, and the hit went bad, killing Ving’s girlfriend, Constance.

Ving has sworn a vendetta, but needs to stay out of trouble long enough to see it through.

Perilous D6

I want to like this system. I really do. It’s really lightweight, with a small rulebook, and uses standard d6 dice. No surprise – it’s right in the name.

The rulebook available on DriveThruRPG is a Pay What You Will offering, and so I grabbed a copy cheap to try out. It needs work.

It suggests using the character sheet included in the rulebook but, there is no character sheet in the rulebook – I ended up creating my own for this. It also has a section to describe each Skill, but then there are Skills listed under the classes that aren’t mentioned there. Where’s the Disarm Trap skill, for instance?

The decision to use three different colored dice seems needlessly complex. The system uses White dice as the common die, which gives you a 50% chance of success (4+), a Red die that gives you a 66.7% chance of success (3+), and a Black die that increases your chance of success to 83.3% (2+). Rather than different dice it seems it would be easier to just ad a +1 or +2.

The build was easy – six attributes and a standard array of dice: 4, 3, 3, 2, 2, 1 that you assign to your attributes. Your class determines your skills and you Class Traits and you then get to select one Special Trait.

I didn’t bother with the equipment build-out, though it appeared simple enough.

At the end of the day, the flaws in the book are surmountable, and the dice choices can be remedied through the use of bonuses. It’s worth trying out if you want a bare-bones system that you can build on.