Gareth Barrett publicly claimed that Scotty McFarland's EZD6 is the "greatest RPG ever written." That's quite a claim, and he makes it without equivocation. While it's impossible that he has read all RPGs, I'm sure he has read a lot, and he makes specific comparison to some that I am familiar with, including Dungeon Crawl Classics, Dungeon World, Index Card RPG, and The Adventures of Baron Munchhausen. He is comparing this newcomer to some of the most lauded and recognized fantasy role-playing games, and this was enough for me to pick up a copy of EZD6 for myself.
The rulebook was a breezy read. The rules of the game are simple, and they presented in a mostly straightforward way. However, I was quickly disappointed in the quality of the book itself. The presentation is scattershot, with technical terms used before they are defined. The writing is functional but inelegant. The result is that the book feels like a rough draft that should have gone out to external playtesters. The book is published by Runehammer, whose own ICRPG went through several rounds of significant editing after its initial release. That's a great benefit of digital publishing, but I don't get the impression that EZD6 is due for this kind of maintenance; indeed, perusing YouTube comments, I see instead that McFarland is currently working on supplements for separate sale.
Particular mention should be made of the strained metaphors. The book insists that what other systems call "characters" are, in EZD6, called "Pushers and Shovers." That phrase hardly rolls of the tongue, and throughout the book, they are referenced regularly as "characters." There's a good reason to do this: they are characters, as agents in a story. Similarly, the book insists that what most systems would call a gamemaster is a "Rabble Rouser." This term doesn't have the right connotation and so it comes across as a sloppy attempt at novelty. You have a "hero die" that is not a die at all but a token you exchange for a re-roll. The worst offense is the use of "Strikes" to denote health or hit points. "Three strikes and you're out" is an easy and memorable concept. The problem is that characters have three strikes, and when you get hit, you lose a strike. You're "out" when you have no strikes. The metaphor is upside-down. This might be a pet peeve, but I feel like the icing on the cutesy wordplay is the gratuitous use of "k" in the word "magick." It puts the "ick" in magic.
The unprofessional editing and poor use of language is enough for me to say that this is not the greatest RPG book ever written. (For exemplars of "bookness," check out Paul Czege's The Clay that Woke or the aforementioned Baron Munchhausen by James Wallis.) An RPG book is not just a book, though, and the systems of EZD6 are where it shines.
The core system is clear: roll a d6 and beat a target number, usually 3. Situations may get you a "bane" or a "boon" in a manner similar to D&D 5e's disadvantage and advantage system. The math and adjudication are much simpler here, and it's not clear to me that anything is lost in the coarse grain. That is, I don't think it matters that taking a -2 on a d20 gives a 10% difference in outcome whereas having a +1 target on a d6 is a 16% difference: the human brain is too bad at statistics for this to really matter. The real value here (as Barrett points out) is the karma system. Players start with three karma, and they earn karma on each failed roll. Karma can be spent to improve any die roll on a point-per-pip basis. This works very well with the d6 system: each failure means, in a sense, you're banking a 16% chance to succeed at something later. It's simple, it takes some sting out of failure, and it adds up even in a short adventure. It also feels heroic in the narrative. This kind of system would not work with a d20 system because the opportunities and impact would be diffuse.
Given the elegance of this core system, I was surprised that the magic rules muddied it up. I agree with McFarland's stated design goal that magic should, by definition, feel different. I think D&D has always dropped the ball here but that Dungeon Crawl Classics has a wonderful interpretation. In EZD6, you basically roll some dice against some other dice and get what you want, and you can use your hero die but not your karma, among some other restrictions. This system does succeed at feeling different from the rest of the game, but it falls short of feeling dangerous and mysterious. The best contribution here is not the resolution system but the division of magic into circles of sorcery. A spellcaster can come up with any effect they can imagine, within the gamemaster's adjudication, as long as it is within one of their known circles. This is an important restriction on a free-form magic system, preventing the spellcaster from outshining all the other classes.
One of my greatest disappointments with the EZD6 book is that it does not include any scenarios or characters. There's nothing you can use out of the box. Compare this to ICRPG from the same publisher: it includes "trials," which are small but compelling scenarios designed to expose new players and GMs to the rules, as well as sample adventures.
For my trial, then, I put together a short three-encounter adventure for my family: my wife and my four sons, ages 7 to 15. Not all of them like tabletop roleplaying games, but they were all willing to join in for a one-shot. My eldest son helped everyone make characters while I designed the quest. I decided to pick something that would highlight some of the miniatures we recently painted together—our first batch of mobs from Massive Darkness 2. (Expect a blog post about that once they're all done.) The party were called upon to eliminate a mysterious evil from a haunted cemetery. This involved battling gargoyles, skeletons, cultists, and a summoned demon. As always, I found myself deploying tricks from ICRPG in designing the scenario, particularly the inclusion of "Timers, Threats, and Treats." Everyone enjoyed the game, especially the karma system. We did not get much experience with the magic(k) system since the lone spellcaster only cast one spell, which was to blind the chanting cultists. This didn't really do anything since they were already in a trance. I have to wonder if his own imagination about how to use magic stunted by his reading too many RPG rulebooks that codify spells.
Is EZD6 the best RPG ever written? No. But it is pretty good. Playing this game with my family was a lot smoother than ICRPG or Dungeon Crawl Classics, and it seemed to be equally enjoyable by both the older and younger crowd. I recommend it as a rules-light game for those who want to emphasize narrative but still be in a GM-crafted D&D-style adventure. Rather than compare it to something crunchy like Apocalypse World, I think it would be better to compare it to FATE, and perhaps that's something I can do later this summer. However, if what you really want is a collection of advice about how to run a game, I maintain that Index Card RPG is still the best resource available, even if you don't ever use the systems it presents.
(Did you know I released a free PbtA tabletop roleplaying game about campy superhero adventures? It's called Kapow! and you can read about it here. I ran into some folks at Origins who have a completely different game out called Kapow!, but I can't blame them. It's a good name.)
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