Humanydyne – the system

Also posted here

Cubicle 7, those cheeky London chappies (see the entry for 23rd August 2007 ) are meant to be releasing a translation of Humanydyne, a somewhat-post-apocalyptic superhero game originally from 7éme cercle (you know them, they originally did Qin).

Yes, it’s superheroes, very flexible, and it is post-apocalyptic – the moon broke up and rained hell on more than one place (London is ****ed for instance). And the city of San Sepluchro is surrounded by radiated areas (those damned superhumans).

It’s been a while and I’ve had the French version of the game and supplements for a while. It’s slow reading because I’m busy and my french is ‘poor’.

The system is called XdX and is declarative (listing only what is remarkable) and pretty freeform. To resolve an action, you roll a number of dice – seemingly any number you want between 1 and 10. To succeed in an action, you need to end up with at least one “positive” though the more you get, the better the quality of success. The system seems to say that d6 dice are standard but any can be used.

Positives – your skill levels, any pairs you roll on the dice you take
Negatives – any non-pairs, resistance from enemies skill levels.

Difficulties are also assigned by adding additional negatives. So, the more dice you roll, the greater the possible result but the increased risk of failure. The more dice you declare to roll, the faster you act in combat – your initiative score is the minimum number of dice you will roll. And rolling a 1 or 6 on a d6 counts double – not sure if that’s for both positives and negatives.

So, my query is whether or not you’d fancy the odds here? I mean, the searching for pairs smacks of ORE which is fine, but the number of negatives that might result, could easily turn success to failure.

About matt

Gamer. Writer. Dad. Serial Ex-husband. Creator of The 23rd Letter, SpaceNinjaCyberCrisis XDO, ZOMBI, Testament, Creed. Slightly megalomaniac
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