Sometimes, when introducing new players – especially new to TTRPG players – to Super Dead, I'll run a session using TinyD6. Which is great, because TinyD6 has both a supers variant and a zombies variant – so smashing them together into Super Dead is well supported. The only drawback is that neither of the games can get out of their own way.

For those who aren't familiar with TinyD6, the basic mechanic is roll 2d6 and look for a 5+. Any advantageous or disadvantageous situation is handled by simply adding (advantage) or removing (disadvantage) a die, so that in a good situation you're rolling 3d6 and in a bad situation you're rolling 1d6.

This mechanic has tons of advantages.

• It's simple: no modifiers
• It's obvious: more dice is better
• It's tactile: more dice feels better
• It's mundane: two standard game dice
• The odds are fine: 33%, 55%, 70% chance of success

Ultimately, it's just a really great mechanic for introducing players to gaming in general.

And this, plus the fact that they have superhero and undead editions, is a great reason to pretend to be using TinyD6.

Wait, what? Pretend?

Oh. Yeah. TinyD6 is just too much game for what it's trying to be.

Because there's no nuance in the core mechanic, layering complexity on top of it doesn't really work. The TinyD6 supers book has 20+ pages of superhero creation, including 12 pages of powers, each of which has three tiers. This has the odd effect of adding crunch to a system that's core mechanic can't handle it. And because powers are interpreted mechanically and there are so few mechanics, you just can't really end up doing what you want to do.

As for the zombies book, well... the word bite doesn't even appear in the text. Which is the main thing that zombies do.

So why say you're playing it at all? Because saying your playing a specific game, that someone else made, lends credibility to what you're about to do: which is run an FKR.

The most newbie friendly FKR mechanic

The 2d6, plus or minus dice for advantage/disadvantage is great for FKRs, especially with players who have never played tabletop games before. It has all the benefits above, and is pretty flexible. Advantage / disadvantage is obvious. You can also nudge up/down the target number. 5+ is good. But giving characters 3+ or 4+ for something they're really good at (say, using their super powers), works great.

The simplicity and intuitiveness of the mechanic keeps players in the fiction. If all they have is a few tags on their character sheet that may or may not have any bonuses associated with them, it's pretty easy to keep folks engaged. Handling wounds in an FKR style is great for a zombies game because... you don't really need a lot of hit points anyways: people are dying from being bitten or scratched more often than anything else.

And when you're dealing with new players, gaming is not about the rules.

Here's the Angry GM on introducing new players to tabletop gaming.

What you’re really trying to teach the players is how a roleplaying game works and how it’s played, and you’re also trying to draw them into the game’s world. That has nothing to do with the rules. [Emphasis mine.]

Angry also notes a few things that makes TTRPGs intimidating to new players:

• rules to learn
• complex character sheets
• weird dice

And this 2d6 +/- 1d6 approach solves... all of those. The rule is dead simple. Character sheets become performative. And the dice are the same dice you need to play monopoly.

Interestingly enough, this is exactly what the creators of minimald6 decided on as well.

You roll 2d6, +1d6 if your character has some advantage of some kind, -1d6 if your character has some disadvantage of some kind. You always roll at least 1d6, and 3d6, tops. Every 5 and 6 is a success. That's it. That's the system.

There's no magic here. But that is the magic.

Their game is free and Creative Commons BY-SA 4.0 licensed. Go download it and play it with your friends who don't game.

Or don't and just remember the one rule. It's pasted right there in this blog post.