NOVA6

Action at the Speed of Narrative

NOVA6 blends narrative and simulationist elements, balancing traditional RPG features with mechanics around player agency and narrative control.

Preparing for Kickstarter
Latest Rules (1/9/2023): Release Candidate 10

Key Characteristics

  • Players Roll. Passive opposition is the norm, and only players roll the dice. 
  • Bounded Influence. Conditions and skill can affect the results of an action without changing the range of potential results.
  • Describe Your Awesome. The outcome of the roll will indicate, without using charts or math, whether you achieved simple success or failure, or something more. This could include amazing stunts, or entertaining complications, but these are always determined after the roll to avoid the heartbreak of setting up an awesome move and watching the dice fail you. 
  • Pay To Play. Plot Points fuel the cost of success, enable stunts, bolster reactions, and provide an economy for information discovery.

The system is intended to support extensive tactical details, rapid task resolution, and creative interpretation of story and plot.

The Basics

We intend NOVA6 rules to be straightforward and to reduce decision paralysis:

  • Choose a skill and one of four actions
  • Roll three six-sided dice (adding more for skill) to determine your outcome
  • Describe, in character, how you achieved that outcome. 

The rules account for your skill, as well as any enhancing talents, perks, features, and conditions.

  • If the situation is to your advantage, you choose the best three dice as your result. 
  • If the situation is to your disadvantage, you choose the lowest three dice. 

Your outcome is success if the total of these dice is 11 or more. You may earn stunt points to improve your success, or the GM may earn stunt points to increase your failure. 

The addition of stunt points to a pass/fail dice pool mechanic creates a variety of graduated outcomes that are easy for player and GM to work with. 

We combine this with a common plot point mechanic to enable characters to fail forward or improve their success. These plot points also act as a consumable resource for character survival, asset use tracking, and structured narrative intrusion.

Themepacks and Quick Play

NOVA6 Core comes with a Universal Themepack to support most games or genres. However, we will be adding themepacks that include custom skills, talents, and rules that further reinforce a setting and theme.

Themepacks are also designed to enable a table of new players to create unique characters and start playing in less than a half hour—perfect for convention play or a quick pickup game.

Check out the Downloads Section for more