For gamers of a certain vintage, the D6 System has a certain cache. It was the engine which powered the (to this day) best tabletop version of Star Wars, as well as my favorite version of the DC license. Over the years, the big name licenses slowly expired and D6 became a generic system a la GURPS Basic Set: Campaigns, running in this fashion for several years before the creator, West End Games, finally went under in 2010.

On the way out, WEG was gracious enough to make the D6 System open source, leaving it to the system's fans to carry the torch. With open source fever gripping the industry for years now, it was only natural that D6 make the move. It certainly delighted several folks out there, judging from the announcement. One of those folks was Brett Pesinski, mastermind of a small company going all in on Open D6 called Wicked North Games.

Azamar is the company's first game, an original fantasy setting in a well put together hardcover with an attractive thirty dollar price point. This was actually the first thing which leaped out at me; it's refreshingly old school and I'm left wondering what unholy deal they made to keep the price to quality ratio where it is in this day.

I admit to coming in a bit blind. I'd forgotten almost everything about D6, my last foray being a short few games of Star Wars back in the mid-90s. Reacquainting myself was easy enough. The rules are simple and clearly presented. D6 is a die pool system; you add an attribute (such as strength) to a skill to get a pool, roll that number of six sided dice, and compare to a target number. You succeed if you go over, fail if you don't. Everything else builds on that simple mechanic.

Wicked North added in the concept of Cinema Points. These are experience points which you can also use during a session to give your character a short boost in capability. They work a lot like Fate Points in FATE, which has become a pretty common mechanic in that system's wake. It's a welcome addition here, serving to make the older D6 System a little more modern and to add an element of metagaming to play. I prefer to see these things split off from experience points but this is a minor quibble.

It seems fast playing and lightweight, which is good. I've found that a lot of generic systems tend to get inexplicably bogged down with minutiae and overly crunchy mechanics. This is fine for a lot of folks but I've always felt as though a generic, portable system should be fairly rules light. Add the big crunch when you can tailor that crunch to a specific setting.

So D6 succeeds in that respect. The problem is that there doesn't seem to be a whole lot to make it sing within the Azamar setting. It's presented largely as is, with most of the customization in the form of character creation and the way magic is flavored. This is a fairly specific complaint and I grant that it won't bug most people, but I feel that an engine should be tweaked to the setting. I never really felt as though Azamar's version of D6 was integral to the setting. Indeed, I felt like I could plug GURPS or D20 or any other generic fantasy system in and do just fine. This isn't automatically a damning flaw but in a book serving as a way of reintroducing D6 to a new audience I don't feel there's quite enough juice in the system to sell it as presented.

This is a particular shame because the world of Azamar is actually pretty cool. If it reads as though I'm pleasantly surprised, I am. To be bluntly honest, I'm wary of most RPG fantasy settings. An awful lot of them feel like quotidian homebrews presented as refreshing and new. There's also just such a glut of fantasy that the good stuff can be almost impossible to fish out of the sea of bad fantasy out there.

It's not going to change the world but there's some good stuff in Azamar to distinguish it from the pack. The gods are actually interesting, some not even anthropomorphic. The flavor of magic is satisfying, too, even if the rules aren't especially groundbreaking. I especially liked the character races, which offer twists on the standard fantasy fare and are presented in a way which gets my interest in each up.

Maybe most interestingly is the way that other dimensions intrude upon Azamar, threatening to break through and overwhelm the world. There's a sense that the world's on borrowed time, that strange, weird gribblies from beyond are going to end things any day. It's not what I'd call Lovecraftian, by any means, but it does give a sense of urgency to things which is lacking in something like the timeless Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide. Somewhat similar thematically, there's an entire Underdark filled with all sorts of races, both PC and NPC, called the Inferium; I love where that can go and I hope they release some material fleshing that concept out in full.

The artwork really does a good job of conveying how Azamar looks, to boot. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that this is one of those games for which the art serves as a sort of glue. It's remarkably consistent in general style and feel, regardless of which artist it is. It feels cohesive and really helped to suck me in; no mean feat for a guy who's not especially visually inclined. There's a refreshingly old school 80s RPG to the art which I really like.

The general quality of the setting and art sets up my other, larger criticism of the book which is the editing. The writing is marred by grammatical errors and awkward sentences. The issues are kept mercifully away from the rules, which are all pretty clear, but they're liberally sprinkled throughout the rest of the book. Nothing hit the level of being unintelligible but there were enough times that I had to reread a sentence or rewind in order to sort out a comma splice that it definitely hit the legitimate annoyance level. The good news is that there's a revised edition in the works cleaning up some of the complaints with the product so hopefully this particular issue is cleared up with the revisions.

On the whole, I was fairly pleased with Azamar. I can't give it an unreservedly good review. The layout and editing are the primary blocks there and are liable to be fairly universal issues, with my own personal preference for some system tweaks way behind. That said, the setting is above average, if needing just a bit more detail on the good bits to make it really come together, and the base system, as is, is perfectly serviceable. The production quality also deserves special recognition; for a first publication by a small team, it's extremely well put together and sturdy. If you're on the hunt for a new traditional system or like poking around decent fantasy settings, Azamar's worth at least a glance. If you have your system of choice or want to get away from fantasy altogether, look at it a bit more warily. At the least, Wicked North Games has served notice that they're making a professional effort at bringing D6 back into the mainstream of gaming and I'm eager to see how they move forward over the coming years.