Gifts, Faults, Backgrounds?

For anyone who has played a lot of roleplaying games, there is much more to characters than what is on the character sheet. We weave a wonderful backstory of successes, failures, achievements and sacrifices but there really isn’t a way to track the inherent nature of who they are and how they were raised except for Gifts and Faults. What if we introduced a new slot called Background?

A gift (to quote the 10^th anniversary Fudge rulebook), “is a positive trait that doesn’t seem to fit the Terrible…Fair…Superb scale that attributes and skills fall into.”. Many times Game masters use the gifts and faults to describe character personality that isn’t covered by the rest of the skills and attributes available.

If Attributes are who a character is, Skills are what they learned, and gifts and faults cover their personality. What about the way they were raised? The influence family, friends, and environment influence. Yes, gifts and faults can be used for this but it will limit characters to have to use a background trait for that information.

A background trait is something that is chosen by the GM based on the information provided by the player. The GM would read the background or listen to what they have to say and then come up with a trait that will fit. Is the character grow up in the forest because their dad was a carpenter? This character could get a background trait like “Woodsman (+1 survival in forests) or Carpenter (+1 in bargaining).”

This type of setup would work very well for campaigns where player characters would be more in-depth and played much more often than a one-shot session or a short little group. It is a way to give more life to a character on the sheet and not just in the player’s mind.

Do you have any opinions on how you could expand a character’s background with more than just gifts and faults? Stop by the Fudge RPG forums and tell us!

The Miracle of Fudge

When it came to roleplaying, Fudge was the very first system I was introduced to. That was back in 2010 while I was deployed to Afghanistan. Since then I have had the opportunity to try all sorts of different systems and sample how their mechanics worked.

I have playedD20 version 3.5, Pathfinder, Cortex, Fate, and D6. They all were very interested in the way they brought the adventure to the table. Even though many of these systems felt more robust than Fudge, they were always missing what Fudge truly had. The Fudge RPG system had the ability to flow.

I found that it was much easier to go from the roleplaying aspect into the combat/action aspect in a fluid way that never occurred with the other systems (especially pathfinder). Pathfinder had a lot of math and a lot of die rolls. Instead of just going into the battle, I had to collect initiative, get everybody’s stats and spend most of my time with a calculator than roleplaying the fight.

It was this fluid, easy story-telling method that made me decide that Fudge was the system for me. I have not looked back since. As many of the readers here might know, I’ve developed the Blood in Space Universe to try to create a full science fiction setting with its own complete ruleset. Fudge has sat on the shelf gathering dust long enough and it was time to get more people interested. That meant more content.

So, what is this long winded post about? It is about an amazing system that captured my heart and will not let go. The dynamics of the roll, the ease of dragging and dropping different rule variants into adventures and the ease it was to mesh other adventures together with little to no prep work.

Fudge is a system that is underrated and sadly not very popular. There is no good reason for that. So, this post is about why Fudge is amazing so that anyone who stumbles upon it can read a true believer and know this is a system not to pass on. Fudge has brought me a lot of adventures and it continues to do so with my family and friends.

Thank you, Fudge!

The Spear in the Gut - Traps in Fudge

It all started with a discussion with a Dungeons and Dragons player about the differences between our two systems and it was a very lively conversation. The thing that made me stop and think was when he asked, “Well, what do you do about traps? Avoiding them or when they trigger? Do you just make it a story element or do you have stats like D&D?”

Though my answer was both, it made me think that there were not any rules out there governing traps more than a story element. Could rules like that be made if a GM wanted more than just “This is a spear trap? Roll minimum of a Fair to get away”?

When it comes to Fudge, the nicest thing I have found about it is that rules can be easily added to the system without it causing other rules to bunch up or fail to work. A GM can choose to make his game as rule crunchy or rule creamy as he or she wants.

I decided to take it upon myself to write a set of rules that would govern traps reminiscent of Pathfinder trying to find a way to present the information in a Fudge way but with enough crunchy to give concrete information but loose enough to not stop the flow of the story (like going to initiative rounds).

For those who are not familiar with the D20 or the Pathfinder system, traps are dictated by their actuation method and delivering the attack while the player would be required a saving roll against one of the skills to either avoid or halve the damage.

With Fudge, there are no hit points in the sense of “You have 50 hit points and you take 4 damage leaving you 46” but more of a “Your Margin of Failure is 2, so you are scratched.” It was important to find a way to inflict damage without having to give every trap a type of skill.

The rules that I did come up with (which can be found in the FudgeRPG repository once approved) took in the idea of each trap having an advantage when it came to being sprung with acted like a skill. When the 4DF dice are rolled for the trap in a simultaneous combat round, adding the advantage will help act like a skill and get a total MoS or MoF.

Once that was figured out, the rest of the rules came simply and so far, they have been popular among those who have read them.

What do you think about traps? Is there a way you handle them in your Fudge adventures and campaigns? Come let me know in the Official Fudge Forums and discuss it!

Is it Okay to Fudge the Results?

So, did you like my pun? Yes, I know it was pretty horrible, but the title was what made me think about writing this article to cover. For those of RPG experience, you have probably already had this discussion and so I wanted to gear this toward the newer GMs that may have asked themselves this question. So, is it alright to fudge results in your RPG?

This question came up when my brother was designing his own session and was very concerned about the difficulty level of the bad guys. He was designing with the Pathfinder system so he was taking in to consideration the Average Party Level (APL), the mixture of Challenge Ratings (CR), and all the movement and maps needed. With all the rules, he had asked me, “Is it alright to fudge the rules in case my enemies are too powerful?”

The answer is yes. The reason that I say this is because the point of roleplaying is the excitement and the adventure. If your players are not being challenged enough (or being to challenged) then it is quite alright to adjust or “fudge” the results so that they do not instantly die or waltz through your dungeon. A total party kill is not good for a GM as they have to handle the fallout among players, while it can depress or upset the players who have vested a lot of time and consideration in to the design of their characters.

Some game systems are inherently friendly toward the player and the GM when it comes to this because the dice system is made in a way that allows for adjustments on the fly. The Fudge System specifically has the fudge point to even give players a chance to change the results. It is a very important give and take between the player and the GM.
The important part is the feeling of adventure and comradery. One of my fond adventure memories was a battle against the undead to protect a city and in the end we lost one of our companions. I do not remember the dice rolling or the mechanics, but the epic battle and loss of our good friend. Even the character’s player was in a good mood in the end because how well our GM handled the death allowing him to be epic in the end.

This is the point of a roleplay, to experience an adventure like no other. If you, as GM of the game, have to fudge the results here and there to bring that about, it is perfectly acceptable!
Have fun gaming!