Please click here for the FUDGE legal notice! Now with retsin!
I've always loved role-playing, from my humble beginnings as a child too young to really understand the rules that I'd lucked into to the fairly free-wheeling GM that youth evolved into, the game of Let's Pretend has always fascinated and thrilled me.
Naturally, over time my Game Mastering style has changed and evolved to suit my needs, wants and whims. I've recently been taken by the idea of modular games and possessed of a desire to work up a set of rules that could be easily ported from system-to-system and genre-to-genre as circumstances dictated. Fortunately for me another old love of mine, the FUDGE role-playing system, reminded me that it existed. 'Frooob,' it called... 'design your system in meeee.... I was built for this... I was built for yooooou...'
Hey, if you can resist a Free role-playing game whispering in your ear, you're a better man than me! Thus, I've dusted off my old copies of the FUDGE rules (good Murphy how they've changed over the years) and sat myself down to begin designing some systems.
Why Not Use (Insert Game Here)?I'm fairly sure that the only commentary mail that I get on these rules sets will be a variety of game-system advocates saying to me 'Hey, you idjit! Why didn't you use one of the generic systems already on the market for your game?' That is a valid question -- though I do hope someone writes in with much more of a comment than that -- so let me explain my reasonings.
First of all, FUDGE is a *remarkably* modular game system. You can build it up from soup-to-nuts and somehow it still remains FUDGEy. What I'm doing here is essentially building a very bare-bones set of assumptions that I can then use to flesh out other genres in which I want to implement FUDGE. Thus the various games will remain cross-compatible with a little work, but the cross-compatibleity won't come at the cost of making each game the same (and thus making it less and less able to elegantly model whatever world it is that I wish to model). Finally, I love FUDGE and this is my rules set, so neener neener neener.
Why Not GURPS?GURPS is a good system. Really, it's good. It's just not a very good generic system, though it tries hard to be. What GURPS was is really the first system that touted loudly 'hey, you can do anything in me!' and the people came to it, much like they did to Kevin Costner's baseball diamond. This isn't a bad thing -- without hype, most commercial games just can't survive. GURPS just isn't that much more special as a generic system than, say, 2nd Ed AD&D.
What GURPS has in spades, however, are wonderfully written and beautifully done supplements. If I ever become independently wealthy I do plan to snap up every one that I possibly can and spend a year of my life reading them all. Bless Steve Jackson Games -- they've given us the Encyclopaedia Mythica.
Why Not HERO System?I do love HERO System. I honestly love HERO System. It's the level best super-hero game system on the market. On the other hand, it's a fairly weak generic system unless you hide all of the math that you have to perform while generating your world. I've run a four-year Champions campaign and I still would pick that up in a second if I could. I just really dislike approaching HERO as a generic utility when it's optimized for heroics.
Why Not Fuzion?I do like Fuzion. One day I'm going to do a nice, long run of Fuzion plug-ins and release them to my web-site. However, Fuzion still doesn't allow me the customization that I want for my meta rules.
Why Not...Dreampark? I lost my copy. Darn it.
d20? Too limited. Besides, I long ago swore not to post anything AD&Dish on the web. Something about that TSR crack-down years ago and while I know they're under new management now, I just don't care...
The Metasystem uses the standard eight Trait levels, defined as...
Legendary is rated by number as well to show degrees of legend, because that's a really incredibly useful concept to have for mythical games. However, each name is only a reference. Each genre will redefine the Trait names in terms more applicable to their game. A lexicon of name conversions will be provided at the beginning of each game which implements the Metasystem.
In the Metasystem, Attributes are divided up into four master categories and several sub-categories within them.
The four master categories are
None of these four have a trait level associated with it. They're only really category headers (and are renamed in some games). The breakdown of Trait-associated statistics is as follows and each statistic is rated on the usual FUDGE scale:
Body AttributesIn my experience, Good Game Design has often come from a designer being lazy. In being lazy but wanting to present a polished product (whoa, alliteration), you often wind up with a system that's absolutely brilliant (and took far more effort to produce said brilliance than it would have to do things in the conventional, but difficult way).
Er, I had a point here. What I'm trying to say is that a) I hate lists of skills. I really hate lists of skills. In some games they really work a lot... in others, they just *don't*. Trying to be compleat lost its appeal for me when Rulemaster, er, Rolemaster finally lost its strange-hold on the fantasy world. And being lazy as heck, rather than surrendering to the inevitable and generating skill categories, lists of skills, subskills, subsubsubsubskills and damned skills, I came up with a system that's vaguely original (in that it only rips off three other RPGs that I know of!).
ExperiencesRather than selecting individual skills at character creation time, you pick a variable (based on the GM's will as well as what's specified within the game in which Metasystem is being used. Metasystem... three out of four dentists asked us what the HELL we were on when we asked them to recommend Metasystem instead of daily flossing) number of Experiences in the character's life. Such experiences might be along the lines of...
'Experience: Spent two years as an intern at a small hospital in the ghetto. Picked up several good friends there and had my eyes opened to the realities of the world. Nearly got stabbed while on watch and learned to make do with what was on hand to make medicine, rather than the fanciest equipment'.
'Experience: Spent years of my life training towards becoming an Olympic Gymnast. Increased my will to win... learned how to perform all sorts of tricky manoeuvres. Became one of the most limber people on earth. Learned a lot about diet and how to treat injuries, breaks and sore muscles'
'Experience: Lifelong member of the Naval reserves. Learned the best bars in Victoria B.C., learned how to signal ships at sea, my military alphabet, and so on. Got into more fights than I can count."
Usually the GM will have final say on each experience, so make sure that it's all right with her before you select a really Out There life Experience. In some games that use Metasystem, possible Experiences will already be outlined for you. You'll have a limited number of Experiences that may be chosen. Some really comprehensive Experiences might take up more than one slot.
Make sure that you detail your Experiences as well as you can. Your Experiences provide the 'ground-water' from which you choose your Skills. You do not begin the game with any skills at all; rather, you begin with a certain number of Fudge Points (exact number assigned by the GM) that are earmarked only for taking Skills later on during play.
During play, your character will often run up against situations which require skill rolls. When you hit one of these situations, you may inform your GM that you wish to Express a skill. Skills are derived from your Experiences and cost 1 Fudge point (either one of your Earmarked points or a regular one) to Express.
Come again? It's really simple. Let's say that you've got a character with the three Experiences listed above (which would be really weird, but this *is* role-playing, after all). Your character has been given three Fudge points (only for skills, mind) by the GM and you've just started your first adventure. You and your party find themselves under enemy fire, with only a broken assault rifle on the ground. You recall that your character was a member of the military through the years; true the character is a reservist, but even there field-stripping and repairing weapons is all part of the package. You inform the GM that you'd like to Express the Skill of Weapon Repair. You then show the GM the Experience from which you're drawing the skill (for this example, you explain that it comes from your reservist experience). You and the GM look at the Experience from which the skill is derived and figure out at how high a level the skill should be set. Hmmm you say... you've had a lot of practice here... you tell this to the GM and she nods, assigning you a Good in the skill of Weapon Repair. You cross off 1 Fudge point to pay for this and now the skill of Weapon Repair is a permanent part of your character!
It's not complicated at all. All skills cost one point, assuming the GM's willing to allow you to have the skill. All you have to do is defend why your character should have that skill by using what Experiences you have (and hey, they double as background!). The GM sets what level your skill begins at (from Terrible to Superb), though she should take into account your Experiences when setting it.
Automatic ExperiencesThere are exactly two types of Experiences that you get automatically: childhood and hobbies. A person's childhood is automatically a part of their life (duh) -- and it's an automatic Experience. Hobbies are more of a catch-all category for those esoteric skills that your character pursues randomly. Of course, the more hobbies that you have, the less time that you have to devote to them, so the GM may penalize you if you try to pack everything into this catch-all. For instance, I'd probably list model rocketry, trumpet playing, fencing and archery under my hobbies -- I have other interests, but my Experiences would catch those (particularly coding and writing, both of which I do as more than a basic hobby). Of these, I'd probably have no skill Derived as higher than Poor, because I simply don't have the time to pursue these talents of mine.
Getting More ExperiencesBut you say... what if you want to buy more Experiences? Can you do that? Can you? Hunh? Hunh? Pleeeeeeease?
Weeeeeelll... sure. Okay. I'll let you. But don't tell anyone that I cracked, all right?
You can buy new Experiences from almost anything your character does, provided that the GM says that it's okay. What's the scope of a new Experience? Generally it's 'whatever the GM says is okay', but I suggest the following: one full adventure, one full span of 'between adventures time passing' or one full day of heavy adventuring. GMs, if a player is buying some between-adventure time as an Experience, make absolutely sure they're not packing a week's time with about six years' worth of experiences. Then just pay 1 Fudge point and the new Experience is yours! Make sure you write down what the Experience is rather fully -- after all, saying 'Adventure #3' is just begging to forget what happened during that adventure, making the Experience fairly useless to you.
Stunts are a new part of FUDGE or at least my little corner of it! Stunts are basically 'skill extensions'. They're little tricks that your character learns to do over time until they're a part of your character's concept. At first, a Stunt will seem like just another skill roll. But then things get strange. The rules change. The player, sensing that s/he would like to develop this sort of thing into a Stunt, will offer to pay a Fudge point to begin the development process. The proper skill roll is made, and if it is successful, the player marks down that s/he is one step closer to developing a Stunt.
Okay, want an example? After that drivel, I thought you might. Jimmy is playing Hagar the Hotshot, a talented gymnast who's got the skill Gymnastics (duh). Hagar is currently falling and wants to grab onto a flagpole, or an out-cropping or *something* jutting from the wall to break his fall. The GM tells him 'make a Skill roll'. Jimmy announces that he'd like the ability to break his fall from a great height to become a Stunt. The GM considers this and nods, thinking this Stunt appropriate to Hagar. Jimmy pays a Fudge point and tries his luck... making the Skill roll! Hagar breaks his fall successfully and lands safely... and Jimmy notes that he's made one successful skill roll towards developing a break-fall stunt.
If you miss a skill roll, do you lose the Fudge point that you spent? No you don't -- but the Fudge point is tied up until such a time as you can make another roll towards the same stunt (in the above example, had Jimmy failed his roll to break-fall, the next time he made that roll, he'd already have a Fudge point spent towards making it a Stunt. If he makes his roll successfully THIS time, the point is finally spent and Hagar is another step towards gaining his Stunt. Had he missed this roll as well, then the Fudge point would still be in escrow, waiting for Jimmy to stop failing his skill rolls.)
How many successful Stunt rolls does it take to get a Stunt? That depends on the GM. She might say that you have to make the roll three times, or ten... whatever combination she chooses. Something that would come up fairly rarely -- like Break-fall -- should probably take only three to four successful rolls to make into a Stunt, whereas something that could come up many times in a single adventure -- like Quick drawing a weapon -- should by rights take many more.
Once you have a Stunt as a part of your character, you simply never have to roll to perform that Stunt ever again. It's a part of your Legend, it's a Thing you Do... if you have the Break-fall Stunt, as long as there's something to grab as you're falling, you will *never* miss stopping your rapid descent. If you have the Quick-draw Stunt, you'll be able to get your weapon out and shoot it all in the same round without a penalty. But what if your Stunt requires a contested roll? Or what if you *want* to roll to get a high level of success to pull off a stunt with panache? In this case, roll as normal -- but having the Stunt will automatically raise your level of success by one (which means that unless you really fumble, you'll automatically succeed).
And don't try to abuse Stunts, please. The GM will kill you for it. You may develop Shoot Through Three People At Once (a fairly common OldWest Stunt), but you still have to make a Shootin' Iron Skill roll to hit the first hombre you're shooting at!
Fudge points may be used for all purposes listed in the main rules, under section 1.36. Further, they're very useful for Skills and Stunts (please see appropriate sections).
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