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Origins: A Great Event Showed Me What Was Wrong With My Game

By Patrick Benson | Published: June 30, 2009
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I attended the Origins games convention for the first time last week. My overall impression is that Origins is a great convention and I had a great time while I was there. The city of Columbus Ohio (it was the first time that I was in the city as well) was easy to get around, has a great convention center, and some very friendly people. If you have never attended the Origins convention I will endorse it as an excellent gaming convention to attend.

While there I met up with John Arcadian and his crew from Silvervine games, and a fellow gnome at Gnome Stew where I contribute, and he introduced me to the crew from The Impossible Dream who produce the RPG Dread which is an awesome horror game that uses a Jenga tower as the central mechanic for conflict resolution. I do not have a crew, so I just introduced them to me and my non-crew buddy Jason. :)

Guess what happened after 21 hours of no sleep, a 9 hour drive, and 11 hours of convention hi-jinks that had left me utterly exhausted? I was asked to run, and agreed to run, a completely improvised Fudge game!

Since I have been busily working on my zombie apocalypse adventure for the One Month Fudge Adventure Challenge I went with that only I changed the setting to that of the convention instead of an abandoned home. I learned two things about my game because of this event.

  1. My damage/health system does not work. It does not work at all. That is fine though, because it inspired me to try a slightly different approach that I believe will yield better results while still accomplishing what I would like to see happen in the game.
  2. I have no need for attributes in my game. None what-so-ever.

How did the game go? It went so-and-so in a purely mechanics driven and rules sort-of-way. The game was an utter super success though from a role playing and storytelling angle and I loved it! More importantly, those who played in the game had a great time too! In fact, one of the players asked me to run another game the very next day. That did not happen, but that was because we just had so much to do at the convention. I was planning on running a Fudge game where the player characters were the zombies because of that request though, and I think I’ll have that ready for when I attend Gen Con where I hope to meet up with even more gamers from around the country (and the world).

It was a great time for me at Origins this year, and it also helped me improve my Fudge game! What can be better than that? Having a crew I guess. ;)

Did you attend Origins this year? Played in any good Fudge games lately? If so, leave a comment below and let us know about it.

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Free RPG Day – One Month Fudge Adventure Challenge Play Test

By Patrick Benson | Published: June 22, 2009
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On Free RPG Day this last Saturday, June 20th, I ran an event for my local game shop at the request of the owner. What did I run? A Fudge game of course! But not just any Fudge game! I did a test run of my One Month Fudge Adventure Challenge!

I expected the adventure to need a lot of work, but it went surprisingly well. The group of five players (three of which had played Fudge before) did very well in working with me to play test the adventure. They were willing to play a loose and fast game, as well as to play using some of my custom rules (note to self: initiative rules worked great but damage rules need a little bit more work).

The adventure was a zombie apocalypse game where the PCs had to clear, defend, and search an abandoned home while a never ending horde of zombies attacked the dwelling. I didn’t bother with a lot of details. With movement I just declared how far a figure could move if they were a player character, while the zombies moved approximately five inches per turn. I used my mass combat rules which I covered here, and they played well given the genre.

I let the players search the rooms of the home for various items with which to defend themselves. The better the results of the Fudge dice roll the better the item that was found. This helped a lot because the longer the game played for the more zombies kept appearing to attack the players. It was a classic zombie film move, and at the end of the game the players were surrounded by a swarm of flesh eating zombies!

There are some details that I still need to work out, but as one of the players said it was “tight” and played well. Now I need to refine the rules a bit and finish typing it all up.

Anyone else run a Fudge game for Free RPG Day? If so, chare your experience with the rest of us and leave a comment below!

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Faces of the Fudge Community: Chris "Bynw" Rheinherren

By Patrick Benson | Published: June 19, 2009
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This is the first in a new series of articles called “Faces of the Fudge Community”. Fudge fans of all types (players, gamemasters, publishers, or whatever) are invited to be interviewed so that we can learn more about each other and why we are all fans of the Fudge system.

Or first volunteer is Chris "Bynw" Rheinherren, who is a player of many RPGs when possible but primarily a gamemaster of Fudge. His homebrew Teara Adan game has been running since 1983 when he, his brother, and two friends started it in high school. Chris switched the game over to the Fudge system in 2005 and has been using Fudge ever since. Chris is also the founder and owner of the OtherWorlders IRC Network which hosts the official chat room of the Fudge Community.

In this interview Chris shares his opinion on Fudge, how he started playing Fudge, and some of his own contributions to the Fudge system and the gaming community at large.

SF: Tell me about yourself. Outside of gaming, what do you do? What are your interests?

Chris: I work in Internet tech support, so I spend a lot of time online and with computers. I own and operate the OtherWorlders IRC Network. A chat community for gamers by gamers.

SF: Why did you start the OtherWorlders IRC Network?

Chris: A few reasons on that. I really liked IRC when I first discovered it out there and preferred the smaller IRC nets over the larger ones. Back in the day before I started it, I was on AOL (don’t laugh) and there was a group called the Council of Greyhawk there attempting to revive the World of Greyhawk with TSR in the TSR Live chat room. They were expanding their membership and needed a place where non AOL members could meet as well as AOL members. IRC was the place and I started the network for that and a place to run my own game online. The rest, as they say, is history.

SF: What is your experience with RPGs and gaming in general?

Chris: I cut my RPG teeth on Traveller when it was new. I’ve been gaming since just after Star Wars came out in 77 at the very beginning of the hobby. I’ve played a large number of RPGs including D&D (but I don’t like 4th edition). I have preferred the fantasy genre and skill based systems over class based ones. I attempted to create my own rules for an RPG back in the late 80’s that had a lot in common with the d20 system just years before d20’s release.

SF: How do you feel about Fudge? Likes? Dislikes?

Chris: I love Fudge. It’s a great system that is very flexible and easy to use. It can have any level of complexity needed for any genre and style of play. I don’t really have any dislikes for Fudge at all. I’m very glad that I finally listened to Ann and switched over to it.

SF: Ann Dupuis? Tell me more about that. How did you meet Ann, and how did she convince you to try Fudge?

Chris: Yes, Ann Dupuis. We met at a small convention called Darkover, its held in Maryland every Thanksgiving weekend. She was talking with Katherine Kurtz (author of the Deryni series) about doing an RPG set in her world. And since I was a gamer and a fan of Katherine’s works I was very interested. But I used D&D at the time, so Ann just told me and kept telling me over the years to try Fudge and I finally did (and I liked it).

SF: What are your favorite Fudge products? Why?

Chris: Just the main rules are good. That gives you the basics that are needed for just about anything at all. I also like the Deryni Adventure Game since I’m one of the named play testers and a fan of Katherine Kurtz’s works.

SF: What does the Deryni Adventure Game have that you consider unique for a Fudge game?

Chris: Really nothing unique for a Fudge game. Its just that I am a very big fan of the book series. OtherWorlders hosts Katherine Kurtz’s chat as well. And since the Deryni use psionic abilities set in a fantasy setting, I find that to be unique since most people associate psionics with sci-fi settings. And I just like the way the powers were done in the Deryni Adventure Game.

SF: Are you a Fudge publisher? If so, what do you publish? If not, what do you wish to see from Fudge publishers?

Chris: No I’m not a Fudge publisher. I would like to see my own game world published actually at some point.

SF: Will you publish it yourself? Are you preparing it for publication? What about your game world would appeal to others?

Chris: I don’t know if I will do it myself. I might or I might get help from other publishers out there already. I would need a lot of flavor text written up for publication.

The game world had its beginning prior to the home computer revolution so there is a ton of information on paper in scattered locations. It’s a work in progress to get a lot of stuff in one spot.

Gamers would like the rich detailed history. The familiarity of it, its sort of a parallel earth but not quite. It also just seems to live on its own without us doing anything at all. It’s been going since 83 and hasn’t stopped yet.

SF: Do you have any custom rules that you have created for your own Fudge games? If so, would you please share them here? If not, what would you like to see a rule for?

Chris: I’ve created a few modifications. Most of them are on my game’s website at www.teara-adan.com.

SF: Which of your homegrown rules do you feel is your most creative?

Chris: I have borrowed a few things from other Fudge games of course, but the only thing that I have that no one else seems to have is what I’m calling "Talents". Talents are additional skills one gets for having reached a specific rank within another skill.

The character gets the default rank of "Terrible" in the talent skill for having the specific skill and rank in the corresponding primary skill. All additional skill levels in the talent must be purchased like any other skill.

There are exceptions to this rule that follow the normal rules. Any talent that is a Very Hard skill is not automatically gained. It still requires training by someone that already knows the talent.

Right now most of the Talents are with the psionic skills. Here is an example:

The primary skill is "Move Object" which is your standard telekinesis skill. It’s a Hard (H) skill. Any of its talents would be automatically Very Hard (VH). That is normal in my talent system too. The only talent listed so far is called "Blade Lock" and it’s a VH skill so you don’t automatically get it, but you are capable of learning it once your Move Object skill rank reaches "Good". It got its name due to its main purpose of "locking" a blade in its scabbard by telekinetically bonding the two surfaces together. There are, of course, many other uses for it.

SF: Tell me about your own Fudge games. What are they like? Why do you use Fudge as the system for these games?

Chris: My mainstay game is a homebrew science fantasy world called Teara Adan. It’s got a website at www.teara-adan.com with our Fudge rules both mundane and customized to fit the feel of the world which is summed up with the theme of "Six-guns, Sorcery and Psionics".

I use Fudge simply because it works. Much like the same reason why I use a Mac and Linux computers. They work <grin>. *

SF: What type of game does Fudge work best for?

Chris: I think it works for any. Fudge can be customized for any level of style of play and any genre. I guess what’s really needed is a GM that is an out of the box thinker.

SF: Anything that you want to share with the rest of us? What do you want to share with the Fudge community that was not asked in this interview?

Chris: Sure. The OtherWorlders IRC Network (irc.otherworlders.org in your favorite IRC client and on the web at www.otherworlders.org) welcomes any and all gamers. We do host the official chat of Fudge, and my game is also played online via chat as well there and has been for 10 years running now. Stop over and visit us.

—

Thanks for being the first Fudge fan that SinisterForces has ever interviewed Chris! It was great to get another person’s perspective on Fudge, and I look forward to even more interviews in the future.

Want to be interviewed for the “Faces of the Fudge Community series? Send an email to Patrick.Benson@SinisterForces.com and I will conduct the interview with you via email. As always, feel free to leave your own comments on this interview below.

* Site owner’s note: Being an IT professional myself I just had to mention that I have used and supported UNIX, Linux, Mac, Windows, and a few gone and forgotten operating systems. All of them have broken for various reasons. :)

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Is Fudge A Dying System?

By Patrick Benson | Published: June 18, 2009
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Is Fudge a dying system? This has been brought up on more than one occasion. Lots of gamers do not know about Fudge, and there are not many products available for Fudge in comparison to the plethora of products available for d20 games. New material for Fudge is not being produced at a very regular rate either.

So is Fudge a dying system? Yes. Yes it is dying, because unless the community is growing the game is not being played. If the game is not being played then the game is dying. My observation is that the game is not being played by many gamers.

Now for the good news: Fudge is not dead! The big difference between dying and being dead is that you may be able to save that which is dying, but dead is dead.

With the recent Day of Fudge and the current One Month Fudge Adventure Challenge I see the Fudge community gathering around the patient and doing their best to save Fudge. You know what? The patient is responding, and getting better!

Activity over at the Fudge RPG Community is increasing as is the membership. More Fudge games are soon to be released, and I know from personal experience that when I run games of Fudge for people who have never played it before (some who have never played an RPG before) that the game sparks their interest. That first exposure to Fudge is all it takes for them to want to download the free PDF and to start diving into Fudge.

Ann Dupuis, owner of Grey Ghost Press and current holder of the Fudge license, has been a great supporter of these types of events. She has sent bricks of Fudge dice to be given away to players, as well as promotional materials. My correspondence with other Fudge publishers has always been positive as well, and without fail they are willing to forward promotional materials to me for me to hand out at my Fudge related events. These are the sorts of things that truly help to keep a game system going strong. You cannot rely on just your existing fans, you need to go out in search of new fans as well.

So is Fudge dying? Yes.

Will Fudge die? Never. There are too many people looking out for it to prevent that from happening.

Is Fudge making a comeback? Only time will tell, but it looks to me like it is. Now is the time to get on board with your own Fudge project, because the momentum is here, and the time is right. Too many people are working hard on too many projects for there not to be some great results. I would not be surprised if by this time next year that there are some great Fudge products on the shelves and an even stronger Fudge community.

What do you think? Agree, disagree? Share your thoughts by commenting below, and let everyone know what you think about the current state of Fudge.

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Gear in Fudge

By Patrick Benson | Published: June 16, 2009
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One of the problems that I have had with my Fudge games is with gear. You know – loot, equipment, items, and good old swag!

Now treasure and cash is easy. If the player characters find a million dollars I just throw million dollar problems at them. Money is funny like that. What I am talking about are items that will skew the mechanics of the game. I am talking about the +5 Holy Avenger Flaming Vorpal Sword w/Cup Holder in the hands of a noob adventurer (forget how much experience the player has, I am focusing on the character).

In Fudge a single +1 is a big deal. You immediately change the level of challenge that the character is capable of facing. Fudge is designed for consistent results. If your character is a Great swordsman a +1 sword will make that character a Superb swordsman. The majority of the dice rolls that a player makes will result in a rank of Superb or higher. After a few sessions of playing you might be tempted to have the character find a +2 sword. Now the character is effectively a Legendary swordsman, and if you have some sort of training or improvement mechanic in your game that character can progress even further without finding an even more powerful item.

If you enjoy that sort of game then that is fine. There is nothing wrong with that style of game, but it is not something that I enjoy. Yet I kept finding myself increasing the power level of items that were in my Fudge games to add a sense of progress or achievement to the game. The mechanic was not bad, but it was not a match for the type of game that I wanted to play.

Finally it dawned on me that what items should have are gift traits, just like characters may have gifts. Now if the characters find an item in one of my games I will assign it interesting gifts instead of dice roll modifiers.

For example, where before I would have the player characters find a +1 sword now I will have them find a sword that hums softly when orcs are nearby. Where before I would have the players find a +2 plasma rifle, now I have the players discover a plasma rifle that recharges itself by converting the kinetic energy created by carrying it around. Neither or these traits offers huge mechanical benefit, but both add flavor to the game that makes play much more interesting.

Sure the items are not as “powerful” in combat situations, but so what? Smart players turn any item’s traits into a useful advantage. They will foresee ways to use these items that I have not, and those moments only increase the fun of the game.

So my advice is simple in this case: instead of using the dice mechanics of the game to make an item appealing use traits to allow the item to do something beyond the norm. It keeps the fun factor high within the game without causing a need for power creep because every character has a +3 doohickey available to them.

Have tips of your own about designing gear for use in your Fudge games? Share it by leaving a comment below. I am always interested in learning what others are doing for their own Fudge games.

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Fudge Combat: One Vs. Many

By Patrick Benson | Published: June 14, 2009
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I’m working on a zombie apocalypse scenario for the One Month Fudge Adventure Challenge and this has me thinking a great deal about Fudge combat rules for multiple opponents versus a single character. This is standard fare for any good zombie movie, because having an escalating number of zombies attacking the protagonists is a great way to keep the pace of the film accelerating while at the same time ratcheting up the challenges that the heroes face.

Yet multiple opponents have to be managed carefully especially if that sort of encounter will be the standard for the game being played. You need to ensure that you as a gamemaster do not throw an impossible to overcome challenge at the players. Horror only works if we believe that the protagonists might win, no matter how unlikely. Right up until the bloody end that is (gamemasters – feel free to indulge in a total party kill if it is the very last encounter of the evening in a horror game).

So how do I plan on handling the one versus many combat scenario in my zombies game? First I am going to establish the zombies as creatures with a rank of Poor individually. I will then increase the rank of the zombies by one for every zombie beyond the first that is encountered  within a group. Two zombies in a group will have a rank of Mediocre, three zombies in a group will have a rank of Fair, and so on, and so on.

For every zombie destroyed the rank of the group drops by one. To destroy a zombie you need only to make an attack roll of the group’s rank or higher. So if your character attacks a Good group of zombies and rolls an attack of rank Good or higher one zombie will be destroyed and the group of zombies will now be a rank of Fair.

What if a player wants his or her character to attack multiple targets? The rank of the trait being used will be reduced by one for every attack made beyond the first. So if the character is using a trait with a rank of Fair to attack with and decides to make two attacks against two targets instead of a single attack then each of those two attacks will be made at the rank of Mediocre, and three attacks would be made at the rank of Poor, etc.

How many additional attacks should the character be allowed to make? That is a gamemaster’s call. A character wielding a chainsaw against a zombie might only receive one attack with that weapon, or perhaps three. You as the gamemaster should have the final say as to what number of attacks the character receives with a particular trait. A double barrel shotgun might grant a maximum of two attacks per round, and the skill of Kung Fu might grant five attacks per round (two punches, two kicks, and a head butt). Whatever works for your game and with your group is all that matters.

That is most likely the rules that I will be using with my zombie adventure. It allows me to customize the encounters quickly, adds an appeal to wielding weapons in the game (“A baseball bat grants a +1 to all attacks and it can be used to make up to three attacks against zombies per round? Batter up!”), and if the challenge is too easy I merely need to add more zombies into the mix to find the right level of challenge. Play testing will determine for sure if these rules create the desired feel that I want for this particular game, but I feel good about these rules based upon my past experience using them in other games.

How do you handle multiple opponents versus a single character combat scenario in your Fudge games? Share your tips and tricks by commenting below.

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Product Review: Rogue Publishing’s The Collectors

By Patrick Benson | Published: June 12, 2009
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Imagine that you are an everyday person. You have your daily routine, and you make the best of what you have. Except you have a special job for a very demanding boss that you can never leave. You also have a partner who is stuck in the same job with you. You and your partner do your best at this job because neither of you want to be sent back to the home office again. Ever.

The job? The collection of souls that have been sold to the darkest of powers. The home office? Hell itself. The boss? To quote the Rolling Stones, he’s “a man of wealth and taste”. Hope you guess his name.

Welcome to the world of The Collectors where the player characters are demons making sure that those who have made deals with he-who-shall-remain-nameless pay up in the form of their soul. That is apparently the currency of Hell, and collectors make sure that all bills are paid in full.

Written by Thomas MacKay, with artwork by Eric Lofgren, and published by Rogue Publishing, The Collectors is not a Fudge game as much as it is “A supernatural mystery scenario for Fudge” according to the cover. I feel that this is an important distinction to make, because the work is not a collection of rules for the Fudge game system as much as it is setting material for the Fudge game system.

If you want detailed rules for combat or social encounters this is not the product for you, because in true Fudge tradition this work gives you just enough rules so that you can flesh out what works for your group and your game. What you do get is a great setting and all of the traits needed to create a collector character. Including a wonderful selection of Affinities which are a form of demonic magic and are treated as a special form of gifts in Fudge.

The best quality about The Collectors though is that it sets up the players for a wonderful tale of morality. Playing the game you could go the route of being the evil and powerful beast that walks into the room and slaughters everything between it and its objective. Yet that is discouraged by the setting for two reasons:

  1. Demons do not like to be reminded of Hell, even by their own demonic abilities. They don’t quite remember Hell, and they want to keep it that way.
  2. Drawing attention to the raw power of a demon is bad for business. New potential “customers” are not going to want to make deals once they see the true nature of demons. Some might actually run to the “competition” instead and find religion.

Playing and running The Collectors  I also noticed that because demons would rather embrace their human facade they really do not like their collecting jobs. In fact, as a player I began to despise the job in character because the people whom you collect from often do not understand the consequences of what they are doing.

Yeah, sure, you could play the game with the demons as “heroes” collecting bloody serial killers and wicked corporate CEOs who cause misery for all of those people surrounding them. That sort of game is pretty typical though of any RPG. To truly enjoy The Collectors  you should play a game where the soul being collected is someone that the player characters like, or someone that they feel was duped into selling their soul. This game is not about being a demon, as much as it is about questioning what it is to be human.

At $3 for the PDF copy of the players section (28 pages) which has everything that you need to create and play a collector character, and $4.50 for the PDF copy of The Collectors: The Burning House (81 pages) which is a gamemaster’s edition with a complete adventure included, you will get a good product for a low price. The material provided can easily be expanded upon, and creative gamemasters will find The Collectors to be great source material in developing demonic NPCs for their games.

I have two criticisms. The first is that the book could have contained more material on both the Enim (higher level demons that take the form of earthly objects) and the competition (angels from heaven who are a lot like collectors except they want to go back). More material on beings beyond the typical collector demon would allow for comparisons, and thus a better understanding of the collectors themselves. Collector demons are “evil”, but the Enim are just plain scary evil and you get a better sense of how this world of the collectors works by comparing the two.

The second complaint is there should be a table of contents. Yep, no table of contents. When I use the PDF this isn’t much of a problem, but I paid to have a copy printed and bound. With a paper copy it is a bit of a pain to flip through the book to find a section even if it is less than one hundred pages.

For The Collectors  and The Collectors: The Burning House I give both products a Fudge rank of GOOD. You get a great setting at a very reasonable price. The text is well written and the artwork, although scarce, is well done. I enjoyed reading, running, and playing The Collectors and I am sure others will as well. Do yourself a favor and buy The Collectors: The Burning House edition though, as you get a lot more material for a mere $1.50 increase in price.

Own or play The Collectors? Looking for more information on the product?Share your comments and questions below.

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One Month for One Adventure

By Patrick Benson | Published: June 12, 2009
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The response to the One Month Fudge Adventure Challenge has been great so far! Lots of volunteers in a very short period of time, and I could not be happier with the enthusiasm that I am seeing for the event. Now there is only one small problem – what am I going to write for the challenge?

I do not want to write a fantasy adventure. Modern action is out too. The siren call that I keep hearing is horror, in particular a good old fashioned zombie apocalypse. That is what I feel the urge to write, and I want to strike while the iron is hot.

I do not want this adventure to be just a plot though, or merely a setting that the player characters wander about in. I want to create some mechanics to help capture the feel of the zombie genre. So I am thinking that there will be some gamemaster tools that will help to translate failed and successful rolls into challenges and benefits for the player characters.

With each failed roll there will be a system that increases the number of zombies attacking the player characters. This is just keeping with the premise of a good zombie flick. There are always more and more zombies coming after the heroes no matter what the heroes do. A good zombie flick always has a climax with a horde of zombies coming after the heroes. I will try to recreate that in my adventure module.

Successful dice rolls will result in items that are of use to the player characters. Anything from good and decent food to a nice cordless circular saw with a good charge on the battery (power tools are the ultimate methodology for zombie population control). Successful rolls should give the players a glimpse of hope that their characters will make it just a little bit further and survive another day.

That is my concept that I will develop into a Fudge adventure. What is yours? Write it up in a comment and share it with the rest of us here. Meanwhile I am going to go charge all of my cordless power tools. Just in case. :)

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Five Tips For Running Fudge Games

By Patrick Benson | Published: June 10, 2009
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Gamemasters new to Fudge can be overwhelmed at first by just how open the system is to any type of play style. Some of this is in part to how so many role playing games have a very objective approach to character creation, combat, and social interactions within the context of the game. Fudge on the other hand can be much more subjective and that makes it difficult for a new Fudge GM to feel confident in his or her knowledge of the rules.

Contrary to what others might think this is a good thing. It encourages new Fudge GMs to think about the rules that they want to use and to discard rules that their game does not need. It allows the GM to tailor his or her Fudge game to the gaming group’s taste. After playing a few games of Fudge based upon the original 1995 edition rules, the set that I believe most people are introduced to Fudge with, it increases a GMs appreciation for the published games that are released using the Fudge system.

Yet like many good things there are some challenges to overcome in order to become a good Fudge GM. Below you will find five tips for Fudge GMs that I wish someone had shared with me before I ran my first Fudge game, and that I am sharing with everyone with the hope that they will make a new Fudge GM’s first game a bit more fun.

  1. Mediocre is the new Fair. It is tempting to start the player characters at the rank of Fair as the default for all attributes and maybe skills as well. The problem with this is that spending a few points to get a Superb trait makes the game feel “too easy”. Have the PCs default to a rank of Mediocre for their attributes instead, and structure your character creation system so that ranks higher than that of Good are expensive to acquire. Players who want characters with Great strength or Superb acrobatics will truly shine during game play when using those traits. Meanwhile the GM has a reserve which he or she can tap to make the game more challenging if needed. Just introduce more Great and Superb ranked obstacles.
  2. Don’t make a list of skills, but ask what skills are desired. You might think that this would be more difficult for beginning GMs because it is so open and I began this article saying that can be overwhelming. Yet in this case open is good, because you are asking the players to define exactly how they want their characters to interact with the game. If one of your players says “I want to be an anthropologist.” and another says “I want to do Kung Fu!” let them write that down on their character sheet. Now you know to include anthropology and Kung Fu in your game! Just add a little structure in the form of how many skills at each rank the character may possess. I often use the following structure of one skill at Great, two skills at Good, and three skills at Fair when running Fudge for people who have never played it before. It takes less time to have the players create six skills then it does for them to choose six skills from a list of fifty or more. As your game matures you can populate your list of skills with those that have played well within your game.
  3. Opponents have a single rank for all purposes. Instead of writing down every detail that might apply to an NPC or a challenge within the game just assign a rank to it instead. When the PCs encounter a group of goblins all of the goblins are Mediocre.  The goblins are Mediocre in strength and dexterity. If the goblins are using swords they are Mediocre with their attacks. If the goblins are climbing trees to escape the PCs they climb at the rank of Mediocre. Now instead of determining at what rank a goblin does something you are just determining if the goblin can do it. Maybe you think goblins would know how to use short bows, but do not know how to use heavy crossbows. Fine, they fire their short bows at Mediocre then and they do not use heavy crossbows. The other nice thing about this tip is that when the PCs encounter something tougher like orcs those creatures do everything at the rank of Fair, and following that encounter the ogres do everything at the rank of Good, and so on, and so on. Your game now has a sense of escalating challenge with very little work on your part.
  4. Just let the player roll the dice. Players will try to apply their PC’s traits to any situation. Have a PC that is a combat monster that is negotiating with the king? The player will suggest that his or her PC intimidate the king using its combat skills. Think about that for a moment. A king is threatened by a person during negotiations. Most kings have guards, and knights, and a royal court made up of powerful allies. Do you really think that they are going to be intimidated by such a tactic? Probably not. Yet the players are just using the tools that they like the best to play the game with, so let them. This is what they think is fun. Just a assign a target rank (you can make it Superb or Legendary if you want failure to be more likely) and let the player roll the dice. If they succeed it will make the game more enjoyable, and if they fail it was their roll and not your decision that did it.
  5. Think in terms of the story, not in terms of the mechanics. Fudge is a game that uses adjectives instead of numbers for a reason. You should not focus on the mechanics of the game, because the mechanics of the game were designed to get you thinking about the story instead. When the PCs encounter anything just ask yourself “Would the possibility of failure at this point make this game more fun to play?” If the answer is yes, then require rolls of the dice and numerous successes in order to overcome the challenge. If the answer is no, then do not bother with the dice rolling at all. Let the PCs move on. Climbing the “Cliffs of Doom” because it is the fastest way to reach the princess before she is sacrificed to the dragon may require several rolls of the dice. That is a tense situation that the PCs may not survive with a direct impact on the story. Climbing the “Cliffs of In-Your-Way-To-Cool-Stuff”? Not so much.

I hope that these tips help you in running your next Fudge game. If you have your own tips that you would like to share, or if you just want to share your opinion on these five tips, please leave a comment below. I look forward to learning about what others are doing for their Fudge games!

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Creatures & Monsters – A to Z: C is for Ciudach

By Patrick Benson | Published: June 9, 2009
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From the myths of the Scottish and Irish peoples, the Ciudach is a giant with a taste for cannibalism that dwells in the caverns of mountainous regions. Standing fifteen feet tall and weighing as much as 4 oxen the Ciudach is the living embodiment of human savagery. While most giants can be considered a unique race unto themselves the Ciudach is descended directly from human clans that partook of human flesh as part of their meals. This combined with their worship of the evil spirits that inhabited their lands resulted in their monstrous size and strength but at the cost of their sanity.

Ciudachs are solitary creatures for they will devour not just any human being that crosses their path but each other as well. Their teeth are like that of wild boars with two large tusks on either side of the lower jaw. They use these tusks to rip the flesh off the carcasses from which they feed.

Ciudachs do not mate for there are no longer distinct sexes within the species. Instead as a Ciudach grows older it must feed more often and in greater quantity upon human and Ciudach flesh until it becomes engorged and fat. Eventually the Ciudach will enter a sort of hibernation and it will begin to split into two complete and full grown Ciudachs who recognize each other as being descendants of the same being. These two Ciudachs will immediately seek out new territory to live in, and given time will forget about their common bond completely. If a Ciudach did not need to venture far in order to find another to kill and devour it most likely killed its own sibling.

Ciudachs wear the remains of their victims upon their person. Human skins will be tanned into leather garments, and the skeletal remains of their meals will be turned into jewelry, tools, and if possible weapons. Their hair and beards will be matted with the blood of their victims.

Ciudachs will also use the blood of their victims to tattoo their own hides with crude drawings of their life’s history. The more tattoos that a Ciudach has the longer it has lived for. Some Ciudach that have been slain by heroes were thought to be three hundred years old judging by the tattoos and the historical events that they depicted.

Ciudachs are greedy and horde their treasure with a ravenous glee. The dwelling of a Ciudach will most likely be a cave or chasm near a road or on the outskirts of some civilization. Inside their will be an area with carcasses in different states of decay, and a work are where those remains are being fashioned into various items. Hidden within the dwelling there will be a great deal of treasure. Weapons, tools, and valuables of many different types kept in pristine condition by the Ciudach.

Ciudach prefer to use large clubs or axes when they attack other creatures. Often they will hear an approaching group of travelers, explorers, or another Ciudach, and they will charge at the noise as fast as they can hoping to catch the target(s) off guard. The Ciudach will then attempt to club or cleave as many victims as possible.

The Ciudach will then drag the bodies back to a location near its dwelling. Sometimes the victims are still alive at this point, but the Ciudach will kill them before bringing them into its dwelling. At this point the Ciudach will drain the blood from the bodies and collect it in a container of some sort for its tattoo ink, skin the bodies to begin the leather making process, and then it will bring the bodies into its dwelling to consume in a grizzly feast.

Ciudach are incredibly strong, hard to injure, and quick despite their great size. Yet their minds are weak and they are vulnerable to magic, psionics, and other skills and gifts that could be used to dominate the Ciudach’s will. Ciudach’s will rarely serve another when these tactics are used, but Ciudach have been known to run away in fear of those who possess these skills and gifts.

Stats

Speed: Ground (Good)

Scale: 2

Attacks: Tusks Rake (Fair, Scale 2), Club\Axe (Good, Scale 2)

Defenses: Thick Hide (Good), Vulnerable to Mental Domination (Mediocre) – Attacks against the Ciudach’s mind use this rank as the target.

Special Abilities: Giant’s Strength and Vigor (Superb, Scale 2) – The Ciudach can lift very heavy items easily. It rarely tires, and it fights to the death unless its opponent can exploit its vulnerability.

Treasure: Great. The proceeds from the treasure horde of a Ciudach is often enough for a young adventurer to equip themselves nicely with, and still have a long rest at one of the finer nearby inns.

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