Damage in Fudge, Can it be Streamlined?
I have written how I streamlined the use of traits in Fudge for my “Day of Fudge” event. I was very happy with the results, but the one area of the game that I felt was lacking was the damage system. I used a default rank of Poor as the target to hit a PC with, and most NPCs rolled at a rank of Fair. If a target had an applicable trait I used that as the target rank bumping the rank up to Mediocre for a successful attack. A player could spend Fudge points to increase their trait’s rank in order to be a more difficult target.
The difference in ranks succeeded by -1 was the amount of damage done. So if a target had a rank of Poor to be hit, and the attack roll was a rank of Good the damage done would be 2 (attack succeeded by 3 ranks -1). A target with a rank of Mediocre to be hit that was hit by a Mediocre attack would take no damage (attack succeeded by 0 ranks -1), nor would it be damaged by an attack with a rank of Fair (attack succeeded by 1 rank -1), but in both cases the target would still be hit and might still suffer some sort of effect from the attack.
If a target took damage the damage translated directly into a negative modifier for the character, so taking 1 point of damage resulted in a -1 modifier to all traits. This damage could be healed by use of appropriate traits within the game, or by time passing.
The system worked well for the event that I was running, but it was a little difficult to apply quickly to the game. I had to stop and think “what is the difference in ranks?” and that slowed me down as a GM. Granted this was a pause of about 2 seconds, but any pause no matter how brief takes the GM’s mind off of the game. I want to avoid that whenever possible.
So my mission is to design a damage system that is highly streamlined for play to remain fast and loose. I welcome any ideas that others may have, so please feel free to leave a comment below and let me know what you would do to streamline damage in Fudge.
Would a hit point system not work? Like you said it could get very confusing having to remember all of that stuff, and I don’t like the idea of people getting negatives for being it, at least to an extreme.
@dwashba: Possibly. One of the alternatives that I was thinking of is taking Fudge points from the players as a form of damage which in effect makes the Fudge points hit points as well. It puts more emphasis on the currency, and it gives the GM further encouragement to reward players with more Fudge points for attempting cool stuff in the game. I would also add a rule that players earn Fudge points for just making an attempt and additional points for each rank of success achieved. I just have not play tested it yet.