For me the adjectives instead of numbers are just aggravating, I always get mediocre, average and fair mixed up so I just convert them to numbers.

The dice mechanic is fine and all but nothing special.

What I like about it is that it boils down attributes, skills and levels into simple abilites. The pyramid system set-up is nice as well for chargen, but is that FATE or FUDGE? I forget.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1059647Fudge is REALLY good for convention one shots. You can teach the system to newbs with no issue and there's a conversion for using real D6 so you don't need their funky dice. I've used it for mini-campaigns, but what it does best is rules light 1-3 session games. I highly recommend it for what it does. I especially recommend it for genre IP stuff, like Star Trek, Marvel, Star Wars or Matrix. I've done all of those where you are cool with broad brush strokes and theater of the mind.

Yeah, I played in a PBEM 'Space: Above & Beyond' FUDGE game back in the '90s, and it worked really well for that.

Quote from: GeekEclectic;1059846Advantage would be 5dF, drop lowest. And disadvantage would be 5dF, drop highest. I like that the potential range remains the same while your results get weighted a bit to one side or the other as appropriate.

One thing I've been doing is reworking how damage works. I'm having Scale+Damage Resistance Attribute be something you roll when you are damage and you only use that result if it is positive. Every time you negate damage you gain a  disadvantage dice until you receive a wound or take a 15 minute short rest.

I've found a lot of players do not like "plinking" with ineffective attacks that hit, so this mechanic then allows for them to do something every time they hit while also giving a method to actually wound creatures of a massive scale without equally massive bonuses.

Quote from: Aglondir;1059826For me the problem wasn't the lack of game procedures, it was the opposite: Option-itis. Character creation can be A, or B, or C. Combat can be D, E, or F. Damage can be L, M, or O.

My favorite iteration of Fudge was called FAST, by a guy named Grubman over on TBP. He converted all of the words to numbers (a 1 to 8 scale), created defined atts and skills, weapon damages, and a short DIY magic section. I liked real math (4-1 or 3+2) better than "Fudge math" (Good +2 or Excellent -3.) But even that couldn't save it for me, due to the granularity.

Sure there were character creation, combat, and damage options, but the game (at least the Fudge book I had) lacked the procedures that tie those together and much of any sort of "how to play". Those options of course emphasize the toolkit nature of Fudge. I suspect it works well for one shots because the one shot is specific enough to create characters with the loose descriptors and have them work ok. I'm sure the procedures the GM uses are derived from whatever gaming they did before they got into Fudge. But could someone who had never played an RPG make any sense out of the Fudge book? Just browsing through Another Fine Mess it looks like it does have a reasonable set of procedures. I suspect it might be a bit difficult for someone not familiar with RPGs to use, but there's enough in there they could probably work it out. But that's a one shot.

Frank

Quote from: GeekEclectic;1059785I'm not going to quote everything, but . . . I just don't see this as a problem at all. Good has a 30% better chance than Fair, and Great has a 60% better chance than Fair, using your numbers.

Then you are happy with a RPG that jumps multiple levels at onces for the next step in experience. It neither good or bad, but it is the consquence of the mechanic. One step of improvement would the equivalent of jumping from 1st level in combat ability to 5th level in combat experience in D&D. (or spell casting, or skill use however you want to slice it).

Quote from: GeekEclectic;1059785And that seems about right. In addition to the Fate Point economy, other things like how milestones(basically the XP/level alternative) are handled keeps the numbers from getting out of control. A +1 means more than in D&D, but you also get that +1 less frequently than in D&D. And then only for 1 skill at a time instead of across the board, plus whatever new class features your level up unlocks.

It more than that, it about situational modifiers as well. And it not "just one skill at a time" because Fate skills are far more broad than what found in 3.X D&D or GURPS.

Quote from: GeekEclectic;1059785And I kind of love the +2 from Create Advantage or tagging Aspects. It really makes planning and teamwork feel important and powerful.

Maybe or it may mean that you are only going to get the +2 bonus if what happening is worth that much of a difference. Otherwise the referee will be well in their rights to disallow the use of create advantage. In Fate Core it not that you get to use Create Advantage you have to use in a way that make sense that the +2 bonus is where.

In contrast with d100, d20 and 3d6 you can do the in-between stuff. Yeah that not worth +30% but it mean something so you get +10%

It the same trade off with advantage and disadvantage for 5e. You got three level of situational modifiers and that it. On the other hand, players seem to grasp it far better than numerical bonuses/minuses so I use it instead of the bonus system I used previously.

Quote from: GeekEclectic;1059785And your rounds breakdown illustrates one of the things I really love. You have 3 to 5 rounds in Fudge if the skill difference is +1(under certain assumptions meant as a control) as opposed to 10 to 15 rounds in GURPS or D&D.

Sorry to bust your theory there but it doesn't take 3 to 5 round because of Fudge/Fate. It because of the -3 Defense penalty I have at the top. I know I didn't explain my rules well but you can read them at this link. But the Attack/Defense in the examples I posted are not a straight opposed check. The defender has -3 to his roll.

When I coded up the different combat systems I found there are two kinds of numbers. One set improves the odds of the one side winning. The other set determines how long it takes on average to produce a winner. D&D the to-hit bonus is an example of the former, the damage dice is an example of the latter. If I ran D&D combat with both sides doing 1d8+8 damage it would take half as long.

With more complex system like my MW RPG, and GURPS. It is a little more complex. In the case of the Fudge based MW RPG, the defense penalty is a primary factor in controlling the length of combat.

If I set the defense penalty to 0, combat stretches out to an average of 14 rounds.

Alex Wins 4958
Brian Wins 5042
Average Rds 14.81585
Total Initial Exchange Kills 105
Total Second Exchange Kills 87

Quote from: GeekEclectic;1059785I'm not entirely sure how this translates to Fate, though, due to its use of Conditions instead of regular Hit Points.

No difference, conditions are hit points. You just compute it indirectly based on degree of success and they are called by a different name.

But in the best case scenario a character can sustain a total number of successful hits equal to the number of scratches, hurt, very hurt, and incapacitated boxes. The worse case of course is a very high degree of success which could result in a single round kill.

Quote from: Rhedyn;1059873One thing I've been doing is reworking how damage works. I'm having Scale+Damage Resistance Attribute be something you roll when you are damage and you only use that result if it is positive. Every time you negate damage you gain a  disadvantage dice until you receive a wound or take a 15 minute short rest.

I've found a lot of players do not like "plinking" with ineffective attacks that hit, so this mechanic then allows for them to do something every time they hit while also giving a method to actually wound creatures of a massive scale without equally massive bonuses.

Read up on Harnmaster combat.

The basic gist is that when you get hit you suffer injury points. You also make a save. The exact type depends on the severity of the hit and the hit location. At the various least it will be a shock roll if failed will result in unconsciousness.

The key to make this work is that the current level of injury is a modifier to the save. So even plinking away at some point that modifiers will be so high the character will fail their save with even if it is but a scratch.

For Fudge/Fate. I would record the degree of success as part of a running injury total. Make a constitution/endurance/hardiness check, set the consequence based on the damage of the CURRENT blow. But modify the save negatively by the current injury total.

The more injury they have the hard it is to make a save for even the least of blows.

Free RPGs tend to suck. Interest in them dwindles.

Looks to me like FATE basically killed FUDGE.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1060250Looks to me like FATE basically killed FUDGE.

Nah, it more like Fate was the only smash hit to have occurred using Fudge.

Quote from: estar;1060317Nah, it more like Fate was the only smash hit to have occurred using Fudge.

Yes, but it also stopped most people playing FUDGE anymore, and (as far as I know) anyone making any other successful FUDGE derivative.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1060250Looks to me like FATE basically killed FUDGE.

More like fucked up Fudge, IMHO. Or screwed over? They even renamed the dice.

Quote from: 3rik;1060821More like fucked up Fudge, IMHO. Or screwed over? They even renamed the dice.

Well Fudge kind of killed fudge.

I showed some friends the 10th Anniversary Edition and no one would even touch the book. It was just physically repulsive to them. There are some table editing mistakes that even a casual read would have caught and the book suffers from a lack of cohesive vision or even awareness of what other articles said when referencing them.

For example, I think the coolest magic system was in the fantasy 5 point fudge example where magic was broad skills and spells may require several schools (conjuration, mesmerism, sorcery, etc) to cast. No example characters use that system and the spell examples introduce an entirely different and an overall boring magic system.

By the end of the book, I had an idea of a system I wanted to make, drafted up the basic idea in about 7 pages and now that project is dead. In the sense that this book made me feel confident in making an RPG with it, it is successful. What it doesn't do is sell the system and I think the licensing situation is still pretty F'd when it comes to making something to sell with the system (which is part of why Fate moved away from it so hard). Which leads to less sexy books, which leads to no one wanting to play it.

It's so dead I have one of their early copies and I've never used it and have no intention of every using it? That's pretty dead.

Quote from: 3rik;1060821More like fucked up Fudge, IMHO. Or screwed over? They even renamed the dice.

In fairness, they got permission to do so, with the caveat that they include a mention of Fudge in the tagline. So the packaging reads "Fate Dice: Dice for your Fate & Fudge Games."

I don't think there's much demand for a rules set toolkit.

There's a couple of Fudge-based games around that are actually decent to pretty good. They just haven't been succesfull enough to keep Fudge on the map.

Terra Incognita
The Unexplained