Boy, the

Fudge List is really hopping with a discussion about what Fudge really is and what that says about commercial viability. This has spawned a lot of little sub-threads concerning what is and isn't wrong with Fudge, etc.

For me, it brings up something that's been bugging me again. I've claimed Fudge as my "exclusive" system for the past several years… I run all my games with Fudge. Thing is, I haven't had a lot of time to actually run games in the past ten years, so my hands-on experience has been lacking. The interesting part is that every time I get a hands-on experience, Fudge somehow comes up short for me.

There's a lot of niggly little reasons, no one of which is really a big problem in itself. But despite its "toolbox" approach, there are some core bits of Fudge that are tightly locked together and it's very difficult to tweak the system because some parameters can't be changed without changing other parts of the system. And some of those tightly-locked pieces are what, to me, make Fudge what it is. If you remove or change them drastically, then it's no longer Fudge.

The adjective list

This one is very frustrating, because it's one of the things I really like about Fudge, and I consider it one of the "core" elements. Get rid of using adjectives to describe traits and you've taken a step away from being Fudge.

But the adjective list imposes severe limitations, namely that your conveniently-usable trait range is limited to a manageable number of words. Fudge defaults to seven or eight, and I'm finding that number is too small for my tastes, especially when using Fudge Dice.

The adjectives really start to get in the way when you start playing games involving non-human scale characters. The Scale system, while it looks elegant on the surface, becomes very cumbersome during play. I find superheroes much easier to manage using numbers instead of adjectives.

Fudge Dice

4dF, the standard Fudge die roll, ranges from from -4 to +4. This range is greater than the standard Terrible..Superb, which is -3 to +3. I could write all day about Fudge Dice, but I'll try to sum up the key issue:

Everyone on the Fudge List will tell you that a +1 is a large bonus in Fudge. Yet the dice are so variable that someone with a Fair skill can range anywhere from Terrible-1 to Superb+1 (or Legendary, if you optionally label +4 that way). The randomness of the dice overshadow the skill of the character in any given roll. Only across a large number of rolls does the difference in skill start to show up… but a statistically significant number of rolls is very large, and we don't obtain that number in a single game session. A character may only use his lockpicking skill three times in an adventure series, and his performance may be all over the map compared to his skill. You can't tell how competent he is at lockpicking by watching his performance in the spotlight.

But the biggest problem with Fudge dice is that they are difficult to tweak… changing the number of dice doesn't help a whole lot and introduces issues of its own. The die result maps directly to the trait range… a +1 on the dice is a +1 to the trait. This is very difficult to change, which makes the dice one of those "tightly integrated" factors that's hard to tweak to get the kind of results you want.

Degree of success

Degree of success (including relative degree) falls out of the die mechanic. There's this understanding that when you roll +2 to your Fair skill, that you get a Great result. This is what makes the wide dice range such a problem.

Relative degree feeds directly into the combat system. If you remove it, you have to rework bits of the combat system to compensate, including finding another way to randomize damage if you want it random.

Bonuses from traits

The strength bonus to damage is +1 for each level above Fair. Damage resistance is the same… except that +1 is like leather armor, and +3 is around chainmail. Having the level of the trait add directly appears elegant, but in practice it ends up being far too large.

The whole ball of wax

When you roll all these things together, you have a tightly integrated trait and resolution system that resists tweaking. And when you look around, it doesn't take long to realize that this is the core of Fudge that I'm fundamentally dissatisfied with. Years of discussing dice, the trait range, Scale and superheroes and being unable to come up with satisfactory answers should tell me something… I really don't like Fudge as much as I want to think I do.

I like Fudge well when I'm not playing it. But when I start playing, I quickly start running into things I don't like about it.

It may be salvageable, but I think it's going to require creating something that most folks on the Fudge List would consider "not Fudge." Bummer.

I'm thinking maybe I'll switch to Mutants & Masterminds for awhile to get my head out of Fudge for a bit so I can come back with a different perspective. It actually has a lot in common with Fudge, and they've thrown out a lot of the d20 bits that I dislike. It's a classless, point-build system.