On problems with Fudge Dice

Recently, Rob Donoghue commented…

Honestly, a lot of the necessity-to-offset-the-dice issue can probably be addressed with a more forgiving dice model. Default fudge is pretty darn fickle in that regard, since the size of the dice spread covers the whole range of skills. I admit, this is the main reason I keep being tempted by different curves (like success counting) or systems where plain old success is pretty easy (like TSOY).

Fudge Dice have given me fits for years. They appear, on the surface, to be so elegant, but deep down, the system just doesn't work well, and it's very resistant to tweaking.

The die range is wider than the default trait range… hence performance is very erratic. A +1 bonus is considered "big" in the Fudge community, yet few seem to have a problem with a character's performance regularly falling into the +/-1 range. Reducing the number of dice doesn't help much… 2dF is too predictable while still creating +/-1 results too often. 3dF is much the same as 4dF. The curve is just too shallow, causing results to be all too random for my tastes.

I think a lot of this problem is present in other die systems, but just isn't so obvious… Fudge lays it out so plainly. And Fudge uses relative degree where other games usually don't, which makes the effects of the spread more important. In Champions, it doesn't matter if you make your roll by one or by five… in Fudge, there's a big difference between a relative degree of one and a RD of five.

The die range issue could be ameliorated by expanding the trait range… but you'd need to expand it to a lot more than to just nine or ten levels to really fix it. But the adjectives tie you down to a small number. To make 4dF really work, you need like twenty or maybe even thirty levels, and you just can't do that with the adjectives unless you implement some kind of half or third levels. And I think the Fair+, Mediocre- stuff is clunkier than just using numbers.

The problem I've had with ditching the standard Fudge Dice is that I'd feel like I don't really play Fudge anymore… the dice are a core "identity" of the game to me. Ditch the adjectives (which I've done for my superhero game) and I've done away with the two key identifiers, in my mind.

Fudge Dice with just one plus and minus and four blanks (4dF.1 as we've come to call it) could help solve a lot of this… but that requires modifying the dice or making them from scratch. I'm not happy with either solution… I and my players own a lot of Fudge Dice. (Don't ask me why… do I really need ten sets for my own personal use?)

And this is what frustrates me about having chosen Fudge as my primary game system for everything I run… I'm unhappy with its fundamental building blocks: the trait range and the die method. And if I drastically change those, I feel like I'm no longer playing Fudge.

But still, I'm looking at is switching to some d6-based mechanic, maybe some kind of dice pool system, if I can discover one that meets my needs. It'd be cool if I could come up with some new system that still uses Fudge Dice.