F.U.D.G.E.

[virgil]

This is a system I found to be fairly enjoyable at its core, since I can tinker with the very rules itself. Technically, it's not a whole system, but a barebones task resolution system.

The FUDGE book gives you a laundry list of how to design a system, though most everyone gravitates towards one or two out of each.

One could liken it to what d20 proclaims itself to be, but it's more open-ended, and came out in 1995.

Ultra-short List: I can give more, but it'd be various systems that use FUDGE as the baseline, and tend to be similar (character creation varies the most).
Wikipedia's entry on FUDGE
Core FUDGE system
Fudge FAQ

[rapanui]

I'm reading through the FATE 2e rules (they use FUDGE at core)... and I really, really, really like them.

A lot.

Maybe enough to start roleplaying again, we'll see.

Part of what makes them appeal to me is the way the examples and designer notes are structured. Furthermore, there's some smart thinking here: the rules have the GM and players pick approx. how long the game will go on in terms of sessions ("phases") in order to set the maximum power level for skills.

There's some room for GM favoritism since the rules aren't always explicit... but this is the best thing I've seen in a long time. More comments when I finish reading them.

[rapanui]

Yeah, OK. FATE Fudge is great. Simply put, this is the best system I've read so far for a non-tactical RPG.

One thing it does that I really like is that gives a way for players to take the reigns away from the GM from time to time by invoking Fate points to cause coincidences or just generally change the plot.

If there are any weaknesses it's how ambiguous it is about certain rules that I consider important, and there's a lot of leeway for a bad Gm to screw with players, unfortunately. The 2e document they have on their site has occasional errors too (but hey, it's free).

Still, I'm going to give it a shot and report on how it works.

(By the way guys... I know someone here mentioned creating a stat free system, and this is a great implementation of that. Furthermore, combats tend to use the Big Box Approach... things are intentionally vague. Just thought I'd put that out there.)

[virgil]

From what you speak of, Rapanui, that might be the largest flaw (were there to be one) in the FUDGE engine. When you have a system that's either vague or free-form in design, it places the blame of an unenjoyable gaming experience (or even imbalance) onto the shoulders of the gamers themselves.

If you want an explicit, rules-oriented system that marginalizes the an unhealthy Player-GM relationship; FUDGE is capable of doing such. But you have to make it yourself.

[RandomCasualty]

Only problem with it that I saw seemed to be the usual fighter/caster balance thing. It seems like as a fighter type you've only got one skill to get "swording" and all the others are extra. As a wizard you've got a ton of skills for spellcasting.

[Username17]

In general, making further refinements to FUDGE makes for a better game. Spirit of the Century, for example, is about as enjoyable as Feng Shui and takes even less time to learn and make a character.

There's not much to talk about in a FUDGE system. It's very close to magical teaparty as far as that goes, and as such is explicitly vulnerable to Cops and Robbers syndrome if all the participants aren't geared towards telling the same kind of story.

-Username17

[virgil]

Oh, and there's the other problem with FUDGE, not really much of a common ground in which to discuss things. For instance, your mention of the dynamic between fighter/caster is hard to understand unless you speak of a specific ruleset within FATE or FUDGE. I can attempt to respond to it though, but it's a very general response. On the one hand, there's only really one thing you do with 'swording', while there are many things you can do with 'magicking'. Many skills for spellcasting can be logical in one sense, but it does create the concern for a caster being too specialized in magic to actually do anything else. This doesn't even include possible inhibitors towards the use of magic, be it mana, fatigue, action investment, or how many badgers you're willing to sacrifice; which only adds to the complexity for balance.

[Username17]

Quite often a fudge system will allow one character to take a +4 in "master swordsman" while another takes a +4 in "magic". Invariably the character with magic is able to participate more and cause more interesting changes in the story more often than the character with a sword.

Why? Because the magic skill is a lot more open ended than the sword skill is. It's up for creative interpretation, and usually that means that you win the RPG. But also it's because the same +2 bonus to "magic" is actually way bigger than the +2 bonus to swording is.

Consider it like this: you're a character with no sword skill written on your character sheet. You're a hard boiled mechanic/detective/magician/reporter/whatever, and you don't have "sword" written on your character at all. You grab a sword in the course of the story and try to stab some mook. You'll succeed on what? A net +0?
Now try the same thing, only your reporter has decided to turn someone into a frog by wiggling her fingers. What do you need? A +3? +4?

Now, same actions, only the character has an appropriate skill. The Swordsman still needs a +0, so getting a +1 or +2 to that makes him a lot more likely to succeed. But holy shit! Now it has suddenly turned into a reasonable action for the witch to turn some mook into a frog. In addition to the +1 or +2 that she gets from having the skill, the act of transforming the mook itself became a normal result, so you only need a +0 instead of a +3.

So having skills in extraordinary things is inherently severely superior to having skills in ordinary things. It comes with an additional +3 or +4 bonus for free.

-Username17

[angelfromanotherpin]

I'm pretty sure FATE essentially charges extra for magic. There's a few suggested versions of it, but basically magic is also a Trait, which means that you have less other interesting things about you, and using magic costs Fate Points.

[virgil]

Don't forget, that isn't a hard and fast rule for any particular FUDGE game. Heck, that problem of 'sword' versus 'magic' skill is something you see in the vast majority of systems out there, but at least FUDGE doesn't assume to work a certain way so you can make it not be like this. You could run it in a manner not unlike your SAME system.

There are at least a few people, myself included, that are aware of the fact having a single open-ended skill like 'magic' is drastically superior to a single-purpose skill like 'sword'; and then play a version of FUDGE that addresses this concern. Some people have a single spell be an entire skill, and keep the difficulty high, since turning someone into a frog is a significant feat no matter how you cut it. Others keep magic split amongst multiple skills, but the effects are broader than a per-spell-basis, and then limit their usage on some kind of mana/action/fatigue/badger meter.

Others deal with it by playing a game where the setting/genre is the activities of a bunch of casters, in which case we don't care about what the non-magical people are like (basically mooks), and attempts to play non-casters would likely entail a high resistance against any magic used against them.

[rapanui]

Currently I'm planning to run a survival horror type game using FATE, and instead of letting characters take "machine gunning", they can either take Martial Arts, Melee Weapons, Military Firearms, or Civilian Firearms (if they even want a martial skill).

Aspects are instead encouraged to be character specific but vague to allow for broad interpretation. Basically, I told them that aspects would be like D&D feats on crack, and that they should abuse them as much as possible.

The "cops and robbers" thing is a legitimate concern. The way I have it set up right now is:

Mooks - No Aspects, No FATE points.

Minor/Major Antagonists - Aspects, No FATE points.

This gives the players a definitive crutch with which to survive and move the narrative, but it also leaves the issue of how I should adjudicate Aspects for Minor and Major Antagonists. One way is simply to stick to stuff that's easily interpreted, like "Strong". But that will make the bad guys boring.

I want one of the bad guys to have the trait "Split Personality" and for it to act as both an advantage and disadvantage, but the power level something like that should have is completely left to the GM to figure out.


EDIT: Maybe I can simply explicitly state that if a player has a problem with what I allow an antagonist to do with an Aspect, they can simply veto it using a Fate point...

[Username17]

It is not simply that general skills are better than specific ones (don't take "move silently", take "stealthy" - it also lets you hide). It's that extraordinary skills are better than ordinary ones.

It isn't coded into the game anywhere, but it is nonetheless a fact of the system that characters who have skills in things that normal people cannot do are able to do those things with reasonable Fudge results, while people who are defaulting cannot.

This means that skills like "surgery" or "computer hacking" essentially come with a free "proficiency bonus" with the first plus, while skills like "observant" or "tai kwon leap" don't.

-Username17

[virgil]

Many incarnations of FUDGE have those skills like "observation" and "fighting" default to something like Poor, while the stuff like "surgery" and "hacking" default to Nil, which means even getting to the common default level requires buying Terrible & Poor; as a sort of entry fee.

[User3]

and in the case of magic, you frequently have to take a supernatural power to be allowed to start buying your magic skill from scratch