A couple of things need to be said before I start this.
First, I've been gaming since 1983, and I've had a real Dungeons & Dragons bias since the beginning. Well, of course, in the very beginning there wasn't much else. But then I grew up in a small town, and gaming was hardly tolerated at all. There weren't book stores, let alone gaming stores. I introduced nearly everybody I knew to gaming. Over time, I did branch out a bit: I played in a really fun West End Games Star Wars campaign, toyed with Vampire, Paranoia and Deadlands, but mostly I've been a D&D geek my whole life.
Second, I haven't actually run Fudge in a game yet -- maybe it'll all fall down flat. I'm still in the "wow, this is really cool" phase.
Third, this is kind of a long post. Now, on to the meat.
I've been aware of Fudge for a long time now. I printed out the rules a few years ago, bound them, read them, stuck them on a shelf, along with all the other unused and unloved gaming manuals I've acquired over the years. It seemed fun enough, but why bother switching?
At the same time, over the years I've felt a growing dissatisfaction with Dungeons & Dragons. "Of course," I can hear all of you fancy-pants gamers out there saying, "D&D is lame and old and stupid." That said, I have a real fondness for D&D. Class/Level based advancement seems OK (skill-based systems seemed OK, but often really complicated). The shaky realism seems good (I
like jumping off a cliff and surviving). The wide support from Wizards and third party companies is really exciting. The OGL and the d20 license seem like Good Ideas, in my naive, non-informed opinion.
On the other hand, I'm pathetic at arithmetic and have a really hard time remembering things. So imagine the horror when I have to (often on the fly) come up with a challenging encounter between my player's PCs and some set of monsters. Choosing appropriate monsters, considering the interaction of dozens of rules. I dread new rules, rather than enjoy them: they just complicate the game. I can't take advantage of rules I can't remember.
Character creation is, of course, a nightmare. I've hated this so long that I've started two or three character generator projects. And not just little dinky ones either -- the sort that use constraint engines to reverse engineer rules, so that you can specify your character's HP range and attack bonus, give a broad idea of the class, and have the program randomly generate the rest... But this was stupid! Why do we care about all those numbers anyway?
Introducing new players to the game embarrasses me. "Yes, we have six different kind of dice". "No, now you roll percentiles". "Roll a saving throw -- that's this section here on your character sheet", "I know, it seems kind of weird". "I'm sorry -- that's just the way it works". Don't even get me started on character creation with new players. This is supposed to be a
game!? It's no wonder our hobby is marginalized.
This is one of the factors contributing to my gaming burnout a few years ago. A game that's so hard isn't fun anymore.
So, I was sitting at work talking to my friend David Ziegler a week or so ago, and was discussing this very issue. David's beef is that he never knows the rules well enough -- he figures he's always at a disadvantage because he doesn't choose the appropriate Feats and Skills, or is unable to apply all the appropriate bonuses. Again,
it's a GAME! Why should it be so hard?
So I went back to look at Fudge, in a new light. Some things, like the death spiral (the default wound system), objective character creation, and the attributes/gifts/faults/skills menagerie seemed to be bringing back much of the complexity that I was trying to escape from. But some things, like the universal mechanic, the extremely coarse Trait Latter (Terrible-Poor-Mediocre-Fair-Good-Great-Superb), and Steffan O'Sullivan's extremely laid back approach to the game in general seemed really promising.
So I read further. I found
Sherpa and
IPFudge, which were much closer to my original vision. I found a
cinematic combat system, a simple magic system, and numerous wealth mechanics that fit the bill. I began to see the possibilities.
Fudge could be the game I've always wanted. You can read my
current, work-in-progress rules set.
Basically, the philosophy of the rules I've put together can be summed up with: it's a
game , don't get hung up on the small stuff. The game should let the characters do fun things, and not spend a lot of energy adjudicating things that don't really matter.
If you want to set up a combat with a half dozen thugs, and you want it to be easy, call them Thugs(Poor), give them a victory point each, and watch the fur fly. You want an epic combat? Make a Fire Mage (Superb) with 10 Victory Points, and a handful of Good Bodyguards. Simple.
Create a character? Well -- I created a half dozen in the previous paragraph, but a player character could be... I want to play a grim street warrior with the ability to use anything nearby as a weapon. Grim Street Warrior (Good), Fight With Anything Nearby (Good). Done. Say what you want to say, get it over with.
No need to worry about being marginalized by the rules --
there aren't any rules (to speak of). You want to try something? Look up an appropriate skill on your character sheet, roll it. The Gamemaster'll tell you the difficulty. You don't have an appropriate skill? Talk it over with the GM -- decide how good you figure your character is, and write it down on your character sheet. Or not. It's just a game.
There are two issues that people (including myself, until recently) seem to have with this approach: consistency and balance.
Consistency goes like this: People claim that without rules covering off at least the most common situations, the same situation could be adjudicated one way one week, and an entirely different way the next. To that, I say: who cares? It's a game. If anybody remembers the last week's decision, and notices the difference, they can say something about it, and it can be consistent. If nobody remembers, nobody's really noticing the inconsistency, so what difference does it make?
Balance goes like this: Without strict point buys or rigid character creation rules, one character can be much more powerful than another character. The real problem is not that characters have different powers, but that some characters get to do all the fun things, and other characters get sidelined. This is not a rules issue. This is a Gamemaster issue. Scenes in the game have to be set up so that each character has a chance to shine. This is true whether or not characters are 'balanced', and it's not particularly harder to balance screen time between unbalanced characters.
In summary (as you can probably tell), I'm very excited about Fudge and what it can do for my game. I'll write again when I've ironed out the final bugs and given it more play testing.
Until then, take a look at (or another look at)
Fudge. It may have what you're looking for.
