In 2009, I posted an article in Fudgerylog—reposted here in 2014—advocating the "Separation Between Attributes and Skills" that is the standard procedure for Fudge. I continue to hold this opinion, but I thought it might be made more palatable to skeptics if attributes were described in a different way as saving throws (inspired by Steffan O'Sullivan's explanation for one of the three things he uses attributes for in his "Recent Thoughts on Fudge"). Attributes represent your ability to avoid, resist, survive, and withstand anything deleterious. They are your resistance rolls, survival rolls, morale rolls, health rolls, and saving throws. They are your last defense when skills cannot save you, for they are not skills themselves, but characteristics inherent to you. Your skills describe your competence; your attributes describe your essence.
They can save you.
Perhaps they can save us all.
Seriously, though, I think it helps the mind adjust to the Fudge concept of attributes by thinking of them as holistic saving throws instead of the soil in which skill trees are grown.
Hi, I would be one of those "skeptics", since in the games I run I have just skills, and no attributes. My impression is that the "attribute + skill + saving throw" is a convention that we carry on from old school games and it's just difficult to let go. In fact, from players that are new to the hobby I never got the question "which attribute is this skill based on" or "what's my saving throw from X". They describe what the PC does, I tell them which skill to roll, and that's it!
ReplyDeleteThat's a valid point. Sometimes greater experience also entails greater baggage.
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