Improving the Trait Ladder 2

[The following article was originally a sequel to another article that has been lost to the astral void because I lacked the wisdom to make backups at the time and archive.org did not capture it. This is one of the articles that was captured, thankfully. I feel it has been superseded by "One Step Beyond", but I offer it here as a relic of my earlier Fudge-blogging activities.]

I am rethinking the improved trait ladder (q.v.), and it has occurred to me that trying to find four additional words that express increasing degrees of the Superb and the Terrible may be as fruitless as trying to assess whether Amazing or Incredible is objectively superior in an extended trait ladder for superheroes. My own solution for the latter was to arrange them alphabetically, so why not extend the same solution to the improved trait ladder? All we are essentially trying to express is the concept of Superb (or Terrible) only more so. Instead of fussing over whether Exceptionally is better than Exceedingly or Extremely (and there are certainly too many “e” words for comfort), I’ve decided to use synonyms for sense 2 of the adverb "very" (“in actual fact”). In Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Thesaurus, these are given as “actually, de facto, genuinely, really, truly, veritably.” Of these, the last four suit my purposes, which gives us this:

Fudge Traits	#	Improved Traits
Superb +4	+7	Veritably Superb
Superb +3	+6	Truly Superb
Superb +2	+5	Really Superb
Superb +1	+4	Genuinely Superb
Superb	+3	Superb
Great	+2	Great
Good	+1	Good
Fair	0	Fair
Mediocre	−1	Mediocre
Poor	−2	Poor
Terrible	−3	Terrible
Terrible −1	−4	Genuinely Terrible
Terrible −2	−5	Really Terrible
Terrible −3	−6	Truly Terrible
Terrible −4	−7	Veritably Terrible

Yes, they mean the same thing, but it has the sound of a more natural, intuitive progression, which is aided by their arrangement in alphabetical order. I think some playtesting is in order.

[Originally posted in Fudgery.net/fudgerylog on 24 May 2011.]