Random Fudge Topic 2026-08-17

I have made a pledge to myself and all my readers (real and imaginary) to post at least one article each month to each of my blogs (as you may or may not be aware), but over the years, this blog (Creative Reckoning) has gradually become the most challenging to support in terms of viable topics (from my perspective). And then I had an idea: Perhaps I could tackle a random topic about Fudge. Older editions of Fudge even have the rules numbered, which makes the randomization effortless. So, I'll look at the contents page, roll an appropriate die, and that will be the topic of the article. I'll roll for specific sections and subsections as necessary.

Let's go!

Although I prefer the Fudge Expanded Edition, I'll be using the 1995 rules since they are freely available and form the basis of the current Fudge SRD (also known as the FUDGE System Reference Document). There are seven parts, so I'll roll my trusty d7. The result is...

Chapter 4, Combat. There are eight sections, so I'll roll a d8, with the result of...

Section 4.7, Combat and Wounding Example (q.v.). The example uses simultaneous combat rounds, wound levels, Damage Capacity, wound factors, grazing, and the damage die roll.

That's a fair number of rules to juggle in an action scene. My only issue, though, is with the necessity of calculating offensive damage factors and defensive damage factors in an effort to run combat more smoothly, which requires you to pause in what ought to be a fast-paced and exciting part of the game. If there are more than two combatants (a mêlée if you will), you will potentially need to calculate the offensive and defensive factors between every combatant on one side versus every combatant on another side (or even multiple sides). You could, of course, wait until each confrontation starts before calculating the factors, but you will still be spending time calculating them in the middle of the action. To my mind, this is not ideal. It's tedious and veers too close to abstractions for my taste. Other than that, the example is O.K. It describes a combat scene using specific rules options. They might not be the same the options I would choose, but it serves its purpose.

Do you have any opinions or insights? If so, leave a comment.

Fudge Thought of the Day 2026-07-06

I think the biggest obstacle to posting non-generic, setting-specific Fudge content is the realization that everyone uses different varieties of Fudge that are largely incompatible. The traits are different, the powers are different, the starting levels are different, even the trait levels and the numbers of trait levels can be different. How universal is the game, really, when there is no reliable baseline? The task of converting material from one iteration of Fudge to another can be just as laborious as converting material from a totally unrelated system to Fudge. It's maddening. And it discourages us from sharing the material from our adventures and settings, because in many cases it would require so much explanation to enable anyone else to use it that the whole exercise seems futile. Anything truly useful amounts to something more accurately designated as system neutral. I support system neutral gaming material, and I think Fudge concepts can do an excellent job of promoting it, but in the end one might well wonder, "Where's the Fudge?" Or "Which Fudge?"

Fudge Thought of the Day 2026-06-27

I've toyed with the idea before, but I would like to see (or edit) a version of Fudge that only consists of the subjective rules. Keep it simple; keep it short; keep it grounded in self-explanatory terms. It is time to revisit a more organic Fudge.

Fudge: The Averaging

And now for something completely average...

Are you looking for a game that promotes extreme realism in character creation and action resolution in all its dreariness and drabbery? Try Fudge: The Averaging. With just three tweaks to the standard Fudge rules, you could be wallowing in ordinariness.

Step One

For each trait, roll 3d6 and consult the table below to find its trait level.

3d6	Fudge
18	Superb
16-17	Great
13-15	Good
9-12	Fair
6-8	Mediocre
4-5	Poor
3	Terrible

Step Two

To resolve actions, roll a number of Fudge dice based on the trait's level.

Any result above Superb or below Terrible wraps around to the other end. For example, if a character with a Great trait rolls +2, the actual result is Terrible, whereas if a character with a Terrible trait rolls −1, the actual result is Superb.

Roll	Trait Level
4dF	Superb
5dF	Great
6dF	Good
7dF	Fair
6dF	Mediocre
5dF	Poor
4dF	Terrible

Step Three

In any given social situation, the character whose relevant trait is closest to Fair or who has the most traits closest to Fair is granted the most respect and/or authority.

Advanced Option

A natural Mediocre is a critical success!

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.]

Situational Event Generator

The following is a simple table for adjudicating the results of situational rolls concerning large scale events such as weather, economics, politics, sports, entertainment, dating, etc. The details, of course, are the responsibility of the GM.

Result	Effect
Superb	Triumph
Great	Prosperity
Good	Comfort
Fair	Status Quo
Mediocre	Discomfort
Poor	Conflict
Terrible	Disaster

+1 modifier for Good Omens, Divine Blessings
−1 modifier for Evil Omens, Curses

Attributes as Saving Throws

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.

Fudge Thought of the Day 2025-08-12

Someday, I need to put my GURPS source books to use, and I can think of no better way to do that than to use them with Fudge. Of course, I would fold most of the GURPS skills into broader Fudge skills and jettison any ideas of skill trees or minimum required attribute levels. A direct GURPS-to-Fudge conversion is out of the question. As far as I am concerned, they are system neutral source books.

Fudge Thought of the Day 2025-07-03

Years ago, as I was trying to conceive of a perfect method of calculating an accurate damage system for firearms in Fudge, I was reminded of the elegant system in The Morrow Project. Re-reading those rules, I dove down the rabbit hole of the physics of ballistics and even bought a book on the subject (as well as numerous books of data pertaining to historical firearms)—all so I could devise rules for Fudge. Fudge! No, the irony is not lost on me. Sometimes, sometimes, rules tinkering is the path of madness.

Eventually, my relative sanity was restored and I remembered that the simple solution is always the best solution in Fudge. I shall post my simple solution in Creative Reckoning someday, but in the meantime, never forget: When in doubt, fudge it.

Fudgifying the Fairly Obvious

From the moment I read the Basic Role-Playing pamphlets included in my copies of Stormbringer and Call of Cthulhu in the early 1980s, I was fascinated by the skill-based system, but it had one major flaw: common abilities started far below what would be normal for an average person in the real world. Skills reflecting ordinary communication, the senses, or knowledge of one's place of birth were extremely low and unlikely to improve unless they were used frequently (and at a slow rate at that). Granted, I normally do not require rolls for very easy tasks such as observing things, using common modes of transportation, remembering facts about one's local community, or doing things that any able-bodied person can reasonably be expected to do under normal circumstances, but for those cases that do warrant a skill check, I feel that characters ought to have a fair chance of succeeding without having to devote valuable character creation points to those standard abilities. And by a "fair chance" I mean a Fair chance.

Any heavily skill-based role-playing system that is burdened with unnecessary common skills (that is, skills that everyone has) can benefit from a little fudgification. Simply replace the score of any common skill (such as See, Listen, Drive, Climb, Swim, etc.) with an appropriate Fudge trait level. In most cases, make it Fair. If the character has an obvious disadvantage for whatever reason, make it Mediocre. If the character has an obvious advantage, make it Good. Use the normal action resolution rules for any other skills that are used, but whenever these common skills come into play, use the Fudge rules to resolve them. The distribution of results will be more realistic, and the player can spend more points on specialized skills (in systems that use that form of character creation).

In short, Fudge rules are not just for Fudge. If your favorite game flounders in some respect, fudgify it.

Someone Mentioned Fudge in a Podcast

It's a rare occurrence nowadays (as far as I know), but in case you missed the headline, someone mentioned Fudge in a podcast! The podcast in question is Che Webster's Roleplay Rescue, and the episode in question is "Fudging It with Joe from Dekahedron". It didn't teach me anything new, but it's always nice to hear Fudge mentioned (and it might be informative to others).

Fudge Is Not Rocket Surgery

Honestly, I do not understand why some people find Fudge action resolution rules so difficult to comprehend and/or accept. It's the essence of simplicity. You have a trait ranked from Terrible to Superb. You have a difficulty ranked from Terrible to Superb. You roll your Fudge dice. The result of the roll increases your trait level, decreases your trait level, or leaves it unmodified. If the trait level after the roll then equals or exceeds the difficulty level, you succeed. If not, you fail. You don't need to worry about arbitrary numerical values. You just need to apply the dice result to your trait level and see if it meets or beats the difficulty. Why does this confuse people?

Fudge Thought of the Day 2024-08-16

What would happen if I played TSR's Marvel Super Heroes using Fudge dice? I wouldn't change the rules in any other way because the game is a masterpiece of rules crafting. I would just use Fudge dice with the Marvel Super Heroes equivalent of the trait ladder. I'll try almost anything to avoid having to use a universal table or a combat matrix to resolve things, so I'll give it a go and report back later.

[Edit: I have decided to abandon this experiment. It is not reconcilable with Fudge without a major overhaul of the system. It simply isn't Marvel Super Heroes without the Universal Table and the Battle Effects Table.]

Painting Characters in Broad Strokes (Part 2)

[This article originally appeared in 2010 in Fudgerylog, the blog connected to my defunct Fudgery.net site. (Read Part 1.)]

In Part 1, I suggested a method for creating the supporting cast—whether player characters or non-player characters—in a Fudge game adapted from television shows or movies, but there is another method that has been part of the rules since the 1995 edition, and that is the Alternate Section on Character Creation by Ed Heil. In this method, none of the attributes or skills are listed until a situation arises during play when a player must decide whether to use a trait and allocate the necessary levels from his starting pool of levels or refrain from using the trait. The character begins as little more than a description of one or two sentences and a skill level pool (which may also be traded in the traditional manner for attributes or gifts if so desired). Given the sketchiness with which most characters are initially defined in television and cinema, this would seem to be an ideal method of character creation. Characters in these media often evolve as a show progresses, revealing skills and background details the audience didn’t know they possessed (and which probably didn’t even exist until a particular story required them). In a show such as classic Doctor Who, even Companions rarely seem to begin as more than a couple sentences’ worth of description. For my own purposes, however, a compromise might be more effective.

In my current Whovian project, Classic Doctor Who: The Unofficial Role-Playing Game, I will be presenting multiple character creation options, and this will probably be one of them. Companions may begin with a brief description and 3 free levels to be distributed amongst the following attributes: Strength, Stamina, Coordination, Intellect, Willpower, and Charisma. They may choose 1 gift, with further gifts costing an equal number of faults. They will have a skill level pool of perhaps 30 free skill levels that may be distributed or held in reserve or traded for attributes or gifts (or any combination thereof). This makes adapting characters from the original show especially easy. Instead of inventing abilities for Barbara Wright that she never demonstrated in the show, we can simply assign her some skill levels in Teaching, History, and Negotiation, and the rest will be the hands of the player who role-plays her in the game. Who knows what other abilities she may reveal in the course of an adventure? This could make playing an existing Companion just as interesting as creating one’s own.

[Originally posted in Fudgery.net/fudgerylog on 6 October 2010.]

Painting Characters in Broad Strokes (Part 1)

[This article originally appeared in 2010 in Fudgerylog, the blog connected to my defunct Fudgery.net site. (Read Part 2.)]

Here is another option for character traits in a cinematic Fudge game. Some genres, especially those adapted from movies or television shows, do not lend themselves to detailed descriptions of a character’s specific skills. Any attempt to adapt such characters to a role-playing game with an extensive list of skills would require the designer to resort to guesswork in order to make the character "whole" and ready to play. The problem with this approach, apart from the necessity of invoking poetic license, is that most characters in these media are notable not so much for the skills they use, but the decisions they make. This is especially apparent with the majority of the Doctor’s companions on Doctor Who (which I am currently attempting to adapt). Non-player characters, too, of any genre, typically need only the barest of details to fulfill their functions. What is the best way to describe such characters with an economy of traits?

Taking a cue from another role-playing game I hold in high esteem, Sherpa, one possible answer is to discard skills completely and rely on a combination of attributes and attributes-as-occupations. Sherpa has the following attributes in order of importance (according to the author, Steffan O’Sullivan): Profession, Experience, Reasoning, Agility, Strength, and Health. The first two attributes are not the usual inherent characteristics one expects to find, but are actually embodiments of large clusters of skills. Profession must be specified by the player, and this attribute covers all the skills logically related to it. Profession (Knight), for instance, would include such pertinent skills as Riding, Jousting, Swordsmanship, Heraldry, Tactics, Court Etiquette, etc. Experience is an attribute that includes all of the other skills a character has gained in life unrelated to Profession. In Fudge, it is simply a matter of determining some standard attributes for all characters and allowing players to designate one or more occupational attributes. As per the standard rules, the GM might allocate a number of free levels equal to half the total number of attributes to be distributed by the players as they choose.

For my own projects, I think I would rename Profession and Experience as Vocation and Avocation (as in Quasi-Standard Descriptive Traits for Sherpa). I would allow up to four Vocations and/or Avocations in any combination, but each one must be specified. (In my games, Vocations and Avocations are functionally identical, but are differentiated for the sake of describing which attributes are, or have been, professional occupations vs. amateur interests.) The rest of the attributes would be Strength, Stamina, Coordination, Intellect, Willpower, and Charisma. The default attribute level for player characters and extraordinary non-player characters is Fair. The default attribute level for ordinary non-player characters is Mediocre. Characters with four vocational/avocational attributes and the usual six inherent attributes would have 5 free levels to distribute amongst them and may further increase some attributes by lowering others. Any character attempting to use a skill not encompassed by one of his Vocations or Avocations has a default level to be determined by the GM based on her assessment of the skill’s difficulty, i.e. Easy skills have a default level of Mediocre, Average skills of Poor, Hard skills of Terrible, and Very Hard skills of Nonexistent. Apart from this, Vocations and Avocations function in all other ways as normal attributes.

This is one option I will probably include in Classic Doctor Who: The Unofficial Role-Playing Game for creating Companions and non-player characters. There is another option I like, however, which I will describe next time.

[Originally posted in Fudgery.net/fudgerylog on 5 October 2010.]

In Search of Fudge RPG

I just read in a "StackExchange" (whatever that is) someone's answer to a question about alternatives to Fudge dice (c. 2010), and my name was mentioned: "There is more than one Fudge die roller on the internet. Gordon A. Cooper's roller is simple and easy to use." My old Javascript dice roller on Fudgery.net (R.I.P.) was linked in the comment. Ah, the days when a few people could find my Fudge essays and Javascript random generators in search engines... Any search of "Fudge RPG" or "FudgeRPG" now yields little more than endless links to FudgeRPG.com or Reddit. The independent blog articles and resources have largely disappeared from results, and Creative Reckoning is nowhere to be found unless the search terms are quite specific. I know some of this is symptomatic of the eclipse of Fudge by other games, but the continuing sabotage of search engines by their owners is compounding the situation. I shan't belabor the point, but the only way to reverse this trend might have to come from the grassroots level and a different approach. I hope a Fudge community still exists to find it.

Fudging Blades

"Fudging Blades: Swashbuckling Combat for Fudge!" (from SpiritMusketeer's Blog) is a simple swashbuckling combat system for Fudge by Thijs Krijger and Jay Shaffstall with help from François Letarte. It lacks the detail of simulationist fencing rules, but it appears to be relatively fast-paced. It looks promising.

[This article has been cross-posted here in Theoretical Swashbuckling.]

The Difficulty with Difficulty Levels

Once upon a time, a commonly heard complaint about Fudge amongst those who enjoyed writing about it in the Fudge List (an Internet mailing list of longish ago) was that it was counterintuitive for difficulty levels to use the Fudge trait ladder. Why, they opined, would someone say a task has a Good difficulty (for instance)? It sounds wrong, they insisted.

I addressed this issue in 2010 in an article entitled "Why Is It Difficult?" (originally posted in Fudgerylog, the blog connected to my no-longer-extant site Fudgery.net; reposted in Creative Reckoning in 2018). My view has not changed on the matter, but in case there are those who just cannot accept it, I can think of one acceptable alternative chart of difficulty levels.

Behold!

Difficulty Level	Alternative Term
Superb	Very High
Great	High
Good	Moderately High
Fair	Moderate
Mediocre	Moderately Low
Poor	Low
Terrible	Very Low

This way, instead of saying "The task has a Good difficulty" (their strange phrasing) or "The task has a difficulty level of Good" (my superior phrasing) or "Jumping the chasm has a minimum success level of Good" (also one of mine), one could say, "The task is of Moderately High difficulty," which everyone will instinctively know (I assume) requires at least a Good result to accomplish.

Now, is that difficult?

The Princess Bride: A Literal Fudge Gift

Lo and behold! We celebrated a belated Christmas at my father-in-law's house this month, and my wife's brother and sister-in-law gave me this as a gift! I can now strike off "Purchase [or otherwise acquire] a copy of The Princess Bride Roleplaying Game (deluxe edition)" from my nonbinding New Year's resolutions! Everyone expressed great interest in at as well as a desire to play it, so I think I had better reacquaint myself with the source material so I can present it to best effect. I am very grateful for this gift, and I look forward to reading it, playing it, and sharing my discoveries and experiences here in Creative Reckoning.

Happy Various Belated Holidays!

Note: The Princess Bride Roleplaying Game by Steffan O'Sullivan is a Fudge-based role-playing game published by Toy Vault.

Let the Dice Fall Where They May

[The following article is a predecessor to "It Matters Who Rolls."]

Dice in any game contribute suspense. Your strategy may appear flawless, but dice represent the fickle finger of Fate that tends to poke you in the eye just when victory is in sight. On the other hand, it can also point the way to safety just when you think all hope is lost. In a role-playing game, dice are the element of chance that is the great equalizer between the GM and the players. For the GM, dice are both a limitation and a liberation. The GM already bears the burden of describing a world and all the inhabitants the players encounter. When the dice are rolled, however, there is no such burden except to describe the results. Here is where the GM gets to participate like a player, where events in the world the GM created can be influenced by an external neutral force. For those GMs who rarely get the opportunity to be players, this is where they, too, can watch events unfold from a non-omniscient point of view.

In order for this dynamic to work, it is necessary for the dice to be rolled in the open. That is to say, the dice ought to be rolled in full view of the players and the GM. Certain kinds of rolls would still be made secretly by the GM, such as a percentage chance of a certain event or encounter happening or when a player character attempts a skill for which success is not readily discernible (e.g., searching for a secret door or detecting a trap), but rolls that represent a contest between characters or a character and the environment should be visible to all participants in the situation.

One problem this alleviates is distrust by the players. If a player can see the GM's roll, he or she knows that the GM is not fudging rolls for the players' benefit or detriment. Although some GMs are suspected of fudging rolls in favor of their NPCs or monsters, I suspect many more are actually guilty of fudging rolls in favor of the players because they do not wish to be too harsh. I suspect this because I was one of those GMs in my early days in the hobby. Mollycoddling players does them no good in the long run. You may think you are helping them, but in actuality you deprive them of the true taste of victory when they succeed if you withhold the bitterness of defeat when they fail. You are also obstructing their growth as gamers.

Any given dice-rolling tradition is probably as old as any other. Some GMs roll in the open; some roll in secret; some let the players roll, but never tell them the target number; some even roll for the players, too. Different groups have different needs. My needs, both as a GM and a player, require that I get to roll dice and let them fall where they may.

[Originally posted in Fudgery.net/fudgerylog on 27 December 2011.]