Wise Turtle Publishing

EDIT: adding the "About Fudge" and "Disclaimber" info that should have been put on here in the first place.

ABOUT FUDGE
Fudge is a role-playing game written by Steffan O'Sullivan, with extensive input from the Usenet community of rec.games.design. The basic rules of Fudge are available on the internet at http://www.fudgerpg.com and in book form from Grey Ghost Games, P.O. Box 838, Randolph, MA 02368. They may be used with any gaming genre. While an individual work derived from Fudge may specify certain attributes and skills, many more are possible with Fudge. Every Game Master using Fudge is encouraged to add or ignore any character traits. Anyone who wishes to distribute such material for free may do so - merely include this ABOUT FUDGE notice and disclaimer (complete with Fudge copyright notice). If you wish to charge a fee for such material, other than as an article in a magazine or other periodical, you must first obtain a royalty-free license from the author of Fudge, Steffan O'Sullivan, P.O. Box 465, Plymouth, NH 03264.

DISCLAIMER
The following materials based on Fudge, entitled Fudging OVA, are created by, made available by, and Copyright (C) 2006 by John Austin, and are not necessarily endorsed in any way by Steffan O’Sullivan or any publisher of other Fudge materials. Neither Steffan O’Sullivan nor any publisher of other Fudge materials is in any way responsible for the content of these materials unless specifically credited. Original Fudge materials Copyright (C)1992-1995 by Steffan O’Sullivan, All Rights Reserved.


So here's the thing about the Ricochet system. There's multiplication involved. As in, in order to get high rolls, you have to roll doubles/triples/whatever, and add 'em up; and then once you've already done that every round in a fight, you also get to multiply against a damage number (after first subtracting the other guy's results).

For a lot of people this is not problem, and in fact it's fun. But several of my regular gamers are people with severe learning disabilities when it comes to math. That makes this sort of thing tricky.

On a related note, some of my new players who are interested in OVA are coming mainly from an anime-fan (and fanfic-writing) background, so again i'd rather minimize the numerical aspect and help them focus on character and story.

Plus for myself, i like a relatively linear, sort-of predictable progression in dice mechanics; some chap on a previous thread noted how unpredictable the dice can get at high levels of ability. That can be a lot of fun, but like to know that somebody with "incredible" ability can accomplish the Nigh Impossible such-and-such a percentage of the time.

So what's my point? My point is that i'm working on crossreeding OVA with Fudge. Mostly it's straightforward; a few details take some work like adjusting the Health and Endurance figures to suit Fudge range of rolls. But it's been going well.

If anyone is interested, and if Clay doesn't mind, I'd like to post some of my work here as a way to organize my effort and get some feedback. Fudge is, of course, available for free from the Gray Ghost website, but i'm not planning to get wrapped up in Fudgey minutiae (if such can be said to exist).

So let me know...

Sure, it doesn't bother me.

I remember a long, long time ago someone had a similar beef with the damage multiplier thing. I don't remember what came of it, but it feels like familiar ground when you bring it up.

So sure, give it a go. House Rules are the spice of any gaming campaign. ^^

Probably the easiest thing would be to create a flat damage total based on your Weapon and your Combat Skill. ie. build in the multiplier.

For example: Halve your Combat Skill (rounding up), multiply it by your DT. I haven't really done the math, but something like this should create an average damage result you can use as a flat rate for the entire game, ignoring how "well" you hit.

Let me know if that's helpful at all! I'm not familiar with Fudge, so I'm kinda shooting in the dark.

Okay, then, a quick overview of Fudge. [Let me know if i leave too many holes to be coherent.] First off, the rules are available for free from Grey Ghost Press at http://www.fudgerpg.com/ [So you can always get a look at anything that i don't explain clearly.]

Fudge was publishing as an effectively open game before the OGL was invented, and now uses the OGL to solidify the alread-standing tradition of publishers creating Fudge-based works.

One thing about the system that tends to turn gamers away is the amount of set-up the GM usually has to go through to get started. It's not just picking a genre and setting and devising campaign details - the GM gets to choose what attributes are used, what skills are available, and all kinds of details down to things like "how does combat work" and the like. Some of these options are very open, in a 'create-your-own' sense, and some are chosen from the menu (unless you come up with something you like better, that is). The philosophy in that regard is very like OVA, I'd say. On the other hand, Fudge tends toward rather concrete assumptions - some of the assumed statistics are derived from world records and from mass/size rations - fortunately all done behind the scenes so you don't actually have to work up the math or the research yourself, but still.

OVA's system of abilities and weaknesses would pretty much wipe out most or all of that set-up effort, and also embraces a stronger sense of 'dramatic necessity,' wherein e.g. changing your Size is inconvenient, but a 2-inch tall pixie can still have Strong +4, if you want.

The main element of Fudge that i'm importing is the dice rules: 4dF. That means you roll four fudge dice and add 'em all up (which dice are available from grey ghost and the coolest gaming stores). A fudge die has six sides: two with + on 'em, two with - on 'em, and two blank. That means the range of a roll can go anywhere from +4 to -4, but tends toward a bell curve (making results relatively predictable). You've got a 23.5% chance of rolling exactly +0, and a 61.7% chance of rolling +0 or better. More on how I'm using this in a moment...

The other element i'm using is the 'ladder' of ability levels, although i'm modifying it slightly for my own taste and to reflect that Anime characters tend toward high levels of ability (a fact which i think OVA reflects very well, btw).

So the levels are:
+5 - Legendary
+4 - Amazing
+3 - Superb
+2 - Great
+1 - Good
+0 - Fair
-1 - Mediocre
-2 - Poor
-3 - Terrible
-4 - Abysmal.

I've had a few games where -5 results came up often enough that the players named that level 'teh suxorz' [sic]. It may be preferable to insert a level of 'Awful' between Terrible and Abysmal. I also note that the Character Creation chapter of OVA does give adjectives for most of the ability and weakness levels. The advantage to using the Fudge ladder is that I can also substitute this for the difficulty levels of rolls - Easy becomes Mediocre, Moderate becomes Fair, and so on up to Nigh Impossible becoming Legendary.

At its most basic level, this means that if my character has a Great Willpower ability, I'd roll 4dF +2, with a range from -2 (Poor result) to +6 (Beyond Legendary - about a 1% chance of getting that one). Most of the time I can expect a Great result or better.

Just like in OVA-proper, it's generally unwise to let the total bonus on a combat roll be more than +5; using the Fudge system this guideline applies to most or all other rolls as well. You certainly can keep to this guideline in character creation, but I find it's also easy enough to just decree that "After all bonuses and penalties are accounted for, the maximum bonus to a given roll is +5." Probably apply the same guide to penalties, too.

One other option: the maximum bonus could be limited to the highest contributing ability, meaning that additional abilities are helpful only to the degree that they cancel out penalties and weaknesses. For example, Auren has Great Smarts (+2), Superb Arcane Magic (+3), and Amazing Magic Knowledge (+4); so casting a spell would have a maximum bonus of +4. However, those other abilities mean that he could suffer up to -5 in penalties (e.g., for being bound and gagged) and still have a +4 to his roll.

Obviously, using four fudge dice means there is no more "one is the loneliest number" rule. Instead, I suggest using a "Whammy" rule: if all four fudge dice come up negative, Something Bad happens - even if the roll succeeds! To pick on poor Auren some more, when he fights a demon summoned by Acacia, and his roll comes up -, -, -, -, he's been smacked by a dose of ill-fortune. If he failed his attack, it may be that he's been disarmed, and his sword Orion is now lying on the other side of the battlefield. If he succeeded in his attack, it may be that his sword is lodged in the demon's armor... but Auren is still disarmed! (Similarly, a roll of +, +, +, + could grant some kind of super-special bonus - something above and beyond the intended results on a succeessful roll, or some unexpected side-benefit to cushion a failure.)

A word on Combat:

Fudge combat normally works like this: roll your attack (4dF + Combat Skill + Agility, or whatever); on a success, your "Relative Degree" (that means the margin by which you beat your foe's defense) is added to the damage rating of your attack. So, Rain's Katana is rated at +3, and he's neither Strong nor Weak; he'd have a straightforward +3 on top of however much he beat his opponent. (note that under this method, unarmed/untrained damage bonus is +0; since we're not multiplying, we don't need a baseline of 1 like in the Ricochet system.)

In an even fight using Fudge dice, margins of success will usually be pretty small - just 1 or 2 much of the time. That means that if we keep the baseline of 40 Health/40 Endurance, fights will go on for rediculous spans. I prefer fights to be quick and dirty - a brief exciting flurry to punctuate the adventure - so i'd suggest dividing all Health and Endurance amounts through the game by 5. That gives a basic 8 levels of health... which conveniently fits the ladder pretty well...

If i'm unharmed, i'm in Amazing health. If i take 1 damage, I'm still in Superb health - it's just a scratch. When I've been beaten up a whole lot, i may be in Terrible shape, or worse, my health may be Abysmal - then I take a -1 penalty to all my actions and start losing Endurance!

The one thing that trips this up is that certain Abilities have endurance costs of 2 (and magic can even cost 1), which doesn't divide very well. You can treat a cost of 2 as costing one but lasting 2 rounds, or a variety of other tweaks.

[One option I've considered - i'll want to play-test this first - is to effectively split these health and endurance levels into halves; each level would have a box, which is marked first by a slash and then by a second slash making an X. Then something that under Ricochet rules would cost 5 Endurance would put an X in a box, while something that costs 2 endurance would put a slash. Under this option, points of damage would probably be slashes rather than Xs, meanding that a fight would last a bit longer.]

Rereading that all, it doesn't seem like it will be very clear - but i'm low on time right now, so i'll have to explain it a bit more later if anyone has questions. I'll see about whipping up a visual aid, too.

I was considering doing something similar. Glad I found this saves me some work.

I was going to try to make Anime:FUDGE. Taking stuff from BESM since most of it OGL anyways. But would love to take some stuff from OVA as it just rocks.

Sounds good, Bhikku! As I said, not much of a Fudge buff, but your overview makes sense to me. I like the idea of a "hatch" system...very simple stuff that further reduces the need for math.

Rounding 2 to 2.5 (or in your case, to half an x) is perfectly fine by me. 2 itself is merely a rounding...I didn't think 3 sounded like enough of a difference so I made it two.

I too at one time was trying to use FUDGE as my game of choice. I tend to be a GM that likes to focus on the ideas and flavor of a place instead of the rules.

But I started to get into it, and to be honest from my personal perspective, made my brain hurt. I scrapped all my ideas, and went back to playing RPG out of the box, even though it limited my creative style. A few years later, I created my own system (more basic than OVA but lacking a lot I might add in the way of flavor, play tested it, and it was blahh for excitement and flavor it just got repitous).

I got into the tri-stat free download to see if I could make it do what I wanted. The same, it made my brain hurt to try and customize the game, there was almost too much you could do, and you had to spend a lot of energy just to get the rules "set-up". So not a lot of time for the actual setting and game.

That is one of the main reasons for picking up OVA, I continue my search for the holy grail of gaming, simple but universal without having to spend a lot prep time on customizing the rules for the setting.

I think Clay got it right, and at least for this Game Master - OVA is a perfect fit. I will probably use it for both my anime and non-anime games in the future. I need to really test-drive before I go final on that statement, but it has gone much further than other games so far in my checklist.

Cheers,

Does anyone know the actual percentage chances of getting each result?

+4
+3
+3
+1
0
-1
-2
-3
-4

Saint&Sinner wrote:Does anyone know the actual percentage chances of getting each result?

+4
+3
+3
+1
0
-1
-2
-3
-4

Roll Probability
+4 1.235
+3 4.938
+2 12.346
+1 19.753
+0 23.457
-1 19.753
-2 12.346
-3 4.938
-4 1.235

Hope this helps!