Slashdot Mirror

Why does anyone hold on to these rules as sacrosanct? If you didn't like the rule requiring an XP expenditure for this-or-that, why not just disregard them? Why wait for a new book to purchase? Why not enable yourself? For that matter, why ever use "D&D" in this age? I suspect that FUDGE is an effectively superior replacement. There's no reason why you can't steal the monsters, weapons, etc; from your favorite system and simply apply them to FUDGE?

My wife and I just came through an addictive run with Oblivion and we're both wondering: Among Gamers Who Know (that would be you folks), what are the options for one-on-one, Dungeons-and-Dragons-style role playing games?

We do that all the time at home, on the road, etc. It's story-telling with very occasional dice-slinging when we have the time, but its mostly story-telling. When we put the family on the road for a long trip the kids are in the back with a movie and we can sit up front passing the time telling stories. Since I run my own fantasy world, she just runs characters in that world, but that is not necessary as there are plenty of pre-packaged worlds out there.

If you want to sling dice together then you can pick some simple systems like Fudge (http://www.fudgerpg.com/) or Fuzion (http://www.thefuze.com/). Both are very simplistic rules and you can get both as free PDFs. BESM (Anime), Iron Claw (Anthro), Feng Shui (Hong Kong action) are all simple rules that are IMO flawed in some ways but still very enjoyable in their own right.

But really the best place to start is with story-telling - not the White Wolf story-telling system - but just telling a structured story back and forth to each other. One person plays a character and the other plays everyone else.

Until life got busy this year, I was GMing a table top Rifts game. I still GM a PBEM game which is going into its third year. Rifts has one of the best environments out there for roleplaying, but suffers from an extremely crapping gaming engine. The combat system is a ruddy mess, there's too many skills and the attribute system has virtually nothing to do with the rest of the mechanics save for a few savings throw modifiers. The variant I use for the PBEM is highly simplified, and in the table top realm I was (and will again when I have the time) move over to Fudge.

I've been working with Fudge for some time now. Very sleak set of rules that can be manipulated in almost any way you like. What's more, the basic game comes as a free download.

A Good generic system is Fudge

And it used to be free and open, but I see the copyrights have been 'acquired', so I'm not sure what the status of the project is anymore.

Anyway, they say its still free, so try it.

d20 is pitching itself as the .Net of roleplaying (so I suppose Gurps is Java?). I hear what you are saying, but I still think there are better systems for even that.

Yeah, I think you're right. I'm not trying to specifically defend D20. It's just that a lot of the settings that I like (Deadlands, Legend of the Five Rings) seem to be moving to it. And it's a pretty easy system to teach a newbie, though it still has considerable depth if you want.

But I had a pretty great time in a FUDGE dungeon crawl, playing a lion tamer-cum-adventurer armed with a bullwhip and a chair. FUDGE probably has the least rules possible, and it's simply not possible to min-max, because everything is subjective.

(I tamed the hell out of that dungeon, let me tell you!)

They do help in some aspects, I have to admit, but if you figure you can do a better job yourself, then you can easily roll your own with the guidance of a meta-system like FUDGE. The difference between it and something that's big by design like GURPS is mainly a matter of the fluffy pieces of detail, stuff like the exact effects of consuming a case of beer or getting hit with a radiation blast of 1000 rads or how far characters should be able to jump.

Fudge would also be a great system for Paranoia, but the existing system is quite fast and free-wheeling and will do just fine. I share your joy that they didn't succumb to the temptation to do this d20, especially since they're basically a d20 company.

I found the role-playing system called FUDGE (the docs can be downloaded for free here wondefull. It has no concept of levelling at all, but a skill based system and is far more realistic than say, ADND. The only problem is that is relies on the GM more than other systems, but that could be changed. If they're trying to remove levelling (to an extent) they should definately check fudge out.

Dont be dissing FUDGE.

You should try FUDGE. Much saner then even GURPS.

A lot of RPGs nowadays have free versions of the rules.

If anyone is interested in GURPS, you can check out GURPS Lite, a simple subset of the GURPS rules. Some people prefer it to the full GURPS rules.

Microtactix gives away Simply Roleplaying!, and they also make cool printable cardstock stuff.

Guardians of Order will be releasing their Tri-Stat dX system for free tomorrow.

Atlas Games has released Ars Magica for free.

Grey Ghost Press gives away Fudge.

It's a good time to be a gamer.

Fudge is available at http://www.fudgerpg.com

I do agree with you, though, that Palms would be great for RPGs. I recently found that the Fudge RPG kit has been palmdoced--and there's a nice Fudge die-roller out there already . . .
--

• FUDGE
• SORD

RPG.NET has a list of 100 free games on their website and other free directories exist on the web. These range from the above games to jokes to GUPRS lite.

Finally, this idea was mentioned in Pyramid Online about two months ago with speculation that in five years all RPG material would be world based using one of:

• D20
• GURPS
• FUDGE

I think that the license FUDGE is released under is very close in spirit to the GPL. Grey Ghost Games publishes FUDGE and FUDGE supplements, but the system itself is free to download and distribute. Check out Steffan O'Sullivan's website; he wrote FUDGE with the help and feedback of gamers on rec.games.design. You can find many websites with supplements, modified versions, etc. The author encourages this.

I recommend waiting until May, although your local game store would probably appreciate it if you took the older version off their shelf for 'em.

"FUDGE Customizable Role-Playing Game, Expanded Edition. GGG1010, 128 pages, $19.95" according to http://www.fudgerpg.com/fudge/

ISTR there are still classes, but they're addressed in a more sensible manner (templates, rather than absurdly limited stereotypes). Someone else has posted links elsethread to some first looks at the new stuff, though.

I think the world needs a simple set of rules with complex possibilities

Well, there's always FUDGE (http://www.fudgerpg.com/ and links therefrom) for that niche.