The result of my efforts can be downloaded here. The PDF document contains the one-paged “Fudge in a Nutshell” and the Open Game License. Printed out this makes the perfect handout for con games! I’ll definitely print a couple of those out and share them with my RPG pub meeting regulars next month!

Related posts:

1. My quest to run a Fudge game
2. 5 Reasons Why You Should Check Out Fudge
3. Solo Game with Fudge and Horror

I had a lot of toys as a kid. I was never into toy cars, model kits or sports paraphernalia. I liked board games, later electronic games, but my favorites where action figures. Most people my age remember the Star Wars Action Figures, GI Joe, He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, Transformer and the myriad other toys of that golden age of action figure and TV show synergy called the 80s. But I am old enough to remember some older toys, like the larger GI Joes and the Mego dolls (yes boys played with dolls!). In that transitional period from the larger doll type action toys and the supremacy of the smaller action figure there were one set of toys I was particularly fond of, the Fisher Price Adventure Series.

These were toys, according to the promotional sheet that is the first illustration on this post, designed for the growing child from three years of age into the early grades. They were play sets of real life professions, adventurers and other exciting activities. There was a safari set, ambulance, scuba divers and motorcyclists among others. Real life adventure heroes! Typically they had vehicles with two or more action figures with only 5 points of articulation. They were simple and fun and I spent hours playing with them, eventually amassing a large collection of Adventure Series figures and vehicles.

By now you may be thinking, what is this guy doing writing about toys in a role-playing blog? Well amazingly many of the games and storylines I played as a child have inspired me later in life either as themes for stories I have written, games plots or even entire campaigns. Others are still undeveloped waiting for the right time to become a campaign. This is the story of a weird little hybrid experience and how the toys of my youth inspired me. If you want the story of how I imagined this read on. If you just want to go to the details of the actual game scroll down the page, I’ll be sure to let you know when we are back on topic! (See this is almost like a “choose your own adventure” but only in post form).

BACKGROUND STORY (full of childhood reminiscing but no actual gaming involved)

The metaplot of the Adventure Series

The storyteller in me was active from an early age, even if I had no concept of what RPGs were or truly understand my love of telling a good yarn. This disparate set of Adventure Series action figures became a large group of interrelated people, with familial ties, relationships and antagonists (the effects of too many Latin American soap opera on a young impressionable mind!). At first my favorite was the Safari Set and the father of the group (I assumed he was the father, the woman dressed in yellow his wife and the others their kids) my “hero”. He was the protagonists of the stories and he and his family were usually aided in their adventures by the characters from the other sets. That’s how I eventually decided the two divers in green swimsuits were related to the safari family. The blond diver was their older daughter and the guy her boyfriend. The other two divers (actually a recolor of the same two diver figures, but with yellow swimsuits and the woman had brown hair) were the sister and husband of the safari mom.

But my adventures took an unexpected twist when during an outing to Kentucky Fried Chicken (back when it was not simply KFC and they only served chicken) I dropped the safari dad action figure and an employee sweeping the floor put him in the trash. I was devastated; I had no hero, what was to become of my Fisher Price adventures?

(Small aside here, I didn’t manage to replace safari dad for years, it wasn’t until much later when I managed to buy the toy in single card, and by then I had stopped playing with these toys much. But I did take them out to play out the return of the long lost father. But I’m getting ahead of myself, back to the story…)

I played around with my Adventure Series toys for a while and eventually found my new protagonists, the motorcycle guy. What made him the hero? Well besides the fact that he rode a motorcycle (which to me seemed like the coolest thing back then), he had two extra points of articulation, he could bend his knees! I soon renamed him Frank (again the name seemed cool to my young impressionable mind), he was an orphan who became a champion motorcycle driver that fell in love with the safari family’s older diver daughter, who left her boyfriend for him and all the animals the safari family had captured in their trips became Frank’s pets.(Does that mean as a child I wanted to be a motorcycle ridding guy with lions and other wild animals as pets? Back to the post…) The Action Series crew became a troubleshooting team lead by Frank. I eventually got other sets like a space shuttle and green robot figures so the group traveled all over the world, even to space.

The island of Rodan!

(SPOILER ALERT, read no further unless you want Christmas ruined!) At this age I would await the arrival of the big store Christmas catalogs with gusto. At five I had figured Santa Claus and the Three Kings, the major gift givers in the Puerto Rico holiday season mythology, did not exists and all the loot came from family members. So when the catalogs arrived I would flip to the toy section and begin circling all the toys I wanted. That Christmas while perusing one of the catalogs I came upon a mysterious toy… (END OF SPOILERS, safe to go back to reading!)

I discovered a Rodan toy and I wanted it! You can see the picture in this post. Which self respecting child would NOT want that red pterodactyl like creature perched on his arm? (The kid on the picture further down looks a little disturbed I know, but I did not get that subtlety back them). I had no idea who Rodan was, not having seen the “classic” Japanese movies, but I knew it was cool. So it went to the top of my Christmas loot list and the waiting began.

With some months to go I could not stop thinking about Rodan. I wanted to play with the toy, but since I could not I did the next best thing; I worked him into my stories. Frank and his Action Series crew were soon contacted to explore this mysterious island out in the middle of the ocean. When they arrived they discovered they were trapped, just like others before them. The island was populated by many other people (i.e. other toys) who had travelled there, and just like Frank and his team, were unable to leave. They also discovered the island travelled though time and to other worlds, so unless they found a way home soon they might never be able to leave. (This may sound strangely like LOST, but I was a big fan of Verne’s The Mysterious Island which my grandmother had read to me and the Mystery Island TV show, so those may be seen as more appropriate inspirations)

Frank and his crew began to investigate the island and learned about a mysterious being called Rodan. He lived in a volcano in the middle of the island and he was responsible for keeping everybody trapped. So Frank being the adventuresome fellow that he is gathers his crew and begins the trek across the islands jungles, mountains and rivers, to find this Rodan and escape. In their journey they met other people (again different toys) some that helped them and others that tried to stop them, one of the robots (yes there where Action Series robots) was corrupted and became a spy for those working to protect Rodan, some in the team decided Frank was not helping them escape but instead putting them in more danger and some even decided to stay and sabotaged Frank’s goals.

Months passed and Christmas was around the corner, by then Frank and his team, along with some allies they had picked along the way, where close to the volcano. They approached it the day before Christmas. I was ready for the next morning when I would open up the box, take Rodan out and play out the final confrontation. To my great disappointment the Rodan in the box had a broken wing… So my grandfather explained to me the toy would have to be sent back and I would eventually get a replacement. I was devastated, I had other gifts and it did NOT ruin my holyday season, but I wanted to keep playing with my then favorite toys, and I had been doing all this build up for nothing…

The best laid plans…

So I improvised. When Frank, his friends and allies enter the volcano they found a giant statue of Rodan but not the creature itself. Instead they faced and were captured by an evil scientist (the action figure of Doctor Hans Reinhardt from the Black Hole movie), as any good villain will oft do he explained his evil plans. Like all the others he had arrived in the island and become trapped, puzzled by the islands effect he travelled to the volcano and discovered machines that caused the islands erratic traveling across space and time. This apparently was a side effect, as the machines had been created to trap Rodan inside the volcano.

The evil scientist deciphered how the machines caused the islands traveling and took control of them; he made the island appear where he wanted to gather the specimens he desired for his experiments. And he was also Frank’s father! (Cue dramatic music… Too much soap operas I tell you!)

The group escaped, hid from evil scientist absentee dad (if you psychoanalyze me through play I’m sure this all would be telling) and plotted to stop his scheme and destroy the machines. This was all a delaying tactic on my part. I was just bidding my time until the replacement Rodan arrived.

When it did I was ready to finish this month long adventure. Frank and his friends defeated evil scientist dad and destroyed the machines causing the island to reappear on earth. As they were getting ready to leave the volcano begins to erupt. From the bowels of its lava prison emerged that terrible creature RODAN! They fought the beast, defeat it but it escapes the island and Frank’s team remains together to hunt and stop the destruction caused by releasing Rodan upon an unsuspecting world.

Looking back that seems like an awfully complex storyline for a child’s game, and I am sure in putting it in adult terms I have made it seem more mature than it was, but I had a vivid imagination and my family played with me a lot so I got their input and help as I played; and the ending? What a downer… I’m pretty sure my players will tell you thats the beginning of my obsession with endings where the good guys never truly win.

Back TO GAMING (or something nominally related…)

Inspired by my childhood games

Years later, when in college I wanted to play a modern game with a twist, a game were players would begin the as regular folk and them be thrown into an unexplained and dangerous situation. At the time I played a lot of Palladium games (Robotech, RIFTS, Heroes Unlimited, Ninjas & Superspies, TMNT, you name it!) so it seemed like the logical fit for my game.

Round 1…

I actually had two aborted starts to this game. In both instances I asked the players to create “normal” people, scientist, soldiers, and law enforcement officers and put them in weird situations. The first time around I attempted my adaptation of my childhood games with two players. I think one was an FBI agent and another police detective, both working the scene of a terrible train wreck. They were few survivors, but when they begin to investigate they realize the survivors were NOT passengers on the train. In included many famously disappeared people, including the crew of the Mary Celeste and some supposedly dead persons such as Christa McAuliffe, the teacher that died in the explosion of the Challenger Space Shuttle.

(A very important caveat, by using her as an NPC I meant no disrespect on her memory. It was a reference I knew both players would immediately get and be shocking, that’s all, sorry of anybody finds that disturbing. It was NOT my intention!)

When they interview the presumed dead teacher they learn the crew of the Challenger did NOT die in the explosion. They instead found themselves transported somewhere else. There they joined other people who seemed to be likewise taken from Earth and other places. They fought evil and secretive overlords that kept them isolated in different regions of a larger landmass, each region separated by nearly insurmountable mountains. These overlords would pit one group against another through manipulation and deception. The people that arrived in the train wreck were a group of rebels who used a portal to escape.

When the PCs examine the devices the escapees from this “other world” brought along with them they discover they are emitting a signal in a hitherto unknown frequency (yes I know how implausible that sounds, but it is after all a game!). Soon after an island appears in the middle of the Atlantic, the media begins to call it Atlantis and the players were in route to investigate, and that was that. We never played that game again. They were supposed to get there and get lost in an island travelling through space and time.

Round 2…

I tried the idea a second time, with a larger group including the same two players that had participated on the first version of the campaign. Again I used the Palladium system, but this time around I planned a little more. I asked each player to create a real world person, any profession, but someone who would be one of the top people in his or her own field. I also asked them not to create loners, I wanted fully fleshed out persons with families and responsibilities. All the better to tie them to their real lives and motivate them to try to return once they became trapped in the island.

They were all gathered by the US Government and flown to a ship in the Pacific Ocean. There they were briefed on the sudden appearance of an island in the middle of the ocean. The island had appeared 72 hours earlier and while satellites confirmed its existence they could NOT gather any data as they went haywire over the landmass. The team had been put together to go in and explore, determine where it came from and if it posed any danger.

There were a couple of wrenches thrown into the mix, one of the NPCs was a supposed psychic who had predicted the islands arrival, but he was in fact a psychopath serial killer contacted by the island’s mysterious masters to bring people to the island. Also the military team providing support for the exploration team had been infiltrated by an agent of the island’s masters.

The teams arrived on the island by boat and soon discovered the jungles were populated by dinosaurs (a nod to Jurassic Park, it was BIG back then). After capturing a few specimens and making camp the team got to testing them. The military support noticing movement out in the jungle deployed out only to be betrayed by the mole and ambushed. So the team was left without their military back up and soon was under attack from bipedal evolved dinosaurs commanding cybernetic velociraptors.

This was another game idea we never played after the initial session. Some of the players were not excited about the execution other simply were uninterested. I had planned for them to meet the evolved dinosaur men who would be the antagonists during the first few session, they would learn that they were trapped in the island, about the secret masters and find the first clues that would take them to other regions in the island. In a way it would have been a multi genre game, like TORG or RIFTS, except the rationale behind WHY all this disparate genres would be meshed together would have been different

Final thoughts

I still have hopes of running this game. I think as a campaign it has a lot of possibilities. I think the system I chose back then was a bad fit. Something more conductive to storytelling, perhaps Fudge or FATE, or even Savage Worlds which I think my players might prefer over those other two. So this is a crazy campaign I hope to tackle some day, maybe at the old role –player’s home.

Like I said before this may sound a lot like the LOST TV show but it all happened long before the show was aired. I’m not claiming I created LOST before there was LOST, like many things we create we are burrowing ideas and tropes from those that created before us. A lost land, filled with wonder from which you cannot escape has been the subject of many stories before and will likely be again.

There are many other sources of inspiration to this campaign idea, some more obvious than others besides my childhood games. The Riverworld series by Philip José Farmer and the Dungeon series of books, my love of Jules Verne, and some other stories like those of Burroughs, all jumbled in with my childhood games. But ultimately the idea for the campaign is for a group of people trapped in another place, doing their best to escape and return to their normal lives. I hope I can play it someday…

PS – I do not have ANY pictures of the toys I talked about above, all the images were scoured form across the internet, I hold no rights or ownership over any of them and use them to merely illustrate the posts, and hopefully mildly amuse you with the captions.

Related posts:

1. Crazy Campaign Chronicles: Defenders of the Earth Redux or a Very Pulpy Future!
2. Mad Ramblings of a Crazy GM
3. Chronicles of the Four Dragons

“The Horror Of Leatherbury House” is a short horror adventure set into the Victorian Age that was created with Call of Cthulhu in mind but basically works with every roleplaying game.

To keep things easy I decided each player should have three attributes (Body, Mind and Soul) and a set of broad skills. Initially I intended to let the players come up with skills for their characters, but then I just used some broad skill categories from the Fudge 10th Anniversary book. Each of the players was given 15 skill levels to distribute among the skills.

The whole character creation process took a couple of minutes and after picking some equipment, we were ready to go. The two characters were a Scotland Yard inspector who was on vacation in a small town in the English countryside and a mesmerist and occultist (played by my girlfriend) who had been asked by Lady Westmoreland to find out if there’s some truth to the claims that Leatherbury House is haunted.

Instead of creating detailed stats for each NPC, I just used one adjective to describe the abilities of NPCs. For example the zombies in room #6 were Mediocre. So whenever I had to roll for them, I assumed all their stats were Mediocre. This worked pretty well.

I also learned that combat can be quite deadly in Fudge. While no one was killed, at least one character was very hurt and the investigators had to retreat from the haunted mansion to tend their wounds and do some research.

But in the end they solved the mystery of Leatherbury House and buried the remains of the late Lord Winston. We all had a great time and Fudge worked like a charm. In my humble opinion it’s great for just eyeballing stuff. My style as a game master was always to improvise stuff instead of preparing everything, so that works great for me.

But I think next time I will try to at least prepare a proper skill list and some genre-appropriate gifts and faults. I also realized that for one-shot games using “Fudge in a Nutshell” is sufficient and it may be a great basis for longer games if you have access to the full rules so that you can add optional rules as needed.

Related posts:

1. Fudge SRD TiddlyWiki
2. Day of Fudge
3. New Official Fudge Site launched

One of the advantages of Fudge is it’s toolbox nature. Especially in it’s 10th Anniversary edition it contains a plethora of rules options that GMs can incorporate into their game. While this may be great if you already have a firm grasp of what you want do do, it’s pretty much overwhelming for a new Fudge GM. It’s like drinking from the proverbial firehose. Albeit of the fact that each basic rule in Fudge is pretty easy compared to some other games I’ve played and run, the sheer amount of options make it extremely hard to get started.

So, what can you do to cope with that issue? I asked around on Twitter and got some excellent feedback. My thanks go to @shaneknysh, @sinisterforces, @thedeadone and @dorkland for showing me several ways to getting started. Aside from that I talked to a friend of mine from Germany who used Fudge to run several campaigns.

He picked up Fudge to solve some issues he had with the game he has been running up to that point. One of these games was Das Schwarze Auge (The Dark Eye) which has a pretty silly task resolution mechanic. So he used the Fudge rules to build his version of DSA. I can see why this approach makes it much easier to get started with Fudge than mine. If you already have a game in mind you want to replace by Fudge you already have some solid foundations to build upon.

But I am trying to use Fudge out of other reasons. I just like the basic task resolution mechanic using Fudge days and that everything is ranked by adjectives and not plain numbers. This makes eyeballing difficulty levels etc. and designing monsters/vehicles/etc. much easier. But because I am starting from scratch things get more complicated. The advice I got from a lot of people was to pick a foundation to start from.

This foundation could be Five Point Fudge by Fudge’s author Steven O’Sullivan which basically is a pre-selection of rules, skills, etc. that a GM can use to get started quickly. Another approach is to rely only on the rules from “Fudge in a Nutshell” and let the players come up with their skills, gifts and faults during character creation. Of course I could come up with a list of skills of my own, but why not let the players do that for you. The positive side effect is that you get a better understanding of what your players want out of the game that way. And that’s exactly the approach I want to take. “Fudge in a Nutshell” contains all the basic rules needed to run the game, the rest can easily be improvised. If I think the game is missing anything I can always check the 10th Anniversary Edition for some fitting rules and add them to my game.

So, what do you think about my approach? Have you run Fudge before and if so, what helped you to get into the game? As always any comment is highly appreciated!

Related posts:

1. Solo Game with Fudge and Horror
2. 5 Reasons Why You Should Check Out Fudge
3. Fudge SRD TiddlyWiki

And perhaps the upcoming “Day of Fudge” is finally my chance to play or run some Fudge. Every first Saturday of June is the “Day of Fudge” where fans of this fine roleplaying game system are encouraged to run public Fudge events.

I am not sure if there are Fudge fans in my area but I might actually run a Fudge game at our RPG pub meeting in June. And I doubt anyone will mind when I miss the “Day of Fudge” by a few days. The important part is spreading the word of that fine game.

I also want to thank Patrick Benson from SinisterForces for the great idea! So if you enjoyed the event, please visit his blog and say your thanks.

So, what are your plans for that day. Are you running a game yourself? Are you attending a “Day of Fudge” game? If so, please post about it in the comments below.

UPDATE: #stargazersworld regular Fudgebob Dicepants asked me to let you guys know about the Official Fudge IRC channel. If you are tech-savvy you can connect your favorite IRC client to the irc.otherworlders.org server and join #fudge. Alternatively you can use this Mibbit shortcut to join the chat.

Related posts:

1. Fudge SRD TiddlyWiki
2. New Official Fudge Site launched
3. 5 Reasons Why You Should Check Out Fudge

Here’s the official announcement as posted by Ann Dupuis on the Fudge RPG Yahoo Group:

The new community-driven http://FudgeRPG.com is now online!

The revamped site offers members the following:

Create your own Member Profile, send and receive private messages with other fudgerpg.com members, and much more

Receive news concerning Fudge, Grey Ghost Games, and fudgerpg.com via our email newsletter

Post in our forums, including the new "Fudge Forge" developer forum for Fudge gamemasters working on their own Fudge materials (for commercial or non-commercial publishing)

Comment on articles and blogs

Submit links to Fudge material on the internet in our Weblinks area

Download Fudge and many Fudge-related files from the Fudge Files members-only area

Apply for "author" status to have your Fudge-related Blog hosted on fudgerpg.com

Apply for access to our "Fudge Publishers" forum for people and companies publishing substantial Fudge materials (commercially or not)

I hope to see you there!

 

Thanks to fudgebob, regular on the #stargazersworld IRC channel, for pointing that news out to me. Fudge is one of my favorite games I’ve never played, so I am quite excited about the new Fudge site. Especially the official Fudge forums hosted there might come in handy in the future.

Related posts:

1. Fudge SRD TiddlyWiki
2. Official RPG Bloggers Network Community Forums launched!
3. Day of Fudge

By the way, he told me that his next project will be a TiddlyWiki of WR&M! I can tell you I am very excited about this!

Related posts:

1. New Official Fudge Site launched
2. Day of Fudge
3. 5 Reasons Why You Should Check Out Fudge

1. It’s free
   The 1995 version of Fudge is available as free PDF download on the Grey Ghost Press website. And there’s even a System Reference Document in the RTF format because Fudge has been released under the Open Game License a few years back. So, it’s not only free to download, you can even create your own Fudge stuff under a relatively open license!
2. It’s a toolbox
   Fudge is not a simple game but a roleplaying game toolbox. Attributes and skills are not pre-set and the GM can choose from a lot of options to tweak the game to perfectly suit his style. The game comes even with several alternative combat systems to choose from. Especially the hardcover version comes with more optional rules you ever could use in a lifetime. It’s a GM’s dream!
3. It’s multi-genre
   If you wish you could play games in pretty much every genre with Fudge. The “10th anniversary” book contains examples for Fudge in the Fantasy, Cyberpunk, Wuxia and SF genres. Adapting it to a genre basically means to pick and choose which skills, gifts and talents are eligible for the campaign.
4. It’s very easy to learn
   While Fudge can be as complex as you wish it to be, it can also be one of the easiest games to teach to new players. Attributes and skills are ranked with descriptive adjectives like Terrible, Poor, Mediocre, Fair, Good, etc. and the dice mechanic is very easy. Some people might not like that you need custom dice to play Fudge, but even that’s not true. If you don’t have any Fudge dice, you can easily use one of the alternative dice mechanics or play totally diceless!
5. It promotes roleplaying
   Yes, it’s true, Fudge is a roleplayer’s roleplaying game. The way Fudge works it encourages a narrative play style. Fudge point mechanic allows players to take over some narrative control over the story. And since the system is pretty rules-lite, the rules rarely get in the way of the roleplaying.

Although I love Fudge very much, there are some drawbacks. Alas the organization of the book is not as good as it could be, which makes things a bit hard to follow when you read it for the first time. But once you got it, it’s pretty easy to teach to your players. The toolbox nature of Fudge also means that the GM has more work than in most games. But if you can look beyond this, you’ll probably love Fudge as much as I do.

Related posts:

1. Day of Fudge
2. Fudge SRD TiddlyWiki
3. New Official Fudge Site launched

In a nutshell ICONS is an easy to play, easy to pick up superhero game that harkens back to the classic superhero role-playing games of the 80s, specifically the old Marvel Superhero RPG, also called the FASERIP system, that got retro-cloned with the 4C system. It has all the charm of those old time games with a modern, simple and elegant mechanic with great touches that enhance the role-playing aspect of the game.

If you are a fan of superhero games, do yourself a favor and pick up ICONS. There is one caveat, if you are looking for Champions style granularity, or something like Mr. Kensosn’s Mutants and Masterminds, ICONS is not that. It’s light on rules but big on hearth, and believe me that is a good thing.

Want more details? Read on…

The first thing that struck me was the art style. The whole book is done in a very particular style by Dan Houser, reminiscent of the animated style often associated with modern superhero cartoons, like the Justice League or the more recent Batman team up series The Brave and the Bold. Art is abundant, the layout easy on the eye, the font easy to read. The tables take up a lot of the real estate, and I think some slight changes in the layout might have made the book even shorter (its 128 pages long including the ads) but I’m no expert on this. I’ll say this, I read about half of the book directly from the computer or on my iPhone and I had no trouble reading it.  The original PDF is a 9MB file, but I received an e-mail form Adamant letting me know a higher resolution copy is available for download where I purchased my copy.

In all sincerity the art took a little getting used to. I found it whimsical at first but eventually it became a little distracting. I would have loved other styles of art. I know what they were going for but I believe the system is strong enough to support all styles of superhero gaming, from over the top cartoon fun to more serious Watchmen style game and somebody who casually looks at the book in a book store or game store may dismiss it based on the art style. Don’t get me wrong I loved what Mr. Houser did, I just think the book would be better represented by a variety or art styles.

But that’s cosmetic, what about what’s under the hood? The game opens with an introduction to a very simple game mechanic and I think the discussion of the statistics and what results to expect is a strength that helps the reader understand what to expect from the system. The Determination mechanic, a resource available so characters can improve their chance of success, perform power stunts and other in game effects, seems a great balancing factor between super power houses and more down to earth heroes. The more powers you have the less Determination, so Superman has all the powers, but Batman has all the points to make his crazy plans work.

The idea that characters earn Determination through the complications and disadvantages (called Challenges in the game) they established for their characters enforces the tropes of the superhero genre. And I think this is one of the things the games does particularly well, emulate not only the superhero, but the situations and events typical to comic books. From Determination, to creating a team and how the Determination heroes contribute serve as resources to the members, to the role of leaders in hero groups, to catchphrases heroes utter,  all these elements emulate comic books, are quantified in the game, and reinforce the type of adventure that feel, well, super heroic!

Character generation is random, from assigning attributes in the order rolled, to rolling for the origin of the hero and number of powers. I’ve said it before; I’m NOT a fan of randomly generated heroes. But I did give it a chance (and the result is the topic of my previous post) and think it works. It harkened back to the days when I rolled characters using the Marvel Superheroes RPG, but the game has tweaks built in, like allowing you to swap two attributes and the inclusion of complimentary powers (called bonus powers in the game which can be confusing) within power descriptions that you can choose instead of rolling for the next random power, that lets you create a character with some internal consistency. If you don’t want random generation, there is simple point buy option in the book.

Power selection is varied enough that you can cover most powers you can think of. Undoubtedly someone will come up with some power that cannot be represented using the rules, but I can’t think of one for now. The descriptions are very general and some will require interpretation or house ruling, but I think this fits the style of play the game supports. This is a game that wants you to have fun first and foremost and worry about rules later.

My least favorite part of the book is the Taking Actions chapter. It lists the rules, attributes and what you can do with them like attacking and facing challenges and some of these concepts are important enough to have been explained with more details, perhaps a few additional examples. This alone may make the book a little harder to pick up by a newcomer which is a pity since this would be an ideal entry level superhero game. Character advancement is covered very briefly, integrated into the Determination mechanic, but this is one area of the game that could be expanded in future supplements.

The book could have been organized a little better, for example, an earlier discussion of what determination is. Reproducing important tables like material strength level and such in an appendix for easy reference. Some rules refer to other parts of the book and could have either been consolidated in one place or simply repeated. An index is something I always look for in a book. ICONS is small enough that you don’t get lost looking for things but an index would have been a great addition.

But these are minor complaints on an otherwise excellent book. The Game Master section is short but it contains solid advice on running the game and superhero campaigns in general. The sample villains are varied, colorful and fit many of the typical roles to be found in any superhero comic. The short sample adventure illustrates the concepts put forth in the Game Master chapter.

The game also includes some stock characters and creatures, enough to extrapolate much of what you will need. There is some discussion on weapon damage in the rules but I think some tables with real world items and their game effects would have been a good idea.

ICONS is not a game for someone looking to have every detail spelled out for them. It requires Game Master Interpretation, player trust and participation. So many modern games try to quantify every aspect of play and end up becoming endless lists of rules and exceptions. Not ICONS! ICONS is meant to be played by people who trust each other and want to tell a fun story together. That is the best recommendation I can think of for this game!

All this comes from reading the game, I’ve yet to put it to the test, as soon as I get to play I’ll come back and let you know how it went.

Go roll up a character and have fun! I want to hear your stories playing ICONS…

PS – Adamant Entertainment recently announced that all proceeds of ICONS for Kindle and iBooks will be donated to relief efforts surrounding the Gulf oil spill. Kudos to them for this! This is the kind of company to support.

Related posts:

1. What about the ICONS Character Folio? A review…
2. Your daily dose of ICONS!
3. More ICONS goodness…

STARGAZER: At first I want to thank you for taking your time for this interview. Before we get to talk about FATE and the upcoming Dresden Files RPG, can you please introduce yourselves to our readers?

FRED: I’m Fred Hicks, and I run Evil Hat Productions, a small press publisher of role-playing games.  I’ve written a few too, contributing to Spirit of the Century and the Dresden Files RPG and Fate, as well as creating the weird little game Don’t Rest Your Head.  I also do book layout and art direction, both for Evil Hat and for Hero Games at the moment, as well as for other companies on a contract basis.

LENNY: I’m Lenny Balsera, and I am the current line developer for the Fate system. I served as lead  system developer for the Dresden Files, and was an assistant developer for Spirit of the Century. I also do freelance work. (Are you listening, RPG publishing world? I do freelance work!)

STARGAZER: What was the first RPG you played and what are you playing today?

FRED: Red box D&D was where I started in the 3rd grade or so. But today I’m playing… uh. What have I had time to play lately?  Mainly board games: Dominion figures in predominately there, though I also go heads-up with my wife over the 2-player game Lost Cities.

LENNY: I started playing Red box D&D when I was in fourth grade, and moved to AD&D 2nd shortly after that. Right now, I’m running a Swashbucklers of the Seven Skies campaign that’s close to finishing, interspersed with one-shots of Zombie Cinema, D&D 4E, and the new Dragon Age RPG from Green Ronin.

STARGAZER: On my search for free games I eventually stumbled upon FATE 2.0, the game Evil Hat designed, based on Steffan O’ Sullivan’s FUDGE. Alas it seems impossible to get a look at it’s predecessor FATE 1.0. Can you tell us a bit about that game and when you came up with the idea to FATE?

FRED: Sure. Fate 1.0 is really the loose collection of notes Rob Donoghue and I pulled together to codify our early hacks of FUDGE to support the play of Amber (and eventually Buffy) using that system. It’s where we first brought in the idea of aspects and so on.  But the version of Fate you found, 2.0, that’s really the first form that was put together and firmly established for the public at large, and was the result of us running Fate around the block for a few more laps than that.  So really that’s the first “product” — even though it was a free one — that we got out there in the Fate line.

STARGAZER: What sets FATE apart from other games are definitely the Aspects. Can you explain how the Aspects work in the game and how you came up with that concept in the first place?

FRED: They’re a combination of two ideas.  Before we took Fudge to the point of it being its own thing almost in the form of Fate, I ran a game or two that was in “straight Fudge”.  I did away with Attributes entirely, even then, sticking only to Skills and Gifts. And in those games, I let Gifts establish some absolutes, some things which were simply true about the characters, like “Greatest Poet Of His Generation”, and so forth.  They’d color play intensely, establishing areas in which the character simply couldn’t be beaten without facing an opponent who was in his or her same league, carrying a similarly applicable Gift.

When we started talking about the vaguely-formed roots of Fate, Rob brought in an idea from 7th Sea, where characters *paid points* (instead of getting points back) to have bad things attach to their characters, like a nemesis or a penchant for drunkenness.  This combined with my previous Gift idea to create a sort of alchemical fusion we called Aspects.  You could be the “Biggest Drunk Ever” with these things, but you’d get a positive payoff whenever the Aspect goosed you (eventually we called that a compel, but we weren’t there yet), and you’d be able to utilize it to your advantage whenever you could work out a situation where it would help (“That guy’s just a Drunk, we don’t have to take him seriously” as a lead-in to a surprise attack, for example).

LENNY: I basically look at aspects as “spotlight enhancers” – when good or bad stuff happens to your character, there’s an incentive in play to center that stuff around your aspects. The result is that what occurs in the game is uniquely “about” the main characters in a way that I think is, pardon the pun, compelling. There’s no real such thing as an “everyman” story in Fate – it’s always a story indelibly starring the PCs that are present.

STARGAZER: When I read through the FATE 2.0 PDF yesterday, while preparing a few questions, I noticed that there’s a quote from Jim Butcher’s “Storm Front” in there. Did you even back then have plans
for a roleplaying game based on the Harry Dresden novels, or was this just coincidence?

FRED: I’d known Jim Butcher for years already at that point, so it was a case of liking my friend’s stuff and tossing a reference in there because it was fun to do it. So, sort of coincidence — it was that friendship that eventually made the connection for Evil Hat to produce the Dresden Files roleplaying game.

STARGAZER: Spirit of the Century, your pulp-genre game powered by FATE is supposed to be a pickup game, but it’s a whopping 400+ pages. Some people might be intimidated by the sheer size of the book. What’s the best way for new players to approach SotC?

FRED: Well, first off, let’s address that whole “400 pages is intimidating!” thing with SOTC.  It’s a whopping 400 pages, yes, but in a 6×9 book. Each page is a single column of text, less than 500 words, maybe more like 350. I think people lose sight of that because they spend so much time focusing on page count and not looking at any other physical facts about the book.  The 6×9 form factor was done to make it more “packable” (as in “toss it in my backpack & go”), and to feel more pulpy in the hand, so to speak.  If we’d done it as a 8.5×11 thing, I don’t think the hand-feel would have been quite right, but it would have been more like a 200-250 page game in that format.  Is *that* less intimidating? Because if it is, then the intimidation ain’t in the content itself.

LENNY: And honestly, a lot of the book is really examples and our personal recommendations on how to deal with the various skills and stunts and whatnot. The actual rules don’t take up a whole lot of the book – you can look at the rest of the stuff as a lengthy series of recommendations, but if you don’t learn all the specific trappings for every skill and all that stuff, it’s no big deal and shouldn’t slow down play.

FRED: But to get to the meat of your question: Don’t try to take it in all at once. It’s laid out step by step, with plenty of ways to hit the fast forward button.  Get a group together and do character creation — which is always a social, collaborative experience in Fate, not an act of “lonely fun” where you sit in a shadowed room and make up characters by yourself.  Character creation *is* play — you’ll see that attitude expressed throughout Evil Hat’s games, in fact.  If you don’t like the feeling of being “on the spot” to come up with things about your character during character creation, easy — don’t do it. We have an “on the fly” character creation method that’ll suit you fine.  Don’t want to look through the stunts chapter to find out which 5 you want for your character? Flip to the back of the book and use some of the quick-pick packages we lay out for people there. Or don’t take them right away and add them on the fly during play.

It’s easy to come to the system at square one and think “man, this thing is big/intimidating/complicated”, but it isn’t. You can get familiar with it in small incremental steps, and it gets clear pretty quickly that there’s a lot of self-similarity among all the moving parts — a side-effect of a design principle we call the “fate fractal”. Which is why you’ll see a lot of fans of the system talk about how it’s actually rules light despite the apparent heft.  The heft is simply because we like providing lots of examples, lots of inspiration, lots of advice.

STARGAZER: In SotC you introduced stunts to the FATE system. When I remember correctly, you made some changes to stunts in your upcoming Dresden Files Roleplaying Game. Can you explain us, how stunts work and what changes you made for the upcoming game?

FRED: Lenny, want to field this one?

LENNY: Stunts have a lot in common with feats from D&D 3E and its numerous relatives – they’re a way of distinguishing your character by giving them a few more special tricks and shticks to differentiate them from another character who might have a similar skill set. It’s a way of further focusing what you’re good at – a lot of characters might have a reason to be good with Guns, but there’s the akimbo pistols guy, there’s the sniper guy, there’s the firearms scholar (using Guns as a knowledge skill), and so on.

The main thing we wanted to do with stunts in the DFRPG was unify their mechanical function a little more – SotC’s method was sort of haphazard and rough, taking genre tropes and whatever we thought was cool and adapting it. So there are some stunts that have a little more heft than others, etc. For Dresden, we wanted to open up the possibilities of stunts more and make them customizable, so while we do provide some examples of stunts for each skill, the real mojo comes from creating your own and fine-tuning your character that way.

STARGAZER: Let’s talk a bit about the Dresden Files RPG. You plan to release the game as two books, one containing the rules, while the others is about the world. Why did you decide to split it into two books and will the game playable if you only get the rules?

FRED: For one, because a single 700-page full color full size hardcover book is a recipe for carpal tunnel syndrome.  But yes, it’ll be entirely playable with just the rules found in volume 1, Your Story.  You’ll have to come up with more monster-stats on your own, and you won’t have a ton of setting info that’s great for fans of the novels without volume 2, Our World, but some people aren’t looking for setting.  Which brings us to the second reason for splitting the book — it lets people pick and choose what parts of the game they want for themselves instead of having to grab hold of a Ptolus-rivaling tome of infinite slaying.

LENNY: Yeah, the development of the game has been influenced by the fact that we’re all huge Dresden Files fanboys and fangirls on the team – we wanted to be as inclusive as we could with the content. So every day, it seemed, there was something new from the books we could mention, a new thing to stat, a footnote to make. The temptation to provide both a set of complete rules to experience the universe with
and have a workable “fan guide” for the setting was pretty profound. Compound this process over the years that we’ve been in development, and eventually you end up with an enormous tome of a thing. It seemed a crime to cut a majority of that content, so the two-book approach seemed the most reasonable thing to do.

STARGAZER: The development of the Dresden Files RPG took quite a while. What kind of hurdles did you encounter during the development? And where there any cool ideas you had to drop?

FRED: Oh, I’m sure there were all sorts of things that got dropped at one point or another.  But really, we managed to fit nearly all that was awesome into the game and left out nearly everything that wasn’t. Which is something of an answer to why it took so long.  We had hurdles aplenty.  Our first full iteration of the system was crap — seriously, just crap.  It took us a little while to get to where we’d admit that, and when we did admit it, we agreed it had to be nuked from orbit.  So we did.

LENNY: Yeah, that was around the point that I initially got brought on to the project – we came to a realization pretty early on that Fate v2 just wasn’t robust enough to drill down to the level of detail we wanted. So Dresden required us to reengineer the whole damn thing from the ground up, which was an undertaking of rather dramatic proportions. The chronicle of the affair is on our website.

FRED: But a lot of the hurdles were really about not yet being the company that could take on the job.  We were handed a license that frankly outmassed us by a few orders of magnitude.  So in a way the delays were as much about becoming a company that *was* capable enough — and finally, with a development team that was big enough – to really take on all parts of the game.  That alone took us a few years, but it also produced things like Don’t Rest Your Head and Spirit of the Century, literally as side effects of the whole process.

LENNY: Right. At the beginning of things, Fred and Rob didn’t really know a whole hell of a lot about publishing. (I still don’t.) So there was this period where their main goal turned toward learning about publishing and growing into a business, a role that Fred has risen to manage with skill and equanimity.

STARGAZER: Will there be additional releases for the game after the two core books have been released?Will there be official Dresden Files adventures or supplements?

FRED: Well, to get right to it, we don’t have a license that covers doing anything other than what we’re already doing.  We can negotiate for more if we want, but that would need to be a separate agreement, a separate contract.  And Jim as well as we are invested in the idea of keeping the game manageable for the fans and avoiding too much in the way of supplement sprawl.  That said, I could see us doing a set of adventures in PDF at least, if the demand’s there. But for now I think we mainly just want to get the core game out there and see what people do with it.  Their ideas are almost certain to be better than our own.

LENNY: Keep in mind that there’s likely to be a lot of “unofficial” support on the Internet from us, too. I mean, I plan to be wherever the fan community is, talking about statting future books and whatnot. I could see some free Web supplements happening, stuff like that. We’re Dresden fans too, you know? We want to babble about it at length.

STARGAZER: What are you plans for the time after the Dresden Files RPG is done? Aside from a long vacation, of course?

FRED: Drinkin’.

LENNY: Amen, brother.

FRED: Eventually we’ll recover from that, and we’ll look at getting to work on a Core Fate product, one without any of the setting or genre trappings of the previous couple products.  And we’ve got some other stuff in the hopper for supporting Spirit of the Century, and maybe some new directions to go on as well.  But I’ve been talking, internally, about this “Wall of Dresden” effect.  We can’t see over that Wall. We haven’t cleared it yet. When we do, we’ll be in an undiscovered country.

STARGAZER: Some people claim the gaming hobby is in the decline and will be replaced by other past-times if it doesn’t change. What are you thoughts on that issue? Is pen & paper roleplaying doomed? Do RPGs have to become more like MMOs or board games to attract new players?

FRED: I think it’s the nature of people to look at something that was once familiar at the point that those familiar things start to change and decide that the sky must be falling.  Is the pen & paper roleplaying we grew up with doomed?  Well, no.  I think it’s already past dead in the sense that it isn’t what it was before.  It grew up, went to college, got a job, and had kids.  It’s not the same thing it used to be.  But is that bad? Is that doomed? Is that really “dead”? No, I think it’s just different. Kids these days! With their hair and those pants and their story games. Who can figure!

LENNY: I don’t know. It’s not like RPGs have ever really had a broad, mainstream appeal if you compare them to other types of entertainment. Can you really compare any phase of Dungeons and Dragons’ history to that of any relatively successful board game, even? I don’t like absolute terms like “doomed” – I mean, you don’t really hear a lot about model railroad building, but there are still people who do it, right? It’s probable that the way we’ve looked at producing and distributing RPGs in the past is no longer feasible due to a variety of factors, but some people have been arguing that this has always been the case. The recording industry has been stuttering its way through a similar process since electronic music distribution has become more dominant. Markets change. That’s just how it goes. I don’t think it’s the games that necessarily need to change, as much as the business models used to sell them.

FRED: I don’t think RPGs have to become more like MMOs or board games (though board games are chock full of great ideas these days, as are MMOs).  I think some of them can, some of them should, some of them will.  But there’s no imperative to imitate here.  I think there’s an imperative to innovate, though, and games which don’t are going to wither on the vine.  Companies and designers that insist on doing the same old same old are going to be in trouble.  That’s not a dig on things like the Old School Renaissance either, as I think they’re still doing something new in their revisitation of What Is Old School — whether they admit it to themselves or not. Revivals have their place, always. You don’t ignore your history. But you’ve got to build on it.

LENNY: I think it’s also a potentially a mistake to assume that these audiences will cross-pollinate. There’s no special reason why someone who likes World of Warcraft will like D&D, other than the fantasy
color. Yeah, we can argue about the influence of tabletop mechanics on computer RPG mechanics and whatnot, but that doesn’t really mean anything in terms of actually identifying a market. And D&D 4E *did* have its mechanics influenced a lot by what’s happening with MMOs… has that really helped it any in terms of sales? (I’m asking because I don’t know.)

FRED: All I know is that I’m still playing the pen & paper games. That they still scratch an itch that other entertainments don’t.  From looking at Evil Hat’s fans, I can’t say as I’m alone in that either.

STARGAZER: Recently I noticed a new trend: prolific bloggers start their own companies and publish their own RPG products. What tips do you have for any aspiring publisher?

FRED: More than would fit into the next ten interviews.  If you want to see my thoughts on publishing, I blog about it with some frequency over on http://www.deadlyfredly.com/ — I’m doing my best to run Evil Hat transparently, so folks can look under the hood and see how it ticks, and figure out what parts of it will work for them.  I also did a round up of some of my earlier advice posts, before I started up Deadly Fredly, over on my tumblr, http://deadlyfredly.tumblr.com/post/504942222/old-publishing-advice-links — so start there, and don’t be afraid to ask questions.

STARGAZER: Thanks again for answering our questions, good luck with the upcoming Dresden Files RPG and I hope we can talk again in the future!

FRED: Absolutely. It’s been a pleasure!

LENNY: Thanks for the opportunity.

Related posts:

1. Necessary Evil
2. Review: Smallville RPG by Margaret Weis Productions
3. Preview: Kingdom Builder by Chaotic Shiny Productions

Free as free software
1w6 has been released under two licenses. Everything available at the website (including the rules you can download in PDF format) are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike-Non-Commercial license. But the creators of the game also offer a printed version which can be ordered directly from them or bought at some FLGS. This version has been released under the GNU General Public License.

Rules basics
A character in the EWS (Ein Würfel System) is described by traits and skills chosen freely by the player. Alternatively the GM may decide to use the attributes and skills from other games like GURPS or Fudge instead. Both traits and skills in normal humans are rated from 6 to 18. Action checks are made by rolling 1d6 and adding an appropriate trait or skill. If an even result is rolled it’s considered positive, odd results are negative. This method is called ±D6.
Usually the target number necessary to succeed is 9 or more.

Compatibility
The EWS was created with compatibility to two other games in mind: GURPS and Fudge. You get much more out of EWS if you have access to either one of these games. There’s even a sidebar containing detailed information on how you can convert advantages and disadvantages from these games to the EWS.

Presentation
I had a look at the German PDF version of the EWS, which is 52 pages long and contains character artwork from the computer game “Battle of Wesnoth” (which is also available under the GPL). The layout is one-columned with sidebars which contain additional information like designer’s notes and the like. There are a few editing errors, but nothing major. The production values are very decent for a free product.

Worlds and  Modules
The 1w6 website offers a SF setting for use with the system called RaumZeit (SpaceTime) and links to a few other websites which detail campaign worlds that are played using the EWS. Basically a GM should be able to play in every genre. There are also optional rules in form of modules available at the site which add magic, an initiative system, critical successes and failures and more to the game. “Modules” refers to the modular nature of the system which allows GMs to mix and match the rules to suit their preferences.

Conclusion
The EWS is definitely an interesting game, especially when you need a rules-light game with some compatibility to content created for Fudge or GURPS. Alas the rules are not available in English at this moment and the core rules don’t contain any rules for supernatural abilities like magic or super powers. But a resoruceful GM with a good grasp of the German language might put the EWS to good use.

Related posts:

1. [German RPGs] “Das Schwarze Auge” 1st Edition in English
2. First Look: The SKETCH System
3. Freebies: Who Watches the Watch Fires (AGE System)

In a way this helped resurrect the RPG industry. A lot of new companies appeared and produced products using the d20 System back then and over the following years more companies jumped the OGL bandwagon by releasing their game rules under the OGL.

So, what other games are currently available under the OGL? In the last days I had done some research, since I initially planned to use an OGL game for my Ad Astra campaign before I settled for Savage Worlds instead.

Here’s what I’ve found:

D&D 3.5 (as Revised 3.5 SRD)
Of course not everything contained in the D&D 3.5 rulebooks is open content, but the majority of the rules, classes, monsters and spells is included in the Revised 3.5 SRD (SRD stands for System Reference Document).
The SRD is actually still available from the WotC website in RTF format. My favorite version of this document is the website “The Hypertext d20 SRD“.

d20 Modern (as SRD Modern)
D20 Modern was a pretty cool game, in many part IMHO even better than D&D itself. Alas WotC treated d20 Modern a bit like an unwanted stepchild and support stopped a few years ago, with no updated version in sight.
The d20 Modern SRD can still be downloaded from the WoTC site in RTF format. There are also a couple of PDF versions floating around the net, including the very good looking Modern d20 Core Kit from RPGObjects.

FUDGE
FUDGE always had a pretty open license even back in 1995, long before the OGL. Pretty recently Grey Ghost Press decided to release FUDGE under the OGL, too. So, what kind of game is FUDGE? If you ask me, it’s not a game at all but more like a toolbox for creating your own RPG.
You get a pretty simple basic mechanic using Fudge dice (six-sided dice with two blank sides, two sides with “-” and two sides with “+” on it) and a lot of optional rules. You can even easily introduce concepts from other games to FUDGE. The FUDGE SRD is available as RTF from Grey Ghost Press here.

FATE
Perhaps you’ve already read about “Spirit of the Century“, the pulp RPG by Evil Hat Productions that has been praised by gamers and critics alike. SotC is based on the FATE RPG which itself was based on FUDGE. So, when FUDGE was released under the OGL, Evil Hat jumped the bandwagon and made FATE 2nd Edition and 3rd Edition (which is used for SotC and the upcoming Dresden Files RPG) available under the OGL, too.
If you are interested in learning more about FATE (at least the 2nd Edition), check out my review. You can download the FATE 2nd Edition rules and the SotC SRD on the official FATE website.

The Action! System
The Action! system is Gold Rush Games‘ version of the FUZION system that was as far as I know one of the first free systems on the internet. FUZION is a combination of the Interlock and the HERO system. The Action! system that is available under the OGL is supposedly 95% compatible to the FUZION system. Alas the Gold Rush Games’ site is more or less down and a couple of links on the official Action System site are dead as well. But I could find a HTML version of the SRD (which also removed all trademarked content) here.

BESM d20 (as Anime d20 SRD)
Big Eyes Small Mouth was the anime-inpired roleplaying game created by Guardian of Order. BESM d20 was their try to tap into the d20 market. Although I prefer the Tri-Stat version of BESM, the d20 variant has its charm. One of the highlights is the fact that GoO reverse-engineered the standard d20 classes and by doing so created a point-based system to create custom classes. Even if you don’t care for anime, this aspect of BESM d20 makes it very interesting. Alas GoO is out of business and as far as I know there was no support for BESM d20 aside from a Slayers setting. But you can still get the Anime d20 SRD here.

This concludes part 1 of my look at the different games released under the OGL. There are still a few more systems to write about in my next post of this series. So, what are your thoughts about the games I mentioned so far? As always I am very interested in your comments!

Related posts:

1. Day of Fudge
2. Fudge SRD TiddlyWiki
3. Solo Game with Fudge and Horror

Michael Garcia is currently working on a fantasy RPG using Chad Underkoffler’s PDQ rules. This yet unnamed game is planned to be released as a 64-page print book. But he also intends to release some stuff for free (like his awesome FATE/FUDGE character sheet).

For more information on Quick & Dirty Games, you should check out the official website! By the way, I helped Michael with the website and logo, and we are going to release a free game I have written soon. So stay tuned!

Related posts:

1. Updated Dungeonslayers website
2. The ENnies and Quick-Start Rules
3. First Look: Swords & Wizardry Quick Start

I am currently working on some ideas for a nice background but it will probably heavily influenced by Call of Cthulhu without being a Mythos game per se. Another source that will have some influence on what I am planning is definitely Roman Polanski’s film “The Ninth Gate”. Like the protagonist of this movie, my girlfriend’s character will probably be a pretty normal person confronted with some supernatural mystery.

So, what system could be suitable for such a campaign? My first idea was using BRP or Call of Cthulhu (which uses a version of the BRP rules), but then I settled on FUDGE? Why FUDGE and not the currently more popular FATE? Although FATE has some very interesting aspects (haha, no pun intended), I prefer the somewhat more classical approach of FUDGE.

I am still in an early planning phase, so your thoughts are welcome. Have you ever tried running a horror/mystery campaign using FUDGE? As always I am looking forward to your comments.

By the way, while researching FUDGE I stumbled upon a couple useful articles, that I just have to share with you:

• FUDGE Sanity
• FUDGE on the Fly
• Fear Checks Revisited
• Fudging It!? Basic System Conversions
• Going Slighty Mad
• Playing Cthulhu with FUDGE rules

I won’t probably make use of all these resources but perhaps you find something that interests or inspires you.

Related posts:

1. My quest to run a Fudge game
2. Fudge SRD TiddlyWiki
3. New Official Fudge Site launched

Recently a friend of mine proposed we could play some Battletech again. Battletech is a tactical board game where you control one or several huge mecha called Battlemechs. The game was initially created by the now defunct FASA Corporation. His idea was to use the rules from Mechwarrior (we decided to use the 2nd Edition rules) to create some mechwarriors that are in charge of their own unit of mercenaries fighting in the wars of the 31st century. We will use standard battletech rules for the mech-vs-mech fights and the roleplaying game for all other encounters. When everything turns out as planned, we all will have a great time.

But this made me thinking. There are a lot of games that would work great as a combat system for roleplaying games. Take some miniatures skirmish game like Games Workshop’s Necromunda for example. In that game each player controls a gang in the Underhive of a huge 41st millenium megacity. The combat rules are very detailed and there are even rules for campaigns and improving the stats and skills of the gangers. So, why not turn it into a fully-fledged roleplaying game? You can of course write up you own rules but it’s much easier to keep the combat rules of the skirmish game intact and add some other rules for the non-combat parts.

This is easy to do with a roleplaying game like FUDGE. FUDGE allows the GM to choose the attributes and skills he needs for his campaign. So just use Necromundas Stats and Abilities as detailed in the rules of the skirmish game and you’re done. You just have make sure that the fighting skills for the combat part of the game can easily be represented using FUDGE. Necromunda like all GW tabletop miniature games uses WS (Weapon Skill) and BS (Ballistic Skill) for combat checks. All stats including WS and BS can usually range from 1 to 10. FUDGE normally uses skills and attributes ranked from Terrible to Superb with 5 steps in between. For normal gangers you can set Terrible=2, Poor=3 etc. until Superb=8 and you’re mostly done. You can now easily convert between both systems. That could work for other GW games as well.

Another game that comes in mind, when thinking about boardgames that would make a great background for a roleplaying games is Crimson Skies. Crimson Skies is a tactical boardgame much like Battletech (it was created by FASA too), but this time you control fighter planes in an alternative early 20th century. The background is pretty detailed and gives a lot of opportunities for adventures outside the cockpit. For a fitting roleplaying game for Crimson Skies I would just take Spirit of the Century since it’s close enough to FUDGE to being easily adaptable and it’s already the right genre. Just use the standard Crimson Skies rules for air combat and you’re done.

What are your thoughts on that matter? Have you already used a boardgame as part of the roleplaying experience? As always, feel free to post your thought into the comment section below!

Related posts:

1. Minigames in roleplaying games
2. Basic Roleplaying Quickstart PDF
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