Fudge RPG - Interpreting results

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From: JoelArellano

Date: Tue, 01 May 2001 06:26:53 GMT

Subject: Interpreting results


Mike,

That's an interesting system. Thank you for sharing it. Testing it with your 
son shows not only how easy Fudge is, but illustrates the value of 
role-playing games. (If I hear another story about the demonic influence of 
such games or the Harry Potter novels, I'll going to run my vorpal blade 
through them.... :)

Joel

>For any action, take the appropriate skill (or attribute), then add your
>usual 4dF roll, and also add any situational modifiers as determined by the
>GM. This gives you a final result that tells you how well you did according
>to something like the following chart:
>
>Terrible -- You screwed up royally
>
>Poor -- You failed
>
>Mediocre -- Ooooh, you almost made it
>
>Fair -- The bare minimum that would qualify as success for this task OR 
>only
>partial success
>
>Good -- You succeeded pretty well
>
>Great -- Perfect job. You did exactly what you set out to do
>
>Superb -- You not only succeeded, but did it better than you imagined
>
>Therefore, a Fair or better result always equates to some measure of
>success. It eliminates situations where a character does a Great (or maybe
>even Suberb) job, only to find out that Great still equals failure. 
>Instead,
>the result in this case is your results _relative to this task_. If I'm
>applying my Good Archery skill to simple target shooting in an indoor
>gallery at 20 paces, my average result will probably be Great. On the other
>hand, if I use the same skill to shoot apples from a tree 100 yards away in
>a high wind, my average result will probably be Poor.
>
>
>One disadvantage... well, it does add more numbers. Now instead of taking
>everything into account and saying, "Yeah, you'll need at least a Great
>result for this one," the GM has to instead say, "Well, based on the
>situation, you'll have to roll at a -2." This moves away from Steffan's
>original simple intent of having only a few +'s or -'s to count.
>
>On the other hand, it makes it easier to break down the modifying
>conditions. +1 for the relatively simple task, but -2 for the woefully
>inadequate tools, etc. This is especially helpful with my kids. I started
>using this for my six-year-old son. I even made up + and - tokens (color
>coded to match the dice). Then I can actually hand him the + token for
>having such a good idea and the - token because his brother's trying to
>distract him, etc. It works well for him to have concrete representations 
>of
>the bonuses and penalties. After only a few tries and a little explanation,
>he quickly caught on, and now he checks his trait, takes his modifier 
>tokens
>and rolls the dice, and he can figure out on his own if he's succeeded or
>not and how well.
>

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SequenceFirst LineUsernameDate
0 difficulty. MikeJones 2001-05-01 16:26:36
1 "Mike Jones" writes: > >From: Tim Seiger > >I think this is a great idea, with one catch. TimSeiger 2001-05-01 15:55:40
2 this >case, it seems impossible to hide the real difficulty of a task from your >players. MikeJones 2001-05-01 15:28:53
3 was going to say, "Telling them -4 is no > different than letting them know they need a Legendary+2 result (or > whatever)." But your point is that they don't know the target until after > they roll. JohnMorrow 2001-05-01 21:05:30
4 accessible to 6 year olds (which is great in and of itself) it could > be used to help grown adults keep track of more persitent modifiers. DhobErman 2001-05-01 16:13:28
5 Sorry about the update delay- I wanted to aim at having the Fudge logos online by last weekend, but stuff came up (I got a new job, and I've been doing a lot of preparation) and I didn't get a chance. TempleOfTheZiggu 2001-05-03 04:26:58
6 Mike, That's an interesting system. JoelArellano 2001-05-01 06:26:53