This is a proposal for a different way of using the Fudge ladder. Let me
preface this post by saying that I have no qualms with the standard Fudge
scale, which I find fully satisfying. I have no problem saying, "you need
a Great roll to jump the chasm." However, I have noticed a lot of people
(at least on the Twiki) seem to see a need to design trait ladders for
various qualities, such as Size, Quantity, Duration, etc, and, most often,
Difficulty.
Therefore, I am sharing a thought I had with you, in case anyone finds it
interesting. The idea is that instead of using adjectives, we may redesign
the Fudge ladder with adverbs. (Or so traditional English grammar calls
these words, as far as I can tell. Many linguists, on the other hand,
refer to them as a category of "modifiers": in this case, words that
modify adjectives.)
The idea looks clunky on paper, but in practice allows the use of game
terminology in everyday dialogue. I assume that is what people designing
Difficulty and Size ladders are after. Fudge is Great in that we can use
it in everyday English, but we still run into problems. The following
statements (as, perhaps, heard at a game table) clearly bother at least
some people.
"The difficulty for that shot is Poor."
"How powerful is that handgun?" "It does Superb damage."
etc.
So, I thought, how about one trait ladder that allows us to describe all
these things? A single ladder would allow easy comparison between
different qualities (for instance, if you have to compare Size to
Quantity, and you want to resolve the situation with a 4dF roll).
The Master Table would look like this:
+3 Incredibly [quality]
+2 Remarkably [quality]
+1 Very [quality]
0 [quality]; or Fairly [quality]
-1 Not Very [quality]
-2 Not [quality]; or [opposite of quality]
-3 Very [opposite of quality]
-4 Extremely [opposite of quality]
(The "0" could just as easily sit one level lower, if you're bothered by
all the negative numbers.)
Looks pretty awful. But look what happens when we plug in a quality that
concerns us, like the Difficulty of an action:
+3 Incredibly Difficult
+2 Remarkably Difficult
+1 Very Difficult
0 Difficult (or Fairly Difficult)
-1 Not Very Difficult
-2 Easy
-3 Very Easy
-4 Extremely Easy
Or size:
+3 Incredibly Large
+2 Remarkably Large
+1 Very Large
0 Large (or Fairly Large)
-1 Not Very Large
-2 Small
-3 Very Small
-4 Extremely Small
The same goes for Intelligent/Dumb, Strong/Weak, Nimble/Clumsy, Rich/Poor,
Skilled/Unskilled, etc.
Of course, you can customize the words to whatever works for you (I used
Extremely at one end, and Incredibly at the other, for instance, which may
or may not be good, depending on whether you want to be able to memorize
the table quickly or to be able to recognize at a glance which end a
particular trait belongs to). Others I considered included Quite
[quality], Somewhat [quality], and Fairly [quality], as well as
Exceptionally and Unusually.
Characters will now look like this:
Zog, barbarian
---
Remarkably Strong
Not Very Smart
Incredibly Sweaty
Clumsy
Very Poor
Very Skilled in combat
Tall
etc... (Remember, no modifiers means "0" on the ladder. I find it kind of
neat that certain traits just appear with no "game terms" next to them.
For really fast character creation, you could just list all the traits a
character has, and then allow a few levels to raise the most important
ones.)
The really nice part (aside from making everything easy to roll off the
tongue) is that it's easy to compare things from unrelated scales. This
could come in handy--for instance, a Remarkably Powerful handgun will blow
down a Not Very Sturdy door very reliably (unless you roll a -4). How big
a boulder can Zog lift? Well, a Remarkably heavy one. And so on.
In addition, sometimes qualities are an advantage, and sometimes a
disadvantage. So just flip the [quality] and [opposite of quality] around.
How hard is that Mugwump to hit? Well, how small is this unusual critter?
Very small? Then it's probably Very Difficult to hit.
It just occurred to me that this might be worth sending to Fudge Factor.
Let me know what you all think.
Paul
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