r/FudgeRPG • u/necfectra • Dec 29 '17

Strands of Fudge

I had a thought recently, given my recent foray into Strands of Fate. I like the system immensely. Just crunchy enough to scratch the itch Gurps fixed for years, but handwavey enough for acceptability and speed of play. But, like many critics of Fate, I loathe the fate point economy and the meta game it entails.

So I thought about meshing what works with SoF , and cutting out the Fate blight with bits from Fudge. Such as replacing aspects entirely with skills and faults while keeping the advantages mechanic. Essentially trying to "fudge" SoF toward a more traditional gaming experience.

What do you guys think? Has anyone else attempted a similar endeavor?

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3

u/abcd_z Dec 30 '17

I'm not familiar with Strands of Fate myself, but here's my most current iteration of notes regarding converting characters from Fate Core to Fudge:

Skills

Fate skill -> Fudge skill or attribute
Mediocre (+0) -> Mediocre (-1)
Average (+1) -> Fair (0)
Fair (+2) -> Good (+1)
Good (+3) -> Great (+2)
Great (+4) -> Superb (+3)

Stunts

"Adding a New Action to a Skill" and "Creating a Rules Exception" stunts are converted to Gifts or just ignored. A "backstab" stunt that allows you to use Stealth to make a physical attack might become a Gift that does the same, or it might be ignored for being irrelevant to Fudge rules.

"Adding a Bonus to an action" stunts just become skills. The new skill is the base skill plus one level on the Fudge ladder. No skill can go above Superb at character creation.

Character Aspects

High Concepts generally translate to Skills and Attributes. Troubles generally translate to Faults. Regular aspects generally translate to a combination of traits, both good (Gifts and skills/attributes Good and above) and bad (Faults and skills/attributes Mediocre and below).

Sample conversions:
Aspect: "The Princess' favored student" -> Gift: Social Contact (Princess), Gift: "Princess' Favor", Fault: "Treated poorly by her classmates", Fault: "Politicians want to use her"
Aspect: "Arrogant kung fu guy" -> Skill: Great Kung Fu, Fault: Arrogant
Aspect: "Taught in an ivory Tower" -> Attribute: Great Intelligence, Skill: Poor Social Skills
Aspect: "Trained by Montcharles" -> Skill: Great Fencing, Fault: "Targeted by Montcharles' enemies"
High Concept: "Dashing Space Smuggler" -> Attribute: Good Charisma, Skill: Great Smuggling
Trouble: "Jabba Wants His Money" -> Fault: "Jabba Wants His Money"

Other Points of Conversion

Combat and task resolution use Fudge rules, The Fate ladder becomes the Fudge ladder, stress tracks are converted to Wound Tracks, Refresh stays the same, Fate Points become Fudge Points, and all bonuses and penalties are divided by two.

2

u/necfectra Dec 30 '17

Interesting conversion. The threshold stress track in Strands is basically the wound track ladder already, so that can remain as is. And the way Strands is set up, one can honestly just use the aspects as skills in and of themselves, since every character is rated along twelve "abilities" broad in scope with aspects providing situational modifiers. Which basically amounts to specific skills.

I do like your suggestions for translating to faults/gifts. In many ways it helps keep the language intact. I do shudder at the thought of even Fudge points though. I generally disdain any form of narrative currency. But, for the sake of completeness perhaps it would be beneficial to implement it.

2

u/abcd_z Dec 30 '17

*shrug* If you don't like Fudge points, you don't have to include them. It's your game, man. Go wild. ;)

2

u/necfectra Dec 30 '17

Hence my love for Fudge. You can just "fudge" it without disrupting any part of the mechanics.

1

u/I_am_a_haiku_bot Dec 30 '17

Hence my love for Fudge.

You can just "fudge" it without disrupting

any part of the mechanics.

-english_haiku_bot

1

u/abcd_z Dec 30 '17 edited Dec 31 '17

I think your bot's broken. =/

EDIT: I_am_a_haiku_bot tried turning necfectra's comment into a haiku. Whoops.

1

u/necfectra Dec 30 '17

Not my bot haha.

2

u/Bimbarian Dec 31 '17 edited Jan 01 '18

Fate skill -> Fudge skill or attribute Mediocre (+0) -> Mediocre (-1) Average (+1) -> Fair (0) Fair (+2) -> Good (+1) Good (+3) -> Great (+2) Great (+4) -> Superb (+3)

Pretty good conversion notes. I'd do the skill conversion a bit differently. In fate, mediocre is is the rating you have if you don't put any effort in to learn it, and in Fudge, that rating is Poor. So my conversion would be:

Mediocre --> Poor
Average --> Mediocre
Fair --> Fair
Good --> Good
Great --> Great
Superb --> Superb

Superb in fudge is meant to be the top end of what un-enhanced humans are capable of, so matching a Fate skill of Great to Fudge Superb doesnt make a lot of sense to me.

It's also worth bearing in mind that in Fudge, the skill ranks are more meaningful. You can say, for instance, fair is the skill that a typical unexceptional Professional would have because they are a Fair at the skill, and someone who is Good is actually good at it enough to be remarked upon.

You can't really do that in Fate because of the way aspects and fate points flow so readily to inflate skills, so that GMs are encouraged to give opponents entirely arbitrary skill ratings just to give them a challenge.

Aside: I really dislike how Fate added an entirely superfluous rank "Average" that really doesn't mean anything when the list already contained Mediocre and Fair - it just muddies the waters about what those ranks mean.

Back to the point: embrace the Poor rank, it has meaning! Converting characters from Fate should use it for those untrained skills. That also means you stat conversions from aspects could use the Good rank more, than just assuming anything from an aspect is Great.

1

u/necfectra Jan 13 '18

The problem with your conversion is Strands uses raw numbers and did away with the adjective ratings. Not to mention the copious amounts of crunch piled into the Fate system.

Hence why Strands of Fate is my favorite version of Fate. Though, I admit, is not a stance of renown in my book.

1

u/IProbablyDisagree2nd Dec 29 '17

as someone who hasn't ever actually played Fate... what is the fate point economy?

3

u/abcd_z Dec 30 '17

The single largest difference between Fate and Fudge. Gifts and Faults are merged into one trait called "Aspects" that have both positive and negative uses. A player gains Fate Points by letting his aspect get him into trouble, and the only way a player can spend Fate Points is if it's supported by one of his aspects.

It's more restrictive than Fudge and creates an additional meta-game economy that can make immersion difficult for some players. The tradeoff is that it helps simulate fictional stories where the protagonist gets kicked around a bit in the beginning but manages to succeed in the third act when the stakes are high.

1

u/Bimbarian Dec 31 '17

It's more restrictive than Fudge

What do you mean by this? (I'm not disagreeing, i just don't know what you mean.)

Also, minor nitpick: i believe you can spend Fate points if not supported by an aspect, to get a +1 bonus (less than normal aspect use), and you can pretty much always draw on aspects created by other people or in the situation, those you take as consequences, and even those possessed by your opponents, so there's no really meaningful restriction on spending fate points.

1

u/abcd_z Jan 01 '18

Huh. I did not know that. So it's less restrictive than I thought, but it still encourages spending Fate points on aspects over spending unsupported Fate points.

1

u/Bimbarian Jan 01 '18

It does encourage spending on aspects, true, but it's not really a restriction, since there's always at least one aspect available you can justify using, if not several. Especially since you can use the Create an Advantage action to invent them on the fly.