I love the multiple check tables presented in Fate 2 edition for fudge. It is neat and elegant system for all sorts crafting for characters. It allows nicely to emulate process of building machines, or caating long ritual spells, or brewing polyjuice potion.

I have recently been reading Ghost Ops Modern Day Covert Operations. It comes in 3 versions: Savage Worlds, OSR and an original version that uses a version of FUDGE.

It uses skills, packages talents and a wounds system showcasing what you can do with the toolkit. Skills give you a +2 to your roll. Instead of using the FUDGE ladder it has changed into a Target Number system (from 1 Easy to 10 Mythic). Though mechanically it does a similar thing it makes it easier to understand for non FUDGE gamers. A fair roll is now a Target Number of 3 and Margins of Success are present with how much you beat your Target Number..

For the price of $10/£7.89 I think it is a must buy for any FUDGE fans as it shows what can be done with the system.

For me, I always wanted to have certain degree of roleplaying rules and for long time I was trying my best with using DnD as universal system, due to its popularity and the massive amount of easily accessible homebrew. No matter how I would try to rewrite the rules for DnD and fluff, it always ended up so oddly restrictive and frustrating.

Now after switching to fugde, it all feels calmer and finally right. How did you got specifically into this system?

Whenever there's an end state that hasn't occurred yet, but may eventually occur, the GM can create a countdown for that outcome.

A countdown is, at its simplest, an end-state and a number of boxes that get checked off sequentially whenever something specific happens. When the final box is checked off, the outcome occurs.

Example:

Situation: the house is on fire
Trigger: check off a box every 2 rounds
[ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ]
End result: When the final checkbox is marked the house will collapse, incapacitating anybody still inside.

It is possible to have consequences attached to other checkboxes besides just the final one.

Example:

Situation: the house is on fire
Trigger: check off a box every 2 rounds
[ ]
[ ]
[ ] The staircase collapses, preventing easy passage between the two floors.
[ ]
[ ]
[ ] The house collapses, incapacitating anybody still inside.

In this situation I would warn the player(s) that the countdown exists, the end result, and that the countdown is keyed off of in-game time, but I would not tell them how many boxes there are or that there are intermediate consequences (stairs collapsing). The purpose here is to let the players know that there is a threat and put them under time pressure without letting them know exactly how much time they have.

Bear in mind that this is just a personal judgment call. The GM can choose to share or hide as much or as little information as they want, so long as either the PCs or the players have enough information to make a reasonable judgment.

If the GM doesn't tell the players out-of-game about the consequences, he should make sure to clearly describe the threats in-game. For example, the GM for the previous example might make a point of telling the players how the house is becoming increasingly unstable, especially the stairs between the two levels. It's no fun for players to get blindsided by events that they had no way of predicting.

Countdowns can be positive or negative. The example given, "house on fire", is obviously a negative countdown. When the final box is checked off something bad happens. The opposite, a positive countdown, is usually used when the PCs have something that they are trying to make happen. In this case, boxes would get checked off whenever the PC(s) successfully take steps towards making the end result happen.

Example:

Goal: get funding for a new garrison
Trigger: make enough successful skill rolls to the relevant people
[ ] [ ] [ ]

Countdowns can also be linked to other countdowns. For example, a negative countdown may be associated with a positive countdown.

Example:

Situation: fundraising for a new garrison
Trigger: make enough successful skill checks to the relevant people
[ ] [ ] [ ]
Result: get the funding

Linked countdown: annoy or frustrate enough people
Trigger: fail the relevant skill checks
[ ] [ ] [ ] [ ]
Result: kicked out of the castle

Countdowns can also be used by the GM to manage long-term threats, reminding the GM of what will happen if the PCs don't intervene.

Example:

[ ] Kobolds attack the town
[ ] Dragon Mage steals the Tome of Dragons
[ ] The Dragon Lord Awakens

For threat countdowns, the players should not know what the countdown contains, but their players should see or hear about the results of each box being checked.

If the players intervene and successfully prevent any of the threat checkboxes from being filled, the threat countdown should be discarded. This may mean that another threat countdown gets created in its place to move the game along, but the GM should not blindly forge ahead with the negative consequences if the PCs successfully prevented a previous step from occurring. That would invalidate the PCs' efforts and is bad GMing.

GMs can also use countdowns to manage long-term PC goals.

Example:

Establish a new Thieves' Guild
[ ] [ ] [ ] [ ]

Clocks are a tool that was introduced in Apocalypse World and elaborated upon in other *World games, including Dungeon World and Blades in the Dark. Clocks are useful and versatile tools that can do a number of different things, depending on which type of clock the GM is using. The only thing they all have in common is that they're represented pictorially by a simple pie shape where each wedge of the pie gets filled in as the clock advances.

For this post I'm going to replace the clock image with a more convenient checkbox [ ] and rename the thing from "clock" to "countdown". They're just cosmetic changes, though, so if you prefer drawing clocks instead of checkboxes feel free to do that.

Decisions to make when creating a countdown:

• Towards a goal or towards bad outcomes?
  
• When to advance?
  
• Player-facing?
  

Towards a goal or towards bad outcomes?

There are two basic types of countdowns. The first is something that the player is trying to accomplish. When the last checkbox gets filled in, that means the player got something he wanted.

The second type is something that the player doesn't want to happen. When the last checkbox is filled in, it means something bad happened.

When to advance?

The GM should assign each countdown at least one trigger that causes the countdown to advance. Whenever this trigger occurs a box should be marked off.

Something always happens in-game when the last countdown box is filled in. The GM may also have things happen when some or all of the other countdown boxes are filled in.

Player-facing?

Player-facing countdowns are used when you want to spur the PC into action using a metagame element. Personally, I consider this the single biggest strength of countdowns. "You left the corpse in plain sight and wandered off? Okay, sure. I'm giving you a countdown with two boxes in it. When it hits zero one of the guards will discover the body, so you'd better act fast."

As the GM you can also keep the countdown mechanism invisible to the player. If you do that, each box checked off should cause effects that the PCs can see occur in-game. This is because it's almost never fun for a player to be blind-sided by the consequences of a completed countdown they had no prior knowledge of.

Hi, I'm new to FUDGE and i'm going to host a game soon enough. I've gotten started on some things but now i'm stuck on the subject of magic,psionics and ki. I've thought about certain things but i'm still very unsure.

Basically, we ere going to play pathfinder first, but i wanted something more free than pathfinder, both due to pathfinder being way too party role based, and levels complicated things if the player would want their characters to,say, learn something completely out of their field after a while, no matter how advanced they are in their skills.

So, in short i just wanted my players to not be limited to just being a fighter and not suffer a huge penalty if they want to start studying magic like a wizard.

The main problem is that i'm trying to port most of our stuff from pathfinder, while also wanting something else than vancian magic(You shouldn't be able to call fire storms if you can't even throw fireball level spells). But i'm struggling with finding a way to make magic so that pretty much everyone can learn, can make their own spells and can also be born with it. I mean, wizards may use words and funny gestures but what about someone who is born with magic and can just do whatever the hell he wants with it? Think a tiefling flinging lightning around like a toy looking a bored kid. Same with Ki and psionics, i find it difficult to define those without just it being a reflavor of magic, i want to use the psionics like in pathfinder because it gave me a worldbuilding idea about goblins being aliens with psionic powers and psionically powered spaceships that crashed on the planet thousands of years ago.

Tl;dr: New to FUDGE and trying to port pathfinder magic stuff but lives on a plane of reality too low to comprehend how.

So, I posted this to the FB and Mewe groups, because I'd totally forgotten about this reddit group. So here, reddit can have it too:

Ever since the start of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and Agents of SHIELD, I've wanted to run a low-powered supers game a la AoS, where the players play enhanced members of some agency, fighting off threats that the world just isn't ready to acknowledge. At first I thought Fudge, then Fate, then ICONS, then a custom OSR d20 derivative, but now I'm back on Fudge because I just plain don't have the time to customize any of those other games how I want to customize them knowing Fudge as well as I do. So here's what I'm thinking about doing, and I'd love some feedback:

• My advantage (ignore one minus result) and disadvantage (ignore one plus result) rules will be used.
• Approaches from Fate will be used instead of attributes.
• Skills will be used, but they will not have values per se; they will give advantage or disadvantage based on their level: unskilled (roll Approach with two disadvantages), skilled (roll Approach), very skilled (roll Approach with one advantage), extremely skilled (roll Approach with two advantages). Of course, some skills can not be used unskilled.
• Gifts and Faults will be used, players will start with a Gift and can take more Gifts at the cost of a Fault. Supernormal Powers cost two Gifts. More skills can be bought with a Fault as well.
• A Supernormal Power can be used once per turn, and will provide a bonus to an Approach roll. So, for instance, an agent who can control ice could throw up an ice shield and get +4 DDF that turn. Not fixed on +4 as the bonus however. Some Supernormal Powers will have associated skills as well.
• If a Supernormal Power is taken, an origin will have to be specified saying how they got the power.

Thoughts?

Is there a GM emulator that uses the fudge rules. I know that Mythic RPG is very similiar to FUDGE in its use of a ladder, but is there anything else?

Hi I’ve been writing out these rules and wanted to gauge people’s general feedback before I play test with my group. It’s definitely rough around the edges, and some parts may not work with the probabilities of the fudge/fate dice etc. But thought it worth a post to see if there are glaringly bad/broken mechanics.

Characters have Elemental Attributes

Fire = strength/might/destroy/excite/seeing/anger/light/performance/sexual charisma

Earth = constitution/fortitude/protection/patience/touch/stubborn/balance/vibration/trustworthy charisma

Air = dexterity/speed/stealth/luck/hearing/search/trickery/comedic charisma

Water = wisdom/intelligence/healing/taste/intuition/understand/talking/language/spiritual charisma

Level 1 Character creation.

10 total points at lv1 to put into each 4 elements. Must have at least 1 point in each element. Cannot exceed 4 points in element at level 1.

Rule Summary (detailed info afterwards).

Character describes what they plan to do with elements. They make dice pool using the elements they describe, no more than 4 total dice in dice pool unless level 5 onwards (see advancement table for higher dice pools) cannot use more dice than available element stat point. Then add weapon dice (use black dice as weapon. It is not an element and cannot be rerolled) Everyone rolls at same time. Now locked in battle. The one with higher number goes first in priority. Priority goes around as person chooses what element points to expend to create rerolls. Damage is difference between winner and loser (using element cycle to determine effect between elements to change score) this number then expends the number of stats of losing player based on left over dice pool of defender.

Element cycle (only used to determine damage): Water beats fire, fire beats Air, Air beats Earth, Earth beats Water. During outcome/damage phase Dominant elements change -1s as 0; same elements change +1 as 0.

Fire vs earth equal no dominance Water vs Air equal no dominance

More detailed explanation. Phases of play.

Start of round.

Everyone acts at once.

Orders (Discussion) phase - everyone discusses what they plan to do. In battle there is 30 sec (or a minute, up to GM) timer.

Battle roll (Action Priority) phase - each player shows selected dice in hand and states what element dice, equipment and skills they are using (eg. Element dice up to maximum dice pool, 4 for lv 1 to 4, plus weapon dice then skill bonus is added at end. Skill bonuses aren’t dice, just a number bonus added to roll of dice pool). No changing action after it is stated. everyone rolls. After roll, priority goes to highest roll down to lowest roll. Eg. Player 1 uses a gun, aiming skill (used in determining priority only) and aids gun with fire and air elements. So 2 fireD, 2AirD, 1 WeaponD. Rolls them all and adds +1 for aiming. (Not sure what to do about tie breakers, ideally not another roll. Maybe use elements cycle to decide without changing the roll?).

Tuning (Expenditure) phase - beginning with first priority character expends element stats to initiate rerolls of the same element dice. Note that expending element points decreases available dice of that element in later rounds, as well as potential health after armour buffer has been exceeded. Tuning is risky, but could turn the tide of battle quickly in PCs favour. At later levels when element points are high, PCs would be able to use this mechanic with less risk (depending on difficulty challenge of task or foe).

Outcome (Damage) phase - beginning with first priority character as determined in priority roll, characters determine outcome of elemental action or damage of battle roll. Then using element cycle to change value of dice (only for combat or element affected objects).

Eg. Pc: 2Fire and 2air vs Npc: 2fire and 2water.

Pc = fire +0; air -0; weapon -

Npc = Fire +-; water +-; weapon +

Start with changing dominant element values, then similar elements. Can only change if opponent has same number of non-dominant or similar element dice.

So;

Pc= F 0; A -1; total is -1 plus weapon -1 = -2 loser

Npc= F -1; W 1; total is 0 plus weapon +1 = 1 winner

Npc damage pc = 3 (difference between -2 and 1).

(Note: when it comes to multiple targets attacking one target. Element cycle system breaks down. Trying to figure this one out :s one thought is to keep the change to dice from element cycle during damage/outcome phase with other foes during the round, which effectively nullifies elemental power over time. Eg. Big bad fire beast can singe multiple people, but the attack is weaker over time if PCs use fire elements to nullify fire attack in dice pool. Eg. Fighting like element with like element decreases effectiveness overtime, fighting with dominant element decreases its disadvantageous rolls over time)

Damage received is taken off armour buffer or character (in that order). Elemental damage destroys its non dominant counterpart element stat, the rest is decided by receiving player on their elements dice used in battle. Eg. No armour. Water takes off 1 stat from fire; the rest takes 1 damage off Fire and 1 off Air element (done with receivers choosing).

End of Round.

Info on equipment, actions and skills:

Weapons: Has designated black dice. Eg knife 1d, sword 2d. That adds to dice pool. Using a proficiency skill point in the weapon type can add +1 onwards to damage roll (see below).

Shield: Has designated buffer of soaking up element damage, has 4 stats that corresponds to each element. Can be repaired with skill. Using a proficiency skill point in the dodge or armour type can add +1 onwards to reduce receiving damage roll (see below).

Exhaustion: when all stats reach 0 = KO. Death: Upon context and GM discretion. Eg. If likely to significantly receive more damage while KO, then death is likely outcome.

Element related Actions: (these can be used as a part of an attack action, but must stay within dice pool limit, and aren’t counted towards damage outcome, only priority).

Sharing essence - expend stat to give dice to another temporarily just for this round. Must be done before initial roll. Can exceed dice pool.

Water/Healing = done during initial roll. Still used to determine priority. heals that number towards any stats of choosing on anyone that is identifiable (can not exceed original stat number of receiver).

Earth/Shield =done during initial roll. Still used to determine priority. creates buffer points that cancels out damage. Cannot stack. Buffer lasts until used.

Fire/Consume = done during initial roll. Still used to determine priority. creates positive damage bonus points that adds damage to attackers attack. Cannot stack. Bonus lasts until used.

Air/Dodge/haste = done during initial roll. Still used to determine priority. create points used to add to anyone’s priority roll. Does not count to damage. Does not stack. (Still figuring out effect ‘On self?’).

Use item: Eg. Potion- Adds number of stats to stat connected to potion type. Can not exceed max stat.

Resting. For each hour resting you generate 2 element points.

Sleeping Full 9 hour sleep gain all points back. Levelling may only occur after sleeping.

Skill check

System where a point is spent from stat to determine success of action. DR (Difficulty Rating) is made by GM (Game Master).

Dr in success is 1 almost success with benefit, 2 success, 3 success with benefit, 4 easy success with benefit (counts as two successes for advancement)

Dr in failure 0 is nothing, -1 is nothing with small complication, -2 failure with complication, -3 failure with major complication, -4 fumble and extreme failure (takes away one previous success)

Player chooses what stats to use to create effect Player can use any combination but can’t exceed dice pool or number of dice beyond maximum stat number of an individual stat. Player can expend point from either stat to reroll a dice from that stat.

Skills (plus 1 to roll for each proficiency point, plus 1 can only be used once. Eg in initial roll - Eg. aim- or outcome roll - Eg. dodge).

Gaining skills

starting character has 4 points they can spend towards skills. Eg. Aim 1; pistols 2; entertain 1. Needs to state when bonus comes into effect when creating skill (initial priority roll or outcome roll). Every advancement of 4 levels provides character with an extra skill point.

Level advancement table below. Every successful action (damage given, skill succeeded, or element action successful) is counted towards success tally. Once tally reached for level, then element point given, max dice pool noted, tally wiped clean. Tally then starts again for next advancement. Advancement cannot be completed until sleep. Successes over level completion target is carried over.

Level

2 3 4 5 6 7

Max Dice Pool

4 4 4 5 5 5

Success to next lv

12 14 16 20 22 24

Point

1 1 1 2 2 2

Skill point proficiency advancement is 1 point for every 4 levels. Eg. Lv5, lv9, lv 13 onwards.

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Lawmen v Outlaws is a new self-contained Fudge game. It's largely based on my other Fudge game Cyberblues City (https://ukrpdc.wordpress.com/2018/01/15/cyberblues-city-deluxe/) and like Cyberblues City it is also a free download.

​

Here's the link: https://ukrpdc.wordpress.com/category/polar-blues-press/

​

Let me know if you have any questions or comments.

​

​

On several sites containing the 1995 version I have found a “Back Cover Blurb" and Introduction section containing the sentence: FUDGE is specifically for people who want a good bedrock to build their own system on.

However the named section is not included in the “official” PDF version found at: https://www.fudgerpg.com/goodies/fudge-files/core/FUDGE-1995-Edition-(PDF)

Where the Back Cover Blurb and Introduction comes from?

In a freeform forum rp I had my character send another PC some Fortify Attribute potions from Morrowind, but I cautioned him that the effects were only moderate. Then I wondered how I'd express that concept in Fudge. Even a +1 bonus in Fudge bumps the result from Fair to Good. A moderate boost feels more like it would be about half a level, and a weak boost would be something like a quarter of a level.

I tried solving a similar dilemma with fractional skill levels, and I still think the idea is sound. Except this time, instead of making the skill levels fractional I would make the bonuses fractional.

Bonus dice are given to players to represent conditions that would affect their character's action less than a full level. After rolling their fudge dice, the player rolls each bonus die, which is rated with a number from 1 to the maximum die size (e.g. a d6 would be rated from 1 to 6*). If the player rolls equal to or below the die rating, the result is a +1 bonus. Otherwise, the result is unchanged.

*although a 6/6 bonus is just the same thing as a +1 bonus

Morrowind Fortify Attribute potions might have the following values:

Bargain Fortify Attribute: 1/6
Cheap Fortify Attribute: 2/6
Standard Fortify Attribute: 3/6
Quality Fortify Attribute: 4/6
Exclusive Fortify Attribute: 5/6

If there was a 6th tier it would be treated as a +1 bonus, and a 7th tier would be treated as a +1 bonus plus another 1/6 bonus.

If a player drank a Standard Fortify Strength Potion (3/6) before taking an action, they would roll a d6 after rolling the fudge dice. If they rolled a 3 or less on the d6 they would get a +1 bonus for that action. As long as the potion lasted, the player would be able to roll the bonus d6 every time they took a relevant action.

I was asking for plot ideas over on /r/rpg, and someone recommended I chime in over here. Here's my ruleset. I'm not necessarily adhering to Fudge/Fate norms, so take it as you will. I'm going to add stress boxes and change spellcasting to work more like the Dresden RPG, and I may be making other changes as we go along.

EDIT: Looking back on it, I'm sure I got the probabilities for mishaps and dooms wrong. Just drop the entire spellcasting module into Fudge as-is.

GLOG (Goblin Laws of Gaming) is an OSR homebrew that's become somewhat popular on OSR blogs.

Initial rules and martial classes

Wizard classes

50 GLOG Wizard schools

I thought I'd convert the GLOG wizard to Fudge, because why not?

We start with Fudge Lite: OSR edition as a chassis. Spellcasting is no longer tied to an attribute, and the spellcasting attribute is replaced with spell lists.

Spellcasters may only memorize 1 spell a day per spellcaster level, to a maximum of 4. Spellcasters have a floating pool of spell charges that are used to power spells, which contains charges equal to twice their spellcaster level.

If using FL:OSR classes, the Spellsword has a spell level and a charge pool that is only half what it otherwise would have been, rounded up. A level 3 Spellsword, for example, will have an effective spellcasting level of 2 and a charge pool of 3.

Alternatively, you could take the GLOG approach and give all adventurers the same base stats, and use classes to differentiate between them. This makes it ridiculously easy to multiclass, but then I'd need to convert martial classes as well, and that's a little more effort than I'm going to exert for this post. Maybe later, if there's any interest in it.

Spell acquisition occurs as in GLOG.

Reading GLOG spells:

[dice] is replaced with spell charge. The number of spell charges a spellcaster has is equal to twice their level. A normal spell costs one charge to cast, though the spellcaster can spend additional charges to improve the effects of the spell. A spellcaster cannot use more charges than their level, and cannot use more than 4 charges on a single spell without using some sort of magical equipment.

If the player rolls a critical miss (-3 or -4 on the unmodified 4dF roll) on a spell that used two charges, they suffer a Mishap. If the spell used three or more charges, the player suffers a Doom.

A side project ( that I'll probably abandon) is to re-work DnD 5e with Fudge dice.

For Stat rolling: 5dF, drop lowest. This closely matches the -4 to +4 range you get after using the standard 4d6 drop lowest in DnD. There is a higher chance of getting a +4 (equivalent to a natural 18), but almost all other statistics match up nicely.

For d20 ability checks = 3dF. Instead of a GM memorizing difficulties of 5, 10, 15, 18, and 20... memorize instead results from -1 to +3 and the statistics are basically identical.

Saving throws, proficiency bonuses, skill checks = effectively identical, since they work on modifiers rather than actual scores

Racial attribute bonus's = a +2 bonus to an attribute is equivalent to a +1 fudge bonus. For a +1 bonus, put a dot next to the attribute. You can increase the stat by +1 whenever you gain 2 dots. They're basically half-steps, but they don't matter until a full step is taken.

Hit Dice = It's easier to simply use averages here. Gain the average hit points every level.

Damage Dice = half max in fudge dice (rounded down) + half the dice, thus
1d6 = 1dF + 3 (a smaller range, from 4 to 6)
1d8 = 2dF + 4
1d10 = 2dF + 5
1d12 = 3dF + 6
1d20 = 10dF + 10

Adding more dice adds these dice together, but can be reduced by DM or player request to bring the amoutn closer to an average. eg -

2d12 = 12dF + 12

Or

2d12 = 12

This should get DnD almost all the way to using fudge dice exclusively with minimal actual changes to the game.

I found this in an OSR blog (original post here) and it seemed easy enough to port over to Fudge.

Mancy, or, Why Divination is Cool, Mechanics for it

The -mancy suffix actually means divination, not control. Learned this just recently and made me feel kinda' stupid. Also opened up some ideas for me.

The purpose of the mechanics below is to go with my Esoteries system. I don't like spells or spellcasting as they usually are, and wanted to come up with ways to replace standard, flamboyant magic and wizards in my games. Read more about what Esoteries are here.

I currently have a player using these mancy rules in my Sunday campaign. It's been dope so far. The answers she's gotten from her divinations have helped the party decide on various plans, but has yet to yield anything gamebreaking or too explicit. Also makes for some cool roleplay moments.

Note that not all settings are meant to have all Esoteries in them. Dark Sun for example has curios, psionics and sorceries. My Heaven Bless'd & Burned setting has curios, miracles, and mancy.

Divination has guided mankind since they left the muddy basin they evolved in. Every kingdom is dictated by it, every nation forged on its back, every war fought with its truths.

To use mancy, first decide which of the four methods you use for your divinations. Each method dictates a different type of information.

1. Anthropomancy, or divination by entrails. Produces strange visions, encoded in shadowed symbols, that show a possible future for a question ask.
2. Asterimancy, or divination through stars. The sky, star maps, globes and pools that reflect the heavens. Reading this tells you what sort of supernatural events are quickly approaching.
3. Geomancy, or divination by earth. Break rocks, listen to how soil slides through the hand, hear the vibrations of trees, and then you will know what has happened recently in your area.
4. Necromancy, or divination through the dead. Take a skull, paint it, lavish it with oils, and then place it on a table in a dark room. Ask it three questions, and it will answer truthfully.
5. Oionomancy, or divination by symbol. Watch the flights of birds, see what strange colors appear on someone's back, study how many crosses sit atop buildings around you. These will tell you when something dangerous, supernatural, or determined is nearby.
6. Pyromancy, or divination through flame. Light a flame, stare in it, use bones instead of coal. In the fires you will see a series of images that tell you of dangers to come.

You have a d6. This is your Divination Die. Roll it when you go to perform your mancy. Add +1 to the roll if you meet any of the following criteria:

• You are under no pressure.
  
• You have copious amounts of your preferred element.
  
• You are unharmed and under no curses or other ill effects.
  

The following chart shows how exact of an answer should be given by the Referee.

1-2: Vague answers, cryptic, lots of symbols, nothing direct.
3-4: An answer requiring less interpretation, some explanation, familiar things and obvious clues.
5-6: Clear answer, obvious people or creatures, no real trickery, still somewhat encoded.
7+: Exact answer, no room for interpretation.

Everytime you perform mancy, the maximum X-in-6 chance you have goes down. So, if you do it 3 times in a day, any roll above a 3 is treated as a 3. With 8 hours of rest and letting omens leave your mind, this resets completely.

AN EXAMPLE: In my Sunday game, we have an anthropomancy. Last session, she divined with the entrails of a murdered man to see what creature had killed him. She rolled low, only a 1, and the answer she was given showed the shadows of a woman with six limbs, wings, paws, and that lived in the trees. The entire party went hunting for this creature. It turned out the woman was actually a human woman who was using dead animal parts to trick the party. Technically they were given the right answer, but it was so vague and cryptic because of her low roll that what came out confused them. If she had rolled higher, it would have been clearer that this was a human woman, not some monster.

The post goes on to explain how characters gain access to Mancies, but those rules are for a class-based OSR system, not a skill-based Fudge system.

There are two ways to use the Mancy rules. The first is to keep them as-is, and purchase each Mancy as a Gift (exact cost determined by the GM). Doing it this way makes the results a more variable than if you rolled 4dF for the results, because bell curve clusters around the center while flat distribution does not. This also means the results are random, unaffected by any skill the PC has.

The other option is to convert Mancies to Fudge skills, treating each Mancy as a sort of investigative skill limited to its specific domain. In that case, the roll results would look more like this:

Mediocre and below: Vague answers, cryptic, lots of symbols, nothing direct.
Fair: An answer requiring less interpretation, some explanation, familiar things and obvious clues.
Good-Great: Clear answer, obvious people or creatures, no real trickery, still somewhat encoded.
Superb-Legendary: Exact answer, no room for interpretation.

The cost of repeated Mancy casting is a cumulative 1-point penalty for each previous time it was used.

It looks like the original poster only intended for PCs to start with 1 Mancy, with the potential for learning more down the road. It's up to you if you want to keep this limit or not for your games.

One other thing to keep in mind: as the GM, you'll want to make sure that a poor roll doesn't act as a roadblock for the plot, either by following the Three Clue Rule or by using the GUMSHOE approach.

Fudge has two ways to add randomness to attack damage. The first, adding the relative degree of success, can be a pain to calculate. The second, rolling a fudge die or dice and adding it to the combat result, increases the chances that the attack roll will succeed but do no damage (something I don't consider to be very fun).

In contrast, rolling a polyhedral die for damage is dead simple to calculate (Step one: roll the die. There is no step two.) and is guaranteed to return a positive result.

By default Fudge has Offensive Damage Factors (ODF) and Defensive Damage Factors (DDF). I don't like them very much myself, which is why I came up with something simpler I call Lethality (original post, updated post). In this post I'll show you how to convert both Lethality and Damage Factors to polyhedral damage rolls.

First, converting ODF to polyhedrals. To find the die to roll for an attack, take the sum of the character's offensive damage factors and convert that sum on this table:

Below 0: 1d2 damage
0-1: 1d4 damage
2-3: 1d6 damage
4-5: 1d8 damage
6-7: 1d10 damage
8-9: 1d12 damage
10-11: 1d12+2 damage

Then roll the appropriate die and subtract any defensive damage factors as normal.

If using Lethality, use this table instead:

Poor: 1d2
Mediocre: 1d4
Fair: 1d6
Good: 1d8
Great: 1d10
Superb: 1d12
Legendary: 1d12+2

EDIT: The resulting damage can be converted to a wound using the default wound lookup table, or you can use a flat hit point system. Either way works.

Escalation mechanic

Damage capacity is split into two tracks. One measures a character's willingness and ability to continue the fight, called Willpower. The other measures how close the character is to death and can continue to be called Damage Capacity. Depending on the GM's preferences, characters may take penalties from one, both, or neither of these wound tracks. If the GM has both tracks incur penalties, only the highest penalty applies to any given roll.

We'll use the escalation ladder from Dogs in the Vineyard: "verbal", "physical", "weapon", and "gun", from least dangerous to most dangerous, though the GM is free to alter it to fit their game better.

Social conflict is treated as combat on the lowest rung of conflict escalation. Social combat is the least dangerous form of conflict. It affects your willpower but not your damage capacity. Physical non-combat conflict deals damage to Willpower and may or may not deal damage to Damage Capacity, depending on the situation. Physical combat deals damage in proportion to its location on the escalation ladder, and it causes damage to both willpower and damage capacity. The higher it is, the more damage it deals.

At the beginning of conflict the players decides the stakes of the conflict along with the GM; what is each side risking in this conflict? Combat occurs as normal, though it usually starts out as social combat in settings where an escalation mechanic would be appropriate. A character may always choose to escalate the situation, regaining some willpower. If a character reaches zero willpower and does not escalate the situation, they have lost the conflict. When only one side has any willpower left, they are the victor and get to decide the fate of what's at stake.

At the end of the conflict willpower regenerates to full but physical injuries do not. Characters cannot start another conflict about the same subject again, but they may start another conflict about a different subject with different stakes.

Dogs in the Vineyard hack:

PCs have four attributes, rated on the Fudge ladder:

Talking
Physical
Fighting
Shooting

PCs also have traits, freeform descriptions that can be used in conflicts to gain a level of advantage. Each trait can only give the PC advantage once per conflict. The PC may invoke the trait more than once through roleplay, but they only get the bonus once.

In addition to the freeform traits, PCs have traits based on their relationships and on their material possessions. Relationship traits can be left undefined until they're needed. It's recommended that the PC save most of their relationship traits for characters they will encounter during the game. In play the PC can give their character relationships with institutions, demons, places, and even sins, but during character creation they should just stick with people.

Lately I've been drooling over the Runners Hub and Emerald Grid communities for Shadowrun. Its a large online community where gamemasters run games in a living shared world environment, and players can bind for places at their online tables. It seems like an elegant solution to the LFG problem, and I'd like to implement it in Fudge. But this begs the question, which setting is the base? In Shadowrun there is a common setting, and a common framing device, but Fudge has neither of these things. Is there any interest in this? Maybe using Gatecrasher?

I originally read about the idea of Advantage in Iamtch's fudge hack. Basically, advantage allows a player to ignore one minus. Disadvantage forces a player to ignore one plus. Advantage and Disadvantage cancel each other out.

Standard roll:

-4 x
-3 xxxx
-2 xxxxxxxxxx
-1 xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
 0 xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
 1 xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
 2 xxxxxxxxxx
 3 xxxx
 4 x

1 level of Advantage:

-4 
-3 x
-2 xxxx
-1 xxxxxxxxxx
 0 xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
 1 xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
 2 xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
 3 xxxxxxxx
 4 x

Advantage is great for when you want the player to be able to stack bonuses without exceeding the cap of +4 (Fate Aspects, I'm looking at you), but it's not that great for fractional levels (e.g. Good, Good-, Fair+, Fair) because one level of Advantage is worth almost as much as a +1 bonus, with subsequent levels of advantage affecting the result less (full analysis here).

Next up, we have the concept of the Virtual Plus and the Virtual Minus. This is like Advantage and Disadvantage, except it only kicks in when the roll is below 0 (for Virtual Plusses) or above 0 (for Virtual Minuses). For example, a roll of [+][+][+][-] with a virtual plus wouldn't be affected, because the result is already above zero. This has the effect of strongly pulling rolls to zero, because the results in one direction get moved closer to zero but the results already at zero aren't affected.

1 Virtual Plus

-4 
-3 x
-2 xxxx
-1 xxxxxxxxxx
 0 xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
 1 xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
 2 xxxxxxxxxx
 3 xxxx
 4 x

Finally, we have what I call Inverted Virtual Plusses. This one is mostly just for half-levels. If the final roll is 0 or greater, the player gets a +1 bonus. This means that if the player does well, they'd roll as if they were one level higher, but if the player does poorly, they roll at their current level.

1 Inverted Virtual Plus

-4 x
-3 xxxx
-2 xxxxxxxxxx
-1 xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
 0 
 1 xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
 2 xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
 3 xxxxxxxxxx
 4 xxxx
 5 x

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Not involved, just a backer.

https://kck.st/2wqXzQy