The Inside Scoop on Gaming

Fudge Expanded Edition caught my eye immediately I saw it. I liked the look of it.

Fudge, in this Expanded Edition, retains the concept of a universal tool for tailoring a game system to the specific genre and level of detail you want.

Fudge's mainly skill-based system doesn't use numbers to represent levels of ability. Instead labels like Poor, Fair, Good, and Superb are used. These also reflect your average result on a task using that skill (at least one that has no situational modifiers - so a difficult task would be harder). The game works best with custom Fudge dice -- four d6's with two +'s, two -'s and two blank faces (also from Grey Ghost Games). These shift the outcome of the use of a skill up or down the list of results from the expected result.

The flexibility and simplicity of Fudge are its prime attractions for me. To my mind, for a game is to be truly generic, it must have the flexibility to be able to add or lose things as circumstances demand. For example, if everyone is a ghost, what's the point in a Strength score for incorporeal beings? In Fudge, Steffan O'Sullivan has realised this, and the attributes for an all-ghost game might have no Strength score. Fudge uses descriptive adjectives rather than numbers, so "score" isn't even the right word - a good Fudge character sheet can read more like a prose description of the character than a block of stats. This simplicity makes it an excellent way to introduce new players to roleplaying.

Fudge's flexibility differs from other universal systems, which generally try to cover all possible genres with precisely the same system. Fudge's philosophy seems to be to provide the tools to build a system tailored to the specific needs of the game you'll be playing. You can add and remove detail as you see fit.

The flexibility of Fudge can also a be problem for people -- particularly beginning GMs -- who want to have the entire system completely spelled out. The GM should generally have a reasonably broad experience of roleplaying, unless you're using a fully prefabricated system derived from Fudge. Fudge, particularly the Expanded Edition, does a number of things to address concerns about Fudge's flexibility.

Sample systems for magic, miracles, and psionics are described in chapter 7. These are examples of what Fudge calls Supernormal Powers. With these sample systems, useable as is, it also becomes easier to see how you could create your own variant systems. Note, however, that there is already a book of magic systems available for Fudge - "A Magical Medley", an excellent (and fairly generic) gaming resource in its own right.

Many sample characters from a variety of genres are presented in Chapter 6. Because these contain descriptions of how the character was built (number of levels of attributes, and number of allowed skill levels, for example), and list allowed attributes, show the level of detail of skills and so on, each is also an example of how to tailor Fudge to your specific game.

With the Expanded Edition, a completely worked Fudge game is presented (Fantasy Fudge), with fully described attributes, skill lists, gifts and faults and four kinds of magic. There is a Fantasy Fudge adventure and a Fantasy Fudge Bestiary. Between that and the animal and character lists in chapter 6 (which include several human and nonhuman characters suitable as fantasy NPCs) there's a wide variety of creatures and characters to be going on with.

Fudge Expanded Edition contains no index, which I usually regard as a big drawback in a roleplaying book. This is probably due to Fudge's origins as an electronic document. However, it does have a good table of contents, and I found things easy to locate when I went looking. The end of the book has various charts and tables (and a character sheet), and the start of the book has a helpful section "Fudge in a Nutshell", and these cover many of the things you'd need to find in a hurry.

So what was it that caught my eye? The distinctive monochrome cover - blue ink on a light blue background with attractive cover artwork by Storn Cook stands out on a shelf of the more usual RPG fare. If you're looking for D&D3 Players Handbook production values, you won't find them here; nevertheless, it works for me. The cover has a nice "feel" when you hold it, but I worry that it might not stand up to the sort rough treatment game books are often subject to. I tend to put a slip-on cover over my softcover RPG books to protect them, and I chose to do that with this book.

Interior artwork is black and white. Some of it is public domain, and some is original art. Most of the clip art fits well, indeed some of it is excellent, though a couple of pieces really don't work for me.

The whole book is printed on recycled paper with vegetable ink. This seems to have worked quite well, though the printing on the occasional page isn't perfect - the interiors of some of the bold letters occasionally look a bit smudged on my copy. This is a minor nitpick rather than a problem.

Overall I'd highly recommend Fudge Expanded Edition. You could use it for a fantasy game as it stands, or with the guidance the book gives, easily adapt Fudge to your needs for any genre.

Style: 4 (Classy and well done)
Substance: 4 (Meaty)