FUDGE

Starting in 1992, Steffan O'Sullivan created, with the help of several netizens from the 'net, a role playing system called FUDGE, Freeform, Universal, Do-it-Yourself Gaming Engine. FUDGE has been created to serve as a generic rule set to cover as many backgrounds and settings as possible.

In doing so, FUDGE is similar to GURPS, which pursues the same goal. Unlike GURPS, FUDGE does not build its rules on a set of basic attributes, but specifies characters according to their actual abilities, being both, strenghts and weaknesses. All traits that remain unspecified are considered to default to the standard. Characters are created by choosing positive as well as negative values, modifying the amount of development points available for spending on abilities.

FUDGE features an original method of rolling dice. You use four six-sided dice, the so-called FUDGE-dice. Ones and twos count as minus one, threes and fours as zero and fives and sixs as plus one. After casting the four dice, you add up all your negative and positive scores, yielding numbers between -4 (all dice negative) and +4 (all dice positive), and add the result to the character's basic ability value. The sum represents the total value of success. The mechanics works quick and fluently, using little arithmetics and do not hamper the game flow too much.