[UA] Fudge?

[Mike Lake]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Peter Kisner" <kisnerp at hotmail.com>
To: <ua at lists.unknown-armies.com>
Sent: Thursday, February 17, 2005 5:53 PM
Subject: [UA] Fudge?


> The cool little excentricities and odd bits of the UA setting have held a
> special place in my heart for quite awhile, but I never really warmed to
the
> % system (or any % system really).

Over the Edge works fine, if you're only interested in dumping percentiles.
I've used those rules for con games, since the many different ways of
handling UA dice is a lot to swallow when you just want to plunge some
newbies into the action.  I don't use unstoppable sixes or blowing the top
off rules in OtE.  I didn't try to preserve flip-flops, just gave a bonus
die
when passions came into play.  Players facing stress checks soon learned
to appreciate traits like "strong will" and "unflappable."

I haven't used the FUDGE conversion, or any FUDGE at all, so apply
some healthy skepticism to the following comments:

Curious that the conversion works to preserve so many quirks of UA dice
use--if you want all that stuff, why not stick to percentiles?  I would
dispense with cherries, but the flip-flop, hunch, and OACOWA and
BOHICA rolls look good.

Perhaps a Poor-Excellent range, rather than Terrible-Superb, should
equate to the 30%-70% UA range.  Just a judgement call.

I don't see why you can't use the skill penumbra for FUDGE skills; let a
+1 equate to the penumbra you would attach to 10%, +2 to 30%, +3 to
60%, and +4 to 90%, or thereabouts.  If you feel that to be too strong an
encouragement for players to sacrifice secondary skills to boost primary
ones, forbid such exchanges.  Don't bother giving players the eight
default skills; they equal the base attribute unless a player pumps one up
with skill points.  Then you might give, oh, ten (?) points to distribute
among skills as they like, increasing from the base attribute for default
skills and increasing from Poor for other skills.  Any character using a
default skill pumped by one of these points should have a +1 or +2
bonus in competition with a character relying on his attribute alone, to
reflect actual training and/or experience.

Otherwise, it looks like a fine conversion.  But then, FUDGE is
designed to make conversions easy, isn't it?