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Fudge is a flexible roleplaying system which has been available for free on the net since the mid 1990's. Its simple, elegant rules satisfactorily tackle a number of philosophically difficult problems which plague nearly all other game systems, such as "how do we deal with differently-sized combatants" [answer: Fudge "scale" system] and "how do we deal with combat damage without resorting to hit points?" [answer: the Fudge wounds system]. Its 0-centric bell curve and scale system for addressing effects of damage between combatants of wildly different sizes are both strokes of pure genius. Why we haven't seen these mechanisms adapted into more games is one of the True Mysteries of the Universe.

This page has some links to material which i've written for Fudge and some adaptions of other freely-available Fudge material. The OpenDocument Text (ODT) files are supported by a number of word processors, most notably OpenOffice and LibreOffice, both of which are available absolutely free for *NIX, Windows, and that other proprietary OS. For those who are ODT-phobic, most of the documents below are also available in PDF format.

Fudge Legal Notice

About Fudge: Fudge is a roleplaying game written by Steffan O'Sullivan, with extensive input from the Usenet community of rec.games.design and other online forums. The core rules of Fudge are available free on the Internet at https://www.fudgerpg.com and other sites. Fudge was designed to be customized, and may be used with any gaming genre. Fudge gamemasters and game designers are encouraged to modify Fudge to suit their needs, and to share their modifications and additions with the Fudge community.

The Fudge game system is copyrighted ©2000 by Grey Ghost Press, Inc. and is available for use under the Open Game License. See the fudgerpg.com website for more information.

Fudge System Reference Document

The Fudge System Reference Document contains the core Fudge rules, as released by Grey Ghost Games. The document here is, in terms of content, identical to the RTF-format doc available from Grey Ghost, but is instead distributed in OpenDocument Format:

The TeX format was done by Rob "Omar" Knop (author of JV_MAP, a clone of V_MAP, if my memory is correct), and is distributed here for the sake of having a backup. TeX can be converted using a number of tools to produce, e.g. PDF, Postscript, or HTML versions of Fudge.

Fantasy Campaign World

My Unnamed Campaign describes fairly detailed (more than 55 pages) fantasy campaign world where "the times they are a-changin'" and magic is becoming the driving force behind an emerging Information Age. It has been in development since 2002 (or so) and gets updated every now and then. It contains a significant amount of detail regarding people, places, cultures, histories, events, and adventure seeds. The only thing missing is a map of the world, and that is intentionally left out. Like Fudge, it is released under the terms of the Open Game License. While it is specifically called a Fudge campaign, there are actually very few Fudge-specific references in it - it can just as easily be used with any given roleplaying system.

Character sheets

Here are some minimalistic character sheets for Fudge. They are laid out to take up only half of a page. The front side has areas for Attributes, Skills, Equipment, and Wounds, which leaves you with the back side for stuff like the character's story. They're A4 sized, but they'll probably fit on U.S. letter as well.

In case it's not obvious, the wound chart is formatted such that you should write the number of wound boxes to the left side of each wound category and use hash marks to note wounds to the right of the category. e.g. in the cell which says "___ S:" you could write "3 S:" to denote that the character has 3 Scratch boxes, and then use hash marks next to the 'S' to denote the actual wounds.

Yet Another Gramarye

Yet Another Gramarye is a refinement of Carl Cravens' The Gramarye, tweaked to suit my tastes.

"Omar" has a list of spells which are designed for the original Gramarye, and also are compatible with this one.

Yet Another Five-point Fudge

Yet Another Five-point Fudge is a minor adaptation of the Five-point Fudge rules presented in the Fudge System Reference Document. Basically it's the original 5PF without the rules for the clunky magic system described in the original.

For the technical people in the crowd, here's some additional stuff for Five-point Fudge:

Here is an SQL file for sqlite3 containing a collection of skills, Gifts and Faults from Five-point Fudge:

5pf.sqlite (47.12KiB)

To import into sqlite3, simply do: 

$ sqlite3 5pf.db < 5pf.sqlite

This database is the master used for updating Yet Another Five-point Fudge (see above).

Also for sqlite3, a native C function which can be bound to sqlite3 to "roll dF dice". (dF dice are those used by Fudge.) Just include the supplied code into your application.

sqlite3_dF.c (2936 bytes)

C++ code

Aside from the sqlite3 code, above, here is a collection of Fudge-related utility source code (all Public Domain) which i have written over the years. It includes a small app for rolling dF and classes for handing wound charts, handling collections of dice ("dice bags"), and similar stuff. (The included files with "s11n" in their names are for use with a now-defunct serialization library, and can be ignored.).

fudge-cplusplus-20070530.tar.gz (11.72KiB)

That code requires only the C++ STL, so it "should" work with any modern C++ compiler.

Links...

PS...

Even though the Fudge system is free, fans may purchase products from their favourite Fudge dealer, such as Grey Ghost Press (a long-time champion of the Fudge cause).