I would love to see this. I'm not too fond of Fudge Dice, though I do plan to buy some (my price hunting found a pack of 20 for like $12 though) and not make my own cheaply. A regular d6 version would make me happy to see.

Hi, John. No, I have no problem with the mechanics themselves, curves and so on. I get why Clinton used them. Good reasons for it, certainly.

I just find them very unuseful, hard too read, slightly increase handling time, and generally a (highly personal) pain.

EDIT: Oh! And my d6 "hack" necessarily uses a different curve and scale. It is not the "old" version of the game w/ 2d6 and bonus dice and all that. It's my attempt to replicate the same general philosophies of the Revised version with standard dice. Like I said, no idea if this works well just yet. It requires some acrobatics with how the whole system works, certainly. Seems like it will work, but I've been wrong about stuff like that before!

Gotcha. Some of the people I've played with feel the same, I think. I'm curious to see your revision.

I understand that Starblazer Adventures is using a d6 minus d6 instead of 4dF. The equivalent for TSoY's 3dF would be to roll a d4 minus d4.

HAH! Hi, Peter.

That's really funny to me. We cross-posted. Someone else came up with d6 - d6? Funny! And... well, of course. I'm no Einstein.

Matt, welcome to the Fudge mailing list, circa 1994. I think Fudge has had more customized dice-rolling hacks than all other games combined. John Kim has an archive of them tucked away somewhere, I think.

I was curious to see how you got the results into the +3/-3 range, but it looks like you're not doing that. Hrm. Oh well. d4-d4 might work... but I'm not sure if it's zero-weighted enough.

BTW, one of the old fixes for the +5/-5 problem was to count those results as '0'. This actually makes the curve a bit more 4dF-like, too. That only brings you back to the +4/-4 Fudge standard, but it's something.

LOL. Now I want to drag "Power in Numbers" back out of the closet and finish it. We could both produce our results, and then look all serious as we pursue the others' work.

My attempt at pretty much the same thing, using all dice from d4 to d10. And I think I kept the spirit of the system, because I wedged the skill scale so that even a weenie with no powerz and one point of skill still has that chance, albeit sooooooper small, or punking Grand Assmaster with his 3d10 and high skill level.

Also, my attempt was all about putting the numbers in the game, then re-aligning the system From Scratch. This mechanic is totally not a substitute or replacement for the scale of the game: Therefore I can't just plug in the dice and make it work. I have to plug in the dice, then basically brew a cauldron of blood and call forth the original edition of TSOY, steal two things out of that, then rewrite the Solar Edition, pretty much from the ground up.

Problem is that I found the scale a bit weird, especially when bringing in more than one "helper/combatant". I'm still waffling on the specifics, but the core is still there. My project is probably a lot more work as well.

Maybe in a month or two after I finish some other stuff up I'll get back to my TSOY Power in Numbers hack.

For me, I just like rolling numbers, seeing high numbers, going "WOW LOOK AT THAT NUMBER! IT'S SO BIG!!" and the like.

-Andy

I like TSOY enough that I made my own Fudge dice instead of buying them. And one day I will finish my gold-on-black ones and then you'll be sorry that you hate Fudge dice, because they will be sooooo pretty. ^_^

(I can totally understand the "it feels weird to roll just to stay at your level" sentiment, though.)

My two cents:

1. I really like Fudge dice! And the curve in TSoY is very carefully calibrated--I wouldn't mess with it too much.

My preferred suggestion? Get some regular d6s, and colour the "5" and "6" sides green, and the "1" and "2" sides red. Then you can use them as d6s or as Fudge dice, as you prefer.

2. If you really want to use regular dice, and don't like the feeling of "rolling just to stay at your level"*, I would do something like this:

(*: Not that I get this, mind you. If you're playing d20, you have a good skill, and you roll a low number and fail at some easy task, how is this different?)

Roll 5 or 6d6. Your trait gives you a "success number", from 1 (unskilled) to, well, higher numbers. Roll the dice. You begin with an outcome of "failure" or "0". For each die that rolls your success number of lower, add one to your success level. If you get 3 dice below your success number, your outcome is a "3".

You'll have to check the probabilities to calibrate this properly.

3. You could also try the 1d6 variant I posted in the "Awesomify Fudge" thread. Not sure how it would work with TSoY, but it could be great, potentially.

Cheers!

I hate fudge dice.

I love 2d6.

1d6-1d6 is 2d6 if the other guy gets an automatic seven.

I kinda like Fudge dice, but go to town, man!

I should have said, though, "Good for you!" Seriously, I'll be interested to see how your hack works. I worry about its potential for making bonus dice less powerful. (Case: I have, I dunno, 5 bonus dice, right? My black die rolls a 6. At best, I'm getting a 0, right? In TSOY, you're almost guaranteed a +3 with that many bonus dice.)

Posted By: Matt SnyderA few months ago, I visited this really cool game store out of state. I was like "Great! Look at all this cool stuff. And indie games! That new version of TSoY I don't own. Hey, I should pick up some Fudge dice, too ... HOLY SHIT THEY COST HOW MUCH!?!?? Fuck that." (They exceeded $20, by the way.)

IPR sells the GM's pack for the (I believe MSRP of) $15. If someone's trying to charge you more than $15 for a GM's pack, inform them you'll be buying the dice elsewhere.

But as to the urge to hack, well, what the hell, man, have at. At least you know you're doing it for irrational reasons. :)

"They make me feel like I have to work to keep what I have, let alone achieve beyond my normal ability"

The statistics on 4dF say you get what you have or more 62% of the time.

I find Fudge dice very easy to read. I don't have to add and subtract, I just discard blanks and pairs of + and - and whatever is left is my result.

So, yeah, I am re-writing these rules like I said. And, then I wanted to publish them in some way, whether just online, in the wiki, or even as a fully fledged book. And, hey, if I go back to fudge dice because this doesn't work well, I'm totally cool with that. We'll see.

But, even so, rewriting the rules has been extremely interesting and educational. You know how writers or artists or something talk about typing out a famous novel or recreating a painting or something to learn how the original artists did whe he or she did? This is the same kind of thing. You do this, and a couple surprising and cool things happen. I actually highly recommend trying this with your favorite game if you're interested in designer, or even just interested in "hacking."

First, you start to notice quirks in the text that bother you, even though you didn't realize or maybe just didn't vocalize before. And, since you're rewriting, you "fix" them. It's editing, certainly. But, it also makes you conscious that you're changing the game to something you prefer. You are, therefore, designing. It's cool!

Second, you also really start to understand the game in ways that you don't by just reading. Or, even possibly, by playing. (I still think play's much more important to enjoying and understanding a game.) This is also cool!

Those two things together really make you much more able to make modifications to a game like this. You just have a better "whole" picture in your brain about the game.

So, in rewriting and effectively redesigning this text, I've REALLY considered creating a TSoY book, new art, new layout, the whole shebang. My vision of Near. On the other hand, I've REALLY considered publishing "Mirage." It's a desert fantasy setting. Spice roads and sorcerer nomads and gun-toting fanatical alchemists and a hidden city of illusions. But, like Near, it should be filled with lots of really pregnant issues and human conflicts.

Today, the wind's just right, I guess. I'm leaning toward Mirage. People have Near. It's cool. They don't have Mirage. It's cool, too. I think I should unleash that one.

Mirage...mmmm

Cool, guys. Thanks. I need to, you know, actually do some writing! But, I'll post about it soon and give a few more details.

Posted By: iagoIPR sells the GM's pack for the (I believe MSRP of) $15. If someone's trying to charge you more than $15 for a GM's pack, inform them you'll be buying the dice elsewhere.

Or you can always print stickers and place them on normal six siders.

In a game market that has been flooded for years with stupid little dice gimmicks, the clean, manageable bell curve of FUDGE dice is the bomb AFAIAC.

In the absence of FUDGE dice, I liked the quick hack that showed up in the old fudge rule that I don't see anymore. Basically, 2 positive dice and 2 negative dice (4d6s, 2d6 each of 2 different colors); remove all matches, and lowest dice showing is the result. It CAN be +/-5, though that result is an outlier. Otherwise, the odds are similar to FUDGE dice.

...keep in mind that the 4d6 technique approximates a 4dF roll. TSoY uses 3dF, so you'd need to make some adjustments to use that technique.

Posted By: oliof If bonus dice remain, only count the best three dice, if penalty dice remain, only count the worst three.

Oh yeah! John Harper -- that's another thing I don't dig. The mental shift for counting lowest or highest is another touch point I find awkward. I want it to always be one or the other, you know what I mean? Anyway, just wanted to comment on that.

Yeah, Matt, I hear ya. That annoys me sometimes, too.

Posted By: Matt SnyderThe mental shift for counting lowest or highest is another touch point I find awkward. I want it to always be one or the other, you know what I mean?

I find this perfectly natural and intuitive.

Every single other person I've ever played TSOY with finds it annoying.

So you're in good company.

Two of the things I don't like about FUDGE dice is that they're so basic.

1. The color selection for the dice sets is pretty ugly. Why aren't there speckled or marbled or metallic or sparkley FUDGE dice out there?

2. The plus minus and blank results on the dice give me the feeling I'm playing Candyland or Chutes and Ladders, not a complex and mature RPG.

Both reasons are petty, I know.

Posted By: orklordTwo of the things I don't like about FUDGE dice is that they're so basic.
1. The color selection for the dice sets is pretty ugly. Why aren't there speckled or marbled or metallic or sparkley FUDGE dice out there?

I think there are some pretty cool FUDGE dice out there:





(I've got 4 of the red on black ones for personal use - and both the GM packs shown in one of the posts above so I have lots of dice to lend out)

Bringing us back to the original topic, I love FUDGE dice or any other dice mechanic centred around zero because it makes setting difficulties so easy. This is a hge boon when you are trying to ad-lib a scene and haven't had time to plan things out before hand.

Want to produce a challenge that the players can probably handle. Check their skills and set the challenge at the same level. Want to make it a real challenge? Set it a couple of points higher. If you define skill levels meaningfully, for example a skill level of professional matching what a typical professional might have, then you know instantly that a professional will have a slight challenge but will probably succeed at a professional level task.

They are also incedibly easy to read. I could roll 30dF and read it within seconds. Try that rolling 30d6 or 30d10. Unless you are an extrordinary mathematician it will take you a while to do all the adding up.

Personally I consider FUDGE dice a wonderful invention. The only dice mechanism I consider comparible is the ORE roll which also has a kind of beauty. Unfortunately one of my players hates FUDGE dice (because he finds them confusing).