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Fudge® Rules for Kalyr

While I have always run Kalyr games using the GURPS rules, I have been considering trying Fudge for my on-line games. For those that have never heard of the game, Fudge is a free RPG published by Grey Ghost Games. The text of the game can be downloaded for free from www.fudgerpg.com, or you can buy the printed version published by Grey Ghost Games.

Fudge is very much a game designed for dramatist story-centric games rather than the more detailed 'simulationist' approach of games like GURPS, or (shudder) the skirmish wargames approach of games like AD&D. One of the major features of the game is that it has no fixed list of attributes and skills; the GM, or even the players are encourage to define their own lists of attributes and skills appropriate for the genre and world of the game.

From this point on, I'm going to assume you've either read the Fudge rules, or are at least familiar with the basic concepts of the game.

(For some 'generic' GURPS-to-Fudge conversion rules, see my conversion page)

Attributes

We have eight attributes, three physical, three mental, and two social.

• Appearance: Physical beauty and attractiveness.
• Health: Resistance to wounds and disease.
• Strength: Physical muscle-power and stamina.
• Charisma: Personality and social magnetism.
• Perception: Covers both senses (sight, hearing) and the ability to make sense of what is seen and heard.
• Willpower: Mental endurance, resistance to mind-control.
• Nobility: The social standing in kandar society.
• Rank: The rank within legion, guild, temple or whatever.

There are no attributes called Dexterity or Intelligence; this isn't to say they don't exist, but they are better represented by a character's physical and mental skills. If you want an agile character, give him or her decent levels in two or three physical skills; for an intelligent character, do the same with mental skills. For a clumsy or stupid character, just take 'Clumsy' or 'Stupid' as faults!

All attributes are on the standard Fudge seven point scale: Terrible - Poor - Mediocre - Fair - Good - Great - Superb. An completely "average" person is Fair in each attribute.

Of course, player characters are expected to be a little better than that! Player characters start with four extra levels, allowing you to have four of the eight attributes at Good, or two at Great, or any combination you choose. You can also lower some of the Fair attributes in order to raise others. You can also gain additional levels by taking faults, or trade levels to gain gifts, at a rate of one gift or fault for two attribute levels.

Note: While kandar have, on average, slightly lower strength than humans, the difference isn't really great enough to warrant different scales.

While most attributes are fairly self-explainatory, Nobility and Rank benefit for further explanation:

Nobility	Examples
Terrible	Outcast, barbarian
Poor	Slave, street scum
Mediocre	Human freeman
Fair	Kandar freeman, human citizen
Good	Kandar citizen
Great	Kandar nobleman from lesser clan
Superb	Kandar nobleman from greater clan
Legendary	Emperor of Vohrleyn

Rank	Examples
Terrible	Outcast, exile.
Poor	No association with any guild, temple, legion or equivalent.
Mediocre	Guild apprentice, student priest, legion recruit
Fair	Guild journeyman, junior priest, junior legion officer, minor bureaucrat.
Good	Guild Master
Great	Varakeyr or Lakentyr of a major city
Superb	Tharn of major city, Academy of the Mind Hierach, One of the Karazthan "Twelve".
Legendary	Emperor

Skills

Skills are rated on the same seven-level scale as attributes, but skills default to Poor. There are three ways to determine the skills for a beginning character.

The first way is simply one assign one skill Superb, two to Great, four to Good, and five to Fair, in much the same manner as the simple method for assigning attributes. Any skill not listed on the character sheet is assumed to be Poor.

The more flexible method is to assign 40 levels in individual skills.

A third, more complex method is to use the prior career system.

Note that there is no explicit connection between skills and attributes. This does not mean they're completely unconnected, though: a character with high skills in a certain area should have decent scores in those attributes might affect it - the difference between Fudge and systems like GURPS is that it relies on the GM's and player's common sense rather than an explicit game mechanic to enforce this.

The following list of skills is not intended to be an exhaustive list. If you can't find the skill you're looking for, define a new one.

Combat and Weapon Skills

Armed Combat

Combat skills represent styles rather than specific weapons; it's possible for someone trained to fight with a sword to pick up a club, and wield it as though it was a sword.

• Narvork: This is skill of fighting with the traditional kandar warrior's sword, the Narvork, wielded one- or two-handed. This fighting style emphasis complex moves, and is regarded in some quarters to be as much an art form as a fighting style.
• Narvork & shield: The technique of fighting with the Narvork in conjunction with a shield, the fighting style commonly practiced by the legions.
• Nirvork: This skill of fighting with the lighter and faster Nirvork, the traditional noble's duelling weapon.
• Klunark: The use of the large pole-arm used by soldiers and guards.
• Knife-Fighting: The use of a knife or dagger in combat, most typically by a human street-fighter.
• Other weapons: Any other hand-to-hand weapon not mentioned above - Each weapon or fighting style is a separate skill.
• Fast Drawing: The ability to draw a weapon to hand quickly, before your opponent does!

Missile Combat

These skills include the basic care and maintenance of the weapon as well as the aiming and firing.

• Flamelance: In most cases, only soldiers of the legions, or ex-soldiers will have had the opportunity to learn the use of this weapon.
• Lightning Wand: These small hand-held weapons are for the exclusive use of the Karazthan, anyone non-member who knows how to use one will face some interesting questions, and be expected to provide some good answers.
• Crossbow: These weapons are more widespread in use, and can in theory be learned by anyone.
• Zughru Stonegun: This weapon is very rare outside zughru lands, but may occasionally be encountered.

Unarmed Combat

• 'Karate': Represents the more offensive kandar martial arts moves, emphasising punches and kicks.
• 'Judo': The more defensive kandar martial arts moves, representing locks and throws.
• Brawling: Represents the rough-and-ready unarmed combat as practiced by humans, sacrificing finesse for brutal effectiveness.

Combat-related skills

• Body Language: Classed as a combat skill, this represents the ability to interpret the moves of an opponent in single combat.
• Military Tactics: Covers the knowledge gained from fighting as part of a small group, rather than in single combat.

Social Skills

• Acting: The ability to impersonate someone else convincingly.
• Administration: The ability to run and organise a part of large structured organisation.
• Bargaining: The ability to bargain, haggle and negotiate.
• Fast-Talking: The ability to fool people with clever words, even if you're lying.
• Gambling: Represents skill and knowledge of games of chance.
• Insight: The skill of reading someone body language in a social situation; useful to tell if someone is lying, or to tell whether or not they've believed your lies!
• Kandar Social Graces: The ability to get along in the social minefield of kandar high society.
• Leadership: The ability to lead and inspire a group of followers.
• Oratory: The ability to sway and influence a large group of people though your words.
• Streetwise: The ability to get along in rough company without getting oneself into serious trouble.

Athletic Skills

• Climbing: Covers climbing cliffs and walls.
• Dancing: Can you impress the ladies at social functions?.
• Jumping: Can you jump across that yawning chasm without falling in?
• Running: Essential for those chase scenes.
• Swimming: If your swimming skill is only poor, it means you can only tread water.
• Zarandar Riding: Riding the most common riding beast of Kalyr, the zarandar
• Yakka Riding: Riding the fast but ill-tempered riding animal, the yakka.

Professional Skills

• Administration: See under Social skills
• Agriculture: The practicalities of planting and growing crops.
• Animal Handling: Dealing with common domesticated animals, an essential skill for any stable-hand who doesn't want to get disembowelled by an angry yakka.
• Craft skills: Each craft is a separate skill, too many crafts to list each one from architecture to basket-weaving.
• Evaluate: The merchant's skill at assessing the value of something.
• Locksmith: The making and breaking of locks; this skill obviously is useful in dishonest professions.
• Repair/Devise: The skill of making basic repairs to machines at the lower levels of technology, and the construction and disarming of devices like traps.

Vehicle Skills

• Boating: Manoeuvring small one or two man rowing boats and canoes.
• Waggon-Driving: Driving an animal-drawn waggon or coach
• Power-Waggon Driving: Driving one of the Karazthan-built Power-Waggons.
• Riverboat Piloting: Piloting a large vessel on one of Kalyr's many navigable rivers. This skill covers both Karazthan-built powered vessels and those pulled by Glethnu.
• Shiphanding: Piloting a sea-going sailing ship.

Knowledge Skills

• City Knowledge: Knowledge of any single city (each city is a separate skill). Tells you which are the best inns and taverns, which part of the city to avoid at night, where that alleyway goes, etc.
• Ancient History: The centuries of kandar history, and the wonders of ancient times.
• Kandar Literature: Knowledge of the great classics of kandar literature.
• Kandar Religious Lore: Knowledge of the Kandar religious teachings and rituals.
• Kalyr Politics: Knowledge of how the kandar political system works, and the names and personalities of major political figures throughout Kalyr.
• Kalyr Law: The detailed workings of Kalyr law and legal procedure.
• Research: The ability to find information from a library of archives.

Outdoor and Stealth Skills

• Tracking: The ability to follow tracks
• Hiding: The ability to hide in available cover, either in an urban or rural environment.
• Stalking: The ability to move quietly, to creep up to something or someone without been seen or heard.
• Survival: The ability to live off the land, away from the so-called security of the kandar cities.

Medical Skills

• First Aid: Covers the basic treatment of battlefield injuries.
• Diseases: The diagnosis and treatment of disease.
• Poisons: knowledge of the effect, antidotes and treatment of poisons. It should be evident that there are characters other than doctors who might want to learn this skill!

Artistic Skills

• Artist: The ability to express oneself in an artistic medium such as painting and sculpture. Kandar art is almost exclusively abstract in form, portraiture is almost unknown.
• Musician: The ability to play a musical instrument. Each instrument is a separate skill.
• Singing: The ability to sing well in an accepted style.
• Performance: The ability to entertain an audience, whether by speaking, singing, or playing. It covers the 'showmanship' side of things; a good tavern performer can succeed even if his or her singing and musical skill is quite poor.

Gifts and Faults

A gift is any ability or talent that isn't obviously covered by an attribute or a skill; examples are empathy with animals, ambidextrous or contacts in important organisations. Psionic powers count as gifts.

A fault is the opposite of a gift; something which affects a character in a negative way. Examples are personal codes of honour, negative personality traits, phobias, enemies, physical disabilities.

I haven't provided a list of ready-made gifts and faults, players are instead encouraged to be creative, and come up with own.

Psionics

The existing psionics page describes the psionics powers used in my GURPS games; I will summarise the basics here:

Powers

There are four basic powers, referred in the Kalyr as ways. Each way is a separate power, rated on the standard Fudge scale, defaulting of course to nonexistent. It costs one Gift to gain a power at Terrible. You can then spend additional attribute levels to raise the power to a level when you can do something useful with it.

• The Way of Vision: This way allows the perception of things imperceptible to normal people; this is covered by those powers classed as ESP
• The Way of Restoration: Although this way is most commonly used to restore the body and mind, which is how it gets it's name, it can also be misused to cause harm: Covers healing, body control, and some aspects of telepathy
• The Way of the Will: The power of mind over mind, this way allows one to impose one's will over others: This covers the remaining aspects of telepathy, particularly those abilities used in telepathic combat.
• The Way of the World: The power of mind over matter. The rarest and most powerful way, those with this power can make changes in the physical world. Followers of this way can manipulate matter and energy, create illusions, set things on fire. The most powerful can change their own shape.

Skills

In addition to powers, characters required the skills to use them. Skills are much more narrowly defined. Note that one or two skills require more than one power. All psionic skills start out as nonexistent, and require a skill level to raise them to Poor!

This is only a draft list at present

Way of the Will

• Emotion-sending: The ability affect another's emotions.
• Mind-Blow: A direct mental attack, reducing the target's will to resist.
• Mind-Control: The ability to control the mind of another, and operate them like a puppet.
• Mind-Reading: The ability to read a person's surface thoughts, emotional state and tap into their senses. It does give access to the target's memories
• Mind-Sending: The ability to send thoughts.
• Mind-Shield: A defensive measure, this makes it harder for a hostile psionic to use any other power
• Mindswitch: A very rare and perilous ability, allows one to swap one's mind with that of the target.
• Vision-Sending: The ability to take over the senses of a target, and make them see or hear things that aren't really there.

Way of Vision

• Far-Hearing: Eavesdrop on conversations a long way away
• Far-Seeing: Allows one to see through walls
• Life-Sense: Detect the presence of life
• Precognition: Foretell the future! Note that in this universe, the future hasn't happened yet, so all you can see is one possible future
• Psi-Sense: Sense the active use of any psionic power
• Psychometry: Gain insight into the history of an item or location
• Seeker-sense: Find that thing you lost

The Way of Restoration

• Healing: Allows the healing of wounds and disease
• Memory-Changing: Allows memories to be changed or erased
• Memory-Reading: Allows one to access a subject's memories
• Mind-Reading: As in the Way of the Will skill listed above.
• Shape-Changing: A rare and powerful ability, this also requires high power in The Way of the World.

The Way of the World

For most skills, the character's power determines the magnitude of the effect, while the skills determines the finesse: for example, for an illusion the size of the illusion depends on power, but how believable the illusions is to an observer depends on the skill.

• Bond: Stick two things together. You can use this to glue an enemy to the floor, or to repair something broken.
• Cryokinesis: Makes things (and people) colder
• Disintegrate: Make an opponents weapon crumble into dust!
• Energy Bolt: Allows the caster to attack with a bolt of flame, either against a single target, or an area.
• Illusions: Bends and twists light energy to create illusions.
• Levitation: Allows the caster to float through the air, even though his or her power may not be enough to lift themselves using TK
• Pyrokinesis: Makes things get hot!
• Shape-Changing: See under The way of Restoration: both powers are needed for this skill.
• Shield: Creates a physical bubble, which can defend against any physical attack
• Telekinesis: Lift things up and throw them around using the power of the mind!
• Transmutation: Transmute lead into gold! This is the ability change one substance into another. Great power is needed to make the change permanent.

Game Rules

Use of any psionic ability against a living target an opposed roll between whatever skill the psionic uses, and the target's Willpower or Health, depending on whether the psionic ability targetted mind or body.

The target also gets a roll on perception to see if he or she notices the attempt.

A psionic character may choose to trade power for skill during play, on a "1 up, 2 down" principle