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Fudge is a rules-light roleplaying game (RPG), concentrating on role-playing rather than endless dice rolls and tables and similar detailed game mechanics. It also uses words rather than numbers to describe character traits. For example, a character might be a Great swordsman rather than a ``14th level fighter.'' Combined with simple action resolution, Fudge's descriptive nature makes ideal it for novice players. Fudge is also flexible enough to satisfy experienced role-players. There are no artificial limits placed on character creation; any character the player can imagine can be described in Fudge terms. (The GM has final say over whether or not a character is acceptable in a given game.)
The basic Fudge rules contain no campaign world information (except for a few examples). But the game's flexibility allows it to be easily used with nearly any other role-playing game's campaign world-- and, of course, with Gamemasters' own personal creations.
No Fixed Attributes. The GM chooses attributes that match the genre played and suit individual taste. A GM designing a simple Fudge game may choose only two attributes (Body and Mind, for instance), or may dispense with attributes entirely and have a character's abilities entirely defined by skills, gifts, and faults. Another Gamemaster may choose 6 attributes, or 10, or more. There are a lot of attributes to choose from.
Skill-driven system. The GM selects the skills, whether they are broadly defined skill groups or finely defined individual skills. You can even mix broad definitions with narrow ones without any loss of playability.
Simple action resolution. Players use normal six-sided dice-- or, optionally, special Fudge dice-- to determine how well their characters perform any action. Results describe degrees of success (or failure!) in words-- from Superb down to Terrible. Alternative dice methods allow for 20-sided or percentile dice to be used.
Painless translation. The word-based system lets you easily translate any campaign world or adventure written in Fudge into any other system-- and vice versa! Fudge thus works as a ``universal translator'' of gaming systems.
Design your own. If you are thinking of designing your own home rules role-playing game, simply reading Fudge can provide an excellent introduction to everything you need consider as a game designer!
Goodies Galore. The Fudge game was first published on the Internet, and alternative rules and supplementary materials are freely available at various on-line sites. The Grey Ghost Games website includes links to many of these Fudge-related sites. There is also an active Fudge e-mail list.
To avoid confusion, ``he,'' ``him,'' etc., are used to describe a player and PC, and ``she,'' ``her,'' etc., are used to describe a Gamemaster and NPC.
The core rules of Fudge are divided into six Chapters plus the Addenda, each of which is divided into Sections. The decimal point in Section numbers is a true decimal. For example, Section 1.35 comes between Section 1.3 and Section 1.4. Additional material has no section numbering.
Note for this LaTeX and PDF version of the Fudge SRD: there is an additional decimal point between the section and the subsection; hence, the slight deviation from the Fudge standard. I will see if I can hack LaTeX to remove this in the future.