My head Hurts.

fudgebob wrote:

My head Hurts.

Tell me about it. All I want to do is have a well-rounded character and go up and down the ladder.

This is reminding me of the level of overanalysis that sometimes occurs in Oz fandom.

By my mind, Average = not special, run of the mill, neither good nor bad. Are you an Average juggler? Then you're just playing with your balls while a Great somebody on YouTube plays a piano with his. But you're not the Poor juggler who's smacking people in the face with his own.

Average swordsman? Conan the Barbarian will smite him with his Superb hacking skill.

Super C is an Average superhero. Spider-Man's at least a Good one.

On Average, someone who has a Great ability will do it great on the average, but nobody who looks at him will say "Wow, that's a real run-of-the-mill kind of Greatness." No! He's Great at what he does, next to the poor Average joe in the corner, of whom nobody talks about. Why, because on the average, he's Average!

BTW, I did away with Scale in my games completely. Lift a big rock? For Toto, Superb Difficulty. For a giant or someone who drank a draught of zosozo potion? Average Difficuty. Why? Because an Average giant can lift that thing. (yes, Oz references!)

Combat? "Get creative or that giant is going to step on you."

*pulls the string on a Barbie doll* "Math is hard!" Amen!

Maybe I'll just say "Typical..."

Overanalysis is my specialty.  My apologies for the Anacin attacks.

But, this original discussion started with the proposal to "offset the middle" of the 7-level Ladder to have two negative, one neutral, and four positive levels.  Professionally, I am a data analyst.  While "normal" distributions of symmetric anthills of data are a pretty and simple model for describing the "expected" deviations from the average (mean), if you actually play with enough datasets, you start to find that the real world (or at least the artificial measures of the real world) is filled with non-normal distributions.  One of the most common is the skewed distributions banging up against zero on the x-axis with one open end trailing to infinite.  So, professionally as well as emotionally, I find Steffan's reformulation moving away from a symmetrical view of Attributes to be more realistic as well as more appealing to players' motivation and feelings of (self-)worth.

There is an implicit, invisible lowest level to the basic 7-tiered FUDGE Ladder of Abilities (or amount of experience needed to do a Task)-- None.  But the "out" of Legendary+x implies the belief in "nothing is Impossible" (just never been done yet).

Well, just to tie this back to the original post, I just posted some more characters in this system - some of them humans!

http://www.panix.com/~sos/rpg/fudchar.html

If anyone sees any glaring typos, please let me know, thanks!

Thanks, SoS. Downloading them now.

No worries, Vermonster. I do value your and everyone else's opinion. Thanks for sharing.

I am just admitting my Poor at Math Skills.

fudgebob wrote:

Thanks, SoS. Downloading them now. 

Thanks for checking them out - I hope you enjoy them!  On the odd chance there's someone interested in the Musicians of Bremen characters and has already downloaded them, I made a small change to the donkey and dog characters this evening.

I noticed you've lowered the default for Skills to Terrible, preserving the two level deference between the defaults for attributes and skills.  I'm curious how this'll affect unskilled use of skills in games - can anyone who has used VG Fudge comment?

Thanks!
Matt

It hasn't yet come up in a game, but it hasn't changed from Standard Fudge that a player will still need a +2 on Default Skill roll to get a Fair result.  This is the minimum needed (in my GMing, at least) for a passable success.

If you are trying VG Fudge (which, please remember, is non-standard) and if you believe a +1 roll on a default skill should give you a passable result, by all means play it that way!

sos wrote:

It hasn't yet come up in a game, but it hasn't changed from Standard Fudge that a player will still need a +2 on Default Skill roll to get a Fair result.  This is the minimum needed (in my GMing, at least) for a passable success.

Makes sense - I get keeping the spread.  I guess I also don't see a lot of characters attempting unskilled brain surgery and other difficult tasks.

MattyHelms wrote:

sos wrote:

It hasn't yet come up in a game, but it hasn't changed from Standard Fudge that a player will still need a +2 on Default Skill roll to get a Fair result.  This is the minimum needed (in my GMing, at least) for a passable success.

Makes sense - I get keeping the spread.  I guess I also don't see a lot of characters attempting unskilled brain surgery and other difficult tasks.

Its pretty common for people to vary difficulties based on situation as well as type of task, in my experience. Climbing a cliff may be Fair sometimes, but if there is sleet pouring down in a wind storm, Great is probably a more appropriate difficulty.