Omar's GURPS/FUDGE Conversion Notes

Contents

Trait Conversions
GURPS modifiers to FUDGE difficulty

GURPS supplements published by Steve Jackson Games are great. They are frequently well written and packed with useful information and background. They are useful not only for GURPS players, but for players of other systems. This is especially true for FUDGE. I'm trying to collet here my notes on using GURPS rules with FUDGE, to make importing such rules as easy as possible.

GURPS sometimes gets criticized as the rules-lawyer-and-spreadsheet RPG. Munchkins love to point optimize their character, abusing the spirit of the rules while staying completely within the letter of the rules. All of this gives GURPS a bad name. Really, though, it's not like that. Many good GURPS players take a much more rational approach to the game. They don't always stick absolutely to the rules for everything, and consult six rulebooks on every small point. Rather, they play things loose and reasonable, not letting the rules get in the way of the game. However, when on those occasions when they want a rule for something, GURPS is likely to have one, and a good one. You can apply the same to FUDGE. Because there aren't a whole lot of materials published specifically for FUDGE, if you want some sort of rules guidelines on something, you could do worse than importing a GURPS rule into FUDGE.

The 9-Level Fudge conversions below are for a variant of Fudge that gives slightly finer granularity where it's needed most, i.e. around the "Fair/Good" range where most significant character skills rest. The levels in 9-level Fudge are "Terrible, Poor, Medicore, Fair, Pretty Good, Good, Very Good, Great, Superb".

GURPS/FUDGE Trait Conversions

The 3-18 trait conversions listed in section 6.11, "Conversion Hints," of FUDGE, aren't great as discussed in Steffan O'Sullivan's "Latest thoughts by the author". However, myself I'm not entirely happy with the table presented there, when I compare the probability of success for 4dF in FUDGE and 3d6 in GURPS. Consequently, I have my own conversion table here. I will probably have second thoughts and change this later, of course.

==========================    ==================================
  GURPS Skill  Fudge Trait      GURPS Skill  9-Level Fudge Trait
==========================    ==================================
      21+        Legendary          21+        Legendary        
    17-20        Superb           18-20        Superb           
    15-16        Great            16-17        Great            
--------------------------    ----------------------------------
    13-14        Good                15        Very Good        
    11-12        Fair                14        Good             
     8-10        Mediocre         12-13        Pretty Good      
--------------------------    ----------------------------------
      5-7        Poor             10-11        Fair             
      0-4        Terrible           8-9        Mediocre         
==========================          5-7        Poor             
                              ----------------------------------
                                    0-4        Terrible         
                              ==================================

GURPS modifiers to FUDGE difficulty

In FUDGE, most tasks you'd actually roll for are considered to be of Fair difficulty. You must get a Fair or better result on your skill or attribute roll in order to succeed. In GURPS, you have to roll dice equal to or lower than your skill level in order to succeed at a task. Harder tasks or easier tasks come with negative or positive modifiers to your skill level. Hence, unmodified GURPS skill rolls would correspond to a FUDGE task of Fair difficulty. Modifiers to the GURPS roll should correspond to an increased or decreased difficulty of the task in FUDGE.

This table should not be considered mathematically correct. I didn't create it by consulting probability calculations. Rather, I eyed my trait conversions table above, and did what "seemed" right. This is a qualitative conversion, not a rigorously quantitative conversion.

Rather than going into Superb+n levels of difficulty, you may decide that anything with a GURPS modifier of worse than -14 is impossible. (You may also decide to set the cutoff at -10.)

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GURPS Roll Modifier    Fudge Difficulty
=======================================
 better than +10         (Automatic success)   
 +7 to +10                Terrible     
 +4 to +6                 Poor         
---------------------------------------
 +2 to +3                 Mediocre     
 -1 to +1                 Fair         
 -3 to -2                 Good         
---------------------------------------
 -6 to -4                 Great        
-10 to -7                 Superb       
-14 to -11                Superb+1     
---------------------------------------
 each additional -4         +1         
=======================================



===============================================
GURPS Roll Modifier    9-Level Fudge Difficulty
================================================
 better than +10         (Automatic success)
 +7 to +10                Terrible     
 +4 to +6                 Poor         
---------------------------------------
 +2 to +3                 Mediocre     
 -1 to  0                 Fair         
 -2 to -3                 Pretty Good
---------------------------------------
       -4                 Good
       -5                 Very Good
 -7 to -6                 Great        
---------------------------------------
-10 to -8                 Superb       
-14 to -11                Superb+1     
---------------------------------------
 each additional -4         +1         
=======================================