Game Mastering FUGU

So, you picked up the FUGU and want to slice it and dice it to cook up a game. Here some advice to avoid poison bites.

Where can I find some settings and adventures?

FUGU is designed to work out of the box for settings written for Fudge, and for Fate with minimal conversion.

The FudgeRpg Subreddit contains enough links to resources to get lost in.

A lively community of enthousiasts is hanging out and sharing knowledge on the Fudge Discord Server.

Of course, the best source for a setting is your imagination!

How can I decide which classes, powers and equipment are available to starting PCs?

Many games have extensive lists of classes, races, powers and equipment, trying to cover anything and making PC creation a chore similar to filing tax returns. You could use those list converting all the stats from the original system to FUGU.

Or you could start simple using the following method:

Think about the four “roles” that a PC can have in the story:

• Face
• Muscle
• Scout
• Specialist

Now relate this to the setting you chose. For example, a Specialist in a SF setting could be a hacker, and in a Sword & Sorcery setting a spellcaster.

Now think about what powers and equipment are available to them. Once you do this for each of the 4 roles, you’ll be able to cover most of the ideas that players will come up for their PC’s Class.

how do I build NPCs?

NPCs can have any characteristic as Player Charachters, but usually you want to keep it simpler:

Think about a class (thug, shopkeeper, vampire lord), give them 2-3 skills, some equipment and possession if needed (those things that murderous players usually call “loot”).

Then think about a “default behaviour” for them. For a Thug NPC it could be:

“guard the door of the safehouse arrogantly until you get injured, then run for your life”.

Keep in mind that combat in FUGU is quite lethal: a Thug of Fair Strength with a Fair weapon (like a dagger) will inflict 2 Damage Points per hit: that can Hurt a PC in 1 blow, and Incapacitate him in 2.

Are there any more rules and stats for FUGU?

Yes, as many as you want. Depending on the setting you want to run, you could need rules for magic, vehicles, spaceships, tax returns and so on.

Peruse the resources linked above, or improvise.

What about Fudge (or FATE) points mechanics?

That’s something I didn’t deem necessary for FUGU: the standard way to give an edge to PCs over their adversaries is the “Act with Grit” rule, that lets players spend Stamina to “cheat on the dice”.

If a setting requires it, you could introduce another kind of point system to be used instead (or together with) the extra effort: call it Mana, Luck, Destiny, Karma or whatever, it is best decided based on the setting.

What is “good roleplaying” in FUGU?

You decide that. How much should a player put himself in the shoes of a PC?

After all, a player engaging in some Very Dramatic Roleplaying can be boring instead of fun, if it reduces the space for other players, or if it becomes a straightjacket for what the PC can or cannot do.

Good Roleplaying is the one that maximizes engagement and fun in the gaming group.

And remember the Saitama Rule!!!

How should I behave towards the PCs?

1. Challenge them, but…
2. Keep in mind that the PCs are the Hero Protagonists of the situation…
3. And try to maximize the fun in the gaming group. GM included.

Bottom line: the GM doesn’t play against the PCs… unless the players enjoy the antagonistic style of play.

Conversions from other RPG systems

You could use FUGU to run modules and adventures from other systems, but you will need to do some conversions.

Skill or attribute levels

The first part, is to map the “stats” of the other system to the skills in FUGU. The relationship will almost for sure not be one-to-one. A Large Language Model can help you with that. Once you’ve done this, you can convert the scores.

Here is a table to convert skill (or attributes) levels between FUGU, Fudge GURPS and other popular systems.

This excellent article provides further conversions from GURPS to other game systems.

Health Points, Damage, Armor

There is no need to convert these from “vanilla” Fudge to FUGU:

• HP are deducted from a Fudge attribute like “vitality”, that converts to the “Strength” skill as above
• the Offensive Factor of a weapon can be used as its Damage Points, one to one
• the same holds for the Defensive Factor and Armor Points

Converting from other system is trickier, but here are approximate conversions to GURPS, D6 system: The conversion from GURPS is relatively straightforward:

• HP: subtract 6 points
• Armor: divide by 2, rounding up
• Damage: 2 points per dice, plus/min 1 if there is a modifier

The conversion from D&D 5e and similar is the most difficult:

• HP: as you might know, in D&D your hit points increase with experience. Scrap that, just convert the Constitution attribute to FUGU level and calculate HP from that. In case of monsters, you could apply a X2 to X5 scale
• Armor: (Armor Class-10)/2, round it down.
• Damage (for PCs and human-scale NPCs): convert abilities, skills and equipment to FUGU, and calculate from that
• Damage (for monsters, spells etc.): (average damage form roll)/3

Here are the conversion tables:

Traits and powers that don’t translate to a skill or other stat

Here you’ll have to improvise, mainly using Gifts and Faults. Again, a Large Language Model can help.