Visceral Baroque: A System For the Cadaverous Earth

[Steerpike]

How does this sound to people: I scratch build a system using the basic building blocks of FUDGE, making combat substantially more detailed than normal for FUDGE while still maintaining lethality and greater speed than in DnD; I borrow and adapt mechanics from various other sources (grafts, sanity, whatever), tweaking them sufficiently so that they feel integrated into a single system rather than a pastiche of unrelated parts.  Playtest liberally, modify as needed, and ultimately scrap if it isn't working.  The magic system will take the most work but I might borrow some of the overchanneling mechanics from an old Wheel of Time RPG to reflect nectar-overload.

I'm acquiring PDFs of TROS as we speak, so if it totally blows my mind and proves adaptable I'll either pirate its combat system or use that as my base instead, heavily modified.

Sound like a plan?

[LordVreeg]

Sounds like a great plan.

[Llum]

Wheel of Time RPG... that sounds familiar. GL Steerpike, the only thing that raises a flag to me is that it seems very pastiche or mix and match. Could potentially cause some conflict.

If you need any help, or a sounding board, I'm usually around.

[Steerpike]

I'm going to try my best to aviod the mix-and-max while still keeping my eyes open for useful ideas.  Most likely all of them will be fully translated into FUDGE/Visceral-Baroque terms rather than simply ripped from their parent systems and stapled together.  Although frankly that image suits CE rather well, if you think about it (graftpunks, waxborn, half a dozen of my other chimerae).

I'll definitely be referring to the Guild frequently as I build this, and its almost certainly going to take quite awhile.  I'm not going to stop writing fluff for CE or working on my other projects (Goblin and Xell, right now) and I already don't have a superabundance of time; that said I've gotten pretty attached to CE and FUDGE is purpose-made to be easy to use and build systems out of, so the first larval stages of Visceral-Baroque may be appearing soon.

Thanks everyone for their help so far.  Any commentss, suggestions, criticisms, etc can all still go here, or if you happen to know of a system that hasn't been mentioned that'd be perfect for CE, post that here too.

[Llum]

Is this the system you're using Steerpike? Or do you have a newer commercial version?

[Steerpike]

That's the version I was thinking of using, yes; as a starting point, at least.

[Superfluous Crow]

I'm looking forward to seeing how it works out.
my biggest problem with fudge really are those annoying dice...

[beejazz]

If you want you can replace the fudge dice with 1d4-1d4 or 1d6-1d6 and get similar results. Of course, in either case the range of results is one off (-3 to +3 for d4s, -5 to +5 for d6s) but the dice are more easily available, especially if you go for d6s.

[Superfluous Crow]

Instead of subtracting you could just roll two d4/d6 (one black for bad luck and one white for good luck) and then the lowest roll counts (black is a penalty and if they are equal it's zero).
Less math and probably a more interesting visual. I'm considering using that system in some way myself.

[beejazz]

Instead of subtracting you could just roll two d4/d6 (one black for bad luck and one white for good luck) and then the lowest roll counts (black is a penalty and if they are equal it's zero).
Less math and probably a more interesting visual. I'm considering using that system in some way myself.

The results are pretty drastically different from fudge, though, aren't they? If that's the basis, the subtraction thing would be closer and maybe easier to adapt. And it leaves most rolls as 1, 2, or 3. Not a lot of variability there.

But elaborating on your example... take a bigger die... maybe in the d8 to d12 range. Take the lower if you're untrained and the higher if you're trained. As for take the lower/higher, I don't know that a color difference is as necessary as it would be with subtraction.

[Superfluous Crow]

The black/white version gives exactly the same probabilities as the subtraction method. You had me doubt it for a second there, but i checked with excel and they are just spread out in a different pattern. :)

[beejazz]

The black/white version gives exactly the same probabilities as the subtraction method. You had me doubt it for a second there, but i checked with excel and they are just spread out in a different pattern. :)

I am... not understanding then... you said you'd roll two dice and take the lowest? In that case to start with only 1 through 4 (or 1 through 6) would be possible, as opposed to -3 through 3 (or -5 through 5).

[Superfluous Crow]

No, you take the lowest and the black dice is a "bad die" i.e. it gives a penalty. So if you roll a White 1 and a Black 4 you get +1 but if you roll a black 5 and a white 6 you get -5.
Wouldn't be very fudgy if there were no penalties ^^
Sorry, should probably have explained it better

[beejazz]

No, you take the lowest and the black dice is a "bad die" i.e. it gives a penalty. So if you roll a White 1 and a Black 4 you get +1 but if you roll a black 5 and a white 6 you get -5.
Wouldn't be very fudgy if there were no penalties ^^
Sorry, should probably have explained it better

Ah, I see. That does work. And using d4s it would give a range identical to fudge dice too. Nice.

[Superfluous Crow]

The result of many hours of theorising about how to best get a negative die result ^^