Fudge Fate Zombie Dice + Damage Rolls

[Tom H.]

I just realized that you can use the four yellow dice from Steve Jackson Zombie Dice to easily simulate Fudge/Fate dice.

Yellow Die Description:
Side: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
Symbol: B, B, F, F, S, S
Fudge: +, +, 0, 0, -, -

Abbreviations:
B = Brain
F = Footprints
S = Shotgun

I needed some fudge dice for a new experimental RPG damage mechanic I'm toying with.

In my plan, damage will just be rated with a single number rather than a range or number of dice.

However, I still want some variance to keep damage from being too deterministic.

After damage is incurred, I plan to vary it slightly, plus or minus, using a fudge dice roll.

Although my statistics are not based on GURPS, here is a comparison example using a GURPS weapon.

GURPS:
Auto Pistol, .45
Damage Rating: 2d pi+
Range: 2 - 12

My Style:
Auto Pistol, .45
Damage Rating: 7
Range: 3 - 11 (after applying fudge roll)

What's really cool about the Zombie Dice is that they let me experiment with a variation to fudge dice that I wanted to customize.

I can substitute a number of green or red Zombie dice for yellow ones to adjust damage probabilities.

More green dice make damage above 7 (in the preceding example) more likely. I could use them to represent more effective ammunition for example.

Green Die Description:
Side: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
Symbol: B, B, B, F, F, S
Fudge Warp: +, +, +, 0, 0, -

Red Die Description:
Side: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
Symbol: B, F, F, S, S, S
Fudge Warp: +, 0, 0, -, -, -

This reminds me very slightly of my Fantasy Flight Star Wars dice in which competing dice in the pool can not only cancel each other but they come in different "strengths".

Here is an old post where I summarize the way the much more sophisticated Star Wars/Genesys dice work.

[Tom H.]

P.S.

For anyone not familiar with fudge dice:

You roll four of them. A '+' result on a die will cancel a '-' result on another die. You end up with a final outcome of a number anywhere between -4 and +4 with 0 being the most probable.

[Anaraxes]

As your chart shows, it's pretty easy to read a regular d6 as a dF.

The Genesys dice are a little asymmetrical -- probably intentionally so, so the expected result is "success at a cost". An even number of ability dice and difficulty dice average out at 1 success and 1 threat. *The actual result may vary widely, of course.) Other than that, the "good" and "bad" dice are more or less symmetrical. I don't know of an easier way to read them with ordinary dice than to use the chart in the Genesys Core book. You could reorder the faces to make them a little easier to remember, but still a lot of memorization.