Cinematic Damage Alternatives
If you're looking for a swashbuckling or cinematic feel to your game, try out one these two options. Not only will they provide relief from the "death spiral," but they can get your players more involved in spicing up the combat. Yet they're simple to use and will keep the flow of combat going smoothly. If "Hit Points in Disguise" isn't for you, be sure to read "Dramatic Events" further down. The two systems each stand alone, and "Dramatic Events" will knock your socks off... which avoids a point of damage!
A common grievance heard from people trying to use Fudge in more cinematic settings is the so-called "Death Spiral." As wound penalties and wound overflow combine, it becomes very difficult for a character to win a fight without drawing first blood. There's nothing wrong with that system, and some might say its more realistic, but its not hard to think of genres and settings where that sort of "grit" isn't the norm. How can we make Fudge combat more "fantastic" or "cinematic" while still keeping it simple?
Hit Points in Disguise
One possibility is to add an additional pool of points that players could spend to reduce the effects of damage. These can be labeled as appropriate to setting... Endurance, Wind, Luck, Action, Fate, and so on. As wounds are taken by the character, the player may choose to spend a point to reduce the severity of the wound by one level (Very Hurt to Hurt, for example). Once these are gone, or when the player doesn't spend them, the wound results proceed as normal. These points should recover at a fairly quick rate once the fight is over.
The initial size of the pool should vary with setting and character. In many settings, primary characters should have a larger supply, while "mooks" or minor characters might not have any. Since every group is different, its difficult to make firm recommendations for numbers of points. That said, if the points are only being used for wounds, I have trouble seeing more than twenty points being useful for anything but making fights take an excruciating amount of time. I tend to think something closer to ten, perhaps modified by Attributes, being more effective.
The advantage of this system is that it's quick and dirty. It will tend to make characters more brave, because it will likely alter the players' combat decisions. The primary disadvantage is that it doesn't directly add any cinema or drama to the situation. That burden still falls primarily on the players and GM. That is to say, when a player spends points to reduce a wound, there is no requirement that they describe how they are doing it. The wound just "gets reduced."
Dramatic Events
Combat in cinematic environments can have many results beyond merely wounding your opponent. Swords are knocked over cliffs. A missed shot starts a fire near the fuel tank. Shields are shattered. A cascade of blows drives a warrior to the edge of the bridge. The Nazi grenade blasts the heroes back into the field. In many games, these events are turned into special abilities that characters collect and invoke as they gain experience. This method runs up against advancement systems in Fudge, and makes things perhaps even more complicated in that area. Furthermore, Fudge requires a lot of work on from the GM as it is. Adding an entire system of Gifts and Faults to handle all the possible things you might want to do in combat seems a bit much.
Instead, using the chart below, let the players buy off their characters' imminent wounds with some of this drama. The events are available to all characters, except perhaps minor "cannon fodder" characters like City Guardsmen, Orcish Raiders, Zombies, etc. Tougher or more highly-skilled characters will use them less often, as their abilities will take care of themselves. The GM is also free to forbid a particular usage if it doesn't meet with the spirit of the event, character, or common sense. These events should still act as penalties, just not the wound penalties that lead directly to the dreaded "Death Spiral." Optionally, you may allow players to use more than one event on a given wound. If so, they must take the maximum result from a category before choosing another. (So a seven point explosion might be absorbed by a Knock Back, Instant Doom, and Disarm, but a three point hit cannot be absorbed by a Driven Back, Cosmetic Damage, and Set Piece Damage.)
| Dramatic Events | Damage Points Absorbed | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Event Category | 1 | 2 | 3 |
| Weapon Trouble | Disarm | Disarm Plus | Weapon Destroyed |
| Position | Driven Back | Knock Down | Knock Back |
| Equipment | Cosmetic Damage | Equipment Damage | Equipment Destroyed |
| Environment | Set Piece Damage | Impending Doom | Instant Doom |
| Social | Awkward Moment | Embarrassment | Utter Humiliation |
Event Descriptions
- Weapon Trouble: The basic Disarm means exactly that. You drop your weapon. It doesn't go flying anywhere special, just dropped, but it will take precious time to pick it back up. Disarm Plus is a little bit more. Your weapon gets knocked well away from you, or gets grabbed by your enemy. Weapon Destroyed is pretty self-explanatory, but it also would apply to a weapon irretrievably lost.
- Position: If you are Driven Back, your opponent forcibly repositions you. (Probably not to your advantage, either.) If you trip, get tripped, slip, stumble or otherwise lose your footing and end up prone, he scored a Knock Down. A combination of both those, particularly suitable to explosions and the like, is the Knock Back. Not only does it leave you prone, but it also moves you in a direction of your opponent's choosing. It should be noted that any time a character is rendered prone, villains are likely to start monologing about their nefarious schemes.
- Equipment: The equipment in question must be of significant import, or there must be a lot of it. So you may not have anything particularly important in the backpack, but having all your rations crushed and useless will still cause you difficulty. Certain equipment may be exempt for plot purposes.
- Environment: When you select Set Piece Damage some piece of the scenery or item in the scene is damaged significantly. This damage is inversely proportional to its potential utility. (Who weeps for the ficus?) Impending Doom occurs when your clumsy fighting sets off the first in a chain of events that will make the area generally unhealthy. This can be a fire starting, the radiation shields collapsing, the warp core alarm starting to chime, etc. Instant Doom is even worse, something really bad happens. Perhaps the bridge starts to collapse, or a wave of water crashes through the window. Whatever it is, it significantly changes the battlefield and threatens innocent bystanders.
- Social: This isn't appropriate for every game, but games set in Swashbuckling eras, Shuojo anime, or other settings might find it useful. For all three results, the victim suffers a loss of social prestige and coolness for some time to come. This might affect future attempts to influence others, or promotion, or romantic inclinations. An Awkward Moment might earn the character some teasing at a later time. An Embarrassment might do the same, but it would also leave the character vulnerable or hurt emotionally. Utter Humiliation shatters the character's self-esteem and ruins his confidence (or the confidence others have in the character.)
This system has the advantage of giving the players some say in the narration of the fight without leaving the GM uninspired. It also has the advantage of actually adding drama to the combat. The only real disadvantage might occur when two closely-matched characters duel. If neither character can get a "solid hit" on the other, all their blows could theoretically be absorbed by their surroundings. If this becomes problematic, the GM could just drop the table for the duration of that contest.
It should also be noted that other Event Categories might be added in some settings. I could easily imagine adding a "Wild Magic" row. However, this would be for more flavor reasons than it would for effect. Most of the possible results from such a row are included in one of the above categories, and any could be narrated as the result of "Wild Magic." I could see a specialized category for characters with certain weaknesses. Perhaps barbarians, lycanthropes, superheroes, or special equipment have certain special problems that erupt under stressful situations.
Combining the Two
There is no particular reason not to use both Points and Dramatic Events. Certainly I would recommend using a very limited number of points, but the two systems could work well implemented side by side. To limit the extent to which the Dramatic Events option can drag out a fight, Points could be required to use Dramatic Events, forcing the combat to a head when a character runs out of points. However you choose to use them, these options are sure to bring some "cinematic spice" to your combats.
