GM Tips: Improvising with Blood, Sweat & Steel

Hard and Easy Checks in Blood, Sweat & Steel

Folks, I just had an epiphany. I've been doing a lot of research of new gaming trends recently, and I discovered the easy/normal/hard mechanic in some games, which makes it easier for GMs to adjust their difficulties and the game, on the fly. In D&D, they've added "Advantage" and Disadvantage" to the game, allowing the GM to make a particular check easier or harder, on the fly. Index Card RPG does something similar by adding a "hard and easy" rule. To make a roll "hard", simply increase the difficulty by 3. To make it easier, lower the difficulty by 3. Both of these mechanics allow the GM to adjust their games on the fly, or even run a completely improvised game.

It then dawned on me that Fudge is designed to work in exactly the same way! You can scale every single Check in the game to the character by following this simple mechanic:

• Normal Check = the Difficulty is equal to the PC's Skill/Attribute
• Hard Check = the Difficulty is +1 higher than the PC's Skill/Attribute
• Easy Check = the Difficulty is -1 lower than the PC's Skill/Attribute

A Normal Check is going to have a 62% chance of success. A Hard Check will have a 38% chance of success, and an Easy Check will have an 82% chance of success. This gives you a great range of probabilities to choose from to scale things appropriately.

You can even add Very Hard  and Very Easy to really round things out:

• Very Hard Check = the Difficulty is +2 higher than the PC's Skill/Attribute
• Very Easy Check = the Difficulty is -2 lower than the PC's Skill/Attribute

A Very Hard Check has a 19% chance of success, while a Very Easy Check has a 93% of success.

Using this approach allows you to scale your adventure to the PC's in the story, ensuring that the challengings stay fun and interesting, and don't become too easy or impossible.

Example: The party needs to break into the king's chamber to steal a letter on his desk. The PC with the highest Thieving Skill is Good [+1]. If this is a normal part of the story and essential to the plot, the GM may decide to make it a Normal Check. But in this case, the GM decides that the adventure has been going a little too easily to this point, so he's going to make it a Hard Check, setting the Difficulty at Great [+2]. If this was a side quest for the PC's and not essential to the story, the GM might just make it an Easy Check at Fair [0].

This simple approach allows you to basically play Blood, Sweat & Steel improvisationally.

Add together this simple word-based system for zones and ranges, and you can basically play Blood, Sweat & Steel on the fly, without mini's or maps!

Word-Based Zones and Movement

Since Blood, Sweat & Steel already uses words and adjectives in the game, this is an easy system to add to your game. Instead of having Zones, Barriers and Movement on a terrain map with mini's, you use a list of words to describe everyone's relative positions, and how they can move between them.

Instead of using top-down maps and tokens, use the following words to describe everyone's relative position:

• Engaged (Opponents are physically engaged with each other)
• Near (Opponents are in Melee Range)
• Close (Opponents are in ranged distance, but close to each other)
• Far (Opponents are in ranged distance, -1 to ranged attacks)
• Very Far (Opponents are in ranged distance, -2 to ranged attacks)

For movement, a PC can move from one state to another and still act, but at a -1 to their action. Alternatively, a PC can move 2 states, but not act. Close emulates being 1 Zone away. Far emulates being a couple of zones away, and Very Far is 3 or more Zones away.

Example: Grognor the barbarian wants to attack the thief that just took his coin purse and ran, but he's currently Close to the thief. So Grognor is goingto move from Close to Near, and try to attack the thief, at a -1 to his action. The thief takes advantage of the distance and intends to throw his dagger at the barbarian, hopefully hitting the barbarian before he gets his skull crushed.

By just implementing these 2 simple subsystems you can basically play Blood, Sweat & Steel  on the fly, with almost no preparation. 

All of that said, I still prefer the default rules for running and playing my games, but I love the option of being able to play a more fast and loose version of the game. The more options we have to play, the more opportunities we'll have as well!

Please let me know if you give either or both of these subsystems a go, and tell me what you think! Game on!