Game Overview

Blood, Sweat & Steel  is a Fudge-based Sword & Sorcery tabletop RPG. The game is designed to be a more "traditional" RPG, with a nod towards "old school" gaming, in that GM and player roles are pretty clearly defined. The GM describes what is happening, and the Players react and act with their Characters. Whenever a conflict arises where the outcome is uncertain, Players describe what their Character are going to do, and they roll dice to determine what happens.

Characters

Characters are primarily composed of 4 traits:

• Attributes - These are universal traits that act both as general Skills, and to determine how Characters react to different situations.
• Agility - manual dexterity and athletic ability
• Awareness - self-awareness of one's surroundings and perception
• Brains - intelligence and reasoning skills
• Brawn - brute strength
• Guts - toughness, fortitude and the ability to resist pain and disease
• Will - willpower and mental toughness
• Skills - These are the typical things that Characters will do in the game. Skills are the most commonly used Character traits
• Brawling - fighting without weapons, using hands, feet, elbows, knees, etc.
• Contacts - the ability of finding the 'right' people capable of helping the Character
• Cunning - the art of lying and deception
• First Aid - treating wounds, poison & disease, stabilizing the dying, long term care
• Insight - being able to understand someone's motives and agenda, what they're thinking & feeling
• Intimidate - getting one's way by creating awe or fear in another
• Investigate - finding hidden things, clues and information important to the Character
• Lore - knowledge that is typically learned information, found in books, stories, etc.
• Melee Weapons - any handheld weapons
• Ranged Weapons - thrown weapons and projectile weapons
• Rapport - the ability to quick bond with and befriend strangers
• Ride - riding and controlling mounted creatures, including teams
• Sorcery - the dark art of summoning supernatural creatures, mind control, seeing into the future and other mystical things
• Stealth - being able to move quietly and undetected, hiding, and evading capture
• Survival - finding food & shelter in the wild, hunting, fishing, camping, tracking and navigating difficult environments
• Thieving - stealing & breaking into places; making and disarming traps, picking pockets
• Talents - Talents are basically ways in which the Character uses their Skills in unique ways. Talents allow the Player to bend the rules in order to showcase things their Characters are particularly good at doing. There are 3 types of Talents:
• Concentration - a narrower use of a Skill that provides a +1 bonus in certain situations
• Specialization - an even narrower use of a Skill that provides a +2 bonus in specific situations
• Benefit - not usually a mechanical bonus, but provides the Character with access to resources unavailable to others
• Qualities - Qualities are brief phrases that help to describe the Character in a unique way, These Qualities can be used by Players to gain a benefit when they spend a Fortune Point, or they can allow the GM to challenge their Characters in order to earn a Fortune Point.