I gamemastered my first game of
FUDGE today, and had a great time. Four players and I played through the first part of a dungeon crawl in a creepy crypt. I stocked a dungeon map by
Dyson Logos (players, don't go looking!) with stuff I thought made sense and guessed on stats for some monsters (the descriptive nature of FUDGE really helped here).
I didn't get any pictures while we were playing, but I set up the tiles again afterward. The tiles are D&D tiles that I got as a Christmas gift, and I really like them. I need a better way to organize them in the box because I spent way too much time trying to find the ones I needed. The miniatures are from my collection (mostly old Warhammer miniatures, but some D&D and Ral Partha too), and the giant centipedes are from the dollar store.
Here's the chunk of the dungeon they managed to explore, as it was before they entered. When we were playing I added areas as they were revealed by opening doors, etc.
The first thing they faced were a swarm of giant centipede things that had been nesting in and feeding on the corpses in wall-niches (marked with red dots). The adventurers tried to hold the door shut, but the angry worms pushed their way in and attacked.
The party took care of the bugs, but their ex-blacksmith tank character had taken a wound. Lucky for him he had a high tolerance for pain so it didn't slow him down.
They were more careful about barging in after that, and walked past a room with some armored guardians lurking motionless in the corners and explored more of the crypt. They found a statue with a suspicious amulet, but the danger sense of one of the party warned them before they caused problems by actually touching the amulet :)
Unable to resist the room with the guardians and the altar that they could see on the far side of the room, they attempted to get at it without entering the room using a fishing rod and hook. Seriously. Due to a character who was an expert fisherman and some good dice rolls they managed to hook the altar...but then knocked it over awakening the guardians.
The party managed to hold one of the double-doors closed so they only had to fight one of the guardians at a time and they were eventually victorious.
I had a great time running the game, and I think the players enjoyed it too. Fudge is an interesting system, and I like how the mechanics made the game feel. We definitely have some learning to do, and I need to figure out how best to handle simultaneous combat rounds and combat with multiple characters and monsters.
Fudge cries out to have broader games than just dungeon-crawling played with it though. The players had made characters that had flaws and gifts that were not very relevant to combat situations. Or skills for that matter. I suspect that would even out over multiple sessions, even in a dungeon-crawl kind of game, but it didn't in the short session we ran through here.
