FRINGE: Basics 0.1

FRINGE: Basics 0.1

Copyright (c) 2003-2004 The Free Roleplaying Community

This document is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This document is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this document; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA.

Legal

FRINGE is a liberated, free content roleplaying system. That means, unlike many other roleplaying games, anyone can use the material published here for any purpose. You can write you own supplementary material, copy the rules verbatim. You can even use our rules as basis for your own, custom roleplaying games.

There are some rules for republishing or creating derivative or modified versions of this work. FRINGE: Basics is published under the GNU General Public License, or GPL. The GPL is a copyleft, free content license. This means that anyone is free to use the copyrighted material here, re-print this work, or publish supplementary material based upon the this work and the rules outlined here so long as they do so according to the terms of the GPL. One of the conditions being that they also release any derivative works under the GPL. There are other conditions for republishing or modifying this work and you should carefully read the license before you use any of the material here. A copy of the license is published in Appendix: GNU General Public License.

Note: For the purpose of applying the GPL to this document, I consider "source code" to refer to the OpenOffice.org Writer document and "object code" to refer to the generated HTML, PDF and/or postscript files.

Authors

FRINGE is published by the Free Roleplaying Community as free content. The following individuals, listed in alphabetical order, have contributed to this production of this document whether by writing content, proof-reading or providing ideas:

Ricardo Gladwell (Project Dictator), James Jensen, Enrique Perez, Jerry Stratton, and Samuel Penn.

Free Roleplaying Community

The Free Roleplaying Community (FRPGC) is a group of roleplayers and game designers dedicated to producing free content for roleplaying game. We support the freedoms of speech, press, and association and, in particular, the right to create roleplaying material unimpeded by private monopolies. We believe that all material for roleplaying games, particular the rule systems and game mechanics, should be freely and openly shared with the whole roleplaying community.

The FRPGC also sets out to write and support free roleplaying content. To enable this we publish the FRINGE roleplaying system and various compatible supplementary material.

Finally, we act as an advocacy group to promote free content in the roleplaying community. For more information please see our web-site:

http://www.freeroleplay.org/

Acknowledgements

No system is created in a vacuum, and FRINGE inevitably takes inspiration from all those roleplaying games that came before it. In particular, I would like to single out the Circe roleplaying game, written by Bryce Harrington for the Worldforge project, and YAGS system written by Samuel Penn. Both are excellent examples of free content games and come highly recommended.

Table of Contents

Legal	2

Authors	2

Free Roleplaying Community	2

Acknowledgements	2

Chapter 1: Introduction	6

What is a Roleplaying Game?	6

Design criteria	6

Version 0.1: Grease Monkey	6

Glossary	6

Chapter 2: Basic Rules	9

Traits	9

Primary Traits	9

Secondary Traits	9

Unique Traits	9

Action Rolls	10

Roll Notation	10

Summary	10

Degree of Success	11

Example	11

Opposed Action Rolls	11

Automatic Success	12

Incremental Actions	12

Chapter 3: Character	13

Roles	13

Designing Roles	13

Character Points	13

Base Roles	14

Weak	14

Normal	14

Heroic	15

Primary Roles	15

Secondary Roles	15

Basic Character Creation	15

Character Concept	16

Choosing Primary Role(s)	16

Select Abilities	16

Lowering Abilities Below Average	16

Choosing Secondary Role(s)	17

Select Skills	17

Select Unique Traits	17

Spend Character Points	17

Determine Secondary Traits	17

Chapter 4: Basic Traits	18

Primary Traits	18

Abilities	18

Describing Abilities	18

Agility	18

Intelligence	19

Stamina	19

Strength	19

Presence	19

Wits	19

Skills	19

Specialisations	19

Describing Skills	20

Basic Skills	20

Acrobatics	20

Animal	20

Athletics	21

Charm	21

Culture	21

Melee	22

Perform	22

Persuasion	22

Sense	22

Sleight	23

Speak	23

Stealth	23

Region	23

Swim	23

Vehicle	23

Weapon	24

Write	24

Secondary Traits	25

Defence	25

Endurance	25

Health	26

Passion	26

Reflexes	26

Size	26

Speed	27

Will	27

Unique Traits	27

Unique Trait Descriptions	28

Advantages	28

Acute Hearing	28

Acute Sight	28

Attractive	28

Ambidextrous	29

Disadvantages	29

Blindness	29

Immobile	29

Lame	29

Missing Arm or Hand	29

Missing Leg	29

Poor Hearing	30

Poor Sight	30

Ugly	30

Reputations	30

Creating Reputations	30

Personality Traits	31

Using Personality Traits	31

Buying Personality Traits	31

Specialities	32

Focuses	32

Control Checks	32

Personality Trait Descriptions	32

Basic Personality Traits	32

Anger	32

Calm	33

Caprice	33

Compassion	33

Constancy	33

Courage	33

Fear	33

Hate	33

Humility	34

Joy	34

Love	34

Melancholy	34

Pride	34

Selfish	34

Sensual	34

Stoic	35

Creating Traits	35

Creating Abilities	35

Creating Skills	35

Creating Advantages and Disadvantages	35

Creating Roll Bonuses/Penalties	35

Creating Prohibitions	36

Creating Secondary Trait Bonuses/Penalties	36

Creating Trait Access and Restrictions Bonuses/Penalties	36

Creating Personality Traits	36

Chapter 5: Systems	37

Basic Combat	37

Initiative	37

Combat Actions	37

Attack	37

Dodge	38

Move	38

Damage	38

Exertion	38

Size Differences	38

Surprise	38

Equipment	39

Armour	39

Weapons	39

Encumbrance	40

Movement	40

Combat Movement	40

Running	40

Overland Movement	41

Appendix I: Index	42

Appendix II: GNU General Public License	43

How to Apply These Terms to Your New Programs	46

Index of Tables

Table 1: Sample Difficulties	10

Table 2: Success Points	11

Table 3: Failure Points	11

Table 4: Character Point Conversions	14

Table 5: Low Ability Penalties	16

Table 6: Primary Trait Levels	18

Table 7: Healing Endurance Damage	25

Table 8: Healing Health Damage	26

Table 9: Sizes	27

Table 10: Reputation Frequency	30

Table 11: Personality Trait Levels	31

Table 12: Frequency Multipliers for Roll Modifiers	36

Table 13: Prohibition Costs	36

Table 14: Secondary Trait Frequencies	36

Table 15: Attack Roll Modifiers	38

Table 16: Encumbrance Levels	40

Chapter 1: Introduction

This document presents the basic rules and mechanics for FRINGE – the 'FRee and INtegrated Game Engine' – a free content roleplaying system, with simple, flexible and extensible rules.

The rest of this document is divided into the following chapters:

Chapter 2: Basic Rules - an introduction to the FRINGE rules system.

Chapter 3: Characters - notes on role and creating your own characters.

Chapter 4: Basic Traits - detailed descriptions of the basic traits.

Chapter 5: Systems - various system complications for movement and combat.

What is a Roleplaying Game?

A roleplaying game, or RPG, is a story telling game where participants (called players) improvise the roles of characters in a fictional setting. It is something like a mixture of strategy, improvisational theatre, and storytelling.

Normally, roleplaying games are played to a set of rules, and are adjudicated by a games master,or GM. The GM is responsible for portraying the setting and events of the game to the players and ensuring the rules are adhered to. An RPG normally consists of a set or rules and a fictional campaign setting. Roleplaying games are sometimes distinguished from their rules by referring to the rules alone as the roleplaying system.

Design criteria

FRINGE is a roleplaying system for creating your own roleplaying games. When designing FRINGE we had two main objectives in mind: simplicity, flexibility and extensibility. We wanted a game system simple enough that anyone can come along and pick it up, but flexible enough to give rich depth to the gaming experience and to make it easy to add new rules and complications.

To achieve this we focused on a number of system objectives. Primarily, we wanted to avoid rules 'gimmicks' and focused on using tried and tested rules. We creating a simple task resolution mechanic that relies on a single dice roll that can be used to determine the outcomes of all actions. We also use human-readable scales (e.g. 0-5 for primary traits and 0-20 for secondary traits, difficulties and action outcomes) in order to make the system as accessible and simple as possible.

FRINGE supports an action-based, heroic style of play with the emphasis on speed of play, character interaction and story. It is not suited to all kinds of settings or styles of play but can be played across a wide range of genres.

Version 0.1: Grease Monkey

Grease Monkey is the name for the 0.1 pre-release, developmental version of the FRINGE rules. These rules are incomplete and have yet to be play-tested which is where you come in. We invite you to play these rules, use them or even modify them for your own purposes. All we ask is that you let us know how you get on and send any feedback, comments or experiences you have back to us at forge-main@nongnu.org.

Glossary

The following is a lexicon of explaining the definitions of the common terms used by FRINGE:

ability: a type of primary trait describing a character's fundamental characteristics.

action: a single activity carried out by a character, usually requiring an action roll to determine the outcome.

action, combat: a unit of time during a combat round within which a character can complete a single action, such as attempting to hit an opponent.

action, automatic: a reactive action that occurs automatically, usually in instinctive response to the environment. Automatic actions usually take the form of a check such as a perception check.

action, cooperative: an action where other character's can contribute to the outcome.

action, incremental: an action carried out over a long period of time requiring more than one action roll.

action, instant: a simple action that occurs within a round, usually combat based.

advantage: a type of unique trait that imparts some benefit or bonus on a character that possesses it.

campaign: series of stories generally related by the same set of characters and setting.

character: a person or being in a roleplaying game.

character, mastered:

character, player:

check, ability: a roll using only a character's ability without a skill.

check, balance:

check, control:

check, perception:

check, resistance:

d10: short-hand for a ten-sided dice. FRINGE uses ten-sided to resolve action rolls.

disadvantage: a type of unique trait that imparts some penalty on a character that possesses it.

Games Master, the: or GM. The individual in charge of running the roleplaying game and ensuring the rules are adhered to.

play: sometimes called an adventure, is an self-contained set of events generally played over a single session.

points, failure: the degree by which a character failed an action roll.

points, success: the degree by which a character succeeded in an action roll.

role: are packages of traits that represent the various aspects of a character.

role, base: a role defining the basic power level of a character.

role, primary: a role defining a fundamental aspect of a character.

role, secondary: a role defining an aspect of what a character does.

roll, action: a roll to determine the outcome of an action using a d10. Results can be determined as either a success or a failure by calculating the success or failure points achieved. An action in which more than one character is competing requires an opposed action roll.

roll, attack: an action roll to determine if an attack successfully hit its target.

roll, damage: an action roll to determine the damage

round: the amount of time taken to perform a single action. Rounds are mostly used to divide time up in combat.

session: a single sitting of a game, during a which a story, or part thereof, are

scene: a self-contained part of story that occurs in at the same time in roughly the same place.

score, base: the permanent score for a secondary trait.

score, temporary: the temporary score for a secondary trait.

skill: a type of primary trait describing a character's learned characteristics.

skill, category: a skill that can be purchased many times, once for each sub-category defined for it.

trait: characteristics that describe a character.

trait, personality: a type of unique trait that describes a character's personality.

trait, primary: a category of traits that describe what a character can do. Primary traits include abilities and skills.

trait, secondary: a category of traits that are derived from a character's primary traits or abilities.

trait, unique: a category of traits that help make your character more unique.

Chapter 2: Basic Rules

This chapter introduces the basic concepts and rules for FRINGE. First of all we begin with a basic description of the various types of traits and then we complete the chapter with the task resolution mechanics.

Traits

Traits are statistics used to describe you character in game terms. All FRINGE characters have traits which define their abilities, what they can or cannot do, and how good they are at doing it. The precise number of type of traits available to characters depends upon the type of game played, but the traits introduced here should be consistent across all FRINGE games.

The basic traits are divided into three categories: primary traits, secondary traits and unique traits.

Primary Traits

Primary traits describe your physical, mental and learned traits. Primary traits typically have values between 0 to 5, or more. Primary traits are divided into two categories: abilities and skills.

Abilities are the fundamental attributes possessed by all creatures. The six basic abilities are: Agility, Intelligence, Stamina, Strength, Presence and Wits.

Skills are traits that characters are not born with, like abilities, but acquire through experience. They represent fields of expertise or knowledge (such as archery or history), social skills (such as etiquette or lying), or talents (such as singing or balance).

Secondary Traits

While abilities define your characters fundamental characteristics, secondary traits represent what your character can actually do. For example, a character may have high Agility, but it is his Speed secondary trait that determines how fast he can run.

Unlike primary traits, secondary traits are not selected by players during character creation but are determined by other traits. They can also vary widely during play depending on events. For example, a character's secondary Speed trait is determined by his Agility trait and the amount of equipment he is carrying. If a character removes his armour or puts down some other heavy item of equipment his Speed will increase.

The basic secondary traits are Defence, Endurance, Health, Passion, Reflexes, Size, Speed and Will. Secondary traits typically range from 1 to 20, or more.

Unique Traits

Unique traits are a broad category of traits that individualise your character, giving him unusual abilities, quirks or disabilities. Unique traits are divided into the following categories: advantages, disadvantages and personality traits.

Advantages are unique traits that give characters benefits in certain situations. For example the Fame advantage allows players to re-roll action rolls in certain social situations. Similarly disadvantages give players penalties to their actions in certain situations. For example, the Infamous disadvantage imparts a penalty on all rolls in social situations where the character's reputation precedes him.

Finally, personality traits allow you to represent your character's personality, defining his passions, drives and personality quirks.

Action Rolls

Roll Notation FRINGE uses a specific notation when specifying which traits and difficulties to use for a roll. The notation is as follows: Ability + Skill vs. Difficulty Similarly, when specifying an ability check the following notation is used: Ability vs. Difficulty For example, when climbing a wall with a difficulty of 12 to ascend we might write Agility + Acrobatics vs. 12. When making a Strength check against a difficulty of 7 we would write Strength vs. 7. Often your character will want to attempt actions where the outcome is not immediately obvious. For example, trying to solve a complicated puzzle or a challenging an opponent to a duel. Whenever the outcome of an action is risky or possesses an element of randomness players should make an action roll.

If a character is competing with another character actively challenging him/her you should use an opposed action roll (see below).

After determining that a character must make an action roll the GM then selects the most appropriate ability and skill for the task. There are no hard and fast rules as to which abilities and skills to choose. The GM always has the final word on the matter.

In certain cases, the GM might want to check an ability score in a situation where no skill is appropriate. This is called an ability check and in this situation, rather than adding the ability to a skill, the ability is doubled and this is added to the roll.

Table 1: Sample Difficulties	Task	Difficulty
Trivial	3
Easy	7
Average	10
Tricky	13
Difficult	17
Nearly Impossible	20
Next, the GM determines the target difficulty for the roll. Difficulties for range from 1, for very easy tasks, to 20 or more for nigh-impossible tasks. See Table 1: Sample Difficulties for guidelines to assigning difficulties to tasks. There are many factors to take into consideration when selecting a difficulty and various influences can raise or lower the score.

In general, if an action is targeting another character who is not actively defending or some other passive target, such as an inanimate object, the difficulty of the roll might be one of the target's secondary traits.

After selecting the difficulty a 1d10 is rolled and the ability and skill scores are added to the result. Various unique traits can impart other bonuses or penalties to the roll depending upon the situation. If the result is equal to or greater than the difficulty of the roll, the character succeeds, otherwise the character fails:

1d10 + (Ability + Skill or Ability x 2)+ Modifiers greater than or equal to Difficulty

To summarise:

Choose Primary Traits. The GM selects an appropriate ability trait and skill, or just an ability if this is an ability check, for the action.

Determine the Difficulty. Depending on how hard or easy the action is the GM selects an appropriate difficulty between 1 and 20 for the roll.

Roll the Dice. Roll one ten-sided dice and add the ability and skill score to this result. Add any other bonuses that apply from skill specialisations and unique traits.

Determine Result. If the result was equal to or greater than the difficulty the action succeeds, otherwise it fails.

Degree of Success

In many kinds of actions its important not just to determine success or failure, but to determine the degree of success or failure. In FRINGE degree of success is measured in success points and degree of failure in failure points.

If the roll was a success you can determine the degree of success by subtracting the difficulty from the final result of the roll (including ability, skill and other modifiers) to produce the number of success points. See Table 2: Success Points for a rough guide of how to convert success points into results. Similarly, if the roll was a failure you can determine the failure points by subtracting the result of the roll from the difficulty. See Table 3: Failure Points for a guide to determining levels of failure from failure points. In general, success or failure points come in ranges of 1-20. They can also be used in more concrete ways to determine results on secondary traits or express results in units of time, distance, etc.

Table 2: Success Points

Result	Success
1 to 5	Minor success: by the skin of your teeth.
6 to 10	Medium success: a reasonable attempt.
11 to 15	Major success: extraordinarily result.
16 to 20	Critical success: exceed your own expectations.
21 or more	Super-human success: beyond the ability of a normal human.

Table 3: Failure Points

Result	Failure
1 to 5	Minor failure: just didn't make it.
6 to 10	Medium failure: failure
11 to 15	Major failure: something terrible happens.
16 to 20	Critical failure: everything goes disastrously wrong.
21 or more	Catastrophic failure: disaster on a national scale.

Action Roll Example

For example, Ian the Thief attempts to climb a high wall. The GM determines the attribute for this action is Agility, the ability is Acrobatics and the difficulty, normally a tricky action with a difficulty of 13, is 15 because it is a particularly high wall. Given the wall is so high this is as much a challenge of endurance as it is agility, so the ability trait could also be Stamina. But, since Ian is rested, the GM determines that Agility is probably the most appropriate. Ian's Agility score is 3 and his Acrobatics skill is 2. Ian rolls the dice and gets a 5 which gives him a result of 3 + 2 + 5 - 15 = -5 failure points! The GM interprets the results and determines that Ian made it some way up the wall before his grip slipped and he fell. The failure points are interpreted by the GM to be 5 points of falling damage.

Opposed Action Rolls

Opposed Roll Notation The notation for opposed actions rolls is similar to unopposed action rolls as follows: Ability + Skill vs. Ability + Skill Opposed action rolls occur when two actively aware characters are competing with each, such as in a game of chess or during hand-to-hand combat. You also make unopposed action rolls when taking an action against an unaware or otherwise passive character (i.e. trying to hit an opponent who is concentrating on something else).

The GM selects a ability trait, a skill and a difficulty for the roll. If the two characters are working against each other in different ways, the traits used might be different for each character. For example, if two character are racing to reach a piece of treasure and one is running while the other leaps acrobatically through the air the GM would determine the first character roll Agility and Athletics whilst the second would roll Agility and Acrobatics.

Similarly, if action is harder for one character than another due to external reasons the games master might well determine that the difficulties are unequal. For example, if two characters are playing chess against each other than the games master might determine that the difficulties are the same. But if one character is being constantly harassed by a small goblin his difficulty might be +2 higher, for example.

Both characters then make their rolls as per unopposed action rolls, each determining their roll modifier and adding it to a ten-sided dice roll. Whichever character makes his roll wins the opposed action. If both characters succeed, the character with the most success points wins the round. If both characters succeed with the same number of success points or both fail a stalemate is reached. At the GM's discretion the players may continue the opposed action and roll again.

To summarise:

Choose Ability and Skill Traits. The GM selects an appropriate ability traits and skills for the action.

Determine Difficulty. Depending on how hard or easy the action is the games master selects an appropriate difficulties for each character, between 0 and 20.

Roll the Dice. Each player rolls one ten-sided dice and adds his ability and skill score to this result.

Determine Success. Whichever character succeeds wins the opposed action. If both characters succeed, the character with the most success points wins. If both characters have the same number of success points or they both fail it's a stalemate.

Automatic Success

If the modifiers for a roll (ability, skill, etc.) exceeds the difficulty of an action, no roll is required. You automatically succeed, but only just so with one success point. You might want to roll anyway to try and increase your success points.

Action Types

Action Descriptions When describing common actions it is useful to use the following notation. An action is described by its name, followed in square parenthesis by it's type (automatic, incremental or instant) and in round parenthesis by the action's roll notation. This is all followed by a more detailed description of the action. Where a numerical difficulty is given this is considered to be a suggested base difficulty for the action. For example, the climb action is an extended action that uses the Strength ability and Acrobatics skill versus the difficulty of the wall to climb: Climb [Extended] (Strength + Acrobatics vs. 10): The difficulty depends upon the type of surface being ascended. There are three basic types of action: automatic, instant, and incremental (see below). An automatic action is a reflexive action taken in instinctive response to something. Examples of automatic actions include rolling to notice if a character spots a hidden door or attempting to resist a poison. Automatic actions do not take any time and can occur without the player calling them.

Instant actions are those actions that take no more than moment (or round, in combat) to accomplish and are the most common form of actions.

Incremental Actions

Sometimes the GM may want you to perform an action that has a long term goal. For example, fixing a car. This can be done one of two ways: the quick way is to simply state that action takes so many days/hours/whatever and make the player roll once. Alternatively, the GM can decide that for an action to succeed a character must collect a certain number of success points. Such actions are called incremental actions.

To resolve an incremental action the player must roll several times, adding his success points together incrementally until he has obtained the target number of success points. The games master makes him roll for every set period, normally a day or hour, adjusting the difficulty as circumstances dictate. Failure points reduce the running success point total.

Incremental Action Example

For example, Ronald the Ranger is constructing a shelter in the woods. The GM determines this will require 5 success points to complete and that he may roll each hour. The first hour the games master sets the difficulty at 10 and Ronald gets 3 success points. The second hour it starts raining, so the GM determines the difficulty is 12 this time. Ronald gets 1 failure point, which reduces his running total to 2 success points. He breaks a supporting branch and now needs to get a further 3 success points before he can complete his shelter and kip down for the night.

Chapter 3: Characters

This chapter details the most important part of your game: the characters. It introduces the concept of roles which are used to put together the fundamental aspects of your characters, and details the process of character creation, which is simply the method of selecting and combining different roles together to determines a character's traits.

FRINGE does not have a single method for character creation. Rather, by selecting and designing the various roles and adding your own, customised traits GMs can design their own character creation systems. Please see various supplements, such as FRINGE: Fantasy, for further examples of character creation.

Roles

In FRINGE characters are primarily defined by their roles – packages of traits that represent the various aspects of a character. For example, if you want to play an elven wizard adventurer then you would take the Adventurer, Elf and Wizard roles.

The range of roles available to players is closely tied to the genre and campaign setting. In some settings players may only have to choose base roles and define their characters in a completely free-form way. Other campaigns may have more clearly defined roles and requirements.

Roles are divided into three categories: base roles, primary roles and secondary roles. A GM should always define base roles for their campaigns or use the pre-defined ones listed in this document, but not all games require primary and secondary roles. You could have a campaign with only base roles, with only primary roles, or with only secondary roles. Any combination of the three options are possible.

Designing Roles

There are several options as to the types of advantages and disadvantages roles can give characters:

Character points – characters can be given a pool character points to be spent buying new traits and roles (see below for more information on the types of Character Points that can be awarded for selecting certain roles). This gives much more flexibility to the character creation process.

Trait Bonuses/Penalties – a role can bundle bonus traits (such as advantages and disadvantages) with it and raise or lower the scores for specific primary or secondary traits. By selecting a role a character gains those traits associated with that role. Unless otherwise noted, trait bonuses should not raise a character's primary traits above 5, and trait penalties should not reduce a character's primary traits below 0.

Role Access – some roles not only give additional traits but also give access to restricted roles. By making some roles prerequisite you can increase the overall cost of selecting them, adding to the richness of character development.

Trait Access – similarly, some roles give access to traits not normally available to characters, or otherwise restrict access to traits.

Character Points

Character points allow players to purchase traits and roles for their characters. Character points are divided into various sub-types that can be used to purchase particular types of traits. The various sub-types are as follows:

Ability points – can be used to raise abilities.

Skill points – can be used to raise skills.

Role points – can only be used to purchase roles. Role points can come in two further sub-types: primary role points for purchasing primary roles and secondary role points for purchasing secondary roles.

Advantage points – can only be used to purchase advantages.

Disadvantage points – must be expended when they are acquired by purchasing disadvantages. Disadvantage points are normally only acquired when a character decides to reduce his starting abilities.

Table 4: Character Point Conversions	Sub-type	Conversion
Ability point	5 character points
Skill point	2 character points
Advantage, Disadvantage, or Role points	1 character point
Role point	1 character point
Players can exchange character points for various sub-type points, such as ability points and skill points. However, you cannot exchange points from a sub-type with another sub-type, nor exchange them for generic character points. The exchange rates for character points is detailed in Table 4: Character Point Conversions.

For example, a player has 20 character points. He could exchange these points for 4 ability points or 10 skill points. If a player had 5 ability points, however, he could not exchange them for character points or use them to increase his skills.

Base Roles

Weak Base Role Starting ability scores: 1 Ability points: 4 Skill points: 10 Disadvantage points: 10 Base roles are a special type of role representing the basic “type” of character you are creating. They also define how powerful the character is relative to other characters and determines how many character points a character has to spend on primary traits, unique traits and additional roles. Generally, the GM decides upon a base role that all players will use to create their characters from to ensure balance.

In general base roles define the following:

Normal Base Role Starting ability scores: 2 Ability points: 6 Skill points: 15 Disadvantage points: 5 Starting abilities – base roles normally give starting levels for abilities. Points in one ability can then be traded to raise another ability score, or added onto through the expenditure of further character points.

Character points – in addition to starting abilities, base roles normally give players a set of ability, skill and unique trait points to further flesh the character out.

Heroic Base Role Starting ability scores: 2 Ability points: 8 Skill points: 20 Disadvantage points: 5 Examples of base roles include Non-Player Character, Adventurer and Hero. See the text box examples of base roles that can be used as the basis for creating your own base roles. Generally, we recommend that you use the base roles defined here for your campaigns, perhaps re-naming them so they fit in with the flavour of your particular setting. Like normal roles, the types of base roles available depends upon the campaign and style.

Primary Roles

Primary roles define those facets that are fundamental to what the character is and that are unchangeable. Primary roles are selected at the start of character creation and are immutable from then on.

A primary role can determine:

Abilities Bonuses/Penalties – most primary roles offer an bonus to some abilities, in exchange for reducing other abilities. For example, selecting the Elf role raises a character's Intelligence score by 1, but reduces the character's Strength score by 1. Note, ability penalties that reduce a character's ability scores below average still give characters' additional disadvantage points as per the Below Average Rule (see Basic Character Creation below).

Advantages/Disadvantages – some primary roles give characters additional unique traits, such as racial traits. For example, selecting the Elf role gives the character the race advantage Enchanting Beauty.

Examples of types of primary roles include Race and Clan. Examples of primary roles include Elf and Mutant.

Secondary Roles

Secondary roles define what the character does and secondary roles give access to skills most characters would normally not have access to, i.e. magic skills. Unlike base and primary roles secondary roles can be selected after character creation representing a characters progression as he/she gains experience.

A secondary role can determine:

Access to skills – some skills are restricted depending on a character's secondary role. You might be only be able to take certain skills if you already possess a certain secondary role, or by selecting certain secondary roles you may exclude your character from taking certain skills at a later point in time.

Access to unique traits – some unique traits may be dependent on the type of secondary roles your character has.

Starting skills – some secondary roles can give bonus levels in certain skills.

Secondary role access – For example, selecting the Apprentice Wizard role gives the character future access to the Wizard role.

Example of types of secondary roles include Professions and Ranks. Examples of secondary roles include Wizard and Technician.

Basic Character Creation

The first step to playing FRINGE is character creation. However, before even character creation begins some work needs to be done. FRINGE provides many options for your characters, perhaps more than you need. The GM determines exactly which traits are available to characters by selecting a base role that all characters begin with.

The steps for creating a character are as follows:

Create your character concept .

Select primary role(s).

Select abilities.

Select secondary role(s).

Select skills.

Select Unique Traits.

Spend Character Points.

Determine Secondary Traits.

Character Concept

At the heart of each character is the initial character concept. The concept is a short phrase or sentence that succinctly describes the character. It can be as clichéd or as weird as possible, but it should give people a hook into what the character is all about. It should act like a seed in the imagination, growing into a fully-fledged character as the concept is developed.

The character concept is dependant upon the campaign setting and the GM should take care to explain the basic premise to the players before they start thinking about their character concepts.

For example, Gerald is a player designing his first character. His concept is for a “dark and mysterious elven wizard.”

Choosing Primary Role(s)

The next step is to choose the primary role(s) for the character. For example, Gerald is designing a elven wizard and, thus, selects the Elf primary role for his character.

Select Abilities

Normally, primary traits give characters a set of starting abilities and set of 'free' ability points to further increase their base scores. At this stage the players may optionally raise of lower their character's abilities by spending ability points, or character points at a conversion rate of 5 character points for 1 ability point.

Below Average Rule

Lowering abilities has other consequences for character creation. A player can exchange a point in one ability to gain a point in another ability. However, if doing so lowers an ability score below average (i.e. less than 2) than the player is penalised with disadvantage points that must be spent on disadvantages to 'explain' this deficiency (see Table 5: Below Average Ability Penalties). Players do not have to select disadvantages that are related to the ability lowered at the GMs discretion but doing so helps create a more rounded character. Characters who start with below average ability scores do not have to take additional disadvantage points.

Table 5: Below Average Ability Penalties	Ability Score	Disadvantage Points
1	5
0	10
For example, Gerald decides that he wants to play an extremely cunning (Intelligence 5) wizard. He realises that he does not have enough ability points to spend, so he lowers his Presence score to 1, thus incurring a penalty of 5 disadvantage points. He decides to spend it on the Ugly disadvantage, attributing his low Presence to an unpleasant physical appearance.

Choosing Secondary Role(s)

The next step is to select secondary roles, if the GM is using them. For example, Gerald is designing a elven wizard and, thus, selects the Wizard secondary role for his character.

Select Skills

Normally, your base role gives you a set of skill points you can use to purchase skills and your secondary or primary roles give you access to a set of skills.

Select Unique Traits

The player should also have some advantage, disadvantage and personality points that can now be spent on unique traits. Disadvantage points are also acquired by lowering certain abilities and should be spent on buying disadvantages appropriate to a character's low ability scores. Players have a number of personality points to spend on personality traits equal to their base Passion. See Personality Traits for more information on how to select personality traits for a character.

Spend Character Points

Players can now allocate any free character points received from their role selection to round off their characters. See Table 4: Character Point Conversions for more information on how to convert character points into additional traits.

Determine Secondary Traits

Players should now calculate their secondary traits from the finalised versions of their abilities and other traits.

Chapter 4: Basic Traits

Following this section is a complete description of the basic set of traits used by the FRINGE system to describe characters. Traits are divided into three main categories: primary traits, secondary traits and unique traits.

Primary Traits

This section describes the basic set of primary traits used by the FRINGE system to describe the fundamental attributes of characters. Primary traits are divided into two main categories: abilities and skills. All primary traits generally range between 0, for an absence of ability, to 5 for the highest ranking you with traits 6 or more being possible but rare.

Table 6: Primary Trait Levels

Level	Description
0	Terrible
1	Poor
2	Average
3	Good
4	Great
5	Amazing
6+	Super

Abilities

All characters, whether they are player characters, non-player characters or monsters, possess abilities. They define the basic physical and mental attributes of all beings. Unlike other traits, such as skills, ability traits tend to remain static. With considerable effort on the part of the character and experience expenditure on the part of the player (see Experience) ability traits can be permanently raised. Taking severe damage can also permanently lower an ability trait.

Describing Abilities

Abilities are always described using the following format standard:

Name: Each description begins with the name of the ability. The ability may be known by other names in your specific campaigns, but this is the name which they are referred to by the rules.

Description: Following the name is a short paragraph describing the ability, what it does and when it is applicable.

No Level: This is an optional section detailing any rule benefits or disadvantages for not having the trait. For example, not having the Blind-Fighting trait means you suffer a +2 penalty to the difficulty when attacking an opponent in poor visibility conditions.

Innate Actions: Following the above are descriptions of the innate actions that can be accomplished with this ability score.

Agility

Agility determines how dexterous, graceful, coordinated and fast your character is. You roll for Agility when you try to hit an opponent with a weapon, running or walking on a tight-rope. Agility also improves Reflexes and Speed.

No Level: Characters with Agility 0 have some physical handicap that prevents them from moving. Perhaps they have a motor-neuron disorder that keeps them from controlling their bodies as well as they would like, or maybe their movements are impeded by some sort of physical disability.

Intelligence

Intelligence represents raw, intellectual ability and allows characters to solve complicated or abstract problems. While Intelligence might allow you to understand the finer points of quantum physics and high-level mathematics, it can exclude common sense or quick thinking. Intelligence also improves Will.

No Level: A creature with no Intelligence has animal-level reasoning ability. They might have some form of personality or be able to perceive threats, but they are incapable of the long-term reasoning ability trait of human-level intelligence. Characters with Intelligence 0 are animals or intelligent creatures who have possibly experienced some form of brain damage.

Stamina

Stamina measures a character's endurance and resilience. Whereas Strength and Agility can allow you perform amazing feats, Stamina permits you to maintain such feats over longer periods of time. Stamina also represents a persons general health and fitness. A person with high Stamina is resistant to disease, heals faster and is capable of ignoring the effects of damage for longer. Stamina also improves Health and Endurance.

No Levels: Generally, a being with no Stamina is either dead or close to it. Characters with Stamina 0 might be suffering from a terminal illness or some sort of weakening, congenital disease. They might be able to participate in adventures remotely from the comfort of their hospital beds, but are not really capable of much more than that.

Resistance [Automatic] (Stamina vs. toxin/disease Potency or 10): A resistance check is used to determine if a character falls under the influence of a poison, disease, shock or some other physical ailment. Players roll their character's stamina versus the potency of the particular disease or toxin, or a difficulty of 10 for shock. If they succeed they shake off the effects. See Basic Combat and Toxins and Diseases for more information.

Strength

Strength is a measure of muscular ability and physical power. Strength allows characters to life heavy weights, wrestle with opponents and wield large weapons. Strength also improves Health and Endurance.

No Level: The character is somehow enfeebled. He barely has the strength to move under his own strength. He may have some muscle-wasting disease or other physical disability that prevents him from lifting anything heavier than a large book.

Presence

Presence defines the characters force of personality and how much influence he can exert over other characters. Characters with high Presence are attractive, charming or intimidating figures who tend to dominate social groups. Presence also improves Passion and Will.

No Level: A character with no Presence has something about him that makes people want to ignore or avoid him at all costs. Perhaps a hideous disfigurement or some terrible personality flaw, or is simply weak willed or painfully shy.

Intimidate [Instant] (Presence vs. target's Will or Presence): By using a raw show of force a character can intimidate others or as an opposed action roll to resist attempts to intimidate.

Wits

Wits represents how quick-witted, socially adept, mentally agile and physically aware a character is. While Intelligence represents raw brain-power, Wits represents speed of thought, common sense and ability to adapt to new situations. It also represents how perceptive a character is of his surroundings. Wits also improves Reflexes.

No Level: A character with no Wits lacks all common sense or is painfully unaware of his surroundings. He may be incredibly clever, but only within the arena of certain abstract thoughts, such as in autism.

Perception [Automatic] (Wits vs. 7): A perception check is used to determine if a character detects the presence of something outside of his normal awareness. The difficulty depends on the obscurity of the target and can be moderated by other external factors, such as light and sounds levels. When the GM determines there is something in the local area he thinks the character's might notice he should secretly roll on their behalf.

Skills

Skills describe the various aptitudes and knowledges acquired through a characters life. Unlike abilities, a character is unstated in skills by default.

Describing Skills

Skill Notation When describing skills it is useful to use the following notation to denote the category. A skill with a category is written as follows: Skill Name (Category) For example, a character with skill in acrobatics and training horses and dogs would write on his character sheet: Acrobatics, Animal (Horse), Animal (Dog). Skills are always described using the following format standard:

Name: Each description begins with the name of the skill. The skill may be known by other names in your specific campaigns, but this is the name which they are referred to by the rules.

Category: If the skill is a category skill, the key word “category” should appear after the name in square parenthesis.

Description: Following the name is a short paragraph describing the skill, what it does and when it is applicable.

Prerequisites: This optional section describes what prerequisites are required before a character can obtain a level in this skill.

Categories: If the skill is a category skill, this section should be included detailing the various categories that can be selected for this skill.

Actions: Following the above are descriptions of actions that can be accomplished with this skill. Please note, that the actions included here are but some of the possible uses of skills. The options are constrained only by the imagination of the GM and players.

Basic Skills

The following skills are common to all FRINGE games.

Acrobatics

Acrobatics is the ability to perform stunts of agility and balance, such as climbing, tumbling, tight-rope walking and other such feats.

Climb [Incremental] (Strength + Acrobatics vs. surface complexity): You can use this skill to ascend walls or other vertical objects such as trees. The difficulty depends upon the steepness or complexity of surface being ascended.

Balance [Automatic] (Wits + Acrobatics vs. 10): A balance check is used in situations were balance is important, such as on a stretched rope or similar thin or narrow surface.

Tumble [Instant] (Agility + Acrobatics vs. 13): This is the art of diving and recovering, for example to automatically recover when struck down by your opponent. See Basic Combat for more information.

Animal [Category]

Animal represents skill with handling and generally controlling particular types of animals.

Categories: birds of prey, cattle, camels, dogs, horses.

Tame Animal [Incremental] (Intelligence + Animal vs. animal's Passion): You can use this skill to intimidate and subjugate any semi-intelligent animal. It is the technique used to master wilful beasts.

Train Animal [Incremental] (Intelligence + Animal vs. animal's Passion): You can teach an animal how to perform a simple action or role. For example, you might want to train a horse to pull a cart or train a dog to play tricks or act as a guard dog. An animal cannot be trained without first being tamed.

Ride [Instant or Incremental] (Agility + Animal vs. 10): This skill can also be used to ride load-bearing animals such as horses. An animal must be successfully tamed and trained for riding before it can be used for riding normally. Success in a riding roll can also determine the speed of a ride, with higher results increasing the speed and performance of the animal.

Athletics

Athletics determines how good you are at running, jumping and other forms of athletic activity.

Run [Instant or Incremental] (Agility + Athletics vs. 10): Athletics determines how skilled you are at running, whilst the Speed secondary trait determines how fast you actually are. When running you can use your skill to increase your speed. The number of success points are added to your Speed score for the duration of your run.

Jump [Instant] (Strength + Athletics vs. 10): Athletics also determines how skilled you are at jumping. The number of success point determines how far you actually jump.

Weightlifting [Instant] (Strength + Athletics vs. target's Weight): Use weightlifting to determine how much a character can lift in one go.

Charm

Charm represents how personable a character is, how likeable they are. Whereas Persuade represents a skill in direct manipulation, Charm is more subtle. The following are samples of the types of actions that can be performed with this skill:

Enthral [Incremental] (Presence or Wits + Charm vs. target's Will): By being as charming and witty as possible within a crowd of onlookers you create a favourable impression for future social situations. Each success points gives you an advantage point you can use to spend on purchasing a reputation within the social group. For example, being extremely witty at a social party will allow you to purchase a good reputation within the small but influential high-class social circles.

Seduction [Incremental] (Presence + Charm vs. target's Will): The ultimate use of Charm is to seduce others into your way of thinking. A successful roll should render the target as putty in your hands.

Inspire [Instant] (Presence or Wits + Charm vs. 10): Truly, the greatest use of Charm is not for you own benefit but for the benefit of others: by making a stirring speech, through subtle compliments, or perhaps by simply being yourself you improve the general outlook of your target. For every 2 success points your target gains a +1 bonus, rounded up, for the duration of the scene for a particular action.

Culture [Category]

This skill represents a working knowledge of a particular culture - it's etiquette, taboos, prominent figures, cuisine, etc. Characters with this skill understand the quirks of a culture and can pass as a member of that culture or carry themselves with minimum offence, potentially improving social reactions and standing.

Categories: The types of cultural categories for this skill depend upon your campaign setting but can for example include London Street Culture, English Courtly Culture and Native Indian Culture.

Diplomacy [Incremental] (Presence or Wits + Culture vs. Wits + Culture): By using knowledge of local culture and tact a character can attempt to negotiate with other parties. The more successes the more upper hand you get.

Etiquette [Incremental] (Wits + Culture vs. 10): You can use Culture to navigate complicated social circumstances and create a good impression. Success points are converted into advantage points which can be used to purchase a good reputation within the social group you are trying to impress, whilst failure points are converted into a bad reputation by the GM.

Melee

Melee represents skill in basic, hand-to-hand combat and determines how well your character can handle himself in violent situations. Melee improves your ability to punch, kick or grapple opponents, as well as dodging attacks. See Combat for more information on the use of Melee.

Perform

Perform describes a characters ability to create a beautiful performance through song, music or storytelling.

Persuasion

Persuasion represents a characters ability to convince others to believe in or do things that they might not otherwise do. Unlike Charm, Persuade is less about making people like you and more about directly manipulating them. The following are samples of the types of actions that can be performed with this skill:

Bargain [Incremental] (Wits + Persuasion vs. Wits + Persuasion): By bartering for goods, a character can attempt to reduce the price. Success points reduce the Cost of an item. See the Equipment section for more information.

Debate [Incremental] (Int or Wits + Persuasion vs Int or Wits + Persuasion): When arguing points of philosophy, politics or science with your fellows roll Intelligence. If you lack the knowledge to debate convincingly, you can always resort to sophistry and roll with Wits to out-wit your opponent rather than out-think them.

Deceit [Instant] (Wits + Persuasion vs. target's Will): A character can attempt to convince someone of a lie. The difficulty may be raised or lowered depending upon how cautious and how believable the lie.

Gossip [Instant] (Presence + Persuasion vs. 10 + target's reputation): You can use Persuasion to convince others of the good or bad aspects of other characters by either bad mouthing them behind their back, or talking them up. Success points are converted into either disadvantage points or advantage points which can be used to reduce or increase the target's reputation.

Sleight

Sleight represents skill in sleight-of-hand.

Chicanery [Instant] (Agility + Sleight vs. Wits): The ability to trick people with sleight of hand. Targets can make a perception check to resist.

Pick-pocketing [Instant] (Agility + Sleight vs. Wits): The ability to rob people of their goods without them noticing. Targets can make a perception check to resist.

Speak [Category]

Speak is the ability to understand and speak a language. Normally, most characters with have Speak 5 in their native language.

Categories: English, Spanish, or Elvish.

Stealth

Stealth represents how quietly a character can move.

Move Silently [Instant] (Wits + Stealth vs. Wits): Sneaking about without anyone spotting you. The difficulty can be modified by the levels of light, what the sneaky character is wearing, etc. Targets can make a perception check to resist.

Hide [Instant] (Wits or Int + Stealth vs. Wits): Similarly, a character can attempt to hide using Stealth. Targets can make a perception check to resist.

Region [Category]

Region represents the ability to find your way around a type of area or terrain. It encapsulates both survival skills and geographical knowledge.

Categories: City, Saharan desert, or woodland.

Survival [Incremental] (Wits + Region vs. 13): Being able to manage in an unfamiliar environment. The difficulty is moderated by the type of terrain.

Swim

Swim represents the ability to move through water.

Vehicle [Category]

The vehicle skill represents the ability to successfully control and drive a particular type of vehicle. See the Movement section for more information on the uses of this skill.

Special: This can be taken multiple times for each type of vehicle. The types of vehicles you can select for this skill depend upon your campaign setting but could include Carriages, Cars or Simple Boats.

Weapon [Category]

The weapon skills represents the ability to successfully use and wield a particular type of weapon. See the Basic Combat section for more information on the uses of this skill.

Special: This can be taken multiple times for each type of weapon. The types of weapons you can select for this skill depend upon your campaign setting but could include Firearms, Melee or Simple.

Write [Category]

Write represents the ability to write (and read) a particular language. Normally, most characters from literate societies will have Write 5 in their native language.

Prerequisites: Speak in the same language.

Categories: English, Spanish, or Elvish.

Secondary Traits

Whilst abilities define your basic qualities, secondary traits determine how those traits relate to the external world. For example, Agility is a measure of how dexterous and quick you are, but the secondary trait Speed actually defines how fast you are. Secondary traits normally range from 0 to 20, with higher values possible.

Each secondary trait generally consists of two scores: the base score and temporary score. The base score is usually derived from another attribute and represents the true value of that score. For example, Endurance is equal to 5 + Stamina. It is hard to increase a base score in a secondary trait unless you also increase the base attribute (which is even harder). See Experience.

At the start of play the temporary score for you trait is equal your base score. Unlike the base score, the temporary score can vary a lot during the game, affected by various influences such as wearing armour, magic and taking damage.

Defence

Your Defence rating determines how damage you can resist whether through the durability of your own body or with armoured protection. Base Defence is always 5 for standard humans. Temporary Defence can be increased by wearing armour or wielding shields:

Defence = 5

See the Basic Combat section for more information on how Defence affects combat.

Endurance

Endurance is a measure of your state of exhaustion, how long you can go on for before you drop from exhaustion. If a character's Endurance is 0 then it is unconscious. Base Endurance is equal to a character's Stamina plus Strength:

Endurance = Stamina + Strength + 5

Expending a point of Temporary Endurance allows you to do one of the following:

Perform an extra action during a combat round at a cumulative -2 penalty.

Add a +2 bonus to any physical action.

Temporary Endurance also decreases through high exertion. Every 5 rounds of high exertion (e.g. lifting heavy weights, intense combat, acrobatics) or 1 hour of light exertion (e.g. walking) cost you 1 point of Temporary Endurance. If you Temporary Endurance reaches 0 you fall unconscious. Temporary Endurance can be regained relatively quickly through rest. The period of rest required to regain each point of Endurance depends upon your Stamina score, the precise details of which can be found in Table 7: Healing Endurance Damage.

Table 7: Healing Endurance Damage

Stamina	Period of Recovery
0	1 day
1	8 hours
2	1 hour
3	10 rounds
4	5 rounds
5+	1 round

See the Basic Combat section for more information on how Endurance is used in combat.

Health

Health is a measure of your general state of well being. If character's Health reaches 0 then it is close to death. Base Health is equal to a character's Strength plus Stamina:

Health = Stamina + Strength + 5

Table 8: Healing Health Damage

Stamina	Period of Recovery
0	1 month
1	5 days
2	4 days
3	3 days
4	2 days
5+	1 day

See the Basic Combat section for more information on how Endurance is used in combat.

Passion

Passion determines your strength of personality. Whilst Will determines your self-control, Passion is the raw fuel which drives a character. Base Passion is equal to your Presence + Wits:

Passion = Presence + Wits + 5

Expending Temporary Passion allows you to do one of the following:

Activate a personality trait (see Personality Traits below).

Add a point of temporary Endurance.

Passion also determines the number of personality points you have to spend on personality traits.

Reflexes

Reflexes determines how quickly your can respond to sudden threats or actions. A character's base Reflexes is equal to their Agility plus Wits score:

Reflexes = Agility + Wits + 5

See the Basic Combat section for more information on how Reflexes are used in combat.

Size

Size rates your physical size. See Table 9: Sizes for descriptions of Size ratings. Most adult humans will have Size 5:

Size = 10

Size affects combat and the types of equipment you can carry and successfully use. A smaller creature is harder to hit but does damage on a smaller scale. A larger creature is easier to hit but does damage on a far larger scale. See the Basic Combat section for more information on how Size affects combat and see the Equipment section for more information on how Size affects a character's ability to use certain equipment.

Table 9: Sizes

Size	Description
1	Fine (Insect)
3	Minute (Toad)
7	Tiny (Small mammal)
9	Small (Human toddler)
10	Medium (Adult Human)
11	Large (Bear)
13	Giant (Mammoth)
17	Gargantuan (Whale)
20+	Colossal

See the Basic Combat section for more information on how Size is used in combat.

Speed

Speed rates how fast you are compared to other beings. A character's base Speed is equal to their Agility plus Athletics score.

Speed = Agility + Athletics + 5

Temporary Speed can never be higher than a character's temporary Endurance. If you temporary Endurance is ever lower than your Speed your Speed is temporarily reduced to that rating.

Will

Will represents the amount of self-control and restraint a character has. Base Will is calculated as follows:

Will = Presence + Intelligence + 5

Unlike Passion, Will does not represent strength of character, but how much raw self-control a character has and how able a character is to use his common sense to overcome his baser urges.

Expending Temporary Will allows you to do one of the following:

Make a control check to resist acting upon a personality trait (see Personality Traits below).

Add a +1 bonus to an action roll.

Unique Traits

Unique traits are special characteristics that customise character descriptions by going outside the normal rules for abilities, skills and secondary traits. This section includes a basic set of generic unique traits that can be used in a variety of campaigns and genres. For more information on creating your own unique traits, please see Creating Unique Traits.

Unique traits can be divided into the following categories:

Advantages impart special bonuses on characters,

Disadvantages impart special penalties characters, and

Personality traits define a character's personality and offer both advantages and disadvantages to characters.

Unique Trait Descriptions

When describing unique traits the following syntax should always be used:

Name: The common name of the unique trait should appear on the first line of its description.

Description: A description of the unique trait should appear on the next line, including a summary of what effects the unique trait has.

Prerequisites: A list of those trait prerequisites required before a character can purchase this unique trait.

Benefits: A detailed description of the benefits of taking this unique trait.

Penalties: A detailed description of the penalties for taking this unique trait.

Special: Any special rules or notes for this unique trait.

Cost: The cost in advantage or disadvantage points of the unique trait.

Advantages

Advantages consist of one or more of the following bonuses:

Roll bonuses give a +1 to +3 bonus to certain action rolls. An example of a roll bonus is Attractive which gives a bonus to social action rolls in situations where physical attractiveness is important, such as when trying to create a good, first impression.

Talents allow characters to carry out actions they would not normally be allowed to, usually for some strategic advantage. An example of talent would be a martial art manoeuvre which would allow a character to inflict additional damage with only his arms.

Access bonuses, whilst imparting no direct benefits themselves, allow players to purchase other traits (usually unique traits or skills) that they would normally be prohibited from purchasing. An example of an access bonus would be Magical Ability which is required to allow a character to purchase magic Power traits and use spells.

Secondary trait bonuses raise the permanent secondary trait scores by +1 to +3. For example, the Large advantage increases the Size secondary trait by 1.

Acute Hearing

The character has a particularly keen sense of hearing.

Bonuses: The character receives a +1 bonus to all Sense rolls directly involving hearing.

Cost: 2 advantage points.

Acute Sight

The character has a particularly keen sense of sight.

Bonuses: The character receives a +1 bonus to all Sense rolls directly involving sight.

Cost: 3 advantage points.

Attractive

The character possesses various physical characteristics that makes it attractive.

Bonuses: The character receives a +2 bonus to all social rolls where physical attraction plays a role.

Cost: 4 advantage points.

Ambidextrous

The character has the unique ability to use both left and right hands equally well.

Bonuses: The character can ignore the -2 penalty for using your off-hand.

Cost: 6 advantage points.

Disadvantages

Disadvantages typically consist of one or more of the following penalties:

Roll penalties - roll disadvantages give a -1 to -3 penalty to certain action rolls. An example of a roll advantage is Ugly which gives a penalty to social action rolls in situations where physical attractiveness is important, such as when trying to create a good, first impression.

Prohibitions prevent characters from taking actions they otherwise would normally have no problem undertaking. An example of a prohibition is the Blindness disadvantage which means characters automatically fail any Sense roll where sight is the major factor.

Access restrictions restrict those traits a player has access to, preventing them from buying traits they would normally be allowed to.

Secondary trait penalties lower the permanent secondary trait scores by -1 to -3. For example, the Small disadvantage reduces the Size secondary trait by 1.

Blindness

The character is blind and loses the ability to use his eyes.

Penalties: The character automatically fails all Sense rolls directly involving sight and suffers a -3 penalty to all rolls where sight is involved, e.g. attack rolls (Prohibition).

Cost: 10 disadvantage points.

Immobile

The character is, for one reason or another, completely incapable of moving by his own volition.

Penalties: The character automatically fails all movement actions and suffers a -3 penalty to all rolls where ability to move is indirectly involved (Prohibition).

Cost: 10 disadvantage points.

Lame

The character has some problem using his legs and his movement is impeded.

Penalties: -1 to base Speed (Secondary Trait Penalty).

Cost: 2 disadvantage points.

Missing Arm or Hand

The character has lost the use of one of his arms or hands.

Penalties: The character cannot use one of his arms at all (Prohibition).

Cost: 10 disadvantage points.

Special: By selecting this disadvantage again, the character loses the ability to use both arms or hands.

Missing Leg

The character has lost the use of one of their legs or feet.

Penalties: -3 to base Speed (Secondary Trait Penalty).

Cost: 6 disadvantage points.

Poor Hearing

The character has a particularly bad sense of hearing.

Penalties: The character receives a -1 penalty to all Sense rolls directly involving hearing.

Cost: 2 disadvantage points.

Poor Sight

The character has a particularly bad sight.

Penalties: The character receives a -1 penalty to all Sense rolls directly involving sight.

Cost: 3 disadvantage points.

Ugly

The character is particularly unattractive.

Penalties: The character receives a -2 bonus to all social rolls where physical attraction plays a role.

Cost: 4 disadvantage points.

Reputations

Reputations are special advantages and disadvantages that represent your character's renown. A good reputation is an advantage that imparts bonuses to social rolls, whilst a bad reputation imparts a negative penalty to social rolls.

Creating Reputations

Costs for good and bad reputations work exactly the same way as creating roll bonus/penalty advantages and disadvantages as in the Creating Roll Bonuses/Penalties section. The frequency of a reputation depends upon how many people are aware of your reputation and how far your reputation has spread. See Table 10: Reputation Frequency for a guide as to how to apply frequency multipliers when costing a reputation.

Table 10: Reputation Frequency

Frequency	Description
Rare	A reputation spread within a small social circle, or over a small geographical location, such as a village or town.
Infrequent	A reputation spread within a large social group, or spread over a large geographical location, such as within a province our country.
Common	A reputation that every single person in the known world is aware of.

However, reputations must be maintained otherwise they fade over time. A character must make some attempt to maintain his reputation each story, either by making favourable social actions in appropriate forums, or performing heroic deeds. Similarly, bad reputations may fade over time as long as a player does nothing to maintain them during each story. Each story that goes by where a character fails to live up to his reputation his reputation may, at the GM's discretion, decrease by an advantage/disadvantage point.

For example, a character with a reputation for being charming (+2, infrequent, 4 advantage points) fails to attend any glittering parties during a story. The GM decides that his failure to make any appearances on the social circuit means his reputation is reduced by one advantage point and becomes a +3, rare roll bonus instead (3 advantage points).

Reputations may also be awarded by the GM as a reward for heroic feats and noteworthy triumphs, and bad reputations can be assigned by the GM as punishment for heinous acts and catastrophic failures.

Personality Traits

Personality traits are a type of unique trait that define the aspects of your character that make up their personality. Personality traits, like primary traits, are rated from 1 to 5 (rarely more) depending upon the intensity of that aspect of your characters personality (see Table: Personality Trait Levels). For example, the personality trait Stubborn 2 is just a facet of a character's personality. Whilst, Anger 5 would be an all-consuming passion - the character would constantly be picking arguments and fights with others.

Personality traits can be used to give you bonuses in certain situations. Depending upon the level of your personality trait, you can expend temporary Passion points to improve your chances at those rolls or give you bonuses where you personality trait comes into play.

For example, Frank the Fighter has Courage 3 and Anger 5 (Violence). Whilst adventuring Frank encounters a group of sarcastic bandits. Being very stupid he becomes angry at his own inability to trade insults and so attacks. Because he is angry, he uses his Anger 5 to spend 3 points of temporary Passion to automatically succeed at his first attack roll.

Table 11: Personality Trait Levels

Level	Description	Effect
1	Quirk	Spend 1 point of temporary Passion to gain a +1 bonus for one action roll.
2	Facet	Spend 1 point of temporary Passion to gain a point of temporary Endurance.
3	Disposition	Spend 2 points of temporary Passion to gain a +2 bonus for one action roll.
4	Passion	Spend 2 points of temporary Passion to re-roll a failed roll.
5	Obsession	Spend 3 points of temporary Passion to gain a +3 bonus for one action roll.

See Also: Compulsions and Choosing Personality Traits.

Using Personality Traits

Apart from the various bonuses and penalties, personality traits can also be used as a type of “alignment” system. For example, you might make levels of different personality traits as requirements for certain roles.

Buying Personality Traits

During character creation a player has a number of personality points equal to their character's base Passion to spend on purchasing personality traits. These should be used after selecting advantages and disadvantages to finally round your character off. No personality trait can ever have a score greater than 5.

All personality traits come in pairs of opposing character traits. The more points a character has in one personality trait, the less he can purchase in the opposing personality trait. Furthermore, a personality trait and its opposing personality trait can never add up to greater than 5. For example, a player is purchasing personality traits for his character and selects Anger 3. He can now only purchase a Calm score up to 2 for his character.

Specialities

You may optionally select a speciality for your personality trait which refines the type of personality trait a character possess. For example, a character with Anger 3 is just generally angry, whilst a character with Anger 3 (Righteous) is full of righteous indignation and only flies off the handle when confronted with something that offends his sense of morality.

Focuses

A personality trait can have a focus: a particular person, object, place or concept to which the trait is tied. For example, the focus of a character's Love trait would be the princess he hopes to wed, or another character's Anger trait might be focused on slavery. When a player is selecting personality traits he can choose a focus for any one of his personality traits.

Control Checks

Control checks are used to determine if a character can perform an action that is against his personality. Any time a player wants his character to perform an action that would be otherwise against his nature he must make a control check. The player must expend a number of temporary Will points and rolls Temporary Will points spent vs. Temporary Passion + Personality Trait. If he succeeds, he controls his character. The player may attempt to control his character as many times as he has temporary Will.

For example, Frank's battle with the sarcastic bandits begins to go against him and Frank's player decides that a retreat would be tactical. The GM rules that because of Frank's disposition to Courage the player must make a control check to break the melee. He adds Frank's Courage 3 to his temporary Passion 5 to determine the difficulty of the control check (8). Frank's player expends 3 temporary Will points and rolls a d10 and gets 6 to get a result of 9. Frank retreats from combat despite the harm to his pride, but survives to fight the sarcastic bandits another day, this time with reinforcements.

Note, that the automatic success rule also applies to personality traits and it is usually not necessary to make control checks for personality traits with scores of 2 or less.

Personality Trait Descriptions

When describing unique traits the following syntax should always be used:

Name: The common name of the unique trait should appear on the first line of its description.

Description: A description of the unique trait should appear on the next line, including a summary of what effects the unique trait has.

Opposing: A list of those trait prerequisites required before a character can purchase this unique trait.

Specialities:

Basic Personality Traits

The following set personality traits are generally applicable to a wide variety of genres and are the basic set used by FRINGE: Basics.

Anger

Angry characters are quick to temper. Examples of angry character concepts include barbarians, freedom fighters and thugs.

Opposing: Calm

Specialities: Violent, righteous.

Calm

Calm characters are reflective and thoughtful, not given to quick action and quiet and patient in their demeanour. Examples of calm character concepts include the wise monk and the patient and ruthless plotter.

Opposing: Anger

Specialities: Enlightened, patient, philosophical, reflective, slow.

Caprice

Capricious characters are inconstant, unpredictable, and care-free. While not necessarily selfish, they tend to be unthinking. Examples of capricious character concepts include children, pranksters and anarchists.

Opposing: Constancy

Specialities: Naïve, sly, hot headed, impulsive, unreliable.

Compassion

Compassionate characters are deeply concerned for the well being of others. Examples of compassionate character concepts include the healer and the thief who steals from the rich to give to the poor.

Opposing: Selfish

Specialities: Empathetic, kind, generous.

Constancy

A constant character is a dependable and loyal sort. Examples of constant character concepts include the honourable knight, the honest judge, and the good friend.

Opposing: Caprice

Specialities: Honest, honourable, fair, law-abiding, loyal, wise.

Courage

Courageous characters are fearless and bold. Examples of brave character concepts include brave knights and stout soldiers.

Opposing: Fear

Specialities: Brave, honest.

Fear

Fearful characters are consumed with paranoia. Examples of fearful character concepts include refugees, torture victims and cowardly wizards.

Opposing: Courage

Specialities: Cowardice, paranoia.

Hate

A hateful character is consumed with contempt. Examples of hateful character concepts include the bitter hermit and the foul tempered witch.

Opposing: Love

Specialities: Bitter, contemptuous, unfriendly.

Humility

Humble characters are meek and self-effacing people, the kind of person who will put others needs before their own or hold their peace during an argument. Examples of humble character concepts include the retiring princess or the meek peasant.

Opposing: Pride

Specialities: Meek, shy, unassuming.

Joy

Joyful characters are full of life and happiness. Examples of joyful characters include happy children and jolly monks.

Opposing: Melancholy

Specialities: Jolly, happy.

Love

Loving characters have strong emotional ties. Examples of loving character concepts include the love-lorn romantic and the jealous husband.

Opposing: Hate

Specialities: Romantic.

Melancholy

A melancholy character is a joyless person, devoid of happiness. Examples of melancholy character concepts include the manic depressive or the lonely hermit.

Opposing: Joy

Specialities: Lonely, depressed.

Pride

Proud characters are full of themselves and their accomplishments and are very sensitive to criticism. Examples of proud character concepts include the proud warrior and the arrogant prince.

Opposing: Humility

Specialities: Arrogant, noble, self-important.

Selfish

Selfish characters think only of themselves and lack the empathy and understanding necessary to realise that others may be affected by their actions. Examples of selfish character concepts include the the lazy coach-potato and the tyrannical king.

Opposing: Compassion

Specialities: Lazy, envious, insensitive.

Sensual

A sensual character gives into desires easily and lives for the gratification of the senses. Examples of types of characters that might have have Sensual include artists, couch potatoes, and hedonists.

Opposing: Stoic

Specialities: Lusty, greedy, frivolous.

Stoic

A stoic character is an austere person, into self-denial. Examples of stoic types of characters include puritans and federal agents.

Opposing: Sensual

Specialities: Aesthetic, practical, scornful, scrupulous.

Creating Traits

The sets of traits outlined in this document are the basics required to run a FRINGE game. It is also possible to add additional traits to FRINGE, whether new abilities, skills, secondary or unique traits. This section details the concerns and rules for adding new traits to the FRINGE rule set.

Creating Abilities

The standard set of abilities are designed to cover most possibilities so you should rarely need to create new abilities. We recommend that you very carefully consider the addition of new abilities as they have the potential of upsetting the balance of the game. One should take care to ensure that a new ability does not interfere with other rules and ensure that

Otherwise, there aren't any other rules concerns with adding new abilities. A new ability can be simply added to a character sheet and used in action rolls as and when the GM deems necessary.

Creating Skills

Similarly, some care must be taken when adding new skills to the set already included. Efforts should be made to ensure that new skills cannot be defined as categories for existing category skills or that they aren't simply new versions of existing skills. Otherwise, no more work is need to fit a new skill into FRINGE.

Creating Advantages and Disadvantages

Advantages and disadvantages offer the most possibilities and are typically those traits most likely to be created so the rules for designing them are more detailed. In fact, some advantages and disadvantages may consist of a mixture of different bonuses and penalties.

Once you have decided what specific bonuses or penalties apply you then need to determine the relative frequency with which such bonuses come into play in a typical game session. This comes in three levels:

Rare – relatively inconsequential, come into play at most once per session.

Infrequent – an occasional obstacle, come into play at most once per scene.

Common – comes into play several times a scene such as during combat.

Creating Roll Bonuses/Penalties

Roll bonuses and penalties are not just measured by the frequency they are used, but also by their magnitude. These are divided into three categories: minor (+/-1), moderate (+/-2) and major (+/-3). To determine the cost of a roll bonus or penalty, the frequency must be determined. This gives a multiplier which, when applied to the roll bonus or penalty, gives the cost of the unique trait.

Table 12: Frequency Multipliers for Roll Modifiers

Frequency	Multiplier
Rare	x1
Infrequent	x2
Common	x3

For example, the Attractive advantage gives a +2 bonus to all social rolls where attraction plays a role (which is rated as Infrequent). This gives a cost of 6 advantage points (+2 modifier times a x2 Infrequent multiplier).

Creating Prohibitions

Prohibitions always have a fixed cost depending upon their frequency of utility. Apart from directly prohibiting certain actions, prohibitions can also impart a -3 roll penalty to all tasks indirectly related to the prohibition.

Table 13: Prohibition Costs

Frequency	Cost
Rare	4 points
Infrequent	7 points
Common	10 points

For example, a character with the Blindness disadvantage automatically fails all tasks directly related to sight (for example, scanning a crowd for a familiar face) and -3 roll penalty for all actions that use sight but aren't directly related. For example, a blind character suffers a -3 roll penalty when attempting to hit an opponent in combat.

Creating Secondary Trait Bonuses/Penalties

Bonuses and penalties to secondary traits range from +/-1 to +/-3 or more. The cost is the score of the bonus or penalty multiplied by a the frequency multiplier.

Table 14: Secondary Trait Frequencies

Frequency	Secondary Traits	Modifier
Rare	Will, Passion	x1
Infrequent	Endurance, Speed, Reflexes	x2
Common	Health, Defence, Size	x3

Creating Trait Access and Restrictions Bonuses/Penalties

Trait access bonuses are a good way of restricting access or increasing the overall cost of purchasing certain traits or groups of traits. By restricting access to certain traits, typically unique traits,

Creating Personality Traits

The types of personality traits that can be used in a FRINGE game can be completely changed. It depends on the type of heroes and characters that are needed to be created. For example, a GM might decide to have a the seven virtues and deadly sins as personality traits. Alternatively, a GM could simply have Good and Evil, Lawful and Chaotic personality traits and leave it at that. There is a lot of flexibility here.

Chapter 5: Systems

This chapter introduces the various systems that sit on top basic mechanics of FRINGE and add to its complexity. The systems introduced include:

Basic Combat – a basic system for speedy and dramatic combats.

Equipment – rules for describing items and equipment.

Encumbrance – rules for carrying heavy equipment.

Movement – rules for moving overland and during combat.

Challenges – rules for common difficulties and obstacles.

Basic Combat

Combat is at the heart of most roleplaying games and FRINGE would not be complete without a combat system. The combat system presented here uses simple and efficient mechanics to resolve attacks. However, it lacks complexity and realism. Because of the open nature of FRINGE you are encouraged to devise your own house rules, or even devise your own combat systems, making them as complex or as simple as you desire.

In FRINGE combat is divided into rounds. The combat actions carried out in each round are resolved as follows.

Initiative - initiative determines who acts first. Each round is long enough to allow each participant to engage in a combat action – a manoeuvre that lasts only a few seconds or so. All combatants announce their actions for this round.

Combat Actions - combat actions are resolved.

Determine Damage - if an attack was successful, damage is rolled and calculated.

Initiative

Initiative sets the order of play for the round, with the character with the highest Reflexes going first and the other characters acting in descending order. Characters with the same Reflexes act simultaneously.

Characters can optionally decide to yield their action for a later point in the combat round so that they can, for example, dodge or parry an incoming blow or to anticipate some other manoeuvre. This delays their action until some later point in the initiative sequence at the player's discretion.

Note: Extra actions gained through exertion take place at the end of the combat round after everyone else has acted.

Combat Actions

After determining initiative the characters declare, in initiative order, the action they are attempting this round and roll to see if they succeed.

The precise combat actions available to characters depends upon the setting and the skills and unique traits available to the characters. The basic combat actions available to all characters are as follows:

Attack - attempt to attack your opponent.

Dodge - attempt to dodge your opponents attack.

Move - either retreat of move to a new opponent.

Attack

The most basic action a character can make is to attack an opponent. The character declares the target of his attack and generally rolls Agility + attack skill (+ weapon accuracy) vs. 7. The attack skill to use depends upon the type of attack: use Weapon for an armed attack and Melee for an unarmed attack, such as a kick or punch. The difficulty of the roll can vary depending upon various situational modifiers (see Table 15: Attack Roll Modifiers).

If you succeed at this roll and your opponent takes no defensive actions, such as dodging, you hit successfully and can roll for damage.

Table 15: Attack Roll Modifiers

Description	Modifier
Using character's off-hand.	-2

Dodge

You can attempt to dodge your opponents attack by swiftly moving out the way. Roll Agility + Melee vs. opponent's Speed. Success points are deducted from the opponents damage roll. If a player rolls well he might dodge the attack altogether, otherwise he might escape with just a graze or shallow wound.

A dodge always occurs after a opponent makes his attack. A character must either yield their action in order to dodge an attack, or exert themselves to gain an additional action to dodge, with the appropriate penalty. A character can only dodge one attack per dodge action.

Move

A character can move up to is base Speed in metres each round, or can run at twice his base Speed in metres each round at the cost of 1 point of temporary Endurance. See the Movement section below for more information.

Damage

If an attack is successful the amount of damage to the target must be determined. Damage reduces temporary Health and/or Endurance and can lead to unconsciousness or even death.

Each weapon and type of attack has its own way of determining damage. The attacker rolls the damage vs. the target's Defence. The number of success points determines the damage inflicted on the target. Failure points are ignored.

Exertion

During stressful situations, such as combat, a character can expend temporary Endurance to gain additional actions during a round. A character may only make up to 2 additional actions in a round and each additional action is made at a cumulative -3 penalty.

Size Differences

When characters of different sizes attempt to attack each other certain penalties apply. A larger character attacking a smaller character receives a penalty to hit but a bonus to the damage roll. Conversely, a smaller creature attempting to hit a larger creature receives a bonus to hit but a penalty to their damage roll. The penalties are equal to the difference in Size scores.

For example, a Medium (Size 5) creature attempting to hit a Small (Size 3) creature receives a -2 penalty to hit, but receives a +2 bonus to the damage roll if he successfully hits his opponent.

Surprise

A group of characters can attempt to surprise or ambush their opponents and thereby gain an initiative advantage. Each character in the ambushing group rolls Agility + Stealth vs. highest Reflexes of target group. If any character fails the roll he stumbles or makes some accidental noise and alerts the opponents. Success points are added to temporary Reflexes for the purposes of initiative, failure points are ignored.

Equipment

Like characters, items have their own traits. Each piece of equipment should be described using the following format:

Description: A paragraph describing the weapon, how it looks and how to use it.

Equipment Bonus: Most equipment gives a bonus to certain action rolls when used. This section details what bonuses apply and in what situations they apply.

Weight: The Weight of an object determines how large and heavy it is. See the Encumbrance section below for more information on how equipment Size affects how much a character can carry.

Size: The Size of a character for which the equipment item is designed for. A character using a item whose size is not designed to use receives a roll penalty equal to the difference in the character Size and equipment Target Size.

Cost:

Requirements: A list of minimum traits a character must possess before he can use this equipment item.

The following is an example description of an item:

Magnifying Glass

A small glass lens mounted in a metal frame which magnifies that which is observed through it.

Equipment Bonus: +2 bonus to Sense or Write rolls when attempting to detect or read something that is very small.

Weight: 0

Size: 4-6

Armour

Like characters, armour equipment have their own traits Each piece of armour should be described using the equipment format with the following modified and additional sections:

Equipment Bonus: The equipment bonus is added to the wearers temporary Defence.

The following is an example description of a piece of armour:

Plate Mail

A full body suit made up of thin, metal plates used to defend a knight against attack.

Equipment Bonus: +3 temporary Defence.

Weight: 5

Size: 5

Weapons

Like characters, weapons have their own traits Each weapon should be described using the equipment format with the following modified and additional sections:

Equipment Bonus: The accuracy of the weapon. The equipment bonus is added to the attack roll.

Damage: The traits used to determine the damage roll. For example, to determine the damage made by a successful hit from an axe's would be Strength + Weapon(Axe) vs. Defence.

The following is an example description of a weapon:

Long Sword

A full body suit made up of thin, metal plates used to defend a knight against attack.

Equipment Bonus: +2 to hit.

Damage: Strength + Weapon(Long Sword) vs. Defence

Weight: 2

Size: 5

Encumbrance

Encumbrance defines how much you character can carry. Characters can carry items whose total Weight is less than or equal to the character's Strength + Size:

Encumbrance = Strength + Size

There are different levels of Encumbrance depending upon how much is carried. A character acts as normal when carrying up to half his Encumbrance. He is considered carrying a light load when carrying up to three-quarters of his Encumbrance and suffers a -1 penalty to all physical actions. Anything up to a characters full load is considered to be moderately encumbered and the character suffers a -2 penalty to all physical actions. All Encumbrance calculations should be rounded up to the nearest whole number.

A character carrying over this Encumbrance is heavily encumbered and must make a successful Strength + Athletics vs. Encumbrance roll to determine if he can actually do anything at all. A heavily encumbered character's temporary Speed is reduced by half and he suffers a -3 penalty to all physical actions. All moderately exerting physical actions all cost a point of Fatigue. Table 16: Encumbrance Levels summarises these penalties.

Table 16: Encumbrance Levels

Encumbrance	Weight	Roll Penalty
Unencumbered	0 – ½ Encumbrance	None
Light	½ – ¾ Encumbrance	-1
Moderate	¾ – total Encumbrance	-2
Heavily	Encumbrance+	-3

Movement

How far a character can move depends on how fast they are, and how much they are carrying. There are two types of movement – combat movement and overland movement. The former represents short distance, fast movement within a combat situation. The latter is normally many kilometres over a period of several hours.

Combat Movement

A character can move a distance in metres equal to base Speed each round of combat without penalty. For an average person, this is approximately 6m/round.

Running

A character can run at twice their base Speed each round. For an average human, this is 12m/round. This is effectively a light jog, and can kept up over long distance. Moving this far in combat counts as an action – see Basic Combat for more information about combat actions. The character will lose one point of temporary Endurance each round he is running.

Overland Movement

Overland movement is where round to round movement isn't important, but distance travelled over the course of an entire day is. In good conditions over average terrain, a character can be expected to travel a distance in kilometres equal to their base Speed each day. This equates to about 3km/h. A character will gain one fatigue each day when moving at this speed. The type of terrain, weather should modify this rate.

Challenges

Toxins and Diseases

Appendix I: Index

acknowledgements	2

authors	2

design criteria	6

Free Roleplaying Community	2

games master	6, 12

Games Master	7

glossary	6

GNU General Public License	2, 43

Introduction	6

legal	2

roleplaying game	2, 6p., 37

rules, basic	9

traits, primary	6p., 9p., 14, 16, 18, 31

traits, secondary	6, 9pp., 16pp., 25, 27, 36

Appendix II: GNU General Public License

Version 2, June 1991

Copyright (C) 1989, 1991 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA

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8. If the distribution and/or use of the Program is restricted in certain countries either by patents or by copyrighted interfaces, the original copyright holder who places the Program under this License may add an explicit geographical distribution limitation excluding those countries, so that distribution is permitted only in or among countries not thus excluded. In such case, this License incorporates the limitation as if written in the body of this License.

9. The Free Software Foundation may publish revised and/or new versions of the General Public License from time to time. Such new versions will be similar in spirit to the present version, but may differ in detail to address new problems or concerns.

Each version is given a distinguishing version number. If the Program specifies a version number of this License which applies to it and "any later version", you have the option of following the terms and conditions either of that version or of any later version published by the Free Software Foundation. If the Program does not specify a version number of this License, you may choose any version ever published by the Free Software Foundation.

10. If you wish to incorporate parts of the Program into other free programs whose distribution conditions are different, write to the author to ask for permission. For software which is copyrighted by the Free Software Foundation, write to the Free Software Foundation; we sometimes make exceptions for this. Our decision will be guided by the two goals of preserving the free status of all derivatives of our free software and of promoting the sharing and reuse of software generally.

NO WARRANTY

11. BECAUSE THE PROGRAM IS LICENSED FREE OF CHARGE, THERE IS NO WARRANTY FOR THE PROGRAM, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW. EXCEPT WHEN OTHERWISE STATED IN WRITING THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND/OR OTHER PARTIES PROVIDE THE PROGRAM "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO THE QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE OF THE PROGRAM IS WITH YOU. SHOULD THE PROGRAM PROVE DEFECTIVE, YOU ASSUME THE COST OF ALL NECESSARY SERVICING, REPAIR OR CORRECTION.

12. IN NO EVENT UNLESS REQUIRED BY APPLICABLE LAW OR AGREED TO IN WRITING WILL ANY COPYRIGHT HOLDER, OR ANY OTHER PARTY WHO MAY MODIFY AND/OR REDISTRIBUTE THE PROGRAM AS PERMITTED ABOVE, BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR DAMAGES, INCLUDING ANY GENERAL, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF THE USE OR INABILITY TO USE THE PROGRAM (INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO LOSS OF DATA OR DATA BEING RENDERED INACCURATE OR LOSSES SUSTAINED BY YOU OR THIRD PARTIES OR A FAILURE OF THE PROGRAM TO OPERATE WITH ANY OTHER PROGRAMS), EVEN IF SUCH HOLDER OR OTHER PARTY HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.

END OF TERMS AND CONDITIONS

How to Apply These Terms to Your New Programs

If you develop a new program, and you want it to be of the greatest possible use to the public, the best way to achieve this is to make it free software which everyone can redistribute and change under these terms.

To do so, attach the following notices to the program. It is safest to attach them to the start of each source file to most effectively convey the exclusion of warranty; and each file should have at least the "copyright" line and a pointer to where the full notice is found.

one line to give the program's name and an idea of what it does.

Copyright (C) yyyy name of author

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or

modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License

as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2

of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,

but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of

MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the

GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License

along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software

Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA.

Also add information on how to contact you by electronic and paper mail.

If the program is interactive, make it output a short notice like this when it starts in an interactive mode:

Gnomovision version 69, Copyright (C) year name of author

Gnomovision comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; for details

type `show w'. This is free software, and you are welcome

to redistribute it under certain conditions; type `show c'

for details.

The hypothetical commands `show w' and `show c' should show the appropriate parts of the General Public License. Of course, the commands you use may be called something other than `show w' and `show c'; they could even be mouse-clicks or menu items--whatever suits your program.

You should also get your employer (if you work as a programmer) or your school, if any, to sign a "copyright disclaimer" for the program, if necessary. Here is a sample; alter the names:

Yoyodyne, Inc., hereby disclaims all copyright

interest in the program `Gnomovision'

(which makes passes at compilers) written

by James Hacker.

signature of Ty Coon, 1 April 1989

Ty Coon, President of Vice

This General Public License does not permit incorporating your program into proprietary programs. If your program is a subroutine library, you may consider it more useful to permit linking proprietary applications with the library. If this is what you want to do, use the GNU Lesser General Public License instead of this License.

FRINGE: Basics 0.1	Appendix II: GNU General Public License

47

FRINGE: Basics 0.1

roleplaying game fringe rules core rpg

2004-05-31T14:01:40