Fudge Dice Roller (Fate Dice, 4dF)

How to use this Fudge dice roller

Each Fudge die has six faces: two plus (+), two minus (−) and two blank. The roller throws four at once, written 4dF in dice notation, and adds them up: each + is worth +1, each − is worth −1 and each blank is worth 0.

1. If your character has a skill that fits the action, enter its rating in the modifier box (for example +3 for Good). If not, leave it at 0.
2. Press Roll, or drag the dice into the tray and let go.
3. The final result is the dice plus your skill. Underneath you see its adjective on the ladder: Mediocre for 0, Average for +1, Fair for +2, Good for +3 and so on up to Legendary (+8).

To read a physical roll quickly, pair each + with a − and remove them, since they cancel out. Whatever is left is the result. With +, +, − and a blank, one + remains and the roll is +1.

What Fudge dice are and where they come from

Fudge dice were born with Fudge, a generic roleplaying system that Steffan O'Sullivan proposed in November 1992 on the Usenet newsgroup rec.games.design and that grew with contributions from other hobbyists. Grey Ghost Press published the print version in 1995.

In Fudge, character traits are not numbers but words on a seven-step scale: Terrible, Poor, Mediocre, Fair, Good, Great and Superb. Each + on the dice moves the result one step up that scale and each − moves it one step down.

In 2003 Fred Hicks and Rob Donoghue released Fate, built on Fudge, and published it through their company Evil Hat Productions. The third version of the system powered Spirit of the Century (2006) and The Dresden Files Roleplaying Game. Fate Core was funded on Kickstarter in 2013 and released under open licences (Creative Commons and the OGL), together with Fate Accelerated, a short version that replaces skills with six approaches. In February 2020 Evil Hat added Fate Condensed, a compact version of the Fate Core rules with small changes.

That is why the same dice go by two names: Fudge dice, after the original system, and Fate dice, which is what the Fate books call them. Shops often sell them under both names.

How to read a roll in Fate

In Fate you roll when the outcome of an action is uncertain: overcoming an obstacle, creating an advantage, attacking or defending. Your total (dice plus skill) is compared with the opposition, which can be a fixed difficulty set by the GM or another character's roll. The amount by which you beat the opposition is counted in shifts.

Fate points let you invoke aspects for +2 or a reroll, so the dice are not always the last word. This roller gives you the clean roll; adjustments from aspects are up to you.

Exact 4dF probabilities

Four dice with three possible results each (+, blank and −, two faces of each) give 3 × 3 × 3 × 3 = 81 equally likely combinations. The table counts how many produce each total, worked out combination by combination:

• The most likely result is 0: 19 out of 81, or 23.46%.
• 62.96% of rolls land between −1 and +1. Rolling +2 or more has an 18.52% chance, the same as rolling −2 or less.
• +4 (four pluses) and −4 (four minuses) are one combination each out of 81: 1.23%. Four blanks is also 1 in 81, but a 0 can come up in many other ways, such as two pluses and two minuses.
• The average is 0 and the standard deviation 1.63. The curve is symmetrical, so the dice favour neither the players nor the GM.

Odds by the gap between skill and difficulty

Because the dice average 0, what really decides a roll is the gap between your skill and the difficulty. With Good (+3) against a Fair (+2) difficulty, the gap is +1:

With skill equal to difficulty you succeed 38.27% of the time (including succeeding with style) and tie 23.46% of the time. Each step of advantage changes the picture a lot: two steps ahead and you only fail 6.17% of the time.

When both sides roll with equal skills, the difference between the two rolls behaves like eight Fudge dice: each side wins 41.56% of the time, they tie 16.87% of the time, and one side succeeds with style 14.13% of the time.

The Fate ladder

Fate extends the Fudge scale and ties each word to a number, so “I have Great Will” and “I have Will +4” mean the same thing. This is the ladder as printed in Fate Core:

Results can go above Legendary or below Terrible, and the rules encourage each group to invent its own names for anything beyond +8.

Compared with the original Fudge scale, Fate added Average between Mediocre and Fair, and Fantastic, Epic and Legendary at the top. In Fate, characters are Mediocre (+0) at anything not listed on their sheet, which is why a 0 on the dice carries that name: no skill and no luck gives a mediocre result.

How to use an ordinary d6 as a Fudge die

If you have no Fudge dice, four ordinary six-sided dice will do. The Fate rules themselves give this conversion:

Since each symbol takes up two of the six faces, the odds are identical to a real Fudge die, so the 4dF table above applies unchanged.

Other alternatives

• Mark your own dice: with a permanent marker on a pipped d6, faces 2 and 3 become −, 4 and 6 become blank, and 5 and 1 become +.
• d6 minus d6: two dice of different colours, one positive and one negative; subtract the negative from the positive. It runs from −5 to +5 and gives extreme results more often than 4dF:

• Deck of Fate: Evil Hat publishes a deck of cards that reproduces the probabilities of the dice and is used the same way.

Other games that use Fudge dice

Fudge dice appear in every game built on the Fate system, and there are many, because its open licence lets anyone publish their own:

Before Fate, the Fudge system had its own games, such as Gatecrashers, Terra Incognita and The Deryni Adventure Game. Beyond those, many groups use 4dF as a generic roll for home-made systems, because it gives a curve centred on 0 with no tables needed.

Practical tips