From the Cradle's statistics system uses the FUDGE RPG system available from Grey Ghost Press, Inc. at http://www.fudgerpg.com. A thorough grounding in FUDGE is available from that site, but we present the basics of the system as they relate to From the Cradle for those who may not be familiar with FUDGE or inclined to dig through source material to find out what applies to this game.

Attributes and skills in FUDGE are generally rated on a seven-point scale: from worst to best, Terrible, Poor, Mediocre, Fair, Good, Great, and Superb. Numerically, these values are equivalent to -3, -2, -1, 0, 1, 2, and 3. Fair is considered to be the average value for attributes and Poor the average for skills. Attributes and skills are not related to each other: merely having high Intelligence does not improve your Medicine skill, for example.

Conflict is resolved by the use of FUDGE dice, which can be thought of as a three-sided die (were such a thing possible in the real world) with one side marked -1, one side marked 0, and one side marked +1. Typically, four of these are rolled on a given action (the number can vary by situation) and the total is added to the applicable skill or attribute. This sum is then compared to the difficulty of a given task, expressed according to the same scale. For instance, if a lock is judged to require a Good roll to break and a character with Great-level strength rolls a total of -1 or better on four dice, the lock is broken. Similarly, if a character with Fair-level strength rolls +1 or better, they succeed.

The system has additional variations for different situations, but aside from combat this document covers the vast bulk of events in the system. The beauty of FUDGE is that it can be made very simple, and in light of the fact that nobody wants to spend hours studying to play a MUSH that is what we have chosen to do.