What was the original design goal behind Fubar? 

It began as a simple set of rules for my own amusement, an exercise in minimalism. Could I create a set of rules on a single page? My original intention was to produce a set of one page rules for World War Two skirmish games, but that quickly changed to have a focus more on modern and sci-fi. The core requirements were:

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• Limited or no paperwork/record keeping

• Only one dice type, either D6 or D10

• Simple command & control mechanics

• Simplified weapons rules

• Unit training/experience

• Suppression affects activation chances

• Opportunity fire for units set on overwatch

• Ability to split platoons down into fire teams

• A unit that fails to activate can still fire or go onto overwatch, they just can't move 

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We're on the 4th edition of Fubar today. When did the game first come out and why did you decide to make it free?

​The oldest copy of FUBAR that I can find in my archives comes from June 2010. As for free, well the first edition was crap. Only after the group worked on it with me for a while did it become actually playable. By then it was a group exercise . Anyway, how do you market and sell a single page?

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How did the Forge of War group come together and who were the key players in developing Fubar?

I wrote a set of skirmish/small unit action rules called The Forge of War and put it on a Bulletin Board. It became quite popular and a group formed around it. We set up our own board for people to tinker with this, and to show their own rules and get other players to test and critique them. These are the guys who are credited in my oldest versions of the core rules; John Leahy, Adam Isherwood, Hoshi Yonagi, Edgar Traverso, David Traverso, Mike Moore, Chris Knowles, Thomas Robson, Jason Mastros, Dave Robinson, Trenton Lister, Phil Morgan, Paskudnyork, Vonsirius, Lanse Tryon, Mike Rybak, and Mark Ball. We had a rule, if you contributed you were credited.

 

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Was solo or cooperative play something you considered during development?

I have seen FUBAR played in both styles, especially collaborative.

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The game can be played with as little as a squad, up to a reinforced platoon per side. What engagement size do you personally find ideal for the system?

In my experience, 2-4 squads is manageable, but I have seen games with multiple players that ran with larger. Often by dividing up the battlespace.​

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Every ruleset has tradeoffs. What criticisms of Fubar do you think are fair?

One of the things that is regularly challenged in various fora is the one-page rule. I held sternly to that because it made all of us much better writers. Every word is precious when you only have three columns of 8pt text to fill. You wouldn’t believe the depth and length of some of our online discussions over changing just one line or even a single word. As for the rules themselves, some of the longest debates we had as group were over Activation and Suppression.