There are two types of people who play Power Fudge: players, who take on the role of a single person, and game masters, who take on the role of… well, everyone else who the players meet and interact with. The game master also sets up the finer details of the city and builds the challenges with which the players will contend.
As a player, you get to create the character you're going to play; the game rules form the skeleton of your character, while your imagination forms the rest. You may choose to play an agent of a shadowy government department that knows aliens are real and uses alien technology to keep humanity safe from - and ignorant of - the aliens. You may choose to play a wizard following the traditions of an ages-old secret society, keeping the world safe from evil, power-greedy sorcerers who want to rule it. You might even play a happy-go-lucky housewife, who was granted cybernetic limbs after a horrible automobile accident and has been drawn into a secret world she never knew existed. Your options are truly limited only by your own imagination.
As a game master, you get to populate the world with your own creations. Is there a bar on the west side that secretly caters to people "in the know", where agents, wizards, and cybernetic housewives can safely congregate? Does a coven of evil witches gather in a clearing in the woods not too far from the train tracks? Is that homeless guy who camps in the alley behind the Saveco really a homeless guy?
The game master also sets up the adventures that the players will experience. What events will occur, and what evidence will the players gather, that will lead the players to the homeless guy who is really an alien? What has the coven of witches done that will cause the players to start looking in their direction and consider them a threat to be dealt with? What challenges will the players face as they begin investigating those things? Questions similar to these are what the game master has to answer and have ready before the players dive in to the game.
