FATAL

Oh, and I've forgotten to name her so far, so I'll have to come up with a name... considering the absurd crap for common names they gave out, I think somehing like "Ysy" or "Yenene" or something would be suitable.

OK, so disposition, which is basically alignment is next. There's some long boring crap that details a more finicky and detailed type of Character Alignment than would ever be necessary, and has a completely illegible pie chart to go with it that says that 60% of the population is some kind of alignment, but I can't figure out what, since it's all in grayscale, and there's 3 aligments that are about that shade. (I guess it's True Neutral, though.) Oh, but they can't call it stuff like Chaotic Good, it has to be "Unethical Moral" because it's totally not ripping this straight from D&D. Basically, Order Versus Chaos is Ethical versus Unethical, and Good Versus Evil is Moral versus Immoral.

Of course, like everything that is a critical character decision, or completely unimportant, this is left up to a random roll, becuase people can't determine whether or not to be good or evil on their own. It even says that you can't change your alignment without a traumatic event that halves your XP gain for some random number of months, because morality is RALISTIDELIC in that people's thought patterns are set in stone from childhood. Have I mentioned how reasonable Maid RPG is?

First, however, I have to roll for Piety Points to see how religious this girl is. But this isn't as simple as just rolling percentile dice, of course, I have to roll percentile dice, then roll more percentile dice to determine if I roll more dice based on some other thing to modify the first percentile dice in some way before I can find out something about an esoteric trait of my character's personality that no RPG in its right mind would make random instead of a player choice, anyway. Oh, and it's Piety Points acronymed into PP, by the way.

OK, I start off by rolling 86. Now, I'd have to modify this by 1/4 my age, but I don't if I'm an elf. Since I'm pretty, however, I apparently am less religious for reasons that are completely unexplained, and wouldn't make sense even if they were, and lose 3 of those PP. I get +2 back for being an elf, and having high Drive gives me another +7 to religion. Because being more active makes you more religious. Facial charisma would have dropped my PP, but I didn't roll the percentage to make that happen. I also lose 1 PP for being healthy, again for unexplained nonsensical reasons. That's a total of 91 PP. Apparently, very religious thanks to my being very active. They also have rules for making getting knocked down to near-death have positive or negative PP, depending on if you saw the white light or not. ROLL FOR SEEING THE WHITE LIGHT! REALISTOCLASTIC ERUPTION!

Anyway, that apparently means I "Worship Fluently" (which apparently means I speak perfect Worship without an accent?)

OK, now for my alignment rolls. With modifiers, I have -24 ethics, and 104 morals, so I guess I'm super-duper Chaotic Good Unethical Moral.

The section on ethics talks about how being "Ethical" and "Unethical" are simply aspects of Order Versus Chaos, and have nothing to do with good and evil. The thing then goes on to talk about how "unethical" describes being things like being creative, but also favor "Anarchy, treacherousness, betrayal, criminality, and meaninglessness". Well, if Byron Hall could understand ethics, he probably wouldn't have made FATAL, now would he have? Still, you'd think he could keep himself on-message for an entire paragraph. Oh, and in the family section, it says that chaotic characters have little regard for family (even though elves get +10 to geneaology, and -50 to ethicality), and that they enjoy doing it with their cousins, but will badmouth their spouses or cheat on them the instant they get out of hearing range. Chaotic characters also apparently don't like cities, and live in rural areas or keep to themselves, which seems to be even more bizzarely unrelated to chaos.

Morality is even more amusing, just because it's FATAL trying to tell people what wrong and right are, in between segments detailing what kind of die rolls to make in rape sessions. Oh, but it directly equates good with happiness, So Yeah. It also goes on about how too much of any emotion is evil for some reason, so being a coward is evil, but being too brave is evil, too. I really have no idea what point he was trying to make, there. It goes on for pages about how much "Liberality" you are supposed to have in spending your money and what kind of pride is OK, or how much modesty you should have (WHEN PLAYING FATAL!!!), and several other pages counting proper behavior in even more length and detail than even the penis rolling instructions, so I'm really confused, but mostly fed up with reading this stuff, so I'm skipping it all.

After that, it's another chapter... Mind.

Since the "average" appears to be 25" waists, that would be a 19" waist, and 36" hips... Then I could snap like a toothpick in a fierce wind.

Some people apparently manage. Behold, the ideal FATAL physique.◊

...Is it bad that I think she looks kind of cool?

I'm surprised you don't have to roll for your Kinsey Stat.

The scale that says what gender(s) you want to rape?

I don't think Lord Byron knows about that. There's straight people, and faggots, I would imagine his views to be.

edited 17th Sep '09 8:25:19 AM by JethroQWalrustitty

Are there asexuals in FATAL? Who do we get to rape?

edited 17th Sep '09 8:29:04 AM by Made of Meat

But its FATAL. Rolling to see if your character is attracted to men, women, both, or neither fits, and can be used to reinforce the unusual worldview seen in the rest of the game. I'm actually kinda disappointed its not here.

Kinsey is too sensible about sex for it to make it into this piece of shit.

"Roll a d6 to decide your Kinsey score. (No, you can't be completely straight. Then who would the fangirls lust after?)"

Ow, my nose!

"He crosses MacArthur Park and walks into a great sandstone building!"

This is appalling. It's like someone took all the bad features of Second Edition D&D and decided that what the world needed was more of them.

All these stats remind me of Oblivion. You could choose exactly what you want your face to look like, but you're never going to do that because it's too damn complex. Same sort of thing here.

Complexity in a video game can be excused, because it's the computer that's handling all the calculations and whatnot. In an RPG however, it's the players that have to be subjected to this sort of thing. This is not good for gameplay, as FATAL shows.

I do work with the character creator in Oblivion...

But that doesn't require trigonometry to do. Nor did it involve an 'anal circumference' slider.

Seriously, what the hell?

edited 17th Sep '09 2:57:17 PM by Miijhal

The only legitimate explanation I can think of is that the guy wanted his system to be capable of handling anything. That's probably not why stuff like that is included.

Anything except things that are tasteful.

After watching you guys demo the character creation...After J Bridge started this, I thought "Hey, maybe it'd be fun to try to actually play a game." Now I know that such an exercise is utterly devoid of merit, ironic or otherwise. The only potential entertainment is the schadenfraude to be found in the total destruction of J Bridge's sanity. Also: exaggeration.

colin: The only legitimate explanation I can think of is that the guy wanted his system to be capable of handling anything.

So he wanted his system to have a high anal circumference?

edited 17th Sep '09 3:55:01 PM by Haven

I laughed so hard I cried.

I am finding it very difficult to believe this game exists.

About "Testicles" -

Anyway, once upon a time, there was a short-lived Rifts campaign I was in. What made this campaign noteworthy was the fact that we had that damned Pantheons of the Megaverse sourcebook.

I'm sure some of you can already see where this is going.

Since I was in a shameless power-gamer mood and the gamemaster wanted to go off the wall anyway, he agreed to let me play a godling, easily the most abusable character class ever conceived by anything that has ever passed for a human mind.

Eight seconds later, the gamemaster groaned in despair when I decided to name my character "Testosticles".

After very careful calculation (read: "How much ass will I be able to kick?"), I took mega-psionics, mega-wizardry, and invulnerability to energy for my god-powers, so – on top of ending up with attributes averaging in the high twenties – I was essentially three or four different character classes at once and had so many abilities that it was hard getting them all on the character sheet. Oh, and I had a bad attitude, too.

The gamemaster punished my foolishness by instating my psychopathically godly alter-ego in what I would later come to describe as the "Woody Allen" pantheon and then enslaving me to some jerk NPC who could basically destroy planets, kill gods, and buy the universe if he felt like it. Meanwhile, another player had his great horned dragon – also munchkinized beyond all belief – and was happily acting as my sociopathic pet.

SenZar was conceived and written with the collective mindset of that entire game.

All these stats remind me of Oblivion. You could choose exactly what you want your face to look like, but you're never going to do that because it's too damn complex. Same sort of thing here.

Complexity in a video game can be excused, because it's the computer that's handling all the calculations and whatnot. In an RPG however, it's the players that have to be subjected to this sort of thing. This is not good for gameplay, as FATAL shows.

What are you kidding me? I spent like 6 hours on my Oblivion character's face. Actually, more, because I later used a console command to give myself the ability to redo it later, because once I got into better lighting, I wanted to redo the blush settings, since it made my character look like she had acne. Plus, don't forget spending more time searching for and installing mods than actually playing the game. No point in making a sorceress if you aren't going to get her a big fancy hairdo, a Pimped-Out Dress, some glasses, and weild a book as a shield!

I don't think Lord Byron knows about that. There's straight people, and faggots, I would imagine his views to be.

Oh, wait for it, I think it IS in here. I remember because I glanced through this thing before, and it's another 1d100 roll with a bizzare chart on it. Naturally, being an elf makes you suffer a -10 penalty to the roll (get it? because elves are gay! That's why they have stats that are blatanly better than humans in every way! No, wait, that didn't come out right...), with 1-10 being gay, and < 0 being Asexual, or something like that.

"About "Testicles" -"

Test-ih-KLEES dammit! Test-ih-KLEES!

If he ever met Mr. Teatime, I think they'd have a lot to talk about.

edited 17th Sep '09 5:38:34 PM by polymphus

Alright kids, buckle up, put in your mouthgard and lock up those protective chastity belts, we're going once more unto the (hopefully non-organic) breach that is FATAL. This time, it's the "Mind" chapter, which appears to be all about the temperment system. This is the system that is REALOHCRAPI'MRUNNINGOUTOFWAYSTOMAKEFUNOFTHIS because it is based upon a hilariously thorouhgly debunked idea of "humours" in your body that determine your personality. Obviously, like everything else in this unrepetent showcase of chart and table porn, it has to be done by rolling things, and looking at the "relevant" chart. (Said only with the utmost irony of "relevant" charts telling you your goddamn head diameter.) Of course, like most of these charts, it would be more easily handled by simply telling you the formulas, as these things aren't very hard to figure out. (The massive charts telling you about your stats basically come down to "every 3 points above 100 is a +1 modifier" and "every point below 100 is a -1 modifier", but just saying that plainly wouldn't have managed to waste 20 pages on full-page tables of the same exact shit over and over again, sprinkled with telling you how "gay" your voice is, or whether you can think of every moving part inside a Jumbo Jet, or just a mere Boeing 707 at the same time, or how many synonyms for "rape" you character's vocabulary stat lets them have.)

Oh, and since I'm railing against things in previous chapters, there is something I'm dissapointed in myself for not gripping about earlier. You see, at the time, I was distracted when trying to figure out my female character's vaginal depth because of the fact that I had to caluclate out to a thousandth of an inch just how deep my character could be penetrated, while vaginal width was just another d100 roll. (Also note: My vaginal width is probably larger, it is a range of 6" to 8", than it is deep. I'm not sure how REALISTIFRAGILISTICEXPIALIDOCIOUS that is, so I can't get terribly snarky over that point.) However, there was the real insidious truth that lurked just behind that nonsensical exercise in number porn: You are supposed to consult with your "Maim Master" to see just how much damage having something longer than your vaginal depth pushed into your character will do.

Oh, and did I mention that of all the personal character choices you might have to make, which is to say, all the things that they force you to roll for, like alignment and nipple color, the one thing that they always let you choose is gender. Because you can force someone to play a Lawful Evil toddler with "Retard Strength", 2" nipples, and a rectum whose diameter has been explicitly stated to be capable of smuggling coconuts, but GOD HELP YOU IF YOU FORCE SOMEONE TO PLAY A WOMAN!!! That shit just ain't right.

Also, on the topic of feminity, I'd like to ask people more on what to name my character... I'll probably go with something like "Ysy" or "Yenene" if someone else doesn't speak up. I'm leaning towards "Ysy", and pronouncing it so that it rhymes with "his say".

Well, THAT was a derail, well, back on topic, I have to roll for blood pressure my Sanguine Temperment. Hall goes on to tell me how each temperment is related to a different matter, and a state of matter (Gas, Liquid, Solid, and "Dense", whatever the hell that means,) the relevant season of the temperment, the wind that is supposed to blow for me, and what part of the body is best represented by that temperment. I'm sure this is supposed to be something really deep and important to someone 2000 years ago, but it doesn't seem to have any practical effect on the game, so I really have to wonder why I had to keep track of all these modifiers to my Phlegm meter all this time, anyway, although I guess that, like alignment, I get punished if I don't play along with being really "black biley".

Oddly, it tells you to either just plain roll another d100, or that you can take an online test to determine your own temperment for some odd reason, and use that as your character's stats for this. It tells you how a 50 is "well balanced" in a temperment, but doesn't bother giving you one of those "bellcurving" rolls to make it any more likely to roll a 50 than it is to roll a 3. I guess Lord Byron likes his characters crazy, though, the better to rape you with, my dear.

42 (Sanguine / blood), 98 (Choleric / yellow bile), 80 (Melancholic / black bile), 25 (Phlegmatic / phlegm) were my base rolls, but now I have to figure out all my modifiers. I get the (so small as to make me wonder why he bothered) +2 Sanguine -2 Choleric for being female, and the (laughably huge) -50 Choleric and -25 Phlegmatic for being an elf. There might have been some things about more modifiers in the "body" section thanks to having 5" long feet or something, but I don't give enough of a damn to go back there to find out. So yeah, I now have 44 Sanguine, 46 Choleric, 80 melancholic, and 0 Phlegm (someone get me a glass of water, my mouth is so dry!).

It goes on in detail about what each thing means, so Sanguine is your optimism and cheerfulness and childlikeness and stuff. Choleric is your leadershipfullness, and gets a more positive review than the others, talking about how "they're always right, even if people don't like them", because it is your "rapist, not the rapee" temperment, so obviously that had to be the one that being a female elf would totally kill. Melancholic is the "introvert, thinker, and pessimist" temperment, and after Choleric got killed, this is my major thing, so I guess I'm a sad elf because I was stuck with a high Choleric score. Phlegmatic is for the "introvert, the watcher, and the pessimist". Umm... you just used two of the same words to describe that one as you did the last one, there, Hall. So basically, it's the same thing as the last one, but I have none of this one, and plenty of the last one. It also goes on to say that they are "shy, compromising, and self-rightuous"... wait, isn't being self-rightuous totally different from being compromising or shy?

Then, because I hadn't seen a chart in a whole three or four pages, Hall spits another one out about the strengths and weakneses (about 30 of each, although there are only half as many Sanguine strengths as anything else). There are too many of these things that are too vaguely defined to give anything remotely like useful information, but yay, the second thing down on Melancholic is that apparently, I "enjoy being hurt". Perfect. Oh, and in the choleric list, there's these gems: "Dominates Others" "Can Do Anything Better", and "Knows Everything". Remember, this is the temperment that takes a penalty for being female or an elf.

This then goes on talking about how "Scholars are debating" this centuries-debunked bullshit, and that apparently, I have to take my two highest temperments, and turn it into my combined temperment thing. Thanks to unusual rolling, in spite of Hall's best efforts, my choleric is still above my sanguine, so I'm apparently Melancholic-Choleric.

It says that this makes me an introvert, but that I can have critical outbursts, and that I enjoy insulting other people. Lovely. It says that I'm a prefectionist who often wins because I prepare and plan more than my opponents, but who is impossible to please, and possibly manic-depressive or sadistic.

OK, now it starts going into mental illnesses for some reason. I don't know about you guys, but I have to wonder about the REALOVISION of Anorexia Nervosa in the ancient world. Back when being fat was a sign of wealth and status, I don't think people who were concerned about dieting to the point of starving themselves.

Of course, why afflict your players with odd but reasonable mental illnesses when you can start handing around things like necrophilia as an illness whenever they roll something low?! Note, I'm only going to post what the book says about these things, not verify what they are. OK, let's go down the list:

• Abasophilia (lust for lame or crippled people. DC 80 roll or you start dry-humping any crippled person you see.)
• Acrotomophilia (lust for amputated stumps of limbs. DC 80 roll or you start dry-humping any amputee you see.)
• Autoabasophilia (lust for making yourself lame. DC 30 roll or you cut off your own limbs)
• Choreomania (DC 50 or you start dancing for no reason)
• Coprophilia (Oh wow. Lust for fecal matter. DC 80 roll or you start humping any shit you see.)
• Erotomania (DC 30 whenever you talk, or you start telling lies about how good you are in bed. *Facepalm*)
• Erotophonophillia (DC 30 or you perform a sexual murder the next person you see. *head desk*)
• Exhibitionism (DC 30 or say hello to your little friend.)
• Formicophilia (wut? Oooooooooookay, sexual attraction to covering people with insects. DC 30 or you dump insects on people.)
• Frotteurism (DC 30 any time you see someone with 120 bodily attractiveness, or you start dry-humping them)
• Hypoxophilia (DC 80 or when you have sex, you strangle your partner to unconsciousness.)
• Narratophilia (DC 80 or you start talking "dirty" to people)
• Necrophilia (DC 80 any time you are near a corpse or... So Yeah)
• Noctomania (Sleep during the day, up during the night... that's a mental illness?)
• Nymphomania (Of course. It talks about "phallophilia", or attraction to large penises, so roll for Freud Was Right. If a man with 110 or higher Charisma is near a Nymphomaniacal woman, she must roll DC 80 or immediately solicit sex from him while asking him how large his penis is. Oh happy, happy days.)
• Oniomania (DC 80 or you start shopping uncontrollably.)
• Onomotomania (DC 80 or you keep repeating the same phrase or sound over and over again.)
• Pedophilia (Why not? Well, Byron actually held himself back on this one. Instead of saying DC 80 or you rape the first child you see, it just says "sexual attraction" and leaves it at that. I'd say Even Evil Has Standards... but this is basically like a mercy kill after the torture.)
• Raptophilia (Love of rape. Cutting straight to the heart of the matter, eh, Hall? DC 50 if you see someone with 110 or more Charisma, or you will stalk and rape them at the first opportunity.)
• Satyromania (I'm amazed he didn't just leave it at Nymphomania so that he could say it's all because women always want it. Anyway, DC 80 around women with 110 or more Charisma, or they solicit sex while talking about their body.)
• Scoptophilia (Voyeurism. DC 80 or you play with yourself if you can watch others have sex.)
• Sexual Masochism (Goody goody gumdrops. Any time a sexual situation comes up, DC 70, or you beg to be bound up and beaten.)
• Sexual Sadism (Oddly, Hall actually talks about this in a negative manner, talking about "ejaculative retardation". I guess he didn't want anything taking away from his favorite, Raptophilia's spot in the sun. DC 70 or they start beating people, and gain 2d20 Choleric, as if that mattered.)
• Somnophilia (DC 70, or rape anyone you see who is asleep.)
• Trichotillomania (Pull out your hair.)
• Urophilia (DC 70 or start peeing on people.)
• Vaginismus (Spasms to your vagina make people less likely to like you, and you lose 2d20 Sanguine. What the Hell?)
• Vomerophilia (ARE YOU KIDDING ME?! I DON'T CARE ABOUT RULE 36, THIS CANNOT BE A FETISH! BULLSHIT! DC 70 whenever you see vomit, or you start masturbating to it. GRAAAAAAAH!)
• Voyeurism (What, didn't we already do this? Well, it's the same DC 80 for the same touch yourself if you see people naked.)
• Zoophilia (Beastiality. Roll for your "favorite" animal.)

I should point out that this book did have your usual psychiatric problems, like depression, kleptomania, OCD, egomania, and antisocial personality disorder, but the "philias" completely outweighed them. They also only had a general "phobia" in the middle of all these stupid "philias", wheras a game like Call Of Cthulhu would actually focus on the "fear" mental disorders.

Anyway, it then tells you to roll 1d1000 on a chart any time you need a random insanity.

Well... I survived this chapter... next up is the thing on "Societies" in this world, however you want to define that world in a game where "50% of all men are likely to have participated in a gang rape at some point in their lives".

Not that I care but I think this is supposed to be J Bridge's liveblog. Well, I guess we could all agree that FATAL is needlessly complicated. However, it doesn't really deserve the hate - all it has are whole heaps of unnecessary details that can be happily ignored if you don't consider it relevant. In fact, I'm almost certain that many of the sexual aspects are completely optional. I still don't really have a clue why he put it in but those aspects really get hyped up far, far too much.

Except when you get to the actual combat part, and every attack has a chance of causing people to *ahem* poop because you hit them in the colon (somehow). And there are rules for raping people as a combat technique. Plus the game goes out of its way to tell you how life is cheap, and you can buy slaves for less money than a daily meal.

It's not called vomerophilia, it's called emetophilia.

edited 17th Sep '09 10:33:49 PM by Made of Meat