FATAL by Syrg Sapphire
Intro/Attributes, part 1
Original SA post FATAL, Part 1: The Introduction
No, really. There's enough material to mine in the introduction alone in this book. FATAL stands for "Fantasy Adventure to Adult Lechery", and was later renamed "From Another Time, Another Land" in the more-commonly-distributed (and heavily censored) second edition. (I'm gonna distinguish the two by the names "Adult Lechery" and "Another Land" editions from here on out.) To this day, it is probably the king of RPG hubris. In case that image up there breaks, I want to point out that on PAGE ONE it claims to be "The most difficult, detailed, realistic, and historically/mythically accurate role-playing game available."
This claim is horseshit in all but one word, and I think anyone who has ever heard of it knows which one it is*.
Right out the gate, we undermine "historically accurate" in the first paragraph on page 2 (of 901 pages ):
FATAL posted:
Welcome to a fantasy medieval role-playing game that focuses on realism and detail whenever possible without sacrificing fun. Despite the focus on realism, several tenets of fantasy are assumed. In the world of this game, magic exists as well as spellcasters such as mages, witches, and druids. Second, fantastic creatures roam the world, including kobolds and dragons, among others. Finally, hundreds of deities exist, and moreover these gods are concerned with their worshippers, the state of the world, and their own deific interests. Aside from these basic assumptions of fantasy, realism is sought in every other respect and applied to these fantastic tenets as well as the gaming world and role-playing system. **
So keep this claim in mind, because I'm sure as shit going to: the only things they changed from real history for fun's sake were "magic is real, so are fantasy creatures, and a fuckton of gods too". Everything else is realistic. This would be altered in the second revision with a huge chunk of pedantic text to clarify so fuckers like me could not point at this and laugh anymore. Too bad I'm reviewing the first edition, motherfuckers!
We go from this into what you'd expect out of the intro to any sourcebook- "what is an RPG, what do I need to play, etc." except with what I'm going to start referring to as "the FATAL Touch". Spot what seperates this book from the intro you might find in, say, a D&D book or a GURPS supplement!
FATAL posted:
A role-playing game is a game in which the participants make decisions as though they were a certain character. The decisions a player may make are incredibly diverse compared to other games. For instance, assume you are an adventuring knight who has just fought his way to the top of a dark tower where you find a comely young maiden chained to the wall. What would you do? Some may choose to simply free the whimpering wench. Others may free her while hoping to win her heart. Instead of seeking affection, some may talk to her to see if they can collect a reward for her safe return. Then again, others may be more interested in negotiating freedom for fellatio. Some may think she has no room to bargain and take their fleshly pleasures by force. Others would rather kill her, dismember her young cadaver, and feast on her warm innards.
As you can see, the number of decisions one could make with one simple situation can quickly become overwhelming. Typically, this is the attraction of role-playing games. No other game allows so much individual choice, and consequently, so much fun.
FATAL is a game that is... well, it's rapey. Really rapey. And I suppose you expect this from a game with a title involving Adult Lechery, but that paragraph remains untouched in Another Land. Either way, we go on to the "what will I need" step, which is standard aside from one curious alteration between 1st/2nd editions... the Adult Lechery edition mentions you might want three splatbooks called "Grimoirium Genitoris (Grimoire of the Gods)", "Grimoirium Monstrum (Grimoire of Monsters)" and "Grimoirium Vita Futura (Grimoire of the Next World)". None of these are mentioned at all in the second printing. A total of 80 pages were added to the second edition, but at a quick glance through the contents*** I don't see anything that could contain monster stats, a god listing, or new world information, and am pretty sure it's just the fact that the damn thing has more ass-coverage in Another Land making up the higher count. If someone has these, get them to me and I will add to the world's knowledge of FATAL (and my own blood-alcohol level).
There's some more fluff and a horrifying sign of things to come: there's no math more complicated than basic algebra in here, it points out, but when dealing with percentages and decimals (a bad sign in an RPG)? Just drop the decimal, don't round up or anything. Also, "percentages are used frequently". Anyhow, you need two types of player: most are just character-toting standard players, but the next is a Game Mast- oh, no, wait. Here comes the FATAL Touch:
FATAL posted:
One person must assume the role of the Maim Master (hereafter referred to as the MM). While the MM does much more than maim, this is the nickname that has been acquired due to the frequency of injury to characters.
The rest is just a bit of basic RPG fluff before a large warning (expanded in Another Land to also point out this book will contain obscenities and other things) that hey, there's some terrible stuff here, but we TOTALLY don't condone it, okay? Ass-coverage again and we're not even to the contents. Thankfully, this is where I bow out for tonight, and we get to another spectacular part of the first printing that Another Land sliced out: the art.
Oh yeah. There's gonna be PLENTY more of that as we go on.
Other Second-Printing Notes:
-
The "realism" corrections sum up to "what if Europe was cut off from everything else? Everyone's white, there ain't no embalming, expect no spices, and oh, Christ ain't around either. Also, assume the technology level is circa 1335 AD." It seems a little odd that the game points out that specific year in the book unless I missed an event.
-
A note was added after the "rape the maiden" examples saying that the game will allow for moral or immoral choices. The game supports neither, and it's there to "allow each player to role-play as desired".
-
For some reason, the name of the worldbook changed between editions, from "Talitaria Fantasy World" in the original to "Neveria Fantasy World" in the second. I have copies of neither of these. I cannot say if anything was quietly edited between these like in the main book.
-
In a terrible choice, all the math examples that point to 77 have been changed to 88 in the second printing. You know, like the neo-nazi symbol. I have no fucking idea why this was done.
-
Another paragraph was added to describe the mechanics FATAL runs on as "The Mean System". It uses the normal curve, mean average, standard deviation, and parabolic curves, with a side of trigonometric function. Despite this, they claim Mean System is "the most simple and sophisticated mechanics in the industry". Yes, really. That is a 100% quote.
Pages covered in this post: 4
Pages covered total: 4/901
* Well it sure as shit isn't "available", genius.
** I want to point out I am copying anything in quote tags directly from the book. The only changes I am making are for spacing purposes, as copying from the PDF inserts wacky-ass line breaks. This means you can blame the designers for the typos or errors you find.
*** If you're shocked that I'm not intimately familiar with these fucking books I just want to point out that man, it is MOTHERFUCKING FATAL we are talking about here. I intend to drink away as much of these books as I can after each article.
FATAL, Part 2: Attributes 1
That image right there lurks just below the table of contents. Thanks, guys.
This is where the printing differences get odd. Despite telling you that the chapters are sorted in order of relevance earlier, the entire flow of character-creation chapters has shifted. Adult Lechery starts with ability scores, then gender/race, and finally body. Another Land is more traditional, going in the order of race/gender (yes, they swapped that order), body, and finally abilities. All this serves to do is basically make it more of a pain in the ass for me to compare things as I swap between books. We're using the old-style order in these writeups because I hate myself.
Ability scores! Probably one of the only things to get MORE miserable between printings. You have 5 attributes, each comprised of the average of 4 sub-attributes, and you only roll for the 20 sub-attributes, using a (4d100/2)-1 formula. (In Another Land, this became (10d100/5)-1 . Again - no fucking clue why this change was made, as with pretty much any numerical shift between the two.) Assuming you don't have a specific d100 and use the traditional pair of d10s, then 160-400 rolls later* you'll have your five attributes sorted. Let's let the book explain it:
FATAL posted:
There are five core abilities (Physique, Charisma, Dexterity, Intelligence, and Wisdom), each with four sub-abilities.
[...]
On the following tables, a score of 100 is the average for all humans. For instance, if a male rolls a Strength sub-ability score of 100 and is horrified that the average Bench Press is 120 pounds, as noted above this is also an average for gender. Later, to resolve this example, males will receive a bonus for Strength.
[...]
Lastly, these abilities are arranged not in an order of importance (they are all important), but in an order that progresses from concrete (Physique) to abstract (Wisdom).
Just for an extra fuck you in the "simplest and most sophisticated mechanics in the industry", only two sub-attributes can be altered later: Physical Fitness, and Strength, both through "persistent exercise". A page later it will be mentioned that they actually meant "Persistent Exercise", which is a set of rules at chapter's end. For no reason at all, they tell you in no uncertain terms that with rules as written, you can't alter anything else save by aging (because all characters are assumed to start as "Young Adult" age class... later, we will cover this later), magic, or "something debilitating happening to the character"**. Also you need to make common sense rolls every time you exercise to see if you're fucking it up and will get gains from it. (Said roll goes from a challenge factor of 60 in Adult Lechery to 18 in Another Land. What.)
Honestly I'm gonna start looking at attributes in more detail one by one as we go, but for now I'll leave you with a spectacular example of the FATAL Touch:
FATAL posted:
If your character is retarded, consult your Maim Master.
Pages covered in this post: 2
Pages covered total: 6/901
* Yes, yes, they recommend using the "FATAL Character Generator" program heavily, but assume, like me for years, or when I first got this PDF, you did not have a laptop around when gaming. Yes, I have aided a group in rolling these BY HAND.
** I suppose if it's one of the only ways to alter your character, it'd explain wanting a "Maim Master".
Character Generator
Original SA post
Now that we're here and Sapphire doesn't wanna do it, let's take a look at the FATAL Character Generator, and being an IT guy I figured it'd be appropriate for me to do it, insofar as anything to do with FATAL is 'appropriate'. I managed to find a copy of it by searching for it on google, downloading an unknown executable, and it amazingly turning out not to be a virus. Don't do this at home, kids.
Anyway, we want to make a simple human male character. Let's call our guy Doug.
The first thing you see is...
Yeah. They couldn't even be bothered to use a free development environment or pirate a higher end version of the one they're using. This comes up every time you open up the program.
Text only interface? Dark red text on black background?
Hell fucking yeah.
When it asks me to verify my age, I put in the only correct answer.
That last prompt repeats itself seven more times. Can you guess why?
That's right.
This program takes each fucking character as new input. I don't even know how they managed to fuck up this badly (maybe taking each character into the string into the buffer and throwing each character to the program's input?), and honestly I feel viewing the code would rape my brain, Snow Crash style.
At this point I reload the program and enter the 'right' answer, bringing me to the... next set of introductory text.
Since everything is text based, this is about the point where I stop taking screenshots and just copypaste out. For the sake of simplicity, I just go with a 'human'. After this screen, two lines show up:
FATAL Character Generator posted:
Your character is a human.
Press any key to continue...
FATAL Character Generator posted:
Your character is male.
Press any key to continue...
FATAL Character Generator posted:
The following table will display your currently unmodified sub-ability scores.
Press any key to continue . . .
code:
Sub-ability Score
__________________________________________
Physical Fitness: 102
Strength: 109
Bodily Attractiveness: 99
Health: 116
Facial: 78
Vocal: 107
Kinetic: 92
Rhetoric: 102
Hand-Eye Coordination: 133
Agility: 93
Reaction Speed: 84
Enunciation: 102
Language: 106
Math: 76
Analytical: 92
Spatial: 102
Drive: 75
Intuition: 93
Common Sense: 113
Reflection: 102
Press any key to continue . . .FATAL Character Generator posted:
Would you like to re-roll any sub-abilities?
You may re-roll up to four times, and that
includes re-rolling one sub-ability multiple times.
Each time you re-roll, you will acquire a random
mental illness. If your ability is lower than
before, then I guess you're just double-fucked!
So what's it gonna be, buddy?
(Y)es or (N)o: Y
FATAL Character Generator posted:
You have acquired esthesiomania
Refer to 'Chapter 5: Mind' in F.A.T.A.L. for a detailed explanation about your
mental illness(es). All modifiers have been calculated for you.
Press any key to continue . . .
...looking up what this is left as an exercise to the reader.
FATAL Character Generator posted:
Choose the corresponding letter of your character's age category.
(I) Infant
(C) Child
(P) Puberty
(Y) Young Adult
(M) Middle Age
(O) Old Age
(V) Venerable
(R) Randomly choose for me
Your choice is:
FATAL Character Generator posted:
Would you like your character to have randomly generated sexual features?
(Y)es or (N)o: Y
code:
Ability Score Skill Modifier
________________________________________________________________________________
PHYSIQUE: 111 6
CHARISMA: 94 -3
DEXTERITY: 103 3
INTELLIGENCE: 103 3
WISDOM: 93 -3
Press any key to continue . . .FATAL Character Generator posted:
Age: 18
Height: 66 inches
Weight: 127 pounds
BMI: 20.55
BMI Status: Healthy weight
Breadth: 33 inches
Foot Size: 12 inches
Head Size: 22.23 inches
Handedness: Right-handed
Hair Length: 17 inches
Hair Color: Auburn
Hair Type: Medium thickness, wavy, oily
Eye Color: Blue
Skin Color: Tan
Vision: Near-sightedness, 500 feet
Most Attractive Feature: Chest
Most Repulsive Feature: Hair
Facial Feature: Big lips
Perceived as daring, reckless, lewd, untruthful
Press any key to continue . . .
FATAL Character Generator posted:
Manhood Length: 5.50 inches
Manhood Circumference: 5.00 inches
Tongue: 4.00 inches
Areola Diameter: 1.50 inches
Areola Hue: Medium
Nipple Length: 0.50 inches
Anal Circumference: 6 inches
Sexuality: Heterosexual
Debauchery Score: 84
Press any key to continue . . .
FATAL Character Generator posted:
Your Ethicality result: 8
You are: Unethical w/Neutral tendencies.
Your Morality result: 16
You are: Neutral w/Immoral tendencies.
Your Peity [sic] Points: 22
Your character has worshipped before, and may worship again.
Press any key to continue . . .
FATAL Character Generator posted:
You're too healthy to have any allergies!
Press any key to continue . . .
FATAL Character Generator posted:
Temperament Value
__________________________________________
Sanguine 59
Choleric 86
Melancholic 77
Phlegmatic 49
Your temperament is: Choleric Melancholic
These characters are likely to become leaders who relentlessly
drive others. They view characters as tools to get the job done,
and more than any other temperament, demand that the tasks of their
followers be performed flawlessly. Some characters respect this
type of individual or leader because they and their followers are
productive, though they may personally dislike them as this
characterÆs low opinion of others becomes evident. With most
characters, reactions are more extreme, usually a combination of
admiration and hate. Choleric-melancholic characters are extremely
competitive, forceful, and often successful.
Press any key to continue . . .
FATAL Character Generator posted:
Temperament Value
__________________________________________
Sanguine 59
Choleric 86
Melancholic 77
Phlegmatic 49
Your temperament is: Choleric Melancholic
These characters are likely to become leaders who relentlessly
drive others. They view characters as tools to get the job done,
and more than any other temperament, demand that the tasks of their
followers be performed flawlessly. Some characters respect this
type of individual or leader because they and their followers are
productive, though they may personally dislike them as this
characterÆs low opinion of others becomes evident. With most
characters, reactions are more extreme, usually a combination of
admiration and hate. Choleric-melancholic characters are extremely
competitive, forceful, and often successful.
Press any key to continue . . .
FATAL Character Generator posted:
Your randomly generated birthname is: Ebulus Shelton
Press any key to continue . . .
Then there's an epilogue screen and that's really it. Besides the shoddy programming, I'm surprised this program actually works for its intended purpose.
"But wait," you say, "this program is supposed to give you FATAL.txt! Where is it?"
Well, unfortunately for all of you that were holding your breath for it, you need to run the program with admin permissions for it to actually write this file. I know this because after all of this, I ran it a second time.
Now I'm going to scrub my hard drive with both DBAN and bleach and then proceed to drink the bleach. I hate myself, I hate you all, and most of all I fucking hate FATAL.
EDIT: While I'm doing terrible, terrible things, I seem to have found a copy of Neveria Fantasy World . I'm not touching this.
Attributes, part 2
Original SA post FATAL, Part 3: Attributes 2
Ability scores ("attributes" in any other game) are covered from pages 6-37. Only 11 of these pages have actual writing on them (if I'm kind - one is the image seen above, taking up 95% of said page as the rest finishes a paragraph from the previous). The other 20 pages (or two-thirds of the chapter!) are nothing but tables.
Well, that's a lie. There's also this sketch cut off(?) by one of them that has no explanation whatsoever for its existence.
Linked due to being mildly NWS.
Here's the rundown of each core ability, the sub-abilities under it, and what skills each influences. I'm just gonna let this shit speak for itself.
Physique controls:
-
Physical Fitness
, which is basically your stamina. Despite not being how strong/muscular you are, it's linked to Bodily Attractiveness... we'll get there. It governs your Sprint speed heavily, and has an effect on these skills: Climb, Contortion, Jump, Mountaineering, Sprint, and Swim. Again - stamina, not muscles, so how it's related to Jump I have no idea...
-
Strength
, which I quote directly, "refers to the size of the character's muscles and amount of force that may be generated". So, where Jump should be. Also, it too interacts with Bodily Attractiveness. "Specifically", we are told, it covers measurements for the Clean and Jerk, Bench Press, and Dead Lift. (Clean & Jerk will appear nowhere else in the book. I ran a fucking search. Handy measurement system!) This thing ties into
seventeen
seperate skills, raises the damage of melee weapons, and also has an effect on your HP!
-
Bodily Attractiveness
, which is comprised of "the attractiveness of [your] frame and how appropriately muscles and fat are distributed". If you have a low score you might have long arms or a funky torso or shit. This is the first of some amazing FATAL Touch moments in this chapter, and I'm quoting it raw:
It covers the twin skills of Seduction and Sexual Attractiveness, and oh, that tie with the prior two skills I mentioned? The more attractive you are, the higher your Fitness/Strength stats are. No, it's not vice versa, which might make sense. If you look better, you get stronger. (And taller.) Unless you're a lady. See, the men get +/- whatever to "Physical Fitness, Strength, and Height" (I would think a +32 in Height would be insane, but what the fuck do I know), but women get "+ X to Cup Size, -X to Strength, and -X% Weight". Yes, weight gets a percentage but height doesn't... and since height in this book is in inches, it means you can gain up to three extra feet as a man just with a bit of luck on rolls! Also, even though on men it's a straight "plus if high enough, minus if low enough" across the spectrum... they specifically remove strength from the "negatives" on women. So if you're too pretty, you're weaker, but if you're too ugly, you're... fatter but somehow have tinier breasts? An amazing grasp of anatomy. Finally, we come to...FATAL posted:
Males with high Bodily Attractiveness tend to have high Physical Fitness, Strength, and Height, while females with high Bodily Attractiveness tend to have large Cup Size, low Weight and low Strength.
-
Health
, which makes it harder to puke/get drunk, protects you from allergies and disease, gives you better hearing, a tiny bit more HP, and... renders you immune to poison ivy? Is this a real thing? I've always avoided the stuff, I did not know you could have a fucking tolerance. And to round out this post, let me have the book itself tell you what skills it aids:
FATAL posted:
Regarding skills, Health is useful with Sound and Urinating. Perhaps Health is most useful when considering Crucial Damage.
Yeah. That's ONE attribute out of five. Let's see if I can cover a pair next time (tomorrow, these are written up and all huge so posted a day or so apart)
Second-Printing Notes:
-
For some reason the formula for calculating Sprint speed in miles per hour goes from asking you to divide the score by 58 in first edition to a simple 20 (aka, 1/5th) in second. I think this is the first time mechanics have actively been made BETTER between the editions.
-
Similarly, there's still a relationship between Phys. Fitness and Bodily Attractiveness, but it goes the sane way this time: the former influences the latter. Strength has nothing to do with either.
-
Strength affects less skills now, but I need to check if some of them even exist anymore/were combined. I'll get to this when we tackle skills later.
-
Bodily Attractiveness no longer affects female Strength, just like it doesn't influence male Physical Fitness.
-
The chapter is now 32 pages long with a similar 10.1 pages of text. One table is actually three pages larger now, while others shrunk so small that pairs fit beside each other.
Attributes, part 3
Original SA post
It's Tuesday somewhere.
FATAL, Part 4: Attributes 3
There are so many of these boxes in the book, in many shapes and sizes, that I honestly wonder if this book was not meant to be sold when I got the copy. Things in the "Neveria Fantasy World" splatbook someone found really make that theory plausible.
Our next ability is
Charisma
, comprised of the following four amazing components:
-
Facial Charisma
, which is how pretty your head is. Yep. That's its own thing. All it affects is Sexual Adeptness. Fun fact: I was going to put a joke here about how you could negate any penalties with a bag on the head, and then add a postscript about me joking and needing to point that out with FATAL... except, uh...
They beat me to it and this is a serious rule in the book. The FATAL Touch, everyone!FATAL posted:
Note that there may be instances, such as total darkness or a sack over the head, when Facial Charisma does not apply [to Sexual Adeptness checks].
-
Vocal Charisma
affects all of no skills according to the description, and it only mentions it coming into play when you're talking to someone who can't understand your language/the impression you give based on speech patterns. However, it IS still mockable since it gives a handy table telling you how you come off with various negatives/positives. An incomplete selection, from weakest to strongest, includes "Gay" (actually the lowest rank in the game), "Detached", "Always says 'um' or 'uh'", "Avoids 'um' or 'uh", "Uses vocal pausing effectively" (how is this going to affect a foreigner in any way and how is this somehow above average?), "Clear" (third-best speech in the table!) and "Otherworldly".
-
Kinetic Charisma
is how smoothly you move. If it weren't for a similar table to Vocal Charisma's, I'd say it was one of the sanest attributes of all, only applying to Dance, Massage, and Sexual Adeptness checks. (Nothing is as funny as the Vocal Charisma table's descriptors. Sorry. It's just got a similar stupid table.)
- Rhetorical Charisma does in fact exist, and applies to how you talk. You're ranked in this by average speech rate, delivered in WPM (Words Per Minute). Since it's better to speak slightly faster than the average rate of speech to sound more persuasive (It does not list average speech rate anywhere), faster is better. Until it isn't. Nowhere is it explained what's too fast or not, making the fact that from the middle of low stats into the middle of high stats are all a "really slow or really fast (50% chance)" rank stupid as shit. Also, there is a seperate attribute we'll get to in a second that controls Maximum Speech Rate, which, should you get a poor roll, will fuck you once more... but not really. We'll get there.
Next comes Dexterity , which teaches me that this game actually has a Basketweaving skill. Read all about it:
-
Hand-Eye Coordination
affects a shitload of skills. Some of the funnier ones include Basketweaving, Delousing, Dying (they meant Dyeing, but the typo is easily on-par with another later in the book...), Milking, and Urinating. It also determines your Finger Movement Precision! So yet another goddamn table. You can be, depending on how fucked your stats are in either direction, so spastic that you can't be more precise than
one foot
with your movements, or within 1/1000th of an inch at the other end of the scale. Damn.
-
Agility
, too, covers a wide berth. It covers the number of Brawling attacks per round, and how many seconds it takes you to stand up! The funny skills in this case include Comedy, Physical, Dismemberment, Impaling, Mangling, and Silence.
-
Reaction Speed
totally isn't the same as Agility, silly! It's listed as "the mental Dexterity". It'll help you wake up fully in less rounds, boost initiative, and affects Blindfighting. Probably the sanest skill.
- Enunciation is what I was talking about that controlled Maximum Speech Rate. Remember how I said a bad roll here would possibly fuck you on your Words Per Minute if you got this one lower than the other, and so did the book? Well the highest you can have as an average rate of speech is "100 or 270 (50%)", and the highest non-random is 170 (so I assume this is a good number?). You can have an MSR of 170 (and thus be safe) if you're at a -9 in the fucking skill with penalties. In fact, the highest Enunciation ranks allow you to talk at a rate of 500 WPM if you like. Shit, the stock average, pure middle of the table, is 200. Talk about stats that don't even affect anything.*
And to take us out, since we just discussed Max. Speech Rate and Average Speech Rate's interaction, the chapter's description of how ability rolls work, unaltered and in its entirety:
FATAL posted:
Ability Checks
Instances in the game may occur when abilities need to be checked. For instance, a slovenly trollop offers herself to a strapping young adventurer if and only if he can expediently say a tongue-twister of her choice. Driven by hormones, the young male agrees, and asks what is the tongue-twister. The courtesan challenges “Huge hung hero hunks hastily hump horny heaving hot whores. How‘bout it, huh?” To make an ability check, roll percentile dice and apply the Skill Modifier to the result. This number may be compared with a difficulty threshold (TH) determined by the MM or the roll of another player. In the example provided above regarding tongue-twisting, the MM may have secretly decided the TH to be 80. The strapping young ad-venturer tests his Enunciation sub-ability at the moment by rolling percentile dice and applying the Skill Modifier from Enunciation to the roll. He rolls 31 and the MM tells him that he tried to say it faster than he was capable at the moment. To the adventurer’s dismay, the soliciting strumpet laughs as she abandons him for a lad with a more nimble tongue.
* Actually it affects the skills of Spitting and Ventriloquism.
Second-Printing Notes:
-
Vocal Charisma now affects an actual skill: "Musical Instrument (Singing)".
-
"Finger Movement Precision" is now "Finger Precision".
-
I bet you thought I was going to say that the Vocal Charisma chart no longer mentioned shitty stats making you sound "Gay", huh? Nope, still there.
Attributes, final
Original SA post FATAL Part 5: Finally, No More AttributesIntelligence is one of the most wishy-washy sets of descriptors in this goddamn book. They take care to point out to us that...
FATAL posted:
After controlling for body size, brain size weakly correlates to Intelligence, so those with bigger brains also tend to be more intelligent.
-
Language
is the "brain size corresponds to Intelligence" of stats. It lets you speak other languages, expand your vocabulary, and have a stellar reading comprehension. Then it points out that FATAL takes place in a society rife with illiteracy and most of this ability's potential will probably go unrealized. It's just there "in case". Jesus christ. (Wait, he doesn't exist in FATAL-world either, shit.)
-
Math
lets you work with skills like Architecture, Chemistry, Numerology Divination, Algebra, Geometry, and Music Theory! All this and you can't fucking read.
-
Analytic
lets you be more logical and reasoned. This stat gets three sentences and nothing as a bonus on its funny table like everything else. A lot of Intelligence is kind of half-assed like this, which... makes sense for FATAL, actually.
- Spatial can let you, if you get it high enough, assemble something from 25000 pieces without a hitch. The AVERAGE person in this world can construct shit out of 200 pieces and make it work. Keep in mind this is referring to machinery and shit. Two hundred pieces. Wow. This is also the stat tied into pretty much any kind of "useful" crafting skill in the game (your Blacksmithings instead of your Basketweavings).
Wisdom is somehow a clusterfuck level beyond Intelligence, though, just as pertaining to their "more abstract the farther we go" comment. A wise character is most likely to "frequently reflect on their life", probably in the kind of vein I would if I had a trackable ability to PISS.
-
Drive
almost works out the gate when it's listed as a character's perseverance (thus explaining how it raises your HP), except then they go "but characters with high Drive aren't always driven". Uh. (Oops, there I go using "uh", my Vocal Charisma must have taken a hit.) It also somehow makes monsters more likely to run from you? And it also controls how many hours you would relax if you had the choice. The average person wants to relax... 16 hours a day? Jesus christ. Even I find that excessive and I'm a fucking slacker. It controls Animal Conditioning and Combat Spellcasting, the single weirdest mix of skills on any stat.
-
Intuition
is instinct, and lets you pick up on subtle cues, except when it doesn't because these things are "fully hidden", so it's not mind-reading, but it will let you use some Wild Kingdom bullshit to tell if someone hates you because their pupils are enlarged (I am not making this up it is the actual given example at length). It might also make you more moral! Fuck these stats they are such gibberish. It's used in
thirty different forms of divination
(they are all named, and some involve reading puke, shit, and piss - these are three distinct skills), Ettiquette, and... Touch? The fuck?
-
Common Sense
contains possibly one of the most ironic lines in FATAL.
If there is a single better descriptor of people who try and make "The most[...]detailed, realistic, and historically/mythically accurate role-playing game available" to the point of sourcing random shit from multiple tomes, and then including rape rules on top of it, I don't know what is.FATAL posted:
Common Sense, as a sub-ability, is an abstract measure of how much a character is in touch with reality. Nerds are good examples of people who may have some high forms of Intelligence, but may lack Common Sense.
- Reflection is the skill that makes it so that as you get older, your memory improves and you can remember FURTHER BACK in your childhood. Let's just leave that shit alone, it's another barely-described skill like Analytic.
Let's take a look at one of the other more infamous parts of FATAL - at the end of this chapter, we actually use an ability and not one of the four making it up. If your intelligence is sub-70, you now qualify for RETARD STRENGTH. You then increase your strength by a different set of dicerolls per race, because this was not a silly enough mechanic after you just rolled...
FATAL posted:
(71 - retard Intelligence) x 3 = (% chance of Retard Strength)
As a final sting, it suggests you could just be a pussy and diceroll for stats... but you have to take a mental illness from a random table to "balance" this.
No, seriously.
FATAL posted:
For each roll with this advantaged method, another roll must be made, one that will balance the character; roll percentile dice and consult Table 5-4: Random Mental Illness in the end of Chapter 5: Mind. If the roll indicates a mental illness that the character already has, then reroll.
Let's get out of this dire excuse for a chapter and go onto something bound to be handled better by these brilliant scholars: "Gender and Race."
fuck my life
Pages covered total: 37/901
Second-Printing Notes
-
You can now only assemble 2
4
000 piece objects at maximum stats.
-
Reflection is now even stupider. The max cap in Adult Lechery let you remember things from within one minute of birth... Another Land lets you go even further and recall "from birth" and "Womb". Yes, really.
-
This
NWS piece is some of the amazing art that fills pages in the new version.
-
To make playing a retarded character even more of a pain, each race now has a set IQ level that they all qualify at, and you also get "extra folds of skin under the eyes, a flattened nasal bridge, and a large tongue". As well, the formula for Retard Strength is even stupider and I'm not repasting it.
-
A new subheader on "Mental Exercise" is added and now all INT-based skills are trainable too. These carry a lot less penalty and it takes a
decade
of not using a skill to have it atrophy at all. By 1d4.
Worldbuilding, part 1
Original SA post FATAL, Part 6: "Worldbuilding" 1I'm incredibly divided on having found all of the FATAL sourcebooks (and extras) thanks to an anonymous tipster. On the one hand, this means I can sate my morbid curiousity: I had NEVER SEEN the details on what this world was supposed to be like, despite owning the original printing. On the other hand... the sobering realization that I may be one of the world's leading FATAL scholars now just by reading all of this makes me want to hang myself.
Let's move on.
The FATAL universe, as of the original "Talitaria" draft, is radically different from the final* world that they renamed Neveria around the time of the Another Land printings. It began with one being...
FATAL posted:
Before time, one being existed. It was everything and nothing at once. Never born and never dying, it simply existed. This being became conscious of itself. It did not predict the future. It was at peace with itself and unity was absolute. Eventually it became tired of itself and considered dividing into seperate entities. To ensure that it would never know boredom again, it chose to divide permanently into three entities.
It became three because two would be boring and eventually, the trio brewed conflict as they developed differently. Alliances shifted here and there, blah blah. I really don't want to do much into The Three here because basically aside from creating crap they are useless. It keeps going "The gods they made don't know they exist, the world they made doesn't know of them", and in fact after they make the gods those guys do all the heavy lifting. I'm not sure why this even comes up. Expect a lot of trios of things though!
The empires/pantheons are Amia (Amian Empire), Brutia (Brutian Empire) and Comia (Comian Empire). The first life on the world was draconic and slightly retarded. It took three seperate gods to make one that could BREED. Amian gods made elves (immortal to aging but killable, so they hid in forests, which made them dragonproof... somehow), Comian gods made dwarves (who hid underground because DRAGONS), and humans/other races aren't given origins. It's a little weird. There are three continents. I'll bet you can't guess how the empires correspond to them! No map exists in this first draft. (In fact, there's not even any art in here at all.)
I'm going to feel dirty for this comparison, but effectively the political makeup of this world is Metal Gear Solid 4's "war economy" with a side of 1984: everyone has to keep battle between all lands because how else can they keep power? Two continents gang up on one, then whenever the loner gets damaged, they ally with one of the others and repair while turning on the new victim, ad infinitum. (This will make even less sense in a minute, I promise.) All three empires write their own history and propaganda and, it emphasizes this...
FATAL posted:
Historical facts that contradict the agenda of the empire are erased. Those who know those facts are tortured, brainwashed, or eliminated.
That sentence has been bolded because it will appear at the end of every empire's description and I am sick of it, but don't want to retype it 5 damn times.
Amia is the westernmost continent, mostly humans. Claims to be a democracy but it makes up the responses to its votes and just tells people what "they" decide anyhow. Doesn't tell you who "they" are because all it says is "a democracy" and it says there are politicians later but doesn't really explain the structure aside from this vast conspiracy. (It's later blatant that Amia is supposed to somehow be a modern America. In a world where shit takes place at a 1300s culture/tech level. Hmm.) So let's just say Amia is run by The Patriots.
Brutia is northernmost, and is composed of "dragons, goblins, hobgoblins, orcs, and trolls". The Brutian Empire "rules by power", so... I'd assume that means an eternal dragon ruler? But it just says the strongest guy is in charge. If I were to copy the torture line from above I would have just pasted 99% of the book's description of Brutia, it's so sparse.
Comia is easternmost, has the same "mainly humans, elves/dwarves are somewhere" population as Amia. I am pasting the following line directly: "The Comian Empire rules through open confusion." The closest I can imagine this is Catch-22 fucked 1984 and that clusterfuck is what controls Comia. You'll get tortured, brainwashed, or eliminated if you aren't confused I guess?
A chapter of two pages sums up the world's history. I'll give you the beats (the game apparently takes place in the Talitarian year 5100):
Year 333: Elves get magic.
500: Elves design the first kingdom rather than... whatever they lived in before. It just says "settlements".
1010: "Deep Elves" (who enjoy being under mountains) find dwarves and educate them. It says dwarves don't care about magic and want to be left alone, eventually... mastering magic to hide themselves underground.
1143-1435: "Elf War". Elves and dragons fight, lots of deaths.
1512-1588: "Dwarf War". Not really a war**, just some dwarves and dragons digging underground run into one another and fight.
2000: Humans and halflings "emerge". The how is never explained but humans are the first species on the planet to actually consider fucking like rabbits to be a viable strategy, swelling their populations massively as everyone else becomes irrelevant.
2500-2613: Summing up a bunch of little blurbs - "All the dragons go to Brutia because the other two continents hunt them like dogs."
3000: Dragons design all the other races, make them hate dwarves/elves/humans. Halflings are specifically mentioned to not be seen as a threat. Those guys can't ever catch a fucking break.
3200-3500 (roughly): Dragons and their creations still can't fucking beat back a single continent's worth of the lesser races.
3484: I am not making this up: "The leaders of the three empires mutually agreed to perpetual war. Terms were delineated and settled." The only blurb after this gives us the present year and goes "Yep, still warrin'."
The only remaining text in the book is a description of the Amian Empire... and it's modern-day America. They have a fucking "war department" which propagandists and psychologists rename "Department of Defense" because it sounds nicer. There are slogans ripped straight out of presidential speeches. They don't make clear how the place is really run, just repeating the "voting is a sham" line, but mentioning that politicians, or "actors", run the place in public and make the occasional speeches to humanize the Patriots to the masses. The book ends after describing how (some) of the numerous professions get by from day to day in Amia.
That's it. That's the entirety of the worldbuilding in Adult Lechery. The god splatbook contains two gods . Two. And neither specifies what continent they're worshipped by since we went out of the way to clarify that the pantheons were empire-specific. There are 19 pages total between these two books.
Monsters have a 45 page book (8 are Elf sub-types alone, another 5 are "Giant" versions of creatures we don't cover, 5 more are just demons!), get up to "Half-Orc", and stop abruptly. Plenty of them make comparisons to things which simply do not exist . Unlike the others, there's one piece of art in this book. Let me demonstrate how unfinished this book is with the entirety of the Gnome page:
The best part of the Grimoirium Monstrum*** is the monster-skill tables, which let you go way past the already absurd human limits in places. It's possible to dead lift galaxies or simply "Infinite" for some creatures. Four-legged creatures have an upper sprint limit of "Gravity". That's the entire description, which ranks above "End of a Whip" and "Speed of Light".
The Another Land printings do not mention these splatbooks at all. I honestly think all work ceased on them after whatever leak let these out, meaning the second (and third!) printings were a game with no rules for gods or monsters to fight at all. Astounding.
Also I just realized that this collection doesn't contain ANY drafts of the third book mentioned at the start ("Grimoirium Vita Futura", Grimoire of the Next World), so I suppose that may or may not have ever existed. I guess at this point I need to track down Byron Hall himself. Let's see if I can pull it off before this thread ends.
* Flipping through these books I am honestly entirely unsure how much of FATAL was ever finished. I mock the thing for being so half-assed and having "Insert Art Here" placeholders, but every one of these splatbooks is missing entire chapters and some end almost mid-sentence.
** It even says that it's not a war, right after calling it "Dwarf War". Good going, guys.
*** I lied. The real best part is the single-sentence monster entry "Dumbledors are a ferocious race of winged insects."
Comparison, part 1
Original SA post FATAL, Part 7: Comparison 1So when I last posted about this, I mentioned someone had given me about three new drafts of the game to work with. One seems to be an even-earlier revision than the early copy I had, short almost eighty pages compared to the draft I've worked from. Just in the chapters we've covered already, here's some of what they decided to cut out even before good taste kicked in:
Physique:
-
Remember how Bodily Attractiveness made you stronger/faster by raising your Strength, Height, and Fitness? Well, this early version was saner and had Fitness affect your attractiveness... but only negatively. If you were weak you looked uglier, but being more fit gave no positive bonus.
-
Bodily Attractivness straight up had no effect on men aside from boosting related skills. Instead of the "male effect/female effect" parts of the table, there were three others: Bust (measured in cup size, from DDD as lowest skill to near-average being A/B, and the "top" rank being C), Waist (lowest: "+300%", highest "-25%"... based off the numbers it gives, that's 100 and 18.8 inches respectively) and Hips (lowest 105in and highest 36.05... you actually cannot have smaller hips than the "average" 35in).
- Health and Strength are identical.
Charisma:
-
Vocal Charisma
was
split by gender. Honestly I actually like this early table more just because it's more descriptive (with the exception of male's bottom being "gay" still), things that would become "always uses 'uh' or 'um'" were described as "Hoarse and whiney/Whiney and weak". Instead of "projecting" and "otherworldly", the high ranks had things like "Abysmal(? I have no idea why this is the top male rank) and clear" or "Angelic and clear".
- Facial, Rhetorical, and Kinetic are identical.
Dexterity:
-
Agility didn't affect time to rise or attacks per round yet, meaning it was just skill bonuses and extra AC... sooooo, Dexterity out of D&D in everything but name.
- Hand-Eye Coordination, Reaction Speed, and Enunciation are identical.
Intelligence/Wisdom:
It's all identical.
More worldbuilding tomorrow then we continue further. Comparison posts'll be here whenever I need filler because I don't feel like diving into these some night.
Gender & Race
Original SA post Fatal, Part 8 (The Continuation): Gender & Race
Yeah.
... yeah.
Look, I'll be honest, you may want to just hit your Page Down key until you're past this one. But, if you're still with me, let's get started. Again.
Really, this game needs no introduction. It's the reason this line of thread even exists. The review of it was cut short due to the game threatening to destroy the sanity of the original writer... that, or they decided that it just wasn't worth it. Maybe it wasn't. The thing for me, though, is that Fatal is too much of a joke. Admittedly that's for good reason; it is an incredibly meme-worthy game. Most of the people I've explained or shown bits of it to think that it is some sort of legendary trolling.
Then I point towards the 901 pages, 981 in the revised version, of work put into it. Along with all of the research which, while not very sanely done, is heavily cited throughout the book. Effort went into crafting this Necronomicon of role playing game tomes. A lot of genuine, heartfelt effort. If that's the right word to use. As such, I feel that this review should be concluded. Mostly because near as I can tell there isn't really an in-depth examination of this game. There should be. Because it's the little touches that can just horrify you.
I'll be continuing on from where my predecessor left off, albeit somewhat intermittently. His posts can be located here .
PG 38, Chapter 2 "Gender"
One of the more notable things about the revised PDF is that it's kind of laid out... oddly. Personally I feel that the original makes more sense in this regard in that it tells you what all of the abilities mean before expecting you to pick your gender and race. Equally interesting is the fact that the original version does actually just tell you to pick your race and gender without providing a random table. When compared to the revised edition this stands out quite a bit as that particular piece of offal seems to have been remade by someone who felt that 3d6 in order wasn't quite hardcore enough and instead encourages you to randomize every single aspect about your character for the purposes of 'realism'.
"Though sex usually refers to biological differences and gender usually refers to environmental differences, gender is chosen for this chapter because sex may be confused with sexual acts."
Let's start with this little footnote. I am actually a little surprised that it bothers to make this distinction. It's a pleasant surprise, actually, since this game is not known to be particularly friendly to anyone who isn't a heterosexual male. Yet another difference between the editions is the reversal of Gender and Race. The old one puts Gender first and the new second. This is a change I would agree with as picking what species you want to be is probably more important than the dangly bits or lack thereof.
The gender differences table is about what you expect; although I'll note that in the revision it was changed to a percentage increase as opposed to flat. Men are supposedly more fit, stronger, less attractive. In the new version they also have less pretty faces. Then there’s an increase in mathematical and spatial processing abilities which some cursory investigation tells me is still a hotly disputed topic. Men also possess more ‘Drive’ than women, according to Fatal, and lower intuition and reflection. Finally, men are more Choleric and less Sanguine… whatever that translates to in sane terms.
For the moment let’s ignore the general idiocy of having universal stat modifiers for gender. I’ll get to that. Let’s look at this from a purely mechanical point of view. Or, rather, the point of view of a sneaky munchkin min-maxer, as it were. In the old version the sum of the ability modifiers for men is positive fourteen. Opposing this is the sum of the female ability modifiers which is, obviously, a negative fourteen.
The revision changes to percentages, so it’s a little trickier to figure out the overall benefit. But considering that the male negatives are a negative two, three, four and five percent whereas the bonuses are two, three twice, five and thirty percent… yeah.
I’ll come right out and say it; Playing a woman in Fatal leaves you at a clear mechanical deficit. Not particularly unexpected. But the sheer scale of it is… rather fascinating. The largest bonus a woman gets is a +5, or a 5%. For men their largest bonii are a +15 in the old and +30% in the new. Then there’s this
“According to the adjustments above, it may seem as though males are superior, though it is important to understand that there are other instances, such as nurturing, that are not apparent in the adjustments and may become evident and valuable during role-playing.”
This is just plainly not true. Being a male is mechanically superior to a female in every way. Now, there’s no way to take advantage of this superiority as the game provides no system for distributing your statistics other than randomly rolling. But, if we assumed there was one, then you could simply take advantage of the skewed increases to boost your statistics in your, very few, weak areas at the expense of your strengths.
If there were any sort of point allocation system it would be entirely possible to create a statistically superior male character about 75% of the time. That outlier is in the case that the female character somehow maxed the five abilities that she gets bonuses to. In which case the male would have at most ten percent less than her in those abilities, which is not a lot given the ‘mean system’ that Fatal uses, and be able to equal her in at least ten other abilities, then beat her in five himself.
These numbers may appear to be superficially balanced. I have no doubt that the logic I’ve just presented was how the creator assured himself the system was balanced. However, due to the highly skewed numbers in favour of the men the male will, in practice, be able to outstrip his female counterpart in more of his abilities than he will equal her, be even to her in all the rest and, finally, only be inferior in five occasions.
But that’s quite enough thought put into that. I’ll just note that the following line is absent from the revised edition and move on.
“The shift in range represents masses of characters better than extreme instances. For instance, the highest measured Intelligence is that of a female, though by large numbers females tend to score slightly lower than males in Intelligence. In this case, shifting the range lower for females also prevents the possibility of a female possessing the highest Intelligence. This is an unfortunate limitation.”
PG. 40, "Race"
Now we hit the other snag that I glossed over earlier. Those gender modifiers are identical for every race. Which means that every single species available to play in the Fatal verse apparently has a patriarchal society structure with identical sexual dimorphism. That’s just the start of the issues with this section.
Putting aside the previously-stated obsession with the revised rules and rolling randomly for literally everything about your character we have what would be your first real warning sign if this were a published product.
Well, no, the first real warning sign would probably be the introduction, or the cover, or the ominous latin chanting that fills your hearing whenever you’re facing the book. From a roleplaying standpoint, however? This is it. Namely; Disposition and Temperament modifiers. For those unaware, the former is the attempt at having a Good/Evil and Law/Chaos axis without getting sued by Wizards of the Cost and the latter is the stat that tells you the personality of your character.
We’ll, uh, get to that.
Interestingly, the sum of sub-ability modifiers for the races appears to come out even as well. That said, the best race is still probably the Anakim. You get one to ten random traits chosen from a random table. This is one case of the random realism obsession that actually exists in the original. There are the expected cosmetic options and a few negative options and, of course, the sex related options. But then there’s stuff like this:
“33 The anakim is only harmed by special weapons. Consult with the MM.”
“54 The anakim has gills on the side of their neck, allowing them to breathe underwater.”
“56-59 The anakim has skin that reduces damage due to fire/cold/electricity/corrosion by 50%. The skin does not seem abnormal when examined.”
“68 The anakim has a wingspan of 2d8 feet. They are able to fly if the wingspan exceeds 10 feet. Consult the MM for specifics.”
“76-86 The anakim is able to cast Call Fog/Call Maggots/Bestow Virus/Force Rancor/Force Scream/Force Slumber/Acidic Touch/Frosty Touch/Seal Orifice/Detect Magic/Determine Magic once per day. No chant, ingredient, or ritual is necessary.”
“87 The anakim has barbed skin. All who make forceful contact with the skin of this anakim suffer an additional 1 LP of damage.”
“100 The anakim has 1% immunity to magic per occupational level.”
And that’s all from the original. The revised edition has most of those, albeit more spread out, but also options for reading the thoughts of animals, dissolving water at 1d10 cubic feet per round on touch, turning rocks into silver once a week, farting as loud as thunder to stun enemies, secreting acid from its fingernails, a random bonus to all sub-abilities for a given ability, +50% to brawling damage, immunity to non-magical weapons, telekinesis and fire breath.
Rolling luckily can get you up to ten of these pick-and-mix powers. A lot of the negative ones appear to have been cut in the revised edition as well along with the cosmetic options that were essentially blank spots. Some options, like smelling perpetually of shit, have no associated mechanical penalties either. All in all it’s pretty much a guaranteed positive.
There are some benefits owned by other races.
Bugbears are pretty much worthless.
Dwarves don’t suffer aging penalties and can shapeshift with an increasing duration based on age at the cost of instantly dying when exposed to sunlight.
Black dwarves are, predictably, notably evil. One of their lines notes “It is rumored that their race was born as a result of the sorcerous combination of humans and maggots.” It’s pretty hard to imagine that isn’t some form of racism given the later magic items that I’m sure we all know about. Brown Dwarves leave their mothers in young adulthood and find a human family to serve or torment. Could be socially commentary, could be stupidity but it seems to be equating dwarves with legends of brownies and other helpful fairies. Unsurprisingly the White Dwarves are universally more ethical and moral.
Hardly seems required to comment when the game does it for me but, buried in the middle of their info block, is the comment that dwarves are differentiated only by garment colour and not skin colour. Uh-huh. Sure they are, Fatal. Sure they are.
Elves are less Tolkien and more, again, tiny fey. Dark elves immoral, light elves moral, dark elves black, light elves white, I’m sure you see the pattern. For some reason it notes they’re universally vegetarian and fart 3d10 times per day as a result? Elves also have lifespans based on the size of their home forest and, again, can shapeshift. However, they also get weaker the further they get from their home forest. This, of course, makes them worthless to players unless the entire campaign is based around your homeland.
Then there’s the racial differences.
“Dark elves are immoral and ugly. Nonetheless, they are incredibly fertile and are always trying to mate. Few children are born.”
Because that makes sense. The revised version adds an extra note that because they’re unattractive and lecherous they consistently use magic for seduction. I’ll take a moment to note that I’ve not been mentioning the, uh, ‘art’ in the revised version. That’s because it’s pretty much all just unrelated pornographic images. That’s rather noticeable here as there’s a picture of what I assume is meant to be a Dark Elf orgy but all the women are notably attractive because… magic, I guess.
Of course, the White Elves-uh, I mean, the ‘Light’ Elves are incredibly beautiful. A better-written game would let you ignore this but with its track record it’s pretty clear this is meant to be intentional. Apparently humans commonly kidnap elven maidens to attempt to force ‘marriage’. Of course. Marriage. That is obviously what a Fatal human would do. Notably, the only repercussion for this is that if the female perceives herself to be slighted, exact words, she will punish her kidnapper ‘harshly’ by ‘playing mischievous tricks’.
Humans get a single page. Bog-standard fantasy stuff. Totally average, no bonuses, no penalties and no noted skin-colour variations. It’s the little things that count, really.
Kobolds. Short, greedy, lazy and fire resistant. No mention on whether or not they have unusually large noses but we can probably assume that was intended without too much fuss. They steal silver whenever possible and enslave everyone they can. No special abilities.
Ogres next! For some reason there are four kinds. Base ogre, cliff ogre, gruagach ogre and kinder-fresser. The firstmost is large, hairy, tan, strong, dumb. Pretty much what you’d expect. They apparently abandon their kids at birth which makes them the smarter kind of ogre given the very next variety, cliff ogres, devour their parents when they get too old. Grugach are fat, lazy, and inexplicably the strongest variety of ogre. Finally, kinder-fresser pretend to be friendly so they can lure in children and devour them whole. They are a player race.
Finally we have Trolls. A notable trend here is ‘races that are offered to players but are an absolutely horrible choice unless everyone is that race’. Only in the case of Borbytingarna Trolls, the first of three types, the latter qualifier doesn’t even apply. They aren’t petrified by sunlight, at least, but will apparently attempt to kill anything they meet that is not an opposite-gendered troll.
Hill trolls are also not turned to stone by sunlight, always handy in your adventuring species, but have the same note of killing and eating everything that isn’t a potential fuck buddy. They also particularly love eating humans. Yum yum. Sounds like a great time to play; I think I’ll roll one up as a Paladin.
Finally, subterranean trolls. These ones are almost interesting in that they were driven underground due to an apparent hatred of loud noises and sometimes like humans. The females are also apparently beautiful redheads? It quickly returns to form with the usual ‘hates everything, kill and eat’ nonsense.
Second to last in this chapter is the Racial Hatred chart. Let me sum it up; “All these races hate pretty much everyone else that isn't one of their own kind so building a varied party is almost impossible.” It looks like humans are at least indifferent to white dwarves, brown dwarves and white elves.
Last, and absolutely least, we have racial slurs. This is obviously incredibly important. Apparently humans are the only people with racial slurs for Anakim and at least one of them is basically a stealth compliment.
Pages Done: 64/901
And that was Gender and Race for Fatal. Closing thoughts? Stupid. Really, really stupid. The game design obviously favours playing a party of all one particular race and the best race is also plainly obvious. The penalties to Dispositions for a majority of these races means that even if you did find them interesting you couldn't run one without special dispensation to ignore that stupid rule.
A number of races are also unplayable in any sort of epic fantasy campaign. Dwarves all instantly die in sunlight and elves can’t stray any real distance beyond their forests. Ogres and Trolls are all pretty horrific, as are Kobolds. Rather tellingly the overall standard for whether or not a species is considered ‘good’ is whether or not they’re beautiful and/or like humanity. Which is odd, given how piss-poor of a choice being human is. Not that there necessarily is one.
The revised edition seems to have an odd fixation with not letting you choose anything about your character. It suggests that the Aedile, because every game needs a pointless name for its GM, might want to allow you to pick your species but then chastises you for wanting it by saying how ‘realistic’ it is to not do so. Considering the literally magical creatures available to you I don’t think realism is that much of a sticking point.
Next up: Body roll for anal circumference
Body
Original SA post
Because apparently I hate myself enough to finally keep going. Geez, where were we.
Part 8: Body
... nope. Nope. Nopenopenope, I am out of here.
Hngh, but I swore I'd finish this eventually so let's bite the bullet. We all know what's coming here. Let's just... yeah. Again; you may just want to skip past this post, as it contains mentions of gross sexism and paedophilia. Because FATAL.
So, I haven't been talking about the art a lot apart from a brief mention of its constant pornographic nature but I'm going to pull out two examples real quick. The first one is absolutely not safe for work, plus it might be illegal depending on your country of origin, and is here. If you don't click on the link, and nobody should begrudge you that, it includes an image of a presumably prepubescent girl on the left, a busty maiden in the middle, and an obese presumably elderly lady on the right.
I will also note that in the original PDF the image rotates out every second page during the whole section with a matching one for men; only the female one stuck in the revised version. Stay classy, FATAL.
The other bit I want to call out is safe for work, and it's here. It's actually not terrible, so if anyone can tell me who Byron Hall stole it from I'd be delighted to know.
Now, without further ado let's do this horrible, horrible thing.
Let’s talk about some bizarre edition differences before we begin. Chapter 3: Body starts on page 65 in the original pdf, and on page 39 in the revision. Why? Because, for some reason, they decided that rolling for your random physical appearance is more important than your stats and, thus, it’s become Chapter 2 instead. Nevermind the fact that several parts of the body chapter reference your changing or being changed by your stats.
The first part is safe! Well, apart from the inane, “Each of the standard features must be randomly determined” part. It's just starting ages. We see the book's obsession with overcomplicating things pop up as, in the revised edition, all the ages have gone from sane flat number rolls with a single added amount anywhere from 1d20 to 1d8, to something... well... stupider. A lot stupider. How much stupider?
Everyone is now some combination of 4d100 divided by various numbers and then another number subtracted at the end, except for Dwarves who are now a 1d1000 roll. The minor issue of potentially having a negative age is 'solved' by saying that you take the absolute value of the equation, meaning a negative value becomes a positive. You can still end up as an infant or newborn quite easily, though; which is realistic, because all people were babies at some point in time so obviously you should have to play one.
The table for lifespan is pretty innocuous and even includes a note that females live (1d10)% longer than males! Amazing that this nod to realism is allowed for here, but that ‘unfortunate limitation’ for intelligence is included later.
Then we get height. Also pretty innocuous but, once again, Hall’s weird obsession with the law of averages comes in when every race has to roll an average of 6d6 to add to some uneven number for their height. Another edition difference here as well; the table for height modifiers appears here in the revision.
Males get an increase in weight, strength and bodily attractiveness based on height difference from the average, females just get weight and strength. The bonuses, of course, markedly differ based on race. The most egregious one I can see is Ogres; males get +20 Strength for every inch taller than average, while the females get +8. Anakim are second, at +15 and +5 respectively. Because even inhuman and monstrous women are weaker than men, right guys?
There’s another interesting difference between editions when we hit weight. Originally, stronger characters weighed more; which kind of followed logically. Now it’s the inverse; if you weigh more, you’re stronger; again, that also kind of follows logically but it's also worth remembering that, in the original, you knew what your strength score actually was by now.. Hall also puts some information about the Cube-Square law in a footnote to try and seem learned.
The revision makes you calculate your BMI, because that's fun, and, predictably, males are less attractive if underweight or overweight but most females are generally more attractive if underweight because, as we all recall, Hall thinks the ideal woman has a tiny waist but giant tits. Notably, however, males being overweight get an increase to strength which I believe counteracts the reduction in attractiveness in some way. The one exception, in a startling demonstration of what is almost real worldbuilding, is trolls; who find both thin and fat women repulsive! Ogres don’t find thin women repulsive, but still hate fatties; this seems to be the only thing that all the races have in common. Stay classy, FATAL, stay classy.
Before the two PDFs link up again we also have Body Part Proportion. Because you’ve always wanted to know how large your head was relative to your groin, right? Of course you have. Plus this table is absolutely vital in combat because you can use it to determine hit locations at random, with varying proportions based on species. Also; apparently Anakim, Bugbears, Elves, Humans and Kobolds all have identical body proportions, as do Dwarves and Ogres. But only two types of Troll share proportions; In all seriousness, there could have been a lot of unpleasant 'jokes' in this section regarding groin/nose sizes for Anakim and Kobolds, given I still suspect the latter of being a poorly veiled stand-in for ethnic Jews.
Most Attractive/Repulsive feature baffles me. You roll 1d100 twice, rerolling if the second matches the first, and then if the result blatantly contradicts the reality of your existing stats, such as your Facial Charisma being super high and rolling a repulsive face, you consult the Aedile to see what to do. There’s also a minor modifier to the stats in question.
Now, the weird thing is that this should really be after the stats chapter for this very reason. You’d just say, “Take your highest Charisma as your most attractive feature and your lowest as your most repulsive” and done. Easy.
I and Syrg before me have said a few words about Hall’s obsession with randomisation but it bears repeating. You randomly determine your character’s Skin Color, Hair Color, Hair Length, Hair Thickness and Type, Eye Colour, Reach, Visual Acuity, Facial Features…
And, at last, we come to the final straw.
Sexual features.
Look, what is there to say about this? I’ll just pick out a few of the worst features. For example, even with the lowest modifier, a -95 for an infant, you can apparently fit two fingers into an anus or a vagina without difficulty, because that’s the lowest the table goes.
We all know about the ripped orifice rule that leads to instant death. As well as hymen resistance. Actually, I’ll talk about that as well because what the fuck. “Every time a male inserts his Manhood into a female with an intact hymen he must roll 1d100 + [(Manhood Circumference divided by Vaginal Circumference Potential) * 100] and if the result exceeds Hymen Resistance then it was broken.” Rolling for Sperm Count is obviously very important as well.
… and something I just now noticed is that the original table only had a modifier of up to -25 for both anal and vaginal circumference. Why? Because it only went as low as puberty. Apparently between the original writing and the remake Byron Hall decided he really needed to include modifiers for if someone absolutely had to try and fuck a baby.
Moving on. Foot Size. Fist Circumference. Handedness. Head Circumference. These are all, apparently, ‘Rare features’. They are ‘not usually determined during character creation unless the player so desires’ and, apparently, they ‘rarely become necessary components of the game, but are detailed here for the sake of comprehensiveness.” Because knowing if you can fit something into a baby vagina is vital to the playability of the game, but whether you’re left or right handed is not.
It also asks you to roll for allergies if your Health is low but don’t forget that you’ve not actually determined that stat yet. Why this chapter was moved is beyond me. The rules for intoxication and disease are included in here for some reason, as well as new rules for waking up and being sleep deprived in the new version.
Of the choicer tidbits in the disease section is, of course, Tourette’s. Because FATAL. As expected, it’s reduced to randomly shouting obscenities at the whim of the Aedile. Apparently the outburst is ‘always honest’, as well.
Pages Done: 102/981
I’m switching to the revised edition number now that the two pdfs have caught up to each other at Chapter 4. Closing thoughts on Body? There’s not a lot to say about this. For as memetically famous as this part of FATAL is the chapter is really one of the least offensive bits of this entire book. Yes, there are implications of Hall wanting to enable pedophilia in his game but, on the whole, it’s just more wanking of the glory of random determination of characters. Apart from odd ducks like the repulsive/attractive features most of these rolls are just... dumb. Not even funny dumb, just dull.
With all that in mind, this bizarre fixation with not allowing you any control over your final character in the name of ‘realism’ flies in the face of every other unreal decision made in this, ”The most difficult, detailed, realistic and historically/mythically accurate role-playing game”.
I'm sure the next section will be much more offensive, however, as we step the two-axis alignment system as interpreted by Byron Hall.
Next up: Disposition why do i do this to myself