I’ll take any opportunity I can to link the legendary RPG.net review of FATAL.
this post was submitted on 16 May 2024
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I once tried to read F.A.T.A.L.'s rulebook. Not because I wanted to play it, of course. I just thought it would be fun.
I was wrong. It was fun for, like, ten seconds. When literally the first page of the book throws you into a scenario where you have three or four different reasons to have sex/sexually assault a woman, the book loses its charm pretty fast.
It then quickly spirals into a gross, demeaning, disgusting pile of misogyny, gore and ignorance, all in the name of "historical accuracy", hiding their distasteful opinions behind "prominent philosophers" and hand-picked statistics.
I applaud anyone who is able to read more than ten pages of that abomination and survive long enough to write a review. Had I continued reading past that point, my brain would have liquefied.
I've never read FATAL, but I've read plenty about it. And I'm glad it exists, because it makes every other RPG better just by virtue of not being FATAL.
F.A.T.A.L. is known for its graphic violent and sexual content, as well as the complexity of the underlying game system, involving higher-level mathematics
Higher level math? Absolutely disgusting.
I dunno about "higher level" maths, but there is one bit where you're asked to solve a simple year 8–level algebra equation (which is still a much higher level than any other RPG I've ever played asks you to do). It's also in one of the more explicitly NSFW parts of the system.
Specifically, you have to solve for y: (BT – 80)^2^ = –4y + 120, where BT is a number arrived at in an earlier step, using (C~M~ / C~V/A~ ) × 100. I will not be defining what C~M~ and C~V/A~ are in this forum in order to keep the comments SFW.
Is that the damage formula based on, uh, circumference?
Haven't actually read the book, thankfully, but I recall hearing that was a thing.
Yes to circumference, but no to damage. Ripping is a possibility the book discusses, but this formula is for quite the opposite.
Hah. I was mostly just joking as it included higher maths in the same sentence as the highly sexually explicit content. But that's interesting that they decided to implement such a convoluted way of getting to stats instead of just simplifying it with a table.
Oh don't worry. There are a lot of tables in this system.
I kinda want to get together with my gaming group to make characters in FATAL and take the piss on the poor author
It's not fun.
Like, legitimately. It sounds fun, but then you sit down and do it, and realize there is little, if anything, redeemable even as a joke. By the time you're done, everyone will hate themselves.
And that's without playing an actual game. I think we made it 3 sessions before we figured out it just wasn't a fun game to play, even with tongue firmly punching out of our cheeks the entire time.
Part of me agrees, but another part of me says...there are far too many rules in this about sex...including illicit forms thereof...for me to want to play this with anyone I know IRL.
And also no part of me wants to spend the multiple hours this would probably take to roll up a character. I Googled looking for digital character generators, and they supposedly used to exist, but the official FATAL website no longer exists.
Hi, I did that with some close friends as a joke before. It starts out as a joke, but it will quickly become hellishly painful to continue. I think we stopped somewhere at distributing skill points, where the game just throws 6 pages of skills at you (not joking) and goes "just distribute these points". Having a giant block of alphabetically sorted skills, most being absolute garbage and some only sounding 'kinda' useful, was my breaking point
Thank you for the kind warning, stranger. I will heed your words.