FATAL: A Campaign Journal

[Dust]

Game Session #1

Achilles shows up for the game early, and he’s not impressed. He did some research on FATAL in the week between character creation and now, and wants to know what on earth I’m thinking. I explain my theory to him and he seems both amused and intrigued, but annoyed that I’m using them as ‘guinea pigs.” He states that its probably worse on me than on them, having to read the book and LEARN the rules, and volunteers to go along with my ridiculous plan anyway. He warns me that I can’t let Blue EVER see the book.

The others arrive and munch on pizza (even though they ‘re quickly realizing that it’s an obvious bribe) while I set the stage.

The Baron Achilles has fallen on hard times recently – a minor drought and insects have damaged crops, which in turn meant he needed to spend more and more money from his personal treasury to keep the lords and ladies of his shire fed. But the situation has only gotten steadily worse, and the Baron’s once-loyal vassals have begun to turn against him. The Baron’s wife accuses her husband of incompetence, and takes matters into her own hands by putting out a notice that any man, woman or beast able to solve the shire’s food crisis will be well-rewarded, given land and a title as well as a portion of the remaining treasury.
Word of this has stretched across the countryside, past the rolling hills of the Tolian Plains, past the elven home-forest of Aediel’tar. It has even reached the ears of common serfs in a small hamlet, where Rock tires laboriously away. Despite his big dreams, he seems to be stuck making soap until his last breath.

But when Rock’s elder brother comes up with a scheme to cheat the Baron out of the reward, the apprentice soapmaker finds himself intrigued. They’d pose as rainmakers, with Rock creating a signed, official-looking note from a neighbouring kingdom that declared them authentic and thanked them for their services. As an unethical gambling sort, Rock found himself tempted by the proposition and agreed to travel with his brother. They gathered a wagon of their wordly possessions and set out westward.

On their way through the Aediel’tar woods, the two brothers were ambushed by a quartet of kobolds, who attacked viciously with small axes and whips. The brothers, who were unarmed, were forced to leave their wagon behind and flee deeper into the woods. Rock’s sibling was injured and the younger brother was forced to seek assistance. The Light Elves in the woods – though wary of strangers – were kindly and took in both humans. Rock’s brother was treated by their herbalist, and he met both Mouse and Blue and took a liking to the latter immediately. Mouse demanded Rock explain the situation, the rather nervous guest explained he and his brother were weather-controllers of no small skill. Mouse passed this knowledge on to the elves, who found this dubious but also concerning – if what Rock said was true, then getting in his good graces would benefit all of them. When Rock and his brother were granted land, they could request the section nearest the forest, which would prevent any more of the Baron’s vassals from expanding their territory outward and hunting in the forest, trespassing and encroaching on ground that didn’t belong to them.

Mouse made up some excuse about Rock’s brother needing further herbal help and begun travelling with them, bringing the orphan bugbear along as well.

I was feeling good about the plot thus far – it seemed ‘historically accurate’ by FATAL’s standards, included the racial selection, and was by the rules so far. At this point Mouse mentioned she received 10 AP for using a herb on Rock’s brother, and I agreed this was accurate. She asked how much AP is required to ‘level up’ and I started flipping – turns out the number is set by the GM. Remembering Rock’s 1 AP per hundred pounds of soap, I informed her that the magic number was only 20. Once a character ‘gains a level,’ they can switch occupations...in the case of Rock, two thousand pounds of soap would allow him to pursue the life more to his liking. He seemed to realize this, and grumbled about the rate – I can hardly blame him, especially when I saw mages gained TRIPLE the AP ‘for every Magic Point spend when casting spells while in danger, or towards a specific purpose,’ for a total of anywhere between 15 and 5400 AP for a single spell.

I browse through the book and realize that the crafting charts are minimal at best, but there’s also no price given for soap. I check again; aged bodily fluids, three different type of capes, pleasure devices.....but no soap. I quickly rule that it’s the same weight and price as a candle (a good base due to simple numbers), so 1sp for 1kg, made in one day. A few more calculations to account for fatigue, and I learn that Rock would need to spend just under four years working steadily away at this.

FOUR YEARS in order to gain the same amount of ‘exp’ that the player to his left would earn simply from using two healing herbs.

The player snaps (and rightly so) and requests I allow him to reroll his occupation or pick something different. You can probably imagine me cringing as I tell him to reroll. Cheesemaker. De-louser. Papermaker. Dicemaker. Vintner. Wench. He says he’s sick of rolling and wants to be a fighter, but then learns his low physical attributes prevent him from being anything more taxing than a Bookbinder. I am informed that FATAL is ‘effin’ dumb.’ And he returns to his pizza, astonished. Achilles looks smug.

We pack up for the week there, and it'll be several days before the next update.