An Enemy Spy Plays F.A.T.A.L!

[An Enemy Spy]

In this thread, I will attempt to play a game of FATAL(From Another Time, Another Land) with myself. I will be both the player and the Aedile(GM, but that term isn't fancy enough for such a sophisticated game as this), and I will attempt to create a character and send him or her on an adventure.

DISCLAIMER: FATAL is a vile, vile game filled with racist undercurrents and overt misogynistic overtones. The rulebook is stuffed to the gills with rape references and should never be played by anyone. This foray is less of a real game and more of an attempt to see if this game is even playable. I will avoid engaging in any sexual activity unless the game forces me to, which it very well might. You have been warned.

Our Hero: Kiki, the two year old Kobold

[sktarq]

As an exercise in creating and running a game it's a wonderful challenge. My one session was. . . Tedious but fair. . . Like mythbusters proved you can polish a turd. . . I wish you luck on this brave endeavor!

[An Enemy Spy]

The first step is of course to create my fearless adventurer who has unwisely decided to venture ut into the world of F.A.T.A.L. Now, as far as I know, no interactive FATAL character sheet exists anywhere on the internet, so I will be using a Google Docs page for this. The game encourages you to randomly generate every aspect of your character(except for gender, because nobody who had a part in making this game would ever choose to play a woman) so that is what I will do.

There are sixteen playable races in this game: Anakim, Bugbears, Black Dwarves, Brown Dwarves, White Dwarves, Dark Elves, Light Elves, Humans, Kobolds, Ogres, Cliff Ogres, Gruagach Ogres, Kinder-fresser Ogres, Borbytingama Trolls, Hill Trolls, and Subterranean Trolls. Why is there a type of ogre that's just called Ogre? Makes no sense. Anyway, I roll my trusty d100 and get 73, which makes me a Kobold! Neat, I've always loved playing as reptilians.

Well, as it turns out, Kobolds are not in fact lizards in this game. I'm a silvery skinned short person. Kobolds live underground and enslave other races to work in mines for them. It says that slave-trading is the only thing that gives Kobolds as much pleasure as getting money. Since we Kobolds are short, they make their human slaves stand on their knees so that they'll never be taller than us. We're an insecure people, it would seem. Well this is discouraging. Here I am wanting to be a heroic adventurer and it turns out that I'm a greedy slaver with a Napoleon complex instead. Oh well, maybe my character is one of the nicer ones.

Up next is the racial hatred table. Thank goodness the game has a convenient table to let me know how racist my character is. And look, here's a list of racial slurs I can use! I am NOT going to share these, particularly since some of them are racial slurs that exist in real life, and the others are just plain stupid. I remind you, FATAL is a horrible game. Suffice it to say that Kobolds hate every other race pretty much to the point of attacking them on sight. Oh well, it's not as if cooperation with other players and interactions with NPCs are something that would ever come up in an RPG.

Next up is gender. Unlike D&D, gneder in this game does have an effect on your character's stats. Most of them are small pluses and minuses to certain abilities, each gender having the opposite strengths and weaknesses as the other. One could almost say that they balance each other out. This would be very, very wrong. While most of the stat boosts are differences between 2-5%, the Physique: Strength stat give as whopping +30% to males and a -30% to females. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, that female characters are given that even comes close to bridging this canyon. Oh, but they're not so unequal as it would seem, the game promises. After all, females have nurturing or some crap. We're not sexist!

So yeah, this is the one aspect of character creation that the game doesn't want you to generate randomly, because again, the game doesn't want you to play as a woman. Well, I'm going to flip a coin on this one, because like I said, we're randomizing this. Heads is male, tails is female, and I get... tails. Screw you, Byron Hall, this game just got a double X chromosome and there's nothing you can do about it.

I guess it's time to come up with a name for our vertically challenged heroine. What's a good name for a short spunky Kobold girl? Kiki, that's it. Kiki the Kobold.

The next segment is body, where we will find out what Kiki looks like. To find out her age, I merely need to roll 4d100, divide the result by 5, and subtract 25. Finally, a character generator that keeps things simple! I roll 135, divide that by 5 which give me 27. Then I subtract 25, making Kiki... two years old. Kiki is an infant. The game just gave me a baby as my character. Had I rolled much lower, I would have ended up with a character whose age is in the negatives. I'm beginning to suspect that FATAL is not very well designed.

To determine the height of our precocious youngster, I need to roll 6d4+36, giving me 60, which I then divide by five to account for the fact that Kiki is a freaking infant, which leaves me with a height of 12 inches. To determine weight, I roll 2d6+63, giving me 67, which i then divide by 20, making Kiki 3.35 lbs, or in metric terms, very light.

Now I have to figure out the essential stat of Kiki's BMI(Body Mass Index). To know Kiki's BMI, I simply do (lbs/inches^2*705). As I'm sure you all figured out in you heads by now, Kiki's BMI is 16.4010416667, making her slightly underweight for a female Kobold.

Next I have to find out Kiki's most attractive and repulsive features. A roll of the ol' d100 tells me that her most attractive feature is her chest(I remind you again that Kiki is a baby) and her most repulsive feature is her... well the dice tells me it's her crotch but there is a line I will not cross even for the purposes of skewering this horrible game, and statting out a baby's crotch is where I draw it. A second roll gives me her face.

Kiki's skin color is automatically silvery white so we'll skip to hair color, which the dice informs me is light brown, which is irrelevant since her age modifier to the hair length stat almost guarantees that she'll be bald. Which means I can skip the Hair Thickness stat, because of course there's a table for that. There isn't one atom on your character's body that you don't have to meticulously stat out. Kiki's eyes are brown btw, as the next table informs me.

Breadth. I have to calculate breadth for goodness sake. That's arm length, for those of you who don't know. Kiki's is 6 inches. Oh great, Kiki's nearsighted up to 300 feet. I guess it makes sense, what with her body not being fully developed yet. Speaking of her eyes, the next table tells me they're tired looking. I'm certainly tired of this crap.

Now I have to determine whether or not my character is freak of nature. I simply pull out my d1000000, a staple for any RPG player, and if I get a result of 1, then I'm that rare freak of nature who wasn't murdered by their parents after birth! I loathe this game. Well, aside from her repulsive face and tired eyes, Kiki is a normal two year old adventurer.

Next is sexual features, which I am skipping. If Kiki were an adult, I might have done this section under a spoiler tag for those who wanted to see it, since this is actually one of the aspects of this game I wanted to highlight due to how repulsive it is, but Kiki is two years old, and as said earlier, I am not crossing that line. I don't think this information is even needed to play the game.

To be honest, I'm so sick of this game already that I'm going to have to finish Kiki up tomorrow. Stay tuned for more FATAL. Or don't. I wouldn't.

[Fable Wright]

Stay tuned for more FATAL. Or don't. I wouldn't.

...An author tried to defend this game at some point. I'm beginning to get the feeling that he didn't actually ever try rolling up a new character himself.

A racial hatred table. Why the **** is there a racial hatred table with in and out of universe slurs in this thing?

[MeeposFire]

Considering that this is a game that supposedly is possible to accidentally rape an enemy to death in the middle of combat (no idea how that is supposed to work) it might sadly be needed to roll those sexual tables (which frankly makes the game even more disgusting than I thought).

[JNAProductions]

You are a braver man than me.

[An Enemy Spy]

You are a braver man than me.

Or maybe just a dumber one.

[The Glyphstone]

The one time I generated a FATAL character for the hell of it, I think it took me about an hour and a half of rolling dice and recording/calculating results.

[Cluedrew]

I was a little worried about clicking on this one, so thank you for sanitizing the experience a bit for us.

As well, what is with the age? I mean the other aspects of the system are probably worse from a moral perspective... but can't people just do math and see that 4d100/5-25 gives 55 to -24.2. I wonder how you are supposed to handle a character with negative ages.

[Anonymouswizard]

...An author tried to defend this game at some point. I'm beginning to get the feeling that he didn't actually ever try rolling up a new character himself.

A racial hatred table. Why the **** is there a racial hatred table with in and out of universe slurs in this thing?

I've read the defence. It's actually rather entertaining, he seems to believe the two-hour character creation and high lethality is a feature and a bug (even GURPS, which has a similar problem, at least requires you to deal 60hp in damage before the character is certainly dead*), and believes that his game is better than VtM because he doesn't understand what symbolism is.

Oh, and it was the author and his two friends. It's interesting that he actually has a point in that it wasn't so much a review as a mocking, but then again it's hard to write an objective review about FATAL because the fluff part is so bad.

I'd forgotten the racial hatred table. Considering that I never worked out how to determine your individual hatreds it's not that surprising.

Considering that this is a game that supposedly is possible to accidentally rape an enemy to death in the middle of combat (no idea how that is supposed to work) it might sadly be needed to roll those sexual tables (which frankly makes the game even more disgusting than I thought).

I think he removed that in the second edition. Or rather, the result was removed and replaced with one where you have the choice to. I ran past that section as soon as I saw the table for how armour influences the roll you have to make.

I'm looking forward to this, although I suspect that the sexual features should likely have been ignored anyway. I hope that you don't roll Clerk as your classoccupation, I don't want your character to spend the next sixty years trying to reach level 2.

EDIT: isn't there a rule about what to do if you roll a negative age?

[Ninja_Prawn]

I'm looking forward to this

Me too. AES is funny when he skewers things.

[Fable Wright]

I think he removed that in the second edition. Or rather, the result was removed and replaced with one where you have the choice to. I ran past that section as soon as I saw the table for how armour influences the roll you have to make.

I think he removed that in the second edition.

second edition.

second edition.

...How. I just... was there enough demand for...? I don't understand. I just don't understand.

[Anonymouswizard]

...How. I just... was there enough demand for...? I don't understand. I just don't understand.

The book wasn't even printed. But there was a revision that changed some stuff around and removed the abuses of negative anal circumference. In short no there wasn't enough demand for one, but Byron Hall made it anyway. It also changed the subtitle, which was good because the first one made no sense, and removed a few of the offensive things (you still get the massive strength penalty for women, and pretty much all the other sexism, but slightly less racism). In short, the 'second edition' of the pdf is still something that looks like the author looked at GURPS and thought 'you think that's complex!? I can do better than you', but is slightly better.

It is best to avoid both.

[Cluedrew]

Me too. AES is funny when he skewers things.

Are there more things the spy has infiltrated?

[tonberrian]

Are there more things the spy has infiltrated?

There's his ongoing reading of The Wheel of Time series. It's fun! And should update more often!

[Rynjin]

And of course the obvious answer (especially given this thread) is "Scout's mother".

[Ninja_Prawn]

So, I tried to roll up a FATAL character last night, that maybe AES wouldn't have to play on his own. I got an adolescent boy kobold (maybe Kiki's brother?) but between the endless, pointless 10d100 tables, constant misogynist vileness and apparently-circular dependencies between stats, I wasn't able to finish.

I hope AES is able to stick with it longer than I could!

[Anonymouswizard]

So, I tried to roll up a FATAL character last night, that maybe AES wouldn't have to play on his own. I got an adolescent boy kobold (maybe Kiki's brother?) but between the endless, pointless 10d100 tables, constant misogynist vileness and apparently-circular dependencies between stats, I wasn't able to finish.

I hope AES is able to stick with it longer than I could!

The few times I tried to roll up a FATAL character I invariably got a kobold. 90% chance of getting a rubbish occupation too. Although I could never face the skill system, getting all my stats and random mental illnesses was bad enough.

[Ninja_Prawn]

The few times I tried to roll up a FATAL character I invariably got a kobold. 90% chance of getting a rubbish occupation too. Although I could never face the skill system, getting all my stats and random mental illnesses was bad enough.

It's sad, because there are some neat ideas hidden in there. For example, I rolled up my Health stat (or whichever one it was) and just about escaped having an allergy, but then I came to the table of age modifiers and had to subtract whatever % due to being an adolescent, which resulted in my character gaining an allergy. So, as he ages, he would naturally grow out of it. I liked that little detail.

Really, I think a lot of the crunch would work better in a Dwarf Fortress-style computer game. Knowing that all the detail is going on behind the scenes is cool; having to manually cross-reference all the tables is not.

[Anonymouswizard]

It's sad, because there are some neat ideas hidden in there. For example, I rolled up my Health stat (or whichever one it was) and just about escaped having an allergy, but then I came to the table of age modifiers and had to subtract whatever % due to being an adolescent, which resulted in my character gaining an allergy. So, as he ages, he would naturally grow out of it. I liked that little detail.

Really, I think a lot of the crunch would work better in a Dwarf Fortress-style computer game. Knowing that all the detail is going on behind the scenes is cool; having to manually cross-reference all the tables is not.

The real problem with FATAL is that with a bit of cleaning up it might have been a good game if it had come out a couple of decades earlier. There's nothing wrong with a complex game, and nothing wrong with a lethal game, it's just that there are already better complex and lethal games out there.

I'll agree that there's a lot of neat ideas in the system. I love GURPS, but it does have the problem that, no matter how long the game goes on, my character will never lose their allergies unless I pay points for it. I actually think that the way your character's physical characteristics actually alter their stats is pretty neat (although I could have done without the most attractive feature and most repulsive feature bit).

[awa]

I think it would take more than a little work to fix all the problems with fatal

It might have a few interesting things in it but its surrounded by a giant festering cancer of various isms, pretentiousness, bad mechanics, and mindbogglingly bad mechanics.

The real problem with fatal is hard to determine because it has so many shockingly bad problems.

[Anonymouswizard]

I think it would take more than a little work to fix all the problems with fatal

It might have a few interesting things in it but its surrounded by a giant festering cancer of various isms, pretentiousness, bad mechanics, and mindbogglingly bad mechanics.

The real problem with fatal is hard to determine because it has so many shockingly bad problems.

Eh, remove the fluff and character creation and it's just a bunch of dials set to the wrong place. It's not going to be a brilliant game, it was two decades to late for that, but ignoring the randomness few mechanics are irredeemably bad. The problem is that you still have to fix everything, at which point you should just be making your own game instead because it's the same amount of work (probably less when it comes to FATAL).

[JNAProductions]

Imma do it! AES, if you don't mind, I'll join in. I will make a character!

Wish me luck. I'll need it.

Edit: I open the PDF, and I already feel the sexism. Urgh...

WHY ARE ALL THE RACES NAKED? WHY?

As for race, I got 94-Subterranean Troll. Oh frabjous day, calloo callay.

This gives... Physical Fitness +5, Strength +100, Bodily Attractiveness -50, Facial -40 (but only for males, which I am), Kinetic -40, Hand-Eye Coordination -20, Agility -25, Reaction Speed -20, Language +10, Math +10, Analytic +10, Spatial +10.

Trolls are smart, I guess? The heck?

Base current armor is 14.

Base life points are 27.

Ethicality -50
Morality -50
Sanguine -25
Choleric +25

I know the troll language.

I begin work at 13, as a something.

Skills:
Blindfighting +5
Brawling +5
Direction Sense (WHY IS THIS A SKILL) +3
Mangling +5
Sound +3
Trickery +3
Wrestling +5

Racial hatred! I hate literally everything except my own kind! How am I supposed to adventure with Kiki now?

I am 42 years old, so I'm middle-aged for a troll.

God, looking at these tables... Why is it so sexist?

99 inches tall. Giving me +48 lbs, +48 Strength, and +3 Physical Attractiveness.

I am 229 lbs. Also, the average weight for a troll is 250. 8' tall. 250 lbs. What? Anyway, I get -1 to strength for being 21 pounds below average.

16.5 BMI. WHY THE HELL DO I NEED TO KNOW THIS? -3 Bodily Attractiveness. Also, why do women get a BONUS for being skinny? This is medieval. Chub was hot!

My chest is the most attractive. My hands and feet are the least.

I have greenish skin.

Light brown, shoulder length hair. Okay. That's not bad.

My hair type is 125. That's not on the table. WHAT DO I DO? :P

My eyes are brown.

Sight is normal.

I have dense, curled up eyebrows.

I'm not a freak of feature.

Spoiler: Sexual Features-Read at your own risk

Show

3" diameter areolas.

Medium hue.

A Cup.

1" length nipples.

3" tongue.

9"-12" anal circumference.

I'm sorry.

6.5" penis.

11.4 inch circumference.

13"-14" feet.

I'm just barely right handed.

33.00" head. TO TWO DECIMAL PLACES, PEOPLE! WE'RE GETTING PRECISE!

Physicque-96.5
Physical Fitness-107
Strength-98
Bodily Attractiveness-101
Health-80

Charisma104.25
Facial-85
Vocal-132
Kinetic-80
Rhetorical-120

Dexterity-90.75
Hand-Eye Coordination-104
Agility-80
Reaction Speed-80
Enunciation-99

Intelligence-92.75
Language-98
Math-95
Analytic-84
Spatial-94

Wisdom-102.5
Drive-75
Intuition-94
Common Sense-148
Reflection-93

WHY DO ALL THESE STATS EXIST?

I'm done. I'm sorry, I can't go on for now

Link to my dice rolls. http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showt...7#post21568697

[awa]

Eh, remove the fluff and character creation and it's just a bunch of dials set to the wrong place. It's not going to be a brilliant game, it was two decades to late for that, but ignoring the randomness few mechanics are irredeemably bad. The problem is that you still have to fix everything, at which point you should just be making your own game instead because it's the same amount of work (probably less when it comes to FATAL).

I feel some of the filth is more then just fluff i recall the magic system being particularly bad. That said i think i get what your trying to say and I can respect an extremely in depth system even if i have little desire to play it.

[Flashy]

Maybe there should be some kind of prize (or at least bragging rights) for the first person to make it as far as selecting a character class?

[BWR]

Spoiler: Sexual Features-Read at your own risk

Show

6.5" penis.

11.4 inch circumference.

Am I right in assuming the second stat also applies to the penis?
Because the mind boggles.

[An Enemy Spy]

Do you think Byron Hall ever actually rolled up a character and play tested it? There are so many problems here that become immediately apparent the moment you actually start playing the game. And did anyone else notice that it's impossible to roll a black character on the skin color table?

Okay, since it might (god forbid) be necessary, I will roll for Kiki's less savory stats. If I'm going to be doing this, I have to go all the way. Little kids do have private areas. I used to work in a day care and I've had to wipe them. I will not be going through the process with you guys however, because I really don't want to spend any more time on this segment than I have to.

Spoiler: Nasty, Wrong, Horrible Stats

Show

Areola Diameter: 1"
Areola Hue: Light
Cup Size: AA
Nipple Length: 1/4"
Vaginal Circumference: 3-4" (I feel horrible)
Tongue Length: 1/2"
Anal Circumference: 3-4" (**** you Byron Hall, you sick, demented piece of ****)

Okay, let's do foot sizes! As I flip back through pages and pages because Byron Hall didn't see fit to include the age modifiers on the same page as the foot measurements. Odd, since the sexual stats all have tables with all information right there. Probably because Byron Hall considers the amount of fingers you can stuff down a woman's vagina to be far more worthy of his attention and effort than things like foot size. In fact, once the sexual characteristics are over, the book straight up tells you that all the stats after this part aren't really important. It's like once he got past the stats required to meticulously roleplay a rape scene, he just lost all interest. I roll a 28 on the d100, giving me an 8-9" inch foot(8-9? you were a lot more specific when it came to nipple length, Byron), which I'll just call nine inches, and then multiply that by .4 for the age modifier, giving Kiki a foot size of 3.6". Kiki's foot is more than a quarter of her height. That also applies to her fist size, since Byron Hall is just phoning it in at this point. To get head circumference, I roll a 52, giving me a base size of 22.12, which I multiply by .97 for being female, which is such a small difference I don't even see the point in including it, giving me 21.4564. I then multiply that by .7 for Kiki's age, giving me 15.01948. You thought we were done there? Oh no, now I have to roll a d100 to see if I have to increase or decrease from the base size. I roll 64, meaning I will increase Kiki's head by 1d100 hundredths of an inch. I roll 14, making Kiki's head circumference a final 15.15948 inches! I sure am glad we got that all squared away. I was beginning to think I'd have to use my imagination to decide what Kiki's head size was down to the nearest hundred thousandth of an inch. Or in metric terms, an unnecessary amount of detail.

Next up is pregnancy!


. . .


Next up is abilities! Finally, we can actually start doing real stats instead of figuring out what size orifices Kiki can fit her head into. I'm sorry Kiki. I'm sorry I brought you into this cruel world.

To determine my abilities, I must first roll the twenty sub-abilities and then... look, this part is so overly complicated that if I try and describe every step of it I'll be here until morning. I'll post what I have so far and then start working on this stuff afterward.

[An Enemy Spy]

Okay, I'm trying to figure these statistics out, and I just can't do it right now. Nobody who is playing this game with the intention of having fun would ever make it through this part. It's long, it's complex, it requires you to flip through pages and pages of tables to determine all the little modifiers for all twenty sub-abilities, and most of all it's incredibly tedious and boring. On top of that, I'm not in a place right now where I can just sit down and concentrate on this, so I'm going to have to come back to this at another time.

Who'd have thought that just rolling up a random character would be this freaking difficult? I bet the combat in this game will take a half hour to get through one round.

[The Glyphstone]

Do you think Byron Hall ever actually rolled up a character and play tested it? There are so many problems here that become immediately apparent the moment you actually start playing the game. And did anyone else notice that it's impossible to roll a black character on the skin color table?

Do you think that is by accident? The Magic Armors of Cartoonish Racism were one of the things cut from the first printing, after all.

[An Enemy Spy]

Do you think that is by accident? The Magic Armors of Cartoonish Racism were one of the things cut from the first printing, after all.

Ah yes, who could forget the Jewy Jewbacca armor? "Whosoever dons this armor will acquire a nose twice the size and a manhood half the size. Further, the wearer will become extremely greedy and fight to the death for one silver piece. Finally, the wearer acquires 2 inches of hair all over their body, resulting in halving their Facial Charisma and Bodily Attractiveness. While hairy, the wearer must bathe every 1d6 hours or smell foul." Subtle, Byron. Very subtle.