How to fix FATAL.

[warmachine]

I remember FATAL the first time round and I read a lot of it. Base attributes divided into lots of sub-attributes for no identifiable reason. Lots of random stat generation using complex formulae but no coherent model, often leading to nonsensical builds. Obsession with sex. Lots of boring professions that make no sense for heroic fantasy adventurers. Lots of tables for everything with plenty of stupid and childish entries. Generic fantasy world with no interesting stories. It's like a twelve year old read Rolemaster, AD&D, and GURPS amongst others, read some bad fiction about medieval societies, and thought he could do better.

Which leads what FATAL is trying to achieve beyond heroic, magical, medieval fantasy. Mechanically, FATAL strikes me as a mangled mess of design goals without focus plus obsession with trivial attributes. Thematically, if you take out the misogyny and warped depiction of medieval society, it's just boring. So, FATAL can't be fixed.


I worry some demagogue will find FATAL and try to make a moral panic out of it. I guess its bad writing prevents that.

[JadedDM]

There is only one way to fix FATAL:

Spoiler

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[Anonymouswizard]

I remember FATAL the first time round and I read a lot of it. Base attributes divided into lots of sub-attributes for no identifiable reason. Lots of random stat generation using complex formulae but no coherent model, often leading to nonsensical builds. Obsession with sex. Lots of boring professions that make no sense for heroic fantasy adventurers. Lots of tables for everything with plenty of stupid and childish entries. Generic fantasy world with no interesting stories. It's like a twelve year old read Rolemaster, AD&D, and GURPS amongst others, read some bad fiction about medieval societies, and thought he could do better.

I think the worst bit of 'realism' I've seen for FATAL was the fact that Attribute generation was devised to first hilariously weight you towards average in your sub-attributes, and then make you take the average so that even if you rolled really high in a score, the actual score you used was probably about average. But yes, it has the lists of GURPS and the complexity of Rolemaster with the lack of sense of AD&D and a whole heaping of extra misogyny.

Which leads what FATAL is trying to achieve beyond heroic, magical, medieval fantasy. Mechanically, FATAL strikes me as a mangled mess of design goals without focus plus obsession with trivial attributes. Thematically, if you take out the misogyny and warped depiction of medieval society, it's just boring. So, FATAL can't be fixed.

Thematically correct, rules-wise you can apply a hacksaw and a bit of glue and get something just about workable.

Although the hilarious bit is that Mazes & Minotaurs is in many ways more mythologically accurate than FATAL. So the game explicitly meant to be based off of pop culture versions of Classical Mythology is more accurate because it picked a mythology and used that (and because it's another mythology with a lot of pop culture versons there's rules for doing Norse Mythology). Although M&M is just a better game than FATAL, having had playability as a goal.

But yeah, it would be easier to just take the stated goals of FATAL (realism, historical accuracy, mythological accuracy [and please pick a mythology and stick with it], and 'player choice') and build a whole new okayish RPG than it would be to make FATAL merely 'bad'.

[D+1]

"The only winning move is... not to play."

[Scots Dragon]

Erase the 'AL' part and replace it with an 'E', so you can just run FATE instead.

It's literally nothing like FATAL on any major level, but I suppose this makes it the best possible approach to FATAL.