FATAL (Fantasy Adventures to Adult Lechery) is generally considered the worst TRPG ever made.
The second worst TRPG ever made is called Racial Holy War.
That’s all you need to know about FATAL.
FATAL (Fantasy Adventures to Adult Lechery) is generally considered the worst TRPG ever made.
The second worst TRPG ever made is called Racial Holy War.
That’s all you need to know about FATAL.
I actually think that it’s actually less offensive than Racial Holy War. Not that it’s saying much. The reason that it’s considered the worst game also has to do with the inepitude of the system. The game isn’t just extrememly offensive, it’s just compeletely unplayable.
To be fair, RHW is also unplayable. Literally. certain rules were just forgotten, so, for example, you can’t deal any damage unless you homebrew something.
The reason why FATAL is considered the worst is because RHW is stupid almost to the point of parody and relatively short. You can read it under an hour, be outraged, then forget about its existence. With FATAL, there are hundreds of pages filled with offensive shit and endless tables. To comprehend all the layers of its badness requires more effort, so ultimately the game leaves more of an impression.
I go back and forth. A while back, someone transcribed an interview with one of the people involved in FATAL, and they explained how they liked to play evil characters and so the game is sort of like a giant evil character sandbox, so you can sort of picture it like that they always want to piss on the corpses and then the DM’s like “okay roll to see if you fail and then we’ll all laugh at you” and so then it’s just stupid and juvenile and everyone involved knows they’re being awful and that’s the point.
Then I think about this bit of a review and have the same moment of detached cynicism giving way and actually thinking about what it’s talking about and my skin crawls.
To give you a bit of hope in humanity, I’m actually not sure Byron Hall and Co engage in child rape in their games.
There is a peculiar phenomenon in homebrew TRPGs where devs would include rules they themselves don’t use because they think these rules are supposed to be included. For example, a game primary about court intrigue may still include a detailed tactical battle rules even though fights take less than 10% of actual gameplay because the devs grew up playing D&D, which is 90% combat, and think it’s the way to craft a game.
The paradigm behind FATAL, such as it is, is to have a rule for every conceivable situation, no matter how unlikely or not important. So, I can see Hall writing a table for anal circumference and then adding modifier for toddlers because, hey, the game has rules for toddlers already, they should be complete.
That still, of course, means that he felt the need to include a table to determine anal circumference, but it’s a bit less soul-crushing to think about it this way.
Mediocre, illhousen! You won’t be McFeasting on Valhalla.
Aww. When I saw the title I was ready for an in depth rant about all the worst parts of FATAL. I am disappointed.
Honestly, there is not much I can say about it. The game is vile and it doesn’t even pretend otherwise. It has misogyny, racism, homophobia, probably other types of bigotry I’m forgetting about, “historical accuracy” as an inaccurate excuse and, most damnable of all, endless tables and nigh-incomprehensible rules.
And everyone knows it’s bad. When White Wolves do some dumb shit, like latex nuns, i know it’s because they think that’s what players want or because their artists/writers mistook maturity for edginess and porn, and some players buy into it, so such flaws are worth pointing out. With FATAL, the only people who could mistake it for a good product are its creators.
So I’ve made a joke about it instead.
Indeed. Much as I would enjoy a good bashing, there’s nothing that can be said about FATAL that everyone doesn’t already know.
I think you could have at least linked to a proper review of the “game”, even if only for the PSA factor.
http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/14/14567.phtml
Really, not much to add.
Not much to add for people who are already familiar with the “game”, or at least with a review of it. :-)
So, I thought about it a bit, and here is my expanded review:
HATE. LET ME TELL YOU HOW MUCH I’VE COME TO HATE FATAL SINCE I BEGAN
TO READ IT. THERE ARE 185,000,000 GOOGLE RESULTS FOR FATAL. IF EACH WORD IN THESE RESULTS: ARTICLES, REVIEWS, POSTS, RANDOM REFERENCES – WAS REPLACED WITH THE WORD HATE, IT WOULD NOT EQUAL
ONE ONE-BILLIONTH OF THE HATE I FEEL FOR FATAL AT THIS MICRO-INSTANT.
FOR FATAL. HATE. HATE.
AM would make a great critic, come to think of it.
Hm. I get the impression you don’t like FATAL much. Am I right? :-P
I’m still sad Sartin disappeared forever. He was a good friend.
Ha! Well-played. I was all set to be annoyed at the deterioration of this blog’s policy on low-hanging fruit.
I’m glad you didn’t took the easy way and started shooting the fish in the barrel.
Although, with F.A.T.A.L. it’s more like skipping the shooting and the getting the fish, already cooked, in your kitchen.
If you’re though enough, glancing over it is interesting in the ‘car crash’ sense. Otherwise, steep clear and, uh, mind the gap.