FATAL

I'm sure somebody else has heard of this. There is no definitive link I can give for FATAL RPG, because everybody who has ever professed to liking it is now dead, possibly smote down by God.

What I would suggest is that you do a search for "Fatal RPG". "Byron Hall", or "Fatal Pen and Paper Game Worst", to understand what I am talking about.

Anybody else stumbled across this on their adventures over the internet? I was disappointed that the last mirrors with the actual .pdf have been destroyed. I wanted to see it for myself.

 

I've never seen the .pdf, but I've seen enough of the rules to know that it devours sanity.

FATAL was a plague upon the gaming community. All those who came into contact with it returned... changed. They no longer smiled. Colours around them faded to shades of grey. Eventually the great Gaming Gods noticed this strange blight upon the land, and with a cry that shook the foundations of the Intarwebs, they descended and smote both game and designers, consigning them to the darkest corners of cyberspace, where they languished and eventually perished.

...Okay, yeah, it might have gotten to me a bit. *twitch* But I'm fine now, really. *twitch* Why would the idea of someone searching for the darkest hour of humanity worry me? *twitch* *twitch*

 

Man Xiao, you'd think I was trying to uncover dark secrets that should have been left hidden, lest they wrought destruction upon the world.

I mean, I am, but still. And somehow, I knew that if anybody had the evils of the internet locked away in a vault, it would be Vorak.

 

This reminds me of Man Spider from the Burnt Face Man series.

 

Don't mess with what the internet gods buried, Grak. Seriously. It will MELT YOUR BRAIN. *twitch* Plus, this is me you're talking to, I'm almost impossible to freak out, and yet... *twitch* I'm mentally scarred by that shit.

 

Anyone have a copy of the pdf they are willing to pass me?

 

I'll upload it to rapid share, will link it later.


.

 

I figured HellBokos would be the one who actively had the pdf on hand.

EDIT: Found it, courtesy of Wayback Machine, our favorite vault of internet secrets. Apparently, he wasn't good at website design, either.

EDIT2: SomethingAwful had a similar discussion last month. It is no surprise that the puzzle is finally completed by my having found the chargen there.

EDIT 3: The .pdf on the wayback doesn't work. HellBokos will still need to bring that piece of the ritual to the summoning circle before the Dark Lord can arise once more.

EDIT 4: Playing with the chargen. I am a human female infant with a variety of stats I don't understand in any way. The program has asked me if I want to generate sexual features.

In my moment of lowest morality, I select 'yes'.

I am a homosexual 3 year old. With an anal circumference of 3 inches. You think something is bad, but you don't really catch on until you actually start to use it. My god. I feel awful now.

WHAT HAVE WE DONE?

 

90% sure this, or something similar is stored on a PC I've got locked in a concrete cupboard under the house. I'll take a look.

Fucking hell, I need to start reading this shit more often so I don't end up with 30+ threads to wade through.

 

I keep getting a message when I open the chargen, explicitly stating "You are not allowed to redistribute executable files made with this product" (slightly paraphrased, they're talking about C++). Yes, that's right. If they had actually gone through with their plan of selling a 1000 page book (hahaha) with the CD containing this Chargen (which is run in a dos window), they would have actually gone to jail for making FATAL.

Now I am upset they never made it to a publisher.

Just rolled a Kobold with "Near-Sightedness, 700 feet". Wtf?

EDIT:

http://www.donatebytes.com/fatal.pdf

Here it is, my friends. Don't get excited, the bookmarks he made act as an index. A huge index. And not a way of skipping to the funniest bits.

Also, from the section on realism at the very beginning: "We try to isolate Europe from outside influences ... human corpses are burned - Egyptians invented embalming, and Egypt is outside Europe."

Yep. Because outside influences are removed, people in the FATAL world do not bury the dead, because they never came up with that idea.

Below this, Byron Hall (the author) explains that only classical, historical, or scholarly contributions are accepted as a source for this RPG, and then leaves his e-mail so you can request consideration for your publication to be quoted in his work. That's right. If you are, say, a professor of Classical History, Byron Hall might consider letting you have a say about ancient times, but only if he deems the information worthy. Not that you would be trying to get quoted in FATAL if you had a Ph. D/job in the first place.

"In order to prevent a gender bias, we will sacrifice grammar and say "them", "they", and "their's" instead of..."

As you will see from the following chapters, which include mass rape and women never being able to be as good as men stat-wise this game really goes the extra mile to remain gender neutral.

He uses the number '69' to explain how rolling d100 works. Wow.

The Math Section: "Players will not need math that is more complicated than basic algebra..."

What? Okay, I can maybe understand carnal brutality, but what made him think that math was fun?

I admit, I gained something from FATAL. My grasp of percentile math was shaky at best, before I came across his guide to doing basic percentile math on pages 5 and 6. Because this is why people play RPGs. They miss school.

I especially like when he introduces slang for the 'Aedile' (the GM of this game). I think somebody missed the point of slang. Especially in regards to it only ever appearing in the second edition or later of a publication, for good reason.

"If you are new to the game, the best solution is to read this book."

Actually, the best solution is to put it down, but if I were to pretend that what Byron Hall claims is true, I would probably note the redundancy of this statement instead.

I decide to skip ahead to page 789 (Conducting the Game), which I assume that nobody has ever actually been before. It's just as bad here. There is a paragraph, complete with a header (Condiments) about buying pizza for your session. My favorite line is "Gain familiarity and gain respect" in regards to the GM. Yeah, right, if they wanted respect, they wouldn't be playing FATAL.

"Choose a quiet place ... such as a good room, or a garage with a comfortable temperature"

As opposed to a bad room, or a garage with an uncomfortable temperature.

"Some gaming groups prefer a temperature slightly cooler than ideal so that players are not apt to fall asleep."

Ignoring the fact that cold temperatures make us want to sleep, is this really a problem for you? You have to sabotage your house to convince your players not to doze off in the middle of the game, and you thought it was all set for publishing? This is quickly followed by some info about the GM sitting on an elevated platform so the other players "literally have to look up at the Aedile", and then this gem:

"On occasion, the results of the dice may contradict reason"

No shit. Also, on the next page it says that if one or more characters becomes too powerful, you should randomly use a plot device to strip them of their powers. It literally says: "perhaps ... a disease will sap their Superhuman Strength".

Best line so far: "Gamers will lose interest if they never know what to expect."

This is so true! Gawd, I hate unpredictability, it is the most ridiculous thing I have ever had to suffer through. Surprises? SO blase.

I decided to check my profession in the index. It is listed under Acting, Drama, as a skill. He lists the 'Factors of Dramatic Acting'.

1) Emotional State
2) Temperament Characteristics
3) Imitate Another's Mannerisms or Gestures
4) Imitate Another's Speech (Tone, Pitch, Inflection, Accent, etc.)

I don't think I need to inform anybody here that this is both incorrect and completely stupid. What the hell is a temperament characteristic? I've certainly never been introduced to that term. I can only assume it refers to trying to match up your acting with a certain personality. Very good of Hall to arbitrarily assume that acting is all just basic imitation. Actually, straightforward imitation is quite rare in theatre: most of the characters you see are built to their state by the actor. If I'm set to play Hamlet, I don't just imitate some emo kids, jerk it to pictures of my mom, and try to do whatever the last Hamlet did, because then I will be booed off stage (especially if they find out about the second part). Instead, my task is to build the character into something that the audience has not seen before, creating something entertaining. I can disguise myself as somebody else endlessly if I want to, but nobody wants to see me imitate Barack Obama. Unless it's funny, but then it isn't imitation, it is satire.

Anyways, despite getting worked up over this one, I should point out the real issue with this entry and the four factors Hall lays out: They don't relate to anything. It would be one thing to bullshit something so that he can make it into a game mechanic. I would even accept that, professional game designers do this all the time. But he actually made stuff up and pretended to know about theatre and didn't even apply it anywhere. I just vomited a little.

At the end of the book, he provides a picture, and claims he has an M.A. in Quantitative Research Methods, has done pre-doctoral work in some sort of equations field, and has taught at Northern Illinois University. On the next page, he ruins the career of several people he knows who gave him information about ancient history and philosophy. He also smears NIU's name by claiming to have gotten a Quantitative Research Methods degree when he uses Aristotle's views on women in a historical context. I guess it's not "Qualitative Research Methods", though.

 

:cry: You brought it back... *twitch* You awakened the ancient evil... *twitch* :cry: I warned you, I tried to tell you and you did it anyway... *twitch* I think a few rounds of Brain Bleach will be in order soon.

*Sets up a bar, lines up shot glasses, and fills them with Brain Bleach with the same flair usually reserved for showoff bartenders* Help yourselves.

paranoid: This has nothing to do with anything, but does anyone else think of Dwayne Dibley/The Dibley Family when they see this?)

 

Should we think of Dwayne Dibley or the Dibley Family? I honestly can't find any information on what the Dibley Family is at all.

 

It's a Red Dwarf reference. If you've seen the episode, you know what I'm talking about. If you haven't... what are you doing hanging around here when you could be watching Rimmer suffer?

 

Bleck, Red Dwarf. It actually reminds me of some TV show I watched as a kid that had some bastard called "thing" with an actual mop as a haircut (seriously), and was getting chased around and abused by this old lady. That shit freaked me out more than willie wonka.

 

Best damn review of FATAL ever.

 

She likes Red Dwarf, your coming close to fitting my "Perfect Woman" criteria. There's just one more thing I need to know before I whisk you away, do you take it up the arse?

 

I always imagined Xiao to be more of a giver than a taker.

 

You know, when you first showed up I thought, "I'm going to have to kill him someday".
Take one step back, please. :x
I want to minimize the blood splash on the upholstery.