FRRpart2

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Part 2/5 of the FATAL Review Rebuttal. --Lord Knockwood the Mad


So check this out: There's five primary stats, right? But, in a nod towards the residents of insane asylums who smear the walls with their own feces, each stat has four sub-stats which determine vital, important information like, say, enunciation, or kinetic beauty. So, you actually have a stat that determines how well you can speak, or how pretty it looks when you move.

You should have used "that" instead of "which". Enunciation and Kinetic Charisma (not beauty -- by now the reader should not expect accuracy from Darren) are important sub-abilities (not sub-stats). For example, if a character is a spell-caster, then Enunciation is important to their spell-casting. Enunciation is also important to bards. Kinetic Charisma is important to a dancer, and probably anyone trying to seduce another character. There are well over 100 occupations, and each uses a different blend of the sub-abilities. Did Darren read the game?

Burnout: Just to elaborate once again. Imagine a mage getting charged by a hill troll. Before the troll gets there, which is determined by the sub-ability of physical fitness, the mage tries to cast Wooden Carapice, which would give himself an additional 15 to current armor. Enunciation would determine if he could speak the chant fast enough to cast the spell.

Sartin: Would this be a bad place to mention that you have to randomly roll all 20 sub-abilities? And the roll is 4d100, halve it, and subtract 1? Then you go back and calculate each primary ability by averaging all four of its sub-abilities. Which is really cool when you consider that primary abilities are rarely if ever used by the rules.

4d100 has changed to 10d100. Keep in mind that a character can be created in five minutes or less with the FATAL Character Generator, available free at fatalgames.com. Then again, the complexity of determining sub-abilities ((10d100)/5 - 1), compared to other RPG's, supports my claims that it is the most difficult, detailed, and realistic RPG available. I mentioned realism because the curve produced by 10d100 is superior to anything else I've seen, as well as the fact that the mean is 100, which is easy to interpret. Therefore, the statistical curves produced by rolling for sub-abilities in FATAL are more realistic, and represent real distributions better than other RPG's. Although primary abilities are used less frequently than sub-abilities, I disagree with "rarely". Just the same, the focus is on sub-abilities, not abilities.

Burnout: Go ahead and make about 20 characters and see how well they fit into the Bell curve. I’ve tried and it’s much more accurate than anything I’ve seen.

So, basically, saying that this game should be burned is an insult to fire.

Saying that this game should be burned is an insult to RPG's and gamers worldwide.

The worst part of reviewing this shit is that I actually have to think about it. I actually have to read this shit, then try to explain it to you, then I have to spend half an hour with a pencil up my nose trying to fish out the piece of brain that died the minute that I tried to use it to understand FATAL. And God almighty, that's not a fun job. I'm genuinely worried that this is going to start interfering with my life, so that I start wind up adding on pointless, redundant statistics to everything that I do, like the guy who writes Hybrid.

Based on the lack of quality of Darren's comments, I doubt he thought about FATAL or read much at all.

Burnout: Come on now, giving credit where it’s due he probably read it. Just he couldn’t understand most of it. That’s why he’s thinking so hard and “fishing out his brain."

Also, for x=(c)(number of words in review)*ycc+kill me you fucks kill me.

Sartin: It's hard to believe, but even Hybrid is less of a waste of atoms than FATAL. You can catch my review of it here.

Just for example: Charisma includes Facial Charisma (how good you look), Vocal Charisma (how you sound,) Kinetic Charisma (how pretty you look when you move), and Rhetorical Charisma (how fast you CAN FUCKING SPEAK.) That's right, everybody: You can determine how fast your character can speak, in words per minute. What a statistic.

While speech rate may seem pointless to a reviewer who doesn't read closely, Rhetorical Charisma is important to some characters, just as with Enunciation and Kinetic Charisma, noted above. Above all, the information is there, if needed. If not needed, it doesn't need to be read.

Burnout: Just a side note, Facial Charisma is not how good you look. It’s how good your face looks.

Sartin: Yeah, where to begin? I mean, I can't count the number of campaigns I've seen where it matters whether your face can be THAT much prettier than your body. But don't worry. Even if you blow that 4d100/2-1 roll for it, you can beat it by wearing a bag over your head, like most FATALites probably do in real life.

It would be interesting to have a poll with hundreds of anonymous participants who rate photos of their faces and ours, just to see.

Burnout: I believe in giving details so here we go again. Imagine, if you will, fighting your way to the top of a tower where a female mage is attempting to cast the spell FATAL upon the world. Now when you get there you have the option of outright killing her. But there are so many options in FATAL one of which is trying to seduce her and make her break her concentration as a by-product. Now being a mage of high enough level to cast FATAL she obviously has high skill points in spell casting, familiarity. So in order to break her concentration you need to seduce her AND roll a high enough sexual adeptness check to be considered exceptional (80 or higher). In order to do this it would help to have high Facial Charisma and Bodily Attractiveness sub-abilities.

And while we're on the subject, it's cool that Kinetic Charisma is entirely separate from Hand-Eye Coordination and Agility. That's right! You can be the clumsiest, most spastic sack of shit who ever lived, and yet still inspire boners because the way you pick up that bottle of Jack Daniels to help you get through this game is just so Kinetically Charismatic. Meanwhile, you fans of the controversial pastime of hot, sweaty man-love will enjoy how, with Vocal Charisma, the lowest possible rating will get you a description of "gay".

Finally, Darren provides an argument. Should Kinetic Charisma be correlated with Hand-Eye Coordination and Agility? If there is a correlation, it should be weak. Consider a female in high school or college, who moves attractively. The gestures she makes with her wrist, the way she moves her head, and how she walks -- most consider her to be kinetically charismatic. However, I believe it is reasonable for a female like this to be tested by a Phys. Ed. teacher regarding either Hand-Eye or Agility, and perform poorly. The opposite also seems plausible. Therefore, if a relationship exists, it is weak. As these sub-abilities stand, orthogonal to each other, is reasonable. Just the same, I am interested in exploring this further. I thank Darren for providing one argument not devoid of all reason or support.

Burnout: Darren claims we are homophobic yet, he uses the term hot, sweaty man love.

And Rhetorical Charisma...yeah. I mean, this happens all the time in the dungeon:

The scope of FATAL is much wider than adventuring in a dungeon. In fact, if you consider the majority of occupations, the most general form of role-playing in FATAL should be gaming either as a peasant in a hamlet or a serf in a town.

Player: Okay, the dark priest HAS to be down to his last few hit points. As I take my next strike, I'm gonna shout "This is for my brother! Eat testicle pubes and die, scrotum breath!"

Gamemaster: Now, hold on! I'm not sure you could get that entire sentence out before you hit. Oh, if only there was SOMETHING we could roll to see!

Burnout: Actually I believe what Sartin is looking for is Enunciation not Rhetorical Charisma. In this case if his Enunciation were not high enough he has the option of waiting to finish the sentence before striking. Though, if he chooses that he runs the risk of the dark priest attacking first. Anyway, Rhetorical Charisma is used more in the case of Haggling for a lower price for buying equipment or a higher price for selling.

If Jason read the game, he'd know that should be MaimMaster, not Gamemaster.

I spent some time trying to scream, but nothing came out but blood.

Please try again.

Sartin: Okay, people. Remember that Darren's a professional, and we're reviewing on a closed course. Don't projectile vomit blood at home!

Darren's a professional? Professional at what? It's sure not debating or reviewing. I wonder if Darren's capable of an advanced degree? Nevermind, they're easy to get.

Burnout: Isn’t it obvious Byron. He’s a professional at projecting vomitous blood, iIn accordance to the wording used by Sartin.

I should also spend some time describing the artwork for this game. Most of it is obviously photographs run through the Graphic Pen filter in Adobe Photoshop; and most of the photographs depict two beer-swollen morons pretending to fight about as smoothly and realistically as any fight on Star Trek - which is to say that it's stiff and really, really staged. There's also startling depictions of the ARTWORK HERE monster, and crudely drawn pornographic sketches here and there. As a matter of fact, the ARTWORK HERE monster must be the most common wandering monster in FATAL, given its frequency of appearance.

There is only one "crudely drawn pornographic" sketch, and it was drawn by my wife. Actually, it was the fun of the moment, not intended as permanent artwork. She is a capable artist, though someone who sees that sketch should know that it took her less than five seconds to sketch it. As for the altered photos, they are also not intended as permanent artwork. The Artwork Here monste r(which, by the way, is not all caps, just in case Darren's interested in getting it right) is now dying a slow death, since art is being added and is one of the reasons the most recent version has not been made available for some time. A professional artist is now working on FATAL.

Burnout: To give credit where it’s due, Darren is somewhat right on one point here. Being one of the people in the photographs he’s speaking about, I can say that one other person and I were drunk when taking these pictures. And as Byron stated they were never meant to be in FATAL, even worse permanent artwork. By the way, if you’ve ever played with a bardiche while drinking you would now it’s better to look staged than to chop your buddy’s head off.

Sartin: Wait, he was trying to be intimidating? I thought he was going for a "Hi! I'm a silhouette of a bearded jackass who couldn't pass muster in the SCA!" look. Really, take a white marker and scribble on some black construction paper, and you won't be too far off from what little artwork HAS been filled in here. If Hall used Photoshop to create these images, he sucks at it.

Who was trying to be intimidating? The last potential creature Darren mentioned was the Artwork Here monster. Was the Artwork Here monster trying to be intimidating? My question is: can Jason write clearly? Who is bearded? I was definitely no good at PhotoShop when altered pictures of myself and my buddies. In the last few months, I'd say I got pretty decent at PhotoShop. For example, I thoroughly redesigned the Fatal Games Website.

Here, check it out:

Really. It's from the combat section. Actually, that one isn't so bad...the guy on the right is obviously Hall, and no illustration that depicts Hall in a state of imminent fustigation can be all bad.

The image used without permission is on the second page of Chapter 10: Combat.

Hmmm...

Oh, yeah. I'm either drunk or half-blind, or someone needs to try harder.

I'm guessing Jason's drunk.

Or check this description of an ability check:

For example, a slovenly trollop offers herself to a strapping young adventurer if and only if he can expediently say a tongue-twister of her choice. Driven by hormones, the young male agrees, and asks what is the tongue twister. The courtesan challenges "Huge hung hero hunks hastily hump horny heaving hot whores. How 'bout it, huh?"

So: Not only do we have a splendid example of the level that FATAL operates at, we also have an example of the game's utter misogyny. You will never, ever find a female character in this game who isn't a prostitute and/or proclaimed slut, because that's the only kind of women that exist in these dipshits' imagination. There's also not-English ("what is the tongue twister" instead of "what the tongue twister is"), and, for the final kick in the balls to my leathery psyche, you have to check against your Enunciation stat in order to say it.

I admit to making a mistake. However, Jason's powers of observation seem to leave much to be desired. For example, it should be, "and asks 'What is the tongue-twister?'" Did he expect the reader to overlook his misuse of the colon next to "So:", or simply not notice the dangling preposition "at", which would be better written as "the level at which FATAL operates." For that matter, FATAL does not 'operate' in the sense he meant. His poorly worded attack is actually hypocritical. By the way, Enunciation is better termed a sub-ability than a stat.

Burnout: Darren states “You will never, ever find a female character in this game who isn't a prostitute and/or proclaimed slut, because that's the only kind of women that exist in these dipshits' imagination.” I take offense to these remarks but will answer in terms of the game itself. With exception of very few, like Hierophant and Druid, a female can choose to be any occupation she so desires and there are even occupations set aside just for females, other than whore. Like baroness, chambermaid, dairymaid, delouser, duchesses, queen, laundress, lacemaker,and ladies, amongst many others. There are also many occupations where both males or females are rare or uncommon but they do exist.

Sartin: Appropriately enough, that example ends with the adventurer blowing it and losing the girl. How unintentionally autobiographical!

Is that what Jason needs to believe to feel better? His suppositions sound as unreasonable as grounds for religion.

But while we're on the subject of whores and sluts, there are also few occupations in this game that get more wordage from Hall than whoring and all things related to it (and even those only exceed the whoring volume through huge charts or long, boring ass skill lists).

Whoring doesn't get much attention at all. Would anyone like to make any comparisons? Jason refuses to support his argument.

Burnout: Sure I’ll make a quick comparison. Ok whore as an occupation gets a page and a half with no charts. I’ll check how many have that much or more. Assassin has two pages with one four line chart. Brotheler gets a page and a half no charts. Clerk gets a page and a half no charts. Doctor gets a page and a half no charts. Druid gets three and a half pages including three charts that cover about a full page. Gladiator gets a page and a half no charts. Knight gets a full page no charts. Mage gets three pages about one and a half in charts. Ranger gets a page and a half no charts. Scribe gets a page and half no charts. Sorceror gets two pages about one and three quarters pages in charts. That’s all. I count 11 occupations that get the same or more wording than whore. Seems like more than few to me. There are also a lot that get a whole page to themselves so whore doesn’t get that much more than them.

And all the whore and whore-related profession descriptions, of course, instantly footnote you to "information on whores has been obtained from Medieval Prostitution, by Jacques Rossiaud". Which, as it turns out, is a book on prostitution...in southern France...in the time period spanning the 1400s. And yet Hall is basing an entire world on it. Yes, people, this is what passes for "research" and "historical accuracy" in FATAL.

If Jason read the book, he'd  know that in numerous places, information on brothels and whoring is generalized to Europe. The arguments of Jason fail to stand here, as usual. Finally, He has no idea how the world for FATAL (Neveria) will end-up, based on the FATAL system rules alone. The reader should know that this is what he tries to call a review.

Actually, I tell a lie. One aspect of whoring you won't see FATAL spend time on is sexually transmitted disease. Yep, with the loving attention Hall pays to sex, genitalia, whoremongering, and rape, there isn't one damn word in the entire book about STDs.

So Hall's either careless beyond imagination, or didn't feel "the most difficult, detailed, and realistic game available" needed to present anything that might be a possible consequence to raping and fucking your brains out. Your call!

I searched for information on sexually transmitted diseases in the Middle Ages. Although I did not search with vigor, the few times that I have searched, I have failed to find any information. Some others have made this same argument. When I asked them to provide a source, so that I can include the information, I never heard from them again. If Jason were credible, he would provide a scholarly source.

Burnout: From what I have heard, they existed but nobody was able to diagnose STD’s. Not that I see it mattering much. Considering the fact that in FATAL you’d be lucky if a character lived long enough to be effected by the long term effects of STD’s. And in the short term most would be nothing more than minor annoyances. Every 1d4 hours you must scratch your balls due to crabs. Or due to urinary tract infection take 1d2 LP of damage during each urination over the next 1d4 weeks. Only problem is, as stated by Byron, no one has brought a scholarly text to prove they even existed let alone could be diagnosed.

Then there's the charts - pages and pages and pages of charts. I should mention that the Bodily Attractiveness stat affects your breast cup size, although, of course, only for women.

Does Darren intend to argue that Bodily Attractiveness should affect the cup size of men? I hope that Darren's lack of clarity does not frustrate the reader. By the way, multiple historical texts indicated that large, spherical breasts were desirable. This was noted in the series by Giles, in either _Life in a Medieval Village_, _Life in a Medieval City_, or _Life in a Medieval Castle_. It has been noted in other books as well, but these are sufficient to support my claim for now, especially since Darren's claim is unclear, at best.

Oh, and you can get "retard strength". Check the formula out for determining this:

(71 - retard Intelligence) x 3 = (% chance of Retard Strength).

I hate the author. I really fucking do.

Is Darren close to retardation, or is he close to those with retardation? There must be a reason he is emotional and takes this so personally. He only notes that Retard Strength exists, and that he hates me for it. By the way, I have neither searched nor found any material supporting Retard Strength. However, it is important to note that it is based on the experiences of some females I knew in college. Their jobs, about which they were obviously never overjoyed, consisted of taking care of retards. They would tell stories of how some of them would flip out, and how it would take multiple male nurses, or whatever they are, to subdue them. At any rate, the girls were impressed with each such occurence, stunned by the surprising strength of retards. In fact, if you observe the features of someone with Down's Syndrome, for instance, you will notice that their metabolism seems not quite right, and that they seem thicker than average. Another thought is that retards may not know the limits of their strength. Sometime I will focus on exploring the validity of Retard Strength, but for now, that is all the information I have on the subject.

Sartin: As bad as Darren's making this sound, he hasn't been telling you the tenth of it. These abilities - and the charts for them - could deep-throat a sperm whale.

Not counting the 4d100/2-1 roll (may it burn in hell), there are three central, massive idiocies at work here. In order:

Burnout: It’s your opinion that the roll should burn in hell. Then show any other RPG that has a roll for abilities that better emulates the Bell Curve.

Lame ass references and quotes

I love how when every sub-ability mentions skills or bodily features or combat stats, we get a big "(SEE CHAPTER (insert lame ass chapter number here))", as though we're too stupid to catch the chapter references in any of the other 19 sub-abilities that are right next to it. But then again, FATAL was written for FATALites, not you or me or anyone else whose IQ doesn't begin with a decimal point, so I guess it's necessary.

And even though I've gone to great lengths to be clear, such as with the premises of the game, Darren and Jason failed to consider them. Also, one reason for multiple references to other chapters on the same page (but not to the same chapter from the same sub-heading) is because a reader may randomly select a page and a paragraph, and be redirected appropriately. Unlike a conventional book, a gaming book is not often read in a linear, front-to-back, fashion, even if it should be (and these two provide the example).

And I have to love that "Brute force bereft of wisdom falls to ruin by its own weight" quote - yeah, it's utterly hypocritical, but it's also half-assedly ironic, given that nearly every FATALite to date has presented themselves as a total death- and rape-monger while having no clue how much their belovedly rape-enabling game sucks.

Whether you like or dislike this quote, it is from Roman times, so it supports historical accuracy. Why is it hypocritical? In fact, isn't it hypocritical for Jason to call it hypocritical (see above)? Besides, I've never presented myself as a rape-monger, though FATAL does enable rape.

General idiocy/pointlessness

Like Intelligence: Spacial. With a way cool "Unfamiliar Object Assembly (# of pieces)" column. This would be the most complex machine a character can understand or some shit. Those with 100 Spacial can only understand machines with 200 parts, but with above-average Spacial, that will quickly grow to thousands of parts. Of course, where you're going to find something with that many parts in the most realistic fantasy setting available is a mystery to us both.

By the way, it's not "Spacial," but Spatial Intelligence. Since Jason's imagination seems limited, I will offer instances of objects with numerous parts: A clockmaker qualifies as someone who needs to understand objects with numerous parts. An engineer such as an archtect needs to understand objects with numerous parts. FATAL is possibly the only fantasy medieval game that lets a player role-play diverse and accurate characters such as these.

Burnout: Actually I find Spatial Intelligence very important in my line of work even though not dealing directly with mechanical parts. Being a Quality Control Supervisor I have to look at blueprints and imagine how the part will look in a three-dimensional space by only seeing one to three views in two-dimensional space. In some instances the part can’t be made from only one piece so I have to figure out what the smallest number of pieces it would take to complete said part. Quite an intriguing concept.

Or the Math sub-ability, with a "Highest math possible" column. Huh. I had no idea Geometry is the highest math any character can understand.

A premise of the game is historical accuracy. In terms of technology, the year for the game is 1335 A.D. Calculus was not invented prior to this year, so geometry is the highest possible math that a character can understand. Again, Jason offers no support for his argument, which is obviously fallacious.

Or the Common Sense sub-ability, with a "likely to" column to explain what low Common Sense characters are likely to get caught doing. The lowest possible rating is "Get caught for greater scheme: attempt to kill a god", but "Appear at emergency room after getting dick caught in zipper" and "Write FATAL" are just as likely.

The Vocal sub-ability has that "gay" note, of course, but if you're around 88-114, your description is "ordinary". Now check out the descriptions above and below it:

84-87: "Always says 'uh' or 'uhm'"
88-114: "Ordinary"
115-120: "Avoids 'uh' or 'uhm'"

So where does this leave "ordinary" speakers? Do they avoid "uh" and "uhm" half the time, and always use them the other half? It's a mystery for the ages, or for whoever's got Hall's bong.

Yes, the ordinary person uses vocal fillers such as "uh" and "uhm".

Burnout: Let’s just say an ordinary person uses them. But not always. But, also fails to avoid them. So they sometimes use “uh” and “uhm”.

And it's cool to know that Health will help out with that Urinating skill. And it helps with your hearing, too, for some reason. Also, did you know that only people with below-average Health can have allergies? So if you have even one allergy, congratulations: you're a FATAL weenie and will have a penalty on Urinating. Disgraced, you will be hopeless until you realize that all you have to do is fucking drink a two liter already and wait a day, which will give you a high enough mod to automatically score a "flood" on the chart and (if you're average height) get it as far as 16 feet with total accuracy (naturally, being "the most realistic game available", FATAL makes no distinction between power and accuracy. Or, for that matter, the ever-increasing difficulty in "holding it").

Although I'll refuse to consider why Jason may have difficulty holding it, I'll admit that FATAL could be more realistic here, which is a core goal of the game. It seemed overly complicated to introduce hearing as a sub-ability, so realism was sacrificed in this instance. As nothing's perfect, Jason successfully attacks an element of the game. I can live with it.

But speaking of realism and Urination, what's really cool is that you can't piss unless you roll over 5...and the roll is d100 + Urination Skill Points + (average of Health and Hand-Eye Coordination skill modifiers) +/- ("Time Since Last Urination vs. Ounces Drunk" modifier).

That sounds realistic to me. Though a person can usually force a little out, it's possible to truly not have to go. And for what it's worth, Health can certainly relate to a character's bladder.

Of course, you'll have to drink at least 16 ounces if you want to urinate without a penalty or having to wait more than half an hour, but that isn't very hard. FATAL characters can practically urinate at will! I have this stupid image in my mind of them beating down their opponents, chugging down those drinks, and standing around holding their dicks (and diddling every open hole in sight) for that half an hour just waiting for that Urination roll. Hell, they probably carry huge funnels so they can be extra quick with getting in the 256 ounces (and +80 mod) that will all but guarantee a "flood". Fucking shit, they probably have greasy T-shirts over their armor that say "PENIS! CUNT! ANAL CIRCUMFERENCE! Put a condom on my head, I'm a FATALITE!" God with a flying orgasm, SenZar has never looked so mature and deep as it does this fucking moment.<o:p>

Burnout: I would just like to point out the hypocritical nature of the urination statement made here. While he attacks the skill itself and finds no need he stated earlier (Glad you remembered from page one) that he wanted to  &#147;inject kerosene into my bladder, piss on them, and then set them on fire.&#148; So he forces me to ask if he would have a need for a urination skill check instead of injecting kerosene.

But hey. If you can get that Urination skill up to 100, that will cancel out the worst possible penalty for drinking 0 ounces. Spell your name with the realism!

Of course, what Jason fails to consider is that for a character to acquire a Urination skill with a Skill Modifier of 100, the character must, on average, have achieved 20 levels, which most never will.

Oh, and about that Retard Strength? It's only +2d10 for humans. And with abilities running from 1-199 (and occasionally beyond), that's not exactly worth bothering with. But that's what makes it so 100% FATALish - it reveals Hall's total wankerness, but adds more or less nothing to the game.

It adds realism to the game. A gain of 20 Strength sub-ability points can be considerable. For example, if an average male human has 115 Strength and bench presses 150 lbs., then an average male human with a maximized Retard Strength of 135 (115 + 20) could bench press 203 lbs. Therefore, it adds something to the game. More than anything, it (hopefully) discourages players from being so willing to play retards. In DnD, the most popular RPG, abilities are determined with 3d6, offering a range of 3-18. I think most gamers have known fighters who easily accept a character who is retarded, if Intelligence were truly considered as a normal curve.

The fact that there are fucking *20* increasingly pointless and redundant stats, and the way they interconnect or fail to is stupid

None of the sub-abilities are redundant. As usual, Jason does not support his argument.

Burnout: Actually, in contrast all the abilities and sub-abilities are very useful for at least three separate skills.

Let's go right to Bodily Attractiveness. Oh, look: "Males with high Bodily Attractiveness tend to have high Physical Fitness, Strength, and Height" - yeah, maybe if all four stats weren't totally random. Sure, high Bodily Attractiveness will boost those a little, but even if yours is the mind-blowingly maximum roll of 199, you'll only get a +18 bonus. You'll forgive me for going "Woooooo!" in the most intensely sarcastic voice I can muster. It's not enough of a "tendency" to matter much of a shit against the random element. <o:p>

Bear in mind that the "random element" creates a distribution that approximates a normal curve. Jason mistakenly implies that players roll a single die that produces a range of 1-199, which is obviously false. For example, if a male has a Bodily Attractiveness sub-ability of 199, then it would increase their Physical Fitness, Strength, and Height by 18. Considering only Strength, a male character that had an average Strength of 115, would apply the + 18 modifier, and have a Strength of 133. This character's bench press would increase from 150 to 190. Of course, the ludicrous portion of this example (the Bodily Attractiveness of 199) is part of Jason's argument. In order to have this sub-ability, a player has to roll '00' (otherwise known as 100), 4 times consecutively. The odds are 1-in-100,000,000 (100 x 100 x 100 x 100). Even in this extreme instance, FATAL seems realistic. Jason made a weak argument, again.

But fuck it. For FATAL guys, pretty = stronger. I'd add some crude speculation here about what team Hall is batting for, but I can't think of one homosexual on this forum who even remotely deserves the degradation of being lumped in with him. (It's just too damn bad my team doesn't want him, either.)

For most females, attractive males = stronger males, within reason. Jason seems adversive to the thought; I wonder why.

Burnout: I guess Sartin hasn&#146;t had enough contact with females to realize this yet. But if I remember correctly it was a female who brought this to your attention wasn&#146;t it Byron?

Meanwhile, the inverse is also presented - low manly Bodily Attractiveness penalizes your Physical Fitness, Strength, and Height. Guess there aren't historical or realistic "tendencies" towards ugly bruisers.

When a male is stronger, he tends to be more athletic. Males who tend to be more athletic also tend to be more physically attractive to females. Nevertheless, Jason oversimplifies his argument. Jason fails to consider two other factors: Physical Fitness and Facial Charisma. He seems to have meant that a character who is strong, has an ugly face, but isn't very fit. This combination is likely. Jason's argument is poorly considered.

Burnout: I&#146;m starting to get tired of finding contradiction in the reviewer&#146;s statements. But here we go again, he just said a couple paragraphs ago that it&#146;s not a big enough mod to be effective against the random element. Now he states that because of the inverse, ugly bruisers weren&#146;t the tendency. The fact is according to what I&#146;ve seen during game-testing, both ugly and good-looking bruisers are, about, equally probable.

But guess what! All that shit's only for males. Like Darren already mentioned, female Bodily Attractiveness increases your Cup Size. It also decreases your Strength and Weight. Again, total bullshit. But what the hell. It's nice to know the ideal FATAL girl is a death camp survivor with a basketball under each nipple.

Somehow, I don't think that shit flew during history, either.

I always thought that the medieval standard of beauty for a female was that she was fat, because it meant that she was wealthy. This is not true according to the Giles books, cited earlier. They quote another historical source, that claims that the perfect woman has large, round breasts, blond hair, and a waist that a man can fit his hands around. Obviously this is as unrealistic as the measurements of the Barbie doll. Some things never change. Jason thought wrongly, as seems to be the case in this 'review.'

Burnout: This really surprised me as well. I thought the medieval standard of beauty wasn&#146;t fat, but plump. For both the wealth factor and the fact they assumed larger waist meant they could bear more children.

Naturally, most games just give you stats and let you picture how they fit together. (It's a fun process I call "getting to visualize the character you actually created".) But then, those games weren't designed by misogynistic human accidents who would lose a battle of wits with an plus-sized assplug dressed up as a crack pipe. FATAL, sadly lacking that distinction, insists on drunkenly interconnecting these stats in ways that have a flung piece of shit's chance in heaven of being "historically/mythically accurate" because, gee, it's not like standards of attractiveness have been TOTALLY DIFFERENT in different eras, places, and myths or anything.

TOTALLY different? So, a female that is obese and flat-chested was the greatest natural aphrodisiac in what era, place, or myth? Obviously, Jason doesn't mean what he says. Just the same, I admit that cultural variation exists, but also acknowledge the norm across such variance. Cultural variation is not covered in the core FATAL book, and will be covered in the second and final book, _Neveria_.

Burnout: Actually I find what is called "getting to visualize the character you actually created,&#148; more like laziness of game creators to make a complete character. Whenever gaming in D&D or any other game, the fact that they didn&#146;t state eye color, hair color, or anything like that, I never cared to know those things. But, now playing FATAL where they are stated for you I find it&#146;s nice to know such things.

But noooooo. In FATAL, sexiness has one standard, everywhere, all the time, all over the world, because Hall apparently forgot the exact meaning of the words "realistic" and "historically" after he hit his head on that toilet I mentioned when I deciphered his research. Oh, well.

Of course, FATAL hardly gets its head any farther out of its ass with the stats it doesn't stupidly try to interconnect. Can you predict what can happen when character facets like speech or beauty or intelligence are governed by three or four totally random stats each? Just keep reading.

If Jason read the game, then he knows that sub-abilities are not totally random. In addition to the sub-abilities representing a normal curve, each may be modified by other factors, such as gender and race. Rants do not even take effort to undermine with reason.

Facial Charisma at 175+ gives you a description of "causes wetness". And with all the total randomness, it's so cute that you can blow that Bodily Attractiveness roll badly enough to get a head start on being the strongest, fattest woman alive, but still roll enough Facial Charisma to catch boners anyway. Fucking FATAL.

See above.

Burnout: First off, I&#146;d like to see such a variance occur, with the rolls being closely related to a Bell curve I just don&#146;t see it happening. Besides, I have seen females that from the neck up are pretty good looking. It&#146;s just less common than the inverse, which I&#146;ve also seen, it&#146;s so common I actually have a word to describe them &#147;Butterface&#148;. When someone looks good all over &#147;but her face."

Wow, look! Enunciation! Naturally, this is a sub-ability of Dexterity. You'd think it would be under Charisma or Intelligence, but I guess you see something stupid every day. Anyfuck, I really like how Enunciation determines your "Maximum Speech Rate", but Rhetorical Charisma determines your "Average Speech Rate". Ugh. NO ONE FUCKING CARES.

Cool, so don't use it. However, if Jason played a character who needs Enunciation, then it would be important to him. Jason seems incapable of seeing beyond his nose, since the world is full of people who'll probably play differently than he does. FATAL accommodates more gamers with more occupations, realism, detail, accuracy, etc., than any other game, as far as I know.

Burnout: What Sartin also forgets to mention is that with a higher or lower than average Enunciation, spell chanting time is adjusted to make it take less or more time respectively.

Of course, since both sub-abilities are (say it with me) totally random, we don't really know what happens when your Maximum Speech Rate ends up being lower than your Average Speech Rate, but it's just on this side of "totally possible".

See the annihilation of his "totally random" argument above.

Tying into these two nicely, of course, is Language (an Intelligence sub-ability). Especially that "possible # of languages learned" column. Naturally, with FATAL being the "detailed" and "realistic" game that it is, it's possible to get a high Enunciation and Rhetorical Charisma without rolling high enough in Language to actually be able to speak a language.

Has anyone ever seen a review of a review? Jason's adverb "nicely" is misplaced. Since it relates to the verb, it is better suited next to "Tying," such as "Tying nicely into..." Some animals are capable of enunciating very specific sounds, yet do not speak a language as FATAL uses the term. Perhaps the bellow of one retarded ogre is more charismatic than that of another. After all, the definition of Rhetorical Charisma states that it is to solicit emotions. On that level, one bellow could solicit emotions better than another. I think Jason's point was that if a character plays a retarded ogre who is incapable of language, that it frustrates him that his character could still have a high Rhetorical Charisma, even though it seems useless. From the normal curve of nature, Jason's arguments seem useless, yet he still wrote a review. See a similarity?

Burnout: To elaborate, we&#146;ve all probably heard a parrot talk or say a few words. Does that mean it knows a language? Of course not, it can just enunciate those few words well and, probably doesn&#146;t know the meaning of them, except that it means the parrot gets a treat.

Am I amazed that Hall came up with all those bullshit interconnections for Bodily Attractiveness, but didn't bother to imagine how any of his other attributes might fit together? If FATAL were a movie, it would make Battlefield Earth look like an utterly convincing, well-considered masterpiece.

At least Jason tried to support this beforehand, even though he failed miserably.

Of course, we can't let all this shit go without looking at the age modifiers.

Infant modifiers are presented, in case you wanted to play Baby Geniuses against a backdrop of anus fisting and 16 foot urination. And it's not as crippling as you'd think, either. The total Strength modifier is -90, so if you were lucky enough to roll 180 Strength or so, your infant adventurer will be about as strong as an average adult human. Bodily Attractiveness is also -90, so again, an excellent roll will still leave you with average adult fuckability and little or no BA penalty to those Seduction and Sexual Adeptness rolls.

I am surprised to read a valid argument from Jason.  I thank him for thinking, even if it took 300 attempts (eh, rough guess). This is easily fixed. Instead of the modifier being a - 90, it will be a - 90%.

Burnout: I think without a doubt he hit upon something that needed to be changed, and changing it to a percentage will definitely do the trick. Now we&#146;ve come across, finally, the reason for a review.

I've flushed RPGs that were better thought out this.

It seems Jason meant "thought out THAN this."

Language is also a blast when you toss it through the age modifier bullshit. With the Child-category penalty, you'll have to roll at least 95 for that, or you won't be capable of learning a language until you hit puberty. (Roll less than 65, and you'll have to wait until adulthood. Below 55, of course, is that magical threshold where you'll either jump off a cliff or face a lifetime of being unable to say "Look, shithead! I can't learn any languages!") Of course, if your race happens to be most varieties of Ogre (-50 to Language) or Troll (-90)...

By changing the modifier to a percentage, this works perfectly.

I also like how Reflection (which determines your earliest memory) increases at Middle Age and Old Age. I had no idea getting older makes you remember more of your childhood.<o:p>

Of course, when a character is Venerable, they lose 50% of Reflection. However, Jason is right that the Earliest Possible Memory should not increase into Old Age. This may forever be a small limitation of the system, since nothing is perfect. I'm tempted to applaud Jason, but I will not be fooled by a mere moment of coherence out of an hour of diatribe.

Burnout: I&#146;m starting to see signs of a real review here. I&#146;m getting worried. I&#146;m not sure how to imagine that one working out. But, it will be worth looking in to.

After all this crap, though, I have to admit to one bright point. I liked how some of the sub-abilities provided real life-kinda examples or descriptions for each score. Like Strength listing how much you can lift, or the Vocal Charisma and Math columns I mentioned (okay, those ended up being dumb anyway, but the basic idea wasn't so bad). Examples like these can give solid ideas on how good a score really is, something many RPG systems have had trouble with. Of course, this hardly makes up for how the generation rolls are 4d100/2-1, or how my bitching troll berserker probably won't know any languages, or how there are 20 attributes for things a sane game could have covered with 8-10, but whatever.

A game that Jason considers sane, I consider simple. I need it to be more complicated to keep my interest.

Burnout: Could the 20 sub-abilities be done in 8-10? Yes probably. Would it be just as detailed? No chance in hell. That is of course one thing FATAL shoots for, is to be more detailed than other RPG&#146;s. In this aspect, FATAL succeeds.

Anyway, I hope this entire section was mind-numbing for you. Because you can barely imagine what it's like to read and dissect this shit-hauling train wreck.

And on that note, let's let Darren have the review back.

Or, check this shit out:

According to a prominent philosopher, males tend to be more spirited, savage, simple, and less cunning. Females, on the other hand, tend to be more compassionate than males, more easily moved to tears, at the same time are more jealous, more querulous, and are more apt to scold and strike. Females are, furthermore, more false of speech, and more deceptive. Females are also more wakeful, shrinking and difficult to rouse to action.

And later:

The philosopher's observations presented above are generalizations and do not hold true for all characters. Certainly, it is possible to find a surpassingly shameless male, or a female who is less susceptible to depression than males, but these instances are the exception to the rule, assuming that the above observations are correct.

This is what the authors are talking about when they say that the game is "historically accurate"; they've taken Aristotle's thoughts on gender, then used them to justify their own sexist stupidity.

Darren fails to represent my work, so here's the actual footnote:
"In Book IX of "Historia Animalium," Aristotle refers to gender differences and compares animals as well as humans. His comments are deemed relevant to the setting of F.A.T.A.L., due to the prevalence of his opinion throughout the Middle Ages."

They make assertions, then try to weasel out of them later on in the same paragraph - "This is all true unless what the philosopher says isn't true, in which case it isn't true."

Of course, Darren is only quoting his imagination. Actually, my comments are not in the same paragraph as Aristotle's, but the following paragraph (poor Darren can't seem to get anything right). As a matter of fact, here is the paragraph about which Darren wrote:

"The philosopher's observations presented above are generalizations and do not hold true for all characters. Certainly, it is possible to find a surpassingly shameless male or a female who is less susceptible to depression than males, but these instances are the exception to the rule, assuming that the above observations are correct."

As the author, I neither agreed nor disagreed with Aristotle's observations in FATAL. Personally, I disagree with Aristotle's opinions on women, and consider Aristotle sexist. This, however, is irrelevant. His opinions existed historically, and were accurate to Ancient Greece, Rome, and the Middle Ages as well. This is why I noted "...assuming that the above observations are correct."

Aristotle may have been a brilliant philosopher, but when it came to women, his head was up his ass; ditto Plato, who thought that human women had fewer teeth because horses were the same way. On top of that, the statements that Aristotle make are internally self-contradictory; women are more wakeful, yet difficult to rouse to action?

Just think about it for a second, understanding that it is a translation. I'm suggesting that anyone should agree with it.

Sartin: Of course philosophers are who you turn to when you're creating something with a basis in reality. (And yes, especially when your beliefs are so limp-dicked that you're only "assuming" the philosophers are correct.)

As should be obvious, I do not assume that Aristotle was correct. However, in an accurate gaming world, it is better to assume that Aristotle is correct than to impose modern norms.

That's much better than basing your shit on the findings of, oh, researchers or historians or scientists or anyone else whose ponderings and conclusions actually have to be based in reality.

It is hypocritical to argue (earlier) that FATAL should be historically accurate and not impose modern ideas on the fantasy medieval world. Yet, here Jason proposed the opposite: that it is better to use modern ideas than classical ones. Does he understand how inconsistent his arguments are? As the footnote states on the page he probably never read, Aristotle is appropriate to a fantasy medieval gaming world, regarding gender; his thoughts were very influential, perhaps moreso than anyone else.

Burnout: Not having read much of Aristotle&#146;s work, I&#146;m gonna stay out of this one.

Then again, Hall also tries to wank "scholarly literature" by us to justify heavier female attribute penalties. Here's the official rationalization:

According to the adjustments above, it may seem as though males are superior, though it is important to understand that there are other instances, such as nurturing, that are not apparent in the adjustments and may become evident and valuable during role-playing. The function of altering gender according to the table above is to shift the averages of the sexes to more closely resemble reality. The shift in range represents masses of characters better than extreme instances. For instance, the highest measured Intelligence is that of a female, though by large numbers females tend to score slightly lower than males in Intelligence. In this case, shifting the range lower for females also prevents the possibility of a female possessing the highest Intelligence. This is an unfortunate limitation.

Fucking god, where to begin?

By understanding that the "shift in range represents masses of characters better than extreme instances." If Jason understand this, then all the rest should fall into place.

"For instance, the highest measured Intelligence is that of a female, though by large numbers females tend to score slightly lower than males in Intelligence"?

Yeah, I'm sure that when he wasn't attending to Sexpot Annie, Hall had a lot of fun rounding up women from medieval Europe and testing them. Of course it's perfectly valid and "historically accurate" to assume they would have the same Intelligence-reducing (and Bodily Attractiveness-raising) "nurturing" and "background" as modern day women, right?

Burnout: Assuming that historical texts are correct, by and large, most women didn&#146;t have any schooling at all. While some males didn&#146;t either, even less females did. Also, going by in terms of masses the female gender would have slightly less intelligence than male.

What better information does Jason have? Does Jason offer any support for his criticism? No.

And on that note, even if Hall were claiming this shit as modern gender modifiers, he only selected the parts of his "scholarly literature" that went along with his retarded views. Even the first work listed, "The Smarter Sex: A Critical Review of Sex Differences in Intelligence" (by D. Halpern and M. LaMay) claims that males more frequently have certain types of mental retardation, but you're sure as fuck not going to find that in these rules.

This is because Jason fails to understand distributions of Intelligence when controlling for gender. Males have wider distributions, or distributions with less central tendency, larger standard deviations, etc. Considering Intelligence, female distributions have more central tendency. What this means is that when considering large numbers of females, they tend to be closer to the mean, while males tend to deviate farther from it. Therefore, there are more male retards and geniuses, and females are more average. However, this is irrelevant to the gender modifier. The gender modifier does not affect the central tendency of the distribution, but the mean itself. Jason seems to know nothing of even basic statistics.

As a side note, I have considered having separate die-rolling methods for males and females. Male characters roll their sub-abilities with [(8d100)/4 - 1], while females roll [(10d100)/5 - 1]. When both standard deviations are considered, the average is 15! This would be a novel contribution to RPG's.

"In this case, shifting the range lower for females also prevents the possibility of a female possessing the highest Intelligence. This is an unfortunate limitation"?

Burnout: What Sartin forgets to mention is that according to gender modifiers, males can&#146;t acquire the highest bodily attractiveness, language, intuition, or reflection. This is also an unfortunate limitation.

Translation: "Yeah, this is an unfortunate limitation...which I just admitted creates a result that isn't true in reality (because I forgot I'm designing the most realistic RPG available)...but guess what? I haven't taken it out, because I would rather claim that the female masses are stupider than men than make my rules accept that at least one woman has scored a higher IQ than any man to date!"

Wrong. Even though I include this information, I am fair and not sexist. I understand that these issues are always sensitive. Just the same, it is less biased to consider the mean to be more important than an outlier. Especially when it is now possible (though not in the version currently available -- I'll update it soon) for a female character (and a male as well) to raise their Intelligence. Therefore, a studious female may surpass all males. I am very proud of how closely this models reality, especially considering the simplicity of the model.

It's an ugly game.

This is an ugly review.


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