Lack of playtesting? Meme all you want about anal circumferences and magical realms, but F.A.T.A.L.'s biggest flaw is its stupidly complicated system that makes actually playing a game nearly impossible.

>>47990779
Even without all the weird fetish shit, the game is awful mechanically.

Abilities are averages of various sub abilities, each of which are determined using stupid dice rolls (I think 1d400 or something like that). This wouldn't be that bad, if it weren't for the fact that, with each effect that changes your sub abilities, you have to recalculate each of your main abilities, and the statistics derived from those abilities.

To make matters even worse, there's a whole bunch of weird random table rules that make no sense. Most surprising of all is that Anal Circumference is NOT the weirdest table in the book. For example, pregnancy is calculated with quadratic equations and a roll of 1d10,000,000. You know, just because.

This, by the way, is just scratching the surface of FATAL. I don't intend to go any deeper.

>>47990779
I think the single best example of what went wrong is the rules for what happens if you get a hit to the anus. You must roll for how many chunks of shit fall out.

It's not just the tasteless gore and sexual crap. It's that the system has confused "more detailed" with "more realistic/immersive", which if you read the statements by the authors, are what they were allegedly going for.


I've never designed a game from scratch, but I'm part of a small team that helps revise and make improvements to a number of ADG games. And one of the things we get drilled into us constantly is

>At best, complexity is a necessary evil. By allowing for a more complicated system, you can create more opportunities for strategic choice. But the complexity itself is bad. We want as much choice for as little complexity as possible, so when making suggestions, balance what it adds with how much in the way of complications you get.

FATAL's designers have obviously never thought along these lines. More details, more complexity, is good for its own sake, nevermind what it adds, or even subtracts from the game. It's not really meant to be played, it's meant to impress someone with how smart you are for playing it.

>>47990779
The devs value complexity for the sake of complexity, and were determined to have rules and stats for every situation they could think of. Of course, "every situation they could think of" mostly involved /pol/ stuff and whatever hentai they were hung up on at the time.

>>47990810
>>47990905
>>47990924
>>47990955
.t hivemind.

Debatably nothing.

Sure the game is total garbage, but by simply existing it has brought "joy" to many people and has garnered more fame than many good games.

A fixed FATAL would be another fantasy heartbreaker and forgotten long ago like many others.

>>47990779

It was doomed from the start. They tried to make it a self-parody and a magical realm simulator and a serious rpg all at the same time and the result was an unworkable tangle that combine the worst of AD&D with Mad Magazine if they did a Scat Porn edition.

>>47990779
You need a roll a dice and consult a table in order to urinate.

>>47991211
I was actually involved in a game of FATAL ovet at the Kiwi Farms and i had a blast, it almost killed the GM but for me it was hilarious.

>>47990779
FUCKING EVERYTHING!

>>47990924
I play fatal because it makes me look smart

>>47991157
The thing is, though, that anyone who's ever even daydreamed about designing a game should know this. It's fun for the designer to sit back and consider how to translate the complexities of reality into quantifiable game mechanics, but surely something in the back of your head asks, "But is that fun to play?"

I don't think FATAL was ever meant to actually be played. It's at the very least a couple of degenerates' brainstorming published in a book and at the most a satire of TTRPGs.

>>47990779
Helped cause the rise of /tg/ puritanism, making it impossible for you to involve sexuality in a fantasy setting without it being magical realm.

>>47996472
I don't think it did anything of the sort. FATAL isn't sexual in a hot way, it's sexual like those over the top indie metal covers with unreadable names where a demon takes a shit in a woman's chest cavity while raping her unborn fetus. I don't think anyone except the creators ever got off to FATAL, people just joke about it.

>>47996472
Not really. FATAL is a lot more childish and retarded than anything resembling erotic, unless your fetish is tables and algebra.

Any scorn towards sexuality in RPGs is more attributed to constant elf slave wat do and blatant fetish-bait shit threads than anything else.

>>47992177
To be fair, some people have terrible aim, even when drunk.

>>47997685
>some people have terrible aim, even when drunk.
>even when drunk.
10/10

>>47990779
ALOT OF STUFF

First they only knew AD&D. YES, fatal is also one of those rpgs. They did it because they houserules so much the game, that when they discovered that 3.0 was created, instead of learning d&D 3.0 and houseruling the hell of it, they decided to make their own rpg.


Another problem is that they dont know what they wanted to do with their game, at some point they tell their idea is to make a game that is mythically realistic, historically realistic and scientifically realistic, there is nothing wrong up to this part.

But them at some point they also tell the game is suposed to be fair, giving everyone equal chances, thats why you have fucking random haircut for adults (what kind of adult cant go to a fucking barber or at least try to do the job on his own) and other like random amount of faith in gods or checking if you are married or not, This is a problem because it goes against their realism idea, I can cut my own hair, and decide if I will get married or not.

Another point of the game is that the game is supposed to be hard, the best i can think of "the game needs to be hard", is something like dwarf fortress. But while real life its hard on some part on other parts. As some example magic would be overpowered on real reality setting, humans would go nuts with it.

Also every player should have the same chance and the game should be hard, but the aedile (what fatal call the DM) can allow players to pick their own race and sex instead of selecting at random.
Also the game should be mythically realistic, but armor gives a penalty to magic a thing that that even the developer know its not true, but he added it there for the sake of balancing the things.