We figured why I wanted to play FATAL, and while you’ll get more of that here, this post will be about who I will play as in FATAL. Yes, this will be a Stat It for FATAL. If anyone has heard of this game, you will know the horror stories of how hard character creation is. However, I’m going to try this step by step and see if I can even survive character creation.
The first thing we need to do, for obvious reasons, is to delete any adult content. Some may view this as bowdlerizing, but most of the stats might not be necessary. Like, do you really need to know the measurements of every aspect of my character? The only reason why sex is even there in the first place is because the game needed to be as realistic as possible.
Going with the old GNS system, this places this game on a heavy Simulationist end. Those who read my blogs know I lean more towards Narrativist games, though I have dipped my feet into Simulationist games. That said, I feel like not a lot will be lost if we simply take out this part of the game and replaced it with a fade to black, if it ever comes down to that.
Remember, I played The Beast after taking out every card referring to sex.
So anyways! Character Races! While the recommended and admittedly preferred option is to randomly determine my race, I will instead pick the Anakim. They are essentially the Aasimar of this game’s setting: a cross-breed between man and angel. Well, fallen angels. Mostly succubuses or incubuses. The game justifies over and over again why these are so few and far in between, namely how this sort of union happens once in a blue moon and that most of them are born with no telltale signs of life, only showing them at around seven. Couple this with the fact that the human mother giving birth always dies creates a pretty dark story all on its own.
See, unless someone present knows about these things, people will assume the worst and call it a stillborn. It’s a very interesting plot hook to create and so I am taking it. We’ll stow away the bonuses he gives for now, as there’s a lot to drink in. Glancing over the Racial Hatred table (spoiler: almost every race hates each other) and picking our gender (which has their own bonuses), we go into body. To save you from all the nitty gritty, I’ll only highlight the results.
- Age: -5.6
… What. The. Fuck.
Okay, so, in a little bit of math fail, the fixed number (50) used to subtract the total and divided number (in this case, 111 before it became 44.4) put it in negatives.
Let’s just assume it’s 56 and pretend this never happened, okay?
- Age: 56 (Middle aged)
- Height: 9’5” (1’5” higher than the average height)
… Okay, I think I just broke the game. I realize why Anakim are forbidden now.
So, the Anakim start with a strength of 100. Then, for each inch above average, they get +15 strength. In total, before adding any rolls, I get a total strength of 355.
WOW.
Just… Wow.
Just to spoil ahead of time, the average roll for your stats (which, I may add, has a beautiful bellcurve that beats out just rolling 2d100) is meant to be 99. Meaning that, with just my character alone, I can total in a strength of 454! But let’s break this game even further. Say I get natural 20’s, right? Then the result could lead to a whopping 730 minimum and 930 at max!
H-how… How do I… Why? Why?
Thankfully I’m below average in weight, which takes away points in strength, not much, (-8) but just enough for me to consider him not too OP.
The most is roughly flavor text, but it’s fun to randomly roll for your character’s appearance. You also get a random chance to have a freak mutation on you, but the chances are ridiculously low. Like, we’re talking 0.0001%. And that’s not an exaggeration. That is legit. You have to roll 6d100 to determine if your character is born with a mutation, and the reason is because, as those who watch 300 would know, those with deformities rarely make it past their first day, because they’re often tossed over a cliff or put down.
I know I should hate FATAL and I just called it out on its flawed math and broken potential, but holy crap that’s a good attention to detail. Well, except for the actual deformities, of which there are only five. And before you ask, no, hunchback is not a deformity on this game. Speaking of attention to detail, there’s a lot of detail going into foot sizes, head sizes, hand sizes, illnesses, and drugs. Holy crap most of these are detailed. If you want to infect your players with a disease, FATAL has ya covered!
Alright, now we get into the meat of the game: abilities. Now, the die roll used to determine this is 10d100 divided by 5, then subtract 1. It sounds stupid on paper and leads you to think why we couldn’t just use 2d100 and subtract 1, but then I punched it into anydice.com and was blown away by the graph.
So, going through my character’s abilities, I discover that he has asthma despite being a bruiser. I find that funny and it adds to his character. Maybe it’s even a flaw he picked up due to his neglect given onto him during the seven years of no-signs-of-life.
Rolling up the charisma stats, I notice how the lowest ranking has the descriptor for what the voice is be … “Gay”.
I… I just… What? Like, what do you mean by “gay”? The other descriptors for the low voice makes sense, as they have undesirable traits if you want to be the face of the party like “whiney” or “detached”. But no! Instead your character can sound “gay”. Like, in what way!? I think (and hope) they mean gay as in talking lame, but when your only descriptor is “gay” in a world where that word is used to describe a sexual orientation more than describing how happy or dumb something is, it sounds a bit like the meaning was lost in translation. And I mean, they have clever terms for all the other descriptors, like how one of the rankings for a low facial score is “butterface” and they explain what they mean with that, as it’s an old saying about how a person is attractive “but her face”.
If we’re going with all the other descriptors, the better solution would be to say “dumb”, because at least then, someone can think of a voice that sounds more fitting for a ranking of -99 than sounding like a stereotypical gay person.
Moving on, we hit on Dexterity, where we see the Anakim’s detracting bonuses shine through. It makes sense, though, as the Anakim would be more sluggish in their developing years. Regardless, the Anakim managed to get a 113 on their agility score, which adds to their armor, and a 110 to their reaction speed.
Oh, this is funny. In Languages, you have a limit of how complex your words are and one of the examples, pernicious, also means fatal. I also like how the order of how good at math you are relates to what you would learn in school. Addition first, subtraction second, multiplication third, etc.
With that, we have finished our statting up. There’s an additional detail where, if your character has significantly low intelligence, you can make up for it with an increase in strength…
Unfortunately, it’s called “R-word Strength”. I get the idea, but it sounds very awkward to say and also insulting. I’d rather go with something like Dumb Muscle or, if you want to be clever with a reference, Lenny Syndrome. I’m not even sure why I’m looking into this, as my character is not at that level of intelligence.
We do have one more thing before we move on. Because Anakim are special, they gain traits. No two Anakim are alike. That said, there’s a crap ton of traits that may not be safe for work, so I’ll be a little careful in picking them out.
So, I rolled up 95, 17, and 32. This means that grass dies wherever he walks, his eyes are pitch black and makes it difficult for others to stare him in the eyes, and non-magical weapons can’t hurt him.
All in all, a pretty standard Anakim on the first roll. Now we move onto other stuff. There’s an alignment system that’s different from the standard “Lawful Good/Chaotic Evil” bend that D&D has. Instead of Law/Chaos, it’s (Un)Ethical and instead of Good/Evil, it’s (Im)moral. The example for the differences are well laid-out.
I’m going to determine his disposition with dice rolls: He is Unethical Neutral. Basically, it means that he plays dirty, but doesn’t exactly feel good or bad about it. There’s also Piety Points, which is how religious our character is. At 72 Piety Points, he’s a regular worshipper. Already we’re painting a pretty interesting story for him.
There’s a huge in-depth look at how the Disposition system works and by God is it gorgeous! This is the kind of thing you’d find in a paper on morality. They give you ideas on what kind of unethical you could be based on certain stances. For instance, an Ethical character could stand for loyalty while an Unethical character would be more for backstabbing.
And this isn’t getting into the part discussing morals. Geez, this is a lot to take in. And now we have Temperament! Yeah, you remember the whole “four fluids” personality thing? That’s in FATAL! Yes! The game where you roll for genital measurements has a system determining your morality, ethics, and even how melancholic you are!
This is gonna be fun. Let’s determine my character’s temperament! Surprisingly, my character is a Phlegmatic Sanguine, which basically means introverted extrovert. I think I know what kind of character this guy is gonna be. A sort of stoic guy when in social situations, but becomes powerfully active when on the battlefield.
Oh, and there’s also mental illnesses. These are basically the flaws you pick up when you need to reroll an aspect. However, I am pretty satisfied with my character stats and a good chunk of them are basically fetishes. Not that there’s anything wrong with creating a character with a few special kinks, no pun intended, but we’re trying to keep this game PG. Despite these, though, there are pretty cool mental illnesses as well, like personality disorders, though they affect your temperament. As tempting as it is to give my character Antisocial Personality Disorder, I’m gonna keep Phlegmatic Sanguine.
Think we’re done? Nope! We’re still here, folks. Now we get to determine his social class! This includes a plethora of stuff like birthdays, social statuses, where they’re born, even their sexuality.
First, his birthday! It is the fourteenth day of the fifth month of the year 5044… As much as I like the world building, the whole “no names for months” thing is a little cumbersome. So instead, I’ll say that the fifth month is called Pemptos. His social status is a slave born in the city. He’s also a homosexual.
There’s a lot of other, well detailed stuff, but I’ll gloss over it. At 195 pages in, we’re now determining our character’s class. Or rather, Occupation. And there’s a ton of them.
Though, I think the cards have lined up far enough for me to automatically decide what class he is: Gladiator. There’s also skills, but that’s a huge handful of stuff I don’t wanna get into. Just know that my character is good at:
- Ambidextrous
- Armor (Light and Medium)
- Axes
- Bows
- Brawling
- Dismemberment
- Impaling
- Intimidation
- Lances
- Mangling
- Rods
- Seduction
- Swords
- Trickery
- Wrestling
And… that’s about it. I made my character. I guess now I’ll just do a brief paragraph putting this all together.
The roars of the crowd are what have me coming back for more. The cheers, the wishes for blood, these are the only things that kept me alive. I was born into an unforgiving world, and only through putting my life on the line for the entertainment of others was I able to find a place in it. Gladius in one hand and falchion in the other, I marched into the stadium, ready for my next opponent…
And that concludes this Stat It. Bon Voyage, Gamers!
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