http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=7ixhxjqoe9swz1xv4bxgw5h0&page=6
OK, here I go...
Phys Fit 103
Strength 96
Bdy Attrct 109
Health 73
Total Phys: 95
Facial 177
Vocal 104
Kinetic 143
Rhetoric 120
Total Charisma 136
Hand-Eye Coordination 144
Agility 105
Reaction Speed 101
Enunciation 124
Total Dex 118
Language 91
Math 154
Analytic 162
Spatial 146
Total Int 138
Drive 105
Intuition 115
Common Sense 96
Reflection 123
Total Wis 109
OK, new female character, and my best stat is my facial charsima, and my worst overall stat is the "Strength" stat, Physique, and the worst, specifically, is the one where I take hits like a sissy. WOOHOO! Even the dice are sexist, apparently, when you start playing FATAL. Well, at least she's good at math.
Also, gotta love that I have "Enunciation" dexterity as it's own friggin' stat.
BUT WAIT! That's just my random rolls, you see, I have to go on, and see how these rolls actually affect my other rolls, because apparently, having less than 100 Physical Fitness is a penalty to Bodily Attractiveness. So, basically, I now have to copy paste this whole 25-stat table over, and start throwing in a new post-modifier table. I can't help but shudder at the thought that when I do later modifiers based on gender or age or race, I'm going to have to update these modifiers of modifiers by hand.
So, anyway, 96 strength means -1 life points, -3% damage, and -3 skill points, and that I can only "Clean And Jerk" 61. I'm thinking that's not as dirty as it sounds, even if it is FATAL, because next to that is Bench Press and Dead Lift.
Oh glorious day, it turns out my 109 Bodily Attractiveness gives me +1% to my bust. I was worried about that! (It also helpfully informs me that I should be shopping for B-cup bras!) It also gives me -3% waist and +1% hips. Oh, but if only I had a maxed-out score for my Bodily Attractiveness, then I could get a whopping +7% to breasts, -25% to waist, and +3% to hips. Since the "average" appears to be 25" waists, that would be a 19" waist, and 36" hips... Then I could snap like a toothpick in a fierce wind.
Oh no! My poor health roll means I lose another 9 Life Points, have +27% "Intoxication / Vomit" (Not vomit resistance! It's just what I need most in FATAL!), only 30% (as opposed to 75%) illness resistance, and 2 allergies. (ROLL FOR ALLERGIES!)
Well, hopefully, I can make the bad diseases go away with looks, because my "Facial Charisma", at 177, is apparently described as "Causes Wetness" (Spit Take).
The next stat that is unaverage is "Kinetic Charisma", which is the stat for how "pretty I move", and is "particularly important in Dance, Massage, and Sexual Adeptness". HOORAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY! Good thing for me, I got a 143, one of my best rolls, in the GoGoEnslavement stat! Anyway, my pole dancing stat is described as "Sleek". Oh, and fun fact, the best you can get in this stat, they describe as "Glabrous". I had to look it up, and it apparently means "having a surface devoid of hair or pubescence." So Yeah.
With 120 Rhetorical Charisma, I have to roll to see if I talk faster or slower than "perfect speed", and rolled high, so I can proudly say my character has an Average Speed Rate of 172, with "perfect" being 170! With rolls this good, I might actually be tempted to give a damn what this guy considers a perfect rate of speech!
Also good news, my Hand-Eye Coordination is precise to 1/250th of an inch! Get out your calipers, kids, I want to test this! Anyway, I'm sure this will come decidedly in handy when my character enters a life-or-death Ship-in-a-Bottle making contest!
Uh-oh! My bad Int roll was on Language! This means I have a Vocabulary Limit! Apparently, since Antidisestablishmentarianism (which is a word I learned of in elementary school, specifically because it was funny-sounding and long) is so long and the "best" word I can learn with the best score, and the worst scores go "ga-ga", "mom", "horse", "woman", and "violate" (only the basics!), then I assume this scale is based on how polysyllabic I can be. REALISM! Everyone knows that they have a certain set syllable limit that try as they might, they can never cross, but any shorter word is perfectly fine for them. Anyway, with 91 in Language, I can say "Substantial", but apparently, not "Experimental", "Conversion", or "Instantanious". Because clearly, there is a huge gradient in difficulty between learning these words... ... REALISM!...
But that's OK, I'll make up for my slovenly inability to understand what "Instantanious" means by wowing them with my maths! With my overwhelming grasp of numbers, I can unlock this game's ultimate form of math: GEOMETRY! Hell, yeah! Fear the power of my hypotenuses, bitch! Oh, wait, can I say "hypotenuse"? I don't know, that word is fairly substantial.
Analytic doesn't have anything funny to go along with it, which is too bad, because it's one of my best rolls. I wish it would tell me how big an object I can ponder, or something similarly absurd.
But that's OK, because Spacial doesn't let me down! It tells me how many pieces can be in an object I am thinking about. Because, you know, REALISTICAL MEDEEEEVIL Roman people never wrote anything down, they just went completely by what was in their head. Anyway, I get to think of a 4000-piece machine, while a normal 100 Spacial person can only think of 200. I'm not sure how that works. Frankly, I'm not sure of many things less complex than a friggin' airplane or imbedded circuitry that really needs 4000 "Objects of Assembly", but whatever.
My 105 drive means that I'm only slighly less lazy than an average person, so I spend "15 hours a day relaxing", and I get back 1 of those Life Points.
A whole bunch of nothing interesting, but my last Wisdom stat, Reflection, tells me that my first memory was from Age 2. Ooooooookay?
Anyway, this is a huge chunk of text, so I'll post this now, and go on with it later.
edit: oh, but my 138 Intelligence is enough for me to be considered "genius"... you know, at least until it takes a hit for my deciding to play a female character.
edit again: Oh, and remember how your reflection determines how early your first memories are? Yeah, well, you take a -90 penalty for being an infant to your Reflection score, meaning that you remember EARLIER in your life the older you get, while you aren't going to be capable of remembering anything above your age until you hit at least puberty!... REALISM!
edit some more: Oh, and another juicy tidbit: You can exercise to gain more Physical Fitness or Strength, but if I ever skip out on exercise after trying that, I go through some inane and convoluted set of die rolls to determine how much body fat I would gain, and if I gain it to my hips or thighs! THE HORROR!
OK, new chapter, new post. I'm helpfully informed that since I am going to be playing a woman, I am more likely to be moved to tears. Since I am reading the bible of misogyny, the FATAL rulebook, I will not disagree that women are probably going to break out in tears reading this shit. Apparently it goes on to say "Women are more wakeful, shrinking, and difficult to rouse to action." WTF? Are they just making stereotypes up off the top of their head, now? Well, it cites a "prominent philosopher" as its source, so obviously some old disproven greek philosophy is obviously more REALISMISTIC than hard science or observable data.
Apparently, I get a +3 to bodily attractiveness just for being female. Because, you know, people's bodies are rated in attractiveness on completely the same scale regardless of gender. That might make sense if everyone was bi, but considering "gay" is the worst setting for vocal charisma, I highly doubt that would play into such a homophobic game.
Other goodies are that I get +4 reflection (woohoo! If this keeps up, I'll be able to remember my repressed memories from when I was 1 year old!), I get +5 intuition (whatever, I don't even feel like making a snide comment about that), +2 to language, and +2 to "Sanguine Temperment"...
Meanwhile, I take another whopping -15 to Strength, -5 Physical fitness, -3 spacial, -2 drive (because women are lazy? What?), -2 "Choleric Temperment", and -3 Math (NOOOOOOOOO! MY GEOMETRIES!)
Anyway, that messes with some things. I think dropping my Physical Fitness below 100 also drops my bodily attractiveness down some, as well, so yay, I've got to go back and do some crap with those awful tables again. Later, though, I'm sure it will bounce around some more.
I'd also like to point out the beautiful artwork on these pages that consist of a box that says "Artwork Here" in it.... QUALITY!
OK, now it goes on talking about how inferior women are in society, how menstration is a punishment from the gods, that their place is in childbirth, and I should be barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen getting my husband some sammiches. I could express shock and horror at this point, but I don't think this is any kind of surprise that I found this here. "Roll for Anal Circumference" is a tough act to follow...
OK, according to my roll, I'm some kind of Fair Elf, which is obviously better than everything else. And I'm not kidding when I say better, because I take (another) major hit to strength, but everything else is all up, up, up for elves. Apparently, that means I love wine (Oh no! My vomit resistance is low!), and am a vegetarian. It also means I can't grow older than Young Adult.
Oh, and apparently, common names are "Ylfe and Ynglie". Are you freaking KIDDING me?!
OK, really looking at these stats, I get +10 Physical Fitness (no more penalty), -10 Strength (At this rate, I won't be able to stand up straight without support), +10 Bodily Attractiveness (meh), +30 Health (Woohoo! Here I come, vomit resistance!), +15 Facial Attractiveness (Up to 192, I am now BEYOND causing wetness! You betta watch out, I'll just cause eye-exploding-hotness with my face, now!), +10 Kinetic Charisma (Good, I needed more pole-dancing stat!), +5 hand-eye, +5 agility, +10 Language (Oh YEAH! Who's "Instantanious", now?!), +20 Drive (for a bunch who love wine, they seem to get alot of caffine in there, too), +5 intuition, +10 Common Sense, and +5 Reflection.
I should also point out that being an elf gave me enough overall positives to put ALL my category stats above 100.
I'm also -50 Ethicality (basically, Chaotic), and +10 Morality (basically, Good). I'm also -50 Choleric, and -25 Phlegmatic, as if I cared.
Yay, I also get +10 to my geneology skill, because I'm damn sure that's gonna come in handy, plus +5 to my etiquitte. I so hate it when people are RUDE when they prance around the world trying to rape people with their Rod Of The Phalluses, it's so much better when they know proper etiquitte for that sort of thing.
Apparently, I have racial hatred for Anakim (everyone does) and half orcs, but I'm "accepting" of humans. Oh yay, I apparently call Anakim "Stovepiper" as a racial slur to make fun of their "huge manhood". Classy! Even better, half orcs are called "Spear chuckers". Racially sensitive!
And that's the end of that chapter!
OK, the next chapter is on "BODY"... shivers run down my spine.
Oh, and before I forget, since you liked the racial slurs, halflings are called "poople". Humans are given the ultra-degrading term "sickly" by the elves. BURN! I just didn't bother typing those out.
First up is Age. I rolled 31, so I am apparently 111 years old. Since elves are supposed to be immortal, like Tolkenian elves, I don't know why they limit you to a d100, though. It also doesn't even matter, as the lowest I can roll is 81, and that's the start of the Young Adult bracket. Oh, and yay, I live 1d10% more immortally than my Spear Counterpart elves.
I roll 6d6 + 39", so I'm apparently 5'1" shorttall. I got 18 for weight, and I only add that to 68, so I'm a friggin' twig at 86 lbs. But I apparently add another 3 lbs for being an inch taller. If I were shorter than normal, I would subtract only one pound. I have no idea how that is supposed to make sense.
Oh, and can I point out that the example character they are talking about is a male human with 190 strength called Antichristo? Because it is.
Let me see, hair charts are up next. As a fair elf, I can apparently have any hair color, so long as it's blonde. I rolled 78, so it's apparently light blonde! Whew, I really dodged a bullet, or I might have had dirty blonde, there.
I also have to apparently roll for my "most attractive" and "most unattractive" parts. Since my face apparently sends people into catatonic shock on sight, it would be very weird if this randomly rolled my face as unattractive.
OK, and 32 and 56... so my voice is really attractive (even though it's rated as normal), and my least attractive part are my breasts. Why do I even roll on this crap when I have a piss ton of stats that tells me the specific dimensions of my waistline and how much wetness my face causes, anyway? This doesn't even change any stats. Oh well, at least I didn't roll "Crotch", I'd hate to have to run around with a cameltoe everywhere.
OK, now I get to roll for skintone. Fortunately, I get a -40 to this roll for being an elf, so I'm sure I'll be "glow in the dark" pale, which will undoubtably give me social modifiers for my whiteness. Now then, ROLL FOR WHITENESS!
Well, I got "Pale", so people think I "obviously, the rare to go outdoors". GRAMMATICAL REALISTIGASM! Well, at least there aren't any modifiers for paleness in this, at least so far as I can see.
Now for hair. (Say, I don't see any modifiers based on my hair, am I using the same chart as you guys?) I get +8 for female, and +26 for elf, so I start at +34 for being hirsuteglamourous hair-ness. Aaaand I roll a 99, so I get a total of 133. Great, I'm going to be friggin' Rapunzel, aren't I? Well, looking at the chart, they stop at 100, but that's for "medium thickness, and wavy"... OK, whatever. I also get green eyes. I dodge a bullet, and have normal vision.
OK, now I have to roll for facial features that will make everyone assume something about me for reasons I totally don't understand. Apparently, I have a mole on my ear, which means I'm "noble, one who repays favors, good friend". Well, it's a stupid theory, but at least it doesn't suck to be me.
OH FRABJIOUS DAY, KALOO, KALAY! I just hit the section titled "Sexual Features", finally, children, we get to the "good stuff". Here it is, the money shot, the reason you paid admission, the roll for anal circumference! This alone deserves a breaker in the post.
First, I apparently have to roll for Areolas, because people apparently really give a shit about this stuff, especially when you can't even see this character that consists entirely of a God-awful number of randomly generated stats. Well, I have a 1.5" areola, medium color. Oh, and there's modifiers of +25 for being fat or pregnant to your breast size rolls, yay. It says with a helpful note that the REALISOPHILE research that went into this game says that males and females prefer "average" bust sizes. Because individuals do not have preferences, apparently. Anyway, I rolled a "C" cup (obviously, because I have ugly breasts, so they are all ugly and slightly bigger than average. THE SHAME!) Dire importance: ROLL FOR NIPPLE LENGTH: Well, I didn't get the freakishly large rolls, but I still landed a .75" erect nipple length.
Woohoo! Now I roll for Hoo-hah width. I'd just like to point out that in this game, apparently, if you stretch an anus or vagina more than their set limit, they tear into a single hole, and you can die instantly. You know, so obviously women who give birth to children with heads larger than an inch in diameter obviously are in danger of exploding into having a cloaca or just dying outright. Oh, and just for extra klassyness, you get a +10 modifier for vaginal width for being older, and a -25 for being younger. You also get bonus width for being a mother, being "nymphomaniac" and more for being "slut". Well, anyway, I didn't roll anything too extreme, so I got an above-average 6-8", which it helpfully informs me is capable of handling a "thick unit".
Oh great, now I have to roll for depth potential, which is measured in terms of percentage of my overall height. So, I rolled 28, so I add 28% onto 5.08", so that's 61/12*1.28 = 6.50667" in depth and WHY THE FRICKEN LAZER BEAMS DO I HAVE TO DO THIS MUCH MATH FOR VAGINAL DEPTH?!
Tongue size. Tongue size? Tongue Size! Well, why the fuck not. OK, I got a 61, so I have a slightly longer than normal tongue at 2.5", and I can apparently touch the tip of my nose with it.
Oh happy times. Now rolling for the dreaded anal circumference. Well, apparently, it's exactly the same chart as the vaginal circumference for reasons I don't understand. Plus, they also make men get +5, so apparently, men's anuses are looser than most women's vaginas. I didn't know that about REALISTIC people. Well, I got another slightly above average roll, here, so I "can handle a thick unit" with 6-8" in diameter here, too. Nothing to see here, folks, move along.
Oh, and now I get to roll the vitally important Hymen Reistance stat, so that I can, apparently, determine if I'm still a virgin after penetration. Why, I don't know. Well, I rolled fairly low this time, so I apparently have a weak hymen at only a 31. (It's 5d20, so the average would be 52.5 there.) My poor not-really virginity! How delicate! Oh, and there are no apparent modifiers for the roll for whatever is actually being put into the vagina, So Yeah.
Well, this now goes into fertility rates, and cites Microsoft Encarta 99 as its source for its "exhaustive" and REALIBIGGERSTICK research. Oh yeah. It talks about how males have to roll for sperm count. Sperm count. Roll for sperm count. No, it still doesn't make sense to me why anybody would ever want to roll for sperm count no matter how often I repeat it. Christ, I was kidding when I said to roll for blood circulation. This isn't even a one-time thing. You have to roll EVERY TIME for your sperm count, and take a -30 modifier after every go within the last 24 hours. Pregnancy only occurs 1% of the time if the man has a high enough sperm count roll, anyway, so obviously, this guy has a REALISTIC thing against pregnancies, just like how he doesn't have any REALOTRON ST Ds, either.
Oh ho! Verbal Tic of another forum goer! I now can go over the rules for menstration, so as to fully understand the punishment of the gods on my character who sinned so badly that she was undeserving of a Y chromosome. Oh, and after telling you how much of a punishment it is, they also let you know that you're "on the rag", too. Oh goodie goodie gumdrops, I get to roll for what kind of menstral cramps my character gets. Well, apparently, I get headaches, and have fatigue for 1d8-1 days before the period arrives. Oh, and it helpfully tells you to increase your melancholic or choleric temperment by 1d100 every time you have a period if you get depression or irritability with your menstration. Because you need to roll for more random, unimportant shit in this game than you already do.
They have a chart for infant mortality rates, too. As elves are better in every way, they only have a 1% mortality rate, so yay for that.
Next, they go into an even more elaborate manhood roll with very specific instructions for how to determine penal circumference for the vital task of rupturing rectums, but that's obviously not anything I have to roll for, since at least hopefully, I'll never have to roll for hermaphroditism. (Right?... please?)
Out of sexual features, and into the "Rare Features" section. Now I have to roll for foot size. OK, seriously? It was one thing to have a strange fetishistic roll for the diameter of sexual organs and all, but what, are we going to roll for toenail growth rates next?
Well, I rolled only a 9, but since I am an inch taller than normal, that kicks it up a strangely large modifier of +10, so 19. I have 5-6" feet. I'm on friggin' toothpicks.
I'm right handed.
Head circumference. HEAD CIRCUMFERENCE! This is apparently vitally important for your hat fitting needs, as it explains, and it's got a bizzare set of conditional modifiers, including multiplying by .97 (!) for being female, and it measures by fractions of an inch. You then have to roll another percentile die to add or subtract hundredths of an inch, because apparently he has some really freaking bizzare head measurement fetish that would require a 1/250ths an inch precision dexterity to measure out exact head diameter!
Well, apparently, I rolled 45, so I have 22.12" base, rolled low, so I subtract the next roll, which is 82, so I have a head circumference of 21.30". This is vitally important shit, here!
Oh great, now there's a pregnancy complication rate thing, here, too. They also make you roll for how much weight you gain and how much you swell, as well as how premature the pregnancy is. Elves apparently have a 160 week pregnancy.
Well, here's the allergies section, but being an elf put my Health high enough that I don't have them. There are only 8 allergies, and bee and wasp stings are counted seperately, for some reason.
OK, intoxication tables. Since I'm so light, I apparently go straight to vomitting if I drink a single Mead. I apparently have to also roll for alcohol poisoning after drinking, thanks to low body weight. As a female elf, that roll is a d100 roll to beat 90. So, basically, any time I drink 4 drinks, I am in mortal peril, or at least just pass out and risk more inevitable rape. Oh, and there are no benefits to drinking alcohol. Somehow, I don't think this guy hates drinking, but it sure seems like he goes out of his way to punish it.
Reefer Madness! Apparently, there are charts for marijuana intoxication. Apparently, REALISFLEA marijuana has some kind of addiction, so it is more powerful depending on how long it's been since your last toke. Again, everything marijuana does is completely negative for your character, which may be sending some kind of good moral message, but it really makes you wonder why a player would ever consider doing something that does nothing but hurt them, and probably costs quite a bit.
They now have some things on Psychodelic Mushrooms, and tell you to roll for cancer and diabeetus. Oh, and Tourettes. The MM can order you to shout obsenities when you have it. Of course, if you're playing FATAL, that's basically like reminding the player to breathe.
OK, that's the dreaded chapter 3. Next up is the stupid Disposition chapter.
Oh, and I've forgotten to name her so far, so I'll have to come up with a name... considering the absurd crap for common names they gave out, I think somehing like "Ysy" or "Yenene" or something would be suitable.
OK, so disposition, which is basically alignment is next. There's some long boring crap that details a more finicky and detailed type of Character Alignment than would ever be necessary, and has a completely illegible pie chart to go with it that says that 60% of the population is some kind of alignment, but I can't figure out what, since it's all in grayscale, and there's 3 aligments that are about that shade. (I guess it's True Neutral, though.) Oh, but they can't call it stuff like Chaotic Good, it has to be "Unethical Moral" because it's totally not ripping this straight from D&D. Basically, Order Versus Chaos is Ethical versus Unethical, and Good Versus Evil is Moral versus Immoral.
Of course, like everything that is a critical character decision, or completely unimportant, this is left up to a random roll, becuase people can't determine whether or not to be good or evil on their own. It even says that you can't change your alignment without a traumatic event that halves your XP gain for some random number of months, because morality is RALISTIDELIC in that people's thought patterns are set in stone from childhood. Have I mentioned how reasonable Maid RPG is?
First, however, I have to roll for Piety Points to see how religious this girl is. But this isn't as simple as just rolling percentile dice, of course, I have to roll percentile dice, then roll more percentile dice to determine if I roll more dice based on some other thing to modify the first percentile dice in some way before I can find out something about an esoteric trait of my character's personality that no RPG in its right mind would make random instead of a player choice, anyway. Oh, and it's Piety Points acronymed into PP, by the way.
OK, I start off by rolling 86. Now, I'd have to modify this by 1/4 my age, but I don't if I'm an elf. Since I'm pretty, however, I apparently am less religious for reasons that are completely unexplained, and wouldn't make sense even if they were, and lose 3 of those PP. I get +2 back for being an elf, and having high Drive gives me another +7 to religion. Because being more active makes you more religious. Facial charisma would have dropped my PP, but I didn't roll the percentage to make that happen. I also lose 1 PP for being healthy, again for unexplained nonsensical reasons. That's a total of 91 PP. Apparently, very religious thanks to my being very active. They also have rules for making getting knocked down to near-death have positive or negative PP, depending on if you saw the white light or not. ROLL FOR SEEING THE WHITE LIGHT! REALISTOCLASTIC ERUPTION!
Anyway, that apparently means I "Worship Fluently" (which apparently means I speak perfect Worship without an accent?)
OK, now for my alignment rolls. With modifiers, I have -24 ethics, and 104 morals, so I guess I'm super-duper Chaotic Good Unethical Moral.
The section on ethics talks about how being "Ethical" and "Unethical" are simply aspects of Order Versus Chaos, and have nothing to do with good and evil. The thing then goes on to talk about how "unethical" describes being things like being creative, but also favor "Anarchy, treacherousness, betrayal, criminality, and meaninglessness". Well, if Byron Hall could understand ethics, he probably wouldn't have made FATAL, now would he have? Still, you'd think he could keep himself on-message for an entire paragraph. Oh, and in the family section, it says that chaotic characters have little regard for family (even though elves get +10 to geneaology, and -50 to ethicality), and that they enjoy doing it with their cousins, but will badmouth their spouses or cheat on them the instant they get out of hearing range. Chaotic characters also apparently don't like cities, and live in rural areas or keep to themselves, which seems to be even more bizzarely unrelated to chaos.
Morality is even more amusing, just because it's FATAL trying to tell people what wrong and right are, in between segments detailing what kind of die rolls to make in rape sessions. Oh, but it directly equates good with happiness, So Yeah. It also goes on about how too much of any emotion is evil for some reason, so being a coward is evil, but being too brave is evil, too. I really have no idea what point he was trying to make, there. It goes on for pages about how much "Liberality" you are supposed to have in spending your money and what kind of pride is OK, or how much modesty you should have (WHEN PLAYING FATAL!!!), and several other pages counting proper behavior in even more length and detail than even the penis rolling instructions, so I'm really confused, but mostly fed up with reading this stuff, so I'm skipping it all.
After that, it's another chapter... Mind.
Alright kids, buckle up, put in your mouthgard and lock up those protective chastity belts, we're going once more unto the (hopefully non-organic) breach that is FATAL. This time, it's the "Mind" chapter, which appears to be all about the temperment system. This is the system that is REALOHCRAPI'MRUNNINGOUTOFWAYSTOMAKEFUNOFTHIS because it is based upon a hilariously thorouhgly debunked idea of "humours" in your body that determine your personality. Obviously, like everything else in this unrepetent showcase of chart and table porn, it has to be done by rolling things, and looking at the "relevant" chart. (Said only with the utmost irony of "relevant" charts telling you your goddamn head diameter.) Of course, like most of these charts, it would be more easily handled by simply telling you the formulas, as these things aren't very hard to figure out. (The massive charts telling you about your stats basically come down to "every 3 points above 100 is a +1 modifier" and "every point below 100 is a -1 modifier", but just saying that plainly wouldn't have managed to waste 20 pages on full-page tables of the same exact shit over and over again, sprinkled with telling you how "gay" your voice is, or whether you can think of every moving part inside a Jumbo Jet, or just a mere Boeing 707 at the same time, or how many synonyms for "rape" you character's vocabulary stat lets them have.)
Oh, and since I'm railing against things in previous chapters, there is something I'm dissapointed in myself for not gripping about earlier. You see, at the time, I was distracted when trying to figure out my female character's vaginal depth because of the fact that I had to caluclate out to a thousandth of an inch just how deep my character could be penetrated, while vaginal width was just another d100 roll. (Also note: My vaginal width is probably larger, it is a range of 6" to 8", than it is deep. I'm not sure how REALISTIFRAGILISTICEXPIALIDOCIOUS that is, so I can't get terribly snarky over that point.) However, there was the real insidious truth that lurked just behind that nonsensical exercise in number porn: You are supposed to consult with your "Maim Master" to see just how much damage having something longer than your vaginal depth pushed into your character will do.
Oh, and did I mention that of all the personal character choices you might have to make, which is to say, all the things that they force you to roll for, like alignment and nipple color, the one thing that they always let you choose is gender. Because you can force someone to play a Lawful Evil toddler with "Retard Strength", 2" nipples, and a rectum whose diameter has been explicitly stated to be capable of smuggling coconuts, but GOD HELP YOU IF YOU FORCE SOMEONE TO PLAY A WOMAN!!! That shit just ain't right.
Also, on the topic of feminity, I'd like to ask people more on what to name my character... I'll probably go with something like "Ysy" or "Yenene" if someone else doesn't speak up. I'm leaning towards "Ysy", and pronouncing it so that it rhymes with "his say".
Well, THAT was a derail, well, back on topic, I have to roll for blood pressure my Sanguine Temperment. Hall goes on to tell me how each temperment is related to a different matter, and a state of matter (Gas, Liquid, Solid, and "Dense", whatever the hell that means,) the relevant season of the temperment, the wind that is supposed to blow for me, and what part of the body is best represented by that temperment. I'm sure this is supposed to be something really deep and important to someone 2000 years ago, but it doesn't seem to have any practical effect on the game, so I really have to wonder why I had to keep track of all these modifiers to my Phlegm meter all this time, anyway, although I guess that, like alignment, I get punished if I don't play along with being really "black biley".
Oddly, it tells you to either just plain roll another d100, or that you can take an online test to determine your own temperment for some odd reason, and use that as your character's stats for this. It tells you how a 50 is "well balanced" in a temperment, but doesn't bother giving you one of those "bellcurving" rolls to make it any more likely to roll a 50 than it is to roll a 3. I guess Lord Byron likes his characters crazy, though, the better to rape you with, my dear.
42 (Sanguine / blood), 98 (Choleric / yellow bile), 80 (Melancholic / black bile), 25 (Phlegmatic / phlegm) were my base rolls, but now I have to figure out all my modifiers. I get the (so small as to make me wonder why he bothered) +2 Sanguine -2 Choleric for being female, and the (laughably huge) -50 Choleric and -25 Phlegmatic for being an elf. There might have been some things about more modifiers in the "body" section thanks to having 5" long feet or something, but I don't give enough of a damn to go back there to find out. So yeah, I now have 44 Sanguine, 46 Choleric, 80 melancholic, and 0 Phlegm (someone get me a glass of water, my mouth is so dry!).
It goes on in detail about what each thing means, so Sanguine is your optimism and cheerfulness and childlikeness and stuff. Choleric is your leadershipfullness, and gets a more positive review than the others, talking about how "they're always right, even if people don't like them", because it is your "rapist, not the rapee" temperment, so obviously that had to be the one that being a female elf would totally kill. Melancholic is the "introvert, thinker, and pessimist" temperment, and after Choleric got killed, this is my major thing, so I guess I'm a sad elf because I was stuck with a high Choleric score. Phlegmatic is for the "introvert, the watcher, and the pessimist". Umm... you just used two of the same words to describe that one as you did the last one, there, Hall. So basically, it's the same thing as the last one, but I have none of this one, and plenty of the last one. It also goes on to say that they are "shy, compromising, and self-rightuous"... wait, isn't being self-rightuous totally different from being compromising or shy?
Then, because I hadn't seen a chart in a whole three or four pages, Hall spits another one out about the strengths and weakneses (about 30 of each, although there are only half as many Sanguine strengths as anything else). There are too many of these things that are too vaguely defined to give anything remotely like useful information, but yay, the second thing down on Melancholic is that apparently, I "enjoy being hurt". Perfect. Oh, and in the choleric list, there's these gems: "Dominates Others" "Can Do Anything Better", and "Knows Everything". Remember, this is the temperment that takes a penalty for being female or an elf.
This then goes on talking about how "Scholars are debating" this centuries-debunked bullshit, and that apparently, I have to take my two highest temperments, and turn it into my combined temperment thing. Thanks to unusual rolling, in spite of Hall's best efforts, my choleric is still above my sanguine, so I'm apparently Melancholic-Choleric.
It says that this makes me an introvert, but that I can have critical outbursts, and that I enjoy insulting other people. Lovely. It says that I'm a prefectionist who often wins because I prepare and plan more than my opponents, but who is impossible to please, and possibly manic-depressive or sadistic.
OK, now it starts going into mental illnesses for some reason. I don't know about you guys, but I have to wonder about the REALOVISION of Anorexia Nervosa in the ancient world. Back when being fat was a sign of wealth and status, I don't think people who were concerned about dieting to the point of starving themselves.
Of course, why afflict your players with odd but reasonable mental illnesses when you can start handing around things like necrophilia as an illness whenever they roll something low?! Note, I'm only going to post what the book says about these things, not verify what they are. OK, let's go down the list:
Abasophilia (lust for lame or crippled people. DC 80 roll or you start dry-humping any crippled person you see.)
Acrotomophilia (lust for amputated stumps of limbs. DC 80 roll or you start dry-humping any amputee you see.)
Autoabasophilia (lust for making yourself lame. DC 30 roll or you cut off your own limbs)
Choreomania (DC 50 or you start dancing for no reason)
Coprophilia (Oh wow. Lust for fecal matter. DC 80 roll or you start humping any shit you see.)
Erotomania (DC 30 whenever you talk, or you start telling lies about how good you are in bed. *Facepalm*)
Erotophonophillia (DC 30 or you perform a sexual murder the next person you see. *head desk*)
Exhibitionism (DC 30 or say hello to your little friend.)
Formicophilia (wut? Oooooooooookay, sexual attraction to covering people with insects. DC 30 or you dump insects on people.)
Frotteurism (DC 30 any time you see someone with 120 bodily attractiveness, or you start dry-humping them)
Hypoxophilia (DC 80 or when you have sex, you strangle your partner to unconsciousness.)
Narratophilia (DC 80 or you start talking "dirty" to people)
Necrophilia (DC 80 any time you are near a corpse or... So Yeah)
Noctomania (Sleep during the day, up during the night... that's a mental illness?)
Nymphomania (Of course. It talks about "phallophilia", or attraction to large penises, so roll for Freud Was Right. If a man with 110 or higher Charisma is near a Nymphomaniacal woman, she must roll DC 80 or immediately solicit sex from him while asking him how large his penis is. Oh happy, happy days.)
Oniomania (DC 80 or you start shopping uncontrollably.)
Onomotomania (DC 80 or you keep repeating the same phrase or sound over and over again.)
Pedophilia (Why not? Well, Byron actually held himself back on this one. Instead of saying DC 80 or you rape the first child you see, it just says "sexual attraction" and leaves it at that. I'd say Even Evil Has Standards... but this is basically like a mercy kill after the torture.)
Raptophilia (Love of rape. Cutting straight to the heart of the matter, eh, Hall? DC 50 if you see someone with 110 or more Charisma, or you will stalk and rape them at the first opportunity.)
Satyromania (I'm amazed he didn't just leave it at Nymphomania so that he could say it's all because women always want it. Anyway, DC 80 around women with 110 or more Charisma, or they solicit sex while talking about their body.)
Scoptophilia (Voyeurism. DC 80 or you play with yourself if you can watch others have sex.)
Sexual Masochism (Goody goody gumdrops. Any time a sexual situation comes up, DC 70, or you beg to be bound up and beaten.)
Sexual Sadism (Oddly, Hall actually talks about this in a negative manner, talking about "ejaculative retardation". I guess he didn't want anything taking away from his favorite, Raptophilia's spot in the sun. DC 70 or they start beating people, and gain 2d20 Choleric, as if that mattered.)
Somnophilia (DC 70, or rape anyone you see who is asleep.)
Trichotillomania (Pull out your hair.)
Urophilia (DC 70 or start peeing on people.)
Vaginismus (Spasms to your vagina make people less likely to like you, and you lose 2d20 Sanguine. What the Hell?)
Vomerophilia (ARE YOU KIDDING ME?! I DON'T CARE ABOUT RULE 36, THIS CANNOT BE A FETISH! BULLSHIT! DC 70 whenever you see vomit, or you start masturbating to it. GRAAAAAAAH!)
Voyeurism (What, didn't we already do this? Well, it's the same DC 80 for the same touch yourself if you see people naked.)
Zoophilia (Beastiality. Roll for your "favorite" animal.)
I should point out that this book did have your usual psychiatric problems, like depression, kleptomania, OCD, egomania, and antisocial personality disorder, but the "philias" completely outweighed them. They also only had a general "phobia" in the middle of all these stupid "philias", wheras a game like Call Of Cthulhu would actually focus on the "fear" mental disorders.
Anyway, it then tells you to roll 1d1000 on a chart any time you need a random insanity.
Well... I survived this chapter... next up is the thing on "Societies" in this world, however you want to define that world in a game where "50% of all men are likely to have participated in a gang rape at some point in their lives".
OK, first off in the "Societal" chapter...
Roll for birthday. Why, why, why does this matter? I can only laugh helplessly at this. Well, it tells you to roll 1d12 for month, and 1d20 + 1d12 - 1 for actual day. Of course, this would result in a minor bell-curve towards the 17th of every month, but really, that's just REALOPHILIA enough for FATAL.
Next, roll for if you are a illegitimate child or not. Being a bastard child penalizes you -2 on your social status roll, aparrently. Well, I rolled a 92, so I guess I'm really legitimate. The social class roll is another d100 roll, so I have to wonder why he would bother with something as minor as a -2, especially considering how badly illegitimate children were treated in the actual past. For humans, anything less than 30 is slavery. 31 - 80 is "Peasant", while 81-97 is "Serf". Yes, apparently in the REALTALITY world, Serfdom, the state of being an effective slave tied to your land in actual history is basically the middle class. Obviously, he spent all his time on "research" looking up new ways to insert rape into his game, and precise measurements of feet, and forgot to look up anything relating to actual history when making a "historically accurate" game with elves, "stovepipers" and "poople" in it. 98-99 is Nobility, while 100 is royalty for humans.
For elves, however, the worst you can be is a serf, for any roll < 94, and they are always literate. Remember, Our Elves Are Better. My elf is apparently better than most, because I got another really high roll, and landed a 97. This makes me on the lower end of "nobility", and I start off with 3d100 gold. 31, 27, 71, so I start off with 129 gold.
Next I have to roll for birthplace... I'm tired of sniping at this stuff, so let's just roll. 10. I could only be born in "city" or "capital city", anyway, so I'm in a city. Apparently, elves are very urban for vegan enviromentalists. Hall also makes three seperate charts for the different social statuses of elves, but the charts are all exactly the same, making me wonder why he even bothered. Oh, right, the chart porn.
Now I have to roll for family members. As an elf, I take a -50 penalty for having family. I only rolled 39, so -11, so I'm a REALLY only child. I would then have to roll for the order of birth, if I weren't an only child. (whyyyyyy?) Next, I roll for marital status. Age has no factor in this. Anything from 84-100 is "Happily Married", and 4-43 is "Unhappily Married". 17% of happy marriage and 40% chance of unhappy marriage. Remember, your ethicality determines how quickly you cheat on your spouse! There's also a 40% chance of being single, with the remaining 3% being divorced or seperated. I guess widowed isn't an option.
Anyway, I rolled 88, so I guess I'm happily married. Good for me?
Oh, and now it goes into how, thanks to men being far more valuable than women (his words), dowrys exist to buy the man off to take women off their hands. Apparently, in this world, beautiful women are auctioned off to raise money to pay for the fund to get ugly women married off. (No wonder the number of unhappy marriages are more than double the number of happy ones.) It also goes on to say that a woman is the property of her husband, and that he has all legal rights over her.
Then Hall cheerfully says that "Even though the wife is property, it is ideal to have a relationship defined by respect, passion, and intimacy". HA!
Some stuff about languages follows. Basically, flanderization of your stereotypical D&D stuff. It talks about Angelic being too high-pitched for humans to speak or hear, and Demonic being too low-pitched. Goblins get a clicking language, but it's still better than the "no words longer than 5 letters" of Black Speech (orcish) and Underworld. Dwarven speech is hardly described at all, but that it has many complex rules. Dragon is roaring with nuance. Elvish is divided meaninglessly, but it basically is about sounding poetic rather than having hard rules.
Woohoo! It's here, the roll for sexuality! OK, first, I was wrong. Elves are actually going to get a +5 to this roll (only rolls of 4 or less result in non-heterosexuality), so elves are basically never anything but heterosexual. I guess Lord Byron couldn't get over his love affair with elves being better at everything, and couldn't let any elves become gay. (Of course, the Tolkenian elves were fairly stodgy, too) Halflings, however, have a -20 to this roll. Of course, the lower your strength, the more penalty you take to your roll if you are male, while strong women are more likely to be lesbians. Yes, because everyone knows that the way to keep the gay away is to just lift more weights, but all strong women must be lesbians. Oh, and there's further modifiers based on the cup size of a woman. Sorry, Petankkos, you take a -4 to your sexuality roll, too.
As for the actual roll, anything less than 2 is "Asexuality", 2 and 3 are Homosexuality, and 4 and 5 are Bisexuality. That means there's only a 4% chance of being etiher Homosexual or Bisexual, no matter what your modifiers are, and lots of penaltys just make you more likely to be Asexual.
Anyway, I rolled an 81, which is way over the zone where those modifiers would matter, anyway, so my character is straight.
O Oooohohoho! Next, they have a Debauchery table that determines what kind of sexual favors my character likes to perform. "When role playing entering a brothel, it is useful to know how debauched the player and the whore are." Anakim and half-orcs get major boosts to this roll, while halflings and dwarves take penalties, and elves and humans are neutral. A 100 is "willing to do anything", and the highest stuff below that has to do with scat and urine and orgies, So Yeah. Oddly, giving oral sex is lower on the chart than vaginal sex, but recieving oral sex (cunnilingus) is just below sadism and masochism. Also, recieving anal sex is higher up than wanting to be tied up or having sex with multiple partners. There's also "recieve
I rolled 35, so my character is "merely" at the "recieve vaginal sex" stage.
Looking at the male debauchery table, the low numbers are much rarer than on the female chart ("refuses all sex" is only a 1 for men, but it's 1-5 for women), and I can't help but notice that while women were described as "recieving" most of their things, everything but the lowest ("Recieve handjob" and "recieve blowjob") are phrased as "give" something or another.
Oh boy, next is rolling for offspring. You have to roll 1d10,000,000. That is ONE TEN MILLION SIDED DIE. Anything less than 666,162 is having twins or some number greater than that in offspring. You roll for gender, anything less than or equal to 52 is female, but Anakim and dwarves have +10 to the roll, while elves have -5.
You can make characters out of your offspring, and instead of just rolling up a new character, your offspring is apparently like a clone of you, where you just modify your character's stats slighly with some rolls before handing it off to the near-carbon-copy offspring.
It then goes on about the code of Chivalry and Courtly Love before talking about the demographics of people of some level or another. Basically, each level you go up, it halves the number of people of that level per million, but he managed to make it a really clumsy formula that had to shortchange level 2 to make the number fit the way he wanted.
Apparently everyone in every culture burns their dead. I was expecting something intelligent or rational as an explanation for this, like a very real fear of necromancers or zombie apocalypse, but no, just because corpses smell. So Yeah, every culture in the REALISBYRONHALL world burns their dead, according to his tremendous amounts of research on rape porn, no matter what species they come from, they all act exactly the same with regards to the dead, even when we humans have great divergences in our practices.
Well, I live in a City, like all elves, for whatever reason. That means at least 10,000 people, and access to all shops and services.
Then it goes on and on about different types of governments, including Meritocracy and Confederacy, instead of just the usual Monarchy and such, but it doesn't matter, because this isn't related to my character, and all elves live in a monarchy, anyway.
They have a section on elven society. Apparently, it's always monarchical, slightly patriachal, but has the most gender equality of any race. (Could it be that, with everything else about elves being better, he's giving tacit admission that gender equality is actually more desirable?)
Elves are total vegans, not even eating eggs, and they will only take the hides of already dead animals to make leather, so leather is expensive to them.
The halfling section was obviously created by copy-pasting parts out of other races, because it refers to elves and humans in parts of the description of halflings, since he was obviously too lazy to edit his 800-page monstrosity. (note, I'm still on page 149). The dwarf section is similarly pretty much the same thing from either the human or the elf section. Humans, however, get plenty of talk about how "males have naturally become dominant in every successful human society", and that "slaves are exploited" and such.
They then have a section on roads and inns, and assure you that "even respectable inns include whores among services offered." Naturally, they're all going to be slaves. The cleaning girls double as whores, he helpfully tells you. Towards the end, and all through the roads section, meanwhile, Hall talks in great detail about the width of the road in different locations, the size of the inns, or how big the stones that make the road are, because God knows this guy's fetish is for inexplicably stating out the dimensions of things.
Just in case you forgot that this is supposed to be the Medie MEDEEEEVIL world, he actually starts listing things in Latin, not even pretending this isn't based on the darkest days of Caligulan Rome anymore. It talks about public baths in three paragraphs, but the second paragraph is about how often clothes get stolen, and the third paragraph is about forcing more cleaning girl slaves, who he again feels the need to tell you double as whores, to have sex with your character. (Obviously, the thought that anyone would willingly play a heterosexual female character isn't terribly front and center in Hall's mind.) He also mentions that in lonely rest stops, sex is pretty much the only diversion.
Next up is taverns which sell alcohol, you can watch "dancing girls", and, you guessed it, the cleaning girls double as more whores! "Tavern-keepers are mostly female. Their chief business is supplying drinks and women." Just in case you've forgotten, every building discussed so far has had at least one paragraph dedicated to how you get your sex in that particular building. Oh, fabulous. The paragraph continues: "Decent characters do not patronize taverns. Females rarely go to taverns. If they do, it is understood that they must be there to fornicate. In fact, husbands may spend so much time lounging and drinking in taverns that they hardly have any use for their homes or wives, and may rent both of them out to others." Klassy!
For restraunts, they have the (actually historically accurate to Rome itself, but not really the whole of the ancient world) taberna, which is the ancient equivalent of fast food, and you buy hamburger patties and wine at a counter. Next, they discuss popina, the sit-down, or rather, lay-down restraunt where characters lounge around while eating and, yes, enjoying the cleaning girls who are also whores. (Seriously, these kids would have every STD on the planet by now.) They also talk about patrons staying in the place all day, having erotic art all over the place, and decorating it with "erect phalluses". I'm not exagerrating any of this, either.
Oh, look, a section that actually goes without talking about sex. It's talking about mail delivery, though, so Byron narrowly manages to keep his streak of talking about every building as providing sex (even private homes) for anyone who will pay for it perfect. I should also point out at this point, that this guy only footnotes a single book for this entire section on travel, and it's "Travel in the Ancient World" by Lionel Casson.
Next, they talk about the arrangement of shops and roads in town. Of course, precise dimensions are given as to how far apart every lamp post must be, and the length of each block because you can't go a page without describing something's exact dimensions. It talks about the dangers of walking about in the daytime, because even if wheeled transports are banned during the day, horses can trample you, shysters try to rob you, and "a character must guard with all their might against whores, since they are a pleasant means to ruin without realizing it." He was talking about the shopping district, and couldn't make it without mentioning whores. Bravo, Byron, Bravo.
New section, for "Justice" in the FATAL world. Smoke 'em if you got 'em, kids, this one's sure to be golden.
Hall starts off talking about how cultures are different, but this list can be a guide for punishments of crimes, by "worst" crime to pettiest.
Treason (Hanging, then drawn and quartered.)
Mass Murder (Burned Alive)
Petty Treason (Murder of a husband by a wife - burned alive, but "some cultures prefer to bury the murderous wife alive with her head above ground to prolong the agony.")
Murder of Wife and Children by Husband (Bowing to pressure, Byron? You actually listed this as "worse" than a slave murdering the master, which is not historically accurate. There is nothing any slave-holding nation feared more than slave revolts. Anyway, it's punishment by placing a giant stone on their chest without food or water for 40 days, or until death.)
Murder of Owner By Slave (Mass execution of every slave owned by the murdered owner)
Murder by means of Poison (Boiled alive)
Murder (Amputation of right hand and right foot)
Murder of Slave by Torture, Poison, or Fire (Hanging or beheading with a subnote about how people wave the head around after a beheading that is kind of creepy and completely unnecessary. Also, since when do Caligulan Romans care about killing slaves?)
Witchery (Burn the Witch!, of course, but he adds that they often torture and gang rape her first. It's added that women who cast magic might also be considered witches, and there's actually a witch class later on, amusingly enough, which makes one wonder why witchcraft would be a crime next to murder if people can openly practice magic in this world.)
Lycanthropy (Tear off their skin with red-hot pincers before beheading them. Why? oh, I should just stop asking that.)
Habitual felons (Lose an ear each time, then grind it into the head.)
Arson (Either lose the hand and foot, or Burn the Witch!)
Heresy, Repetant (you must take a pilgrimmage... wait, why is this listed before unrepetent heretics? Didn't Byron say this was listed from most to least severe? Damnit, Byron, you're not just a freak, but you're also a liar?!)
Heresy, Unrepetant (Burn the Witch!. You'd think they'd run out of straw to burn these people with eventually.)
Slave Revolt (Crucify all slaves)
Adultry by wife (Burn the Witch!)
Insulting the Ruler (Lose your tongue)
Blasphemy (Branding on the face with a "B" for blasphemer)
Robbery (Hanging, Branding with an "R", or lose your hands)
Assault in a Palace, Court, or Church (Lose a hand)
Disturbance in Church (Branding with an "F" on the face for "fray-maker". I don't want to have piety points anymore...)
Poaching (Lose your legs, or have molten lead poured in your ears)
Pimp (Not a crime most places, but death in others)
Prostitution by women (Not a crime in most places, but pilloried in others)
Affair Between Mistress and Slave (Both are put to death. He makes positively sure that the reader is assured that a man having an affair with a slave "even if he rapes her" is legal.
Sex Offenses (Includes "many things, such as incest, child molestation, man-hating lesbians, and sodomy." They get pilloried while they entice the crowd to mutilate them or stone them. They also may tear out the defendant's eyes.)
Irreconcilable Civil Dispute (Screw that Judge Judy crap, apparently, civil law is handled by gladiatorial combat in Byron's world. Of course, this is handled by "champions" that are often slaves.)
Slander against a Married Woman or Priestess (Branded on the face with "SL")
Covetous Eyes (Burn their eyes out. How do you prove "covetous eyes", anyway?)
Libel (Lose a hand)
Infedelity or Bawdy Behavior (Tied to a horse and paraded through the streets)
Female With Acid Tongue (A husband can have his wife put in a metal head cage that gags her, and have her paraded around town to be humiliated.)
Missing a Rent Payment (Pilloried)
Petty Debt (Imprisonment. It goes on to talk about how the genders aren't seperated, "leading to rampant promiscuity".
Petty Theft (Lose a thumb)
Perjury (Banishment, which probably means death)
Fraud (Pillory)
Forgery (Pillory)
Cheating at Gambling (Pillory)
Petty Crimes (Banishment, which probably means death... he doesn't even specify what a "petty crime" is.)
Wife That Keeps A Disorderly House (Stripped naked, tied to a cart, driven through town, and flogged)
Vagrancy (Branded in the face with "V")
Runaway Slaves (Covered in molasses and tied down over an anthill to be bitten to death.)
Slave Convicted of Any Crime (Crucified)
I could comment on the "justice" of all this, but I should point out that there is no description of a court system at all. Sadly, this isn't a terribly inaccurate description of Medieval justice in some parts, and Roman justice in others, but it's blended together with absolutely no consistancy.
Recepies. He actually wrote a section here about baking fish the ancient Roman way. Why the Hell would he feel the need to include this in the rule book?
Gah. Well, anyway, I'm skipping that. Next chapter is one of the worst, the Occupations chapter. This seriously occupies 70 straight pages, talking about how many beards you have to shave as a barber to level up.
OK, next up is the Occupation chapter. I want to just take the time to talk about how utterly insipid and irredeemable this whole thing is. In D&D 3rd ed and on, you had a "commoner" and "expert" class that handled pretty much all the jobs that weren't combat-related. Experts could take all those skills that weren't related to combat fairly easily, and be able to handle pretty much anything with proper skill allocation.
Not so FATAL. Every job Hall could imagine is its own class. What's worse, it digs up the old and buried D&D notion that gaining GP = XP. Basically, if you're a merchant, making profit is your experience points. If you're a barber, shaving beards are your experience points. Even if you're a wizard, you gain experience points just for casting spells, not for actually doing anything with those spells.
Worse, the tiny few classes that are actually worth playing as adventurers or whathaveyou are blatantly segregated based on your stats. You can be, say, a Warrior or a Knight, but knights are better in every way, and the only "balance" is that you had to have the randomly rolled stats to qualify for the class, or be of a high enough randomly rolled social class to qualify for the good classes. Or have some other randomly-determined factor, except for gender, because you better believe they discriminate based on gender in this chapter. (And if you are a female slave or peasant, you might as well just skip straight ahead to the "Cleaning Girl" / "Prostitute" section right now.)
Oh, and you can apparently randomly roll yourself into being the king or queen. It just takes a roll of 1000 on a d1000 roll after getting "royalty", which is a 100 of d100 roll first. That is to say, you have a 1:100,000 chance of rolling being the King (really, the Emperor).
Speaking of Byron Hall having know idea of what he's talking about, the table for royalty jobs lists all the noble ranks you can be if you are "royalty", which means that he didn't know what he was talking about when he said Peasants were basically what were historically Serfs, said Serfs were middle class, and that Nobles were the upper class.
Basically, what Hall REALLY meant is that the classes go: Servi (Slave), Serfs (maybe you can make them Peregrini, or non-citizen / foreigner freemen), Plebians, Patricians, and then the actual Caeser and his appointed ruling class.
Anyway, you are asked to roll your family's occupation, because why the fuck should you be able to determine that for yourself, either? At the very least, it tells you that you can actually choose a different occupation, so long as it's still on the chart, but that most people take up the jobs of their parents. I rolled an 893, so as a Noble, I roll on a fairly small chart, and get... SPY?! Wait, what? Nobles go out to do spy work? Isn't that, you know, the sort of really dangerous job that gets you killed, and is better suited to inconspicuous laborer-types? Well, since I have two parents, I'll roll again to see what my other parent did for a living... 683 - Mage. I can get behind that a little more.
Well, I don't have to take my parents' job, but I should look at it, anyway...
Looking down the list, I should point out, you need 1000 XP to hit second level, 2000 the third, 4000 the fourth, 8000 the fifth, etc. You literally get XP in terms of 1 XP per ten beards you shave, here. (Technically, you can also get 1 XP per tooth you pull or hairstyle you do, but I'll just continue my rant as-is because it's funnier this way.) In order to level up as a barber, you have to role-play SHAVING TEN THOUSAND BEARDS. That's just for level 2. It geometrically increases each time. No high-experience beard shaving for you, you have to sit there and role-play shaving FIVE BILLION, TWO HUNDRED FORTY-TWO MILLION, EIGHT HUNDRED EIGHTY THOUSAND BEARDS to hit level cap at 20. Get shaving, bitch!
JUSTIFY YOURSELF, BYRON HALL!
This, CTS, is why FATAL cannot be defended by simply making "all the sex optional". There is no game worth playing even if you remove all the talk of rape.
Oh, and of course, you can be things like a "Brotheler", which is basically a female pimp, and you only gain XP for every 5 gold you farm off your whores. You can tell how much Hall likes a class by how long the entry is. Assassin gets a couple pages of description, talking about getting "Memorable Kills", which are basically instant kill moves. Clerks, meanwhile, get a single sentence description, and they gain 1 XP "Per Month of Service". Note: That means it takes 83 years in game time to hit LEVEL TWO. Really thought that one out, there, hunh, Hall? Oh, and speaking of barbers, it's really not fair... Delouser is a class, too, (Always Female), and her job is to pick lice out of people's hair, and she gets FIVE XP per customer. Yeah, eat that, stupid barbers, combing lice out of hair is where the real XP is, not that silly cutting hair nonsense!
Oh Christ, I just hit the Druid pages. Four Pages. Druids are male-only cleric-types. OK, every time you level up, you have a PERCENTILE CHANCE of going up in spell levels. Yes, you have to roll for that, too. You need a bigger and bigger "Language" score as your primary stat. (DAMN YOU, ANTIDISESTABLISMENTARIANIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIISM!) Anyway, he actually gets into outright algebraic equations with 4 variables to solve if you want to make druid circles to cast spells.
Pity I have average Language, because otherwise I could be a Mage, as its other requirements of Math, Analytic, Drive, and Reflection are some of my best stats. Mage is obviously one of the best classes you can take, aside from the Knight or other obviously superior fighting classes. Oh well, at least I'm not a barber. I should also point out that these mages get every spell in the game. Even the priest ones. They also get twice as many MP as priests do. They are so clearly superior to every other class, it's just plain sickening.
OK, I'm getting close, but I had to stop at the occupation of Slave. Apparently, you roll for the tasks that you can perform as a slave, and of them, the female tasks are... predictable. 81+ (20%) in a roll is outright Whore. 16% are Cleaning Girls (which doubles as whore!). 16% are "Wenches". 16& are Dancers, 8% are Grooms, 16% are laundresses, and 8% are just plain laborers. Men get things like swineherder, farmer, and mason.
OK, here we go, spy. Basically, it's the second-best in the line of rogue-type classes, with Assassin obviously being the best. Well, spy sounds kind of half-hearted. They're basically described as just really good thieves, unlike the lower-class Thug, Pick-Pocket, and Bandit classes. Byron doesn't really even bother giving alot of detail into what exactly you do, since it's obviously not one of his favorite classes (which makes you wonder why he bothered making SEVENTY PAGES of classes nobody, not even HE wanted). Basically, spy gets a couple sentences in description about being a good thief, and a few skills, and then get walked out the door.
I'd like to point out that, essentially, all these classes are interchangable except for what it takes to gain experience points. (well, and money). There's no skill point bonus (other than the one-off +5 to some skills) to being any thief class, here. Warriors are just going to get better armor and more "kill stuff" skills. Asassin gets some instant death power, but that's about it. If you want to be a magic user, you had to have been lucky with your Language roll. This is the single most unplayable class system I've ever seen. I could shit a better game out than this. There is no justification for this incomplete heap of random, needless jobs like "pewterer" or "thatcher", which get one sentence descriptions, and told that they get 5 AP per roof they fix.
You see, most games have something called "game balance". Byron Hall, however, says "The Dice Never Lie", and makes the most unbalanced shit he possibly can, because if you happen to just sit there and reroll crap until you get the perfect classes, you can mow over the entirity of what the game has to offer, get rich, and blow it all on measuring tape and hookers.
Anyway, of the classes I do qualify for, the only thing besides Spy that even relates to combat is the Hierophant, which is the lower version of a Druid, but is open to females, and has lower language requirements. Only, OOPS! That idiot Hall forgot to include anything after he just copy-pasted the crap in the druid section to tell me what kind of equipment or alignment restrictions or skills I get as a Hierophant! Too bad he didn't give half a shit for his game after it got past the pinky finger diameter parts.
I love how Hall didn't even attempt to playtest or edit any of this shit. He clearly just threw up his hands and declared he just didn't care anymore.
