Shouldn't the labels be swapped? Is common decency keeping F.A.T.A.L. from pursuing players? F.A.T.A.L. is antithetical to common decency. Decency keeps players away from F.A.T.A.L.
this post was submitted on 17 Oct 2025
269 points (95.9% liked)
RPGMemes
14071 readers
1443 users here now
Humor, jokes, memes about TTRPGs
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
i just looked it up and holy fucking shit how are most comments here about its mechanics rather than how it's apparently Violent Misogyny: The Game
I have a morbid fascination with it, and one of the things that keeps dragging me back to it is the very weird ways in which it is, surprisingly, progressive. FATAL makes a distinction between sex and gender (though throws it away), and also recognises asexuality as valid (despite not understanding it).
It's a racist, sexist rape fantasy simulator.
It sure is, but the author had a very particular type of bigoted worldview combined with a very particular type of pseudo-academic obsession. Without that, it would be an utterly unremarkable cookie-cutter grimderp RPG from the 2000s. The exact, half-baked layout of the trainwreck presenting as high-speed rail is what makes FATAL into FATAL.
The Cypher system is one of the most ingenious, elegant, immersive, and flexible TTRPG systems ever created and I will die on this hill. If you want to escape D&D, Cypher is the way to go.
Dude. Just try Torchlite or Ironsworn.
There are people here who've probably never seen the greatest review of the worst RPG of all time.
There is no God, and the proof of this can be found in a .pdf file from Fatal Games.
And for those who don't have time, the only thing you need to know about FATAL is this; it's an RPG made by the kind of people who stormed the capitol on Jan 6. Horrifically racist, sexist and queerphobic, and designed by people so fundamentally stupid and lacking in curiosity that they can't get even the most basic of design concepts right, but so utterly obsessed with the idea of their own intellectual superiority that they keep trying to reinvent every single wheel.
Some friends and I once got drunk and made FATAL characters. After 4 hours we gave up. We still weren't done. There's no decisions to make, character gen is 100% random roll. It's just so badly designed that even rolling your base attributes takes forever.
By the point where we stopped the dice had informed me that I was playing an 8 year old lesbian prostitute, and understanding how that's even possible reveals the depths of the awfulness at work here.
My character was 8 because you have to roll for age, and these morons decided it was a good idea for people to be able to random roll adventurers who are literal babies. Yes, 0 years old is an option. Newborn barbarian warrior, off to save the world.
My character was a lesbian because the dice said she was a girl, and the system said I had to roll for sexual characteristics, like breast size. Gross. Of course, the system also applied a massive downward adjustment to her breast size for being, y'know, an actual child. So she was an A cup. For those of you wondering how an 8 year was an A cup, it's because these geniuses remembered to include an age adjustment but didn't remember to actually include an option on the table for "I haven't fucking hit puberty yet you disgusting perverts."
Anyway, the reason we're talking about this hypothetical child's hypothetical breast size (thanks FATAL, God you suck so much) is because you then have to roll for sexuality, and for women this is modified by breast size! I am not shitting you, this is how unbelievably fucking awful this game is. Every big titted lesbian you've ever met doesn't actually exist according to FATAL. I swear to God even the Rimworld guy had more brains than this.
And she was a prostitute because you roll for your career, but the careers all have stat minimums. Don't meet the minimum, roll again. And being 8 gave her huge penalties to her stats, so the only career in the entire book she actually qualified for was prostitution.
If you feel like throwing up right now I completely understand.
My favorite thing about fatal is that you can read several reviews of it, all will be summed up vety similarly, but it induces a verbose disgust that leads to every review being a distinct archive of points where each reviewer got sufficiently pissed off at the creator of the game for publishing it.
For all I hear of the misogyny, of which I trust the reviewers is abundant, every review leaves me thinking that this man believes things about men that should offend the entire human species.
Thank you for throwing yourself on that grenade for us.
What a terrible day to be literate
Thank you Mr Abyss, for staring back at me.
I miss the person I was prior to having read this.
I had to force myself to keep reading this.
I read this in the voice of Mr. Cody. That was the only way I could get through it.
I guess it could be sped up with a computer just generating the random character
I don't want to sacrifice coders to insanity, like some sort of slaneshi torture program
Yes, but then you'd have to actually play FATAL, and you really don't want that.
Thanks for the write up, it sounds like it’s maximum value is as kindling…
But what’s wrong with the RimWorld dev, am I ootl here?
Rimworld was originally coded so that all women were at least slightly bisexual, if not fully gay, while all men were either gay or straight. According to the creator - who vociferously defended this stance claiming it was based on "research" - bisexual men like me don't exist.
That's honestly just the start of the rabbit hole. The game was hardcoded so that men always prefer younger partners and women always prefer older partners. Also women were eight times less likely to be willing to hit on someone. This is, to be clear, supposed to be a scifi game set in the future, but modelling sexual politics apparently taken from 1980's TV.
There's an amazing breakdown of the whole thing here; https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/rimworld-code-analysis
You can find the creator of Rimworld in the comments defending all of his nonsense and making a total ass of himself in the process. Unfortunately the rest of the comments are a total shit show because the average gamer simply does not have the mental maturity needed to handle critical analysis deeper than "graphics bad".
I'm told they eventually changed some of this stuff after enough backlash, years later, for whatever that's worth. Maybe the creator actually did some learning and growing, and if so, good for them.
Based on the fact that all that nonsense was removed even before the release, and that I've never heard about him being weird like that, I want to believe he grew as a person since then, and pulled a reverse Notch.
And if you can show me even one time that he actually apologized and admitted he was wrong on this, I'll happily agree.
I want to see people be better. But I'm smart enough not to assume it without evidence.
I'm not in on the drama, I don't know if he apologised or not.
But at this point I would take quitely sweeping bullshit under the rug over going all in on being an asshole.
load more comments
(8 replies)
Is that the one where you roll for anal circumference?
That's pretty funny
load more comments
(1 replies)
load more comments
(7 replies)
It's not even a fucking rpg since everything is a diceroll. It's like pen and paper progress quest.
load more comments
(3 replies)
It's ALWAYS a horror show with FATAL. I've blocked EVERY group that invites people to fatal and my life is better for it. Mr Lake and Mr Foot? (no first names) Rot in prison you creepy fuxks.
I would make a joke about kissing my ass, but discussions about FATAL often include a need for anal circumference. No thanks.
load more comments
(1 replies)
Honestly FATAL isnt even fun to read its just mad cringe. Like the most in depth look into the mind of an incel.
Yeah, basically a complete listing of the kind of "jokes" edgy internet dweebs made and then checked to see the reaction before they decided if they meant it or not.
view more: next ›