why, dear lord, why?

[kodalai]

Just spent the better part of an hour perusing this review of FATAL on RPG.net. The only thing that saved my sanity was the hilarity of the reviewers. *whimper*

Normally, when I read something so scathingly negative, I automatically adopt the devils advocate. So I did. I thought, "These reviewers are probably biased; they are after all gamers, who have a tendancy to be elitist and perfectionist. Quotes may be taken out of context, I must try and view it objectively."

However, I don't think that magical items such as "26-50 Rapeseed of Raping: If a character swallows this seed, they will attempt to rape the next member of the opposite sex in sight regardless of age" or "Jewy Jewbacca, Armor of: Whosoever dons this armor will acquire a nose twice the size and a manhood half the size. Further, the wearer will become extremely greedy and fight to the death for one silver piece. Finally, the wearer acquires 2 inches of hair all over their body, resulting in halving their Facial Charisma and Bodily Attractiveness. While hairy, the wearer must bathe every 1d6 hours or smell foul." would sound any better in context.

Why, dear God, WHY? Why did you imbue the human race with the capacity to sink so low?



The really scary part is that I was around for one of the first waves of this -- I was observing the thread around the time that Hall himself came on and started defending his game against criticism. He seemed so fucking calm... passive, quiet, polite, normal. I got a mental image of a pale man with dark hair, who dressed in dark business suits with glasses and a briefcase. I could probably pass him in the street or stand in line behind him at the bank and never look twice.

This game is not a joke to him.

It's the real thing.

I think he is seriously, seriously disturbed.

Comments

[oysterverse.livejournal.com]

Oddly enough, my reaction was exactly the opposite. The review kept me laughing the entire time I read it, and I was comforted to know that there were people whose reaction to that monstrosity of the human imagination was to write a uniformly scathing and detailed criticism of everything they found offensive in it. FATAL is the sort of thing that gives gaming a bad name--no, I take that back; stuff a lot milder than FATAL gives gaming a bad name. But as long as there are people in the gaming community willing to condemn FATAL for being a pathetic and misogynistic piece of crap, and to take its creators to task, gaming will be okay. To me, that's the problem and the solution wrapped up in a burrito. People can be shit, so thank god other people will stand up and say "that's wrong, that's bad, you shouldn't do that, and we'll do whatever's in our power to stop you." To be all Christian about it, good works--that's where our salvation lies.

[kodalai.livejournal.com]

Well, I did laugh. My thoughts ran along those same lines, and the reviewers were quite funny, in addition to having quite a convincing argument. It wasn't the kind of humor that made me laugh out loud, though, and as funny as I found it, it reminded me of all the bad thoughts it inspired back when FATAL first made its rounds.