Thread "Being monotonously offensive." in forum "Comic Talk and General Discussion *"

Posted at 4:10AM, Oct. 3, 2020

A while I go I found a PDF copy of F.A.T.A.L., "the worst tabletalk rpg ever as called by RPGnet, various reddit forums, and some other places, and decided to see out of morbid curiosity how bad was it.

It was boring.

Oh it had things that is offensive, but after seeing stuff like Outlast 2, Cane Mondo, the Black Dog label from White Wolf, the stuff RPGnet players came up with I'm kind of numb to a lot of the "horrors" within the book.

Truth be told it was written so damn dull that it couldn't even get a raised brow from me if I encountered it when it was published.

Another media that is offensive was Hatred, caused a massive stir when released causing various gaming journalist to decry it was sickness and evil in gameplay form but after watching Civvie 11 and other playthroughs I found it, again, very boring.

Basically, this topic is about hiding mediocre, or just downright dull, beneath a pile of being in your face edgy and vile. Ether on purpose, by design or just judged by community.

Hell, even I did it by making a few tabletalk rpg that had sex focus rules, because I was honestly saw a fun weird niche and tried to fill it, I didn't want to bother anyone and I just kept it to Tromaville levels of goofy feel good sex, but that ended with me getting a few death threats and being banned from RPGnet so I kind of backed away from that.

Posted at 7:10PM, Oct. 3, 2020

Sounds like this RPGnet place is pretty awful, I'm glad to steer clear from it!

It's very true that there are so many things like you describe, which just use shock tactics or attempts to offend as a disguise from their problems. In the end, most of them are just boring, as you said, and I think they're aware of that, which is why they so often resort to lurid tactics. It was especially trendy around 2000 to just stuff in as much "outrageous" (translation: intentionally tacky and tasteless) content as possible, and you can often really see it when you look back at media from around that time.

On this specific topic, there are plenty of game systems out there that are just dull as a beige room, but one I remember most from discussing and analyzing it extensively with a colleague was hilarious in its attempts to surprise.

It had a lot of extremely homophobic parts to it, and it was so overwritten that I can't imagine anyone, including the authors, really knew how to play it because there was just so much of it to read and try to make work together. One of the most memorable things I can recall is that there was a rule that any trauma to the buttocks, for reasons probably best known to the authors, had a dice roll chance of causing the target to just…poo.

But despite their exhaustive attention to detail, they neglected to note a limitation for this, and using the rules as we had read to that point, between us we created the "halfling endless poo cannon strategem", which is about how you might suspect. Lift a halfling up and just spank them. Keep spanking them, with their business end pointed at your enemy.

Eventually, the dice will be on your side, and you won't run out of ammo.

Which really, if I think about it, is probably one of the most unpleasant ideas I've ever been given by any game system.