What it is is a series of "rules" for transfering RPG characters between RPG games and systems promoted by certain incredibly stupid people on the internet.
I'm going to review and discus FAILSNAILS specifically on this thread because fuck it. It's comedy gold. Sad sad sad comedy gold.
You can read it's "Conventions" (yes they don't even call them rules) HERE on it's bustling and informative wiki empty worthless internet ghost town. That's the top result on google, its the official FAILSNAILS org site, I'm going with that as FAILSNAILS official cannon etc...
Now I don't want to immediately shit all over converting a character between two different RPGs. I think it's a bit silly, but you might conceivably want to do it and there is nothing wrong with that.
I also don't want to shit all over doing that by means of just having a GM familiar with both systems/games eyeballing it and trying to make a best fit clone. That's fine, it's pretty much what you would have to do to make such a thing even begin to work barring some brilliant conversion resource of some kind.
Certainly I think it is USUALLY better for any given game for players to invest in the game itself. Certainly I think it's better for players to learn the game they are actually playing by actually making a character for it rather than handing the GM a 4E D&D character and saying "you just make this work for me in Rolemaster m'kay?". But if you wanted to play zany chaos bullshit anyway what the hell, sure fine, house rule all comers with whatever into whatever system you use until it overflows with ninja turtles and space dragons and turns into RIFTS. That's cool, RIFTS is a sort of fun idea, and its probably a better way to play RIFTS.
BUT I want to REALLY shit on the apparent enthusiastic belief by proponents of FAILSNAILS that it is somehow special, somehow an idea they just now invented and somehow an idea they are in any way doing right.
FAILSNAILS attempts to be a movement, they want people to sign up to a community of sorts to co-operate and make a super secret promise special pact to perform this unholy act of "sure whatever you can use your character from StarwarsD6 in Shadowrun, what could go wrong".
I could see some value in the community aspect on it's own for people looking for such games. Though... I mean, it seems fucking silly because all in all I'd put the priority of such an idea well behind almost ALL other priorities when seeking or considering an RPG group to join. But hey, maybe you are a wanker who is REALLY attached to that ONE fucking character.
But enough messing about. Lets get to the meat of how stupid this is. And actually consider the...
Conventions... OF... FAILSNAILS!!!111!!1!
Article ZERO
Before there were articles there was failure. The name FLAILSNAILS was tortured into existence. Curious what it stands for?
Yes. Those are the words. YES they are fucking stupid. Yes it is missing all sorts of appropriate punctuation, has horrid grammar and random capitalization in it's overly flowery accompaniment. Yes they even managed to actually miss a space between Law and Supporting in the actual walking out of the acronym itself.We the GMs of the DIY RPGing, in Order to form a more perfect Ruckus, establish Justice, insure intercampaign Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and Play some Games, do Ordain and Establish this set of Free Location And Inclusion LawsSupporting New And Interesting Leisure Situations (FLAILSNAILS).
I know it's small potatoes picking on the language there. And I know it might not seem fair being excessively wordy and often imprecise myself. But I feel as bad as my language is it's way better, and basically the shoddy dumbness of the initial text REALLY sets the tone for what to expect in the actual articles themselves.
Article 1
States that you cannot use FAILSNAILS on characters that were not at 0 XP AND at level 1 on or before July 26 2011.
This is the FIRST ARTICLE. It is UTTER FUCKING INSANITY. The entire concept of FAILSNAILS? "Sure bro your whatever can join my game, let me just fudge some shit here..." is utterly undermined by this incredible out of left field limitation. AND IT'S THE FIRST AND FOREMOST ARTICLE OF THE INSANE PLEDGE!!!
Just... why? I mean wow, why not just say anyone can rock up with any old character regardless of age? And the level 1 XP zero thing? Again why? Lots of characters don't get to HAVE levels, or XP, even if they do what the hell about a 1+ XP or level 2+ character as of that date actually needs to be banned? Really now? This rule or "article" is pure WTF?
Article 2
Suddenly decides to limit character conversion across systems to only systems with similar genres, and in which "similar" abilities can be "reasonably" represented.
For a methodology of conversion of "GM pulls stuff out of his ass" that seems rather excessively limiting.
BUT FEAR NOT. Within the SAME article it then lifts this limitation by suggesting the GM can define "similar" and "reasonable" as "whatever he pulls out of his ass".
BUT WAIT oh no, it then backtracks again to limiting guidelines of expressly named suggested similar rules sets!
And so on. Generaly not commiting to anything much at all. Article 2 should have been Article 1 and said "GM's still get full veto but can also let any character join anything if they want" and it would have been better, clearer, and shorter.
Article Just One Second Here
Worth noting the formating is bullshit for a bullet point list of articles. My formatting here isn't brilliant but it's a hell of a lot clearer.
Article 3
Takes 382 words to basically say. "Characters level up after receiving new experience from actually playing the game they are in, and then advance according to the game they are actually playing! When converting characters convert XP to equivalent advancement in the new system."
Then it says maybe everyone should just use percentage of advancement to next level in all their systems (which remember, may not even have levels) and that they should totally get Jeff or somebody to make a conversion table or something ACTUALLY FUCKING USEFUL.
Article 4
Article 4 hides inside Article 3 by means of starting it's unbolded heading directly on the end of the paragraph at the end of Article 3 instead of a new paragraph.
Article 4 takes 727 words, which include a huge ass stupid random table, in order to explain optional rules for allowing an "over-level" import character to play with much lower level characters (because that would be a good thing that needs support!).
Does it perhaps suggest since you are already pulling the system appropriate clone out of the GMs ass that you just make a lower level version of the clone?. Well, no, because amongst other things apparently it is a GOAL of the system is to just let shit like massively different level characters play together and to let Little Johnny 1 Character not just walk into every game with his level 17 Barbarian Bannana God but also to let him permanently accrue XP and other junk and carry it over to other games and not make one off or temporary lower level clones that actually play nice with other real people at the table.
So just making a level appropriate version to play nice with the actual fucking other players would be too easy. You MIGHT do that because the actual rule is "Every GM can just make their own rule to somehow deal with this, whatever".
But the DEFAULT rule is, would you believe it the bullshit stupid random table. So, what you do is for every level over the group you just roll on the bullshit random table and get RANDOM FUCKING DISABILITIES.
The table is poorly formatted. The table is a 1d100 roll but is inexplicably broken evenly so that each table result equals 3 dice results (do these people know a d30s exist? Couldn't they just roll 1d4-1 tens place and 1d10 1s place instead? Limit themselves to 20 results? Throw darts at a poster, anything?)
ANYWAY. The results are stupid and wildly variable, lose limbs, change gender, involuntary continuous laughter lose lots of dice from lots of stats, regardless of totally differing scales in differing systems, lose lots of dice more from lots more stats regardless of smaller penalties and total no penalties and regardless of differing scales, lose just 1 dice from just one attribute that maybe isn't even important to you, SMELL BAD, Randomly Mutate at GMs whim, have people who want to kill you (so what?), shrink to 1' tall (that might be growth dumb ass), have a drug ediction like elric IT DOES NOTHING THOUGH, fail to know local language (thus ENSURING the LEAST POSSIBLE COMPATIBILITY WITH MASSIVELY LOWER LEVEL GROUP FROM ANOTHER SYSTEM)... etc...
So basically you don't solve anything problematic about being a more powerful character playing with weaklings. You MIGHT be horrible crippled though, or maybe not meaningfully effected. You also might just have random bullshit happen that makes the impact of importing a character alien to the group, system, and party level EVEN WORSE THAN IT OTHERWISE WOULD BE.
Why? NO FUCKING REASON.
Article 5
In the general style and flare of FAILSNAILS article 5 takes a simple almost unavoidable concept "Special stuff that isn't in the current game works according to GM fiat" and makes it trip some balls.
It limits what it is talking about to "special powers" like psionics and magic and magic items. Really, non magic special powers and items no biggy just because there are no equivalent items in setting or even equivalent rules in the system. So those don't get the GM fiat proviso.
Inexplicably "outleveled" special powers DO get the proviso. So if you know fireball spell and the setting and rules set you move to has fireball spells because all you did was move from 2E to 3E or whatever, BUT you are level 5 and the party is level 1, aside from you being a one armed transgender compulsive giggler who cannot speak to the other players, you are also now OFFICIALLY subject to the GM deciding not to use fireball as written in your old rules OR EVEN AS WRITTEN IN THE NEW RULES. Because whatever fuck you.
Hell as written you could level up, gain new powers IN THE CURRENT SYSTEM and this rule puts them all under pure GM fiat! Nice.
Article 6
Just says if there is only one item in the setting you go to, but you for some reason are already carrying it from your old setting then the GM does whatever he wants about that.
All this arbitrary division of "and then it's GM fiat to deal conversion issues" seems a little pedantic. Especially considering lack of advice and repeated introduction of improbable flaws and random coked up crazy.
Article 6 has the redeeming features of being relatively short and not following the precedent set by prior articles and introducing something crazy and irrelevant for no reason.
Article 7
Is basically "tell people if you are going to accept this bullshit".
Only for some reason its con specific. So at other cons and all othertimes you can keep your secret FAILSNAIL shame a secret like you... well, shouldn't actually, wasn't the whole point of this pledge so people would agree to do it and know where to go to do it?
Whatever, they can't even manage "Tell people you offer this to them" without fucking it up with oddly narrow arbitrary insanity.
Article 8
Takes the time to suggest it would be stupid to make someone manually perform in game travel to move their character from where-ever they were to the current game location.
That apparently needed mentioning.
This is presented as "hoops" in general before allowing arrival to be bad.
Then it fucking contradicts itself by saying that you can instead set hoops in a PRIOR game and tell people they have to jump through them if they want to play their characters in your upcoming FAILSNAIL game!
Because THOSE hoops and arbitrary limits to who is allowed to play are FUN ONES!
It's like they just invented a needless hurdle then swan dived right into it.
Article 9
Just says players can make up their own justification for turning up where-ever.
Then says "Once a FLAILSNAILS PC dies, you can't use that PC again in real-time, no matter when in the "timeline" the PC died and..."
Which makes little to no sense but is probably perma-death. So basically FAILSNAILS encourages you to play a fun one off game joining a group you don't know with your favourite character from a long running game... and then instructs your regular trusted GM that if the one off GM you never played with murders your character he should totally keep your character dead in HIS game. Thus ensuring FAILSNAILS somehow fucks up games your character comes from as well as the ones it visits.
But then it says when you go on your failsnails adventures it's totally up to the GM in games you return to whether you get to level up or have any items you took from the other game. But if you died then fuck you you are dead. That isn't as important for the game you are returning to.
Not only is this INSANE. It's actually oddly counter to the rest of FAILSNAILS strategy and philosophy. I mean, wasn't the whole point of some of the worst bullshit to try and let you have persistent advancement across games and systems? No? Then WTF? But permadeath, because you played in "crazy coke head Justin's" game just one time, THAT'S COOL!
Article 10
Is an promise so unconvincing it openly admits it isn't convinced about itself, to totally have more google + stuff and also a web page and junk.
And blames one specific guy.
Then it promises to give out bonus XP to players who help make the site.
Because, fuck it, whatever.
Article 11
Specific GMs should totally blog their own rules for this shit. And they should, because fucking hell if they use the ones in the articles they're fucking crazy.
Article No More Articles
Then there is a big wanky meaningless horribly written end fluffy turd.
And then the whole pledge is signed by three whole people, one of whom is the world champion biggest idiot on the internet, or possibly Justin Bieber, and "other signatories here".
Conclusion
You know what. THAT COULD HAVE BEEN BETTER. It could have been NOTHING and been better. But fucking hell, it could have been RESOURCES for people wanting to actually do this. The only actual resource is "fucking random crippling or not bullshit table". They didn't even manage to get a fucking XP or Level conversion table.
FLAILSNAILS certainly IS FAILSNAILS.
