Review of Fae's Anatomy: A Melodramatic Medical Mystery RPG

By Caleb Stokes

Publisher: Hebanon Games, 2022. As of this review's date, only available via DriveThru RPG in a variety of formats and prices.

The blurb on the back cover says it perfectly: "... a comedic storytelling RPG wrapped around a challenging logic puzzle, recreating the high-stakes melodrama of medical procedurals like Grey's Anatomy..." but in a fantasy setting where modern Western medicine works side by side with an equally effective body of magical medicine.

Trigger warning. If you are distressed by hospital humor, stay far away from this game. Skip this review.

The prime mover of the game is the patient and their illness. Illnesses always have a magical "super-" disorder (such as telekinesis) and a Westernized "-natural" disorder (such as an infection of the duodenum). The combination of the super- and -natural disorders is the illness; in this case, the patient suffers from "telekinetic duodenum." What does that mean? That's for you, the medical professional to explain.

Providers must deduce the illness through the patient's role-play. Providers guess at symptom (is that nausea or abdominal bloat?), run tests to confirm, and apply treatments. When a symptom is treated, another becomes apparent. Each symptom treated narrows the range of possible disorders. When all are identified and treated, the actual illness can be cured.

Testing, treating, even talking to the patient costs providers expertise points. A provider has only one, which would seriously limit things. Expertise is recovered by playing melodramatic scenes. There's a list of these, such as "Love on the wards," or "Dr. Jerk." A provider chooses one from the list, recruits other providers, and a juicy scene is quickly played. All participants in the scene, good, bad, or eavesdropping, recover their expertise point, and the resulting romances, blackmail attempts, selfless sacrifices, and tear-jerking emotions fuel the game.

Meanwhile, the clock is ticking. While the providers deal with their personal dramas, the patient's condition declines. There's a disease progression track that only the patient can see, and it ticks down for every scene the providers play, whether treatment or melodrama. If the track reaches the end before the patient is cured, they die. That's usually not a problem because there are means for dramatic rescues.

Once the patient is completely cured, there is one final scene. The table votes for the Most Valued Player, and that character becomes the star of the closing scene. The MVP even gets to play their personal closing music.

The game is technically GM-less, but that's not entirely true. The patient takes on some of a GM's duties. They have privileged information, they run the disease progression track, and when NPCs are necessary, the patient covers them, too.

The game has a webpage for playing online that can also be handy face to face. The webpage handles character sheets and randomly generates the disease. Patients see the whole thing, including their symptoms, while providers have a tool to rule out selected diagnoses and mark others as likely contenders.

Webpage or no, you'll still need the book. More than half of it is the master concordance of diseases, useful for the patient who might want more detail on a disorder, or for providers to look up entire families of related diseases to help rule out possibilities. The webpage doesn't have this integrated yet, and I expect it will take a while.

The book rewards the reader with snark and sly humor sprinkled throughout, even in the footnotes, which are only in the pdf. Footnotes? There are nearly six-hundred of them. Most of them link to Wikipedia to explain disorders. (You might want to know what an Olgoi-khorkhoi is.)

I've played once so far and had a great time. What made it less than perfect was that it takes a little practice to keep track of all the moving parts, and I missed several in my session.

My players and I agreed that it was a lot of fun, but it's unlikely to hit our table again any time soon. That said, it's an ideal game for convention play where new players would keep it fresh. I'm sure I'd like that.