Racial Holy War
 Expect huge amounts of derp and rage, punctuated by /tg/ extracting humor from it. |
Veterans of 1d4chan and /tg/ in general will notice that when we tend to review and, more commonly, openly make fun of shitty RPGs, we still tend to discuss what positive features they have, if any. For example, Ironclaw may be sort of fail, but it works fine once the furries are removed from the setting. Conversely, you have settings which have few directly appreciable features, but are so eminently mockable that one can't help but get a chuckle out of it. Poison'd and references to Esophagus-fucking may be a great example of this phenomenon, though the ur-example remains FATAL, which for all of its hideously broken design, is a fucking singularity of humor that allows for borderline-infinite mockery. Anal Circumference alone has led to countless lulz on /tg/ and beyond.
And then you have Racial Holy War, also known as RaHoWa, which has none of these redeeming features.
It is below contempt, even if you're not racially/ethnically sensitive or even disapprove of racism altogether. It is not an RPG you can really make fun of for laughs because it's complete idiocy, everything about it is just devoid of humor. It somehow manages to out-do FATAL as being the worst RPG made, because whilst FATAL may be completely defunct mechanically, FATAL at least can, like a shitty movie being MST3Ked, get a laugh out of someone for being that broken and having ideas that stupid. Out-doing FATAL in badness is an achievement in and of itself, but RaHoWa takes it to the nth degree.
Putting it simply: RaHoWa is a White Supremacist RPG, an RPG that is made by - and for - the sort of people who cherry-picked the worst of Hitler's short-lived ideals (apparently forgetting that Hitler eventually retconned his early racism during his escapades in WW2) and still biting into the whole concept of: "Whites are the best because we're white and our god told us we are.". It is a ridiculous attempt to lionize this belief as a form of propaganda - in RPG format, of course fuck that, even bad propaganda can gather a guffaw or two. Its concept and setting are beyond /tg/'s ability to make ostensible humour via mockery. It is broken ruleset-wise - because of course it is - however, the fact that it adds a dimension of glorifying a mindset that is all too happy to grab progress by its proverbial ankles and drag it, screaming, to the Lovecraftian depths is what pushes it over the pale, as the mindset it espouses has led to countless atrocities and horrors.
Seriously, FATAL is infinitely less cringe-worthy than this shit. At least FATAL has humor in its shock value, and is meme-worthy. RaHoWa has none of that. It's almost too pathetic to hate, and too disgusting to pity.
Premise
The synopsis of RaHoWa is that in the not-so-distant future, the world is on the edge of collapse, and it's all the doing of the evil non-white races and their insidious Jewish masterminds, having reduced the superior white race to a downtrodden minority. Fortunately for the world (but not for our sanity) a team of brave White Warriors (read: The Players) emerges in the hopes of "cleansing the world of all the vermin" (yes, this is an actual quote from the game).
Throw in such great missions as "destroying a drug cartel run by awful latrinos," and you have a strong case for this being the only RPG in history that makes FATAL look slightly better by comparison. Yes, folks, the bar has once again been lowered with the force of a tactical nuke. Thanks a fucking bunch, Reverend Molyneux.
Mechanics
When you open with a premise of blind racial genocide on the premise of "muh racial superiority", the only direction you have to go is straight down, unless your game is saved by a relatively decent ruleset that can still be fun to use in some way, making it infamously memorable. Unfortunately for RaHoWa and fortunately for us; RaHoWa fails just as much as an actual RPG. In fact, just classifying it as an RPG is a grave blasphemy to the legacy of the genre in general.
Character creation is a relatively boring affair, with a similar points-based attribute system to most RPGs- the problem is that what these attributes actually do is only mentioned in passing, if at all. From there, you choose a class and the skills of your choice, which include Clothesmaking (suggested uses for it include making swastika shirts), Video games, and Holy Books of Creativity (the latter of which involves "the study and enlightenment of the greatest books ever written- Nature’s Eternal Religion and The White Man’s Bible", which somehow manage to heal the White Warriors by "soothing and inspiring them". You can even heal yourself by giving yourself a speech!).
For the combat part; you only have 3 generic weapons: a handgun, assault rifle, and shotgun. From here, you can pretty much see how downhill things go for combat: weapon selection is so god damn basic that there's no fun to be had in variety. But all this is nothing compared to the biggest problem of all that pretty much breaks the game in half- weapons themselves have no rules or stats, hell, there's not even a rule that explains how to calculate a player's base accuracy. This makes it essentially unplayable as there is no way to tell whether or not your attacks hit an enemy, not to mention that because guns have no stats; you can only assume that your weapons are actually imaginary guns that you attempt to materialize by making gunshot sounds with your mouth and positioning your hands like you're holding a gun, which would explain more how you're unable to hit anything at all.
Although the mental image of the last hope of the "White Empire" being completely incapable of fighting even the weakest enemies is certainly hilarious, it also makes it abundantly clear that the writers simply didn't care enough to even check if their game was complete before printing it out. One wonders if the authors involved with the creation of this game even played a single RPG before trying to make their own.
Enemies
As one last bit of flaming stupidity, the game takes unnecessary pleasure in categorizing enemy NPCs into ethnic stereotypes, each with their own special attack. It isn't even good if taken as a joke; it is completely devoid of any comedic material for even the most ethnically offensive comedian to use. It also makes whites the weakest race in the game since they are the only ones that don't get a special attack, demolishing its own claims about whites being superior.
- Niggers: "Smelly, stupid creatures" which can reduce PCs' accuracy via their body odor. Also an accurate description of the game's creators.
- Latrinos: "Lazy and criminal vermin" (gee, that sounds familiar) with the ability to strike first in combat. (Because they sneak across the border so much, get it? So funny I forgot to laugh.) (Hey, I thought they were lazy. Shouldn't they attack last? These fucks can't keep their own propaganda straight for a full sentence.) Also, yes, the book consistently calls them "Latrinos", because poop jokes fit so nicely with the established motif. Stay classy, Molyneaux.
- Sand Niggers: "Scumbags" that have "declared the White Race as one of their many enemies in their 'Jihad' or holy war" (ironic given that "holy war" is in the fucking title) which can try to blow themselves up to attack. And no, the explosions are not statted out because of course they fucking aren't.
- Gooks: "Timid, annoying, slanty-eyed pieces of excrement that so desperately wish they were White" which can gain extra attacks in hand-to-hand combat from watching "fake martial arts movies", which makes you wonder how they would gain extra attacks if the movies are fake. (The only piece of excrement here is the one you're reading about.)
- Kikes: "The worst and most evil parasites that the world has ever seen" who can bribe the PCs with jewgold to skip their turn, courtesy of the power of "brain pollution". (Which, paradoxically, pretty much destroys the premise of the White Warriors as "superior" beings and more of them being hypocritical race traitors who sold their race for money. As we've said previously, these people have the fluff-writing skills that would make the likes of Matt Ward and C.S Goto seem like Dan Abnett in comparison.)
So in Conclusion...
Racial Holy War is a perfect example of something so terribly awful it can't even be used an example of how not to do something. If you desperately want to lose friends, there is no sure faster way then presenting this to them and going on what a great idea you think it is. About the only good thing to come out of it is some horrible jokes that it's about as close as one can get to a Pen-and-Paper version of /pol/, and even that's debatable. While FATAL can at least be delivered to one's roleplay group as some sort of sadistic April Fools joke, Racial Holy War truly has no redeemable qualities whatsoever. Its only function is to remain hidden somewhere in the Bermuda Triangle: its unfunny racial stereotypes, broken mechanics and incomprehensible fluff accessible only by those too stupid to live.
And I really need to go back (to tumblr)
Creator
Many neckbeards and ca/tg/irls may ask themselves; who the fuck created this mess?
The creator is a lesser-known (thank the Emperor) racist priest, "game" creator and lobotomy recipient known as Reverand Molyneaux. No, not that Molyneaux, as Peter Molyneaux's discarded anal waste is more valuable than the reverand's contributions. His "works", if you can even call it that, consist of RaHoWa, a shitty blog and his pitifully un-entertaining and completely unreadable white supremacy fapfic known as "White Empire", which features a Gary Lu self-insert and Tom-Cruise-in-Top-Gun-ripoff known as "John Granger". I'm sure that the real John Granger, an actual fucking pilot in the US Marine Corps and a half-decent writer, is thrilled to share names with this idiot's literary projection of his tiny dick. The real John Granger knows JK Rowling and doesn't afraid of anything.
If you're noticing that Rev. Molyneaux tends to repeat the same tired plots inserts again and again across various mediums, then congratulations! You're officially smarter than he is.