Contents

Fundamental Medicinal Cantrips........................5

What is FAMMM?.....................................................5
The World of FAMMM.............................................7

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How to Use This Book.............................................8
The Oaths...............................................................13
Patients....................................................................19

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Patient’s Responsibilities.......................................19
Game Structure.....................................................23
Vitals......................................................................30
The Fine Art of Malingering.................................38
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Providers.................................................................45
Character Creation................................................46
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Playing a Provider.................................................58
Best Practices.........................................................72
DSMMM DCLXVI.................................................... 74
The Super- and -Natural Disciplines...................76
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How to Use the DSMMM.......................................80

Endnotes...............................................................180
Index......................................................................200
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Symptom Concordance......................................202
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 CHAPTER 1

Fundamental
Medicinal Cantrips

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WHAT IS FAMMM?

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Fae’s Anatomy: A Melodramatic Medical Mystery is a RPG designed to replicate the
stories found in procedural medical dramas like General Hospital, Grey’s Anat-
omy, and House.
The game is designed to preserve the strong structure and clear plotline of a pro-
cedural medical show by presenting players with a challenging diagnostic puzzle.
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The mechanics of solving that puzzle require characters to act out the cheeseball
melodrama the genre was designed to carry.

Medical Drama?
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A typical medical drama is written as a soap opera first and a realistic scenario
second: literally. If you look at drafts of scripts for many shows in this genre, the
sections of dialog meant to establish the characters as doctors usually just say
something like “(MEDICAL STUFF GOES HERE)” or “(PATIENT DIES OF SOME-
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THING).” Meanwhile, the same script has a two-page monologue, complete with
stage direction, explaining why Doctor X hates himself for having an affair with
Nurse Practitioner Y despite the trauma caused by a failing marriage with Hospital
Administrator Z.
Actual medical professionals are hired to add their expertise once the script
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is finished…or sometimes ignored completely. That might explain why diseases

on TV shows appear to be cured exclusively via defibrillator or improperly
performed CPR.

MELOdrama?
The disconnect between drafts lends itself to melodrama: exaggerated, sensational,
and overly emotional acting and situations. “Exaggerated” compared to what? Well,
we’re supposed to believe a professional capable of performing a coronary revascu-
larization might refuse to pass the forceps to the assisting physician because they
aren’t talking since the infamous “baby shower incident.” That genius that got a
4.0 and multiple doctorates at Yale? The writers would like you to believe he did so

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 6 CHapter 1

while in the grips of a life-long ketamine addiction, but without any of those pesky
symptoms that might make it difficult to believe he’s the world’s leading podiatrist.
In the season finale, we learn that the skills required to do a crainoscopy appar-
ently translate to the task of defusing a bomb: the one planted inside the brain of
her LONG-LOST TWIN?!
Melodramatic acting can be a ton of fun! Players get to inhabit hyper-competent
professionals who are, nonetheless, absolute drama queens with dumpster fires for

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personal lives. These are the kinds of folks willing to get into a sexually-charged
screaming match with their polycule over a stranger’s open chest cavity.

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Why Snake-Mustache Man, tho?
The problem with taking a medical soap opera to the RPG table is that most of
us can’t afford to hire an oncologist from John Hopkins to rattle off jargon at our
weekly game night. Even if you have medical personnel at the table, they’re just
going to be roleplaying going back to work. Not much escapism there…
Yet, we can’t entirely sacrifice medical realism on the altar of our histrionic
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antics. The genius of a medical drama’s plot structure is that it’s rigid enough to
carry all manner of ridiculous soap opera storylines without getting bogged down.
Most medical shows revolve around a simple mystery: what does the patient-of-the-
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week have? How do we cure it? That’s a glorious focus for a roleplaying game. It’s as
pure as the time-tested “go in this hole, kill monsters, and take their stuff.”
But simple and elegant as this structure may be, the satisfaction of solving
diagnostic mysteries wanes when the epiphany moment can only be expressed in
vagaries: “Eureka! She doesn’t have (MEDICAL CONDITION A) at all! It’s actually
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(MEDICAL CONDITION B)! We need to administer (DRUG), stat!” What are you sup-
posed to say to fill in the blanks?
Well, this book lets you replace the actual medicine part with a bunch of
made-up, supernatural bullshit.
FAMMM makes being a doctor easy (except for all the crippling character flaws
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and interpersonal turmoil that make it fun to watch). All you have to do is pretend
you know what you’re talking about; I’m doing it right now!

What is a Roleplaying Game?

Better to see it than explain it (Use the QR code to the right).
Suffice to say, if this is your first RPG, thanks!
But there are so many games out there now that do so
many things, better just to learn how to play one-game-at-
a-time than lay down some “Unified Field Theory of RPGs.”
Much like being a medical professional, there’s no real train-
ing or reading involved. Just get in there and start rooting
around for fun.
 Fundamental Medicinal Cantrips 7

Who is This Game For?

If you suffer from any of the following symptoms, ask your doctor if FAMMM is
right for you.

• Compulsion to try that hot new RPG all the cool kids are talking about
• Feelings of irritability and ennui when exposed to traditional dice systems
• Disorientation when in contact the ill-defined goals of story games

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• Loss of executive function at the thought of prepping an extensive RPG scenario
• Nausea triggered by depictions of violence in games
• Allergies to any strain of grim darkness

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• Obsession with one or more procedural medical dramas
• Manic hysteria brought on by acute character immersion

THE WORLD OF FAMMM

FAMMM is a game about super-natural medicine. In the world of FAMMM, all forms
of magic, spirituality, and mysticism are science, and science is just another form of
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wizardry. There is no difference between the two, and there never was. Everything
was always weird and, as a result, never considered weird in the first place.
Every quack treatment and pseudo-science you can think of? It works in FAMMM.
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And it always has. Why would a healer ever use a method that doesn’t work? Money?
Fame? Ignorance? That world sounds like hell! I certainly wouldn’t want to live there.
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Every disease is supernatural in origin, which means everything in heaven and

earth (and hell. And other heaven. And Narnia. etc.) is available for a cure. If a
healer is skilled and dedicated enough, no one ever has to die. And even if they do,
that’s why we have necromancers on staff.
If a character suggests a drug regimen that wouldn’t work in the “real world,”
who is to say if that’s true for someone suffering from blood gnomes? Does malaria
have the same effect on a homunculus? How many angels do fit on the head of a

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pin, and how many CC’s of angelic host do I need to inject to cure lycanthropy if my
wolfman patient weighs 181 kgs fully-transformed?
Hell if I know. You’re the doctor here.

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Does your character know that “CAT scan” stands for Computerized Axial
Tomography and works by spinning the X-ray emitter across the sagittal, coronal,
and axial planes to increase contrast in imaging? Cool! Say that then. It sounds
about as nifty and inscrutable to most people as any Latin gibberish mumbled to
cast a spell.
In FAMMM, you can get the same diagnostic results if, by CAT scan, you mean
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covering the patient in literal cats and summoning the goddess Bast from the fields
of Aaru to translate what they see. Or maybe you learned to speak feline in med
school. Or maybe you are an actual cat, wearing a tiny stethoscope and adorable
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little lab coat.
It’s all good, comrade. Medicine isn’t an exact wizardry.

HOW TO USE THIS BOOK

It might be clear by now that the page numbering of this book is a little odd. There’s
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a reason for that.

The section you’re reading currently details the basic premise of an RPG and
FAMMM in particular. After that, there are chapters explaining the rules for play-
ing each of the character types: Patients (p. 19) and Providers (p. 45). The last sec-
tion has its own numbering scheme and changes the graphic design.
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If you’re referencing any part of this text during gameplay, it’s overwhelmingly
likely to be the last section, the DSMMM-DCLXVI. This is the primary tool players
use to solve the medical mystery at the heart of every session. The list is double-sided

CASE STUDY: The DSMMM In and Out of Character

Dr. Chungus knows the patient is suffering from tapeworms, so he places a bookmark
on the right-side of page IV.A.63 (the -Natural side of the list). However, the group
hasn’t yet pinpointed which supernatural element is present in the disease (the left,
or Super-, side of the list), but they’ve deduced it must be part of the Monstrous Scan-
dinavian family (I.D.13-16). Luckily, Dr. Chungus can consult the left-side version of
those pages (the Super- side) to reference that family’s symptoms and tests.