Dig this

I've been remiss in not reporting this item sooner.  Starships & Spacemen second edition is a project from Goblinoid Games that takes a musty old sci-fi rpg and updates it to full compatibility with Labyrinth Lord and Mutant Future.

In case you're new here: Labyrinth Lord is the retroclone closest to Basic/Expert D&D and if add in the Advanced Edition Companion it also emulates they way AD&D played when I was a stupid kid who didn't know you "couldn't" mix AD&D and BX.  Mutant Future is an almost-clone of Gamma World that more compatible with LL than Gamma World was with BX/AD&D.

Adding a full-blown sci-fi option to this scheme is pretty much my definition of rock solid awesomeness.

This project is already fully funded, so if you kick in five buck now you will be getting a PDF of this game.

Inhuman Future

I've been kicking around an idea for my next Mutant Future campaign: humans as an endangered species.  The folks that do all the important stuff in the campaign would be plants, animals and robots.  In some areas of the world humans would be considered mythical while in other places they might be second class citizens or treated as animals like in Planet of the Apes.  Other communities might never have heard of humanity.  The PCs might care about the fate of humanity and the campaign could even be about that, but humans (mutant or otherwise) are not what the milieu itself is about.  The world of 2525 (or whatever) just doesn't give a crap about humanity anymore than the world today cares much about any of a hojillion extinct species.  They're dead and we've moved on.  Later we're dead and they've moved on.

There'd still be morlocks somewhere, of course.

Would this set-up annoy you as a player?  I'd certainly be open to letting folks play PCs who were some sort of the last remnant of humanity, whether that means mutants slumming about radioactive ruins or cryogenically preserved pure strain humans.  But I wonder if this sort of heavy-handedness might make the game ungrokkable to some players, especially the neebie types.

Illo courtesy Dresdan Codak.

Meet my bums.

I wanted to see if I could fit some starting Mutant Future PCs on index cards.  Click on the pics for a bigger view.

I hate buying equipment for starting characters so I rolled on these charts instead.

The Mutation Compilation

I mentioned a week or two back that I use an expanded mutation chart pillaged built from mutation charts found here and there. Some folks were really digging on this concept and asked me to share this uber-chart monstrosity. I'm not sure I feel comfortable doing that, as all I'm doing is ripping off other people's work. But I am willing to share the list. Originally I had 19 charts to choose from, so the players would roll a d20 to find out which chart to use with a 20 indicating a roll again. Three more charts have been added just yesterday, so I guess my d24 is going to get some use soon.

The Mutation Compilation Master Chart (d24)
1 - Mutant Future human/animal physical mutation chart
2 - Mutant Future human/animal mental mutation chart
3 - Mutant Future plant mutation chart
4 - Dyson Logos's Freak Legion based mutations & drawbacks
5 - Survival RPG mutations chart
6 - Encounter Critical Mutation Powers And Defects chart
7 - fanmade Encounter Critical mutations chart (found it in the official yahoo group)
8 - another fanmade EC mutation chart (also in the Files section of the yahoo group)
9 - Rondo's Severely Messed-Up Mutation Chart (yet another fanmade EC chart)
10 - Supplement V: Carcosa mutations chart
11 - "How Green Was My Mutant" charts for Metamorphosis Alpha from Best of Dragon vol I
12 - The random Hordling charts from page 76 of the original Monster Manual II
13 - Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader mutation chart (the original game, not the new one)
14 - Paranoia Mutant Power Table
15 - mutations chart from a draft post-apoc game that I don't think has been published yet
16 - drawbacks charts from the same unpublished game
17 - Mutant Scavengers of the Ruined Earth! (yes, there is a whole RPG hidden in my charts!)
18 - "Why Is This Mutant Smiling?" chart for Gamma World from Dragon #96
19 - "The Double-Helix Connection" mutation chart for Traveller, Dragon #109
20 - Mutation charts from Savage Swords of Athanor
21 - Joesky's Mutations Table
22 - Person Chaos Attributes chart from the WFRP book Realms of Chaos: Slaves to Darkness as updated by SlackRatchet (I just found this the other day but can't find the link right now.)
23-24 - roll again

Note 1: Since mental and physical mutations are all muddled together in this set-up I give Mutant Animals and Mutant Humanoids a flat d6 rolls on this chart. No d4 from here and d4 from there business.

Note 2: I don't keep the rules to all these extra games handy. Hell, I don't even own some of them. When something comes up that isn't obvious or needs hard stats, the player and I just make something up.

Mutant Future, session 8 part deux

So having completed the new bridge connecting the folks in the Slimy Lake region with the city far to the west, the party set off down the ancient blacktop highway in search of the spellbooks of the legendary wizard. Next came a brief visit to the highway rest stop that had been converted to a shrine which the lich recognized as being dedicated to the Great God Elvis. The undead wizard with the hell's angel jacket lined with newly-slaughtered sloth fur refused to allow the rest of the party to the loot the place. Even heartless abominations respect the King.

As the party traveled down the ancient road they naturally inquired about any ancient wrecks to be looted. Initially I informed the players that all the ancient vehicles by the roadside had been left to rust out then burned down, leaving nothing but mounds of rusty ash. But then Carl pointed out they really only needed a cart for their donkeys to pull. The idea of a couple donkeys pulling the rusty bed of an ancient pickup amused me so much I decided to allow it.

Finally, after two half-sessions of delays and shenanigans, the party exited the Slimy Lake area and began exploring the unknown lands to the west. The party didn't know it yet, but they had just taken their first steps into Dave Hargrave's Arduin modules! First stop was the Winged Elf Inn, which is an ancient metal hull ship inexplicably laying upside on a dry plain with a sign depicting a Keebler elf with angel wings. The owners are a grey-haired three-eyed old mutant and his equally ancient but unmutated wife. At least they are in my campaign world, I don't think Hargrave gives many details in the module.

At the Winged Elf they made contact with some spider mutants who 'mine' a landfill to the north. Periodically they bring a cartload of ancient metal to the inn, where they trade it to 'the fat merchant'. The merchant was overdue and the spiders where running out of beer money, so they sold their wagon o' junk to the party. Spunky the Invincible Wonder Weasel found a functional Rubik's Cube among the tin cans and aluminum foil. It was missing most of the little stickers, so her attempts to solve it where all in vain.

Along the road the party ended up fighting a pair of wobras, which are cobras with wings. That Hargrave sure knew how to make a monster. My second attempt of the night to kill Spunky with poison failed, but maybe I'll get her next session. I allow her to abuse the hell out of her mental illusion powers, so I feel I can get away with picking on her just a little bit extra. With the wobras quickly slain, the party resumed its journey, pushing a full 24 hours to get clear of a forest reputedly the lair of a fearsome dragon. The last time a dragon showed up in one my campaigns it killed the entire party in the first round, so they weren't in any hurry to meet another one.

Instead of a dragon, the party met Ortegg the Obese (the fat merchant) on his way to make his delayed appointment with the spider miners. You remember the fat computer guy from the first Blade flick? That's what the merchant kinda looks like, a slightly more humanoid Jabba the Hut. His caravan is 3 wagons, one of which carries only him. The merchant and his three cyborg minions were late for the rendezvous with the spiders because the axle broke on Ortegg's personal transport.

Ortegg and the party negotiated a trade for the junk he was hoping to buy cheap from the arachnid pioneers. He ended up with a jar of wobra poison that Dane had extraced from a dead wobra as well as the junk and the party got an ancient artifact: a working metal detector. After spending a night on the road with Ortegg and his men they also got directions to an ancient tower. That's where we'll pick up the next session.

Mutant Future session 8, part 1

When last we left our genetically impaired heroes they had decided to build a new bridge to replace the one they accidentally blew up. So we started this week's session at the next logical step in the narrative: an attack by hostile mutant tree sloths. The logging team recruited by the party tried to chop down the lair of a family of gamma sloths, only to be treated to radioactive eyebeam attacks. The sloth morale broke early and the encounter was brief, but I was entertained because these infamously slow creatures kept winning the initiative roll. Gamma sloths have a low AC and are immune to radiation, so I announced their fur must be shiny and metallic. Joe latched onto this fact and decided that his lich's biker jacket needed a fur lining. Have I mentioned that my players are rad to the max?

The next little hassle in bridge construction was a wandering monster. Instead of rolling up a critter as is my usual wont, I just opened my copy of Labyrinth Lord to a random page. My eyes immediately fell on the entry for crab spiders. I've always felt that crab spiders should have big crab claws, so I added a couple d6 damage attacks with grab ability. And just for good measure I added some wasp wings, allowing it to swoop down and attempt to carry off Spunky the Invincible Wonder Weasel. Also, I arbitrarily gave the spider 9 more hit dice than are in the book. Sometimes I'm a dick that way. Spunky ended up finishing the fight trapped in a spider claw, repeatedly bashing the thing in the face with her sledgehammer.

The last major hurdle in building the new bridge was the Sludge River itself. Periodically slimes, oozes, jellies and puddies float down the river and at least some of them would readily eat the the logs. I thought the PCs would travel upriver to locate and shut down the source of the pollution, but instead they covered the logs with pitch. Although I had this neat side jaunt in mind, I decided that I liked this idea. They got to have their bridge and I got to keep sending oozes down the hexmap. Win-win.

At the grand opening of the bridge I assigned a flat 1 in 6 chance that their would be a catastrophic design flaw, but the structure held firm. The nearby fishing village feted the party for re-opening the old trade route to the city far to the west and I awarded the PCs 200xp each for doing their part to make the world a little more civilized. The next day the party set out on their quest: to find the wizard's tower to the west. Actually, I'm not sure they really want to find the wizard. The lich just wants the dude's spell books.

Well, my daughter is begging me to come watch Futurama with her, so the second half of this recap will have to wait. I can hardly say no to that! Stay awesome, everybody.

like this, but with more filth

I wanted to share this pic I found yesterday. Crusty Island, the ruined city in my Mutant Future game, is a lot like this except that the water is polluted with some industrial sludge that builds up on top of the water. To get from building to building the PCs walk over the hardened, dried upper surface of the sludge.

We had to destroy the bridge to save it.

Last night's Mutant Future session was a blast. We started out with a completely arbitrary attack by a Shark With A Friggin' Laser Beam Attached To Its Forehead. The party was in a small fishing boat, so I imagined all sorts of delightful nightmare scenarios based upon the climactic battle in Jaws, but with laser beams. But alas, the party shot my pet dead before it could capsize, eat, or zap the boat. So instead of the intended aquatic mayhem the party ended up have lasershark steaks for second breakfast.

The evening's expedition to the ruins of Crusty Island was pretty successful. They looted an ancient vending machine of soda pops and snack foods, as well as the intact plexiglass sheet between them and the tasty treats. The soda had been flat for centuries, but how would they know it was carbonated to begin with? And Lumpy the Junk Merchant pays top dollar for precursor delicacies like that.

The second floor of the building featured a ceiling full of creepy-crawly mutant centipedes slinking along the ceiling. Spunky the Invincible Wonder Weasel succumb to centipede poison when one of them leapt onto her face. Wheelz found himself in a similar predicament and Carl eagerly tried to bat away the offending centipede. With his crowbar. Somehow Wheelz survived both the enemy and Carl's friendship. Carl's actually an extremely competent player and it was clear he was feeling a little ornery in that encounter. Carl also helped by firing his plasma pistol at another centipede and rolling so poorly I ruled he had set the place on fire, but that wasn't intentional mayhem. Meanwhile Karus the Lich didn't want to be outdone in the firestarting department, so he got out his can of Lysol and used a firefinger cantrip to turn it into a flamethrower. Good times. I especially liked how the encounter ended with the Wonder Weasel fainting (overcome by poison) and Carl rushing about trying to put out the fire he started.

With a bag full of swag to sell and an out of commission Wonder Weasel, the group decided to head back to their base of operations, the nearby fishing village. While they were going about their business I said to Joe (playing the lich), "You know the neat thing about having a magic-user with a spellbook in the party? Plot hooks are dead easy. You hear a rumour that the western end of the Road to Nowhere leads to the realm once ruled by the greatest wizard of the seventh age." Almost immediately the party begins planning an expedition to the west, confirming my intuition that Crusty Lake was starting to feel a little repetitive.

Having come into a little money, they decide to equip the party with some donkeys to ride and carry gear. Here's where I missed a grand opportunity to say something like "No donkeys for sale around here, but you can get some pack-slugs for cheap." But I did make sure to note the logistical problem facing the PCs: how to get to the western end of the road was a non-trivial problem, given the layout of the Slimy Lake area. Their good buddy Swampy Joe was happy to ferry people to and from Crusty Island each given that the party saved his village from the buggem menace. But Joe fishes near the island. To ferry the group and its donkeys to the west side of the lake would take him away from his fishing.

The party ends up deciding to try to clear the bridge upriver of its well-known spidergoat infestation. This proves to be a lot easier than I thought it would be, as Carl whips out his plasma pistol and lights the webbing on fire from maximum range. A handful of spidergoats attempt to bumrush the party, but further plasma volleys break their morale. As the webbing burns I describe the flames revealing several large lumps of spider silk actually contain the shriveled bodies of past spidergoat victims.

The spidergoats actually had some pretty sweet loot in these corpse cocoons, as when I wrote the encounter I imagined the victims as a party of adventurers. One of these poor sons of bitches was carrying a couple sticks of dynamite, so I made an explodey noise and said "That was the dynamite cooking off. Carl, roll a d6. On a 1-3 the bridge is damaged, with a 1 indicating it's completely destroyed." God bless him, he rolled a 1. That spells doom for the last of spidersilk and rust holding the ancient structure together, and the sky rains flaming fragments of bridge. Beautiful. I ask everyone to throw dice to see if they spot some other loot floating down the river and Wheelz ends up braving the polluted, monster-infested waters to pull out a skeletal arm still clutching a large satchel. In it is 300 poker chips, which is real money in my post apocalyptic world (1 chip = 1 gold piece).

The PCs are undeterred by their bridge blowing up. They decide to build their own across a narrows closer to the fishing village. The tail end of the session involved them scouting the Forest of Eyes for lumber, getting permission from the Mother Psiperior of the Convent of the Violet Flame to harvest the trees for the project (provided they don't touch the Ocu-Oaks), and recruiting a gang of workers. Carl handled most of the negotiations and behind the screen I threw some very favorable reaction rolls for his character. Meanwhile, the Sister sent to monitor the logging is trying to convince Spunky the Invincible Wonder Weasel into becoming a nun.

Mutant Future goes full blown Thundarr

Meet my campaign's newest PC:


I've been running games at the Armored Gopher since January and this whole time I have been eagerly awaiting some player to ask "Can I play X?", where X is not one of the classes/races/whatever in the rulebook. Last night I got my wish. One of the first things I heard as I entered the store was "I wanna play a lich." Joe was apparently ready to set aside his mutant with three brains in favor of something a little different. So he rolls 3d6 six times while I figured out how we would put a lich into the Mutant Future.

I end up offering Joe two options. The first implementation would be a gaunt Mutant Humanoid with half his physical mutations traded in for mental mutations. The mental mutations would be his "magic powers" and he'd effectively be a member of the Pseudo-Undead, like in the 1st edition Monster Manual II. The second possible method would be to start with the Labyrinth Lord version of the Magic-User, starting level set by a 2d4 roll but at 0xp and he would get Mutant Future hit points (a number of d6's equal to his Con). Other Undead abilities such as not needing to breathe would be adjudicated on the fly. I explicitly warned Joe that whether poison would work on this version would be a function of how dickish I was feeling whenever the situation arose.

Joe chose option two, so we now have a full-blown cadaver with a spellbook in the party. While I didn't add anything supernatural to this week's session, the kid gloves are officially off in this campaign. Balrogs wielding lightsabres and robots with magic rune casemods are now on the field of play.

bye, bye Witch

Last night I rewatched the Thundarr the Barbarian episode "Den of the Sleeping Demon" and this clip from the episode "Island of the Body Snatchers". No one in "Sleeping Demon" disputes the villain Judag's theory that a demon can turn you into a wizard and as I recall Circe the Witch doesn't behave much differently than the many wizards in the show.

My concept of the Witch class was probably based solely on a hazy memory of the Sorcerer/Wizard/Witch analysis at Under the Broken Moon, a fan-made Thundarr rpg powered by the Over the Edge system. Upon further consideration the Witch class is redundant with the Wizard in the Labyrinths & Mutants class scheme I outlined yesterday. Summoning, commanding and pacting with demons can be handled as just another weapon in the Wizard's twisted arsenal, alongside Sorcerer-like spells, technological abominations, mutant minions and pet monsters.

Labyrinths & Mutants

I've been kicking around ways to mash up Mutant Future and Labyrinth Lord to better fit a more Thundarr the Barbarian-inspired game. Basically, a science fantasy game with both the familiarity and social commentary available to post-apocalyptic Earth and the magic of straight-up D&D. And more lasers. There's a section in the back of the MF rulebook for such shenanigans but I'm just not digging that particular implementation. I've mentioned before the mutant rules in particular don't really light my jets. But in the past weeks as I have considered the subject of Class holistically (i.e. What classes do I want in my game?) I have come around to the idea of Mutant as a class option. In the end, I think I want a Basic/Expert style approach, with Race as Class and relatively few options. Four humans and three non-humans seems like plenty of classes most days, but I don't have my list quite cut down that short just yet. Here are the classes I've been kicking around so far:

Savage - The baseline fighting class, suitable for Thundarrs, Conans and any uncivilized human who gets by on force of arms. Perhaps not much different from a standard Labyrinth Lord fighter.

Scavenger - The uncivilized human who gets by on stealth and guile. I.e. an alternate thief of some sort.

Techno - A human knowledgeable in ancient tech and science. This class would be reserved for unfrozen people from the Science Age, refugees from Logan's Run style arcologies, time travellers, visitors from advanced extraterrestrial colonies that survived the Fall, etc. Inspired by the Arduin class of the same name, though I'd be more inclined to use the St. Andre version.

Sorcerer - The basic human arcane caster class. I'd like to stick as close to the standard MU as possible, but I also kinda want to ditch spell books for a know it/throw it approach. I think I'd like the default magic-using PCs to be just as illiterate as everyone else in the party.

Wizard - I can't run a Thundarr game without giving the players the option of running one of those awesome mutant techno-wizard guys that Thundarr is always fighting. This class would combine the skills of the techno and sorcerer with the possibility of mutating into something horrible. Mechanics-wise, it would be akin to the Elf class: lots of powers but a painful XP chart to climb.

Witch - An arcane caster who gains additional power by making pacts with extradimensional demons.

Prophet - The cleric class of the setting. Instead of serving a temple and a distant god, these people directly hear their god's voice. Think Joan of Arc in the year 4094 AD. I may drop the ability to affect undead or make Turn Undead into a spell.

Cyborg and/or Robot - Because cyborgs and robots are cool.

Deviant - My version of a mutant class, with name inspired by the Deviants of Marvel Comics. Instead of mutant powers that level up as the character does (the Mutant class in the back of MF) I would go with full-blown MF uberpowers. The catch is that the character starts with very few mutations and continues to mutate in play.

Brute - Because if someone wants to play Ookla the Mok I sure as hell ain't gonna say no. I might borrow the Half-Ogre class from Ruins & Ronin for this one.

That's ten classes, which feels like too long a list to me. I guess the Wizard and Witch could be folded into the Sorcerer as subclasses, bringing the total down to eight.

without further ado

Optional Random Mutant Plant Stock Chart (d100)

01-03) Algae
06-08) Apple Tree
09-11) Avocado
12-14) Banana
15-17) Bamboo
18-20) Bean
21-23) Blueberry Bush
24-26) Cactus
27-29) Cedar
30-32) Coconut Tree
33-35) Corn
36-38) Daisy
39-41) Dandelion
42-44) Fern
45-47) Hemp
48-50) Ivy
51-53) Kelp
54-56) Kudzu
57-59) Moss
60-62) Mushroom
63-65) Oak Tree
66-68) Orchid
69-71) Palm Tree
72-74) Pineapple
75-77) Pine Tree
78-80) Pumpkin
81-83) Rose
84-86) Thistle
87-89) Tomato, Killer
90-92) Tumbleweed
93-95) Venus Flytrap
96-98) Wheeping Willow
99-00) My god! What is that thing?! (Roll again here and once on animal chart, combine results.)

[Can you tell it's getting close to lunchtime for me?]

and now, a random chart

If Mutant Future gets a new edition, I hope it contains something like this:

Optional Random Mutant Animal Stock (d100)

01) Alligator

02) Alpaca

03) Amoeba

04) Ant

05) Anteater

06) Ape

07) Armadillo

08) Bear

09) Beaver

10) Bee

11) Beetle

12) Butterfly

13) Camel

14) Catfish

15) Centipede

16) Chameleon

17) Chicken

18) Chinchilla

19) Cockroach

20) Cow

21) Crab

22) Deer

23) Dinosaur

24) Dodo

25) Dog

26) Dolphin

27) Duck

28) Eagle

29) Earthworm

30) Eel

31) Elephant

32) Ferret

33) Fox

34) Frog

35) Gecko

36) Giraffe

37) Goat

38) Goldfish

39) Goose

40) Hawk

41) Hedgehog

42) Hippopotamus

43) Horse

44) Housecat

45) Hyaena

46) Jaguar

47) Kangaroo

48) Koala

49) Leech

50) Lemur

51) Leopard

52) Lion

53) Llama

54) Lobster

55) Monkey

56) Moose

57) Mosquito

58) Mule

59) Muskrat

60) Octopus

61) Ostrich

62) Otter

63) Panda

64) Parakeet

65) Parrot

66) Penguin

67) Pig

68) Piranha

69) Possum

70) Praying Mantis

71) Pufferfish

72) Rabbit

73) Raccoon

74) Rat

75) Rhino

76) Salamander

77) Seahorse

78) Scorpion

79) Shark

80) Sheep

81) Skunk

82) Sloth

83) Slug

84) Snake

85) Snail

86) Spider

87) Squid

88) Squirrel

89) Tiger

90) Turtle

91) Turkey

92) Unicorn

93) Walrus

94) Weasel

95) Whale

96) Wolf

97) Wolverine

98) Zebra
99-00) An Abomination Unto The Lord (roll twice, combine results)

Kindly Mutant Lords (i.e. GMs) may allow players who roll on this chart to substitute an animal based power for one or more random mutations. For example, a skunk PC might trade in one roll on the mutation charts for the ability to spray funk (the bad kind) on opponents.

Next task: a plant chart.

Mutant Future session #5

Wow! Last night's Mutant Future run turned out to be a real humdinger! You ever had a night where one PC idea or one crazy die roll spins the whole session wildly out of control? It was one of those nights and it was beautiful. A couple days ago I shared with all y'all the map of Slimy Lake. The adventure I proposed last night was an exploration the ruins of Crusty Island, just south of the Fishing Village where the current PCs are based.

A key concept here is that Crusty Island is not a natural island. Most of the ruined pre-apocalyptic city is 30' or more under the surface of Slimy Lake. The tallest buildings poke out of the water and over the centuries fallen vegetation has gotten logjammed between these taller edifices and coated over with the mysterious oozy crud that periodically flows down the Sludge River. Crusty Island is literally a booger-like crust a few feet thick floating on top of the lake but anchored to the taller buildings.

After explaining these facts I threw in the requisite "oh, yeah. rumors of ancient artifacts, yadda, yadda". Dane really latched on to the prospect that vast parts of the city were underwater and asked if the party had access to scuba gear. At first I wanted to outright reject this request. After all, it's a post-apoc setting where flushing toilets are beyond the ken of normal men, I have no maps of the underside prepped, and he was only kidding anyway. But then I thought to myself, what the hell? I gave him a one in a twenty chance.

Whaddyaknow? The little so-and-so made it. Rolled right out in the open and everything. For extra fun I decided that what he actually had access to was a single old fashion diving suit, the kind with the big brass helmet and long hose to the surface. The pump is a manual jobbie, requiring two people to keep the oxygen supply good. Actual scuba gear wouldn't be nearly as amusing.

The PCs get a lift to the island from local fisherman Swampy Joe. After avoiding a huge giant bee lair and dispatching a few wandering giant centipedes, they establish a base camp in a small building. The rest of the night turns into Aquanaut Adventures in the Mutant Future, as the entire session ends up revolving around a series of dives into the flooded levels of the ruined city.
The ruined building next door is venting some sort of poisonous gas, which our heroes discover is bubbling up from the water below. Dane wants to discover the source of these strange orange vapors, so he suits up and heads towards the stairwell leading down. This is when I tell him all about the Mutant Future equipment condition and malfunction rules. I sling some dice, he rolls a save versus poison, and runs back to the group as fast as he can without ever reaching the water. His PC is coughing and hacking, his lungs feel like they're burning, but he'll live.

Dane: Aargh! Why don't people in the future test their equipment before using it?
Me: You're the player. You tell me.

After testing the suit in some non-poisonous water, the group does their best to plug some leaks. Dane suits up and heads back for the poisonous stairs o' death. Once he hits the water a successful Dex check insures that he doesn't slip on the slime-covered surfaces. He makes it down two flights of stairs to the level that seems to be the source of the deadly vapors. He ducks under the bubbles of gas and enters a strange bluelit world. It seems the underside of the Crust is home to a phosphorescent fungus and it's lighting the level through some large holes in the walls as well as the windows. This allows Dane to see some sort of huge wormlike leviathan swim past the outside of the building.

But he doesn't have a lot of time to take this all in or ascertain the source of the lethal orange bubbles, as a four foot long mutant leech attacks him! Piercing right through the suit and into his flesh, the leech starts to drain Dane's vital fluids at an alarming rate as Dane attempts to shoot him with mutant-powered gamma ray blasts. Two rounds into the combat Dane remembers that his plant mutant has Poisonous Sap and asks if the leech should be taking poison damage. I agree that makes sense and start rolling saving throws each round. Eventually the leech succumbs to a combination of gamma radiation and sap. Dane immediately announces that he is firmly holding the dead leech to his wound so as to not break the watertight seal the leech-mouth had on the suit. He slowly walks back up to the surface without further incident. The party dine on roast leech after draining the poison and thoroughly cooking it out.

Man, that encounter was rad to the max.

With Dane badly wounded other players step up to plate and take their chances with the diving suit. After getting the suit repaired in the Fishing Village and testing it, the party returns to the island and Wheelz suits up. He takes a shot at exploring the flooded level immediately below the ruined cubicle farm that's serving as their base camp. He ends up exploring an old dentist's office. Being a backwards future guy, he misidentifies a dental X-ray device for a laser cannon, which then becomes the object of the party's avarice. Somewhere along the way he also snags his suit and starts taking on water. What can I say? If these guys are going to bet their lives on a poorly-maintained centuries-old piece of equipment, I am going to run that plot point into the ground.

On his way out of the office and back up the stairs Wheelz makes a critical discovery. He spots some sort of underwater creature on the level before the bogey spots him. Wheelz does the smart thing and gets the hell out of Dodge, but he does notice that the finny creep down the hall is wearing some sort of belt full of gadgetry. There are intelligent mutants under Crusty Island!

But in their greedy little hearts they still lusted after that laser cannon. So they sold their most prized possessions (a wind-up Barky Dog™ toy and a baseball autographed by the World Series winning Chicago Cubs) to finance the purches of some mining equipment, more rope, a block and tackle, a bigass iron hook, etc. Pure hardcore dungeoneering gear.

They return to the island and try to guess approximately where on the dry level of the building they should dig to directly access the room with the laser cannon. A quick die roll suggests Wheelz does a good job of picking the spot. As they dig they open up a dry crawlspace between the levels, which they promptly strip of cabling and such to sell to the junk merchant. Once they have access to the floor below Carl suits up and is lowered into the dentist's office. He crowbars the X-ray machine and its armature from the wall, ripping out the cables with his sheer manly strength. The device is hoisted up via pulleys and ropes. Back at the junk merchant's they sell the cable from the access level for 25 poker chips and the laser cannon for 150, which I'm pretty sure is more money than they've seen the whole campaign. I started the PCs out dirt poor.

All in all, it was one of the best damn sessions I've played in a long time, owing a lot to player ingenuity and a little bit to my ability to roll with the punches. I had brief notes prepped for over twenty floors of adventure, but all of them were above the water line. So I spent all night ad libbing for dear life. When I got home I slept like the dead.

a place for some adventures

In case you haven't heard, the newest issue of Fight On! is out. Issue #6 has a lot of great stuff in it, but (egomaniac that I am) I'm particularly jazzed about my own Mutant Future contribution, "Welcome to Slimy Lake". It's a teeny sandbox setting for gonzo post-apoc adventuring. Even if you don't play MF, I think the stats are handled lightly enough you could get some play out of it with another system.

Christian de la Rosa did the map for me. The one inside the issue is black-&-white, but check out this color version.

The illos for the article really kick a lot of ass, too.

Get your own copy here.

Mutant Future session #4

Last night five brave souls gathered at the Armored Gopher last night to play some Mutant Future. My three groovy MF regulars, Carl, Dane and Wheelz, were all present. Back from exile working nights is the unstoppably awesome Joe. And joining us for the first time last night was Rialla, the daughter of the owners of the shop. Rialla's been present for many sessions I've run at the Gopher, but until last night she always declined my offer to join us. Now she's Spunky the Invincible Wonder Weasel, a nearly blind mutant animal with mental illusion powers and a musket. And she helped beat up the Buggems.

The Buggem Lair is one of the mini-adventures in the awesome first edition Gamma World module Legion of Gold. Because it's not for D&D, I think Legion is often overlooked as a classic in the field of sandboxy adventure. But last night I drilled down on the chapter with the big bug monster lair for some loud, stupid fun.

Here are just a few of the highlights of the night:

• The Buggems were defeated not by ubermutations or high-tech weaponry, but by good ol' fashion player ingenuity. They smoked the bugs out!
• I let all the new characters roll on this table for some crazy extra starting equipment, in addition to these tables I had already been using. Dane ended up with a toilet plunger, which he used to plunge out some insectoid larva that had been implanted in some hapless farmers!
• Joe had the Mutant of the Night. He rolled both the good mutation Dual Cerebellum and the disadvantage Dual Cerebellum (Defective). Basically, he has three brains, one of which is evil. Both Dual Cerebellum entries stress that your extra brain may be located anywhere on your body, so Joe decided he had a spare brain in each buttock. Joe's evil brain had some mental mutations that he wasn't allowed to know about, so much to my delight I had this little chart behind the screen entitled "Joe's Secret Brain". I heartily recommend to all GMs that they have a chart behind their screen just like that; it is pure joy.
• Dane showed up with two sets of Gamescience dice, apparently taking this post to heart. He even had a sharpie to color 'em. I'm also going to go out on a limb and totally take credit for the fact that Armored Gopher suddenly carries Gamescience dice. I have no evidence that I had anything to do with this development, but as a member of the Blogger's Guild I'm required to assume I'm 1200% more relevant than I really am.

No PC's died and the party scored some high tech guns, so I call that a very successful Mutant Future outing. Next time I need to show up with a proper MF screen, more blank character sheets (we've exhausted my initial supply due to PC mortality!), and more mutation charts. That last item is a result of too many mutations making multiple appearances for the group's tastes. So I'm putting together a compilation of every random mutation chart I've got handy.

Mutant Future session #3

Last night Carl, Dane and Wheelz all started new characters, since at the end of the previous session the entire party was blow'd up by an android with a grenade launcher. I don’t have the charsheets in front of me as I type this, but Wheelz made a mutant humanoid named Zat who was blind yet possessed the ability to manipulate light waves. Carl played Fruity, a mutant tree with oranges that were actually grenades he could lob. And Dane played Pungent Shamblestump, a plant with both good and bad pheromones (one scent tended to incite people to violence towards him, the other acted as a sort of charm person ability). Pungent also possesses a form of mutational lycanthropy, allowing him to transform into a giant two-headed ant with a poison stinger.

We were joined by Gameblog reader Infamous Jum, who drove all the way from Valparaiso for some mutant mayhem. So of course he was the first and only casualty of the evening. His first PC was a mutant humanoid named Jonagar Throgus, who possessed psionic flight and a Black Canary style sonic scream attack. I thought Jonagar was going to buy the farm when he flew up to the giant mutant spider in the first encounter. The spider promptly entangled him in webbing and drew the poor guy towards his poisonous maw. Fortunately, Fruity’s citrus grenades killed the spider slightly more than it killed Jonagar. Later the J-man volunteered to scout out a strange haziness in the air ahead of the party. It was a rad zone. He died. Death comes that easily in the irradiated doomscape of Mutant Future.

Jum’s replacement PC is Thorny Bill, a giant walking rose with a scary face painted on one of his petals. Jum wanted non-plants to have a reference point for communication purposes, but he didn’t want them to assume that such communications would be pleasant. Brilliant.

So the theme of the evening’s adventure was a continuation of the previous two sessions: the water merchants have stopped coming to the village of Esperanza and the PCs must do something about it. Since the party sent to explore the settlement on Poison River never returned, it was decided that another group should cross the Crunchy Desert in search of the water merchants’ home base. Play began on the far side of the desert, the PCs canteens empty and food supplies almost exhausted. The first pond they found was next to the home of the spider mentioned above. I was a little surprised that no one checked out the webbed up tree for treasure. They would have found the egg sac and a shoebox containing some Reagan pennies (i.e. copper pieces).

Speaking of coins, the village elders had given the party a supply of cash for purchasing water to bring back. At first I described the hundred bucks as lumpy gold coins. Lumpy because I imagined either they were partially melted or had been poorly cast. Dane didn’t seem to dig on carrying a bag of gold, so I told the group I had considered an alternate currency for the campaign world: poker chips. They immediately caught on to the idea of ancient plastic discs of no particular value becoming the standard coin of the mangled present. So instead of the gold standard the campaign setting now uses the chip. And not those fancy pants ones you get at casinos, either. We’re talking about the cheap kind that people have been using in home games since before poker went legit.

The party eventually arrived at a small town on a lake. Their attempts to set up a mutant crustacean as a water merchant were foiled by the guys family patriarch nixing the idea. The lobstercrab people are simple grain farmers and any new idea is a bad idea to their elders. When playing the dude I tried real hard not to fall into my very bad Zoidberg impression, but it wasn’t easy. I’ve gotten a lot of opportunity to work on Futurama voices lately as my daughter has been populating much of her imaginary play with the characters from that show. She Mary Sues herself into the captaincy of the Planetary Express ship, with Leela getting a demotion to first mate. (Professor: Good news, everyone! I’ve hired a seven year old girl with no prior experience as the new captain! Leela: That time the autopilot was put in charge of the ship was humiliating enough, but this completely wangs chung! Zoidberg: I hear little girls often have candy. Does the nice captain have anything to share with her good friend Zoidberg? Etc.)

Anyhoo, the group decided that setting themselves up as the water merchants was the most sensible thing to do. But they needed more cash than the 100 chips they had on hand, so they went looking for work. Not honest work mind you, but adventurer’s work. Eventually they discovered that a band of pig-mutant bandits were holding some prominent townsfolk for ransom. A reward had been posted of 50 chips each for the returned citizens, while the heads of the king and queen of the pigs were worth 250 chips each.

Finding the secret hideout of the pig people involved a minor brush with a radiation zone and an opportunity to annoy some very deadly robots that they took a pass on. Thanks to clever planning and some favorable dice rolls Pungent used his charm person aroma to drive the pigs into a frenzy. As I put it last night “You are the Beetles and they’re willing to kill each other to be the first to get an autograph.” The leftovers were mopped up with various PC weapons and mutations, including Thorny Bill using a heat ray to literally fry some bacon.

What won’t a PC eat? Always an interesting question. Sure, when you’re on the tenth level of a dungeon and the rations have run out, killing and eating giant rats is perfectly acceptable. How about a giant spider? Or howzabout a giant spider with human eyes? Last night’s group didn’t hesitate to consume the latter. And intelligent, bipedal pigs were just another source of tasty ham treats to this group.

So the session ended with the PCs back at town. They collected their rewards and used some of the pig people’s food stocks to throw a party. Everyone made level two. As the session was breaking up they considered retiring to live a longer, more peaceful life as water merchants and farmers. I’m seriously considering setting next session a whole generation later, when the economics of the situation no longer support Esperanza buying its extra water from across the growing desert.

One final note: I’m enjoying all the crazy mutations and weird creatures and super tech, but I’m starting to miss the wizards and stuff. Trying relatively straight (if gonzo) post-apocalyptic in this campaign (and my magic-free Encounter Critical post-apoc game last February) has really driven home for me that the Kitchen Sink Coalition of Arduin/Synnibarr/Rifts/Encounter Critical is definitely where I want to be. Whether that means combining Labyrinth Lord and Mutant Future, or finally launching a full-blown campaign in a native kitchen sink system (EC or Rifts or Lords of Creation), or simply chrome plating some variety of D&D, I dunno.

here, have some bullet points

• Howdy, folks! I haven't been on the internets much for almost a week now and when I have it's been to access Google documents. Since misplacing a flash drive for a few days I've decided to switch to a non-localized set-up for my word processing. I've been trying to put the last finishing touches on the Mutant Future sandbox article for the next issue of Fight On! The deadline for submissions has come and gone, but the editor is kindly allowing me a little extra time to finish up. This baby will be my single longest contribution to Fight On! to date, but I'm trying real hard not to overdo it. Paul Crabaugh is my role model for what a good game article should look like: no longer than necessary and immediately useful.


• Local Item #1: Speaking of Mutant Future, I started a new MF campaign last week. We'll be playing at the Armored Gopher every other Wednesday; next session is next week. Anybody who wants to come sling post-apocalyptic dice for an evening is welcome. So far we have a badass ubermenschian Pure Human (Wheelz rolled his character in front of me and got a 12 as his lowest stat), an anthropomorphic deer that can see the future and a guy that looks like the Silver Surfer who can disintegrate you with the power of his mind. We played out a slight variation of the sample adventure in the book: rather than outsiders hired to find the lost water shipment, the PCs were locals trying to save their town from drying up. Next session I'm parachuting them onto my sandbox.


• Local Item #2: Some nut came into the Armored Gopher and traded in a bunch of RPG stuff for some Magic cards. If you dig on Palladium products, there was a bigass shelf of the stuff in the used section. I nabbed the always-fun Compendium of Weapons, Armor & Castles and the Rifts Conversion Book. I also got the BECMI D&D supplement Creature Catalog, which is basically the Fiend Folio of non-Advanced D&D though not quite as weird or British. And I talked newly minted DM Dane into getting the unknown nut's Fiend Folio for use in his brand new 2nd edition AD&D campaign. Huzzah!


• In case you haven't heard HackMaster Basic is out, though my copy hasn't quite made it through the distribution system to my local retailer. Reviews can be found here, here, here and here. That last one was written by Mark Hughes, who I'm pretty sure is both smarter and crazier than I am. His anti-AD&D screed is a classic.


• A bunch of new gaming goodness has popped up on the radar while I was away: Mike Davison's Ruins & Ronins in both PDF and print, David 'grubman' Bezio's lastest deal, a neo-retro sci-fi game called X-Plorers, is available in a free playtest edition, and James 'the Comissioner of Gaming' Mishler has a bunch of new PDF stuff from Adventure Games Publishing. I haven't had a chance to check all of this stuff out yet but it's all coming from great people chock full of awesome ideas.


• Lulu sales of the Miscellaneum of Cinder, counting both print and PDF versions, have now surpassed 100 copies. That's literally an order of magnitude greater than I assumed I would sell, so big thanks to everyone who bought a copy!

Random Starting Gear for Mutant Future

Melee Weapon (d12)
1. Crude Spear
2. Rusty Meat Cleaver
3. Rusty Machete
4. Rusty Butcher Knife
5. Ball Peen Hammer
6. Crowbar
7. Baseball Bat (2 in 6 chance Cricket Bat instead)
8. 2x4 with nails in it
9. Hockey Stick cleverly adorned with rusty razor blades
10. Lead Pipe
11. Fondue Fork
12. Broken Beer Bottle

Missile Weapon (d12)
1. None
2. Shortbow, 2d12 arrows
3. Longbow, 2d12 arrows
4. Light Crossbow, 2d12 bolts
5. Sling, d12 stones
6. Slingshot, d12 stones
7. d4+1 Pub Darts
8. Boomerang
9. Black Powder Pistol, ammuniton for 2d12 shots (d10 damage)
10. Black Powder Rifle, ammuniton for 2d12 shots (d12 damage)

11. Bola
12. None

Armor (d12)
1. None
2. Heavy Furs & Hides (Ac 8)
3. Biker Jacket (Ac 8)
4. Leather Armor (Ac 7)
5. Football Pads, 2 in 6 chance w/jersey (Ac 8)
6. Biker Jacket & Miscellaneous Metal Bits (Ac 7)
7. Leather Armor & Miscellaneous Metal Bits (Ac 6)
8. Roadsign Shield (Ac 9)
9. Roadsign Shield plus random armor (roll d6)
10. Ridiculous Agglomeration of Metal Bits (Ac 4, encumbering)
11. Kevlar Vest (Ac 5)
12. None

Still working on miscellaneous equipment.

UPDATE: Changed the armor chart to give a 2 in 12 chance of starting with nothing.

UPDATE 2: Made some changes based upon the comments.

a Mutant Future hazard

Glowclouds are free-floating radiation fields lying close to the ground. Determine the Radiation intensity level with a d10 as normal. Glowclouds of strength 3 or less are invisible to the naked eye. Intensity 4 through 7 glowclouds are dim and can only be seen at night or possibly during overcast daytime conditions. More potent glowclouds can be seen even in the noonday sun.

Glowclouds move with the winds, using a roll of 1d6 on the chart below:

DAILY GLOWCLOUD MOVEMENT

1-3 Glowcloud floats to random adjacent hex

4-5 Glowcloud remains in present wilderness hex

6 Glowcloud dissipates

Glowclouds are generally not so large as to encompass an entire overland wilderness hex. If you enter a hex containing a glowcloud the basic chance of stumbling upon it is only 1 in 6. In open areas the visible ones can be easily avoided unless a high wind is blowing in a unfavorable direction. In rough terrain roll to see if the party is surprised. If they are not surprised they can avoid contact with the glowcloud provided a saving throw versus radiation is successful. Surprise indicates at least one round of exposure, with additional rounds of exposure if the winds are particularly uncooperative.

Dissipated glowclouds lose 2d6 radiation levels. Any remaining radiation becomes a permanent feature of the map and should be noted in the wilderness key.

There are several ways to get glowclouds into your game. If you have something like a Monthly Events chart you can make an entry like “New glowcloud appears on random map edge”. Alternatively, you could place glowclouds on your wilderness wandering monster charts. Another idea would be to place a source of glowclouds on your map, some ancient object that leaks radiation. Periodically it spits out a new glowcloud onto the map, maybe a 1 in 6 chance each month. The region immediately surrounding the source would undoubtedly contain a fair amount of background radiation.