Dive bars…always with the dive bars…

It’s my basic gaming staple. Bars. Usually divey ones.

Whether it’s D&D (ok, those are “inns” and “taverns”), my futuristic Champions setting, Star Wars, or Call of Cthulhu, I always play the dive bar card. I’m not sure I ever did it with post apocalypse stuff like Gamma World, but if you ever saw Book of Eli with Denzel Washington, then you know those are great places for encounters/fights as well. I know from firsthand experience, because in the 90’s, especially when I was into darts for extended periods, I spent a decent amount of time in them.

It’s my go-to setting, because I can always get characters to spend time there. Often an entire session if I want. Have an interesting guy behind the bar, some mixed-economy patrons (there are always “yuppie” types who like to go slumming at dive bars), some ladies of ill-repute, some informer types, low-level criminals, and you have a nice mix of NPC’s to play with. Have a table or two with some open gambling, and frost the cake with fist-fight betting (cage matches or otherwise) and you got yourself a good time.

Players can chat to a lady of choice, get in on the gambling, or if they are the rugged type get involved in some nice punch-up play for fun and profit. My current group really loves my bar settings, and what was maybe going to be a very brief encounter often turns into the better part of the night.

Case in point: In the last Call of Cthulhu game, the characters needed to go to a lowbrow Hudson Bay dockside bar to find a guy who could lead them to a Ghost Town in the New Jersey Pine Barrens they needed to investigate. So after dealing with an attack from multiple byakhees (they have been stalked by a Chinese Business man since NYE who can summon them with an ancient whistle), they went into the bar for the usual bar fun.

Of course there was some fist fighting going on. It didn’t seem like any characters were going to get involved in it this time, until the young Turkish antique dealer grabbed Wing Kong, the young Chinese cook/martial artist, by the arm and sort of forced him into it. She is a brash young Turk, that girl is. Anyway, in the ring against “Slippery Pete,” Wing, who’s English is not so good, just dodged around confused while the guy threw punches. Wing Kong is the best HTH fighter in the group, and it was refreshing to me that he didn’t want to fight unnecessarily. But Andy’s old business man/’semi-hobo Michael (sort of an aged Clint Eastwood type) got up on the small dais and pushed Wing out of the way to take on Pete himself. After a devastating head butt and a good right hook from Pete, poor Michael was laid flat on the ground (this seems to happen pretty much every game to the poor old guy). Wing did not like that, and he got up to give Pete a thrashing with his five fingers of death (our young female Turk even tried to get a punch in). By the end of the evening, a group of international sailors were buying Wing drinks, and even Slippery Pete, black eyed and bruised, joined the characters at the bar.

I didn’t intend for the group to spend the better part of the game there, but these dive bar encounters just seem to have a mind of their own.

We have almost an hour left of the game, so we did manage to get them to the Pine Barrens, and a little bit of investigation into the presence of some Tcho Tcho people there. More on that, and a Mythos deity, next game.

R.I.P. - ADAM ADAMOWITZ OF FALLOUT 3

What with my love of post apocalypse settings, including game ones such as Gamma World and Metamorphosis Alpha, I had meant to post about my Fallout 3 experiences for a long time. I’m sad that the passing of the concept designer for the game, Adam Adamowitz, has been the catalyst.

I love this game, and am still playing it after several months. My character, Mac, left the safety and comfort (well, except for the occasional Radroach) of Vault 101 to search for his father (voiced by Liam Neeson), and has spent his countless hours in the wasteland exploring, helping people, and building up good karma. His rewards for his being good instead of evil have been many, including a spiffy shanty house in the town of Megaton that he long ago saved from the eventual explosion of the atom bomb worshipped in the town square. Mac continues to adventure, and with my purchase of the add-on Broken Steel hopes to soon bring pure, radiation-free water to the Capitol Wasteland through completing Project Purity.

Adam also worked on the current huge hit, Skyrim.

I did not know much about Adam, but I know I loved his work. He had everything to do with that world, from the raggedy human survivors, to the terrifying super-mutants. This weekend, I’m to play a couple extra hours for Adam.

Playing D&D with Pub Stars

I guess if a fortune teller told me a couple of years ago that I would be running a Dungeons and Dragons session in a busy pub, I would have told her not to listen to those spirits again, because they were full of shit. But there I was, at a Santa Ana British Pub, running a sort of Tegel Manor prequel game for seven players, and drinking pint after pint of delicious Elvish brew (Bass Ale).

Cyclopeatron put this together, and it was an interesting experiment. Basically, we took over a back area, slid some tables together, and I did the 5 hour session while Trent Foster ran at another table nearby. It was a stormy day in Southern California, and I really thought I might face the prospect of this falling through if a lot of players decided not to forge out into the weather. I told my regular player and designated driver Terry, and great trooper, to bring along her Mythos card sets in case I had to go ahead and fold whatever players showed up for me into Trent’s session (who was willing to have up to 12 people play).

But as it turned out, I had a full boat. Seven players including Terry. Wow. I think Trent ended up with a couple players less than I had, which surprised me. I think some kind of word of mouth, somewhere, is getting around about the breezy little OD&D sessions I’ve been doing since last year. It was really gratifying to me to have such a great showing.

At Around 11AM the pub was filled with hollering and shouting soccer hooligans, but before long the TV matches were over and it quieted down a bit. We took our time getting characters set up, I ordered up two pints at a time, and tore into some delicious Cod and Chips when it finally showed up. I had a nice cozy booth type seat to adjudicate from, and it was the perfect amount of players for the space we had. Just enough room for everything and everybody.

The pub manager was a hilarious Manchester lady names Jackie, and her often mean and sarcastic attitude in the morning blended nicely with her more warm and friendly chatting in the afternoon when things quieted down a bit. Personally, I think she had tilted a few herself in the back, which is always a bringer of cheery feelings. One of my players that day was also English, from the London area (there was an old London map in the bathroom that he could see his old neighborhood on), so the combination of the Euro accents, pub atmosphere, and rainy day was super conducive to good gaming feelings. It was all quite perfect. After making sure of taking care of Terry’s Cod lunch and a couple of pints for being my designated driver, the day cost me around 90 bucks, but it was well worth it for a great day out. To me this was more fun than a day at Disneyland or Knott’s. Limey manager Jackie said that for next time she might arrange a buffet and some booze discounts to cut back on costs a little.

As far as the scenario, I did a sort of Tegel Manor prequel, set in a time before that mansion become the most haunted place in the world. I used some of the Tegel personalities from the 100 portraits in the Tegel Manor adventure, and had them still be alive, and a family trying to hold off the encroaching curse of the area.

Later this week I’ll post a bit about that Tegel Manor Prequel session, and also about tomorrows Night Below session, which I think will be quite brutal and very likely the last game of the campaign.

Meanwhile, go to Cylcopeatron’s site to see a couple of photos of the sessions from that day.

The Serious sides of Gamma World/Mutant Future

Today in his “Free Friday” post, James over at Grognardia started a discussion on taking this genre more seriously, pointing out a Jim Ward article at “Wizards of the Cost (spelling mine).”

This hit home for me, as it reminded me of a bit of a conundrum in my recent attempts at doing a Metamorphosis Alpha game (using Mutant Future). We have played around four games or so far, and in the most recent game a couple of weeks ago the party came close to where they are going to exit the level and find out about the world “outside” the fields they know. The next session should be both interesting and exciting as they find out they are on a spaceship, and just how large the universe actually is.

But as far as Grognardia James’ post is concerned, it really struck a chord with me. You see, those first few games came off just so goofy. We had big fun with the powers and disabilities (nobody wanted to be pure human because we had such a gas with the random mutations), and character creation was a hoot. Unfortunately the hilarity did not stop with the wacko mutations.

In Gamma World and Met. Alpha games of my youth, we had some giddy fun, and there were laughs galore in the games. But we always approached it with a certain degree of seriousness. There may be insane powers abounding, but the game is still set in an apocalyptic setting. It is a game of survival even more than D&D, and at least in the case of Gamma World you are adrift in a decaying world full of danger. Now, I actually played in Cyclopeatron’s Gamma World (my first time sitting down as a Gamma World player in around 30 years) one-shot earlier this year, and the game was full of good chuckles. But even though this GW setting was more akin to what you would find on a classic heavy metal album cover (our characters were mutated rock stars of the far far far future), and was almost more high fantasy than any kind of serious science fiction, it managed to find enough of a dramatic tone to balance out the goofiness.

But goofy is just how my first few of these recent games I ran. But before this most recent game I put my finger on the button of what kept certain seriousness from drifting in along with the crazy mutants. And what the problem was comes right down to me. You see, without even thinking about tone, I went into the games laughing more than anybody. And I set the scenes and encounter with a certain comedic tone without even realizing it at first. All the laughing is great, but this isn’t fucking Toon or Paranoia or some other game where laughs are first and foremost. It’s basically Gamma World, and it should be more frightening and chilling than pure guffaws.

So before this last game I decided that the world could be as goofy as hell, or whatever the players wanted out of it. But for me, as GM, I needed to try and not share in the laughs. I had to approach my game setting and the session more or less serious as a heart attack. Instead of describing an encounter with a flock of sheep that turn out to be carnivorous with a big grin on my puss, I need to think in terms of just how scary this could be. A pleasant postcard scene of sheep on a hill, then suddenly this flock is tearing into you like fluffy wolves. Lovecraft could easily present this weird situation in a non-goofy manner, so why can’t I?

The funniest movies are the ones that act like they are not in on the joke. Austin Powers was funniest in the first movie because he wasn’t in on the joke like he seemed to be in the later films. And the funniest Jim Carry movies have everyone in the foreground talking about some serious matter, while in the background Ace Ventura is jumping around with an alligator or whatever clenched on his ass. Or, you can even turn that around a bit. The home invasion and rape scene in A Clockwork Orange has in modern times become sort of a comedic punch line, but at its core it is one of the most frightening scenes in any film ever made. It all depends on approach.

So in the last game I took a more serious stance, and although the players still had a jolly good time with their sicko super powers and crippling disabilities I think there was a bit more respect for the setting, and what I was trying to do with it.

The things that happen in any role-playing game very often elicit laughs and humorous ironies, but sometimes it is best if the GM doesn’t act like he is in on the joke.

Dungeon Wallop among Dark Clouds

So last Saturday was the “Minicon” event in Anaheim, and the earlier part of the day went well. I’m pretty heartened by the fact that I played a con style game session with pretty much strangers and still had a good time. I had at this point in life given up entirely on that, but enjoyed the game and the other players. No, I don’t think hell froze over (but I’m sure I’ll find out if it’s hot or cold down there soon enough).

One thing I didn’t mention in the last post was the fact that I attended this thing with a bit of a dark cloud hanging over my head. As you might have read in this post a few weeks ago, I played in local guy Christian’s 3rd edition game and did not exactly have the kind of experience you want when you sit down at the game table. My post ended up having more teeth than I expected. Although my only real direct criticism for Chris was the presence of a waste of space player that he had as his prime player, I think he was struck by fingers being pointed at the DM by comment makers regarding the situation. In retrospect, I agree with lots of them, and might have more to say on it in the near future.

But the (sad) fact is Christian was not only going to attend the Minicon thing as a player, but also as a GM. Well, within a couple of days of my original post Christian pulled out of the event entirely. The online community is a fairly small one, and the ramifications spread to places like Dragonsfoot and OD&D Discussion forums. Wild. And naturally the only thing you can take from that is he was not going to attend because of me.

So I was showing up to this thing with that hanging over me. I wished Chris had at least tried to talk to me about it, but looking back on it now all I can really think of is what a pussy move it was. We could have been at this thing shaking hands and laughing about it, but now I guess there is no smoothing things over – assuming there ever was anything needed smoothing. So I have some unwanted advice for Chris, but I will save that for another day.

There were also quite a few personalities from Dragonsfoot forums in attendance, but I’m pretty sure none of them were folk that I got into some “spirited” debates with there. Pretty much all of them were cool on me, and a couple went out of their way to come up to me and press flesh before they took off for the evening. One of the DF opinionated souls, Mobad, even sat in for my evening session.

So Cyclopeatron’s Gamma World went great, and afterwards I was in a great mood for running my OD&D session. But would anyone be there to play it? It was almost 7PM, and the gamers were slowly making their way out. Like I said, I did get a chance to briefly talk to some Dragonsfoot folk in attendance who had been in other sessions, including Wheggi and Telecanter. I’m hoping to get the chance to talk to some of these guys more in the future, and also hoping the Minicon can maybe be a twice a year thing rather than one.

So I did indeed have a small contingent of folk there specifically to play my OD&D, and I was very jazzed about that. But about half of my eight players for the evening were drop-ins who were (I think) planning to play in another evening session, but as it turned out mine was the only late shift session. We had the big beautiful room to ourselves! I took advantage of that fact and got my boombox out of the trunk so I could play some Vasen and a few of my video game soundtracks (Chrono Cross and Vagrant Story) during the dungeon wallop.

OK, game recaps are generally boring, so suffice it to say that it turned out to be a very fun session. Everybody was enthusiastic and into their characters, which were a nice mix of all the possible types (no hobbits, sadly). They moved around the 1st level mostly, fighting various low level pests with great humor. I even managed to kill a character, a cleric, in my giant centipede room. The player rolled up another cleric on the spot, and even got much better stats so I don’t think he minded the demise at all. He just continued plugging away with the new guy. Awesome. It all went by so fast, and before we knew it 11 o’clock hit and we had to wrap it up. I made sure everybody got my email in case we had a chance in the future to continue with as many of the players as possible. At least a couple are interested in me doing a session in or around the Socal Smackdown convention Labor Day weekend. That will be great if we can work it out.

So I think the big thing here is that I played with and DM’d for a bunch of strangers, and it was not the shitty experience I have had with that sort of thing in the past. I found that I can have some fun outside my own group, and that is a good thing. Heartwarming, really. Like that a-hole the Grinch’s heart growing all big.

One thing I want to mention is that around 9PM there were huge explosions outside nearby, and I almost freaked. Then I realized we were practically next door to Disneyland, and the fireworks show was going on. I cannot believe that I was so into the gaming that I had long forgotten that Disneyland, a place I loved so much as a kid, was right there. Pretty cool.

Mutants of Metal!

This last Saturday was the Socal “Minicon” game day. I was actually scheduled to play in a morning game and an afternoon session, and also to do a dungeon crawl session of OD&D in the evening.

As it was almost an hour’s drive to Orange County, I eventually decided not to play two sessions then have to run my own game all worn out, so I decided to show up for Cyclopeatron’s afternoon Gamma World game as the one session I would play in.

As any regular reader can probably tell, I don’t do much playing outside of my own group (although these experiences tend to make for some entertaining posts). I have most often found it to be a disagreeable experience at best. I really just prefer to hand pick my players for a regular group, and if I get the rare itch to sit down as a player, I try to get somebody in my group to run something.

But if I was going to run a game at this event, I decided I needed to also play in somebody else’s session. Bob “Cyclopeatron” seemed like a decent enough guy online, and he had a truly interesting idea for a Gamma World one-shot.

I hit the road around 1PM, and if you are from anywhere in LA you know Saturday afternoon traffic to The OC can be a bummer of a bitch. The I-5 was a big part of the trip, and at one point it turns into three lanes and is just a nightmare. So as you can guess I was running a bit late for the 2PM session.

The area was right around Disneyland, and it tripped me out. I haven’t been to Disneyland in over 20 years, and things in the area had really changed. When I was a young man the area around the park was pretty open, but it had really developed since then. Residences and big hotels and shopping areas – Oh my! I was a bit disoriented by that, but found the location of the Minicon pretty easy once I got away from the big traffic.

The event was being held in a large glass community room near the pool, and it was a great and well lit room for gaming in. There were three tables in the room with upwards of 8 people at each, with a fourth table outside with a game going on. For sure a great turnout! I found Cyclopeatron’s table, introduced myself, and after going back out to get better parked the game was on.

OK, here is the basic premise of the scenario. This Gamma World setting was set in a very far future, in a time when all living things had been so mutated and interbred so much that all things contained human, animal, and plant genes. I had seen this premise in some old sci fi of the 70’s, and found it interesting.

Our characters were a band of heavy metal musicians. In this world, this kind of performer was a respected sort of bard, and travelled the lands bringing rock to the huddled and heavily mutated masses. My character, “Child Eyes,” and another player’s charcter were The Tipton Brothers, and we seemed to be the main force behind the band. We came from a famous rock family. Our mother had recently been killed, our home destroyed, and our family heirloom and relic “The Gibson Guitar” had been stolen.

In our travels we found a flyer for another band, “Zygotus,” who featured the Gibson in their photo. We had found our guitar, and we needed to go to the local town of dogmen to await Zygotus’ arrival for a big concert. There was a lot of arguing with the local town guards, because we didn’t want to leave our weapons (swords, axes, exploding ninja stars, flamethrowers, etc.) at the door. They seemed to have the ability to scan us for powers and weapons, so we didn’t have much choice. We spent a lot of time at this, and quite frankly I was worried that we would ever be able to finish up this game in the one sitting we had for it. My boy Child Eyes Tipton wanted to confront the band right there on stage at concert night. That would eventually happen, but there seemed to be a lot of the typical screwing around with minor things and issues that I don’t think have much place in a 4-hour one time session. In the end though, this wasn’t really a big issue.

We got to confront Zygotus on stage, reveal them for cyborgs and robots, win the hearts of the people, and get our Gibson back. We ended the night and the game with our band (which I don’t think we ever named but I was referring to as “Van Tipton”) bringing true flesh and blood rock to the masses.

I know the way I tell the tale might sound lame, but this was actually a really great session. We had a lot of laughs with our weird characters, and all the heavy metal imagery was fun. The only thing missing was actual heavy metal to listen to (I had my boombox in the car, but the room was just kind of crowded with other gaming for tunes to be played). Also, Cyclo is a fairly soft spoken guy, and in a room full of loud gaming it was hard to hear what he was saying sometimes. But he had a strong grip on his scenario, and things moved along pretty well despite a lot of piddling around by our characters.

Cyclopeatron got applause from us at the end of the game, something I cannot really recall from any game I have played in. My own damn regulars certainly don’t throw a clap my way, and I give them my heart and soul.

Anyway, congrats to Cyclopeatron (real name “Bob”) for a great showpiece game. I think he really needs to put together a scenario pack featuring themes and situations from this session (using Mutant Future of course) and make it available (to sell or otherwise) to the old school retro clone community. I think he might have a Carcosa level hit on his hands.

OK, that was my session as a player. For the night shift I ran my OD&D game, and I’ll follow up on that in my next post later this week.

Emirikol the Chaotic and Trampier the Mysterious

I always loved the artwork in the Players Handbook, Monster Manual, and DM Guide back in the day, but the artists themselves were never much on my mind. It wasn’t until my involvement in the blogging community that I started reading about them in places like Grognordia and finding new appreciation for them.

I was looking through the Players Handbook and DM Guide the other day prepping for the next game, and had to stop and gaze on the rendering of the mysterious Emirikol The Chaotic. This page always intrigued me since I was a kid. A bearded, not-so-nice looking gent gallops down the street while shooting what is probably a magic missile at a man, while another lies burning on the cobbles outside a tavern. Not only did he look like a cool character, but the street and buildings of the picture themselves were so well done, they forever became how I envisioned the slightly claustrophobic streets of my own main city.

David A. Trampier, who often signed his work as “DAT” or “Tramp,” drew people, monsters, and places in a sort of classical, realistic style, but they still captured the essence of D&D. Often they were the first time iconic monsters in D&D had been depicted. Rakshasa, Catoblepas, the Fire Giant, Werereats, etc. To me, I see his work and say “that is for sure an artist who played the game.” I didn’t know until this week that he was also the creator of “Wormy,” that great cartoon from the old Dragon mags that featured the point of view of a dragon and other denizens of a dungeon, who almost all seemed to have East Coast personalities (an Imp who lives in Wormy’s cave called him “Woimy”).

Not only did he do the most iconic D&D image, that of the Players Handbook idol cover (and famously used as the title image over at Grognardia), but he also did a ton of the best images from Gamma World. He touched so many things in gaming, and his visuals determined how I pictured things in game terms in many ways.

What really blew me away when I researched Trampier a bit this week was that he quit his D&D artwork, and also his work on Wormy in the middle of a storyline, and went off to be a cab driver in a small Illinois town. He was actually still getting checks for his work, but they were returned to TSR and they just assumed he had died. Can you imagine? His photo eventually showed up in 2002 in a local university newspaper, and many of his fans recognized his name and even tried to contact him. He apparently rejected the attention from fans, and politely asked them not to write or call him. Wow.

His work was so good, and Wormy so popular and it is hard to envision somebody just stopping. I’m sure the money was not huge (with tips a cabby could probably make more money than niche artists in the early 80’s), but there had to be other reasons he was “done with the game.” Did he really dislike the people he had to deal with in the business? Did the dorky fans scare him off? He could probably drive a cab and do his art, unless he is one of those poor souls who really go for the cab money and work 15 hour shifts 7 days a week.

D.A.T. has full old school cred and would no doubt get some real props if he were to pop up as an interview on Grognardia or something, but given his history, it seems he is destined to go down as yet another mysterious figure in a field that is full of them.

Mutant Future on the Starship Warden Game 1

Last month I posted here and here about my desire to do a little Mutant Future/Metamorphosis Alpha with my regular AD&D group. I finally got to have a little session last night.

Only three of the regular players could make it, which is kind of the point. I want to do MF when we don't have enough players for our regular D&D. I had already sat down weeks ago with Andy and Paul to do up characters. Paul rolled up a walking, thinking Tree man (although he opted to have him be non-speaking. With Paul being a bit quiet and mousy, that is actually perfect) with 3d6 acid sap, shrieking ability, and a glandular problem that has him growing 10 times faster than a regular tree. Andy did up a sort of hillbilly mutant, with teleport, disintegrate, and the crippling slow movement drawback. He didn't look like a mutant, but Andy did decide he would look a little bit like he has Down's Syndrome.

So with Dan there the other night, he did up a mutant animal. I made the mistake of allowing him to decide the animal after the mutation rolls, and I think that was a mistake. It lead to him spending around a half hour brainstorming on what animal it should be. Anyway, he got quickness, poor eyesight, telekinesis, and dwarfism. He went with a humanoid bear that was 4' tall, and I also gave him a D6 bite and heightened sense of smell to make up a bit for the bad eyesight.

I had diverse groups of pure strain humans set-up, but nobody ran one. Ah well. The mutants are more fun anyway. Andy and Paul's mutants already knew each other. They decided that out in the woods Andy bumped into the living tree, got surprised, and discovered his disintegrate power by zapping part of the tree off. Both hung out for the next couple of weeks recovering there in the woods, with Andy teaching the tree to understand the language. Andy decided to carry the dead arm off the tree as a staff for combat.

On the road the met Dan's dwarfy bearoid, and they encountered a wagon of the "Undine Brotherhood." This monastic order travelled around giving fresh, guaranteed unradiated water to pure strain humans and mutants alike "All may drink of pure water, even the unclean." The brotherhood also brew up strong tea for minor donations.

Suddenly from the brush a young pure strain human appeared. Wearing cloak and toga, he was obviously from the human town of Nova Roma. He was bloody and wounded. It turns out that he is the son of a senator in Roma, who preferred traveling around sketching things over the political intrigues of his people. So while on a few day outing, he and his bodyguard were attacked by a green, spikey mutant and his small band of "Thuggos." The Thuggos take up a sort of orcish slot on the valley level. Generally without powers, they tend to have distorted or misplaced facial features and limbs. The mutants had killed his bodyguard, and left Nero for dead in a ditch.

So 16 year-old Nero Pullo asks them to help him get his sketchbook bag, his family ring, and decorative dagger from the mutants, and in exchange they could keep the majority of his money, his retainers sword and spear, and anything the bandits may have. With steel weapons in short supply and very valuable, our heroes were chomping at the bit for real weapons instead of their sharpened sticks and fish bone daggers.

The party assaulted the bandit cave, using some decent strategy. They lured them out so the bearoid could drop heavy rocks on them from above, while the rest attacked with their weapons. It is especially fun when the tree gets a heavy wound, and 3D6 of acid goes spraying all over his attacker. Also, when he is damaged he lets loose his 2D6 shriek that damages everying in the immediate area. One freaky, scary tree, dude. Anyway, all the Thuggos were killed, but the party parlayed with the Spike Guy, who was fairly intelligent and managed to talk his way out of fighting them. With the party scooping up the nice treasure, we ended it there.

That battle was pretty much the last hour of the evening. The first hour was Dan's character set-up, then the second hour me giving more information on the world they live in. I described that the weather had been weird the last year, with heatwaves, snowstorms, and 3 day-long eclipses (no moon, stars, nothing). That all represents the slow failing of the ship systems, and why crew members ares starting to be unthawed in other decks the last several months.

So far the players have not voiced anything to make me believe they suspect they are on a starship or something. Most of them have D&D experience, but it is becoming apparent that they don't really know Metamorphosis Alpha. Because they have their own copies of Mutant Future, they keep bringing up androids and technology. But I'm quick to say that this is more or less D&D with mutants, and to not worry about techno stuff. That may be throwing them off and keeping them guessing. I should probably make a reveal before too long, before somebody shows up at a game talking about Met. Alpha!

As this is an alternative to my AD&D campaign, who knows if we'll play it soon, but at least I got the first game in, and I think the guys had fun with it.

A little boardgame called Rivets

As a teen I played most of the microgames put out by Metagaming in the late 70’s. Chitin, Ogre, and of course Melee and Wizard.

These games were touted as being playable during a school lunch break and damned if they weren’t right. I was by no means a great rules interpreter (those skills would not be hard-forged until I started running Champions in the 80’s), but these microgames were so easy. The rules were aimed towards fast and furious action. You moved your little chits on the hex map, and you attacked, either with a weapon or missile of some kind. There you had it.

I played Rivets, Ogre, and Chitin religiously, but Rivets got the most play of all.

Rather than turn me off, the slightly cartoony robots of the Rivets were strangely appealing to me. In some weird way I thought of little robot tanks with big eyes as being kind of scary.

Armed with various guns and the occasional melee weapon (I think it was the Bopper class tank that featured a huge can-opener as a weapon, along with its freaky robotic war cry of “Pop-A-Top!”) the little mini-tanks scooted around the post apocalyptic landscape, fighting and scavenging for their respective factory CPU.

Besides some fun little game sessions, Rivets also made it’s way into a couple of my campaigns of the 80’s. In my first homebrew game, based on The Road Warrior, I had players dealing with the robots from Rivets as fellow scavengers on the field. As long as you didn’t attack them, or pick up choice pieces of salvage, they would leave you alone. I also used them in a much more violent encounter in an early Gamma World game, which eventually saw the characters having to assault the Robot Factory CPU.

I may actually have my old copy of Rivets somewhere deep in one of my game boxes, but I really only thought of the game again this last weekend as I was coming up with encounters for my Mutant Future campaign I have planned. I thought that it would be a hell of a shame not to feature the little metal scavengers as warriors in one of those upcoming games.

And I may just have to throw that monster tank for Ogre at theme at some point as well…