Mutant Future Campaign done and done

Really, last night I was finally able to admit to my players that we have really been doing Metamorphosis Alpha, just using the Mutant Future rules. The big reveal. OK, they didn’t really know what Met Alpha was. Makes me feel old.

The forest valley is not the entirety of their world, and they finally passed into the between decks areas and eventually to the command deck to meet starship captain and other unfrozen crewmembers, who are striving to save some of the ships failing systems, all the while fighting an ongoing war with androids who have taken over sections of the ship.

The characters learn of the original home known as “Earth,” and that the world they know is a starship that has long since passed it’s intended destination, and now hurtles through space. It was fun role-playing all this, and seeing character reactions.

Actually Andy knew, as he had read many of my blog posts after a mysterious emailer hipped him to my blog, that was formerly only a rumor amongst my players. Well, with the big reveal completed along with this campaign, I was able to go ahead and inform the others about my blog, which they can now read with impunity.

Two secret things, my blog and the Metamorphosis Alpha nature of the Mutant Future sessions, were never that important to keep secret. It’s easy enough to refrain from foreshadowing game events in the posts, and as far as any hard talk about Andy or Dan or any of the others, well, it’s nothing I don’t really say to their face. I think I can continue to be open and honest about my player’s headache inducing foibles without offending anyone. And for the starship nature of the characters world, well, Met Alpha was not designed as a game with keeping the secret. The players knew what they were playing in Met Alpha originally back in the old school heyday of that game, and that fact that only the PC’s were ignorant of the true nature of their world was fairly superfluous. Fun gameplay is fun gameplay no matter how you slice it.

For Posterities sake, here are the characters from this campaign:

Gamo-Ik (Andy): with a hillbilly persona and look inspired by Billy Bob Thornton’s Slingblade character, Gamo has teleport and disintegration powers. He also has Slowness, which makes him take actions every other turn. How did a slow moving humanoid survive the dangers of the valley? Well, he also has Teleport. So he cannot run faster than any of the characters in the party, but his still often appears in front of them when they travel. Slow of body, he is the most intelligent and wise of all the characters, so he is more accepting of the true nature of the world once it is revealed.

Rizgar (Dan): I mutated bear with Quickness, Telekinesis, and Dwarfism mutations. Belligerent and contrary (like most of Dan’s characters).

Will O. (Paul): a mutated tree-man. When travelling with the group, some characters keep a distance from him. See, he gives off a damaging Shriek when damaged to those nearby, and also bleeds out acid sap when he gets damaged. At one point got his hands on a large cell-powered chainsaw that he uses to great affect. One scary tree. Often damages himself in combat to get the Shriek power activated.

Korm (Big Ben): no obvious mutations and looking very much like a normal human, he has Weather Control and combat intuition powers. He also has increased metabolism, so the character is always looking for his next big meal. His use of weather control on the forest valley level over the years may have made the breakdown of ship atmospheric systems occur more quickly than they otherwise would have.

Donald “Don Juan” John Garth (NPC): a ship engineer who got trapped on the forest level over a year ago, he has become a known as a wise travelling shaman to many of the valley people. Let himself be known as “Don Juan” to many as an inside joke to himself – he was a big reader of Carlos Castanada. Eventually led the party out of the valley level and to the command deck at the end of the campaign.

Also, little Ben played in one game as a lizard man from the valley, but actually I forget his name.

Oh, in last night’s final game I got to use classic beasties from The Barrier Peaks D&D module in encounters, including VegyPymies and hostile Android weight trainers in a gym area. Nice.

So there we go, one little campaign wrapped up. We usually played this alternate when Terry could not make a game, so we’ll have to find some other alternates for the future, including White Box OD&D, of course.

Spotlight On My Campaign/Group

Hats off to this interesting post at The Tao of D&D for inspiring me to ask these questions about my group and campaign to myself. It is actually pretty self-enlightening to question yourself like this from time to time.


1. How long has this present campaign been in existence?

The Night Below has been going on for a little over two years. The year before that was leading up to a high level dungeon crawl, but then I bought NB and said “what the heck” and switched gears to an Underdark based campaign.

2. How many players do you have, and how many right now were present at the beginning of the campaign?

Steady full group of the same six for over a year now. Andy (our host), Dan, and Terry (who I have known for over 20 years and played in a lot of my groups of yore) are still with me since day one.

3. How many of your players are family members?

Zero. Nobody in my family has any love for the rolling of the dice (unless it’s in Vegas).

4. How many of your present players began playing after the halfway point in the existence of your campaign? How many in the last year (if that applies)?

Big Ben and Paul started a little over a year ago. Paul is 20 and it was his first table top gaming (after playing a lot of Warcraft and Neverwinter Nights). Little Ben (also known as Ben 2.0, Ben-ny and The Jets, and “Ben Dover”) played a couple of years ago, had to stop for many months for work, then started again a few months ago.

5. How many long-term players (played for more than a third of the campaign) have you had that dropped out? Were any reasons given?

All my guys who played for more than the first three months have stuck with the group.

6. How many short term players have you had since the campaign started who did not come back? How many of them gave a reason?

For that first year I think a total of four temp dudes played for a couple months or so each. Various reasons given such as work, school etc. In all honesty, I’m not sure my freewheeling style and lots of house ruling appealed to them. I was disappointed in a couple of them, because there was a certain amount of investment. “Caleb” is his own story (search his name in my blog if you want to read about that, but not really worth going into at this point), but one of these past guys before he came to the game called me on a Sunday afternoon while I was sunning and sipping beer in the back yard, and proceeded to grill me about the game. It was like an hour long job interview. I should have said “no thanks” at that point, but I kind of wanted more players. He showed for maybe two games. Waste of my time.

I’m more happy with all my current players than I would have been with those other guys anyway. A Couple of them were a bit weird (and not in a good geeky way). I hope they found gaming happiness, and managed to avoid the couple of groups I had terrible experiences in the area outside of my own. These experiences gave me new gratitude for the group and players that I have put together. Honestly, despite past gripes (what, me gripe?) about some of my players, there is not one "Rod-turd" in this punchbowl. I feel very fortunate as a GM to have these people to run for.

7. How many of the players in your world have never played a roleplaying game before?

21 year old Paul was a noob, but played a lot of fantasy video games. He is a natural at it, and has even caused controversy in the games (without being a trouble making douche).

8. Estimate the appearance rate of your players. How often does your campaign run?

Couple times a month. As I want all the long-time major players (Andy, Dan, and Terry - my original varsity team) there for my main campaign, we have often had to wait a month or two to get back to the Night Below. In those times I mostly ran some Metamorphosis Alpha (with Mutant Future), some OD&D, and a little bit of Champions. Terry makes more games than she used to, but still has a tough time scheduling. “I have a life,” she often says, despite the fact that most of us have more of a life than she does (sorry Terry, but “having a life” is not a rare condition, even among gamers).

9. Name the three principle reasons for people not appearing in your campaign.

Vacation, business trips, school, etc.

10. How often is it that players in your campaign do not appear without having given a reason?

Never.

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.

The Painful Character Creation Process

Wednesday night this week I was supposed to run a bit of my Mutant Future campaign, as one of the regulars could not make it for D&D. With regular player Ben doing a session of his D&D this coming weekend, I offered that we should at least do up our stats for his 1st ed. Game so we could have more game time on Saturday. By around 9:00 we were still working on characters, so I offered up that we should just go ahead and finish the characters so we could get right on it this weekend. I was a bit miffed that we put so much time into it that we didn’t actually do any gaming. I mean, I’m giving up a weeknight to run a game, not work on a character. But I originally suggested Ben do some D&D for some of the reasons I gave in this recent post, so I figured I would be supportive of that, and the MF games are just a sort of throwaway when we don’t have the full group. If I was doing my D&D there would have been no other stuff but the game, but I wasn’t so it was OK.

Ben is doing scenarios that are elf-centric. Our only choices for race were elves, half-elves, and human monks. No humans otherwise. I thought this was a bad start, because supposing you don’t like elves, and don’t get the stats for a monk? I know many DM’s like to do things like this, but I never liked doing elf, dwarf, etc. centric games. I like players to be whatever race they want or class they want, so I rarely restrict.

Ben is going by the book 1st ed, a far cry from my methods. When people have asked me if I go fully by the book, I say “as if.” So he let us use any of the methods from the DMG – 4D6 pick best 3 and put where you like: roll each stat on 3D6 in order six times, etc. FYI – my method is 4D6 method, with an elimination roll and possible bit of point switching.

Not everyone had arrived, so I went for it first and did the method that lets you do up 12 characers with the 3D6 method. I got pretty lucky, and ended up with Str. 13, DX 16, Con 16, Int 17, Wis 13, and Chr 13, That was pretty perfect for the half-elf Fighter/MU I was envisioning.

The other guys weren’t all that lucky. Poor Paul, a guy still fairly new to tabletop, decided he would go for the human monk. Nice try, but no stogie. He didn’t near have the stats for monk. I have to admit I could not resist getting in there and saying “aw, give him a break. But no go. Paul would have to settle on a very low wisdom, not that strong nor fast straight fighter full elf.

Andy did good enough to get a Cavalier with the 4D6 method. Daniel arrived a bit late, and he decided on the roll 12 characters method as I did. It took him forever, and it was very painful. Almost all of his stat rolls included a very low number for each possible character. He would have liked a ranger, but it wasn’t happening. Poor Dan, he decided on some kind of cleric/thief or something that he didn’t sound all that happy to pursue, but did anyway.

Long ago in my games I decided that we would do our best to let somebody have a character they wanted. There had to be some decent rolls in order to get a ranger or monk or whatever, and my 4D6 method including an elimination roll would often provide them. Maybe a point or two would have to be moved around. Whatever, as long as I was convinced the player wanted the character for a desire to role-play it, rather than just to be a powerful character, I would do my best. Ben’s strictness reminded me of some bad old game times from the early days, from a character standpoint.

One thing that really chapped my ass was this: In my game Ben is running an MU. When the system shock or die element of using a Haste spell was brought up in my game a couple of weeks ago, Ben vehemently argued against it. I asked him last night about it in his game, and he smilingly said he would be going by the book. As a DM I felt a little manipulated by that in my game, so good old Ben can expect me to lose a little bit of my easy going nature when it comes to his MU and his spells.

Am I too much of a soft touch in my game? Too easy on characters and the character creation process? I don’t tend to have power gamers in my group (for the most part), so it is easy to be more open. If somebody wants a ranger, we will do our best for them to have the stats for it, even if it means moving some points around.

We’ll see how Ben’s game goes Saturday night, but I get a feeling I’m going to be experiencing a lot of things that gave me reason back in the day to start putting in some of my own little rulings.

Taking off the DM hat (at least a little)

I always preferred GM’ing to being a player. From the mid-80’s through the late 90’s, I was the DM/GM 99% of the time and was the guy who would put the gaming group together. The last time I sat down as a player was around 1998 for a couple of times in some local folks GURPS games. I had no experience with GURPS, and there was nothing special about the games to make me a fan. With a GM who had no real talent and seemed to make it all up as he went along (“notes light” is fine, but I don’t trust any GM who doesn’t even have a notebook to refer to during the game), that didn’t last long for me. I re-resigned myself to GM’ing only.

When I put my current group together a couple of years ago, I had no intention of being a player in it. I had just taken around 6 years off from gaming, and I came back to it with a thousand ideas in my head, pent-up in me like sperm cells in a set of blue balls. Although one new player from last year clearly had joined us to try and get us to let him run his games (he wasn’t at his first game an hour before he started inquiring about anybody wanting to play in his 3.0 D&D – what cajones on the dude), my other players have been happy to go player only.

But since getting involved in the online gaming community the other year, I have started to have a little bit of a hankering to sit down as a player (and it’d be nice to sit down – I run our weeknight games standing up the entire time). Not out of a great love of playing a character. Outside of doing the occasional Champions or Call of Cthulhu campaign, my first and greatest love is my AD&D world setting. I started it out at around age 14 towards the end of the 70’s. It has grown and expanded over the decades, and has seen the coming and going of hundreds of player characters. My love and attachment to it has kept my away from various Forgotten Realms and Grewhawks and Blackmoors since day one (well, I did dabble a good bit in the City State of the Invincible Overlord setting around 1981).

But I feel that perhaps not being a player in D&D has made me jaded, and maybe even a bit out of touch. So I have wanted to get a little player time in, and one of our newer players has offered to step up when I feel like having a little break from DM’ing, or when an important player cancels and I don’t want to do one of my alternates. I plan on wrapping up my Night Below campaign (at least the first half of it) by late July, and I may not want to jump right into DM’ing another campaign. So I’ll need a break at some point.

I had planned for a rare weekend session this coming Saturday, but with a crucial player not being able to make it, and me not wanting to do an extra long Mutant Future alternative (we are doing that Wed night this week) I gave Ben the go ahead to get a game ready for us. I think he is pretty excited about it.

Ben started with us around late fall of last year, and he is an excellent player. He knows 1st edition well, and that is a plus. I actually would like to lose a few of my less necessary house rules and go a bit more by the book when I do my next campaign, and Ben wanting to go by the book for his games will give me a chance to re-familiarize myself with rules I haven’t used as-is in decades (if ever).

So I am looking forward to coming up with a player character for the first time in forever, and about blogging about my player experiences rather than just my GM joys n’ headaches. Ben wants to make it elf-centric (he runs a high elf in my game, so he obviously has an elf fixation), so I think I’ll do up a rakish half-elf Fighter/MU.

Beware the Mutant Tree

Last night, during one of several passing storms here in So Cal, I got the chance to run the second Mutant Future/Metamorphosis Alpha session. We had a 4th player this time, and Ben rolled up a mutant human. His mutations mixed in nicely to add to the fun. Besides weather control powers, he also had increased caloric intake, so he was always munching.

In the forest level mutant colony, the party arrived to drink, eat, and shop at the public house/trading post. After the requisite bar fight, a tall middle-aged man in robe and cloak approached the party. In reality, his is Walter Garth, a ship engineer who got trapped on this level a year or two ago and wants to get out to return to other awakened crew members who are working on saving the ship, which is in a steady decline of malfunction. With his robe and broadsword, Garth struck a sort of Gandalf figure. He said he is known as “Don Juan Garth” (I decided that Garth was a fan of the 19th century writer Carlos Castenada) in the valley, and that he is a wandering historian who is seeking to study “places of the ancients.” First stop, a hidden airtight agriculture shed. Garth has an agriculture color band to get in there (but unknown to him he will actually need a command or security band to exit the level, which will be the basis of a quest in the next couple of games).

After dealing with a flock of carnivorous sheep, the party entered the cave and in the back found a strong metal door (duralloy). Garth bypassed it, and inside was well preserved agriculture equipment. In addition to several duralloy shovels and hoes, there was a power tree saw (3D6 damage) and a stone drill (2D6+2), each with an extra power cell. There was also an agriculture robot, which Garth tapped into but didn’t fully activate.

So the players knew they were now in the presence of technology, but their characters were baffled and perplexed. So, these are weapons of the ancients?

Paul’s young mutated tree, “Will O’ Wisp,” claimed the power saw as a weapon, which just seemed like more icing on the cake. “Will” has acid sap which sprays out on whatever damages him, and also has a 2D6 shriek upon being hit. Now toting a heavy damage chainsaw, this is one tree you better not mess with.

Even though they have not realized they are on a spaceship yet, the players have now seen that The Valley indeed has technology in it. In the next game at the west ramp level exit, Garth will verbally communicate with the ships computer, which is a situation likely to give them more clues as to the true nature of their world. I’m looking at game 5 or 6 being when they will leave the level (when Garth gets his hands on a command band) to explore other parts of the ship, so until that reveal it would be cool if the players stay a bit confused until then. I’m not actually counting on hoodwinking the players for several games, but it would just be a nice touch if they didn’t think about it too much.

So far, the only complaint I would have about the game is it’s easy to get silly and start joking around. I’m not sure me or my players are taking it seriously enough. But with all the weird mutations (especially that scary tree) and all the things that can happen in combat, it’s hard not to laugh. I mean, when an enemy takes 13 points of damage from acid tree sap hitting him in the face, while simultaneously taking another 12 points from the tree’s sonic shriek, how can you not bust up laughing?

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.

I hate it when a plan doesn't come together

Had to cancel the Mutant Future 1st game session last night due to somewhat weird circumstances. At the last minute Dan's fiance had a death in the family, Ben 2.0 emailed and said he had a cold at the last minute (yeah, that's usually my top excuse to get out of shit. Gonna call in sick to work tomorrow with a "cold"), and then the nuttiest one. It was going to be just me, Andy, and Paul. Paul is a fairly timid young 20 yr. old, a long time Warcraft player new to tabletop. He showed up, saw that the house seemed quiet, stood outside for 20 minutes, then decided we had totally cancelled and left. This is a guy who had to take a bus to Santa Monica from West Hollywood (bit of a ride), and he went home without even knocking on the door. No call, nothing. Good guy, and up for anything we play, but that was just damn weird.

So no December last game o' the year. Shit. Group of six players and could not get enough for one damn game for year's end. Aw well. See ya in January...

Housin' Mutant Future

In yesterday's post, I outlined the setting and set-up for my Metamorphosis Alpha game using Mutant Future. So here are a few house rules I'm going to use. I want to use the rules as-is as much as possible, but I needed some tweaking to make it fit into how I like to GM things. I have a very difficult time refraining from modifying rules, and it's nice that this game's design makes it easy to add your own ingredients.

First off, I'm leaving out alignment. I just don't want to deal with it in this game, and I personally don't think it fits. I don't think the players will mind.

I want going up in level to mean a bit more. I noticed that some good mutations include drawbacks, so going up in level might alleviate some of that. For example, a mutant human character one of my players rolled up has disintegrate. When used, you get knocked out and go down to 1 hit point. Ouch. But there is hope. I may have the hit points he gets knocked down to be equal to his level, and maybe after 4th level I'll give him a saving throw to go down to only half his points and not get knocked out. A lot of mutations can be level-tweaked like this, and I'm going to wing it as best I can.

Also, I wanted to come up with my own level bonus chart. Here it is.

Experience Level Bonus

D6 Bonus
1-2 +1 hit and damage w/ attack of choice
3 +1 attack per round w/ attack of choice (not usable with powerful mutations)
4-5 +1 to random stat
6 +1 to stat of choice

Obviously, in my game you'll get much less chances to have extra attacks. I just think that getting extra attacks in everything every two or three levels is a bit much.

OK, now this hot potato. I'm including skills. I don't want them to be a big part of the game (just like in my D&D), but I'm just compelled to do so.

Character skills

Pure humans begin with half their intelligence (round up) in skill slots.
Mutant humans begin with half their intelligence (round down) in skill slots.
Mutant plants begin with one-third of their intelligence in slots (round down)

Acting /Performance: stage, musical instrument, puppetry, etc. (mutant must use two slots)
Animal handler: might include stable skills, cattle or sheep husbandry, etc.
Blacksmith: with proper facilities can work with metal, including weapons creation. Can work iron into steel (three slots and unavailable to mutants)
Boating: operate and repair small boating craft in Europa’s rivers and lakes
Farming skills: adept at growing food.
Fishing: +1 to fishing attempts, and ability to create fishing gear from simple materials
Gambling: get a small bonus in most gambling situations (mutants must use two skill slots)
Knowledge: general knowledge of an area/place the characters is not originally from
Riding: character is especially adept (+1) at riding horses or other animals
Simple weapon craft: can create weapons from wood, stone, and bone (no metal work)
Stealth: +1 when trying to move silent or hide
Survival: minor hunting skills and living off the land (usually not applicable to non-mammals)
Tactics: (not usually available to mutants) usable when dealing in combat with 10 or more allies present
Tracking: +1 when tracking things in the wild
Trade/Haggle: usable in trading situations (mutants use two slots)
Transport familiarity: can drive and repair carts and wagons of various sizes
Weapons skill: +1 hit and damage with weapon/attack of choice (all PC’s use two slots for this)


None of these skills are going to have a big affect on play. Even little weapons bonus' won't make that big of a difference. Now, when crew members or characters from other, higher tech society levels come into play, I'll need to rethink skills. But for now, these will do for people of a dark ages level.

That's about it. It looks like only three players are showing up for the game tomorrow, so I'm hoping to wow them with this excellent old school-style game. I hope it's good enough to make the other players wish they had been there!

Mutant Future on the Starship Warden

As I've mentioned in previous posts, my current AD&D 1st ed. group has being going strong for over a year, and I feel it is time to do as I always do with a group I put together for my D&D world - introduce a back-up alternate game genre. I'm going to do that this coming Wednesday night with Mutant Future.

As a kid running a bit of Metamorphosis Alpha and Gamma World, Mutant Future appealed to me (and I didn't have to buy anything. I'm Scottish, ye ken?), and I've wanted to do some Met. Alpha again for years, so I thought I'd just do MA with the MF rules.

I'll start things off on the "Valley" level that the inhabitants call "Europa," a place more or less at a dark ages social and technological level. Three major international groups had colonist towns on this level and are now the largest populations of pure strain humans - Irish, German, and Italian. In the several hundred years since the "cataclysm," these groups have maintained many ethic features of their own. The Irish descendants are in a wooded area town of "Dublin" and are hunters and archers. The Germans, or "Germanans" whose original colonists mined large deposits of raw iron placed in the northern part of the level, are much like ancient Germanic warriors, and pure humans from there would start with metal weapons. The Italians, who originally were made up of many historians and anthropologists, have evolved their town into a mini-Roman empire with togas and higher learning and all. The people of "Nova Roma" tend to be more educated, and they created the monetary/trade system of the Valley. The Nova Romans have a gladiator arena, and often force mutant slaves and monsters to fight it out for entertainment.

Gypsies and savage hill people round out the PSH population.

To the humans of Europa, iron is the greatest commodity. Without it, you have to rely on weapons and armor of wood, bone, and stone. These items break easily.

Mutations are thought of as curses from the "bad times," and the three major pure human communities tend to cast out and chase off any obvious mutants. So most mutants live in the wild, except for the few who have created the mutant colony, a mutant town with a flop house and a public house for anyone willing to stay there, all run by mutants. Just like I would for any D&D town or village, I've come up with a few interesting NPC's the players might encounter. As I expect most if not all of the players to run mutants, the mutant colony will likely be the home base for the "Europa" portion of this campaign.

The NPC who will bring them all together is "Garth," a middle aged travelling scholar who is actually an original crew member, unfrozen a year or so ago, who is trapped on the level and trying to get out (the doors and elevators have long gone into malfunction - opening on their own briefly every 1-100 days). He is a high ranking electrical engineer, and he wants to get back to the command deck to meet up with his fellow crew members (and perhaps captain) to work on restoring more ship systems. So he will ruse the characters into questing around with him, and hopefully after three or four games in the Valley, lead PC's to other parts of the ship. Besides a mini-computer "Mother Box," Garth carries a plasma pistol that he wants to keep quiet from players. It'll only have a couple shots left, as Garth has had to protect himself while in Europa.

So Garth will probably encounter and hire the players at the public house in the Mutant Town, and go in search of tools and crew badges to get out of the level with. Yeah, I'm starting out with a standard D&D type meet n'greet.

I haven't really thought much more out than that. I'm hoping to get the party to Nova Roma and into some arena combat somehow. I also have a "necromanser" (misspelled on purpose) in a "castle" in the hills who can create undead that I want to be encountered somehow. I even want to use the all-18 stat PSH "jungle girl" described in the original Metamorphosis sample valley level. The hunt for crew badges can lead to all of that.

I can see in the future having the party go between decks, learn that they are on a giant starship, and perhaps get recruited in the quest to save the ship.

I am fairly successful so far in not revealing the true nature of the environs to the players in this pre-game stage of discussing characters. Nobody seems to know I am basically doing Metamorphosis Alpha. I'm not allowing androids or robots as characters yet, and as far as the first characters are concerned, these things don't exist in my game. Once characters go to other levels and learn the nature of the environs, I will allow dead characters to be replaced by androids or crew members.

A few weeks ago I got together with a couple of players to work on characters. One wanted a mutant human originally from Dublin (he doesn't have obvious mutations, but does sort of look like he has Downs Syndrome or something), and the other a mutant tree from the wild. The human rolled teleport, disintegrate, thermal vision, and as a bad mutation ended up with slow movement, basically letting him only do things every other turn.

The mutant tree got acid blood, shriek, and thermal vision. He also ended up with a bad one, fast aging. Despite somewhat crippling bad mutation, both players were happy with their characters, which is a good sign. I'm going to have a month equal a year for the tree as far as growing is concerned, so it might be interesting to see how big he gets if the campaign goes on for a long time.

The randomization of mutations was done as given in the rules, and I like they way it worked out. I can't wait for another player or two to roll up a mutant. I do hope somebody runs a pure strain human, though. I can't tell them that eventually the pure humans can command robots and get other perks, so they seem like sort of bland characters compared to mutants. But there are advantages in terms of equipment and weapons and wealth for the pure humans, so hopefully that will entice somebody to go the "pure" route.

Game day is just a couple days away, and I'm still trying to decided on my house rules. I don't want to change too much, but I want to have some rulings about the particular mutations (especially teleport). I also want to have going up in level mean a bit more, and maybe tie that in to mutations improving as well. Guess I better get on that stuff...

As and old dog who never strayed too far from D&D, Call of Cthulhu, and Champions, it's pretty exciting to face running a brand new game to me. Tonight I'll finish up my small amount of house rules, and post them tomorrow. After that, it'll be the big test Wednesday night. Not all my players are totally excited about me running anything other than the AD&D campaign they are enjoying so much. I hope it wins them over enough to be an alternate game they won't bitch about having to play when some players are missing for D&D.

You’d GM it if you could (but probably never will)

Since the 80’s, I’ve always tried to have an alternate game to do for my D&D groups whenever I was feeling a little burnt out, or if a player important to the current scenario was missing. From the late 80’s until the late 90’s, my usual alternative would be either Champions (my long-running setting was based heavily on Superhero 2044), or Call of Cthulhu. Both genres originally would meet with resistance by the group (they never burnt out on my D&D), but after a couple games under their belts my players would often request an alternative session.

After several years off from gaming, I have had this new group going strong for over a year now. At a time of year where it is easy for players to miss a game due to end of the year obligations, it is more important than ever for me to introduce an alternative game. Something that we can do if only three players can make it (I like at least four players for the D&D session, but three is ok for most other stuff).
For months I have been putting thought to this. For the most part, I don’t feel like putting all the prep into Cthulhu like I used to do. My Champions setting is something I would like to rekindle, with my only consideration being that we play for only around three hours on a Wednesday night. Many simple combat scenarios can take more than three hours with Champs.

Having remembered the great times running Gamma World and Metamorphosis Alpha when I was a kid, I have also been tossing around the thought of doing Met. Alpha using the Mutant Future rules.

So last week I got together with a couple of my players (the ones most into doing an alternative genre) over a few beers, to work on characters for both Champions and Mutant Future just to see how we feel. Both players came up with mutants (a human and a plant), and the results of their random mutation rolls really brought back the old fun of those old mutant games. Both characters ended up with one really crippling bad mutation, but the others were so good they wanted to use the characters as is (the plant got the faster aging mutation, but also got the three dice of acid blood damage mutation – nice. The human mutant got the slow action mutation, but also got the disintegration and teleportation powers).

Then we really got to work on the Champs characters (oh, the crunch) and there were some good ideas there as well. A street level game is what I want to go for at first. Andy came up with a chop socky Hong Kong cop, and Paul (a fairly new player to the group) dreamed up a two-fisted chemist who carried special attack vials of chemicals (web, acid, smoke screen) and knew Savate (French kick-boxing.)


So the alternative will for sure be Champs or Mutant Future based mostly on great characters getting created, maybe both. But this has me thinking about the games and settings I have wanted to do for a long time, but probably never will. Maybe one day I will game more, and on the weekends, but twice a month on a Wednesday night isn’t exactly conducive to lots of experimenting. And with at least a couple of my players not wanting to play if it isn’t my D&D, these alternatives will always be the least priority in what we do.

But here are the ones I’d like to do if I could, but may actually never get the chance:

DUNE – I never really could get into the book when I was younger, but I always got a kick out of the David Lynch film. Several years ago I suddenly got into a Dune phase. I watched the directors cut of the film, and went right out and got the book. With the film setting up some of the locales and themes in simpler form, I was able to enjoy the nuances of the book more. I even read the two or three sequels that followed. Then I logged in countless hours on the Dune 2000 video game. It was around that time I got a real hankering to GM a game in the Dune setting. With no official game releases on this, I probably would have used the Hero system . With players running mentats, pilots, warriors, etc. I would have adventures across the planets of the empire and finally to Arakis itself. Whenever I mention wanting to do a Dune game to my players, it usually goes over like a lead balloon. So I guess this one shall remain a dream unfulfilled.

RUNEQUEST – I played this more than I ran it as a kid, but I loved it. I always dug the simple elegance of the Chaosium basic role playing system, and the mythical, ancient Greece styled setting was a great break from our D&D games that were going strong at the time. With most of my current players preferring the pulp fantasy of D&D, this one shall likely remain a dream as well.

TRAVELLER – another great game from my youth. Like Runequest I played more than I GM’d back in the day. At Aero Hobbies in Santa Monica, where I hung out as a kid, this was a heavily played game, much more than D&D. I also really loved the Dumarest novels by E.C. Chubb as a kid, a major influence on Traveller even thought it doesn’t get enough of that credit. Although I’m not a fan of the whimsy of the character creation process, and that I think there could be more character development as games progress, I really would love to do a straight Sci Fi game with little or no fantasy elements.

KNIGHTS OF THE OLD REPUBLIC – I loved the video game on XBOX so much it made me want to run games in that setting, despite not being a hard core Star Wars geek. KOTOR is so removed from the yammering muppets, mincing droids, and lame humor of Sir George’s works, it really shines as a separate, more mature section of the SW multiverse. I actually got the chance to run several games for an established Star Wars gaming group recently, and despite that not working out the way I would have liked, I would love to spring this on my regular group. Problem is, they ain’t exactly hard core Star Wars geektards either. Long live Jar Jar (not).

BUNNIES & BURROWS – Even though I sold my first edition of this 1970’s game on Ebay a few years ago (sniff), I would love to run a small campaign of this Watership Down inspired old school RPG. I think I would find an alternative sytem to use for the character types (maybe Chaosium’s basic role playing) as presented in the original game, but I would really love to see how game play would pan out. Just going out in the field to look for truffles is a huge danger to these characters. So tense, furtive gameplay would be the order of the day. Yep, another lead balloon for my players. I don’t think they would buy my pitch.

So, those are some of mine. What kind of game would you like to GM, but probably never will?

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…