Marvel RPG in Haven - "All Creatures Great and Small"

 

I was never that into beastfolk in DnD or any other media. Though I have long had a soft spot for Gnolls in my games. I mean, hyena-men with the builds of basketball players (I think listed as 7 feet in the orginal MM) is kind of a cool concept. Other than that, in my current Haven campaign there are cat-human hybrids Manx McAllister and his twin grandaughters I have been using as NPC's. But also my latest fascination with the anime Chainsmoker Cat was covered in a recent post. 

All this had me thinking more on beastfolk in recent weeks, and as of a week or two ago I decided I wanted more of this going on. So as a base for it my mind drifted to the furry community. 

I swear to god this is not a usual part of my thought processes. My deep fandom goes to hard sci fi films, comic books, rpg's, and some minor things in my orbit like certain anime. But Furry fandom was not really all that adjacent to me. I would say the closest I got to it was collecting maybe a half dozen issues of Omaha the Cat Dancer back in the day. 

That was decades ago and I am not really sure if furries existed yet and if that fandom was as sexually charged as it seems to have gotten. Nuff said I guess. But I decided that in the future setting Haven the furry community is just one of many such scenes. Much like the "Urban Cowboy" bar scene I tapped into in early sessions months ago when the character got involved in a kerfuffle between two fan scenes in two adjacent nightclubs.

Remember Juniper "Cowgal" West?

So here were my thoughts prior to introducing this stuff. Furries are a scene much as they are now, and the scene has been accepting of the "Anthro's" that are a sort of sub-culture of them. Anthro's are basically furries who go to more extreme lengths than just big floppy costumes. They tend to be heavily tattooed, very often get a certain amount of plastic surgery and/or dental work to get a bit of animal aesthetic. Then the next step are "Moreau's," who have had physical enhancements, either chemical or cybernetic, and even in some extreme cases (such as the Hyena lad "Hardee" at the top of this post) some animal DNA therapy. I will admit I am in large part inspired by an episode of Batman Beyond I saw many years ago that featured "Splicers," surgical genetic hybrids. 

I also had dreamed up that Mutants are sort of in the equation. With a large mutant community in New America City (they take up a neighborhood area they call "Xavier") many refer to it as "Mutie Town." They got political advocates and lawyers who fight for their rights.  In the decades after WW3, with the world mutant population having boomed, the Science Police have currently (in multiple countries) taken to policing the mutant communities. And we all know what more policing of a group leads to. I have not written down every possible notion about the political and sociological ins and outs (all in my head pretty much), but what I am thinking is that Anthros, the "Moreau" ones at the least, are trying to piggyback on upcoming mutant related legislation, and the mutant community is not having it.

But the Anthro's have their resources. I came up with two attorneys who are actually themselves part of the furry community.  Not Anthros' just furry cosplayers. 

Above: Peter Pedigree and Sonny Gold. And yes, those are just masks and costume attachments. They don't go into court with those (usually). 

So here is something I had not thought about originally. But the Furry/Anthro situation could be compared to certain LGBTQ issues and situations. Was not my intention, and it's not something I will lean into. I mean, I think mutants in Marvel have long been compared to racial and gay community issues. Not leaning into that, but I will mention it in a later post if a player vocalizes on that. 

I should mention at this point that a couple of days before former president and former Science Police director (see previous post) Russel Logan got on a Zoom call to the characters, and updated them on the Manx McAllister clone situation. See this post for his origin. He has been in Science Police custody since the character took him in to them. Logan gave them the lowdown he had just found out. On day one the creature acted like a rabid cat. On day two he believed he was Manx McAllister and demanded to know why he was there and why he looked different. On day three after behavioral staff explained he was the product of a teleport accident gone awry at Manx's birthday party, he was reflective. By the next day he was asking to be referred to by his new name "Sheut Neko." Neko being Japanese for "cat," and Sheut is one of the 7 aspects of the mortal soul in Egyptian spirituality, "Sheut" representing the shadow self. See: William S. Burroughs "Seven Souls"

Anyway, Sheut Neko apparently had gained teleportation powers at birth and escaped the facility. Back to the sessions.

So I did up some maps to a Furry members only nightclub, in the more upscale parts of uptown. 

The frontage of the nightclub "Felix the Cats." The limo belongs to the Furry attorneys, and there are not other cars because only VIP parking in the front. 

The Furry bouncer
"Chubs" McGill

 The characters are out on a night patrol, and they witness mutants approaching the front of the club, and a woman with apparent water powers entraps the bouncer in a curtain of water, and they enter. 

"Cascadia"

"Quatrain" He has the four
arms, Mighty 1, and Sturdy 1

"Swift" She's fast

"Bounce" He can become a 400 lb
rubber ball with Mighty 1 and Sturdy 1

The mutant squad enter the club and head to the lawyers table. The Furry attorneys seem to be meeting with members of the Anthro community. Besides the lawyers there is also a leader in the community ( a cat guy of course), some beast girls for some reason (groupies or something, I had yet to determine where I wanted to go with that. I just like the images), a male and female hyena Moreau's (sort of security for the group), and also Sheut Neko the Manx McAllister clone, who had already found allies within the Furry community.

Sheut was incognito at first, so used a hoodied image until he revealed himself.

Hardees sister Har Har

Community leader Chris Catfield

The females were there mostly for color, and because I had already collected a ton of images. But this black beauty I have in mind to eventually hook up with Sheut Neko. Seems about right. 

"Liz" is not exactly a beauty in my mammal eyes, but I like the image. 

This ended up being a two-session arc. The characters followed the mutants into the club and basically stood by as Cascadia approached the meeting table and read them the riot act for their trying to horn in on mutant legislation being worked on (I have not thought it all through, but I imagine healthcare related. Also, I don't know yet if the more extreme surgeries, especially the genetic splicing stuff, is fully legal). Paladin and Seraph were the closest to the table, and while Cascadia was saying her piece "Bounce" in his 400 lb. rubber ball form just dribbled sort of threateningly near the PC's. 

As the session was coming to a close (two hours or so a session at times feels just right, sometimes it just flies by). As usual Seraph tried to be a voice of reason, and told them police were probably on the way and they should leave. I just decided they would do so. One of my faults is that I almost always expect characters in my games to get right in the grill of potential foes. If this was my DnD they would have. But they remained sort of distant other  than Seraph being the voice of reason. Even with some minor assault and battery on the bouncers, the characters were not going to stop them, though were watching them closely. It had been a long week and I was tired, so I just figured I would end it. 

By the next morning I had regrets. I had put a good bit of work on the maps, the bar concept, and all that. But role play and my descriptions, along with the characters never really going right to the fisticuffs, sort of took the night. I sort of worried about the session being a non-starter for a couple of days. But in life one of my processes is to worry something to death until I had an epiphany, and that happened here. I would not let the encounter end. The mutants had not made it to the exit yet. So I dreamed up a continuation of the moment. 

Not that I needed more NPC's (favorite player Amber often goofs on me for using lots of NPC's, in this campaign especially). But I thought of a way to delay the exit of the mutant intruders. I decided that literal furry heroes, protectors of the community were present at the club. So when we started the following week, I had them run over and block the exit to tell the mutants they had committed battery and needed to wait for the police. I had them be a hero duo. I called them "Foxclaw and Hopper."

Though a furry without any physical alterations, Foxclaw's use of animal themed cybernetic equipment qualified her as an Anthro. I figured she was a cybernetics engineer who had created her and Hoppers equipment. Besides her Furry association, she also thought of herself as a bit of a crime fighter in general. She had her gauntlets that besides being clawed had a Mighty 1 grip strength. Her boots gave her a minor leaping ability, and her suit was micro chain that provided her a Sturdy 1. And her goggles gave her Heightened senses 1. 

Hopper already had some cosmetic mods, but Foxclaw had given her cybernetic leggings that granted her a decent leaping ability, and Mighy 1 for her kicks. Bit of armor for Sturdy 1. 

So mutant Cascadia assumed the two Furry heroes were acting on the orders of the Furry lawyers, so she sent the partially armored and 4- armed Quatrain to go and put some pressure on them, while having Bounce and Swift get Foxclaw and Hopper out of the way. The young speedster girl Swift did not have much in the way of offense but was prepared to bash somebody with a booze bottle. Meanwhile bounce, in big ball form, was blocked by Paladin and Igneous. He made some ricocheting attacks on them, bouncing off one and into the other, and back and forth. But Iggy  just grabbed the rubber ball man up in his usual grapple and dragged him outside where police where just showing up. Cascadia did some water attacks on the Furry vigilante's, while over at the Furry attorney table Nova flew over to block Quatrain from attacking. The tall mutant grappled Nova, who much like Seraph likes to do, started trying to talk the foe into just giving up on all this (way too many pacificists in this group). 

The cops were now coming in. Cascadia called off her peeps, because the plan was to not do more than basic assault and battery. They are activists, so expect to be arrested at times without sending anybody to the hospital. So the action ended fairly abruptly, like it does a lot with this group. Police Captain Lou Bannon showed up with more cops, and detained everybody in the club to figure it all out. 

Captain Louie is an old NPC from back in the day, when he was a lieutenant. He was usual comic relief, being a no-nonsense guys who was constantly irritated by meta human and their shenanigans. Older now, he is even more grumpy. I based him back then on Danny Devito's character from the old show Taxi. 

The mutants did not resist arrest, so they would be taken to the normal police station for processing, and probably not spend more than the night (as I may have mentioned the mutants have their own lawyers). But a couple of Sci Pol agents were called in to go along to the station to keep an eye on them a bit. There is a lot going on with the mutant community, and it is being watched by the Science Police, but usually there has to be major damage of harm for them to be locked up at Sci Pol headquarters. This was not considered any kind of terrorism. Basic police stuff. 

With things having calmed down, Iggy talked the bartender/owner about some stuff. Like what all this might be about. She is a normal human Furry, but dressed up like an old Marvel hero and called herself "Tigra."

He got some info on that was going on with this Anthro/Mutant stuff. And also about what Sheut Neko is doing with the Anthros. Since he has the mind of Quantum scientist Manx McAllister, he is aware of the miracles Manx had done with Teleporters, not just his recent de-aging with them, but also the fact that as a child he was combined with his pet cat in an accident, there is the possibility that Anthros would not have to go through expensive and painful procedures if that process could be duplicated. So Manx clone Sheut has brought that possibility to the community. More on that will come up later I hope. 

So another not too challenging combat situation in this session. I've decided that if I am going to rank the characters up anytime soon to Rank 4, I am going to need to pump up the challenge. I hope to do that next session with an arc that will fulfill that need. Stay tuned. Cheers. 

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.

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.

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.