WalkerP is the co-host and producer of The RPG Haven Podcast. Check out the latest episode on how to enjoy GenCon when you can’t actually go.
I would like to thank ChattyDM for giving me this opportunity to share my love for Mutant Future with you. I think it’s great that he is having guest posters on to showcase some other games on his blog and I hope some people get exposed to something cool they might not have otherwise heard about.
Like many of you, I started gaming way back in the day with Basic Dungeons & Dragons. My real love at the time, though, was Gamma World. My early experiences with that game (and my dad taking me to see the Road Warrior when I was 15) left me with a life-long love of the post-apocalyptic genre. Since I got back into gaming over 8 years ago (drawn in by the launch of 3rd edition), I’ve been looking for the holy grail of post-apocalyptic gaming. While many games have served me well for this genre, nothing really hit the sweet spot until Mutant Future came out.
Let’s Make a Mutant!
I think the best way to convince you of the insane awesomeness of Mutant Future is to just jump right in and roll up a character. Feel free to join me in this process as Mutant Future is a free pdf download from Goblinoid Games (there is also a print version available through Lulu).
Core Statistics
The base rule to generate your core stats is to roll3d6 in order, though there are options that are a bit less stringent. I’ll stick with the core for the sake of this review. Here are my results:
Strength: 11
Dexterity: 12
Constitution: 11
Intelligence: 8
Willpower: 17 (!)
Charisma: 13
So I’ve got a very willful, slightly dumb, slightly charming, physically average mutant. For now…
Character Races and Mutations
Let’s get into the fun stuff. There are five broad Character Races: androids, mutant humans, mutant animals, mutant plants and pure humans. Let’s go with a mutant human, which gives me 1d4 physical mutations and 1d4 mental mutations. I rolled a 4 for physical and a 3 for mutant, which is great. Lots of mutations means lots of crazy Mutant Future fun.
Physical Mutations
We go to the Mutation charts starting on page 21 and we roll a d% for each one. There is a chart for mental, physical and plant mutations (which we won’t be using with this character). The beneficial mutations and drawbacks are on the same chart, so these rolls can go either way. I’ve got 4 rolls on the physical mutations table coming my way:
Physical mutation #1: [58] Albinism (a drawback)
Physical mutation #2: [72] Pain Insensitivity (another drawback!)
Physical mutation #3: [34] Natural Armor (okay, now we’re talking)
Physical mutation #4: [25] Gigantism (even better)
A quick summary of each of these results tells me that my guy suffers a -2 penalty when in daylight, he can’t feel pain so the player will not know how many hit points he has left (that’s up to the GM to track). However, he has a natural armour (whose form I can choose, so let’s say it’s a thick matted fur) which gives him a starting AC of 4. With Gigantism, I have to roll 3d6 and add it to the base height of 6′. I rolled an 11, so now my guy is 17′ tall, which gives him a +2 damage bonus for non-powered hand weapons.
So far, I have a giant albino covered in thick white fur who can feel no pain.
Mental Mutations
Now let’s get to his mutated brain. I have 3 rolls on the mental mutation chart coming to me.
Mental mutation #1: [78] Quick Mind
Mental mutation #2: [41] Increased Willpower
Mental mutation #3: [99]Weak Will (drawback)
Quick Mind is nice! I get a 30% advantage to learn new tech. Mental attacks against me are much tougher and I can always determine if someone is telling the truth. Increased Willpower gives me 4 more points to my already butt-kicking Willpower and another 10% bonus for tech rolls. Rocking! But wait, what is this last one? Weak Will? “The Willpower of the mutant is reduced to 3.” What?! Argh!? Ouch! Now that really truly hurts. But this is an important lesson for you, kiddies. The Mutant Future is a cruel one. The radiation giveth and taketh away. Now, I may throw a tantrum here or offer to pay for the pizza to see if I can sway the Mutant Master to let me re-roll that last mutation. But for the sake of this review, we’ll play it as it lays.
And really, my guy is still pretty cool. Despite his puny willpower, which makes him totally wimpy against any kind of mental attacks, he still has a +40% to being able to use technology of the ancients, which is a huge advantage.
I just wanted to give you a taste of the fun of character creation in Mutant Future, so I’ll stop here. But let me at least give him a name. I’ll call him Dranem. He’s a giant furry albino with a knack for technology and he looks like a blast to play in the scarred wastelands of the mutated future. Let’s hope he survives!
Are you hooked yet?
Even if you may never play the game, I highly recommend you at least pick a race and roll up some mutations just for the hell of it. The results can be highly entertaining. I’d love to see what people come up with, so if you make a cool mutant, paste him or her (or it) into the comments!
The Basics
Mutant Future is based on the Labyrinth Lord rules, which is in turn a retro-clone of Tom Moldvay’s Basic/Expert Set of Dungeons & Dragons. It was written by Dan Proctor and Ryan Denison, strong believers in keeping the spirit (and the rules) of the original games alive. It is 156 pages, with everything you need to play, with an excellent bestiary of mutant baddies (including the infamous Spider Goat), lists of artifacts and gamemastering advice. It has instructions for building your mutant future setting (with a regional hex map of the “Explored Lands”), a sample scenario and a section on mixing Mutant Future with Labyrinth Lord.
- Pigmen are nasty, hateful creatures…
For those of you not familiar with the Basic D&D rules, you will find it a very simplified and open-ended version of D20. One may even say “primitive”, but meaning that in the most positive sense. You roll D20 to attack and compare the result to a table (there is one table for PCs and another one for monsters), looking at the PC’s level and the opponent’s armor class. There is a separate table for mental attacks, which is also based on a D20 roll, but this time you compare the combatant’s Willpower (as you can see Dranem better hopes he finds a tinfoil hat soon!).
Mutant Future is well-suited to campaign play, but it’s also a blast for a one shot. It requires very little prep on the GM’s part. You can play an entire session just using the random charts for wandering monsters and artifacts.
The Old School Playstyle
As you can see, Mutant Future is pretty over the top and at the same time can be quite open-ended. It is meant to be played in the old school style, where the GM makes the rulings on situations that aren’t covered by the rules (and this will be often), but I have found that a back and forth negotiation with my players can also be fun. The important thing is that everyone sits down at the table with the right spirit and expectations. Combat balance is right out the window. Characters can die quickly and easily, but who cares when they are so much fun to roll up!
You can get a good sense of this playstyle over at Jeff’s Gameblog, where he’s been writing up reports of his Mutant Future Sessions.
I tend to be a GM who likes to see a story develop. I give my players some wiggle room and am reluctant to kill their characters, unless it’s in a really cool way that the player is okay with. Mutant Future really opened my eyes to a different way of playing. While it hasn’t changed my default style, it has made me appreciate the fun of taking the gloves off at the table and letting the dice fall where they may.
...but none are as loathed as the dreaded Spider Goat!
I ran a one-shot of Mutant Future at our local convention and made sure to print up tons of blank character sheets. I had a premise and a quest for the mutants, but we ended up having a lot more fun just rolling on the wandering monster charts and seeing what chaos ensued. Among the players, we had a sentient (but not very smart) oak tree, a nasty little ‘possum-man and a malfunctioning cleaning android (who could nevertheless dish out a lot of damage) among others.
When they camped for the first night, I rolled up a Mummy Vine, which attaches to and then poisons its victims, making them unable to cause harm to the plant. I ended up with a TPK, except all the PCs were still alive and conscious, swaying on a hillside as the Mummy Vines slowly sucked the life out of them at the rate of 1d4 hit points per week! We got a big laugh out of that and went back to the character sheets.
I strongly recommend Mutant Future. It captures the gonzo feel of Gamma World and is also a great way to get a taste of old school style gaming in a new flavour. It’s a great way to introduce your group to something new that requires very little commitment. I hope I’ve been able to share some of my enthusiasm for you for Mutant Future and that it may appeal to those of you who want to test their mettle in the radiated ruins of man’s folly. The wasteland awaits! Game on, people!
This sounds like a needed cage match
Spidergoat Vs el Chupacabra!
.-= Zzarchov´s last blog ..Screaming from the beyond and fading into the void =-.
Mutant Future already scored points with me by using the Iron Maiden font on its cover. Now go look up some Thundarr: the Barbarian episodes on YouTube, crank up Number of the Beast, and go exploring!
Couldn’t agree more! (And for a truly horrific MF critter, try a Skin Stealer.)
.-= Tim´s last blog ..Dangerous Encounter: Green Thumb =-.
That was lots of fun but I’m still waiting to see my spidergoats!
This looks like a lot of fun. I have been running a Gamma World campaign as a change of pace between our regular D&D campaign story arcs (which my wife runs). It’s been great fun, but I’m the only one with the game book. I might download Mutant Future and look into converting our storyline to that system so that all my players can get their own copy. Thanks for the tip!
Gary
Tell me when they have a conversion to a saner game system, like d20. Looking things up in tables is automatic not fun.
.-= Cory´s last blog ..House rules: alignment change =-.
Thanks for the comments, guys! Glad to see there is already some existing love out there.
@Jeremy yes, MF is metal! Good call.
@Tim Skin Stealer [shudder]
@sicnaxyz I’m building suspense so when you do finally meet them, you’ll be truly freaked out! Maybe this year at Draconis? (To the rest of you, Sicnaxyz was one of the players in the con game I described above. I promoted that game with some heavy emphasis on Spider Goats and they ended up not showing up in the game at all. This Bait and Switch tactic has caused a lot of bitterness and resentment in my local gaming community that I’m still trying to overcome today. ;))
@Gary Cool to hear that someone is still playing the real Gamma World. What version are you using? I still remember those insane tech flow charts from that game.
@Cory I would politely add “for you” to the end of your sentence. I’m no big fan of tables myself, but some people still consider them to be quite acceptable and even fun. In the case of Mutant Future, the system is relatively simple so having two refer to two tables (which I put on my GM screen) turned out to be no problem for me. Remember, those tables are the grandfather of the D20 system. But I recognize they definitely aren’t for everybody.
@Cory I can relate to your pain. When I hear table. I cannot help but think of rolemaster (aka roll master) with its gazillion tables. <shiver>
As for the random character generation. I could see the attraction for a silly one shot but for a campaign… This is so not my cup of tea.
All of the tables work off of incredibly simple formulas- it’s incredibly easy to just do the addition in your head. For my Swords and Wizardry game I have never once had to check the combat tables- there are only one or two modifiers at most to any attack roll, and combat is a breeze.
@Yan I my experience I’ve found that randomly generated characters are more fun to play and easier to roleplay than intentionally designed characters. Character traits that you wouldn’t have thought of can be suggested by odd statistics or random traits, and gameplay becomes more interesting and creative when players have to use the resources they have rather than the abilities they want.
@Otto I never intend to mean that it’s a bad thing I just said that it’s not something I like. I’m not searching a roleplay challenge. I will sometime roleplay something out of the ordinary because I feel like it. Not because some random table told me I had too. It’s a big factor in MY enjoyment of the game and is in no way an indication of what is or not the norm.
I’m incapable of enjoying myself in a campaign with a character I did not create myself, where I carefully planned his/her weakness, strength and progression. It’s as much part of the pleasure I take out of the game as the actual session itself.
One shot adventure are an exception to these.
WANT!
I love random character creation rules, especially with lots of d% charts…
EDIT: Oh, haha! I missed the bit at the beginning about it being a free download. Sweet!
.-= Asmor´s last blog ..Friends & Foes: Changeling Husklords =-.
I really don’t have a strong preference for random or not. It really depends. Sometimes the random chargen can be a crutch for when I’m plumb out of ideas for a character. But your comments, Yan, did make me think a bit more deeply about it. You could take the random part out of Mutant Future, but it would be tricky (and interesting). Just have people pick a certain number of mutations, with the group agreeing on how many beneficial vs. artificial. However, there are some crazy potential combos in there and I’m sure players could come up with some very high-powered characters. It might be a kind of fun exercise, just to see what you could come up with if you were choosing instead of rolling.
Another factor, though, is the theme of the game and I think you would lose some of that if you took out the randomness. As I said in my post, the mutant future is no cakewalk and those beings who actually manage to be born should be grateful they were even given a chance at survival. I think having the gods of the dice choose your character for you sort of fits into that notion.
@Walkerp: Like i said I could totally dig it for a one shot. It really sets the feel of a post apocalyptic world with great effectiveness. I compare it to Paranoia which makes great one shot adventure (especially when I was a teenager) but sucks a create a long running campaign.
My feeling is once the novelty of the first session with the random character is gone you’re left with a bunch of misfits all of unequal value where some where lucky to have good roll and other totally screwed by the dice. (For a tactical player like myself this is aggravating to say the least.)
Great article. Mutant Future is an awful lot of fun–I’ve only been able to play in a one shot, but I sure hope to get to play more, possibly at Gen Con. MF is an integral part of the Kitchen Sink Coalition of games.
Also, I agree with Otto–I’ve found some tremendous characters can come out of random beginnings. When you’re forced to work with the hand you’re dealt, you can come up with some great things.
.-= Zachary´s last blog ..Sneak Preview: Digital Pen and Paper =-.
Just rolled up a character for fun… Got a mutant bear who can turn into a giant crab, control people parasitically, teleport, regenerate and reflect damage, but who radiates negative energy that causes everyone to want to attack him.
Fun!
.-= Asmor´s last blog ..Friends & Foes: Changeling Husklords =-.
I think if that random table also included point values for calculated creation of mutants, rather than just random determination, I’d be a lot more interested.
I’d throw in with Yax on this one…for a long term story or campaign, I want to create the mutants by intention. I think it’d be better for a storyguide trying to design a larger arc and players who want multiple sessions with a character they enjoy.
-Ben.
.-= Ben´s last blog ..Once more into the Breach! =-.
Another giant (19′!) mutant with fitting scores (st17, dex 15, con 14, int 8, wis 11, cha 10). He also has a unique sense (uh a Spidergoat presence sense?).
His mental mutations are empathy (I convince you I’m very nice!) and mental phantasm (I’m a cute little puppy!) but also has been cursed with negative empathy (that’s where the empathy comes in handy.. STOP ATTACKING ME! STOP ATTACKING ME! I’M A CUTE LITTLE PUPPY!) .
lolz
@WalkerP – We are using the 4th Edition Gamma World set, but we’re really running it more like a d20 game (which 4th Edition GW approximated in a lot of ways).
James Malizewski just posted a short essay about random character generation that expresses my point of view much more clearly then I could. I highly recommend checking it out http://grognardia.blogspot.com/2009/08/character-generation-thoughts.html
I messed around with it some, though I don’t remember seeing a table for what ever animal, maybe I skimmed right over it. Eh guess not, though if I was to roll one up on the spot, I’d ask for random suggestions, or just go with way to common for me to draw animals. 😛