Warning - Mutagenic Substance

Odds and Ends pt.1

2011-07-16T17:17:00.000-07:00

I am going through my big three ring binder full of crap from my Mutant Future campaign today. I pulled out a few of the gems to share with y'all in a series of posts, hope you enjoy!

Tribe 15: When I rebooted the campaign on the world of Celestia and included magic in the mix, the party ran across a few members of this group; a little goblin that could teleport and a giant ogre proved particularly troublesome. Tribe 15 is named after 15 sets of paired glowing spikes designed to be inserted into the eye socket. The spikes are octagonal in cross-section at their base, and would be totally transparent if not for the intense glowing white light they produce that makes it difficult to look at them directly. Once both spikes from a matched set are inserted into the eye sockets of a subject, the subject loses normal sight but gains magic detection, x-ray vision, regular vision and heat vision out to a one mile range (telescopic and microscopic only for regular vision, microscopic down to 32x magnification). The eye spikes can also be used at will to make a ranged attack within 100' for 6d6 damage (energy blast). In addition, the subject now has a telepathic link (willing or not) with all other members of the tribe.

Each set of paired spikes has a personality, intelligence and even a spirit bound within, and the spikes constantly attempt to assert dominance over any user. Once per day, even when just being handled, either spike of a pair may attempt a Willpower attack (WIL 15) to dominate a target in physical contact with the spike. The spikes were created by the techno-mage known as Mad Albert in the darklands, and basically form a self-perpetuating magic item collection team. When members of the group fall, the remaining Tribe 15 members search for new "recruits" to stick with the free spikes. Once dominated by the spikes, the new members meld seamlessly into Tribe 15's unending quest to scour the darklands for magic items and technology to bring to Albert. The 15 distinct personalities of the spikes fulfill different roles in the group, from squad leaders to melee bruisers to sneaky scout types.

Tribe 15 in play: The party was really creeped out to discover they were being tailed by a group of mixed creatures with glowing eyes. All attempts by the party to lose or hide from the pursuers failed (1 mile range xray vision is a bitch!). When the teleporting goblin isolated a party member and it became clear it was trying to blind the party member with glowing crystal spikes, the party REALLY started freaking out. This was a great encounter, the powers of the spike, especially x-ray vision and telepathy within the group, really made it hard for the party to run, hide or even effectively engage their opponents. After a tense combat that ranged up and down the sides of ruined buildings and across a large area of the dark surface, the party managed to escape with one set of these spikes in tow...

Albert's Constructs - Albert's Eyes and Killballs: The creator of the Tribe 15 spikes also created a number of other constructs that the party heard rumors of but never encountered. Interestingly, my 4e group HAS encountered these next two, reinforcing the link between Celestia and my 4e campaign world...

Albert's Eye (tiny construct)
HP:1
AC:-4
MV:240' (magical flight, can hover, total maneuverability)
Attacks as 10 HD Creature
AT: 1 (50' stun ray or 10' electric shock )
DMG: stunned for 1d4 rounds / 5d6
Saves as a 20 HD Creature, no damage for effects that would do half damage with successful save

Albert's Eyes are tiny magical constructs that resemble large marbles with a glowing red "A" suspended in the middle. They can project a 2-dimensional image on any surface out to 50', with the size of the image depending on the distance it is thrown (up to 15' wide at 50' range). They can also project sound (of volume equivalent to a dozen people being loud) out to 50'. Objects within 1' can be telekinetically manipulated with 15 pounds of force.

Intelligence: While not "intelligent" in the true sense, Albert created sophisticated magical artificial intelligences into each eye. Separate combat avoidance and movement centers allow the eye to fly unharmed while directing other constructs with the impressive battle algorithm that Albert created to enable the eyes to be tiny commanders of his battle machines. Scouting and tracking modules enable an eye to perform nearly any task Albert needs done in the darklands.

Senses: detect all lifeforms within 50'; telescopic and microscopic regular and heat vision out to three miles; x ray vision to 1000'; hearing augmented to incredible levels with sophisticated magical intelligence filtering out background noise to allow targeted listening of human speech or equivalent at ranges of 1d4 miles (roll once per use, terrain and other conditions result in the variation).

In addition, Albert's Eyes act as a direct conduit for Albert. Linked to him at creation, he can see and hear through them at any range. Albert can take direct control of an eye, and by extension, any other constructs that the eye is currently controlling. It is rumored that Albert can also cast magic through an eye that he has direct control over, but this has not been verified.

Killball (medium construct)
HP: 100
AC:0
Movement: 180' (magical flight, good maneuverability)
Attacks (as 10 HD creature): 3 x longsword AND battleaxe / 3 x machine gun (see below)
Damage: longsword: 2d8+3 / battleaxe: 2d8+4 / machine gun: 2d10 +6

A Killball's HP are divided into half, with 50 HP belonging to a spinning metal ball with three swords for tripod extremities and 50 HP belonging to a metal ball with a battleaxe and heavy machine gun. Once at least 50 HP damage is taken, roll randomly to see which half is destroyed. The killball then loses the attacks of that half (either three longsword attacks or the battle axe / heavy machine gun combo). The two halves of the killball are connected with an invisible magical "tether" that can stretch up to 10', allowing the two halves to potentially engage in melee with two different targets.

The Killball receives +3 bonuses to attack rolls made with the longswords+3, +4 bonus for the battleaxe+4, and +2 bonus for the magical heavy machine gun+2. These items can be recovered from a downed Killball. The heavy machine gun has 120 rounds in a belt (40 rounds of continuous fire at 3 shots per round).

Killballs come equipped with a very limited set of pre-programmed actions, including guarding a defined area against intruders, pursuing a target, attacking a target and taking evasive maneuvers. When within 50' of an Albert's Eye, however, a killball can make use of the eye's combat brain and becomes a very cunning foe.

The End (for now)

2011-06-20T18:27:00.000-07:00

After a glorious run of either 54 or 55 sessions (I found a scrap of paper that would appear to be the experience awards for a forgotten "true" first session which would make the numbering I have used all along on this blog off by one) I have decided to cancel my biweekly Mutant Future game.

This is not the end of this blog; I actually hope to resume my 2e Tuesday posts in the near future and I have a TON of material that I generated for the game that I can post now as well!

Incidentally, this also marks the official end of my developing a supplement compatible with Mutant Future that I had hoped to self publish someday. I had fun making a "fantasy genre" character creation bolt-on for Mutant Future, but it really just whet my appetite to make my own complete game (which I am doing). Honestly, the play test that I conducted (14 sessions with all new characters rolled up using the Fantasy Quirks rules playing side by side with the surviving Mutant Future characters) was a success. The new characters with fantasy quirks held their own with but did not overshadow the old characters with mutations. The magic system worked pretty well in my opinion, and that is considerably more than I say about any published edition of D&D to date.

I am going to leave the free text version of Fantasy Quirks up forever, all the OGL crap is filled in and correct and the entire thing is open game content. I was actually quite pleased with the devilish pacts (one way to gain magical powers in Fantasy Quirks is to make a pact with a specific devil, based on "real life" devils drawn from the Goetia - I presented a version of this adapted to D&D on my other blog). I feel good about adding some more open game content into the great Internet soup. I hope that somebody will find something of use in it.

I am still DMing my other game and playing in my friend Carter's awesome campaign. And like I said, I'm not giving up on this blog.

Carry on!

Dance Party! (session 54 recap)

2011-05-15T02:38:00.000-07:00

Last Sunday's Mutant Future / Fantasy Quirks session at my place unfolded like an 80's movie. There has been a big social event on the horizon for several sessions now, the annual Spring Stomp dance held in the Sottles (south hills) of post-apocalyptic Eugene, OR. The citizens of Spanky Butt and the matriarchal Sottle clans come together in a massive grange each spring to feast, drink and dance the night away, culminating in a Line Dance Faceoff between the Sottle folk and the townfolk. James Bomb, international man of mystery, ladies man and the self proclaimed "face man" of the party, had been invited to the dance as the date of Elise Baumgartner, the beautiful young daughter of a progressive and wealthy Spanky Butt family.

As I have been terribly remiss in posting on this blog, some key bits of back story must be filled in here. As mentioned in my Force Cage Death Match post, the Sottle women chew a strange black berry that stains their lips dark red, keeps their teeth white, their breath minty... and allows a rage filled demon known as a Blarg Beast to possess them should they lose their cool. The Sottle menfolk are kept in a drugged stupor by the hurkool leaf they chew, which makes them move terribly slowly but also allows them to become hulk-like combatants if pressed. The Sottle women seem to be in league with a secret faction of the Knights of Genetic Purity known as the Men of Santo (their symbol, as revealed by a tattoo discovered on the chest of one of Chaplain Squaldorf's slain deacons, may be recognizable to you:

)

The party has seriously messed with the biofuel production which is apparently the primary result of the labor of the massive herds of drugged menfolk, first stealing several 50 gallon fuel drums after a refinery and storage facility was left unguarded in the wake of Hag the Beastmaster (a party member created using my Fantasy Quirks supplement to Mutant Future) sacrificing an entire Sottle enclave to an unknown demonic entity in exchange for great personal power, then blowing up a storage depot with six completely filled 300 gallon tanks waiting to be helicoptered off by members of the Knights of Genetic Purity directed by the Men of Santo (this last bit of information was revealed by a captured KoGP mechanic who was interrogated at length following the destruction of the fuel depot).

Hag the Beastmaster also was responsible for destroying a section of the fortified wall which surrounds Spanky Butt town and blowing up portions of the Brown family residence, a very wealthy and xenophobic/anti-mutant Spanky Butt family. So in short, the party in general and Hag in particular were in bad standing with both the Sottle folk and the townfolk.

But on the other hand, the party had also just managed to finally destroy Julius Corple and the ziggurat of doom (definitely a subject for another post), so they were also local heroes to some. People either loved 'em or hated 'em. One of the younger members of the Brown family, a lad whose name escapes me at the moment, has developed a bit of a schoolboy crush on Kazumi, the halfling samurai who has been serving as James Bomb's bodyguard. The night before the dance, this boy took a considerable risk by sneaking out and warning Kazumi that he had overheard his father planning to kidnap any party members that attended the dance. The dance is supposed to be neutral ground, and Mr. Bomb had been assured by his hosts, the Baumgartners, that nothing untoward would happen on the festival day.

So, forewarned is four-armed, as they say in the Mutant Future.. some party members scouted out the location of the dance during the night and discovered some trap doors leading below ground, and the Hag's beast (which is now intelligent and possessing a photographic memory because it was fed several "soul cubes", sugar cubes containing a captured human spirit...) was able to identify the scent trails leading into the trapdoors as being members of the Brown family.

Beyonce Chai parachuted down onto the roof of the grange from her giant eagle mount and set up position with her sniper rifle, while the other party members either waited out in the brush or arrived in the parade convey that left from the town, firing guns into the air the entire way (as is apparently the tradition at this sort of thing).

Three separate assassination attempts were foiled by the careful planning and reconaissance of the party; first, a party member cloaked in shadow (Brent's new character, whose name I also cannot remember without my notes in front of me; he was rolled up at the start of the session after Braziere the half-orc died rapidly last time fighting some advanced terminator bots buck naked for some reason) observing the dance hall from a vantage point inside, saw a number of young toughs associated with the Brown family excuse themselves from the feast and venture outside to the bathrooms en masse. Beyonce used her remote controlled dragon fly robot's camera to observe what they did; they snuck out into the brush and visited a previously undiscovered trap door, and met a knight of genetic purity there who handed off several small bundles to the scoundrels. These bundles were pocketed and the posse returned to the dance.

Beyonce radioed in this information to Mr. Bomb and the Hag, the only two party members who had openly attended (the Hag caused quite a stir when she showed up wearing a dress of glowing energy draped over her hunchbacked form). They were thus not caught unawares when the Brown family henchmen tried to bump into them and brush a soaking wet handerchief across their faces. Mr. Bomb tried to turn the tables on them and inject one of the incoming ruffians with a strong sedative he had prepared in syringes for the event, but he accidentally stabbed a comely town lass who he was dancing with at the time (damn those critical failures!). He did, however, manage to grab one of the handkerchiefs from an attacker and save it for future analysis. Realizing Bomb and the Hag somehow had gotten wind of the plan, the scallywags beat a retreat. It was later revealed that the chemical covering the handkerchiefs caused anyone inhaling it to get terrible diarrhea. The dastardly plot was to force Mr. Bomb and the Hag outside to the restrooms, where they would be jumped and drug off into the night.

The second assassination attempt was foiled by Beyonce Chai's decision to hunker down on the roof for the entire dance. A slender person dressed in ninja garb attempted to use a grappling hook to gain access to the roof, intending to sabotage the machinery that operated the grain elevators and drop a massive platform down onto James Bomb as he participated in the one on one dance offs that took place between the lines of townfolk and Sottle folk in the Line Dance Face Off that was the culmination of the dance. Beyonce simply lifted the grappling hook up, threw the ninja out into space and blasted him/her with her laser pistol as he fell down! He barely survived the blasts and fall and disappeared into the night... but he/she will be heard of again, I promise Beyonce that!

The last assassination attempt was foiled by my bad luck at dice rolling. I had devised a dice pool gambling mechanic to resolve the individual dance showdowns that were the centerpiece of the dance, and James Bomb got lucky when I used my nightly d30 roll on a high bet by his adversary in the dance off, one Georg of the Hilldancer Clan (a group of Sottle men who apparently were not kept drugged by the womenfolk, and who wore distinctive kilts - the dance was the first the players had seen of this faction). I rolled something terrible, and James ended up winning both that showdown, and eventually, the title of Spring Stomp Champion!

Only fit men and women participate in the individual dance face offs, because the combined mental energy of the two lines of line dancers and the live band actually causes 5d8 damage to be dealt to the loser of each faceoff. Mr. Bomb knew this risk, but had plenty of HP to deal with the eventuality of a defeat if it came to that... but what he did not know was that old man Brown, that fascist mutant hater, was actually a mutant of considerable power in his own right, and was planning on sending a mind bolt to strike him dead at the exact moment the collective crowd energy dealt him damage if he lost the danceoff. Alas, the dice did not fall well for me, and all three assassination plots came to naught.

The Hag did, however, detect Mr. Brown's mental mutations through the use of her Detect Magic ability (I had to answer the question right off the bat when I started using my Fantasy Quirks supplement if Detect Magic could detect mutations... as I have explained the power source of both mutations and magic as coming from what I call the shadow world, I reasoned that Detect Magic would work, but would only reveal a very faint trace of magical energy in the presence of mutations; the Hag used her d30 roll to detect the mutations and rolled a 28, so she lucked out and got some powerful leverage against old man Brown...) and ended up blackmailing him with this potentially damning revelation to get him to stop his continual attacks against the party.

All in all, it was a great session! Oops, I just realized that I missed the part where some party members killed a few guards that were posted at the trapdoor where the Brown family thugs got the drugged handkerchiefs from, with Bozko the shape shifting plant flying in his iron man suit 2.0 (the glargore version recently constructed by the mice in mech suits) to dispose of the bodies far away. Everyone was too chicken-shit to venture down into the trapdoor, because Hag's beast had smelled a hideous spider-mutant-monstrosity down the hole, and the party had heard that the Brown family kept a mutated spider in their dungeons to use as an interrogator Maybe next time...

Force Cage Death Match! (Session 51 Report)

2011-03-15T22:20:00.000-07:00

That Wascally Wabbit

I am falling farther and farther behind the rabbit. I still haven't finished session recaps from months ago that explain campaign changing events that are shaping the current game. Tonight I decided to bravely soldier on ahead, damn the torpedoes, and recap last Sunday's game without sidetracking myself with endless digressions to explain the previously unmentioned. So this may be a little strange and incomprehensible (even by the standards of my admittedly over-the-top, GONZO!!! Mutant Future / Fantasy Quirks campaign...).

Only six players showed up for the game this week, as James Bomb's player was travelling cross-country to Eugene on Sunday, Bozko's player had a ride fall through, John Doe's player had finals coming up and long standing scheduling conflicts prevent some of our original players from attending.

Verisimilitude Be Damned!

One of the greatest strengths of Mutant Future campaign is also its greatest weakness; from the beginning, I stressed that it was perfectly OK as a player to drop in and out of the game. I wanted to encourage new players to drop in without feeling like they had to make a huge commitment; I wanted to encourage friends who might have one weekend free in a blue moon to drop in and play as a one shot character; I wanted to make this game as low pressure as I could by requiring as little commitment as possible from players in general.

On the pro side, this has led to me introducing a dozen brand new pen and paper RPG players to the hobby, and has led to me refereeing sessions with over ten players for the first time in my DMing career. This has also led to some strange situations where PCs pop in and out of existence, because I always let everyone present at the start of a session play even if there is no logical way that they could suddenly appear in the action. Usually I just wave the magic DM's wand and be done with it, but this week I had a meta-game conversation with the players present and asked that they not take actions to advance the game time past the big dance on Saturday that James Bomb had been invited to by the daughter of a leading Sottle socialite. It was Wednesday in the game, so that gave the players two full days to play around with.

Of Mice and Men

The session started with a trip to the Mice of Camelot to pick up three mech suits (one custom built for Kazumi the halfling samurai and two of the generic mech models the mice use converted for human occupants, a Galahad model and a Robin Hood mech) and four suits of dog boy armor that was supposed to settle a long standing debt the mice owed the party. While there the party had some liquid analyzed that had been swiped last session from a religious revival in the Sottles. Chaplain Squaldorff, a long time nemesis of the party that first came to their attention as the religious leader of the group of Knights of Genetic Purity that invaded the Willing Mate valley a while back, conducted the religious revival and first dosed the usually placid and drugged out hillfolk men with an incense that appeared to be some form of amphetamine, then whipped their emotions up to a frenzy, and presented them with a communion of bread and "wine".

James Bomb drank some of that wine last session, and now the party (sans Mr. Bomb) learned what it was: a very potent male fertility drug. Its effects: Semen can survive nearly indefinitely without perishing; chance of fertilization is greatly increased; chance of the egg splitting into twins, triplets, quads or even more is over 50%; and offspring are at least 80% sexed male.

Further analysis revealed that James Bomb's semen could now survive even in the vacuum of outer space! Party members snickered at the thought of what future sessions will surely bring...

The party had also left some alien technology with the mice for them to examine; the teleporter pods and repulsor carts looted from Celestia. The mice made a major breakthrough with the teleporter pods (I let the party roll the mice's tech roll, and BJ used his d30 roll and got a 9 (on a roll low, d100, Mutant Future-style tech roll). The mice had both identified how the teleporters worked (a mycelial tissue that generated linked portals with a "skin" of the shadow world between them), and had figured out that they could hack a pod to link to a different pod besides its original mate.

The broadcast power units in the hovercarts that both powered the repulsors and served as a shield and environmental manipulator had also been reverse engineered to an extent by the mice, to the point that they added a strap-on repulsor flight system to the dog boy suits the party had ordered. Most interesting to Tilandriel was that the broadcast power seemed to travel through the shadow world, but the machinery interacting with the shadow world was neither biological (like the mycelial tissues used to open wormholes by the Oozyxphg or the similar tissues in the teleporter pods) nor magical in nature. The shadow circuitry seemed to be entirely created and sustained through controlled frequency and vibration modulation in an enclosed sound chamber.

The shield technology, a way to extend the forcefields that the mice already used on their mechs out to a scale that could be useful for the party's hovercraft, had been difficult for the mice to crack but they did succeed to an extent. The Swamp Orca now has an omni-directional 50 HP forcefield that refreshes at the beginning of each round. This shield could be focused down to a minimum of 90 degrees arc of protection, at 100 HP forcefield per round. A control seat was added so that a party member could take direct control of the forcefield and sacrifice her actions that round to take total control of the shield.

After the party had spent a good chunk of time with the mice, it was remembered that Beyonce Chai had obtained some strange dark berries from the purse of one of the well kempt Sottle women who seemed to be in charge of the herds of drugged men. Talandriel examined the berries and discovered that the seeds seemed to be linked to the shadow, a one way connection that would allow something to enter this world from beyond. Eager to test out another new piece of equipment (the result of an ongoing and fruitful collaboration between the mice and their technology and Tilandriel's elven magic), Tilandriel put on the scanning microscope attachment and turned his mind's eye inwards, looking back through the shadow portals that have replaced his eyes into the shadow world. He traced the connections back from the seeds and soon realized that some sort of demonic beast could emerge to possess anyone eating the berries.

Someone had the bright idea that maybe the party could use the berries as a focus to gate in some of these demon-beasts so the party could test out the new mech suits in combat!

Force Cage Death Match!

Beyonce Chai was initially reluctant to go along with this plan, even though everyone else was quite taken with the idea. Once Hag the hideous beastmaster offered to construct a magical force cage to act as a summoning circle, so that the party members who wanted to take place in the combat could be sealed in before the demons were even summoned, Beyonce agreed to give up a few of her berries to use as demon-bait. Hag is a magic shaper, and last session she sacrificed an entire village of Sottle women (long story) to a demonic entity to double her Constitution, the stat which her force based magic relies upon. As a result, Hag now has a lot of magical energy, and she successfully constructed a force cage summoning enclosure linked to the berries so that anything drawn through would be unable to leave the enclosure. Some spiked walls and areas of floor that would trigger columns of fire were added to the force cage, and Tilandriel set up a magical trap that would drain some energy from the beasts as they passed through the portal.

Death Match, round one! (Hag scouted around the ruined landscape and found a nice big Nash Rambler hubcap to bang on before each summoning...)

A single Blarg Beast came through, and Tilandriel successfully drained some of its energy, suppressing the time ripple effect that would normally surround the beast. Inside the force cage, Brazier the giant half-orc hefted his new sword (a converted mech weapon, a force great sword with an 8' blade) and stood shoulder to shoulder with Kasumi in her new mech.

Danny's new character (can't remember his name right now), a dragonborn sorcerer made using 4e rules (yes there is a 4e character in my Mutant Future game), hid behind a wall in the force cage in the Robin Hood mech and readied its grenade launcher.

The first beast died before it got to take an action, there was much congratulating all around, and the decision was made to do it again!

Death Match, round two! Ding!

This time, four blarg beasts came through. Luckily, Tilandriel again managed to suppress their time ripple fields with his magical trap as they came through the portal.

With four targets, the party only managed to drop one of them in their surprise round. Now we had a real battle on our hands! The beasts have three arms, which they used to slash and grab their victims; a second slavering mouth emerged from their stomachs when they successfully grabbed someone. They also had the ability to leap fifty feet up into the air and then shoot down like an arrow at a target, making a DEX 15 attack for 6d12+36 damage. The first beast to do that would have killed Brazier, but he sacrificed his armor, leaving him standing naked in the arena wielding his giant sword. He did not run as his comrades urged him to do.

Danny's character was also dive-bombed, and he had to sacrifice the brand new suit of +5 wooden chainmail that Tilandriel had made/grown and enchanted for him to survive the massively damaging attack. He then found himself behind the wall of cover that he had been using, engaged one on one with a blarg beast. Hag switched the force spikes from one side of the wall to the other, and Danny used a power that pushed the beast back into the spikes, just killing it.

The terrain hazards worked well, as another blarg beast was charging at Danny when Brazier used his wind controlling abilities to slam the beast into the force spike wall just as Hag caused the spikes to extend toward the beast.

The third beast abandoned Kazumi as the samurai mech had proven very difficult to hit and Kazumi's Dexterity is so high that the beast had little chance to land its divebomb attack. It turned its attention to the naked half orc, who again narrowly avoided death when the beast nailed him with all three claws - which would have killed him, but his nictitating field saved his ass this time (a forcefield that flickers in and out of existence, giving a 50% chance of reducing each incoming attack by 10 damage) and prevented twenty damage, giving him just enough time to slaughter the beast with his greatsword next round.

Teach Your Children Well

Tilandriel divided up the magical energy siphoned from the beasts between himself, the artificial soul that he rescued from one of Corple's failed experiments, and the devil Seere (who he contacted last session and negotiated a complicated deal to obtain the devil's help and patronage in return for the soul of one of the telepathic hackers, if the party could free the souls from Mad Albert back in Celestia).

Tilandriel's player has been talking to me about raising the artificial soul and intelligence like it was his child, and has taken several steps toward that. The shadow cube that houses the intelligence and the shadow circuitry that makes up its soul can also manifest a physical body out of shadow stuff, and when the party defeated one of Corple's shadow panthers a few sessions ago, Tilandriel was able to salvage some of its "shadow modules" (the shadow circuitry that allows the shadow panthers to take different forms and absorb mutations) and install them in his child.

This session, he actually sacrificed 3,000 XP that he was awarded to raise his artificial child up to 1st level. He told me he is grooming the child to be his next character! I love it.

I love scheming. And plotting.

2010-12-29T21:36:00.000-08:00

I don't get to spend much time prepping for my weekly games. I scribble in my notebook on the bus to and from work. I grab fifteen minutes here or there, but I never actually sit down for extended prep sessions anymore like I used to think I had to do.

I used to think I had to spend hours creating a fully fleshed out place for the PCs to explore BEFORE the session (heck, before the campaign even started!). I treated it like an art project; I was creating a four-dimensional sculpture, and a lot of the time, I ended up creating tons of stuff that never saw the light of play.

What I do now is a lot more like studying for a test than creating an art project. After a campaign has been going for a while, it generates enough content that you really don't have to create much. It creates itself. You just have to sprinkle in some new spices and stir the ingredients around a bit to keep it from burning and sticking to the bottom of the pot. I look back at my notes from past sessions and refresh my memory with plot hooks that have slipped through the cracks. I think about new ways to connect all the things that have happened into a coherent framework. I think about what the logical responses would be to the PCs actions; responses from the other sentient actors on the scene, responses from the plant and animal life, responses from the land.

I have been getting to do a LOT of plotting and scheming lately, because both of my games took a couple week break over the holidays. On top of that, I got to fast forward time by a year and a half in my Mutant Future game as a result of some extra-dimensional portal hopping and 4-D teleporting done by the party.

A year and a half is FOREVER in game terms. My Mutant Future game has met for 48 sessions, and only a few months of game time has passed... until now! The party ended last session having just been reunited with Daybrak and the badders, and soon enough they will find out what Julius Corple has been up to underneath the ziggurut that he built on top of the military complex during the party's absence.

All I can say is it is going to be fun.

Target 10 System for chart-less Attribute Attack Resolution

2010-12-28T14:28:00.000-08:00

Mutant Future contains a chart based resolution mechanic for Willpower attacks. Many mutations call for a Willpower attack rather than a melee or ranged attack roll; the chance of success in a Willpower attack is determined by cross-indexing the attacker's and defender's attribute score on a chart to get a "to hit" number for a d20 roll.

I took this idea and ran with it, coming up with the general idea of attribute attacks. Any attribute can be the basis of an attribute attack; just like Mutant Future's Willpower attack, there are Intelligence, Dexterity, Constitution, Strength and Charisma attacks. I used this a lot while writing the "quirks" (mutations by another name) for my Fantasy Quirks character creation supplement for Mutant Future. I created a version of the Willpower Attack Table found in Mutant Future for any attribute attack:

There are two things that I like about attribute attacks; they do not gain potency while leveling up unless the ability itself increases, so 1st level characters with high attribute scores can contribute meaningfully alongside high level characters in combat; and (more importantly to me) it makes each attribute a defense. It makes the random attribute increase that is the result of leveling up 80% of the time in the Mutant Future a much more valuable thing. In a similar fashion to how 3e and 4e took saves and made defenses out of them, this gives me as a DM an easy mechanic to use for all sorts of attacks against the PCs. Demonic possession? A Willpower attack with the demons WIL of 15. A run of the mill pit trap? Dexterity attack with an attacking DEX of 10. I would write the previous example using the following shorthand: DEX10 ATT 3d6 (meaning if the Dexterity attack succeeds against the character, the character takes 3d6 damage).

A cloud of gas? CON15 ATT, 5d6 dmg save for 1/2

Bribing an official? Obviously a Charisma attack situation. I don't always (or even most of the time) call for rolls when players attempt to do things, but it is nice to have an easy and unified mechanic to use when I do. When I don't know the attribute of a creature or situation (in the case of a pit trap or other inanimate attacker or target), I generally use 5/10/15+ as a good guide: If the creature is not known for that attribute, or if the challenge is easy, I use 5. If the creature has no reputation for that attribute, good or bad, or if the challenge is moderately difficult I use 10 as the target attribute. For a creature known for the attribute in question or a difficult challenge, I will use 15 or more.

Today, I looked at the chart a little closer and realized that I could express the attack resolution in very simple terms to allow attribute attacks on the fly without having to look up a target number on a chart.

I realize that many people love looking up numbers on charts. In my case, it is often one of the only times I have to refer to a book at all while running my Mutant Future game, and I would just as soon not have to break my stride to look at the attribute attack chart one more time.

So here it is:

The “Target 10TM” system for chart-less attribute attack resolution .

(Target 10TM Carl Nash 2010)

d20 roll + (Attackers Attribute - Defenders Attribute) ≥ 10 = Success

In words: Subtract the defender’s attribute from the attackers attribute. The result (positive or negative) is the modifier to the d20 roll. A modified result equal to or greater than 10 is a success.

Example:

An attacker with CON 13 makes a CON attack on a defender with CON 15.

Attacker’s CON - Defender’s CON = -2

-2 is the modifier to the d20 roll

The attacker would have to roll a 12 or better (12-2=10)

4e Gamma World online character builder

2010-12-24T21:08:00.000-08:00

I have been really curious about the 4e Gamma World game since I first heard about it.

Of course, my wedding and honeymoon this summer have left me broker than I have ever been as an adult person, and my student loans are in repayment, and I have so far resisted the urge to buy all the booster packs. Because I have to confess, I am not one of those people who got all aghast about the use of cards and the inclusion of extra cards in booster packs.

I love cards. I used to play and collect Magic the Gathering back in high school, and while I haven't played that game in years I still get a kick out of the cards. All that glorious art... I could run many an awesome session of D&D using nothing but a bunch of Magic cards randomly dealt to me as a DM to give me inspiration. Come to think of it, I should do some Magic the Gathering inspired monster and magic posts over on my other blog. But anyway...

In a rare display of doing something other than sticking their collective heads farther into their collective arseholes, the good folks at Wizards have given us this.

http://wizards.com/dnd/article.aspx?x=dnd/4news/20101221

Follow the link and read the brief article if you want a discussion of how to use the character builder. It is free, totally awesome and I love it. It does not include the tech cards or the Alpha Mutations (the mutation that changes randomly with a card deal at the start of each session, if my sketchy understanding of 4e Gamma World is correct) that would be dealt to you at the game table and which are not permanent parts of the character.

Here is the link straight to the Character Builder for those of you who are American by gum and don't read instructions:

http://www.wizards.com/dnd/blank.aspx?x=dnd/4dnd/gwsheet

I am going to stop typing so I can go play around on this now.

Merry Christmas!

Powered Armor in varying states of repair

2010-12-22T23:04:00.000-08:00

My last post about destructible armor and damage reduction has gotten me thinking about powered armor.

I want to extend these rules to this fertile ground, but with more options than a simple loss in base AC bonus when soaking up damage into a suit. My initial thoughts were to divide a suit up into sub-systems: AC Bonus; propulsion (if any); weapons; defense (if any); carrying capacity/strength.

For example, the Iron Man suit in my campaign has a base AC bonus of +8 (AC of 1); repulsor tech propulsion enables flight up to 1200 MPH (James, the player in my campaign who controls the iron man suit, may pop in here and correct me on that, I don't have my notes in front of me and I can't actually remember top flight speed right now...); 2 x Repulsor Beam attacks per round for 4d6 damage, or a Repulsor Beam cone, +4 to hit against all targets in a 50' long 15' wide cone, doing 2d6 damage to those hit, or a mini-missile at +4 to hit with targeting computer lock, doing 7d6 damage in a 15' blast radius; 50 HP per round force field; 2 ton lifting capacity/1 ton carrying capacity in flight.

If damage was soaked into the suit, I would roll 1d5 (d10 / 2) and go down the line of sub-systems to see what got messed up. I would rule that you could soak the entire damage of an attack by suffering damage to a random subsystem. I would probably base the severity of the damage on the total HP being soaked, so absorbing a 127 HP explosion would definitely completely destroy whatever sub-system was rolled.

Like armor, powered armor can be repaired. This requires a successful tech roll and some raw materials (wiring, circuit boards, pipes, metal sheets, blow torch, etc.). A sub-system can only ever be restored to half functionality; in the Iron Man suit example, if the weapons sub-system had been completely destroyed, I might rule that the mini-missile launcher was a total loss but the repulsors could be restored with some hard work; if flight capability was lost, it could be restored, but only up to 600 MPH max speed and at greatly reduced maneuverabilities.

I am kind of excited about this. I have been thinking about how to make my Mutant Future game a little more Mad Max in flavor, and the scavenging and scrounging of weapons and armor and robotics is going to go a long way towards achieving that. More so, I look forward to seeing what kind of Frankenstein creations my players come up with after a while of adding on random junk to their rapidly disintegrating mech suits.

Scavenging Armor in the Mutant Future

2010-12-22T02:31:00.000-08:00

I mentioned my "Let it Ride" house rule a little while back, which has served to both speed up combats and make them much more exciting for everyone involved. At this point, combat in the Mutant Future is finally humming along at the pace and lethal tone I like without having to rely on grenades and laser blasters. Nothing wrong with those, mind you, I just want the guys with the lead pipes and hockey sticks to be able to mess someone up as well.

I am also introducing a simple damage reduction mechanic, which I think will resolve a long standing frustration of mine with the way D&D AC works. This was inspired by the Shields Will Splinter houserule, that my friend Carter is using in his Labyrinth Lord campaign (and which I know he got from another blogger in this small blogoworld). Shields Will Splinter allows you to sacrifice your shield to prevent the damage from an attack, and I have used it several times to save my dwarf's neck in Carter's campaign. I basically took this concept and ran with it, applying it to any type of armor. My hope is to see characters running around with half destroyed armor, looking for stop signs and car doors to patch themselves back up with.

Armor Will Crumble

(Mutagenic Houserule)

When a character takes damage, her player has the option of soaking up some of that damage into her armor. Damage can be soaked in 10 HP increments, with each 10 HP soaked reducing the base bonus of the armor by one. For example, a character wearing chainmail takes 15 HP of damage from a laser blast. Soaking all of that damage into her armor would reduce its base bonus by 2, resulting in her chainmail having a base AC of 7 instead of 5.

Unarmored: AC 9
Current AC: 9 - current armor bonus - Dexterity modifier

Armor Type: Base Bonus: Current Bonus:

Shield +1
Cloth +1
Leather +2
Studded Leather +3
Chainmail +4

Scale Mail +5

Plate Mail +6
Full Plate Mail +7

Magical Armor: If a player chooses to soak damage into magical armor, the player rolls a Save vs. Energy Blast for the armor as if it were a character of a level equal to twice its magical bonus (+5 armor saves as a 10th level character). If the save is successful, the damage is negated and the armor is unscathed. If the save fails, the attack does double damage and the armor is completely destroyed.

This will require a minuscule amount of record keeping for the players, but only if they choose to use the houserule... and that will probably only be in a situation where it saves the character's bacon, so I don't envision any complaints...

All a player has to do is say how much of the damage they just received they are soaking, reduce the amount of incoming damage accordingly, and then adjust AC and current bonus of armor.

For every two points of AC bonus lost to damage soaking, one point could be restored by scavenging material and taking the time to repair the armor. This also means that you can only repair leather or better armor, and that repaired armor will be only half as effective as new armor... but hey, its much better than nothing!

I think this houserule will encourage a kind of hording mentality that I think actually would exist in the Mutant Future - I imagine if you found an extra suit of armor in the wasteland, you would lug it around with you if you could...

Teleporting in 4D

2010-12-21T01:35:00.000-08:00

I have been thinking a lot about time travel lately as it relates to portals, teleporting and dimensional shifting.

One of the things I have been kicking around is the idea of linked portals both advancing through time. The simplest example is two portals linked together and advancing through time at the same rate. So you step through a portal and pop out five years in the past (these portals may or may not also travel through physical space or dimensional space, regardless of being linked temporally). You spend a year farting around in the past, then step back through the portal and find that you have missed a year in your original timeline.

A slight wrinkle is to have the two portals advance through time at different rates. This is what happened recently in my Mutant Future campaign, when despite experiencing just a few weeks as the party experienced time, the characters found that almost two years had passed when they passed back through a dimensional portal into their original home (and home dimension). This allowed me to make some changes to the swampy home they have come to love, such as the disturbing tendency of recently killed things to rise up from the dead and stumble around looking for brains, and some major reshuffling of the local power players (most noticeably the Knights of Genetic Purity withdrawing from the valley and a major increase in Julius Corple's activities and influence).

Anyone else ever played around with this? I first got the idea when a new character in the campaign got the Plane Shift mutation and I was coming up with a list of some random destinations in case it was ever used. One of the destinations I wrote down was in the past of the campaign world, before the apocalypse.

That destination came into play because I just couldn't resist it... I had decided that the first time the mutation was used, it was opening to the present. I had gleeful visions of a mutant party crashing through Eugene, looting the army installation by the fair grounds and then jetting with the military in hot pursuit. The first time the mutation was used, the party was in a desperate struggle against a Xiticix Killer (a great monster that I stole from a wonderful Rifts book called Lone Star which I actually wrote a review of on this blog - I highly recommend Rifts as inspiration for Mutant Future DM's, even if you just look at the pictures...)

In a sudden flash of inspiration, the player with Plane Shift opened a portal to random destination behind the creature and the rest of the party bull rushed it and forced it into the portal... to a busy intersection in west Eugene on the evening that I was playing the game with my friends in real life. Only of course, we didn't hear about the national guard being called in to deal with an alien monster that night...

I recently picked up Transdimensional Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which is more or less an entire book of possible destinations for time portals as well as advice for running exactly the kind of time and dimension-spanning game that I have come to love!

So of course, I recently had the players discover a "portal tree" with 18 twisted columns of energy intertwining around each other, each leading to a different destination if stepped into.

They have learned what is on the other side of about half of the portals. They very nearly dropped everything else they were doing and went exploring a giant temple of the snake men on an apparently abandoned planet, and they stuck their heads out in my 4e campaign world (two players who cross-over between my campaigns were duly impressed, and got to feel like they were in on a joke). But what is on the other side of the other nine portals? Or when?

Stars Without Number

2010-12-17T13:21:00.000-08:00

Wow. Just simply wow. Check this out right now. Author Kevin Crawford has released a free .PDF of his amazing retroclone, Stars Without Number, which is not released under the OGl and thusly does not claim any direct compatability with any system... but it is pretty much compatible with any pre-3e edition of D&D with minimal changes. The coolest thing is that this looks suspiciously like B/X crossed with Traveller.

No, I lied. The coolest thing is the equipment list. No, the world building tips. No, the easy to read layout and the concise but evocative writing.

I am going to hork the equipment list and make a few random tables out of it so that new starting characters in my Mutant Future campaign can have something cooler than a short sword to kill things with at 1st level!

Don't Cross The Streams

2010-11-23T01:24:00.000-08:00

In the real world I run two RPG campaigns simultaneously, am the general manager of a local natural grocery store with 40 employees, try to be a good husband to a beautiful goodwife, and keep up a busy musical and social life. I am good at juggling things. I see connections everywhere, ways of integrating different aspects of my life to achieve new heights at every endeavor. It is only natural, then, that my two RPG campaigns should coexist in a single coherent worldview and could even, if the conditions were right, directly impact each other.

Well, the moon was in the correct phase, the planets aligned, the stars froze for 73 milliseconds and a transmission escaped from one of my campaigns into another. A player, looking bravely into the face of the unknown in the form of a direct nervous system interface with an alien computer system, facilitated by the animated liquid-metal quadrapus-harness robot that had attached itself to him, said the following immortal words:

"I'll flip some switches."

The DM pauses and thinks back on what he had just heard.

DM CARL: "The only thing you can understand about this interface is that there are certain 'programs', or complex sequences of energy pulses in various frequencies, that can be activated by the central singularity container. You have no way of telling what the effects are going to be. The only way you can even tell that these are 'programs', is that one was recently activated by the liquid metal centipede that you guys destroyed last time. That program activation is what provided the energy for all the compartmentalized charged gas brains, started the alien egg bath glowing pink and restored the dead embryos to a rapidly growing life. So when I said that basically you had a bunch of switches, that you could flip on or off, I was trying to stress that you had no idea what flipping the switches would do. Are you SURE you want to flip some switches?"

TILANDRIEL: "I'll flip some switches." (poker face)

DM CARL: "OK... pause... I have to find that list... pause shuffle shuffle... where the FUCK is that chart of random possibility outcomes... OH WELL

(there is a delicate balance between finding the correct information in your notes and just keeping the game moving)

(I at least remember the gist of the chart, which is that an 85 or higher is a result observable within the chamber, 1-84 is an activation of one alien facility or another on the planet, or the activation of a certain subroutine in an alien robot, and a roll of 100 on a d100 was the total, immediate and utter destruction of the universe with no savings throw. Thats what you get for fucking with a goddamn singularity contained inside alien technology that you don't even pretend to understand.)

DM CARL: "OK... I can't find the chart, but go ahead and roll 4 times. That is how many 'levers' you can flip in one round of actions. I will record the results. I remember enough about the chart to tell you the general results, if you can see any at all, of your actions. You can roll 1d100 four times if you really want to."

TILANDRIEL: shake shake shake ROLLLLLLLLL 86 (oooohhhhhhhhhh...... I will go with one of the results that I remember well because it is a really bad one, but it is easily observable in the chamber)

DM CARL: "The complex pink and purple pulses that have covered the central singularity container stop and a dull orange glow replaces them. Everyone with a magical quirk (see my Fantasy Quirks supplement for Mutant Future) can sense a sudden and strong influx of magical energy. Go ahead and roll three more times."

SHAKE SHAKE SHAKE ROLLLLLLL ----- the last three rolls were under 85, no 100's, the world did not end, and three of the four levers caused effects that the party could not observe. Still, the party DID have one observable effect to contend with back on Celestia.

DM CARL: "No longer is the singularity container simply broadcasting energy out across Celestia; now, several intense streams of magical energy seem to be manifesting and streaming INTO the singularity, which swells and grows as the orange glow becomes more intense. At the same time, the plasma brain baths are instantly shut down and you lose your interface. You no longer have any contact with the alien computer or the singularity container."

The Upshot: The streams have been crossed!

The players have already suspected that the alien technology they are encountering on the surface of Celestia is related to the "snake men" that reside in an obsidean crater in a city of gold in my 4e campaign. These suspicions will probably be confirmed next Friday when my 4e game next meets, as there will be noticeable impacts of the levers being thrown in that game world.

The alien facilities that pepper the landscape of Celestia in a peculiar pattern the cause of which the party has not yet determined are not only created by the same race of snakemen that reside mysteriously aloof in their golden city in my 4e campaign, but these facilities are directly linked to the huge meteorite "battery" that the golden city sits on top of.

The players unwittingly activated an energy transference subroutine that was not supposed to be activated until very near the end of time in my Mutant Future universe. This subroutine begins the transference of stored energy from the snakemen's meteorite battery in my 4e universe to the snake men's singularity container in my Mutant Future universe, for purposes that are still unclear to my players, not to mention the effect that starting the energy transfer billions of years too earlier might have on whatever plans the snakemen have laid throughout time and multiple dimensions of reality.

More to be said on that after next Friday's game...

The Surface of Celestia

2010-11-08T23:38:00.000-08:00

This is a page from my notes with a nice cutaway view that shows the surface of Celestia. I gave a brief overview of Celestia in this post. Click to see a non-clipped version.

The party has been stumbling their way across, over and under the dark ruined surface of Celestia for six sessions now. In that time they have come across quite a few oddities, a few of which I have scanned in from my campaign notes.

The last two sessions have largely focused on this room (including an epic battle last session [Mutagenic Substance Campaign Session #45!] against a liquid-metal robot centipede golem!):
(Top View, scale is at the bottom: The circular thing in the center is an alien machine of some sort. A dome on top of it opens into what appears to be a controlled singularity, the creation and distruction of a/the universe contained within it somehow for an as yet unknown purpose)

Click to see a non-clipped version:

View of the circular thing in the center of the chamber: This emits intense energy in every possible form that energy can be emitted, apparently broadcasting to numerous receptors around Celestia. Everything in this chamber that is powered (the egg foam, the teleporter pods, the lift, and the "cars") runs on broadcast power emitted by this thing.

The party became aware of this strange chamber, totally incongruous amidst the lowest service levels of an ancient subway line, when Tilandriel (an elf made with my Fantasy Quirks character creation supplement for Mutant Future) gained access to the memories stored inside the Dr. Octopus-like tentacled liquid-metal-harness that had attached itself to him. Intrigued by the alien contents of the chamber as revealed to Tilandriel in a 3-Dimensional scan of the subway line, and by some glowing tablets of energy they had previously found which appeared to be related, the party reversed their stolen subway train and headed back to look for the alien chamber.

The numbered circles in the room are matched pairs of teleporter pods. They function similarly to the teleporter pods in the movie The Fly with Jeff Goldblum (one of my wife's all time hollywood crushes and on her top five to do list).

The door of the pod opens from the center at any touch of at least one pound pressure, and will not shut if anything at all is breaking the plane of the door. If at least 1 oz of matter is inside a pod and nothing is breaking the plane of the door, the door shuts and the pods channel the singularity inside the big machine in the center of the room. The contents of the two pods with the same alphanumerical designation trade places in spacetime, instantly, no matter the intervening distance, with no effect that can be observed by anything thus transported, and the door opens in the new location. If the door on one matched pod is open, the door on its mate will not open until the first door is shut. A glowing iris in the center of the door is an omni-directional camera that broadcasts its feed to a screen inside the pod's mate. In this manner, the area in front of the destination pod can be viewed before teleporting.

The pods crossed out with an "X" and numbered 1-3 lead to the corresponding destinations labelled 1-3 at the bottom. The pods that are all the way blacked out are the mated pairs to the pods labelled 1-3 and are consequently missing from the chamber.

Two pods (bottom left corner) are loaded onto a sort of "car" that is parked on top of a working lift that goes up to the subway line. Three more cars, each capable of loading two more pods, are parked along the wall.

Two pits contain mounds of alien eggs, covered in a solidified foam that resembles a spit-bugs nest. The foam is super-charged and delivers a 5d20 damage shock (save vs. Energy attacks for half damage) to anyone foolish enough to touch it. The eggs contain dead embryos, similar in form to mammals in early development, but obviously of a slightly divergent alien evolutionary history.

Fantasy Quirks Beta Test Version 0.9.4

2010-09-17T02:15:00.000-07:00

As mentioned in my last post, I recently have written a supplement for Mutant Future that allows random mutation style character generation in a fantasy vein. Not necessarily your normal D&D fantasy vein, but a fantasy vein nonetheless.

I just updated this blog to include a permanent link to the Google Docs version of this supplement. In many ways, this is already an outdated version but it will be couple of weeks before I release the .PDF version of the official public beta version playtest.

The official playtest will be hosted on the forums over at the Eye of the Vortex, so stay posted for news of that.

Any feedback, almost especially negative feedback, is encouraged. Let me know what you think!

New Campaign World and New Rules

2010-08-16T19:21:00.000-07:00

Man, last night's session was a doozy. It might take too long to explain exactly how this all transpired, but the PCs now find themselves on the dark surface of a planet that is entirely surrounded by a metal ball. The surface of the planet itself is really the crumbling upper level of layer after layer of ruined cities that stretch uninterrupted across the world. Occasional light oases (an oasis of light) exist where radiation spills from the underside of the metal shell that covers the planet; this is usually heat exhaust, but in at least one place a malfunctioning fusion reactor in the metal shell is shedding light comparable to the setting sun over a good swath of the land.

The group has sort of fallen in with a passive resistance movement called the Upward Thinking Gentle Beings, who pride themselves on still being aware of the galaxy of interstellar intrigue that exists on the other side of the metal shell that covers the world. The Upward Thinking Gentle Beings split away from the Old Republic of Celestia because they found the brutal methods of the old government to be distasteful. The mutant race of telepathic computer hackers that had been enslaved by the government escaped with the Upward Thinking Gentle Beings, making tracking down the runaways the number one priority for the Republic, because without the Hackers the death machines used by the Republic to keep order are beginning to go haywire.

Last night's session, in addition to being somewhat of a campaign reboot in a new location (much more of the world of Celestia to come in future posts), marked the first official playtest session of a supplement I am working on for Mutant Future.

Basically, I have come up with an entire new set of physical and mental mutations that I call "quirks", that enable anyone to roll a random character with powers similar to and compatible with Mutant Future's mutations and mutants. The difference is that instead of being post-apocalyptic flavor, these characters taste like the particular strange version of the fantasy genre that exists in my imagination.

Players who have characters die and new players in the campaign are now making characters using these rules, and playing them alongside the regular Mutant Future characters. So far so good - the new characters and quirks meshed seamlessly with the old mutants and mutations. As soon as I finish getting the Open Gaming License and the Mutant Future License filled in correctly, I will post a free public Beta version of these rules if anyone else wants to get in on the playtesting fun!

I also introduced a new houserule into play that proved to be terribly exciting and an instant winner.

"Let it Ride" or "Double or Nothing"

Whenever a successful melee or ranged attack is made, the attacker can choose to let it ride - this involves throwing a second attack roll. If this is also successful, the attack does double normal damage, but if it fails, the attack does no damage at all. This can be attempted a third time if the second roll is successful, for quadruple damage with a success but again, no damage at all with a failure.

In play, this made combat WAY more exciting, fast and deadly. A guy with a sword or bow and arrow can now do some serious damage in a single round; it is just much harder to get the hit in. When Dis, a vampire character made using the new rules, was making his escape in the back of a purloined jeep, a Republic soldier drew careful bead and BAM, I rolled a 19. Solid hit with the rifle. So I let it ride... 15. Hit. So I let it ride again... the party hangs in suspense... 19! Dis takes a quadruple damage rifle shot and ends up with 3 HP. Ouch!

Of course, what is good for the goose is good for the gander, and the party got some awesome super high damage shots in using this rule - and also wasted several hits by pressing their luck. The most dramatic moment was when Gar the dark elf (another fantasy quirk character, I combined race into the random quirk package so that both race and powers are determined randomly during the char gen process) decided that he was going to go for broke and double up an attack twice. He rolled all three d20's at once, and the first two stopped rolling before the last one... 20! 20! Two 20's sitting on the table (a 20 is a double damage attack in my game, which stacks with the doubling and quadrupling from the Let it Ride rule, so we were looking at a possible 16 or even 32 times damage attack if the last die ended up a hit or a 20 as well) and the last one finally stops rolling on a 4. Wiff!

The group erupted in howls of laughter as poor Rorey (Gar's player) had to pick up his dice, knowing he just wasted double 20's without even landing a hit!

I personally loved the feel of the rule, combining the excitement and risk taking of gambling with the rolling of the dice. Even though an individual attack round might take a little longer using this rule, the whole group was very into each roll and soon began chanting "Double It! Double It!" when a party member landed a successful hit. The overall effect was to actually speed up combat, because a few quadruple damage hits landed that dramatically changed the balance of power on the battlefield.

It also neatly solves a longstanding problem I have had with the Mutant Future rules, which is that the equipment table was lifted straight from Labyrinth Lord with its d8 damage for a longsword intact. With HP being based solely on Constitution, I have a hard time buying the usual "HP do not represent physical damage" jazz, so I want a sword to be able to do some serious damage. Maybe not as easily as a laser cannon or a rifle, but a 1st level character shouldn't be able to just stand there laughing while someone hacks at them round after round with a measly d6 damage shortsword. Just for shits and giggles, the next time I roll a nat 20 on an attack roll, I am going to calmly say to the group... "Let it ride..."

Some plant-tending robots.

2010-07-21T01:37:00.000-07:00

This motley assortment of robots was encountered by my PCs in the alien spaceship that turned out to be nearly filled with a powerful plant organism. The robots, designed by the plant organism and created using the ship's science labs, tended to a small forest of young flowering bodies (small Death's Head Trees, with little severed heads as fruit). The sketches are lifted out of my notes from running the game, and are pretty hasty to say the least.

Sensor Balls:

All of these robots can be controlled by little flying balls called "Sensor Balls", one of which is depicted flying over robot 2 below. These little flyers usually take no actions beyond hovering in a position that gives them a good field of view (and they can see in all directions and spectrums) and directing the other robots. They will take evasive maneuvers if necessary and can use a short range laser meant for precision trimming and pruning work in combat as a last resort. As long as any one Sensor Ball is in the vicinity, it commands the other kinds of robots with great intelligence. Left to their own devices, the robots can only respond with pre-programmed aggressions to anyone disrupting their routine.

Movement: Flight (35 MPH), instant acceleration, perfect maneuvering including the ability to hover
HP: 12
AC: 1
Attack: 2' Laser Beam, attacks as a 14 HD monster (these little balls have amazing processing power and when they combine it with their terrific sensory inputs they can attack with cold precision), 4d6 damage, can cut through metal slowly.

Forcefield: 20 HP per round (the Sensor Ball ignores the first twenty damage it takes every round, this refreshes at the beginning of the Sensor Ball's next turn).
Each Sensor Ball has 6 "eyes" that have 2 HP each; one eye is lost for every 2 damage the ball takes.

The Plant-Tending Robots:

All the robots below share at least one common design element: the ball shaped "fingertip" that on the end of each "finger" and "toe". Each of these balls is covered with a multitude of tiny manipulators that can fold upon themselves to create attraction much like a gecko's foot. These fingertip balls are capable of firmly grasping almost any surface, and when five of them on the ends of opposable fingers are combined, these robots are extremely nimble and dexterous when it comes to fine manipulation of objects. This feature means that all robots that possess it can walk on walls and ceilings just as easily as the floor. Use this to your advantage! PCs often forget to look up...

The numbers refer to the numbers next to the robots on the drawings above.

Robot 1: This is a mobile vacuum cleaner, essentially. It stands four feet off the ground with a neck that can extend out to ten feet.

Movement: This thing cannot go faster than a slow jogging pace, and its normal movement speed is a slow walking pace as it snuffles up debris and keeps the plant chambers clean.
Attacks: As an 8 HD monster, it can attack with its powerful suction hose to a range of 15'. This attack causes no damage but holds objects weighing less than 2,000 lbs firmly suctioned against the hose mouth as if it had a strength of 20. It can carry 500 pounds and drag up to 2,000 pounds at half its normal speed.
HP and AC:
   Main Body (the vacuum bag, which can expand out more than twice as wide as the robot is tall, and the disc shaped power source and legs): HP: 100, AC: 5

   Neck/Vacuum: HP:30, AC: 3

Disabling the body destroys the robot; disabling the neck or vacuum eliminates its only effective means of defending itself.

Robot 2: This is a flying plant trimmer. The main body is 14" across and each arm is a smooth plastic that can extend out to 3 feet. It has a hand that can gently manipulate a plant and a wicked pruner that can slice straight through a ten inch tree trunk if the blades are fully extended.

Movement: Flight up to 30 MPH, excellent maneuverability
HP: 30
AC: 3
Attacks as a 7 HD monster. AT:1, DMG: 2d6 pruner, 2d10 if pruner fully extended (takes 1 round to extend)
Can grab and carry an object in its hand as if it had a strength of 18. It can fly with up to 200 pounds and drag up to 400 at half its normal movement.

Robot 3: This is a robot plant mister and fertilizer and insecticide dispenser. Your general all in one watering can swiss army knife type robot. It can stand anywhere from 2 feet (the height of its reservoir tank and power disc) to over 7' tall when all five segments are extended on each leg.
Movement: as a human
Attacks: The robot attacks as a 8 HD monster. See spray attacks below.
HP and AC:
   Reservoir Tank: unless otherwise specified, all attacks are directed at this area. HP: 60 AC:4 - if the Reservoir Tank is destroyed, the pressurized gases inside explode for 5d6 damage in a 10' radius.
   Legs (4): Each leg has HP:20 and AC:3 At least two legs are required for the robot to effectively move, although it can certainly drag and hop along on one leg.
   Misters (2) Each mister has HP:10 and AC:4. At least one mister is required to for the robot to make a spray attack.

Spray Attacks: 2 sprays (15' range, single target each) or one area attack spray that automatically hits any opponent within 6' (or close melee range).

Damage: (many different sprays) 2d6 acid (ongoing 1d6 damage for two rounds unless washed off), or save vs. poison for 5d6 damage (poison gas lingers in the same area for another round, anyone still in the area a turn later must save again if they have not taken any damage), or save vs. poison or fall unconscious for 1d4 rounds or no damage (special): smoke cloud, limits visibility to 5'

Robot 4: This is a mobile plant nursery capable of transporting up to a 3' tall baby Death's Head Tree (or your choice of other valuable plant type thing). It is a beefy robot designed to be able to traverse rugged environments. It also can act as a controller for the other robots, although it is not as intelligent as several Sensor Balls acting in concert.

The section of the drawing above labelled "4B" shows how each large metal sphere that independently powers two of the robots legs can descend downwards on a pole up to 15'. If any one of these three two-legged balls survives, it can maneuver the robot around at full speed if not full agility. 4B also shows how each leg can itself extend out to a total of five jointed segments (only two are pictured extended in the main drawing, and none of the three balls that mount the six legs are pictured extended down at all).

The five circles that appear around the edge of the main disc like body of the robot are portals through which eye-tentacles can emerge. There are ten of these eye tentacles in total. The very front of the robot is a multi-purpose panel that can serve as a monitor for displaying images and also functions as a forward facing viewpoint.

Movement: Can run up to 50 MPH over even terrain, and up to 30 MPH over broken terrain and even up a cliff. These are extremely powerful and rugged robots.
HP and AC:
   Everything but the dome (the main body, the extendable balls and the legs): HP: 150 AC: 0
   The Dome: HP: 50 AC: 0

Forcefield: The dome is surrounded by a 50 HP forcefield (the dome ignores the first 50 HP of damage it receives each round).
Attacks: as a 20 HD monster: 2 kicks for 4d6 damage each. If a kick does more than 12 damage, it knocks the victim backwards 10' and requires a dexterity check to remain standing.

Destroying the main body of the robot does not disable the forcefield around the dome or make it any easier to penetrate the incredibly hard clear plastic surface of the dome. The interior of the dome will maintain a livable environment for its plant for up to 7 days after the robot is destroyed with the tanks of compressed gases and stores of water and nutrients inside the dome.

I love poorly translated Japanese comments on my blog!

2010-06-22T23:41:00.000-07:00

The following is an unedited (except for where I made the line breaks) excerpt from the babelfish translation of a Japanese spam comment on my last post. For more hilarity, scroll down and read the other badly translated porn spam.

Found Poem

a one hitting javelin

unevenness

electric shadow institute love

love

single leaf feeling

I am mystified by and remain hopeful that another commenter is legitimate, because the translation of this short comment seems to perfectly sum up my entire Mutant Future campaign in an abstract sort of way: "The impossible left and right heaven - yes from here reforming - feelings"

Holy Crap! I have time to write a post! (Mutant Future sessions 34 - 37)

2010-04-27T01:11:00.000-07:00

Well folks, looking back at my last post I see that I drastically overestimated my ability to keep up on this blog. Not a single 2e Tuesday post. Sorry!

My weekly Mutant Future game has become an every other week affair, but the players are taking the campaign in interesting new directions. I want to briefly outline what has happened since the players stole an alien spaceship in an alternate dimension that they were visiting. This is still going to be a very long post even if I skip a lot of the details.

Sessions 34 - 37 have all taken place on the ship, although at the end of last nights session the main body of the ship was destroyed and the party barely escaped in the detachable flying saucer top of the space ship. The flying saucer was heavily damaged and the party more or less crash landed it on a rocky planetoid.

The party took a while to feel out the ship. A character death had necessitated that Danny roll up a new character during the session that the party stole the ship (alas, Rok was decapitated during a duel with an Elf Champion), and he made a robot using the optional rules I introduced here and here. I let him roll twice on the optional Industrial and Civilian feature chart and once on the mental mutation table and he got the Plane Shift mutation. Of course, this meant that he had just used his ability to materialize within the alien ship the day before the party stole it. He had been working on interacting with the ship's computer the entire time, and spent much of the next two sessions pursuing this strategy. His ability to wirelessly interact with the computers within 50' of him (thanks to that handy optional chart) let him attempt to do the job of a crew of humans on the bridge. He spent a lot of time doing tech rolls and coming up with new and creative ways to use the ship's computers and attempt to wrest control of the computer systems from an unknown super-computer that was manipulating the ship's data feeds.

One thing that the party learned right away was that one quarter of the ship, a large wedge, on two levels, had been completely disconnected from the ship's systems. What lay in that large area, behind sealed bulkheads, the party had no way of knowing.

Other party members familiarized themselves with the large weapons control deck and the robotics control deck. Bob the mutant human had a great deal of success in figuring out how to remotely control what turned out to be a veritable legion of robots of many different varieties.

An army of robotic minions was sent out to explore the ship when it was discovered that the optical feeds coming in from the ship's cameras were being tampered with by an unknown super-computer that appeared to have direct access to the ship's bridge. It gradually became apparent that there were "invisible" creatures stalking around the ship (at least two of them were confirmed by reconnaissance squads in different locations simultaneously), but as they were cloaked from visual detection and the feed from the ship's sensors was being manipulated by the unknown computer the only way of detecting them was relying on the sensors of the robots directly controlled by Bob the mutant human in the robotics control center. Attempts to engage the invisible creatures led to the destruction of numerous robots and no further knowledge of the invisible assailants

Amusingly, Shazaam attempted to "figure out" the weapons control system. This was a complex touchscreen interaction with visual tracking that allowed the user to pull up enormous targeting windows along the outer wall of the deck. Having already failed to understand the interface, he informed me that he was going to "press some buttons". I had him roll the dice. He rolled the worst possible result that he could of. Everyone in the party stopped as I laughed and told them what happened next. Shazaam had activated an emergency defensive sub-routine meant to be used as a last resort when taking intense enemy fire. He diverted all available power to the ship's shields and the weapons systems. The ship shut down all non-occupied areas, powering off life support and diverting everything to the shields.

The party held its breath, looking at monitors depicting an inky black ship. Over in the bridge, Volcom (the plane shifting robot computer tech) managed to restore the ship to its normal operating parameters but multiple alarms demanded his attention.

Entire decks of cryo-chambers had opened, releasing a bizarre horde of part plant, part animal monstrosities. Stang, the giant mutant wasp with four defective paranoid brains, leapt at the chance to rush into action.

I probably shouldn't go into detail with the battles that raged across the ship, first with the newly awakened abominations (this battle was actually mercifully short thanks to grenades and an entire legion of robotic defenders activated by Bob to aid the party) and later with the invisible assailants. These turned out to be shapeshifting plant-toads that walked upright and had enormous gaping mouths (I used the Grey Slaadi stats from the Fiend Folio, with a few tweaks: 150 HP, flame strike does 15d6, and they could transport themselves with/transform themselves into their "ball of lightning" ability which I left at 8d6+6 damage). The creatures proved to be quite formidable. One showed up in the bridge in the guise of a holographic doctor that had been activated during the accidental ship-wide power shutdown.

The party was all too eager to believe in the holographic doctor, especially as he told them a lot of information that made sense. Eventually, the ruse was revealed and the toad-thing attempted to slay the party in the bridge as another attacked the party members that were down in the lower decks. Nothing the party tried seemed to be able to hurt the creatures. Even mental mutations seemed to work only infrequently (I applied the Grey Slaadi's 55% magic resistance to mental mutation attacks and the party wasn't trying the "magical" weapons they had, two long swords +3 of light from the elves and several glargore weapons from the badders). At one point James Bomb received a wound and an egg pellet was implanted in his arm by the toad-plant. He panicked and fled, tying off his arm above the wound and blasting his own forearm off with his laser pistol as he retreated to the med chambers. The elevator let him off in a strange, plant covered chamber and it took all his wits to evade another toad creature that came looking for him. Back in the bridge, Shazaam had realized that his elvish Light Sword could injure the creature and the tide of battle turned. The toadstrosity retreated.

I have to mention one epic moment: a later battle pitted Shazaam one on one against another Slaadtastic Plant Toad. Dr. Hops the mutant were-rabbit lay dead at his feet, victim of the Slaadi's flamestrike which thankfully Shazaam had succeeded in his saving throw against. The slaad traced a strange symbol in the air and projected energy through it - Volcom's player Danny made a specific point to mention that Volcom was watching this symbol closely over the monitors from the bridge - and Shazaam and Volcom promptly became blind. In the case of the robot Volcom, his optical sensors were still working but his processors had lost the capacity to crunch the visual feed and he had no image to work with. Shazaam hefted his Light Sword and made a called shot to the neck, an attempted decapitation, acknowledging my admonition that he would be at a severe penalty to hit due to his BLINDNESS, and... rolled a natural 20. He cut the thick head off the shoulders of that thing, and then stumbled off to the med labs.

Several sessions slowly revealed that the entire ship was riddled with a single organism, an immense plant that had filled the ventilation systems, the spaces between decks, and presumably had a main body in the section of the ship that was sealed off from the party. Sorties into this sealed section revealed rooms of robot plant cultivators tending to small "sapling" versions of the death's-head tree the party had encountered at the elven castle.

The party had also been experiencing symptoms of a physical ailment, symptoms that manifested for some of the party members as bloating and discomfort in the bowels and in others as sinus pressure or a sore throat. Eventual scans revealed that an alien organism was growing inside most of the party members (Bozko never ate any elvish food and Volcom arrived in the spaceship without contacting the elves at all). It appeared to be forming a second nervous system that was intertwining itself along and around the nervous systems of the infected party members. Of course, many methods were tried to remove the organism but it was too closely linked to vital nerves to allow for any surgical extraction and the robot doctors warned strongly against even attempting it.

The party gained access to what appeared to be several thousand years of ship's medical logs - apparently, the ship had been cruising around space for over 5,000 years acting as the host of the parasitic alien plant-creature. The plant creature infected the original crew of the ship and once the alien nervous systems grew inside the crew members, the plant-creature sent out signals that activated the alien nervous systems and seized control of the crew members' bodies.

I wish I had time to go into the biology, philosophy and survival adaptations of the alien creature and its offspring because it is really fascinating but I don't.

Long story short: A violent struggle for control of the ship broke out between the alien plant-creature that filled the ship and the party, who holed up in the bridge. The bridge and the other three important main decks were all located in a detachable portion of the spaceship, a large flying saucer that also contained the weapons systems but not the hyperdrive. The party eventually cleared the entire flying saucer level of the alien plant creature and achieved a stalemate of sorts as both sides waited for the ship to complete its jump and come out of hyperspace.

The second the ship returned to normal space Volcom initiated the detach flying saucer sequence. The party had prepared for this moment by hacking into a section of the ship's life support code and eliminating the barrier on how hot the internal temperature could be raised to. Then, the party had activated the sprinkler system and filled the hallways with mist. As soon as the flying saucer was clear, Volcom was cranking the heat inside the main body of the spaceship up to nearly 1,000 degrees. The plan was to steam the vegetable, as it had been proven earlier that head dried up and killed the mycelium-like tissue of the plant-creature.

The plant-creature proved to be a wily adversary as well, jettisoning four large sections of the ships hull that opened into the sealed plant-sections of the ship and revealing four enormous "arms" of plant matter, that reached out thousands of feet and snagged the flying saucer as it was attempting to fly away. Twisting and turning, pulled by the long plant-tentacles, the flying saucer and its crew blasted away with the pulse-laser cannons and soon succeeded in destroying the arms that bound the ship. Volcom steered the flying saucer a safe distance away and the rest of the party remained in the weapons control deck, manning pulse cannons and missiles aimed at the ship "just in case".

Soon, two cloaked slaadi flew out after the flying saucer. Impossible to detect except as a void where background radiation should have been coming through, the slaadi proved difficult to target with the pulse cannons and were dangerously close for missile fire. The slaadi took advantage of this moment of confusion and transformed into lightning ball form and travelled at the speed of light to directly outside the saucer's hull, from whence they sent lightning balls inside the ship to attack the party.

The slaad attempted to tunnel in to the ship, but Stang picked one of with the pulse cannon, overcoming its energy resistance (55% magic resistance) and utterly obliterating it with something like 780 damage done with the one shot (the ship-to-ship pulse cannons do 1d100 x 10 damage). The second slaad made it into the walls of the ship and was eventually stopped, but not before severe damage was done to the computer and life support systems in the bridge.

Volcom piloted the crippled saucer back close enough to the mother ship to be able to wirelessly tap into its computers (the transmitter in the saucer had been damaged beyond repair and the party had lost all feeds from the mother ship). Once the party had access to the feeds again, it became apparent that the plan was working. The alien flesh was being slowly cooked, and it looked like within five or six more hours the middle of the alien creature would be "done". Mmmm, roasted alien mycelial networks.

Suddenly, a huge ball of the creature shot out from the spaceship and began hurtling away into space, apparently making a break for it. As the astonished party swung their weapons toward it, they saw it preparing some kind of energy charge that it was aligning toward the main body of the ship.

Volcom diverted all of the shields to directly between the flying saucer and the main body of the ship, just before a nuclear explosion happened in the chamber recently vacated by the plant-creature. The ship was ripped to shreds and then disintegrated, but the alien creature had readied a shield of energy to "surf" off the explosion and accelerate away.

Luckily, the shields held because of Volcom's last second maneuver, but the power resources of the flying saucer were almost completely drained. The party did manage to destroy the alien creature with pulse-laser fire as the explosion was happening, and then eventually Volcom armed a missile with a planet buster and sent it off after the creature. Once it got within a few hundred miles it detonated and annihilated the plant.

Stang remarked that she kind of missed the plant now, because she had really gotten to know the tricky creature after several sessions in a row of fighting against it.

Volcom piloted the saucer to a nearby rocky planetoid that the party had previously scanned. It contained a robotic automated mining station but no life forms.

And there you have it folks, the extremely brief version of what has been going on in my Mutant Future campaign!

2e Tuesday and General Announcements

2010-03-23T23:05:00.000-07:00

Howdy Blog Readers! Events in my life necessitate that I cut back on some of my game related activities. I think I am going to make my Mutant Future game a bi-monthly occurrence, and continue to blog sparingly about it. I will at least try to keep up on the 2e Tuesday posts because I think having Gamma World monsters for Mutant Future is a noble cause.

For anyone curious, I am getting married on June 5th and now that my betrothed has graduated from the University of Oregon our wedding planning is going to get much more serious (i.e. I will have to spend a lot of time helping my sweetie out doing wedding-y things).

I am also a member of a band (Telepathic Dumpster) and I have been slacking on my duties as band sound engineer; two CDs are waiting for nothing but my time spent doing a final mix down to release, and I owe it to my bandmates to spend some time on them soon.

My duties over at the Eye of the Vortex web site are increasing a little bit because I agreed to be an editor over there and help get articles ready to publish. I also run a weekly 4e game and play in a weekly Labyrinth Lord game - something is going to have to give, so I think I will also cut back on my participation in the Labyrinth Lord game and see about possibly shifting the 4e game to an every other week kind of thing. Thus ends probably the most intense period of D&D activity that I have ever had in my life. I have never ran and participated in three weekly games simultaneously, and I certainly have never spent so much time blogging and writing about gaming. It has been a lot of fun! I will still keep up on my Back Screen Pass blog, as I want to slowly publish a game setting of mine on that blog.

And now, on to the Gamma World Goodness!

Today's creature is...

Oriens

No. Enc: 1d4-1

Alignment: Lawful

Movement: 120'

Armor Class: 6

Hit Dice: 12

Attacks: by weapon

Damage: by weapon

Save: L10

Morale: 7

Hoard Class: Unique (1d4-1 any Technological Artifacts)

These 8' tall, two headed, four-armed giants are surprisingly intelligent and peaceful. They have an average Intelligence of 14 and an average Willpower of 17. Technologically advanced, Orlens can modify armor to fit their unique build and all adults carry at least one technological artifact that they have mastered the use of. They will equip themselves with armor (hence their AC of 6, which should be adjusted downwards if they are wearing better than the equivalent of Studded Leather Armor) and swords if they have no weapons among their artifacts. Despite their physical strength, size and willingness to wield weaponry, Oriens will harm no one that does not harm them first. They will use their telepathic abilities to communicate with strangers, and will attempt to use telekinesis to restrain attackers without harming them before turning to combat as a last resort in self defense.

Mutations: Neural Telepathy, Neural Telekinesis, Ability Boost (Willpower only)

I like the idea of big scary looking two-headed giants wielding laser rifles that turn out to be a peaceful and civilized race. Things are not always as they seem in the Mutant Future..

Mutant Future goes Travelling

2010-03-18T23:19:00.000-07:00

My Mutant Future campaign just took off in a ship out of the Traveller Book, a great score that I picked up at Smith Family Book Store the other day. I already owned reprinted versions of the original LBBs, but the Traveller Book includes awesome illustrations, particularly of the ships.

Thus it was that when James Bomb ducked out while party member Rok fought an honor duel with one of the Elven Champions, and went for a swim in the lake, he found what he was looking for: a spaceship.

You see, Stang had a dream the first night she slept in the alien world, before she consumed any of the Elvish food. She dreamed about the planet before the elves came, a planet completely covered by one massive purple life-form which existed in perpetual harmony, intelligent, uncounted single cellular organisms linked together to form a planet sized mind. Then she saw an egg shaped spaceship (the Mercenary Cruiser from Traveller, but several times larger) descend from the sky and drop into one of the many clear lakes that dimpled the purple life-surface like jewels. Soon, solid earth was summoned up from the bottom of the lake and the elves and their hairy servant race constructed a castle on the island and began systematically destroying the purple life in a ring around the lake.

James Bomb had a hunch this was more than just a dream, and he also had a feeling that things would go badly for the party if they stayed on this planet until one of the party members could use his Plane Shift mutation to return the group to the Mutant Future they all knew and loved. You see, the party was invited to a ceremony to be conducted at night below the castle and the party already knew that at nightfall the elves turned into werewolves, the queen and her daughter into green skinned vampires and the hairy servants into red-eyed little balls of animate fur. To make matters worse, Dr. Hops had teleported to the tallest tower of the castle (where Stang had previously spotted a garden arranged in concentric circles around a tree that perched atop a tiered platform in the center of the tower) to use his sniper rifle to cover the duel in case the elves tried anything fishy. When he arrived atop the tower, he discovered the tree had branches bearing humanoid heads of all descriptions instead of fruit, and the heads opened their mouthes and spat seeds at him. Luckily for him, his Dog Boy armor had a forcefield which deflected the seeds, and he tossed a grenade at the tree and teleported away.

The occurrence of an explosion atop the highest tower of the castle instantly brought the duel to a halt before it even began, as all the elves acted like their god had just been attacked. The queen disappeared, and reappeared momentarily to reassure her people that the Mother Tree was safe and sound. She smiled at Dr. Hops, who had casually rejoined the group around the dueling ring, and told him that he would be the guest of honor at the ceremony in two nights time. The elves relaxed, and the two combatants took their places in the center of the circle and walked away from each for the allotted number of strides.

Rok lost the duel despite a most valiant effort, and his head bounced three times upon the perfectly smooth grassy field before the surrounding elves let out a cheer for their champion and offered their condolences to the rest of the party. "Your friend died with honor. Join us in celebrating the duel!"

James Bomb quietly radioed the other party members about the space ship he had discovered in the lake, and while the elves began preparations for the party, Bozko the shape-shifting plant made air-bladders around party members' heads and ferried them one by one down to the hidden spaceship. The session ended with the party, plus one sympathetic gnomen (the hairy servitor race of the elves, this one who identified himself as Grosso was the only gnomen the party encountered capable of speech or independent action; he just crawled out of the birthing vats like that...), blasting off into space.

I love this, because now I get to essentially run a Traveller/Mutant Future game for a few sessions. I am going to go 1/2 and 1/2 Traveller and Star Trek, with a good dash of Star Wars for flavor (after all, Haiku-spouting droid IG-88 recently joined the party...).

2e Tuesday - Blaashes (Gamma Moths)

2010-03-16T20:52:00.000-07:00

That's right, Gamma World 2nd edition... what 2e did you think I meant? Every Tuesday I will pick one of my favorite monsters from the fully illustrated bestiary included in the 2d edition Gamma World Basic Rules Booklet and convert it to Mutant Future. Today's monster is...

Blaashes (Gamma Moths)

No. Enc: 1d10

Alignment: neutral

Movement:

Fly: 150' (50)

Land: 30' (10')

Armor Class: 7

Hit Dice: 7d8+9

Attacks: none (see muta

Damage: see mutation

Save: L5

Morale: 6

Hoard Class: VII

Gypsy Moths with 6 1/2' wingspans, the Blaashes are much feared by those unlucky enough to be stuck outside in the wasteland after dark. When they discharge their deadly radiation, their abdomens flash and glow. If a Blaash manages to kill anything, it will stop everything to consume its prey.

Mutations: Special (Gamma Burst; 20' radius around the Blaash is flooded with class 9 Radiation, saving throw vs. Radiation for 1/2 damage)

Big moths are beautiful, but they used to freak me out when I was a kid and they came careening wildly in looking for that enchanting light.

Leaving, On a Jet Plane

2010-03-09T23:15:00.000-08:00

I am leaving on a business trip early tomorrow morning. Unfortunately, your regularly scheduled "2e Tuesday" critter has succumbed to the last minute packing that I must do. Posting will be more or less non-existent for a week.

May all your mutations be beneficial,

Mutant Lord Carl

The Haikubot - New Mutant Future Race/Class

2010-03-08T22:48:00.000-08:00

To give credit where credit is due, the original idea for this came from a new player who contacted me and wanted to play a robot. The twist was, instead of rolling for mutations he wanted to have the ability to influence reality by uttering Haiku. He envisioned this as the robot attuning its utterances with the frequency of the cosmos. He proposed that some kind of roll would serve as a "metaphysical volume" to see how loudly the Haiku was heard by the cosmos (in the form of Mutant Lord Moi).

Here is the mechanic that I came up with:

Add Intelligence, Wisdom and Charisma. This is the Haikubot's base "Haiku Score". Each time the Haikubot attempts to alter reality with a Haiku, a d100 roll is required, attempting to roll underneath the Haiku Score. This roll can be modified up to + or - 20 (or more!) as determined by the Mutant Lord based on her appreciation of the Haiku. This may alternately be a group decision. The exact effect of the Haiku is determined by the Mutant Lord and the content of the Haiku (e.g. if the Haikubot wishes to befuddle an opponent, the Haiku should have a bemusing subject matter).

Obviously, this is a race/class that requires a great deal of creativity on the part of the player (who must actually say the Haiku aloud at the table) and a considerable amount of adjudication on the part of the Mutant Lord. I suggest that most Haiku should have SOME effect - a failed roll indicates that the effect is not what the Haikubot had desired!

I leave you in closing with the following introduction that Josh, the player who came up with this idea, posted on my campaign wiki/blog to introduce his character to the rest of the group:

"A rift in time, or what you perceive as time (mechanical laughter), has allowed a forbearance to information of future friendships and trials. Is there one with portal abilities in your midst? I can see no other explanation. But I diverge from the true topic at hand, friends.

Those of my Corporation, what you would call family, friends? These fellows of the realm you have rifted so audaciously, my home, do call me by a name. If I were to attempt to transcribe it I dare say you would not understand. However you can call me IG-88 for our time together. However impolite and with out warning your transgression into our existence, our reality, I do sense one thing that pervades any amount of snobbish resentment, most of my Corporation may feel. I sense a need, of those who seek truth and justice in their endeavors against evil. And what is there to be said that, such concepts as good and evil transcend from one universe to the next? Nothing that cannot be explained with our future/past time together, beyond, that I am at your service.

Now you must make haste, in a sense. While time is in stasis in your realm while you venture in mine, Time does not halt for anyone in where one does perceive. And you Perceive it here, and thus it flows here, along with a tumultuous flow of evil that would squash you for no other reason than you represent your own willingness to die for a friends freedom. A list of my abilities, is, in order! You must prepare to use what you can from a low level being such as myself in anyway you can see fit.

I am, of a mechanical race. I am what you may call ANDROID.
I do not employ the great powers of biology, or the wonders of mutations, I employ little in fact. I offer a symmetrical mind of mathematical prowess and the ability to foresee with a relationship to numbers, that bears on an ambiguous prescience the emotional needs of my allies.
In my world I am what you would call a poet, artist, shaman, or even witch-doctor, of mechanical evolution. And with my calculations perhaps I can mathematically say the right words at the right time to inspire my comrades in arms to defeat the foes we both know to be ours: The generalities of evil in whatever form may come our way.
Alas, Till Sunday."

Thanks, Josh! And thanks for letting me post your awesome idea on my blog for all to benefit from!

Android Features (android substitute for mutations)

2010-03-07T03:34:00.000-08:00

I just found this cool Mutant Future wiki - there was a blank page called "Android Features" which inspired me to create some. I encourage everyone to go add stuff to the wiki!

I will now allow any of my players creating an android to substitute one mutation for a roll on the tables below.

Roll 1d6 - on a result of 1-5, roll on the Industrial and Civilian feature chart below, on a result of 6 roll on the Military feature chart below.

Industrial and Civilian feature chart:

These android features were commonly installed in industrial and civilian androids - roll 1d4 once and consult the following list:

1. USB 4.0 - this particular model of android has USB 4.0 compatibility. USB 4.0 has an extremely high data transfer rate and wireless connectivity to a range of 10d10 feet. Any high-tech device within this range that is compatible with the USB 4.0 protocol can be accessed remotely provided it is not password protected. Data can be transferred, devices controlled and tech-rolls can be made at up to this range. Examples of devices that commonly were compatible with USB 4.0 include most computers made after 2017, smart houses, many televisions, many smart phones and most smart vehicles. In addition, some androids can remove their positronic brains and, as long as the range of the USB 4.0 is not exceeded, control their brainless bodies remotely.

2. Blow Torch - commonly installed on industrial androids. Roll 1d6 - on a result of 1-5, the blow-torch replaces the left hand. On a 6, the blowtorch emerges from a compartment in the left arm (the android still has the use of its left hand). The blowtorch can be used as a melee weapon but its extremely limited reach makes it relatively ineffective. Attacks with the blow torch are at a -4 penalty to hit - however, they do a healthy chunk of damage if the attack is successful: 4d8 damage. They can also be used to cut through metal or burn through other substances that are not more than 2" thick.

3. Vocal Modulator - the android is capable of perfectly replicating sounds that it has heard through its vocal apparatus. This ability is not limited to speech, and indeed, the android can hear and reproduce sounds above and below the audible frequency range of human hearing.

4. Limited Transformation - the android was designed with movable parts such that it can undergo a limited transformation into one other form, determined at character creation in consultation with the Mutant Lord. Common forms include vehicles such as motorcycles, pallet lifts or hoverscooters, and furniture items such as chairs or desks. A common variant is to have only portions of the android's body transform - legs slide open and reveal wheels, or arms extend and hands become clamps, etc.

Military Android Feature Chart:

These Android Features were commonly installed on military android models. Roll 1d4 once and consult the following chart:

1. Laser Guidance System - as long as the android has line of sight to its target, it can emit a laser beam that aids in targeting ranged attacks. The android gets a bonus of +4 to hit stationary targets and +2 to hit moving targets with ranged attacks.

2. Camouflage - the android has special, durable LCD screens mounted on its body that can be used to mimic its surroundings, granting an effective camouflage. There is a 2 round delay while the surroundings are processed before the camouflage takes effect - when used for camouflage, in all other ways this feature functions like the Chameleon Epidermis mutation. In addition, these screens can be used to emit light (at the choice of the android, the light can be emitted from its entire body or only certain areas). This light can illuminate out to 30'.

3. Com-Link - the android is equipped with a com-link that enables it to communicate at up to a 1d4 mile range with anyone else who has a com-link, radio tuned to the correct frequency, satellite, or similar piece of technology. Roll 1d6 - on a result of 1-5, the android has one additional com-link that can be used by any being with ears and on a result of 6 the android has 1d4+1 additional com-links. Any additional com-links are stored in a small compartment in the androids chest when not in use.

4. Rocket Boots - the android has rockets mounted to the bottom of its feet. It can fly at speeds of up to 1d6 hundred MPH. While flying at high speeds (over 100 MPH), the android has very poor maneuverability. This is left to the Mutant Lord to adjudicate. The android can fly for a total of 6d10 minutes each day (both max speed and total flight time to be rolled once at character creation). When this total is used up, the android cannot fly again until 24 hours have passed and its energy cells have recharged.

cloud spiders and lightning hearts

2010-03-06T12:42:00.000-08:00

Last Sunday the players decided that despite all the weird shit that happened during the night, they had little choice but to play along with the elves for now and accompany their champions out on their daily battle with the creatures spawned by the purple blight. The party was surprised to learn that they were expected to go off on their own instead of accompanying one of the elf champions. They headed out over the fleshy purple landscape, at one point stopping to cut a section of the purple flesh out. While at first there seemed to be no response to this action, soon some purple cat-like beasts with tentacles coming out of their shoulders emerged from the ground and attacked the party. Hello, displacer beasts! Realizing very quickly that ranged fire was not the way to deal with these critters, the party fell to dispatching them in hand to hand combat and shortly emerged victorious.

They tramped on further, and soon the sky began to darken as great clouds coalesced overhead. Flashes of lightning arced from cloud to cloud, and soon the the party found themselves directly underneath an enormous cloud, with eight smaller clouds arranged in a circle below and around it. Lightning strikes next began to target individual PCs.

My memory at this point gets a little hazy - I am not sure exactly what they used to do this, but somehow the party managed to shoot something into one of the clouds (a missile maybe? An energy ray? Who can keep all the high-tech shenanigans straight?) which caused a momentary dissipation of the mist and revealed that the party was underneath an immense floating spider, the body of which was concealed in the large cloud. Each of its eight legs ended in a strange disc like foot, around which the smaller clouds formed. Realizing that they should focus their attacks on the main body of the cloud spider, the party started unloading into the central cloud.

The cloud spider reacted by drawing its legs together beneath it, shielding its body with the large discs that tipped each leg. It then began to spin rapidly, and the clouds began to stream out and form a whirling layer around it. The party was unable to damage its main body while it was in this position, and soon a tornado began forming underneath the spinning spider which began flinging party members into the air like matchsticks.

At this point the party began calling for help from Dr. Hops, the wererabbit who had stayed behind in the castle because he was pretending to be the party's servant. He had been trying to get information out of the short hairy servitor race referred to by the party has "dwobbits" (an amalgamation of dwarf and hobbit) and called "gnomen" by the elves. Dr. Hops had been unable to get any of the gnomen to respond to him as they silently and efficiently went about their business. The previous evening at dinner he had been able to talk to one who identified himself as "Grosso", so he began wandering about the various areas that the gnomen worked loudly inquiring if Grosso was present. He found him in a metal workshop (which, incidentally, contained a furnace that burned the boxed wood shavings accumulated in the wood workshop - this is where Pliskins would have ended up last session when he became trapped in sugar glider form in a box full of wood shavings if Stang had not saved his unconscious ass) and soon learned that apparently Grosso was the only gnomen who had an individual personality. Grosso revealed that he knew from the moment he emerged from the birthing vats that he was different than his fellows, who found all the satisfaction they needed from mindlessly performing the tasks that they were created knowing how to do. Dr. Hops soon managed to shatter Grosso's world and convince him that there was more to life than doing what the elves wanted him to do. It had apparently never occurred to him that he could stop working - when Dr. Hops pointed out that he had not been performing his job the entire time he was conversing, Grosso freaked out but quickly realized that nothing bad seemed to have happened. Around this time is when the party called for Dr. Hops help.

Dr. Hops, you see, can teleport. He rapidly rounded up all the grenades that the party still had (they go through those things like candy!) and joined the crowd of elves on the castle walls that were watching the progress of the various fights going on (between their champions and the manifestations of the purple blight and between the party and the cloud spider). He got a good bead on the party's location, then teleported into the sky high above the cloud spider. As he was free falling down towards its main body from above, he pulled the pins on the grenades and tossed them down at the spider, then teleported back to the castle.

He also used his once a session roll of the d30 for this attack and got above a 20, which (according to my houserules) meant that he did double damage! He pretty much blasted the spider to little pieces which rained down on the party. Go team mutant!

The party searched among the grisly debris and found two strange organs - one appeared to be its heart and the other was attached to its spinnerets. Both were translucent and seemed to contain bottled lightning...

2e Tuesday - Arks (Hound Folk)

2010-03-02T23:45:00.000-08:00

Arks (Hound Folk)

No. Enc: 1d4

Alignment: Chaotic

Movement: 120' (40)

Armor Class: 4

Hit Dice: 6

Attacks: 1 (bite or weapon)

Damage: 1d6 or by weapon type

Save: L4

Morale: 6

Hoard Class: VI

Small packs of Arks roam the wastelands, hunting anything that crosses their path. They are smart enough to use their ability to control weather to their advantage, tracking their prey by scent through thick fog or forcing travelers to take shelter in the woods from a sudden downpour that came out of nowhere... It is not uncommon for the first sign of an Ark attack to be the sudden loss of energy that accompanies a vampiric field attack from hiding. Bipeds beware - Arks love eating humanoid hands above all else and will go to great lengths to attain this delicacy. Arks have unusually strong Willpower, with an average score of 16! This makes the Neural Telekinesis ability particularly useful in the paws of these wily predators.

Mutations: Neural Telekinesis, Control Weather, Vampiric Field

Why is it that the small detail that Arks love to eat humanoid hands makes me want to include them in every game I run, from vanilla fantasy D&D to the Mutant Future? Can someone give me a hand here?

Stonehell Dungeon - the deep levels - a spaceship?

2010-02-25T18:26:00.000-08:00

[Edit] Michael Curtis dropped in on the comments below and disabused me of my fantasy. No spaceship in Stonehell for me! I am sure I will still love the deep levels anyway.[/Edit]

I recently interviewed Michael Curtis, outstanding member of the blog-o-sphere over at the Society of Torch, Pole and Rope, as well as the author of Stonehell Dungeon - Down Night Haunted Halls and the amazing Dungeon Alphabet. I wrote a review of Stonehell Dungeon and the review and interview were published today at the Eye of the Vortex.

In the interview I asked Michael about the upcoming publication that will detail the deep levels of Stonehell.

In his answer, Michael let this delicious hint drop,

"... a section that I’m tentatively calling the Astronaut’s Tomb. It’s been on the list since the early days of the dungeon’s construction and I hope that people either absolutely love it or completely hate it once they see it for themselves.

I am a huge fan of mixing my genres. Sci-Fi and Fantasy tend to blur together in my games, and I get the feeling that this level is going to really tickle my fancy. I hope this is an entombed spaceship, deep beneath the earth. I have my fingers crossed, and Michael, if you are reading this, keep me in mind as an illustrator because I love this idea.

Having already horked an entire sublevel of Stonehell Dungeon for use in my Mutant Future game (the greenhouse level full of plant monsters) I am pretty sure I could plop the Astronaut's Tomb into my game with minimal alterations.

Of course, my first thought when thinking spaceships and D&D is Expedition to the Barrier Peaks and the great booklet of art that came with the module. To be sure, I could be reading too much into Michael's level title, but I hope that the Astronaut's Tomb is an homage of sorts to that classic module.

Sci-Fi and high tech are a lot of fun on their own rights, but they are even better when you get to experience players blundering towards an understanding of them while they try to apply their regular fantasy/D&D metagame knowledge to the situation at hand. One of my favorite early D&D memories was getting to run through the Temple of the Swamp as a player and slowly figuring out that there were robots and aliens running around.

2e Tuesday - Centisteeds (Fast Trotters)

2010-02-23T22:01:00.000-08:00

Centisteeds (Fast Trotters)

No. Enc: 1d4

Alignment: Neutral

Movement: 240' (80)

Armor Class: 3

Hit Dice: 8

Attacks: 4 (4 hooves)

Damage: 1d6/1d6/1d6/1d6

Save: L4

Morale: 3

Hoard Class: none

Why ride a horse when you can ride an 18-heeler? Centisteeds resemble horses with insectoid eyes and 10 + 2d4 legs. Two medium sized creatures can ride a centisteed, but one of them must maintain full concentration on the mount to control it. A centisteed that throws a rider will not hesitate to trample her! Despite their temperament and prodigious appetite, centisteeds are greatly sought after because they can emit a force field to protect themselves and their riders.

Mutations: Aberrant Form; Force Screen, Greater; Increased Caloric Needs

Knights on Centisteeds have a certain charm for me. I like these guys.

A Night of Terror, Confusion and Love in an Elven Castle

2010-02-23T01:52:00.000-08:00

(also known as Mutant Future sessions 30&31 Recap)

Yes, this is what it has come to in my Mutant Future campaign. My group of lecherous characters (lecherous players?), upon finding themselves invited to stay the night with a bunch of beautiful, tall elven folk in a castle on a lake, immediately set about none-too-delicately feeling out the likelihood of a midnight rendezvous with one of the Queen's three lovely daughters. Or one of the daughters of the Elven Nobility who joined them at dinner. Or one of the mothers of one of the daughters of the Elven Nobility! Of course, this last proposition was broached by the mother in question, one Yarro, to James Bomb (self appointed "faceman" of the party and ladies' man of interdimensional repute), while she responded to the latter's questions about the sexual practices of her people. Yarro explained that according to the laws of her people, both sexes had to remain chaste until marriage, but once married sexual dalliances were permitted and common.

While this was not originally what Mr. Bomb had been hoping for, he is ever one to adjust to a new scenario on the fly and he smoothly segued into making an appointment with Yarro for the wee hours of the morning. She was to come to his room, as the party had been rather strongly "asked" to remain in their chambers after nightfall while staying as guests in the castle.

Some backstory may be in order (and a fair warning may be in order as well - I feel a long post coming on...) before I proceed with relating the events of the evening (which occurred during Sunday's Mutant Future session).

You may recall that the party was contemplating travelling through a dimensional portal to a land covered in purple goo where elves fight dragons. Apparently, catching a glimpse of a possible future that included swords emitting beams of light and dragon loot was enough to persuade our stalwart band of mutant heroes (troublemakers?) to abandon their swampy home for some new digs. While the party currently has two members who possess the Plane Shift mutation, one of them had already used their mutation this game week so the party was guaranteed a stay of at least five days in the other dimension until he could open another portal back to the Mutant Future we all know and love.

So off they go. The party that stepped through the portal consisted of James Bomb, Bozko (giant shapeshifting nettle plant; possesses an "iron man" suit), Stang (21' long Wasp with four extra malfunctioning brains exhibiting the personalities of the Beetles), Bob (the mutant human incapable of feeling pain), Dr. Hops (the "were-rabbit" as his player likes to call him; capable of teleportation), Rok (mutant human apparently made out of obsidian; one of the plane-shifters), Shazaam Alottapus (precog and the other plane-shifter), Pliskins (the man who can turn himself into a sugar glider - the myth, the truth, the legend!; precog with gamma-ray eyes), and Saurus (the empath who can turn himself into a velociraptor. A Jurassic Park velociraptor, thank you for much, and keep the turkey-sized dinosaurs for yourselves).

Pliskins in Sugar Glider form

This is a pretty normal amount of players for one of my Mutant Future sessions. Seven to nine is the norm, more than the three or four that I often hear bandied about as the "ideal" size of group for D&D.

When the party first entered the strange land, events proceeded more or less how Shazaam had foreseen them. They found a tall elf clad in shining platemail, wielding a glowing sword that shot beams of light at a great green-scaled dragon. With one well placed shot, Shazaam distracted the dragon and the elf lopped its head off in one clean motion. Despite the language barrier, the party and the elf made their introductions. When some party members began trying to remove scales from the downed dragon, the elf vigorously stopped them, gesturing at a castle that gleamed in the middle of a lake. A large raft bearing two sturdy wagons was making its way across the lake to the near shore of a thickly wooded forest. The forest ran up almost to where the party and elf stood, and beyond this point the world appeared to be covered in a fleshy purple substance that formed faces in the hills and seemed to slowly stretch and breath.

Not wanting to offend the knight (and possibly more than a little bit afraid of the lethal sword that hung casually in his hand), the party waited calmly while the wagons trundled through the woods up to them. A crew of hairy, 3 1/2' tall beings quickly and silently dismounted from the wagons and began efficiently dissecting the dragon. They unfurled coils of a nearly invisible wire fitted with handles on either end. These they used to slice the dragon into rounds as easily as you might push a butter knife through warm water. When the wagons were loaded with the remains of the dragon, the elf gestured for the party to climb aboard and they all retired to the castle.

Along the way, they noticed that the trees ran in perfectly straight rows, as if they had been planted. When they crossed the lake on their way to the castle, they saw a huge, serpent like form swimming deep in the lakes depths.

Stang, who had been acting like an unintelligent beast, had chosen not to accompany the party and started to fly around the area. She saw that the purple mass covered everywhere she could see except the small one mile radius patch of forest surrounding the lake and castle. She tried to fly higher to get a better idea of exactly how far this purple substance extended, but her terrible eyesight and the quarreling voices of the Beetles in her head made this mission impossible and she rejoined her companions. As she was flying toward the castle she did see something the rest of the party had missed - on top of one of the two highest towers in the castle was a rooftop garden that appeared to be constructed in concentric circles around a tree on a pedestal.

In the meantime, the elf had taken the rest of the party through the gates of the castle, across a courtyard and into a large hall where they were introduced to a regal elf wearing an ornate dress and a crown of silver. She appeared to understand the party when they spoke, and responded in their own tongue. When the party inquired if there was any way for them to communicate with the other elves, the queen apologized for her rudeness and procured a set of necklaces from an extra-dimensional place. Placing a necklace over the neck of each character, she told them that as long as they wore the necklaces, they would be be understood and would understand any spoken language.

The queen then introduced her three daughters, pale skinned and black-haired like their mother (and in marked contrast to the blonde haired gent with the platemale and light-sword), who showed the party to their guest chambers and told them that a dinner would be held in their honor in one hours time. Mr. Bomb, Shazaam and Pliskins were all trying to make a move on one princess or another, but none seemed affected by the strangers' charms. Around this point is when Stang returned, still pretending to be a dumb beast of burden for the party, and Dr. Hops "put her" in the stable for the night.

At dinner, much was learned about the elven people. Apparently, this little patch of forest was the last bit of this world not covered by the purple blight, which spawned the dragons and other monsters that sought to destroy the elves. Only the bravery of the three Champions, each wielding a mythic weapon and wearing plate-mail handed down through generations of Champions, prevented this last bastion from succumbing. The party seemed to buy this explanation, but some members asked probing questions about how this came to be, and what happened to all the rest of the elves people. These and all other questions about the past were met with a smile from the queen, a slight tilt of her head, and the sudden loss of the train of thought in the questioner's mind.

The dinner was attended by a number of couples identified as "nobles", who shared the generally tall, lanky and blonde haired appearance of the champions. Indeed, only the queen and her three daughters had black hair and dark eyes. The guards stationed through the castle grounds ate separately. Acting as waiters during the meal were more of the short, hairy individuals who had butchered the dragon. They moved just as silently and efficiently in the delicate ballet of table service as they had while field dressing a dragon. In fact, only one of these creatures was heard to talk all night, an individual who self-identified as "Grosso", who got into a conversation with Dr. Hops about a servant's role. Grosso did not appear to be unhappy with his lot as a servant to the elves, and Dr. Hops pretended to be the party's servant in a plan to possibly gain access to the servants' quarters of the castle later on. One highlight of the meal was Pliskins' ill-advised use of his precog ability. He decided to foresee the consequences of asking the queen f he could "hook-up" with her daughters (or some such crude and not very courtly at all language). He died too quickly in his precog to be able to tell what happened, which meant that in real life his body slumped unconscious over the table for ten minutes!

As the last courses were being served, a petulant elven youth strode down the main stairs into the dining hall and took his seat at the end of the table opposite the queen. She introduced him to the party as Prince Coriander, and he immediately started grilling the party about their presence in his castle. Sensing a bit of hostility from the prince, James Bomb attempted to smooth things over but ended up saying exactly the wrong thing and really setting Prince Coriander on edge. Soon, Coriander challenged Mr. Bomb to a friendly duel after dinner, a practice fencing match "to first blood".

(read this blog post to find out what mechanics I use to simulate a master fencer)

Rok, Shazaam and Pliskins all instantly volunteered to take Mr. Bomb's place in the practice ring against the prince, and it was agreed that they should all retire to the practice chamber after dinner. The rest of the guests socialized while the servants cleared the hall in preparation for a dance. An orchestra of the hairy shortlings assembled and began to play otherworldly waltzes.

Meanwhile, Prince Coriander had handily defeated Rok, who is easily the parties most impressive physical combatant. The Prince's triumph was short-lived, however. Amazingly, Shazaam managed to score a hit and win his match (I had some epically bad rolls for the prince), and the Prince seemed to warm up to them after that. More importantly (in Shazaam's mind), the princess that he had is eye on seemed quite impressed with his swordsmanship.

The evening concluded with a tour of the castle grounds and an admonition to be back in their rooms before dark. They were warned that once the two moons came out, terrible creatures would emerge from the night. The characters learned that the elven guards had orders to kill anything that moved inside or outside the castle at night, as the monsters could take many forms. Basically, the PCs were told to remain in their rooms OR ELSE...

So of course a good portion of the party decides to go exploring around the castle in the middle of the night. A new character suddenly materialized in Dr. Hops bedroom (IG-88, the Haiku Magician robot) and it took a little while for the tensions to simmer down and the party to accept that IG-88 meant them no harm and was merely an interdimensional traveler like themselves who had become stranded at this particular spot and moment through sheer happenstance.

Bob opened his shuttered windows and began surveying the night landscape. He noticed that in the reddish light of the first moon, the forest around the castle had assumed a radically different appearance. What he had seen as trees in the daylight now appeared to be machinery of some sort, injecting a needle-like device into the ground and plunging it in and out repeatedly. He notified the rest of the party of this over their com-links.

Pliskins used his precog ability to imagine assuming sugar glider form, gliding down and around the castle to the boats, and attempting to take a boat across the lake. Just as the raft had done when the laden wagons had pulled onto it earlier in the day, the boat took off apparently under its own propulsion as soon as Pliskins turned back to his normal form and sat in the boat. Pliskins ended the precog when he foresaw the large serpent-like creature in the lake rear up and reveal itself to be Zombie Nessie!

Stang discovered a secret passageway in the wall of the stable, and after determining that she would have a difficult time navigating the corridor beyond it, she asked if anyone else in the party would like to come down and explore it. Bozko had opted to stay the night outside in the castles courtyard, hidden in tree form among the trees of the garden. He reported that all seemed clear. The only life to be seen was the castle guards at their posts. Pliskins glided down to join Stang and ventured down the hallway beyond the secret door. Sliding open the panel at the end of the hall, he found himself peering into a workshop filled with what appeared to be the servants busily splitting beams of wood off of strangely uniform, 12' blocks of perfectly straight grained wood. The servants seemed to have undergone some kind of transformation and were now completely covered in long black hair, to the point that no skin was visible at all and their suddenly red, glowing eyes gleamed from the backs of hairy pits.

Despite their spooky appearance, the servants did not seem to notice as Pliskins cautiously entered the room in sugar glider form. Nor did they notice when he hurled a small chip of wood at one of them. Looking around for some place to hide, he scurried over to a large pile of wood chips that a small robotic bulldozer seemed to be forming as it traversed the room, pushing the debris created by the busy servants in front of it.

Pliskins buried himself in the pile of wood chips and used his precognition mutation to see what would happen if he just walked up to the large double doors that seemed to be the only exit from the room and pushed them open. Just as he opened the doors, something jarred his body in the present and he came out of his precog to find himself enclosed in some kind of box, jammed tightly in with all the woodchips. Unable to escape, he asked for help over the com-link then foresaw what would happen if he simply assumed his human form while trapped in what seemed to be a 2' cube. He died instantly in his vision of the future, again causing him to pass out in real life for 10 minutes.

Some pretty good hilarity ensued when Pliskins' player realized what he had done. "I think I just put myself in a wood chipper!" he announced to the group at large. Everyone laughed when they realized he had hidden himself in the waste pile which was probably bound for a compressor, or furnace, or chipper, or any number of other horrible places which everyone was bandying about.

Stang, realizing she was the only one near enough to be able to help Pliskins if he were to be in immediate danger, squeezed her bulk through the hallway and calmly entered the room of woodworking servants as if she belonged to be there. They payed her no attention at all, silently sidestepping to avoid her 21' long body as it filled the side of the chamber, then resuming their work. She surveyed the room and saw the little bulldozer robot carrying a 2' metal box in its scoop. It set the box on top of a stack of 7 other boxes so that it now formed a cubic load, and the wagon began trundling itself toward the double door. Stang swiftly reached out and grabbed the last box from the top of the wagon, hoping that it contained Pliskins. The wagon proceeded through the doors which quietly opened in front of it. A gruff voice in the hall commented on the missing box,

"Oi. Looks like the line is messing up again. Short one box."

Stang did not wait around, clutching her purloined box to her abdomen as she rapidly made her way back through the secret passageway to the stable. She was completely unable to open the box, which was made of an unidentifiable metal and had no obvious seams. In the end, Dr. Hops had to borrow Saurus' vibro-knife (in my campaign a vibro-knife or sword is basically a light saber) and teleport down to the stable to cut Pliskins free.

Meanwhile, Bozko had grown weary of waiting to see if anything happened in the courtyard. He turned himself into root form and began traveling through the dirt toward the wall underneath the window in his room. He learned two things during this journey: the dirt in the courtyard was synthetic in origin, completely lacking the normal compounds that he associated with the breakdown of organic matter into dirt; and there was a rhythmic pulsing noise coming from deep underneath the castle. He decided to investigate the noise and ended up breaking into a natural cave with a steel door set in one wall and a ladder down a chute in the floor. Hiding on the ceiling, he knocked on the door and observed the first Champion they had met come out and survey the cave. Bozko's camoflage worked, as the champion did not notice him even when the champion held up his sword and illuminated the cavern with a blinding light. Bozko noticed that the features of the champion seemed more bestial than he had remembered, even through the obstructions of his ornate helmet.

After trying and failing to sneak into the hallway beyond and nearly getting killed when a guard saw a strange moving patch of fungus on the ceiling and slashed it with his energy sword, Bozko beat a hasty retreat for the surface and returned to his room. Before this occurred, he saw the Champion return with a hideous figure wearing the clothing of the queen; this figure was green skinned and totally bald, with desiccated facial features and bright yellow eyes.

After Bozko got back to his chambers only Pliskins was not in his designated room, as he had decided that he was not finished exploring the room full of hairy servants. He once again used his precognition ability to foresee re-entering the woodshop, and saw that a figure wearing the robes of one of the elf nobles was working on the bulldozer robot with his back to the secret panel. Pliskins (in his vision of the future) walked boldly into the room and strode up far enough to get a good look at the noble. He saw a werewolf in elvish clothing.

Pliskins instantly blasted the werewolf in the face with his gamma eyes, rolling a natural 20 and doing a ton of damage. The werewolf responded by biting his head off, killing him for the third time this session in a precog and yes, causing him to pass out in real life for 10 minutes. This time, he was also near death from the accumulated damage he had taken in his precogs (every time you die in a precog, you take 2d6 HP real damage).

Two more notable things happened this session.

When Stang finally fell asleep, she had a vivid dream. She saw the planet from above, completely covered with the purple substance. Then she saw an egg-shaped spaceship descend from above and land in one of the many small lakes that dotted the surface of the purple expanse. Soon, elves emerged from the lake and began destroying the purple substance, laying out strange oil-derrick like structures where they had cleared the purple flesh from the ground. She awoke with the profound conviction that the elves were invaders on this planet, intruders set on destroying the natural life of the world.

And James Bomb slept with a werewolf.

Yarro showed up at his room just as they had planned, and Mr. Bomb decided that while he had not expected such a rough and furry lover, it was in his own best interests to get as close to this valuable informant as he could...

Mutant Houserules

2010-02-22T15:34:00.000-08:00

I think it is about time for a little spring cleaning roundup of house rules that I use in my ongoing Mutant Future campaign. Some of these have already been posted, while some have never seen the light of blog.

Character Creation:

Stats are rolled 3d6 down the line, but any one set of stats may be switched.

If a player feels that the stat rolls are "hopeless", all rolls may be rerolled (but the player is more than welcome to keep the stats as is, and I would look kindly upon such an endeavor).

Androids, Synthetics and any other Robotic characters have a base AC of 7

If a player rolls more negative than beneficial mutations, the player can choose to reroll all mutations.

Combat:

Initiative is rolled once per combat. All participants in the combat roll d20 + Dex modifier to determine their place in the combat order.

Mutants that are more than double man sized (roughly) have natural weapons that do double the amount listed under natural weapons (2d4, 2d6 or 2d8 depending on the d6 roll at character creation).

Called shots to the head are at a -4 penalty to hit but do double damage if the target has a brain. The called shot penalty will increase to a minimum of -6 if the target is wearing a helmet or other device that protects the head.

Any single attack that does 50% or more of the target's total HP requires a save vs. Death or the target dies from system shock.

A natural 20 (or higher, see the Order of the d30 below) on any attack roll is an automatic hit and results in the attack doing double damage. This means that twice the normal amount of damage dice are thrown, then the regular modifiers from strength or mutations are added.

A natural 1 on any attack roll is an automatic miss and may result (at the Mutant Lord's discretion) in Bad Things happening...

Mutations:

Planeshift: The portal opens perpendicular to the ground.

Teleport: Teleporting is strenuous activity akin to sprinting and can be engaged in for a number of rounds equal to Constitution before the mutant must stop to catch her breath (Teleport cannot be used again until 2d4 rounds have passed).

Precognition: This has been the trickiest mutation to rule on during play. Seeing the future is, of course, always a little problematic. During a precog, the mutant can consult with other characters that will be present in the future; the players of those characters can answer as if they were being asked that question in the future. The mutant must state what action(s) will be attempted, then start the precog - the mutant may not modify his course of action during the precog based on the knowledge that it is a precog. For all intents and purposes, the mutant is watching a video feed of his future actions, not actually acting in the future with the knowledge that it is only a precog. If something happens to the body of the mutant in the present during the precog, the precog ends and the mutant can respond normally to the stimulus.

Order of the d30:

As a proud member of the Order of the d30, each of my players gets to roll the d30 once per session in place of any other single die roll. For this use, a percentile throw counts as a single die (d100) rather than two d10, so a d30 may be thrown to generate a result of 1% - 30% (great for those roll-low tech throws!). An attack roll made with the d30 that results in a number between 20 and 29 does double damage as explained above in the combat houserules. An attack roll that results in a natural 30 does triple normal damage!

In the spirit of fair play, the Mutant Lord gets one roll of the d30 for every whole increment of 3 players present at the session (e.g. two d30 rolls per session if there are eight players present, but three d30 rolls if there are nine players present).

Mutant Future as a multi-genre game

2010-02-21T14:25:00.000-08:00

The players in my Mutant Future campaign have recently traveled through a portal opened with the Plane Shift mutation and are currently adventuring in what appears to be a "fantasy" world, complete with elves and dragons. I can't say too much about the specifics of that until after tonight's session because there is a lot going on that the players have not figured out yet.

Still, this development has really gotten me thinking about Mutant Future's ability to be a multi-genre game. Plane Shift leaves it wide open, completely up to the Mutant Lord, as to what is on the other side of the portals that are opened up. Want to have a session or two of WWII gameplay? Throw in an NPC mutant that the players are after who has the Plane Shift mutation - things get hairy and the mutant has no choice but to open a portal to escape... straight into the middle of war torn Europe! Of course, a party that does not have the Plane Shift mutation themselves would be at the mercy of the NPC to get back to their regular place in the space/time/dimensional continuum... unless some sort of epic quest could be performed to open a portal?

Mechanically, Mutant Future uses the Labyrinth Lord ruleset as its backbone. This means that the entire wealth of pre-3e D&D material ever published can be used with minimal adjustments. Take a look at that RPG bookshelf and imagine a portal opening into any of those great old adventures or supplements. Mutants Against the Giants. Mutants in the Underdark.

I had a brain flash while thinking about this sort of multi-genre gameplay; imagine an interdimensional A-Team of sorts (the players) who go on missions that their employer sends them on (the employer has Plane Shift as well as a unique mutation that allows his Mental Telepathy to extend across gulfs of time and space to discuss terms of service with clients in all the possible dimensions). As the party is hustling through the portal, their employer gives them the stern warning,

"Be back to this same place in one week exactly, as the return portal will be open for only five minutes."

This would be the perfect picaresque set-up, episodic by nature, confined to no genre. The characters would get to experience everything the wide world of D&D has ever offered. The many worlds are their oysters...

2e Tuesday - Gators (Green Hissers)

2010-02-16T23:24:00.000-08:00

Gators (Green Hissers)

No. Enc: 1-2

Alignment: Neutral

Movement: 40' (10')

Swim: 120' (30')

Armor Class: 3

Hit Dice: 5

Attacks: 2 (bite and tailslap)

Damage: 1d6/1d8

Save: L3

Morale: 7

Hoard Class: VI (usually buried in the swamp near the Gators feeding grounds)

Were it not for the 3' long tentacles emerging from their foreheads, these creatures would appear to be normal alligators. Unfortunately for explorers of the swamps of the Mutant Future, the tentacles paralyze any prey hit by a mental attack roll (treat the Gators as Willpower 16 for purposes of determining the success of this attack). As usual, victims get a saving thow vs. stun attacks to avoid this effect and the paralysis lasts 2d4 turns. Gators normally swim below the surface of the water with only their nostrils and tentacles protruding, making it very difficult to notice them before a paralyzing attack is launched on an unsuspecting lunch date. While it is rare to see more than one or two of these creatures under normal circumstances, each spring large groups (1d6x10) congregate to mate and spawn.

Mutations: Reflective Epidermis (radiation), Special (Paralyzing Tentacle)

I like the simplicity of this creature, just one mutation removed from a regular crocodile. I also have a soft spot for swamps (come to think of it, both games that I am currently running in two different systems feature swamps prominently) and the critters to be found in them.

Mutant Experience - Leveling Up between Sessions

2010-02-14T01:16:00.000-08:00

I have always been a bit of a rebel when it comes to awarding experience. My normal method is to just pick a number that seems right, based on how much I feel the party accomplished. I keep a log tracking how much experience I have given for past sessions, along with a one or two sentence reminder of what the party was up to. I compare what just happened with previous sessions and look at what I awarded in the past, and this normally makes it easy to tell how much XP to award. Part of the reason I have been doing this in my Mutant Future campaign is that I rarely give out "treasure" of the normal gold piece, silver piece, etc. variety. I don't really see there being any sort of money economy in my world, barter being the rule of thumb, but this lack of gold means that if I gave out experience by the book, the players would advance at a glacial rate (because Mutant Future uses the GP for XP rule).

As I mentioned in my post about hit points in the Mutant Future, what level a character is does not make as much difference in this game as in regular D&D. A character's HP are always going to be more or less the same, and what mutations a character has is arguably more important than the level attained. In this respect, I guess it really wouldn't matter if the characters took forever to level up. But on the other hand, this also means that there is no reason NOT to level up characters fast.

I recently started a campaign wiki of sorts (actually just a blog that I have given the players administrator privileges to). I have been awarding experience to players who post on the blog between sessions, at the rate of 100 XP per comment and 500 XP per new blog post. This means that a character could level up between sessions if the player posts enough!

So far, this idea has been working well. Players have posted everything from new Mutant Monsters to wishlists for the Mech suits that they want the Mice of the Round Table to build for them. One benefit to me as a DM is that the players have taken to discussing strategy and plans for the next session. This means that I can do prep work with greater certainty that I am not wasting my time readying something only to have the players do something entirely different.

Questions for my readers - How do you award experience? Have you ever given experience for something that occurred outside of play?

2e Tuesday - Yexils (Orange Scarfers)

2010-02-09T21:40:00.000-08:00

Yexils (Orange Scarfers)

No. Enc: 1d4

Alignment: Lawful

Movement:

Fly: 240' (60')

Armor Class: 5

Hit Dice: 15

Attacks: 1 (bite)

Damage: 3d6

Save: L12

Morale: 3

Hoard Class: VIII + Unique (Yexils horde clothing and their "treasure" will also consist of various synthetic fabrics)

Yexils bring a smile to the face of any entrepreneurial residents of the Mutant Future. These flying leonine creatures have a ravenous appetite for manufactured fabrics (the only thing they eat) and will trade "worthless" artifacts that they have found as they fly over the wastelands for particularly tasty synthetics. Yexils have few natural enemies due to their size, deadly bite and the laser beams they shoot from their eyes!

Mutations: Reflective Epidermis (cold), Unique (Laser Eyes, 80' range, 5d6 damage)

This really is a great illustration. Honestly, this might be Gamma World in a nutshell - a lion-bat that shoots lasers from its eyes and eats synthetic clothing. Take that, all you overly serious post-apocalyptic sci-fi games!

Hope you can read binary...

2010-02-06T01:26:00.001-08:00

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Party Plans a Planeshift (Possibly)

2010-02-04T19:59:00.000-08:00

Last Sunday's session included two firsts: it was the first time we gamed with a player who was not present (via the PS3 Eye, a hi-def TV, a sound system and an online dice roller), and it marked the first use of the Precognition mutation to imagine using the Plane Shift mutation. I have had mixed feelings about this combination of mutations, as part of the joy of Plane Shift is that it opens a portal to a random place (unless you are using it to travel someplace that you have already visited with the mutation). Using Precognition to circumvent this at first had me considering simply saying that it did not work.

Then I thought about it, and I decided that there were really two options if I allowed it to happen. I could either have the player foresee a place so terrible that the party would never willingly go there, or reveal an intriguing location that would strongly tempt the party to open a portal and travel there.

As for option 1, I want to keep all the truly horrifying locations (we have arrived at the 666th layer of the Abyss, local time is 6:66, temperature outside the portal is 451 degrees Fahrenheit, thanks for flying Plane Shift...) in reserve for the time the party decides that whatever lies on the other side of a random portal has to be better than the current situation they are in. So that is a no go. What good does describing a wicked awesome and dangerous place do if the party would never, ever, willingly go there?

As for option 2, this sounded good to me. As it is, the Plane Shift mutation has only been used once in play and the party has never actually gone through a portal. So why not encourage a little planar hopping with a tempting vision of the future?

This is exactly what happened last session. This is what awaited on the other side of the precogged planeshift:

As I mentioned in a post over at my other blog, this is a crappy, low-res pic I took with my old cell phone of one of my drawings.

I described the ground and landscape as some kind of fleshy purple substance, I told the group that the eyes of the faces in the hillsides were slowly blinking, and I described the fight between the shiny knight and the dragon. After assisting the knight defeat the dragon (in the vision of the future), the knight lifted his visor and revealed himself to be some sort of faerie or elf. He spoke in a melodic and silvery tongue that was, of course, incomprensible, but then he pointed behind him to a castle in the middle of a lake, surrounded by a normal forest.

The party is very excited to go on a dragon slaying expedition and are dreaming big about bringing back piles of dragon parts to assist the Mice of Camelot in making some mech suits for the party. Dragon-scale mechs, anyone?

2e Tuesday - Zarns

2010-02-02T20:48:00.000-08:00

That's right, Gamma World 2d edition... what 2e did you think I meant? Every Tuesday I will pick one of my favorite monsters from the fully illustrated bestiary included in the 2d edition Gamma World Basic Rules Booklet and convert it to Mutant Future. Today's monster is...

Zarns (Borer Beetles)

No. Enc: 1d4-2

Alignment: Neutral

Movement: 60' (20')

Armor Class: 6

Hit Dice: 2

Attacks: 1 (spit)

Damage: Paralysis (2d4 turns)

Save: L1

Morale: 8

Hoard Class: none (Zarns move around constantly, and their victims often travel for days before dying, so the characteristic pile of loot accumulated from victim after victim is not found with the Zarns)

Despite barely reaching one foot in length, these bright orange beetles terrify all who cross their path. They attack anything that moves, spitting gobs of paralytic venom up to 20' then teleporting to a new position to renew their onslaught. Due to the intensity of the venom, the save vs. poison is made at a -2 penalty, and the venom remains active for 1d4 hours; until it is washed off, a new save is required every turn it remains active. If a Zarn succeeds in paralyzing a victim, it will bore into its skull (doing 2d6 damage in the process) and lay 1d12+4 eggs inside which hatch within 48 hours unless removed (a difficult procedure without surgical equipment). Newly hatched Zarns consume their host from the brain down to the toes, leaving an empty bag of skin behind when they emerge fully grown.

Mutations: Special: Minor Teleport (identical in all respects to the Teleport mutation except it has a range of 200')

You better hope you spot this one before it spots you (unless you like the idea of being beetle brain food...)! I love this illustration as well, the eyes on that thing are pure evil.

Gamma World 4e

2010-01-30T15:25:00.000-08:00

When I first heard about the upcoming Gamma World 4e release (that is D&D 4e, not to be confused with the 4th edition of Gamma World which was published by TSR in 1992), I was excited but also had a lot of trepidations. With D&D 4e's strong emphasis on planned character builds and the use of the Character Builder tool to help sort through all the options, I was pretty sure that the random char gen that is so integral to Gamma World would be dropped. Looks like I was wrong! Here is a link to a series of tweets from D&D Experience 2010 (Wizard's in-house D&D convention) about the new version of Gamma World, aggregated in one spot at rpg.net:
http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=496155&page=12

Color me excited! Not so much about the collectible mutation cards that are only fifty cents apiece in random booster packs, but about random character generation and mutations and high-tech that could be easily used in regular 4e games. So far it looks like Gamma World 4e will use a stripped down, rules-lite version of the 4e ruleset at its core, with random mutations and char gens bolted on. One interesting thing is that each day a player draws from the mutation deck to get a random mutation for that day! I will definitely be picking this up, especially considering it will be a boxed set! I love me some boxed sets, I am so glad that Wizards is returning to this model!

Oh yeah - and a re-release/re-vamp of the classic Gamma World module Famine in Far-Go! Bring on the mutated chickens!

d30 table for Savage Afterworld Contest

2010-01-30T03:47:00.001-08:00

I made this d30 table for a hoot and a holler and a shot at a killer Radiation Symbol dice cup over at the Savage Afterworld's d30 contest.

I repost it here for posterity:

d30 Scavenging in the Ruins table:

1. Three Headed Rat encountered in Ancient Cereal Box (rat may have up to three mental mutations at Mutant Lord's discretion)

2. Strange Black Ball with window to an everchanging series of ancient characters such as "Reply Hazy, Try Again" and "Signs point to yes"
Subtable: Roll 1d20 -

1. As I see it, yes

2. It is certain

3. It is decidedly so

4. Most likely

5. Outlook good

6. Signs point to yes

7. Without a doubt

8. Yes

9. Yes - definitely

10. You may rely on it

11. Reply hazy, try again

12. Ask again later

13. Better not tell you now

14. Cannot predict now

15. Concentrate and ask again

16. Don't count on it

17. My reply is no

18. My sources say no

19. Outlook not so good

20. Very doubtful

3. Large (5'x3'x3')White Box with a Silver Handle - pulling the handle opens a door and reveals a compartment filled with deadly green mold, 10d6 damage, save vs. poison for 1/2 damage (ye olde refrigerator trap)

4. Collection of grooved black discs, made of some sort of plastic like substance, with a hole in the middle; each disc is stored in a crumbling paper casing (records).

5. A metal tool with many blades, files and saws as well as pliers(leatherman)

6. A glass bowl with turquoise pebbles and a miniature castle inside of it

7. A collection of small metal figurines, lovingly painted, seemingly portraying various mutant creatures (D&D minis)

8. A velvet sack containing plastic spheres and cubes with varying numbers of sides, each side embossed with an ancient glyph representing a number

9. Three large metal containers, silver sides and copper bottoms, with metal handles on the sides

10. A bin full of small plastic pieces of varying lengths with raised dots along them; on top of each raised dot is the ancient glyph "lego"

11. A large chest with a small padlock securing the clasp (easily broken) - the bottom has a hole in it and an unusually aggressive snake has taken up residence...

12. A textured rubber sphere with the ancient letters "NBA"

13. The world's dullest knife, ornately decorated with a skull on the pommel, resting point first in a block of wood (cheesy letter opener)

14. 1d6+1 cans decorated with a red and white label, containing a red substance (tomato soup)

15. Deer antlers mounted on a wooden plaque

16. A gold statue of a man with a club in his hands, mounted on a wooden base with an inscribed metal plaque

17. A rectangular metal object with a depressible handle - this fires a staple (possibly into the experimenting character!) 1d30 staples in device

18. A circular object with concentric rings painted on it, and several needle-sharp darts stuck into it

19. A plastic column holding a multitude of red, blue and white discs in slots around its edge (poker chips)

20. A metal rack holding a miniature shovel and a metal poker

21. Two fur-lined metal rings attached by a short length of chain (hand-cuffs - may accidentally close one or both hand-cuffs around wrists - key may or may not be present)

22. A flexible plastic rod with a spool of nearly invisible thread attached to it. Nearby is a metal box containing numerous brightly colored doo-dads attached to barbed hooks.

23. A huge book in amazing condition - its pristine cover has the ancient words "Webster's Unabridged Dictionary"

24. A strange device consisting of metal tubes, gears and two rubber discs surrounding spokes (bicycle)

25. A pink statue of a pig with a slit on its back (filled with ancient coins)

26. A box full of miniature, soft cloth bears (a dangerous spider may be lurking amongst the teddy bears)

27. A bright yellow rubber outfit (rain coat and pants)

28. what appears to be a vicious samurai sword (cheap pot metal replica)

29. A red canister with a rubber hose and a pin (fire extinguisher, Mutant Lord's decision if it still has propellant)

30. A paper box with a wood-grain appearance - inside are three little brown books...

Campaign Catch Up

2010-01-28T00:07:00.000-08:00

A lot has happened since my last session recap. Lets see, for starters, how about four character deaths, one character kidnapping, the campaign wiki getting up and running and the NEAR TOTAL ANNIHILATION of the local chapter of the Knights of Genetic Purity at the hands of my wicked awesome players! Too much has happened to allow me to recap everything, so let me hit a few highlights.

After sending the tentacle armed monster back to the Mutant Past, the party poked around the top of the military complex and realized that the monster had left behind dozens of babies, gestating in sacks of entrails and insides that the monster had sucked out of its victims with its tongue-arm. They set about destroying these, and the embryos inside starting screaming, drawing the attention of some adolescent tentacle monsters. The ensuing fight also drew the attention of some huge worms that apparently have taken up quarters in the second level down (a lot has changed in the complex since Julius Corple has been in charge...).

Blue the Kangaroo was unconscious for much of this fight as a result of dying in a vision of the future he had while using his Precognition mutation. He woke up just in time to see a bunch of Dog Boys coming across the swamp, and rather than running like a sensible Kangaroo he used his ability to see into the future to see what the dog boys were going to do. He didn't like what he saw, tried to run when it was too late and got netted by the Dog Boys, who hauled him off into the swamp despite the best efforts of his comrades to save him whilst simultaneously fighting off junior tentacle monsters and 300' worms.

Yeah, that was a pretty epic combat. One of the great moments involved Stang (an angry 30' long mutant wasp with 4 extra brains, 3 of them defective, that have the personalities of the Beatles and occasionally attempt to possess her) and one of the worms. Stang, flush with the hundreds of temporary HP she had gained from using her Vampiric Field mutation to destroy dozens of monster embryos, swooped down at a worm that had just crashed through the roof from below. She was promptly swallowed whole but blasted her way out from the inside, emerging relatively unscathed despite taking 5d20 acid damage a round!

After things quieted down, the party learned that Skinny Butt (their home base) had been obliterated. The Knights of Genetic Purity had managed to form an alliance with the Radiant Order of the Oh and had successfully trapped the Secret Order of the Ooh in the underground portions of the Ooh-Oh Monk's neck of the woods. This meant that the Knights now had access to the missile silo the monks had formerly used to fend off all comers, and the (huge, bunker-busting) conventional explosives packed into the missiles had been used to pound Skinny Butt until it was a hole in the ground.

Reasoning that if they helped the Secret Order of the Ooh escape they would have yet another ally against the Knights, the party contacted his magnificence the Dean Doco Proffus Flipsham Egwar using the special ear piece he had given them in an earlier meeting. They were perturbed to find out that something or someone was preventing the powerful mutant from using his mental abilities to teleport in his shining egg vehicle, and indeed, was preventing all of the mutants in the order from using their mutations to fight their way out. The party resolved to clear a path up from the mouse kingdom through the abandoned levels that were frequented by Dragons (giant, winged, scaly, fire-breathing cats) and an assortment of carnivorous plants so that the Secret Order of the Oohs could escape down without having to fight their way out.

This turned out to be a bad idea, as the party ignored all my (very clear, I thought) warnings that the dragons were nothing to be trifled with - Ryan had just rolled up a new character to replace the recently abducted Blue, coming up with an Obese Were-Panda in a business suit, and this unfortunate mutant died within a half hour of his creation. Natas, who had recently acquired the Increased Caloric Needs defective mutation, carved up the roasted (courtesy of the dragons) body of the panda to eat later on.

The party then tried a different strategy, returning to the surface and making a direct assault on the missile silo with the help of some of the Mice in Mech Suits.

The battle was ferocious and bloody, and when a chainsaw wielding robot of doom joined the fray on the side of the Knights of Genetic Purity, it looked like the party was facing another inglorious defeat. Thats when George (a new character played by Mike) floored his ATV at the robot and used his Disentegration mutation, rolling a success to disentegrate 140 pounds of its head and shoulders. As it teetered and then fell over, decapitated, it became apparent that there had been a man inside it - blood began to pour out and George collapsed unconscious on his ATV, drained by his mutation, and rolled off into the woods.

The Robot of Doom:

The tide of the battle turned at this point, and when it became clear that the party and their allies were going to win through into the silo, the two silo coverings opened up and the knights inside began preparations to launch two missiles simultaneously on Lard Jeebus knows what target. Dataan and Bozko saw this, and both took actions to prevent the missile launches. Bozko in his Iron Man suit flew by and loosed a mini-missile into one silo while Dataan ran down the hillside from where he had been hiding after nearly being killed in the first moments of the combat and began chucking grenades into the other silo. They both managed to ignite the booster fuel in the lower stages of the missiles, and as the silos were consumed with a fiery explosion, one of the warheads was detonated in the conflagration.

Most of the party had cleared out as soon as the impending missile launch had been discovered, Rock hauling away the unconscious George and Bozko flying off after loosing his missile. Bark had already been slain in the melee, and Natas was inexplicably carving holes in a helmet he had pilfered from a KoGP commando so that he could put the helmet on over his horns.

When the missile exploded, Dataan and Natas died instantly and several more missiles stowed below in the silo also exploded, collapsing the entire complex and leaving a smoldering crater in the side of Hendrix Hill. I should mention that I gave Natas plenty of opportunity to say he was fleeing the scene (Dataan unfortunately was right next to the silo, having just tossed the grenades in that caused the missile to detonate) - but he was very clear that he was stopping to pick up a helmet and cut holes in it for his horns to fit through. Rock's player (the older brother of Natas' player in real life) said, "You mean you are doing that after you run away, right?"

But Natas again reiterated that he was picking up a helmet and carving holes in it. So that is how he died, in the middle of a crafting project!

Still, this had to be counted as a glorious success for the party despite three character deaths - in the battle and subsequent missile detonations, 50 regular Knights of Genetic Purity, 16 commandos, 1 special operative wearing an Iron Man suit and one chain-saw wielding Robot of Doom had been destroyed, representing nearly the entire force that the knights had in the area. Some of the top ranking officers and one special operative in an Iron Man suit escaped in a vehicle, but other than that, it was a clean sweep.

2e Tuesday - Kamodos

2010-01-26T20:51:00.000-08:00

Kamodos (Thunder Lizards)

No. Enc: 1d4-2

Alignment: Neutral

Movement: 240' (80')

Armor Class: 0

Hit Dice: 15

Attacks: 1

Damage: 6d8 (bite) or 5d6 (tailslap)

Save: L10

Morale: 7

Hoard Class: XV (scattered around its lair)

There are few creatures more feared than the 59' tall Kamodos. While their imposing size and toothsome bite is bad enough, it is their earth-shaking roar and powerful mutations that send all who cross their path running. All Kamodos have a Willpower between 13-22 (1d10+12) and have a sixth sense that prevents them from being surprised.

Mutations: Accumulated Resistance (Heat), Disintegration, Damage Turning, Mental Barrier, Combat Empathy, Special (Sonic Blast: 50' range, 9d6 damage), Special (Will Force: double the effect of any mutation used during 1d4 minute duration, once per day)

This one is a real terror. You really don't want to make a Thunder Lizard angry - it will use Will Force and start letting loose the 27d6 damage Sonic Blasts!

Mutant Links - Mutations, Random Junk and More!

2010-01-24T02:33:00.000-08:00

Check out Matt's Mutant Future Page: I discovered this page when looking at my site statistics and checking out where people came to the blog from. Thanks for linking to me, Matt!

I like a lot of the stuff he has up, particularly the maps. The map of the U.S. with California split away from the west coast and the flooding along the east coast into the great lakes is really cool. Another score is his list of additional mutations - you can never have too many mutations, right?

On the topic of Mutant Future links, I realized that I have not shared this random junk generator and random settlement generator (made for Deadlands but eminently usable for Mutant Future) yet. How could I be so remiss? They are a great tool for the improvising Mutant Lord when the players go exploring somewhere that is a blank spot on the Mutant Lord's map.

One more link - Iaian over at the Buccaneers Guild has posted a great tutorial showing how to make quick and dirty isometric perspective multi-level maps suitable for the sorts of buildings likely to be found in the Mutant Future.

HP in the Mutant Future

2010-01-21T21:36:00.000-08:00

Hit Points in D&D are a nebulous concept, clearly not mapped directly to how much physical damage a character could withstand (or a mid to high level fighter could withstand more physical damage than most dinosaurs!).

Gary Gygax has a great explanation of HP in the AD&D 1e DM's Guide (page 82). An excerpt:

"It is quite unreasonable to assume that as a character gains levels of ability in his or her class that a corresponding gain in actual ability to sustain physical damage takes place... Why then the increase in hit points? Because these reflect both the actual physical ability of the character to withstand damage - as indicated by constitution bonuses - and a commensurate increase in such areas as skill in combat and similar life-or-death situations... Each hit scored upon the character does only a small amount of actual physical harm - the sword thrust that would have run a 1st level fighter through the heart merely grazes the character due to the fighter's exceptional skill, luck, and sixth sense ability which caused movement to avoid the attack at just the right moment."

HP seem to be something entirely different in Mutant Future. I say this for two reasons - one, at character generation they are directly tied to the physical makeup of a character as expressed by the Constitution score (starting HP are 1d6 or 1d8 per point of CON), and two, they do not increase as the character levels up (or increase very rarely and only when CON increases in the random leveling up process).

I have been thinking about HP in Mutant Future ever since I commented on The Savage Afterworld's
Savage Managerie: Equort post that 3 HD seemed like too few for an incredibly strong, horse sized reptilian creature. Sniderman (Savage Afterworld Blogmeister) pointed out that Mutant Future's Warhorse has 3 HD, which he used as a starting point for the Equort. Opening up my copy of Labyrinth Lord, I realized that the statistics for all three horses in Mutant Future were lifted directly from Labyrinth Lord with no changes made.

This just seems wrong to me. Lets compare Labyrinth Lord and Mutant Future for a second. HP in Labyrinth Lord mean the same thing as they do in D&D. The most that a character's physical makeup as expressed by attributes can effect HP in Labyrinth Lord is + or -3 HP a level. Lets take two hypothetical 1st level fighters - one with a 3 CON and one with an 18, and assume that both have maximum HP. Their HP would be 5 and 11, respectively. The + or - 3 HP from CON illustrates the physical component of HP, and the rest has to be the skill of dodging (made more obvious when you realize that a fighter has more of these non-physically related HP than any other class, reflecting greater skills at dodging injury).

Now lets look at two hypothetical Mutant Future characters, again with a 3 CON and an 18 CON and max HP, and we see a radical difference. The 3 CON character has 18 HP and the 18 CON character has 108 HP! There is no skill of avoiding injury component here, as there are no classes and the only way HP can increase is if your CON attribute actually is increased by leveling up.

All this leads me to the conclusion that HP in Mutant Future are actually a measure of how much physical damage and exertion a character can take. The poor character reduced to 1 HP should be a bloody mess, possibly with broken bones, certainly barely able to move around. The laser blast that does 45 damage should probably leave a hole in the mutant's body. With no healing magic available, several characters have been temporarily retired in my Mutant Future game while they rest and heal up over the course of several weeks of game time.

The most interesting ramification of this understanding of HP in the Mutant Future has been with mutant plant characters that posesses the Chameleon Metamorph mutation. This enables them to change their form into that of any other plant, provided their total mass stays the same. Bozko was the first character (and the only one still active) in my campaign with this mutation, and he has came up with many creative uses of it - we have collaboratively determined that he can use pieces of his own body as ranged ammunition if he sacrifices HP, so he could, for instance, turn a section of his body into a sharp wooden branch and break it off and hurl it at someone at a HP cost determined by Mutant Lord Me. He has used this to great advantage, shaking off a few HP worth of dandelion seed tufts to form chaff to disrupt laser targeting, for instance.

This has also led to the understanding that as he is damaged, he is literally losing pieces of himself to the point that if he was reduced to 1 HP, he would only be a tiny little blob of plant matter until he slowly regrew his body! This works because we had already decided that a mutant plant with the Chameleon Metamorph ability did not have a central brain or nervous system, because the plant maintained consciousness even when in such radically different forms as a sheet of algae covering a pond or a tall pine tree. Bozko's player ran with this idea and decided that each cell of his body had all of his knowledge and memories encoded into its genetic structure, so as long as any little piece of him survived he was still sentient and could eventually regrow himself.

As a Mutant Lord, deciding that HP = Physical Damage has made it very easy and exciting to narrate events in combat. No longer do I have to restrain from describing horrendous wounds because HP are a representation of how skilled a character is at dodging; if someone takes a lot of damage, they are physically messed up. End of story. When Beyonce was reduced to 3 HP in a flame thrower attack, her body was horribly burned and her face became a mass of scar tissue.

2e Tuesday - Sleeths & Fleshins

2010-01-19T02:18:00.000-08:00

Sleeths (Seer Lizards) & Fleshins (Flying Fish)

Sleeths:

No. Enc: 1d10

Alignment: Lawful

Movement: 120' (40')

Armor Class: 4

Hit Dice: 18

Attacks: 1 (weapon)

Damage: By Weapon Type

Save: L12

Morale: 5

Hoard Class: IX

These friendly, highly intelligent bipedal lizard men are a welcome sight to the Mutant Future traveler. They live in peaceful, scholarly groups that typically befriend strangers and offer them whatever hospitality they can (although they will use their ability to foresee the future to avoid any potentially hostile wanderers). They have the ability to possess one plant within 45 feet as per the Possession mutation, except there is no mental attack roll required and the ability can only be used once per day. In addition to the listed mutations, each Sleeth will have one more beneficial Mental Mutation.

Mutations: Precognition, Neural Telepathy, Body Adjustment, Special (plant control) + one beneficial mental mutation

Fleshins:

No. Enc: 1-2

Alignment: Chaotic

Movement: 240' (80')

Armor Class: 7

Hit Dice: 6

Attacks: 1 (spines)

Damage: Contact Poison, Poison Class 15 (Death/4d6 damage)

Save: L4

Morale: 5

Hoard Class: None (there may be some random discarded treasure on the bottom of the body of water that the Fleshins hunt in, but Fleshins do not actually carry any treasure nor do they accumulate it in the crevices that they lay their eggs in.

Luckily for most mutant PCs, these six foot long flying fish are usually only found in large bodies of water. They can glide for long distances with their wing-like fins, effectively staying airborne for as long as they want when they use thermals to regain elevation lost while gliding. They are dangerous carnivores that rely on their deadly spines to bring down their prey. They also possess the unique ability to assume the form of a Sleeth, and in this form they gain all of the Sleeth's mutations. They possess only an animal intelligence, so anyone who has experience with the quick thinking, peace-loving Sleeth should be able to recognize that something is wrong when they encounter a Fleshin in its Sleeth form.

Mutations: Sleeth Form: Precognition, Neural Telepathy, Body Adjustment, Special (plant control) + one beneficial mental mutation

Mice in Mech Suits

2010-01-14T20:35:00.000-08:00

Here are the Mice in Mech Suits mech combat rules; this is a public beta playtest, if you download these and use them, please give me feeback! These rules work much better for at least two on two combats, and I have ran them with up to 16 total combatants. This is a stand alone game, and it pretty much ignores the mech pilots (who are mutated mice from the Mutant Future!).

One cool thing about these rules is that the Mechs are roughly human sized, so they could easily be used as robotic adversaries for Mutant Future or any other edition of D&D, really. They are not so overpowered as to completely unbalance a normal game if they are introduced. For Mutant Future, small mutant animals or mutants with the Density Alteration, Self mutation could easily pilot them. The To Hit chart in the stand alone rules section is basically the to hit probabilities of a 5th level Mutant Future character, so you could adjust those numbers if you want the mech to be a more ferocious combatant.

In my campaign, the players have finally convinced King Arthur and the Mice of the Round Table to help in their cause, so a contingent of these mechs will join them if requested to sortie against the Knights of Genetic Purity or Julius Corple and his henchmen. This definitely gives the party some sorely needed muscle, because up till now, they have been running around like chickens with their heads cut off!

Updated the Guns Post

2010-01-13T22:42:00.000-08:00

I just added the alien gun wielded by the Dog Boys to the guns post. Of course, at this point the players have already exhausted the alien worm ammo and the alien web ammo, but they still have homing darts, flamethrower fuel and the regular energy blasts to work with.

Oh, and I just realized I forgot to do a 2e Tuesday post this week. Oh well. Catch ya next week, Gamma World Critters!

Look out Mutant Past!

2010-01-11T01:05:00.000-08:00

Tonight's Mutant Future session, something a long time coming finally happened; a character with the Plane Shift mutation finally used it! The text of this mutation states that "This mutation grants the power to visit realities in other dimensions... The mutant can only choose to open doors to worlds he has visited before. Otherwise, the doorway leads to a random world of the ML’s choice and design." I have had a fun plan ready for this since the very beginning of the campaign, because one of the starting characters had the mutation. Of course, he was only able to attend a few sessions and never ended up using the ability. But with the deadly sessions of the last few weeks, we had several new characters and two of them have this ability!

My plan was that the first time someone used the Plane Shift ability, it would open a gateway to an alternate past in the same physical location on earth that the portal was opened. The gate would lead to today's date in the present (the real present, Monday, January 11th 2010). I figured that the only time the group would want to hop through a portal to a random destination was when they were running from something truly horrid and had no other chance to survive; I envisioned a group of wounded mutants suddenly appearing on Eugene's streets, and thought it would make a fun diversion for the week they were stranded in the Mutant Past before the ability could be used again.

As often happens in RPGs, the way things went down was far from how I had planned it. After a lengthy meeting with the Mice of the Round Table, where King Arthur and his knights promised to assist in a campaign against Julius Corple and the Knights of Genetic Purity and Merlin told the interested members of the party that he would get a list of materials needed for the robot manufacturing plant to create powered armor for the characters, the party decided that the most pressing threat was Julius Corple. This decision was aided by two things; the mice had just been invaded by Corple's dog boys and terminator bots, and Dataan's player was not in attendance (he has a serious grudge against the Knights of Genetic Purity and probably would have lobbied hard to make them the top priority).

The group piled into the jeep (all except Natas and his melted face, who rode on the back of Samantha, or "Stang" as she is nicknamed, a 22' long giant mutant wasp who is new to the party) and rolled over to the military complex. They investigated the building where the formerly aggressive war chimps appeared to be holed up, and discovered that most of their number had succumbed to the FDF7 virus. The mutated survivors were tending to the diseased and dying, and were patrolling the perimeter of the building as if they expected an imminent attack. Blue, another new party member, has a special sense that allows him to smell emotional states by the pheromones that are emitted by a body in different mood which he used to detect that they were afraid of something. He is also a precog, and used this ability to imagine himself hopping (he is a mutant kangaroo) into the building unarmed and attempting to parlay with them. When he foresaw that they would not react violently, he did this in real time and discovered that their will had been largely broken by the devestating virus and a mysterious creature that had emerged from the military complex and had been slaughtering them one by one. Now that the rest of the survivors and diseased members of the war chimps had clustered in this one building, the creature had been unable to pick off any more of them, but they were too terrified to leave. Blue also learned that several of the first war chimps to survive the virus and gain mutations had cracked under the strain of the transformation and had fled off into the swamp never to be seen again.

Blue offered the party's assistance in killing the creature, recognizing that the war chimps could make valuable allies. He picked their brains for as much information regarding the killer creature as they could give him, then got their permission to invite the rest of the party in. The war chimps parted with some weaponry to assist the party (good thing to, because the group was out of grenades! Lard Jeebus knows they love blowing stuff up, so I am sure the ten grenades and the couple of missile launchers that they got will get put to good use) and then sent them on their way with sincere wishes of good luck in their endeavor. The war chimps had revealed that the creature had an iron will and had proven almost impossible to effect with mental mutations. It moved with incredible speed and could leap a hundred feet in a single bound. One of its arms ended in a deadly metal claw, and a tentacle-tongue emerged from this and entered the wound made by the claw to suck out the insides of its victim. Its other arm was a long tentacle that it used to grapple its opponents. An energy cannon mounted on its tentacle arm and poisoned quills that covered its head rounded out its formidable arsenal.

The creature only emerged from the complex at night, so the party hoped that by searching for it in the complex during daylight hours they might catch it napping. Stang shuttled everyone up to the roof, and just as they were discussing strategy and how to best go about finding the beast, it burst through the roof and hurtled itself at Stang (who has the Prey Scent mutation which draws predators to her like sharks to blood in the water). The following fight was brutal, and several party members (including Stang) were reduced to single digit HP in the first couple of rounds. Only some lucky shots with the guns looted from the Dog Boys using the alien web ammunition kept it from completely annihilating the entire group.

This is what they were up against: The 16' tall Xiticix Killer from the Rifts Lone Star World Book.

A few rounds in to the combat, the monstrosity had shredded the rest of the party's alien web ammo like so many spiderwebs and was about to commence with the devouring of the party from the inside out with its claw and tentacle-tongue. Desperate, one member of the group emerged from behind the air vent where he had been hiding and knelt directly behind the killer, enlarging himself so that he came up to its knees. Rok used his Plane Shift ability to open a gate directly behind the kneeling party member, and the rest of the group rushed the creature and pushed it over the kneeling party member and into the gate. As it tumbled in, I told the party that they could see through the gate to what appeared to be the same location, but the rooftop was not in the middle of a swamp, instead being surrounded by dry ground, paved roads, cars driving and generally not a ruined post-apocalyptic landscape. The beast attempted to drag Rok through the portal with it, but he managed to shut the portal on it, severing its tentacle and trapping the beast in an alternate reality.

Everyone realized that they had just unleashed a terrible killer into the present/Mutant Past. A debate ensued as to whether or not the portal led to the actual past of the timeline that they presently inhabited, or if it led to an alternate past. Some party members felt like they might have unwittingly caused the apocalypse that led to the Mutant Future and the world they knew today! Blue used his precog ability to imagine Du Pont (the other mutant with the Plane Shift ability) opening up a portal to the same place (I ruled that now that Rok and Du Pont had seen through the portal, they could reliably open up a portal to that particular reality if they so desired) and himself looking through it. He saw a scene of devastation, cars wrecked on the road and people fleeing as the creature slaughtered everyone within reach.

2e Tuesday - Kai Lins

2010-01-05T01:08:00.000-08:00

Kai Lins (Lizard Bushes)

No. Enc: 1d4

Alignment: Neutral

Movement: 120' (40')

Armor Class: 5

Hit Dice: 9

Attacks: 1 (gamma eyes, 30' range)

Damage: 3d6 (radiation damage)

Save: L5

Morale: 5

Hoard Class: none

This mobile plant is often confused with a large reptile, because it is covered in green scaly bark and runs around on two stalks that end in thorny pads. It trails a bundle of roots that look like a tail when it is running, and uses these roots to feed by wrapping them around its victim and absorbing nutrients. Kai Lins prefer to eat carrion because it is easier for their plant digestive juices to break down tissue that is already decomposing, but if there is no ready source of carrion they can hunt live prey effectively with their deadly mutations. Interestingly, Kai Lins emit a pheromone that seems to attract dangerous predators, so often the main danger associated with a Kai Lin sighting is whatever mutant beast is currently tracking it!

Mutations: Prey Scent, Energy-Retaining Cell Structure, Optic Emissions (Gamma Eyes)

Hooray for mutant plant-lizards that attract deadly carnivores, shock you when you touch them and shoot radiation from their "eyes"! Gotta love Gamma World!