Mutants vs. Monkeys

As promised, here is the sordid tale of what my PCs have resorted to while trying to pit one faction against another in my Mutant Future campaign.

The first thing they came up with was to somehow turn the Knights of Genetic Purity against the two bands of apes.  There was talk of killing three birds in one bush, or something like that.  The Knights are the mother of all factions in my campaign world, a continent spanning organization dedicated to the complete eradication of all mutants and the restoration of pure humans to their former position of unchallenged supremacy.  The party captured two members of the Knights way back at the beginning of the campaign, and the two unfortunate bastards have been languishing in a dark hole in Skinny Butt, their only contact with anyone being the occasional visits from Chab the rattlesnake, one of the village elders and the self appointed "interrogator" (read as "torturer").  So the party takes their prized camcorder and their only tape and brings one of the captured Knights out into the swamp.

Warning:  the following paragraph may be a little disturbing, so if you are faint of heart, please skip it and go watch a family movie like Silence of the Lambs instead.

This campaign has been a campaign full of firsts for me.  First openly gay PC, first time running a session with 10 players, and... first time my players have shot a snuff film in game?  WTF?  They decided that they would stage the gruesome massacre of the captured Knight at the hands of a "warangutan" (really Bozko the shape-shifting plant assuming the general form of a great ape and covering his body with shaggy red moss).  They filmed this Blair Witch Project style, from the point of view of the other Knight who "got away" after capturing the horrible death of his comrade on film.  The party wanted to really get the Knights pissed off at the Warangutans, so they had Bozko actually rip the poor dude to shreds in front of the camera.  Interestingly, of the six players participating, only one (my girlfriend, playing Beyonce Chai) expressed any reservations about this plan and she still drove them out into the swamp so that they "didn't do anything even stupider".  The truly disturbing part is that Dataan the robot became aroused during the filming of this movie and there may or may not have been robot masturbation involved.  The party  arranged for the video to make its way into the hands of Chaplain Squaldorf, the true power behind the recent incursion of the Knights into the Willing Mate valley, and then they sat back to watch the fireworks.  However, the PCs soon grew bored waiting for a response from the regional headquarter of the Knights up in Porrit Land, so they decided to take a stab at stopping the apes themselves.

Their next plan was to ally with the War Chimps and attempt to wipe out the Warangutans once and for all.  However, when they flew an unmanned drone that they had just spent a week repairing from the parts of several nonfunctional drones they had secured many sessions earlier, they discovered that the War Chimps had posted a horrifying "keep out" message in the swamp; a roughly circular ring of cut trees marked their territory, and flayed corpses of swamp creatures and mutants alike adorned the tree trunks like bloody post-it notes.  Zooming in on one body with the drone, the party saw that it was flayed from the neck down, and its eyelids had been removed.  And thats when they realized that this poor mutant (a swamp trapper from Skinny Butt town) was still alive - it turned its bulging, dried out eyes at the drone as if it were silently begging to be put out of its considerable misery.  Dataan flew the drone in low, planning on ramming the flayed mutant in the head to put it out of its misery... and he flew the drone right into the War Chimps trap.  They had a ring of concealed blinds a ways in from the outer perimeter of stumps, and a War Chimp with a missile launcher blew the drone up with one well placed shot.

The PCs now decided that maybe they didn't want to ally with the War Chimps after all! Their next brilliant idea was to ally with the Warangutans and convince them to leave the complex and wipe out the War Chimps with the party's help.  They journeyed to the Badder warrens and made their way to the now filled in tunnels leading to the Hangar level of the military complex.  The two shapeshifting plants in the party burrowed through the dirt in root form, creating just enough of a pocket of air behind them to drag a pair of spiderbots down with them.  Once Swampy (one of the shapeshifting plants) got in to the long cross tunnel that leads from the hangar level all the way under the swamp to the sublevels of the Ooh Oh Monks (yet another faction in the swamp), he soon heard a vehicle rumbling down the tunnel at him.  He hid, and saw a jeep driven by a Warangutan pulling a covered troop transport, heading down the tunnel towards the Ooh Oh Monks.  Dataan, controlling a spiderbot, sent it down the tunnel towards the hangar while Swampy set off after the jeep.  Soon, a terrific explosion echoed down the tunnel, and the party surmised that the Warangutans were attempting to blast their way into the lowest levels of the old university complex that the Ooh Oh Monks inhabit.  Dataan's spiderbot reached the blast doors to the hangar, and attempted to use the door's control panel to access the complex's computer system - when to the parties considerable dismay, it became apparent that some true computer wizard had overridden the codes that Dataan had left in place in the complex and the party no longer had access to the still active security networks.  The door began to shut, and Dataan had his spiderbot scurry through and into a maintenance shaft in the wall (the facility is riddled with tiny shafts designed to let the spiderbots scurry around and do their job of maintaining and repairing the electrical, computer, ventilation and water systems of the base).  Peering through a small opening in the wall, Dataan saw through the spiderbot two large Warangutans wielding rocket launchers come up to the door, accompanied by a Terminator looking robot - picture the shiny metal terminators that don't have any skin covering their terrifying metal bodies.  The Warangutans covered the doorway with missile launchers while the Terminator opened it up - of course, they saw nothing.

Meanwhile, Swampy was making decent time heading down the tunnel toward the Ooh Oh Monks, a distance of several miles, with the second spider bot accompanying him.  Soon, the party heard over their comlinks (stolen from the military complex a while back) the Warangutans back at the door to the hangar level warning the Warangutan party up ahead that there was something in the tunnel.  Swampy began traveling much more carefully, in long extended vine form taking cover behind all the heaps of scrap metal that line the tunnel.  The spiderbot went up ahead, under the control of Dataan the robot, who trusted in its small size to escape detection.  The spiderbot came to a juncture, where the the jeep and troop transport were parked, guarded by a single Warangutan standing behind the twin heavy machine guns mounted on the back of the jeep.  Dataan cautiously snuck the spiderbot past this point and came into a room that had evidently once held a large door which had since been blasted away.  A squadron of Warangutans was exploring the chamber beyond, which was filled with what seemed to be massive boilers and other strange rusted out hunks of motionless machinery.

Swampy, alternating between his normal vision and gamma ray vision, continued on slowly and carefully.  He spotted the tell-tale radiation leak from the fusion cell powering a plasma rifle up ahead, and realized that two Warangutans were concealed behind the cab of car that was leaning against the side of the tunnel ahead of him.  Deciding that he could take on two of them with the help of the hypnotic fragrances he could emit, he painstakingly inched a viny protrusion of his body towards the apes and released a cloud of mind-controlling goodness into their hidey hole.  He instantly realized that they were far too powerfully built to succumb to his tricks as they burst forth, plasma rifles blasting.  Luckily for Swampy, they had not spotted him as he was concealed behind the everpresent stacks of scrap metal.  Never known for his discretion, Swampy rolled the lone grenade that he was carrying directly between the two apes who frantically hurled themselves to the ground as it exploded.  Before the smoke even cleared the apes were laying down covering fire as they called for back up.  "We've been hit!  Taking fire from unknown assailant!  Alpha Squad leader, send back up!"

A squad of five Warangutans set out to assist the two fighting Swampy - only to be grenaded themselves by Bozko who had been waiting in the collapsed tunnel to the Badder warrens.  Bozko dropped four grenades from more or less directly above the squad, and killed three of them on the spot.  Now convinced that they were experiencing a serious assault, the Warangutan leaders  called the exploratory party that was moving under the Ooh Oh Monks back.  In the meantime, Dataan had stolen their jeep with his spiderbot, ramming it into a wall and breaking the neck of the Warangutan who was manning the machine gun in the process.  Then, the spiderbot turned the machine gun down the corridor and opened fire on the exploratory party.  With the enemy now apparently coming from all sides, and not even sure what was making the machine gun fire (as the spiderbot was completely concealed behind the gun), the Warangutans broke formation and ran.

 Swampy had continued his fight, and when the two Warangutans he was engaged with started retreating to join up with the larger contingent of the exploratory party (who were now getting into a second jeep that was parked in the large room by the Ooh Oh Monks), Swampy couldn't just let them go and he popped out of cover and took another pot shot at them with his trusty shotgun.  As he dropped back down, they let him have it and I rolled a natural 20 and killed him on the spot... When his player asked if he could roll a savings throw to survive since he was a shapeshifting plant and most of his body mass had never left cover to take the shot in the first place, I decided to be a merciful overlord that night and told him to roll a save vs. energy attacks.  Of course, he still had to get a 15 or higher on a d20, so I figured he was probably toast anyway... then he goes and rolls a 15 on the dot.  I ruled that Swampy was alive but unconscious, mostly blasted to smithereens, and clinging to life only as a small globular mass of unrecognizable plant matter.  The Warangutans all retreated in their Jeep back to the hangar level and shut the blast door, not at all sure what had been attacking them from three sides.    A spiderbot was sent to check on Swampy, as he had suddenly cut off communications.  His quivering remains were retrieved, and the party beat a retreat back to Badder Town to plan their next move!

One important thing has been missed so far; the role of Julius Corple in all this.  Corple, a brilliant roboticist and all around mad genius from the year 2135, had recently been released from centuries of confinement within a massive alien computer/brain.  Exposed to the surface air, he contracted the FDF7 virus and soon grew a second brain and began exhibiting strange powers.  He was last seen, after grabbing the body of Laura Hazelton (a footsoldier from 2135 who was dying of the virus), flying over the swamp in the direction of the military complex.

Many small clues in the last session led the players to speculate that Julius Corple had become the leader of the Warangutans and was directing them as well as the strange Terminator robot the party had seen.  Are they right?  Only time will tell....

I do intend to post the full tale of Julius Corple soon, he is a tragic figure and was directly responsible for the downfall of the military complex all those long years ago.

NPC Factions (Or how to be a lazy DM)

Despite my players' often repeated claims that I am an awesome DM, I know the sad truth - I am a very lazy game master, running my games with a mixture of way too little prep work, a good dose of fly by the seat of your pants and a little bit of luck from the dice gods.  The honest truth - for the last 10 sessions (or 40-50 hours of real life time spent playing), I have spent a grand total of two hours doing preparation work!  I spend FAR more time on this blog then I do my game, and I am not a particularly prolific blogger either.

How do I do it, you might ask?  While my background in competitive extemporaneous speaking and improvisational theater certainly helps, I don't just make it all up as I go. One of my favorite lazy DM tricks is an oldie but goodie, the use of NPC factions.  The vast majority of the two hours of prep work I have done recently was statting up a few different groups that the PCs have been interacting with.  I first come up with the leaders of the group and write a sentence or two describing their personalities and motivations.  Then I stat up a sample member of the group, a tough member of the group, and make a few notes about different weapons or armor that I can use to make members of the group seem unique (for instance, one Warangutan might be wielding a plasma rifle and wearing flak armor, while another is clad in plasteel armor and is carrying a rocket launcher and a vibra-dagger).  When statting up the typical faction members, I write down a range of HP (50-80 for your average Warangutan) so that I can pick a number in the range whenever an individual is encountered.

One amazing thing about using factions is that once you place them in your campaign world, they just keep on surprising you with all the things they do.  It is very much like getting to watch your world come to life before your eyes.  Knowing what the goals of the faction are and the personality of its leaders means that you should have a good idea of what they are doing when the PCs aren't looking.  For instance, when the PCs in my campaign left the military complex in the western swamp, they for all intents and purposes forgot about the warring groups of War Chimps and Warangutans that they had inadvertently set free from the level they had been trapped in for centuries.  While the PCs spent a few weeks out in the desert trying to prevent the Knights of Genetic Purity (another faction in play) from gaining access to nuclear missiles, the War Chimps left the complex and took over a section of the swamp centered around the complex, while the Warangutans focused on seizing control of the complex itself and the tunnels that lead away from it far underground.  This brought the Warangutans into conflict with the Badders, who the PCs had left with the codes to unlock the doors into the lowest level of the complex so the Badders could scavenge scrap metal from the ruined vehicles in the hangar to offer to Glargorion.

In the middle of the PCs adventures in the desert, the now deceased Logan teleported back to the hangar level to look for material to repair the parties hovercraft with - while there, he saw a pile of Badder corpses and the door leading into the tunnel that accessed the Badder warrens standing wide open.  So when the party returned from the desert, they decided that they had to assist the Badders and somehow thwart the militaristic apes that they had unwittingly unleashed on the area.  Two sessions later, and it looks like I can mine this particular little conflict for quite a few more sessions as the PCs have been coming up with one crazy idea after another, trying trickery and diplomacy to pit the Knights of Genetic Purity against both factions of apes, attempting to ally with both factions of apes against the other and, at the end of last session, it looked like they were moving towards trying to get the Ooh Oh Monks involved in this affair as well.  This tickles me pink, because the Ooh Oh Monks are one of the original factions that I set up at the very beginning of the game, and so far the PCs have been content to completely ignore them (in part because Dataan escaped from servitude to the Monks and is more than a little afraid that they may reformat his CPU and put him back to work processing data should he ever run into them again).  My next post will detail some of the crazy antics this little set up has led the party to attempt; the last two sessions have been wild, woolly, a little disturbing and tons of fun.

Next Post:  The Party shoots a snuff movie and meets a Terminator!

The Megadungeon in the Mutant Future part two

It may seem a little presumptuous to call my ancient military complex a megadungeon.  At the present, I think it only has about a hundred, maybe 150 rooms that the players know about- surely this is too small to qualify?  The key to that statement are the words "at the present".  There is plenty of room to expand, and I have already planted the seeds in the players' heads that will eventually lead to the exploration of three more large areas.  And as play continues, I am sure I will plant more seeds and more areas will be discovered.  As it is, the first time the players ran through the complex they spent several sessions searching for the gold key cards that would allow them to access some of the sealed off areas.  When they finally did find them, they ended up getting chased away by some Warangutans and haven't returned yet.  This means that after six straight four to six hour sessions, the players still have only scratched the surface of the complex.  The door temptingly labeled "Alien Weapons Division" is still unopened!  Likewise, the top secret area that they learned about in Julius Corple's papers is still virgin territory (an upcoming post will detail the tragic story of Julius Corple, brilliant roboticist and the unwitting cause of the downfall of the military complex at the hands of the Oozyxphg).  The players turned tail and ran from one of the largest levels of the complex before they had even really began to explore it, because they realized it was the home to two groups of warring, possibly partially robotic killer apes (think Planet of the Apes meets Vietnam with a little bit of Robocop thrown in and you have an idea of what that level was like).  There are several long tunnels leading from the lowest hanger level, one of which evidently leads up to the swamp because it was flooded and nearly drowned the players when they opened it; it took some pretty heroic and nearly self sacrificial actions from two players to save the rest of the party from a watery grave.  However, the other tunnel leads to the labyrinthine science complexes underneath the old university inhabited by the Ooh Oh Monks, and offshoots lead to places as yet unknown to the players.  Only a handful of the officers' and scientists' quarters have been explored, as the players mostly focused on those that they suspected might contain a gold key card.  All in all, the campaign could easily go on for a long long time in this one network of underground chambers, and that makes it a megadungeon in my book.

One of the things that James over at Grognardia identifies as a key feature of a classic megadungeon is that it is dynamic and changes in response to the players.  My little complex is an excellent example of this; play began with it flooded with poisonous gasses, so besides the odd alien critters that had come through the portal from the Oozyxphgian homeworld, it was mostly robots that the party had to deal with.  However, these robots were not sitting idly by waiting to be discovered.  The still active security cameras sweeping the corridors detected the party's movement despite some interesting efforts to circumvent them, and a team of robotic defenders was dispatched.

When the party eventually shut the gas off, the apes and other denizens who had been trapped in self-contained areas of the complex that the gas had not been able to reach soon emerged and this really changed the dynamic of the area.  As the party was trying to make it to the armory that they had seen on a building schematic in a computer they hacked into, they realized that they had been beaten there by the War Chimps.  They watched through a camera feed with a mixture of curiosity and horror as the War Chimps easily handled several Scorpions and took control of the coveted armory.

I have always been a big fan of moving monsters around the dungeon; it prevents complacency by the PCs and it makes the dungeon feel "alive".  The most recent example of this from my campaign occurred during the last session.  The party has been out in the eastern desert involved in some tricky diplomacy in an effort to prevent the Knights of Genetic Purity from gaining access to nuclear weapons controlled by three oft-times warring desert tribes.  During the last session, the Swamp Orca (the party's hovercraft, purloined from the hangar level of the megadungeon and outfitted with Glarg-ore armor courtesy of the Badder master smiths) took some serious damage and was on the verge of a total breakdown.  The skirt that contained the cushion of air had been badly ripped, so Logan the incredible teleporting shrinking man teleported back to the hangar level to scavenge sections from the skirts of the other ruined hovercrafts that they had left behind.  When he arrived, he noticed that the level was being patrolled by the Warangutans.  He also noticed that the massive blast door which sealed the hangar off from the tunnels leading to the Ooh Oh Monks and the Badders' tunnels was wide open, and a large pile of Badder corpses was stacked near the tunnel mouth.  The party correctly deduced that the Badders (who the party had given the code to open the door) had attempted to scavenge more of the ruined vehicles in the hangar to offer as scrap metal to their lord Glargorion and had run into the Warangutans.  As several of the party members were quite taken with the great worm god (Dataan has been spreading the gospel of Glargorion wherever he goes) and the entire party was quite grateful to the Badders for their assistance in crafting Glarg-ore weapons and armor for them, the last session ended with talk of returning to the military complex to deal with the Warangutans.  Having things occur in the absence of the party is a useful tool, and one that greatly adds to immersion in a game world.

Stay tuned for more lessons from the megadungeon, including the tragic tale of Julius Corple!

Bestiary part the second - Robots and Apes

In this second installment of my Mutant Future bestiary, I will present another military robot developed by the resistance using alien technology, as well as two of the genetically engineered ape super soldiers that the party encountered in the ruins of the military complex they spent several sessions exploring.

Illustrations are still in the works for these entries; I will add them as soon as I finish them up.

MR1200 "Jumping Jack"

This military robot represented the pinnacle of human understanding of Oozyxphgian technology.  Utilizing force-field generation, repulsor beams, and an organic computer "brain" capable of telepathically contacting nearby sentient organisms and hijacking control of their bodies, the Jumping Jacks were ideal security bots for sensitive areas that could ill afford to be strafed with the kind of explosive firepower that earlier security bots were equipped with.  They resemble a large iron ball from which protrude four rods tipped with repulsor disks.  These four rods are arrayed in similar fashion to the points of a caltrop so that when the Jumping Jack is at rest it sits on three of the rods with the fourth pointing straight up into the air.

They were the first robots to be built with no electronic circuitry at all, instead relying entirely on the artificial neural network and organic computers copied from the Oozies.  They use a form of sonar (70' range) to sense their surroundings and also use their telepathic ability to detect the presence of sentient beings.  They are incredibly maneuverable, capable of changing directions almost instantly by virtue of their four opposed repulsor beams. While utilizing their telepathic possession ability, they enter "defensive mode", spinning and bouncing around so rapidly in place that it is nearly impossible to hit them.  While they are quite smart in their own way, most Jumping Jacks were given a set of directives at creation that they cannot override - the human scientists responsible for reverse engineering the alien technology never fully understood the process of "programming" the organic computers, so these directives must be relatively simple (guard this chamber and attack anyone who does not present a gold key card, for instance).  Within the bounds prescribed by these directives, the Jumping Jacks demonstrate amazing creativity and a keen mind for tactical maneuvers.  Over the centuries, some have managed to break free from their directives and it is possible that there are rogue Jumping Jacks wandering the land, following their own inscrutable whimsy.  Jumping Jacks need no food or fuel, subsisting on the nutrients provided by the wormhole generating tissues inside their metal shell (in fact, a Jumping Jack may have a much larger physical body than one might imagine, but the bulk of it resides far away on an alien planet, soaking in a nutrient rich environment and transmitting the energy gathered back to its metal-shelled brain through these tiny wormholes).

HD:10 (50 HP)
Movement: 240' (repulsors allow it to fly up to 40' in the air)
AC: 2 (or -2 in defensive mode,see below)
Forcefield: Ignore the first 25 damage each round (ignore the first 40 damage each round in defensive mode)

Attacks:  4 repulsor blasts (range 40'), or possession (range 50', requires a successful mental attack roll)

Damage: repulsor blast: 2d6 and pushes target backwards 2d20' - if this causes the target to slam into an obstacle, they take 1d6 more damage for every 5' traveled.

Save: L8

Intelligence:14

Willpower:14
Mutations (these are actually innate properties of the particular tissue cultured for use as organic computers in the Jumping Jacks):  Neural Telepathy, Possession

Special:  defensive mode - the Jumping Jack diverts energy from the repulsors to the force field, increasing its strength, and begins spinning and hopping wildly in place to make it extremely difficult to land a solid hit.  No attacks can be made while in defensive mode, but the Jumping Jack can maintain a possession.


The Ultrasimianus Project:


The Ultrasimianus project was an attempt by the resistance movement to genetically engineer supersoldiers using the great apes as a starting point.  After achieving a great deal of success in creating apes that were both incredibly strong and as smart as the average human, the resistance went farther by grafting robotic implants into the skulls of the apes, replacing one eye with a sophisticated camera directly connected to the brain.  These implants also allowed the resistance scientists to control their experimental soldiers by remotely regulating bodily functions such as heart rate, adrenaline output, etc.  A genetic aptitude and predisposition for combat was a primary goal of the genetic engineering; in this regard, the project was an unqualified success.  Some populations of these apes have survived; most no longer have the robotic implants, but some have persisted for centuries in the military complexes where they were created, and if the automated equipment of the facility is intact, apes that enter the surgery chambers could still be outfitted with the robotic sensory device.


Ultrasimianus Pan Troglodyte (War Chimp)


War Chimps are quite intelligent and always display an innate understanding of tactics and strategy in combat. They will attempt to engage when the conditions favor them, and will often use their superior climbing abilities to ambush foes when they least expect it.  However, once injured they tend to abandon strategy and enter a terrifying frenzy, wading in to hand to hand combat without fear of death.  Unlike an ordinary chimpanzee, the War Chimps are capable of fully articulate human speech and most speak and understand a human language in addition to having a complicated sign language for silent communication between war band members during an attack.

Number Encountered: 3d6+2 (war band)
Movement: 180' (climb 120')
HD: 13
AC: 5 (unarmored, reflecting -2 from tough hide and -2 from dexterity bonus - most war bands wear armor)

Attacks: 2 (blows from arms, legs or weapon - all melee attacks at +5 to hit, all ranged attacks at +2)

Damage: 1d8+5 or by weapon+5

Save: L12

All adult War Chimps have at least a 22 Strength and a 16 Dexterity.  Intelligence and Willpower should be determined as normal with a roll of 3d6.

Most war bands will be led by an alpha male with 18 HD and 24 Strength (+6 to hit and damage) who saves as a level 13 monster.

Special:  If a War Chimp is outfitted with a robotic implant, it gets an additional +2 to hit on all attacks, and the camera acts as a 16 X telescope and 64 X microscope, seeing into the infrared spectrum (heat vision)  and allowing the War Chimp to operate in low light situations (night vision).

Ultrasimianus Pongo Pygmaeus (Warangutan)


Warangutans tend to operate in smaller bands than the War Chimps.  They are just as intelligent and always display an innate understanding of tactics and strategy in combat. They will attempt to engage when the conditions favor them, and will often use their superior climbing abilities to ambush foes when they least expect it.  They are highly disciplined fighters and will maintain their ranks and follow orders even unto death.  Unlike an ordinary orangutan, the Warangutans are capable of fully articulate human speech and most speak and understand a human language in addition to having a complicated sign language for silent communication between war band members during an attack.

Number Encountered: 1d8+3 (war band)
Movement: 180' (climb 130', brachiation 200')
HD: 15
AC: 6 (unarmored, reflecting -2 from tough hide and -1 from dexterity bonus - most war bands wear armor)

Attacks: 2 (blows from arms, legs or weapon - all melee attacks at +6 to hit, all ranged attacks at +1)

Damage: 1d10+6 or by weapon+6

Save: L13

All adult Warangutans have at least a 24 Strength and a 14 Dexterity.  Intelligence and Willpower should be determined as normal with a roll of 3d6.

Most war bands will be led by an alpha male with 20 HD and 26 Strength (+7 to hit and damage) who saves as a level 14 monster.

Special:  If a Warangutan is outfitted with a robotic implant, it gets an additional +2 to hit on all attacks, and the camera acts as a 16 X telescope and 64 X microscope, seeing into the infrared spectrum (heat vision)  and allowing the Warangutan to operate in low light situations (night vision).