Under A Blood Red Sky

Going, going, gone....

2012-01-04T22:09:00.000-08:00

I started my love affair with miniatures as early as my fifth year of life. After
my mom gave me a pack full of plastic army men, there was no going back.
Discovering scale models when I was about ten was the next logical step. Role
playing games followed next as my tactically-minded crew got down to hashing
drag-out fights which continue to this day.

In 1998, I got into Warhammer 40k big time. I was single and had some money to
burn so I decided on the most expensive, figure-intensive army then: the
Imperial Guard. At one time, I had about 100 mostly pewter-metal figurines on
the table marching to crush any foolhardy rival general who dared to presume
that humanity’s legions were a walk-over in a stand up fight. I recall lovingly
painting practically all of these figures.

These tinmen made guest appearances in all my various games, gracing the combat
tables of Traveller, Fading Suns, Gurps, D&D and Mutant Future.
Alas, time flies and it’s time to wrap up affairs here. My tanks and combat vehicles
had since been sold off and today, the tinmen’s turn to be bought off has
arrived.

I never thought parting with my collection would be occasioned with a profound sense
of loss. Though I never experienced an amputation of a body part (and never
hope to do so) I feel like a large piece of me was just hacked off.

Ouch.

Quick and dirty and eminently useful

2011-12-31T19:42:00.000-08:00

As a harassed dungeon master/game master, I am always on the lookout for very useful shortcuts to make my job easier and more effective. Real life takes a horrific toll on my refereeing efforts - and I feel that I am not remiss in claiming that many of my brethren of similar persuasion are in the same situation as I am.

Jeff Rients has a most effective article on coming up with an instant dungeon in Fight On! magazine issue number 6 most appropriately entitled HOLY CRAP! I NEED A DUNGEON RIGHT NOW. I find myself so much in such a situation the day before I committed to run a dungeon and just emerged from a very toxic work week. I do heartily recommend this article if you find yourself searching for some solid tips on how to deal with these last minute crunches.

One such piece of advice deals with quickly but effectively stocking your shake and bake dungeon with monsters which are hopefully going to offer something for your players' characters to sink their fangs into. I am a fan of customizing my big baddies before I throw them at the players as I always believe in tossing them something they've never encountered before as opposed to just recycling something straight from the monster manual.

Jeff suggests rolling once on the appropriate encounter table for your dungeon's level for the basic monster and then rolling again on the encounter table. After this, simply amalgamate the two monsters who have rolled up.

I decided to take this for a spin during my last Traveller-themed dungeon crawl. The results were pleasantly intriguing (and surprisingly fun too for my players). First roll on the wandering monster table under Labyrinth Lord rules produced the Owlbear- my usual favorite. Second roll was the Gorgon: mean and deadly considering its petrification attack. Amalgamating the two together produced a monstrous and deadly hybrid- the Owl Gorgon. It looked, smelled, attacked and died like an Owlbear but packed the hideous surprise of breathing out a cloud of greenish gas when it had you in a bear hug which, if you failed your saving throw, turned you to stone.

As it is, my players wisely ganged up on it and applied massive dollops of shock action (ie. cut it to pieces before it really got to turn someone to stone). The fighter narrowly missed his save but never really found out what was going to happen to him if he failed. Too bad he later got careless and failed his save against a corrosive poison gas trap later on as he fixated on looting a magical sword. But that's an altogether different story.

As to generating the Owl Gorgon, I got it down pat in 2 minutes flat. Not bad for a harassed dungeon master.

Jeff's advise shows you that thinking slightly out of a box and using the tools provided in existing old school clone rulesets will really yield great dividends. A great savings in both time and effort.

I know it's gonna be a good year!

2011-12-31T06:16:00.000-08:00

As I post this, I reflect on 2011.

To be honest, 2011 was very difficult for me. I count myself lucky that I am still gainfully employed when so many decent, hardworking folks are aching to find fulfilling meaningful jobs. But I'm only just so lucky... working for a living for me now involves earning just enough for the family to survive but at a price of slowly eating away your soul. I had made a promise to reinvent myself when the time comes and I pray it comes sooner than later. We aren't getting any younger after all.

I'll be saying goodbye to the third world very soon and hopefully settling in a better place overall. As a gamer, my fears lie in the direction of losing contact with my gaming group of more than ten years. I'm having separation anxiety as I am leaving behind my books, my games and my airsoft stuff (some of my few real vices in this life).

It is my fervent wish that sometime in the future, I'll still get a chance to do some gaming in our new home in the great white north.

It is with this that I look forward with hope.

2012. A new year coming in about one and a half hours from now. May it be peaceful, fruitful and better for all of us.

The Barrier Peaks Syndrome

2011-12-30T17:22:00.000-08:00

Expedition to the Barrier Peaks.

Believe it or not but I've never had the privilege of either running or playing this module. Never had the chance to do so but it always remains as one of my best inspirations in terms of genre-bending science fantasy. Maybe it's just the Gamma World fan in me but I always found it cool to have sword wielding adventurers toting captured firearms.

Looking back to yesterday's most recent "one-shot" Labyrinth Lord dungeon crawl made me re-visit Traveller Book 1: Characters and Combat. The rules set down some "antique equivalents" of the weapons set down to give the players a reference point on their capabilities and stats. Hence, when GDW referred to "submachineguns" they stated that they were referring to the Sterling 9mm L2A1 or the Israel 9mm Uzi.

What about armor?

Yesterday's vulpine mercs were wearing Mesh. Traveller described this as a body suit of natural or synthetic leather reinforced with a lining of flexible metal mesh similar to chain mail but lighter and stronger. Hmmm, so it would look like modernized leather armor with a layer of chain mail below, but lighter. My equivalent in Labyrinth Lord would be Chain Mail (Armor Class 5).

Going through the whole set of Traveller armor, I would put the following as their Labyrinth Lord equivalents:

Jack - a natural or synthetic leather jacket/body suit. Somewhat better than ordinary clothing or bare skin against blades but worthless against guns. Labyrinth Lord equivalent: Leather Armor (Armor Class 7).

Cloth- my favorite, being the most versatile in the Traveller series. A heavby duty jacket/vest covering the upper torso and legs tailored from ballistic cloth. It absorbs impact energy distributing the blow over the body of the target resulting in (possibly) severe bruising. Given the metallurgy and workmanship of the D&D world, I'd place Cloth's Labyrinth Lord equivalent as Plate Metal (Armor Class 3).

Ablat is cheap and is fashioned from material which will vaporize when hit by laser fire. I'd like to see how this stacks up against a fireball spell. It has some value as protection against other forms of attack primarily because of its bulk. I'd place its Labyrinth Lord equivalent as Studded Leather Armor (Armor Class 6).

I find cross-genre gaming fun as I get to "translate" the stats of gear and items from one game universe to another. In this case, 'porting matters from Classic Traveller to OD&D (and vice versa!) never fails to provide me with a most interesting intellectual exercise.

I guess the Barrier Peaks Syndrome lives on. While I don't think I'll have the time to run or play out this very long and most intriguing module, its' influence will always continue to make itself felt in my gaming in years to come.

If you think dungeon crawls are fun...

2011-12-30T03:20:00.000-08:00

...don't let anyone else tell you it isn't (run your games this way if you want). I recall a sentence to this effect in Robin Laws' book on refereeing. Today, our gaming group validated this statement.

It started out with having one afternoon to run a one-off old school game. So I decided to dust off (figuratively) my pdf copy of Labyrinth Lord and cobble up a one shot dungeon crawl. To spice up the weirdness factor, I decided to throw in a mutant human and mutant animal (antman!) warrior from the Mazes and Monsters optional rules at the end of the book thereby importing mutant warriors from the Mutant Future. So my pregen list ended up with a stock human fighter, a cleric, a magic user, a thief (all of the above representing the big four basic classes), a dwarf, an elf and the two afore-mentioned mutants.

To spice things up even further I set the game in what turned out to be a frontier scout surveillance base staffed by Vargr Mercs from Traveller. I know we always used to consider tech level 6 Traveller weapons as being on the lower end of the deadliness scale during combat. Today's game showed how the "typical" battle rifle (being the venerable M14) proved deadly against a group of 5-6th level D&D characters, particularly when paired with an odd laser carbine and wielded by a foe that seemed to remotely know what they were doing...

It was fun. I recall the last time we did this sort of D&D-Traveller genre bend was in high school. I wonder how their magic items will stack up against an enemy in Battledress?

We might get to find out as my players are clamoring to continue. This one shot is turning out to have a continuation after all....

Well that's very kind of you to mention it...

2011-10-06T21:13:00.000-07:00

I've been so out of it for so long, I even neglected to note that my friend Alex who runs a pretty good gaming blog himself posted something on my ongoing Fading Suns game here at the Armchair Gamer.

Many thanks my friend. You do a better job than I do in documenting our latest attempt at good gaming.

They lost the will to fight/play so now we're looking at dying stars

2011-10-06T20:57:00.000-07:00

I have not posted in a while (understatement) as I am a tad busy with real life (another understatement with accompanying attempt at a lame excuse). Please pardon me if I ramble here. In case you’re feeling cranky and don’t feel like going through a meandering streams of consciousness-esque account, kindly feel free to stop reading at this point. No, really…..

Our current Mutant Future campaign (set in the post-apocalyptic Southeast Asian Wastelands) is on hiatus. It appears that my players will to play/fight took a nose dive from our last three sessions. Briefly, the surviving crew of a dozen or so-odd mutants, androids and one precious (and hard to kill) pure human ran through the proverbial meat grinder after trying (unsuccessfully) to dislodge a tribe of unusually well tech-equipped mutant frogmen from the ruins of what seemed to be a pharma products lab-cum-warehouse. I think of these Palaka-folk (“palaka” meaning “frog” in Tagalog) as mutants physically resembling rabid specimens of Frank Herbert’s Gowachin endowed with viet-cong tactics. Yes, enough insurgent deviousness to put Tucker’s Kobolds to shame. My players choose to call them the Chtulhu-frogs and they don’t smile when they say that.

Post game assessment: it appears that my players became a wee-bit enamored with their cool and funky mutations. This, coupled with a modest amount of pre-disaster weapons and artifacts and a seemingly-unbroken string of victories against the mutant flora and fauna of the Southeast Asian Wastelands brought about a perceived sense of invulnerability. Speaking from a GM’s perspective, I frankly didn’t see this kind of cockishness in my players since way back. By way back, I mean back when I ran my one-and-only attempt at a D&D 4th edition campaign. On second thought, maybe I downplayed things a tad bit when I said that the heroes possessed a “modest” amount of pre-disaster weapons. From my recollection, they HAD a blaster rifle, two .50 cal. M2 heavy barrel machine guns, a Rambo-type M60, assorted hand grenades and poisoned bolts on top of the miscellaneous rifles, pistols and the odd-sniper rifle. Ok, so I guess I’d more accurately say “rather modest” amount of pre-disaster weapons.

Well, so here we were in this jungle with everyone feeling cocky after flattening a 20 hit die mutant two headed jungle sawa that spits disintegrator rays from each pair of saurian eyes (“Sawa” means big python in Tagalog). Everyone’s feeling good as no-one even got damaged substantially from the last encounter. That’s when we arrive at the mutants’ lair which is a flooded warren of pre-fall basements and tunnels. Apparently still feeling cocky, my friends proceed to waltz into the dungeon proper. No recon, no precautions, using their giant mutant salamander/beast of burden to use his part water mutation (from Creatures of the Wasteland), the intrepid band marches boldly into the dark. Eighteen effectives walk in and get pounced upon by the Cthulhu frogs waiting in ambush. Seven get out swimming for their lives as Moses the Salamander is one of those KIA-ed.

The most memorable post game comment went something like this: “Gee, they were waiting in ambush. How’d they figure out we were coming anyway?” with accompanying accusing look at the Mutant Lord. So cue in your Mutant Lord patiently explaining how all that water displaced by the part water mutation has to go somewhere, right? A bubble of air 30 meters in diameter in the middle of the bottom of a lake has to force all that water somewhere, correct? Duh!

In any case, the game went on for two weeks after that with more characters (yes, much more characters rolled up with manic old-school ferocity) against a justifiably more well-armed tribe of Cthulhu frogs. Using viet-cong tactics, the palaka-folk still manage to hold off the party and to this date, they have not even RE-ENTERED the dungeon.

The quotable quote from those sessions went something like this: “For crap’s sake I don’t believe you Bob! Such a mean game master – those were our characters’ weapons and now you’re using them against us!” Cue in more accusing stares aimed at yours truly. This time, I just cracked up. I do believe the kids playing out in the street heard my manic laughter right after that. I guess a good laugh was my best answer to that comment.

Which brings me back to my original point – I guess this served too much to test my players’ will to play and the group opted for a more 90s-style science fantasy role playing game. Yes, they did hope it would be more forgiving in terms of casualties but then, as now, I make no promises. After all, as Mr. Arneson once said, I don’t ever kill any characters. The players end up doing that to themselves.

Fading Suns – it’s big, wonky, kitchen sink-ly, has apparent pretensions at “role playing” as opposed to pure “roll playing”. I got myself the 1st edition rules sometime in 1998 (this being my very first ever on-line purchase of a role playing game book from Amazon.com). I ended up getting practically most of all the other books in the line and played the game extensively. Our gaming group had since scattered to the four winds but yes, I’d like to think it was Loads Of Fun.

When introducing this to a new player, I always describe this as Herbert’s Dune meets Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun. For the literary-challenged player I tend to say, think HBO’s Game of Thrones meeting the technology of Star Wars. What episode of Star Wars, you say? Whatever- it don’t really matter. If I’m feeling particularly ornery that day, I’d say this to a purely local would-be player: think of the Philippines today with all the corruption of its politicians, big business and the military, throw in the hyper-hypocrisy of our monolithic Church (Which one you ask? Why, there’s only one over here, right?), the flooding of our streets, the poverty of the proles and add spaceships, rayguns and laser swords into the mix (at least for those who can afford it). Make the suns fade and viola! Fading Suns!

So now I’m running a game in the year 5010 amidst the remnants of humanity’s great failed experiment at galactic-scale free-market democracy. The Nobility rules. Technology largely keeps working because of the Guilds. The Church in power puts its predecessor of the middle ages in Terra to shame. And amidst all this, the suns appear to be fading. Yes, you read that right- they’re going out, one by one.
Still, I’d venture to say that Fading Suns is a post-apocalyptic game of sorts.

Admittedly, it isn’t a Mutant Future (or at least not all around) but there are striking parallels with my old school favorites:

1. The Good Old Days are behind us and we live in Interesting Times. The Republic is dead and it’s essentially every sentient for himself these days….

2. Old tech is dangerous but nice to have. They don’t make stuff like they used to but if you go to places where the Ancients lived you may get lucky and bring home some Magic Items. Or you can die.

3. Here Be Dragons. Yes, civilization (what’s left of it) has contracted and frozen. Lots of old history lies out there waiting to be rediscovered.

4. As always, the characters drive the story. I wouldn’t go so far as saying they will make a difference in the scope of historical events (I tend to take the Warhammer 40k-ish bent on things that eventually, entropy claims us all – it’s just a matter of time). But pass or fail, they’ll make a great story worth telling.

Maybe I’ll draw up some Cthulhu Frogs and see how they’ll deal with them in this game universe…

Regrouping

2011-07-02T16:46:00.000-07:00

It's regrouping time for me. Recovering from a bout of gastronomical infection of the variety that sends you scurrying to the bathroom, I had to call off today's game. I think I can use a day of rest.

It would be the eve of another anniversary of the battle of Kursk, something my history aficionado friends and I always end up marking. But to my other friends and relatives, it's almost the 4th of July.

In particular, to my American friends out there, here's to a great 4th of July! Stay well and prosper everyone.

Epic battle

2011-06-26T05:02:00.000-07:00

My head is still spinning. We had our regular Mutant Future game today. Fifteen player characters and NPCs in the adventuring party. Just when I expected them to run, the players dig in resolutely and FIGHT! A reinforced platoon of mutant 'human mercenaries assault their prepared positions. Supporting dragoons make a nuisance of themselves, sniping and harassing.

The result: three solid hours of good old fashioned combat and killing. The final tally: six dead characters and the reinforced platoon of attacking mutant mercs scattered and fleeing. The butcher's bill proved a heavy price indeed.

Two things everyone learned today with a definite emphasis:

First, friendly fire, ISN'T. Mutations harm friend and foe when badly used. Today's use of Killing Sphere came close to wiping out the party as well as the attacking point squad. Reminded me of a wayward arty strike landing on your own positions.

Second, snipers kill from a distance. One of two pure human player characters found out the hard way. I guess he should have been paying more attention and asking why the Mutant Lord was still counting initiative when every enemy in sight appeared to be dead....

Oh well, happy times....

Rain rain and rain

2011-06-23T15:58:00.000-07:00

It's seven in the morning and the sky is pouring. By this I mean forty days and forty nights variety of tropical torrential rain. It's been like this since the other day. What many people take for granted is the appalling state of urban drainage we have here after years and years of corruption and neglect. Every little bit of rain (which is pretty much unavoidable this time of the year) results in flooding. This gets to your car, your house, your things and pretty much brings everything to a standstill.

I have a meeting with a minor government agency in a flood-prone area and I'm having doubts even if my SUV will survive the trek. Oh, and did I ever mention the traffic jams that will inevitably result? They are giving out anti-pneumonia shots in the office and boy, do we really need this stuff the way things are turning out here. Somehow I keep wondering if people should really be living like this.

Times like this I feel that living in the third world is an adventure in a medieval fantasy world. At least it isn't post apocalyptic..yet.

Maybe this is why my recurring inspiration for my current mutant future game has a lot to do with tropical rain and jungles.

I can't wait for the week to end so we can proceed to session 6 of the Southeast Asian Mutant Future. Upon a player's urging, I cobbled together the MF encumbrance rules as written with the elegant point system found in Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Role Playing thereby (hopefully) simplifying things in this regard. we'll see soon I guess.

In the midst of a lot of stuff

2011-06-21T16:37:00.001-07:00

Life has been very busy and exciting of late. I have so little time to update my blog and I am very much aware of the fact that I have a tremendous backlog in terms of after-action reports and other related musings. Between work, family life and the occassional gaming session, my days and nights are jam-packed, but I have so far stayed true to my personal commitment to thrive and not just to live.

Events are catching up with my wife and I and decisions have to be made soon. I'm just so thrilled to move on with our lives after waiting for the right thing to happen.

On the gaming front, I'm happy to note my Southeast Asian Mutant Future campaign has been progressing into its fifth session by last Sunday. I've been scribbling down my copious notes and will be posting the account of our mutant ne'er-do-wells who are now in the midst of trying to break into their default starting town which is besieged by Moro Mutant Pirates. They recently just survived the Re-Energizers module and are currently dodging freelance mutant marauders allied to the Moro Mutants. It certainly isn't easy for them they have to keep moving while lugging 120 pounds worth of scavenged radioactive batteries which they are trying to smuggle into the surrounded defenders of Barrio Santo Cristo.

Keeping in consonance with the tenets of old school gaming, I lifted the restrictions on characters each player can field. With our NPCs, the party is now up to 15 effectives and counting.

I plunked in the 'Shields Will Be Splintered' houserule, as well as some handy houserules by fellow Mutant Lord Malcadon on increased melee combat plusses due to Strength. Adding some sniping rules and other assorted bits on firearms all served to turn the game a tad deadlier. Judging from the players' reactions, the verdict so far is that Mutant Future is one deadly game.

I'll be making an effort to post more, given the constraints of real life always hanging over me. What little free time I have is often eaten up by reading up all those interesting bits from other people's blogs.

Have a great week everyone!

Good bye chips and junk food

2011-05-22T05:15:00.000-07:00

What is it about players, soda and chips?

I just got my blood test result and my cholesterol rating is too high to be normal. Hence, goodbye salty, trans-fat laden chips.

Argh! Watching my players gorge on this is pure pain.

Mutant future episode 2 - no fatalities

2011-05-22T04:37:00.001-07:00

We just finished our second episode of this season's Mutant Future (Southeast Asia edition) amidst a tropical late afternoon downpour. Yes, that was fun. Nothing beats an afternoon with friends around the gaming table. The intrepid mutant adventurers are halfway through RE-ENERGIZERS, a Mutant Future adventure module I recently purchased and downloaded. So far, it played out well as a balanced and well thought of scenario. It was also very easy to take, adopt and plunk into my homebrew gameworld. Yes, RE-ENERGIZERS rocks!

My house rules expanding the slug throwers found in the MF rules as written appear to work fine- making gunplay very much reminiscent of FALLOUT TACTICS, which was my intention in the first place. Of course so far, it's been the players using their firepower against mutant fauna. I'm sure things will get suitably sanguinary when they run up against opposition with a modicum of intelligence similarly armed and inclined as they are.

Man, it is so hot here. I hear the weather hit 38 or 39 Celsius last week.

Even if I'm tired and hungry, I'm real happy. And more than ready to face the work week. Bring 'em on guys....

Back to gaming!

2011-05-16T01:53:00.000-07:00

We just had our return to Mutant Future game yesterday. It was a blast. i'm still enjoying the feeling of having ran a great game with good friends. I'll be posting a report soon. More good news means we'll probably gaming again this weekend.

It's been such a long time I've forgotten how great all of this can be!

Entering the 46th year

2011-05-10T06:31:00.000-07:00

I've been blessed to be alive and well and entering my 46th year today. I have a lot to be thankful for in spite of the day to day challenges that come up now and then. For this year, I resolve to do a lot more enjoyable and memorable gaming.

The Newest Addition to this Mutant Lord's Arsenal

2011-05-03T20:42:00.000-07:00

I just managed to purchase and download my pdf copy of Mr. Raggi's Random Esoteric Creature Generator. I'm only in the first few pages but I can see how this product is going to go very far indeed in enhancing my next Mutant Future game. With everything moving in accordance with our plans, I hope to be gaming on May 22. Good times seem to be just around the corner!

Hijacking the jumpstart attempt at running a new game

2011-04-27T05:50:00.000-07:00

One thing GM-ing has taught me is the value of player buy in. The fact that your players have this starry-eyed look of expectation whe you tell them what you plan next means they are hooked.

I've been mulling a more Hawkmoon-esque Mutant Future game in the coming weeks and started the actual task of jotting down my ideas just to make them simmer and stew. In the process of doing this, I seem to have been hijacked again along my original path. This has happened before so I am not really bothered. My ultimate end in the proposed upcoming game is a gradual decline of technological civilization on Earth during the course of a drawn out struggle which savants of a later more civilized age will refer to as the Tragic Millenium.

The thing is, I seemed more drawn for now to run a game at a point in the TM when technology and civilization is still somewhat formidable but falling catastrophically fast.Having to explain how I envision this to some of my more new school players I described the feel of this attempt at a Mutant Future to be Fallout Tactics meets Planet of the Apes and a dash of the X Men. Well, this got their attention.

Next, I decided to try a different tack. I decided to set the game in the place I call home. This means hot, tropical beaches, a lot of native slang, crumbling ruins near fortress gothic churches all set in a place once referred to as the Pearl of the Orient Seas. Other things of interest include local warlords (we never seem to lack those even today), mutant water buffalo, overgrown rice paddies with mutated carnivorous flora, mangrove swamps aplenty, a resurgent ultra-fanatical religious order which would put the Knights of Genetic Purity to shame, fortified towns cobbled together from the floating hulks of ancient tramp vessels (clustered around a beached inert SSN Boomer as the town hall), and rain - lots and lots of it as climate change is slowly but surely sinking our land beneath the waves.

I'm presently tweaking the MF rules to allow more and deadlier slug throwers in keeping with the tradition of Fallout Tactics. Knowing my players they'll be demanding this. Maybe it's the legacy of playing too much Twilight 2000 in the past. So yes, guns, guns and more guns. At least until they come upon some serious energy weapons (I do believe that's what happened in Fallout Tactics too).

Another thing that provided me with unexpected fun is how I get to use the current slang and subculture here and turn it on it's head when crafting the background. I know my old language teacher will probably maul me what with my bastardizing a lot of Tagalog for this game, but heck, this can be fun!

I do recall that the original Gamma World had a lot to do with satirizing Western culture. So maybe I'll do a little of that as regards the culture over here with Mutant Future and see how it pans out.

By the emails I've been getting from my prospective players, I do believe I've latched on to something promising here.

Bataan Day

2011-04-25T17:36:00.000-07:00

I take this opportunity to salute the heroes who gave so much in the defense of Bataan and Corregidor in 1942. Bataan heroes day was celebrated here on April 9 with a ceremony honoring the veterans at Mount Samat. Mt. Samat is a commanding terrain feature somewhere in the middle of the Bataan peninsula and was subject to a terrific bombardment when the Japanese Imperial Army finally broke through the lines in early April 1942. As my family comes from Bataan, I took trips to the war memorial during the summer months of my childhood.

This year, my re-enactor friends from the Asia Airsoft Alliance joined the veterans' ceremony in the Mt. Samat memorial. The ceremony was also attended by active service members of the Philippine Armed Forces and visiting servicemen of the US Pacific Command. I'm still regretting that I wasn't up to joining my comrades after recovering from a long bout of respiratory infections and my asthmatic cough.

It was unusually foggy and wet at the start of the day when our group took positions at the memorial. Nonetheless I found this scene so apt as to produce a poignant reminder of the sacrifices made by those who fought, bled and even died here so many years ago.

My humble thanks remain with the gallant generation who served with armed services of the Pacific Theater of Operations during the last World War, in particular, to the heroes of the United States Armed Forces of the Far East (USAFFE) and the guerilla fighters who kept fighting the good fight after the fall of Bataan and Corregidor. Your sacrifice allowed us to enjoy the freedoms we should never, ever take for granted today.

You will never be forgotten.

Real life ruins

2011-04-24T19:30:00.000-07:00

I was lucky to have been able to join a company outing last week to an island south of Luzon. Mindoro hosts a pretty decent place called Puerto Galera which is known for its beaches. I managed to join up with a hiking group from our company and ended up trekking through a forested and hilly area to a place called Aninuan Falls. I believe the closest translation from Tagalog would be 'Falls of the Ancestors'.

Being rather out of shape after an extended bout of chronic respiratory infections, I found the pace climbing up the hills rather tiring. I did not help that my companions just recently completed a 17-hour mountain trek near Subic Bay. In any case, I luckily made my constitution check and survived the trek over rather challenging terrain.

Completing the trek was worth it as a wonderfully secluded and refreshing natural waterfall greeted us at the end.

What really got my attention was a group of ruins off to one side of the small lake formed by the cascading stream of water. This appeared to be the concrete and rebar foundations of some long crumbled bridge. The bridge itself seems to have eroded away long ago but the supports are still evident.

The structure does not seem to be a contemporary or near-contemporary construction. I'm betting it was set up during the American Commonwealth period, sometime in the 1920s or 30s.

For some reason, the upper portion seems like it was blown up. I have to do some more research on this. Maybe this was blown up by guerillas who were fighting the japanese between 1942-1945. Or maybe it was the work of some communist rebels who were quite active in the area in the 1980s. Then again, maybe I'm just letting my imagination run away from me this time.

Even more intriguing is how the locals managed to use some of what remained of the crumbling concrete supports as a frame for a hut they managed to cobble up.

Seeing all this through a roleplaying umpire's eyes gave me an idea how the survivors of the Mutant Future could set themselves up in terms of shelter amidst the Ruins of the Ancients. Seeing concrete ruins all moss-covered and crumbling is one thing but beholding them up close is quite an inspiration for a gamer!

Also, I do believe I'll be paying more attention to those ability checks from now on when I'm adjudicating wilderness movement and exploration. Most of the terrain we traversed was boulder-strewn dried river beds. Apart from being out of shape, I had all I could do by just keeping my attention on the ground. Tripping and falling on the rocks is not a nice thing to happen to a trekker. And yes, difficult terrain tends to slow down travel. Having a trail to follow is such a Godsend when you're traversing jungle terrain in them thar hills.

Where in the World?

2011-04-22T19:23:00.000-07:00

The last incarnation of my MF game was set outside Earth. The world had two moons and was a terraformed garden planet before the Interstellar Federation from which it's colonizers originated from collapsed and died. This time, I'm setting it on Earth, somewhere in the not too recent future.

Earlier, I mentioned my preference in setting the game amidst a Hawkmoon-esque feel. The action of this particular Mutant Future happens a lot longer after the last planet-busting weapons were detonated. Instead of one big mad minute where everyone who had something worth shooting let loose and trashed the world, we had a long, extended spate of unpleasantness which led to the End of the World as We Know It. In Moorcock's books, this extended time of unpleasantness was called the Tragic Millennium. While there were various times of reconstruction and recovery, the ultimate end after this era was the gradual erosion of technological civilization giving way to the quasi-medieval world of the wasteland.

Now that I've more or less determined the 'how' and 'when' of the setting, what remains to answer is the question where the action takes place.

The Hawkmoon novels picture a Europe composed of a patchwork of squabbling principalities ruled by petty monarchs. And one big bad Dark Empire. This sort of fits my gaming model but I decided on moving the game to North America. With a big landmass with so much space to play in, amidst interesting and varied terrain, I feel that this pretty much meets my demands. One of my inspirations is the old Gamma World module Legion of Gold. The feel of that game setting really doves into how I intend to run this coming incarnation of MF. A lot of sword-wielding feudals ranged against the new barbarians amidst the ruins of the Ancients. Mutants? Yes, quite a lot, but this time, I'll be dialing down the gonzo-weirdness factor a bit.

Other influences include Richard Adams vision of horse clans and steppe warriors duking it out with knights from extant kingdoms such as Pitzburk. I see the new world as a bit warmer, what with all the havoc caused by the Tragic Millennium and the resulting climate change that followed. Lands previously considered relatively cold north of the Canadian border are now pleasantly warmer. Hence, I'm imagining massive rain forests with corresponding mega mutant flora and fauna in places like Virginia. I believe Sterling Lanier's Heiro novels suggested something like this in their version of the mutant future.

Jumpstarting the game (or so it is hoped)

2011-04-22T17:08:00.000-07:00

After the longest time, I hope I'm on my way to starting up a game with some semblance of regularity. I was supposed to run a Mutant Future session this afternoon but practically all of my players bugged out. I guess I'll be putting the time to good use by reading up on some inspirational material and more solid prep.

I don't know if Roger Zelazny's Damnation Alley qualifies as inspirational material. I'm enjoying it though. I can't believe I have not read this book a long time ago. I remember watching the movie as a kid but I guess the special effects tech of the 70s would have been pathetically Insufficient if they decided to run the movie straight by the book.

As to solid prep, I have reams and reams of hex paper here and pages of notes. Last week's extended stay in the beach left me a lot of time to just muse about the setting of my MF game this time around. I'm leaning towards a world feeling more like the post-disaster kingdoms from Moorcock's Hawkmoon novels, than Kirby's after-diasater Kamandi.

I'll let the ideas stew a bit more and see what happens.

As an aside, anyone know a source of downloadable hex paper with individually numbered hexes?

Preparing for the next one (and a little house cleaning)

2010-11-11T17:46:00.000-08:00

It's still an rpg-less existence for me as of this point. I recall coming across something someone wrote sometime back which sounded somewhat like "Peace is just an interval wherein nations prepare for the next war."

No, I don't wish for war but I guess one way of looking at my rpg-less existence as of now is that it is nothing more than down time in preparation for the next gaming spasm I'm hoping to initiate soon.

I had a Twilight 2000 Gurps one-shot set up last month but some near-catastrophe here at work scuppered that well and good. One very enlightening (if not pleasant) effect of that experience was that I happened to get to know more about the maturity level and values held by my players. Looking back, I guess it now comes to no surprise to me when I learned that at least one of them nursed a grudge against their umpire for having cancelled his game (yet again) in the interest of coping with problems at work and family. Well, to this I can only say "Too bad." I'm too old and too busy to even dignify such an attitude. If I never had any difficulty blowing off a bratty player who didn't get what he or she wanted in my game, I figure I wouldn't have much difficulty either in blowing off a bratty player who can't understand that most of us folks have to work for a living in order to enjoy the privilege of having passtimes such as this gaming thing we do.

Maybe it is time for me as our group's umpire to do some apparently long-overdue housecleaning.

In the meantime, I'm catching up on my reading list of great gaming inspirational reading. I'm also endeavoring to catch up on what's been going on in the blog accounts of my fellow gamers.

Our gaming group (or at least those who I believe count at all) are scattered to the four winds for the moment- but I've seen this happen before. We'll get back together again - and with a vengeance!

For a little stress release, I've linked up with my airsoft buddies and shoot a lot of 6mm bbs on weekends. This, coupled with some World War II re-enactment goes a long way to keep my spirits afloat. Much of the stuff I've re-experienced (and am learning for the first time) here will sure make an appearance in my future games.

All this, I know will eventually be put to good use very soon....

Our story so far

2010-07-27T19:24:00.000-07:00

As of the present, our group of Travellers are in Porozlo, on a desperate mission against the clock on behalf of his Imperial Majesty's secret service. The situation is alarming but not critical (although this is disputable). A short synopsis of the story so far has been ably summed up by one of my players:

"So the team finally made it to the planet surface where they were able to obtain material help from the Covert Team located at Kohang. Despite a few encounters from the local patrols there were no untoward incidences. With the aid of the local smugglers they were able to get their equipment aboard the monorail that will get them closer to their objective. A thousand kilometers away from the objective the rug was pulled out from under them as the monorail was derailed. Mushroom clouds were rising from the horizon. The city of Chu from which they had just passed through a more than a thousand kilometers behind them rising up in its own mushroom cloud. Making their way out of the wreckage the team notes the weather in the area is frosty with sleet falling."

By now, it is becoming increasingly apparent that the button was finally pushed and doomsday has arrived on the planet. The War to End All Wars has finally started between the Free Commerce and Private Ownership Blocs.

Stranded in the middle of nowhere, in a cold and wind-swept steppe, dressed in uniforms of troops from an Internal Security Special Unit, our Travellers, through one of my players have voiced these concerns:

"Here is the situation in a nutshell.

1.Mu is a thousand kilometers away.

2.We are on a wrecked monorail.

3.Our smuggled care package is in one of four trains.

4.Are any of the party injured?

5.Combat Environment Suits will provide limited nuclear protection. Which means in my mind that Bob has the discretion to tell us when we have reached the limit. It is not unrealistic to assume that the suits are considered disposable due to radiation exposure. They will protect from background radiation but not direct exposure. At this point we shelter in the train we are in and search it for useful items. Skills that should prove useful would be Survival, Navigation (Land), Recon, Medic and J-O-T.

6.Once we are suited up and armed then we make the decision as to where we are going. Mu where there is possibly a Scout Outpost with the artifacts or to the coast which I have no idea where or how far is on the map?

7.Additional resources will depend on what we will find on the way, (to where I have no idea!)."

Reading through the above, it dawned upon me that this is the first time I'll be testing the Combat Environment Suit in Mercenary for proof against radioactive fallout- something that it was always claimed to have been designed for. In some strange way, the present situation on Porozlo harkens to the wars which may well just qualify as the Mutant Past in a Mutant Future game.

I guess we'll be seeing how things will turn out on our next session on the 7th of August. I can't wait!

My intro to players for our current adventure

2010-07-27T03:05:00.000-07:00

Here's the intro I wrote up for my players for our current Traveller adventure.

I'm still trying to get an after-action report of our last session set up, so by way of introduction, let me present this er, intro.

Since everyone requested to play active-service operatives for the Imperium (as opposed to mustered-out/retired adventurers/mercs), the premise here is that their characters are part of a special operations group 'answerable to the highest levels of government in the Spinward Marches'. Yes, it sounds cheesy but it gets the game going, neh?

Think Mission Impossible meets Aliens, or something to that effect.

Porozlo is a world taken from canonical GDW Traveller lore. It was mentioned in Book 4 (Mercenary) and the 76 Patrons supplement. Essentially, it is a highly populated, up-and-coming planet divided until recently between a liberal Free Commerce Alliance and a more inward-oriented Private Ownership Bloc. I also hand-drew a hex map of the world and colored it to boot using colored pencils I cribbed from my son's doodling supplies. Unfortunately, the map won't scan properly, so I won't be able to post it for now.

I normally always send out such intros for my players to chew on before running a game. In this case, I fed them this and left them alone as to how they will accomplish the mission. This includes coming in, getting to the mission area and going out.

-Start-

Date: 1108 Imperial

Mission: Retrieval of Ancient Artifact

Area: Poroszlo [Rhylanor/Spinward Marches] (A867A74-A)

Intel briefing:

Poroszlo is a high tech, balkanized, high population planet in the Rhylanor subsector of the Spinward Marches. Its population, until recently, was divided mainly into two camps- the Free Commerce (FC) Bloc and the Private Ownership (PO) Bloc. The FC nations are concentrated mainly on the large western continent of San Miklos. Although controlling about 2/3s of Poroszlo's population of 9+ billion, the FC nations are the richest, most tech advanced countries on the planet. They adhere to a policy of close ties with off-world mega-corporations and business concerns.

The PO Bloc on the other hand controls the much of the remaining majority on the planet and are concentrated on the central supercontinent of Hoxha. This is further divided into two great states: the Greater People's Democratic Collective (DemoCol) and the Supreme Federated People's Union (SFPU). The PO adheres to a nationalistic, Poroszlo-first policy and are wary of off-world mega-corp 'imperialism'.

Tensions always remained high on the planet giving rise to brush fire wars and coups, the latest most serious being the counter-coup in Steposzhevac, on San Miklos, wherein numerous off-world mercenary contingents figured in forcibly unseating a pro-PO junta.

[note: refer to sample tickets in Book 4, Mercenary for more background]

Last year, the fragile situation was upset by hostilities between two ostensibly allied nations: the DemoCol and SPFU. Skirmishes along both authoritarian nations' shared border erupted into full-scale war. Most predicted a swift DemoCol victory in view of the latter's more sophisticated armed forces (stiffened liberally by higher TL imported military hardware). After swift gains deep into SFPU territory, the DemoCol forces were locked into a stalemate as the SFPU numbers slowed down the DemoCol advance. This Greater Hoxha Eastern Theater of Operations eventually became a meatgrinder which consumed division after division of conscripts from both sides.

Four months ago, a senior officer coup occured in the Republic of Morovic, on San Miklos, wherein the pro-FC national assembly was held hostage by air assault pathfinders commanded by conservative elements in the military. The pro-PO coup plotters appeared to have miscalculated as this led to a spontaneous popular uprsing by the pro-FC segment of the population. With fighting in the streets, the members of the national assembly still at large sent a formal request for FC Bloc military intervention. This was followed by a ultimatum by the DemoCol that any intervention will be considered a formal act of war against the PO. Curiously, the SFPU remained neutral on account of continuing aid and support from the FC Bloc.

48 hours later, air assault units of the FC Bloc landed in Morovic with armored brigades crossing the border from Steposzhevac to the south. Later that day, a state of war existed between the FC Bloc and the DemoCol.

Already under strain from the campaign against the sFPU, the DemoCol forces were pushed steadily eastwards into the home territories of the DemoCol constituencies as generally better-equipped and sophisticated FC Bloc forces went into the attack.

As of the present, FC Bloc forces have pushed as far as 2000 km into DemoCol territory.

So far, none of the combatants have used their stock of nuclear or biological weapons but reported use of chemical weapons has been reported.

Mission:

The Scout Technical Services Branch (R&D office) along with the Liason branch (contact and liason Office) maintains a covert station in the northern territorial area of the SFPU. The existence of this station is highely classified - the decision to create and maintain this goes all the way up to the Office of Sector Archduke Norris. it appears that certain mysterious archeological sites were discovered in the far north of the eastern part of Hoxha - sites which appear to have yielded inexplicable artifacts of ultra-high TL. it is postulated that these could even be from the precursor race known as the Ancients.

The covert station is in the heart of a SFPU industrial settlement, which unfortunately is now an active warzone after the DemoCol opened its northeastern front in an attempt to deprive the SFPU of its source of strategic minerals and resources.

Your mission is to proceed immediately to Poroszlo and retrieve a list of items from the inventory of the station. Failing to do so, you are to completely destroy the whole inventory of the station.

Important:

1. Poroszlo is now an Amber Travel Zone. Travellers proceed with caution.

2. The Imperial Navy just imposed a blockade of all military activity in the system. All travel two and from the world is restricted to the main starport of Timosoara in the continent of San Miklos (FC Bloc territory) and the subsidiary spaceports in the SFPU and the DemoCol.

3. Space and air defenses remain very tight throughout the planet - a legacy of a prolonged state of political tension in the past. this contributes to a lot of emphasis in ground-based action.

4. We have solid imperial contacts in Timosoara. there is a small spy ring in the SFPU and DemoCol spaceport areas, respectively.

5. you are expected to find a way into the planet, arrange for mission-specific gear and to get to the mission site. you have to specify what support you need so we can assess if this is available.

6. The FC has, until recently, employed numerous off-world mercenary contingents. the SFPU may have a few (officially known as Offworld Military Advisers) and the DemoCol has a few also (officially termed as People's Democratic Volunteers).

-end-

If you do see any parellels between the events here and something you came across in a history or game book, chances are you're correct. I admit to cribbing something from both actual history and a game book to spruce this up. I just hoped I wasn't too obvious!

Giving life to characters, places and things

2010-07-26T03:51:00.000-07:00

One vital point we Players of the Game should never forget is that our type of RPGs require a healthy dollop of imagination. In fact, I’ll go so far as to say that you can never have too much imagination in a role playing game. I will be stating the obvious by asserting that the responsibility falls squarely upon us players and umpires to breathe life and otherwise animate the dry strings of statistics which, when read together comprise what we call the ‘character sheet’.

The dizzying variety of RPGs indicates a correspondingly dizzying variety of setting down the facts and figures which make up a player character. I recall dicing up characters in high school for Metamorphosis Alpha and writing up the stats on a torn-off sheet of notebook paper, and I’ve seen the same thing repeated recently with the Mutant Future characters of some of my players in my more recent campaign. On the other end of the spectrum, the sheer amount of data in ‘newer’ type games I’ve ran/played in would give an income tax return from our Bureau of Internal Revenue a run for its money. Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition and Gurps are two games that come to the top of my mind in this regard.

All these of course can be abbreviated, hence we have stat blocks or chopped up versions of the most important character stats in the character sheet.

In Classic Traveller (CT), what counts are the Universal Profiles. We have Universal Personality Profiles (UPPs) for player and non-player characters, Universal Ship Profiles (USPs) for starships and Universal World Profiles (UWPs) for er, worlds.

Traveller uses the hexadecimal system in encoding character attribute stats, such that values from one to nine are written normally but values from ten upwards are expressed in letters. Hence ten becomes A, eleven becomes B, twelve becomes C, and so on. A human character in CT can have an attribute score of two to fifteen. You roll two six-sided dice twice each for Strength, Dexterity, Endurance, Intelligence, Education and Social Standing, which are the attributes of every human character. This gives you an unmodified spread of two to twelve. You get a chance to raise attributes higher than twelve during the character generation process itself (then again, you can also lose points during character generation and end up with lower attributes than those you originally rolled).

The point I’m driving at here is the UPP of player and non-player characters in Traveller is, to my mind, an example of a succinct way of encoding the totality of a character’s stats to ensure that you get an idea of what she can do in one fast glance. Very much sort of like shorthand notation.

Take the example of Army Captain Sam Riley, one of the operatives running loose on Porozlo from last Saturday’s game. His UPP is Capt. Riley: ACC885. One glance tells me the Captain is stronger than average, with excellent reflexes and endurance. He’s quite smart too, with a decent education. A social standing of 5 would seems that he came from a middle-class background. All around, Captain Riley is a cut above the rest of the crowd- good stats for a smart, deadly survivor type in the service of the Imperium.

Putting this together with the incidents in Captain Riley’s career- which are played blocks of four year terms at a stretch in the basic rules- and you have what you need to flesh out a CT character. Unlike newer-type games, I don’t need advantages, disadvantages, quirks, doodads, shticks or other gimmicks to flesh out this character. Instead, I extrapolate from his UPP and my dice rolls during the character generation career cycle using a lot of imagination. This to me is another hallmark of the Old School way of gaming: letting your own imagination free in using the data in one’s character sheet and cobbling them up together to come up with something uniquely yours.

Although the UPP and the rest of Capt. Riley’s character sheet will look downright anemic by some of today’s gaming standards, I consider this a blessing, rather than a curse. This serves to free the player – remove the fetters and enable one to really stir up one’s grey matter and come up with an interpretation of the stats to flesh out the character.

The same principle works out with the UWP in CT’s Worlds and Adventure. This is where, as game master and umpire, I get a lot of gaming satisfaction. Each world’s UWP data string is shorthand detailing the basic stats of a planet. Starport type, size, atmosphere, hydrographic percentage, population, governmental type, law level and the ever-important tech level are learned by one glance at the profile. Hence, our current setting Porozlo has a UWP of A867A74-A.

At one glance this tells you our world has an Excellent Quality Starport, a Planetary Diameter of about 12,800 km (roughly comparable to Earth), a standard breathable atmosphere for Terra-humans, about 70% ocean cover, a population running to almost ten billion (crowded!), a balkanized political structure (meaning no central world government- something like what we have on Earth today), a rather liberal law level near the Starport and a technology level more advanced that what we have today (with developed non-FTL craft and primitive gravitics) but still only average by overall Imperial standards.

Not bad for one string of numbers.

Of course, this is just the jumping-off point for real world development. I took these facts and, together with some rather sparse canonical data published by GDW in Mercenary, ran with them and built up a current setting for our game.

Again, imagination is a key ingredient. Other systems can (and do have) more extensive world generation parameters, but to me, this is all I need. Perhaps it is this sparseness which lends itself to a lot of player/umpire creativity to bring the stats to life which really characterizes Old School gaming and differentiates it from the newer varieties which are in much use today.

In any case, whether you prefer the older-type rules sets or the more contemporary ones, you’ll never go wrong by investing a lot of imagination in your games.

New Acquisition

2010-07-25T21:52:00.000-07:00

Apart from RPG-ing, I'm trying to get some gaming time in for airsoft. I believe this is also called 'skirmish' in other countries. Airsoft guns (or automatic electric guns- AEGs) are replica-type battery powered airguns which fire 6mm plastic pellets. We form up in teams, put on our gear (and masks!) and take to the hills for a day of exercise and fun. My doctor says I need to exercise more so I'm going back to this old interest of mine.

Things got more interesting now as I joined up with some friends who are part of a world war II re-enactors' group. I thought this was impossible in Asia but was recently glad to be proven wrong. We have such a group here after all!

There's a big 'Axis vs. Allies' game set for this Sunday and I'm trying to assemble my kit to be able to join in. So far, I have the gun. The pictures I am posting are of my recent acqustion: a 1:1 scale converted airsoft PPSH 1941 submachinegun. As you may have guessed, I'm assembling a reenactor's kit for a Soviet infantryman, circa 1943.

This AEG started life as an all-China made (ACM) M14. My friend Jimmy is a master craftsman who, apart from reenacting also rebuilds and converts existing AEG models into world war II smallarms. He had the barrel shroud machined and fitted it into the weapon's forestock which he replaced. The drum magazine is a joy since I figure it holds about a thousand bbs. It is an integral drum so I'll just be pouring in the bbs instead of slapping a new mag or ammo drum into the gun.

I can't wait to get my uniform later this week. If the hobnail boots aren't ready by then, I'll have to stick to puttees and a pair of brown shoes. I'm not sure this will be good for trekking in the jungle....

Combat Drop

2010-07-25T17:53:00.000-07:00

I just received a recent request from one of my players for a Combat Drop-themed adventure. When I say this, I mean aerospace orbital insertions in a hot landing zone by power-armored marines. Since we are all in our Traveller phase, this becomes a very appealing and real possibility in a coming game.

Traveller is known for its power armored troops in what is known as Battledress. For those of you who aren't into the military SF genre, think Iron Man. Imagine something like his armored suit with all the hydraulic power boosts, weapons packages and doo-dads. Imagine the 101st airborne going in for an assault drop somewhat like that in Normandy or Holland in '44 but kick up the tech level considerably and give them Iron Man's powersuits. Have them coming in from orbit while the Navy provides high guard cover and the Army's Close Orbital Aerospace Command flies interference on the deck. Traveller has a supplement called Mercenary which deals quite a lot with this.

The thing is, I can see another generational gap interposing itself here. My player is a younger fellow (most of them are!) weaned on Warhammer 40k novels. I believe he is presently reading about the Space Wolves and their drop pods from orbit, hence his request. Me, I'm very much game for this but chances are, the game will be resembling more of Heilein's Starship Troopers during the best times (read: when the mission turns out well) and Joe Haldeman's Forever War, as a default setting.

In any case, a game we'll be playing on this theme is bound to be interestingly fun to say the least...

Back to Gaming

2010-07-24T23:24:00.000-07:00

It's been a very long time since I last posted in my blog. Work and real-worldly concerns finally caught up with me and I've had all I could to prevent me from updating my posts here. So far, things have eased up a little bit to allow a bit of gaming back in my life.

My Mutant Future game is on hold for the moment. A combination of lack of time and scheduling problems compounded by umpire burnout sort of doomed this game of mine to the archives for the moment.

What I've been playing lately is my other great old school rpg love: Classic Traveller. So far, I've been very lucky to be able to get a few Saturdays off in order to get a Traveller game running with a semblance of regularity. I also take my hat off to my players for being really patient and so willing to give my first SFRPG love a try. I've been running and playing games in the Traveller universe on an off since 1981 under a series of different game systems spanning the original Little Black Book (LBB) set from GDW, to the latest incarnation in GURPS 2nd edition. What I haven't done yet was to take Mongoose's Traveller version for a spin, even if I managed to buy a copy of the rulebook on PDF.

So far, I managed to walk my players through the basics of classic traveller after running them a pre-made adventure by GDW called Night of Conquest.

Traveller, in its earliest incarnation (being the 1977 version) consisted of three basic little black books. One for character generation and combat (unsurprisingly entitled Characters and Combat), one for space craft and space combat (entitled Starships - rather essential to a space operatic SF game) and a third one dealing with planets, systems, equipment and other rules (entitled Worlds and Adventure). Re-reading my dog-earned version of these rules (which are also referred to collectively as Classic Traveller or CT) just drove the point home to me how much these were more of a SF gaming toolkit which, when properly used, would allow an enterprising gaming group to create their own SF space opera game.

Without going into an extensive discussion of the influences of CT, the best way I found to describe the feel and nature of a Traveller game in more contemporary terms would be to say that playing in it would be more akin to Firefly or the remake of Battlestar Galactica rather than Star Wars (particularly the later Episodes One to Three).

The game does show its 1960s SF roots and the tech level of the seventies - what with an emphasis on safetech and the liberal persistence of slug throwers (ie. Bullet Firing Guns) in an age of faster than light drive and galactic-scale empires. Somehow, this has always resonated powerfully with me - or maybe it's just my advancing age showing through.

I do hope and expect to get more gaming and blogging in the next few weeks, what with the ever-present excigiencies of life always hanging above up there... While I have been following a lot of the posts of my friends and fellow gaming bloggers out there, I'd be lying if I didn't admit to wishing I had more available time to post and stay in touch with those in our great gaming community.

In any case, here's to more and fun gaming. We can always use more of this in our lives. :)

Dry Spell

2010-03-11T20:39:00.000-08:00

It is a dry season for me as far as gaming is concerned. Work has eased up a little bit but promises to come down in a raging torrent by the beginning of next month, what with the news that I’m being handed another department to run. This has its respective pros and cons- and I am reminded of the age old adage which says that crisis lends its share of opportunities. Far from complaining, I continually thank my lucky stars. At the very least I have a job and this counts for very much in these curious times we live in.

That said, I foresee no further sessions of Mutant Future (or any gaming, for that matter!) perhaps until the first week of April at the earliest. I thank the Pancreator that the inhabitants of this third world paradise I am constrained to call home have an apparent collective fixation with Holy Week. This means, amongst others, that work tends to stop as early as the day after Palm Sunday. Maybe (just maybe), I can wangle some seriously fun gaming time on that week.

In the meantime, I’ve taken the opportunity to catch up on my reading (both gaming-related and otherwise). Amongst the items I am presently going through include Urutsk, World of Mystery (‘UWoM’). These are two downloadable PDF documents written by Kyrinn S. Eis (who also maintains a blog here). These documents appear to be beta versions of a players’ book and a referees’ guide.

It is a fact that I don’t post on my blog now as much as I would want to – I’ve learned to accept this as part of my present circumstances. The same is true with my attempts to follow the posts on many blogs I have grown to love. I’ve followed Timeshadows blog for some time but only recently had I managed to find the breathing space to go over UWoM. I must confess that I have not had the chance to go over this as completely as I want to (and I’m still going through it as I write this) but so far, it’s beginning to fire me up as inspiration for future games.

Briefly, my take on UWoM is that it is a science-fantasy RPG background and system. It’s got the elements I automatically look for in such a setting: galactic-scale cataclysms, weird and wonderful flora and fauna, aliens, humanoids, a liberal mix of tech levels, swords wielded alongside blasters, guilds, religious wars, the rise and fall of empires- just to name a few.

The writing style in the opening of the players’ book grabs your attention. It puts you right there with a minimum use of words-

“I want you to imagine or remember the wilderness in or around your area. If you live in a city, think of the area with the most trees, parks and open fields. Now imagine all that twice as vibrant and close and dense.

If you live by the coast, imagine the worst storms you can remember. Anywhere else you may live, jungle, desert, etc. imagine or remember the same intensities but keyed to those locales you know best.

Now raise the sea-level three feet (roughly a metre). As the planet is generally flatlands not much higher than sea level, most Trees have developed long torpedo-like seed pods, similar to mangroves which allow them to grow from under the water. Cedar and cypress, sequoia, everything simply adapted to the added three feet of water.”

In three starting paragraphs, I found myself in Urutsk already. This is something I have not seen in a long time in gaming material, and I find this very refreshing.
The fluff associated with UWoM spans centuries and concerns events which can be very convoluted and often-times violent. My impression here was something very akin to the political-military machinations in Frank Herbert’s Dune. This provides the players a lot of leeway as regards the kind of games they want: whether these are dungeon crawls, stand-up fights or a lot of skullduggery and covert ops.

Speaking of stand-up fights, I can’t help but agree with the spirit of the writer’s advice at the beginning of the combat section in the UWoM players’ book:

“Also my understanding of combat is heroic by virtue of its terribleness, and the amazing fact that some fighters survive at all, and not by dint of cinematic illusions or desires for wish-fulfillment.

While certain more forgiving elements have been included, in general these rules are justifiably lethal at all levels of play, and even heavily armored foes are capable of being instantly slain by exceptional strikes.

My overarching advice is for player-characters to avoid combat under all but the most favorable conditions, and even then, to be prepared for the loss of said characters, as healing in the early Autumn era is in no way as common or miraculously effective as in many other games.”

This resonates positively with me. This is how I see combats being played in my games as well.

I know I’ll be re-reading UWoM after I finish my first reading. Even as I’m going through it, I’m finally convinced to run that science fantasy game of a rather different sort from my current Mutant Future one. Along with this, I’ve this hankering to revisit Dune, Book of the New Sun, and Tales of the Dying Earth in the next few weeks.

If I can’t game for now, I’ll at least put the time to good use.

Episode Eleven - Dungeon Crawl

2010-03-02T02:04:00.000-08:00

ML’s note: I had a general idea of some plot to spring on the group but as things would turn out, my players had their own ideas. Not that I’m complaining- it was a fun game: lots of role-playing, conflict, interaction and high-grade bantering all around. We finished at about 12.30 a.m. and Doc Ben-g had to be in the hospital at 8 in the morning (ouch!). I found the session a bit disjointed and the group disorganized- but hey, I’m only the Mutant Lord.

It’s really as much my players’ game as it is mine!

When we last left our intrepid band of adventurers, they were holed up the lowest holding chamber of the automated artifact that was once Research Station Gamma in a forgotten age.

They make ready for what they fear is another attack by the guardian ‘bots of the station. The gigantic double doors roll soundlessly to the side. Weapons are raised and a pair of utility ‘bots roll soundlessly inward supported by a globular construct they’ve never seen before.

ML’s note: For want of a close image-analog, I described this somewhat like a larger version of Darth Vader’s interrogation robot from Episode 4.

Sounds of firing and combat filter in from outside and are muffled.

“What is going on?” muses Zed. Shai adds that it sounds like another fight is in progress in the levels above.

The utility ‘bots seem harmless at first. Then Ratchet tries to fool around with one and narrowly escapes getting brained by a mop. All hell breaks loose as the group breaks into a free-for-all, putting down all their attackers. The utility bots’ globular back-up proves tougher to kill but soon ends up similarly as a mass of fused circuits and burning parts.

Knowing that they can’t stay in place all day, Shai orders an armed reconnaissance to the upper levels. Zed, Shai, Link Seyz and Marcus head upwards by rail-car in search of the missing Orua. The android mechs Ratchet and Mirage stay behind with Kyoshi to salvage the wrecked ‘bots. They find that the globular construct is not a robot but a sophisticated vehicle piloted by some geneered dwarf para-human. It was once called a Mini Advanced Field Operative [MAFO] during the Age of the Ancients.

In the rail-car, the recon party surveys the upper levels of the Station and sees it damaged and littered with broken ‘bots. Also, there are many torn and burned bodies of attackers – humanoid pigmen of fearsome countenance. Suidoids! The place looks like it was attacked by Suidoids but these were beaten off.

“Looks like we’ve stumbled into some fight,” muses Shai.

As the rail-car goes higher up the structure, the recon party sees Orua looking down at them from what appears to be the sixth tier within the central column. She also has three humanoid plant-men in tow.

Arriving at level six, the recon party are glad to meet up with Orua. She claims she doesn’t remember much but claims to be able to talk to the ‘brain’ that controls the whole place. She introduces her vegetive humanoid friends as the ‘Xodal’ (they all answer to that name).

ML’s note: Her new-found friends are Vegepygmies – humanoid plants I picked up from Expedition to the Barrier Peaks. Perfect for intelligent plant mutants.

The Vegepygmies are wary of Orua’s newly-arrived friends. The say the fauna are dangerous – particularly the artificial one (meaning Link, the Android). Despite Shai’s attempts at desperate peacemaking and negotiation, the argument ends badly and a disturbed Link Seyz goes into overdrive mode and shoots one of the Vegepygmies. He is tackled by his companions; both Shai and Orua just barely restrain the others from piling on and trashing the Android.

Shai eventually makes peace with them and as a sign of good faith, hands over the laser pistol of their dead friend Max. Talk turns to humans. “Who’s a human?” asks a Vegepygmy.

“I am,” answers Shai confidently.

Override protocols kick in. Long dormant systems come to life. Link Seyz and his original Terminator- series protocols come to fore. He looks around with new purpose – and finally understands his true nature.

ML’s note: Much of this was fun and loose role-playing. Trust my players to turn this into another intriguing plot hook that drives the story onward. This is when I learned to apply something I read from an improv-gaming book: say yes often, and just let go…

Eventually, they return to the holding chamber at the lower levels. Nobody posts guard at the portal and everyone is busy checking out the stuff scavenged by Kyoshi and his Android buddies from the wrecked ‘bots. Putanesca is thrilled to meet fellow plant mutants.

The stay-behind party did well and managed to salvaged 2 stun pistols, 2 car battery-sized Radioactive Batteries from the utility ‘bots and a working Plutonium Clip from the MAFO. Mirage and Ratchet fairly beam with pride after successfully jury-rigging the stunners to run off the Rad Batteries.

Then, it happens: Link Seyz finally gives in to his prime directives as a Terminator- and attempts to shoot Shai in the back. The group manages to prevent this in the nick of time and end up piling on the Android. They cobble up metal binders to secure his arms and wrists. All the while, the Vegepygmies grow convinced just how crazy and unstable the Fauna can be. Particularly the ugly artificial one. Link Seyz vows to make pumpkin soup out of the pygmies.

As the group is engaged in their private brawl, another janitor ‘bot comes in and begins to clean up the mess on the floor.

ML’s note: The group was surprised as no-one bothered to keep watch. Tsk, tsk. Bad dungeoncraft.

The ‘bot is trashed by Ratchet and Mirage who are eager to try out their newly juiced-up stunners on a moving target. But this is not before it radioed for assistance.

Still engaged with the ruckus with the Terminator, they are attacked by 2 MAFOs responding to the janitor droid’s distress signal. The fight that follows is vicious as it is unexpected. The MAFOs have gravitic boosters and sport plasma pistols. Williis, Shai’s Rat mutant retainer is killed by a plasma bolt. Orua is badly injured by a sizzling blast.

Mirage and Ratchet use the stun pistols effectively on the MAFOs. These are immobilized but at the price of burning out both jury-rigged weapons.
Putanesca changes shape and forms a living mass of creepers. She lassoes one of the stunned, floating MAFO down to the ground. The group piles on and with great difficulty, manage to get it open. Kyoshi finds what he expects to see: a stunted mutant dwarf in a ‘pilot’s’ seat. He violently twists the neck of the dwarfish para-human ‘pilot’ and takes its place at the controls.

He tries to figure out the controls. It’s a tight fit as he is in leather armor while the para-human was naked and just wired in place. He winces at the notion of stains on the seat he now occupies.

ML’s note: I remember a resounding “Eeewwww!” from everyone in the game table.

While the party is engaged, Link Seyz tries to attack Shai again but fails. He is pulled away and the party argues what to do with him. Shai learns from the Vegepygmies that there are supplies at the top of the tower and perhaps a way out. They claim they were stunned in the desert and flown in by their captor droids in a flying ship that landed on the tower’s roof.

They all agree to keep Link restrained and to swiftly ascend to the top so they can find a way out.

ML’s note: I’d have thought things would be easier if the party came together and figured what to do first but as they would have it, some active role-playing still came first.

The other MAFO comes to life and attacks again. Otiis, Shai’s second mutant retainer is killed by a burning plasma bolt. Kyoshi believes he has the measure of his MAFO but sends it zooming out of control. It hits the wounded Vegepygmy and kills it. Its laser pistol-armed companion considers shooting him but again, cooler heads prevail at the nick of time. It was an accident, they claim.

Kyoshi pops the lid and mumbles “ooops”, shrugging sheepishly.

They fire back destroying the other MAFO- wrecking it so that nothing remains for salvage.

The party (much as who remains) piles into the rail car and ascends. They encounter more ‘bots going down to the first level and heading out the exit. The Station appears to be in the process of being sealed. Other droids are cleaning up the detritus from the earlier battle. They are left alone by the ‘bots.

Finally they arrive at the top. It is a huge circular structure honeycombed with chambers, corridors and rooms. There is so much to see, so much to do, they can’t make up their mind where to go.

ML’s note: Later on, my players told me that this game gave them so many options, they felt like they were literally free to do whatever they wished (and could follow their wishes)- explore the place, loot the rooms, bash ‘bots, and so on. I took this as a compliment. At least I knew I wasn’t railroading people in this one.

They decide to explore the rooms. After a while they end up in a large cavern-like garage. Looting the place, Marcus finds a backpack with something like a box inside. They keep it for future use.

Xodal, one of the remaining Vegepygmies, points out an elevator lift platform in the garage and they take it up to the roof deck level. They are standing on the level below the roof of the Station. Above is empty space and then the dome of the hollow shell of the ‘mountain’ above them. They can see for hundreds of feet around enclosed by the shell.

They find an entrance and a lobby into the structure. Not being able to agree the party splits up again.

Shai asks Putanesca to form tendrils (she’s gotten quite good at this already), and together with the Vegepygmies, they climb the roof. Kyoshi flies on ahead and finds a parked aircraft on the other side of the rooftop level. It enclosed by walls. They make for it.

Meanwhile, Orua goes inside the structure. She is attracted by a holographic waterfall on what should be the far wall of the lobby. As she touches it, her hand disappears beyond it and a metal hand suddenly grabs her. She is forcefully pulled her inside the hologram.

Her remaining companions follow cautiously. Perhaps it is the knowledge that the ‘bots tend to tote plasma guns. They see a security ‘bot carrying an unconscious Orua- floating away.

ML’s note: The party had surprise but didn’t attack. Maybe they remembered what happened to Max (and the two Rat mutants…)

They keep following. It enters a door. They follow find it is an elevator. It takes some time to figure it out and when they do, it goes down one level. They are in a passage filled with doors leading into dormitory rooms. More salvaging and looting- Zed finds two cigarette lighters and an artifact that looks like a bracelet with tiny gem-like buttons under a tiny metallic grille. They decide to figure it out later when they have the time.

Marcus was keeping watch in the passage and sees the door at the end of the open. This time it’s a utility droid- carrying the still-unconscious Orua exiting from the room. It disappears down the corridor.

They know they’re back in the labyrinthine center of the structure but they have little aught choice.

They just have to keep following the ‘bots.

Final note: Pardon my writing style if it seems I'm rather disjointed in posting this one. Apart from the fact that this was a pretty loose game, I'm still not 100% operational as I write this.

Have a good week ahead of you all!

The New Generation

2010-03-01T00:39:00.000-08:00

Apologies for a fairly long lull in posting. I’ve been downed by a bad cough and cold and am only just recovering now. I foresee that I may not be able to continue with this week’s scheduled game on Friday, what with the need to take things easy and more work that’s come in. On top of this, one of my legal assistants suddenly resigned, leaving us with a lot of backlog.

There’s always next week, so I hope my players bear with me on this. It seems I don’t get sick as much as I used to but when I do manage to catch a whiff of a bug the effects tend to be, well, debilitating.

As I spent most of the weekend just sleeping and resting, I was awakened yesterday afternoon by my four year old son, Joshua who grabbed a book from my bookshelf at the head of our stairwell at home. My son then sat down right in front of me and opened the book with great seriousness. He went on to start relating to me what he believed the book was about. With my brain still emerging from sleep and fuzzy from the meds I had to ingest, I remembered him talking about animals and sick creatures. He went on for about fifteen minutes and started counting the pages of the voluminous tome as well.

I finally could not restrain myself and, ambling over to Joshua, checked out what book he selected for that day. On earlier occasions, he pretty much did the same thing with my copies of Anderson’s ‘Young Flandry’, a collection of H.P. Lovecraft’s tales and ‘Germany’s Luftwaffe Ground Divisions’ by Osprey books.

Naturally, yesterday was quite different. As you can see in the enclosed photo, Joshua’s selection for Sunday afternoon was my very much dog-eared edition of Bruce Streling’s Schismatrix. Unless I am mistaken, I picked this one up during a trip to Melbourne, Australia in May 2000.

I’d like to think my kid is on the way to reading the great classics of SF and history. Who knows? Is it too far fetched to wish that this can get him started on this ‘gaming thing’ his dad is so gaga about?

Toxicity continues

2010-02-24T21:31:00.000-08:00

Having returned from an out of town trip, it seems my health has taken a turn for the worse. I had been complaining of chills and slight fever brought about by an incipient cold even as early as Sunday night at the beginning of the week. Going out of town thereafter didn't help. My cold is now a painful cough and I've been prescribed some meds and rest by the medics. Unfortunately, my presence is needed at work as we have some deadly deadlines to fulfill. I'll just have to keep crossing my fingers while rolling on my Willpower and Constitution - hoping for a critical roll and not a fumble to get me through the day.

As a slight aside, it has always been my habit to ask for a window seat when taking a plane ride. This normally provides me a view outside which goes far to alleviating the tedium of a long monotonous trip inside a commercial jet. No matter how much I've seen it, I love to look down on mountains, rivers, roads and other terrain features rolling right on below as we speed towards our destination.

Maybe it was the slight grogginess that hit me but on the trip out, I kept mentally superimposing hex grids on the mountains, rivers and plains that rolled out from under the plane. Could it be that some cosmic high stakes role playing game is being waged out there somewhere beyond our space and time reference and that our world is merely a hexmap of the powers that be?

Strange thoughts. I need my medicine... and rest. Glorious rest.

Hurried post on the top of a toxic week

2010-02-21T23:46:00.000-08:00

Last Friday's game was a blast, with more Mutant Future weirdness and hack and slashing in healthy doses. It's a toxic week for me, I'm headed out of town tomorrow and won't be able to run the game this Friday night. We'll be continuing with our usual post-apocalyptic madness next Friday night. In the meantime, I'll be posting xps and an after-action report asap.

Have a great week ahead everyone!

Oh, so that's why they don't like randomly generated characters...

2010-02-18T01:33:00.000-08:00

Going through Theo Dudek's Ultimate Game Master, I stumbled upon his take on why some players seem to object to randomness in character generation. I found his post interesting as it takes a contrary view to my wholehearted acceptance of the application of such randomness. Examples of this dynamic in action include Traveller (wherein Theo cited James M.'s earlier post) and perhaps even more extremely- Mutant Future. In both Classic Traveller and Mutant Future, I admit I enjoy the game-within-a-game random aspect of character generation. In fact I even enjoy character generation as an end in itself using these systems.

Amongst the things said by Theo on this are:

"But perhaps the real reason people object to random stats and random character backgrounds is not “fairness” but that it is too similar to what we have to deal with in real life. Determinism based on biology or upbringing is not most people’s chosen form of escapism (unless it is ‘good’ determinism and they are “destined to be awesome because they are the chosen heir of the throne of blah blah blah” etc.) In real life, we don’t get to choose who we’re born to or where we grow up or whether we have Asperger’s or diabetes. But in RPGs, we at least look forward to having an idealized and personally chosen backstory, even if we may get eaten by a dragon or something shortly after actual gameplay begins. In the gray area before actual gameplay begins, in our epic memories, we can all be heroes. It’s when the dice start rolling that the drama and tragedy and mayhem starts."

While I may not share Theo's side on this matter, I nonetheless thank him for sharing this as it gave me some additional insight on how some of my players may be feeling about random character generation (and the every-present risk of turning up what they may consider a 'loser' character). Reading the above-quoted post brought back at least two separate conversations I had with a couple of my players wherein they just about told me the same thing. At that time, I really could not understand where he was coming from but now, I think I do.

We Aren't Alone

2010-02-17T20:42:00.001-08:00

A recent post in A Paladin in the Citadel, a blog I regularly follow, dealt with gamers and bloggers in the place you live in. Speaking for myself, I was under the impression that gamers are a rare breed in my city and most of them do not maintain blogs. Now, I not altogether sure if I was correct in believing so.

I crave your collective pardon if this post takes on a self-serving aspect but I could not help but say something about what recently appeared on The Armchair Gamer. Until recently, I didn't even know my friend Alex actually had a gaming-related blog of his own. This changed when I received an email containing a series of questions posed by my friend, the results of which, were expected to form the basis of a series depicting various experiences and backgrounds of game masters known to him. I have Alex to thank for introducing me to Fading Suns back in 1998. We had a lot of wild, wacky and fun games with a relatively large gaming group that called itself The Herd. A large balance of the players from the Herd never played rpgs before but they took to gaming with a vengeance. They were fun times indeed!

In case you are wondering, Alex was referring to yours truly when he posted the responses of a certain GM Bobby in the above-mentioned post. My apologies go out to him as I fear that my responses were less-than-coherent as I was in the midst of shifting mental gears at the time I sent those out, right at the end of a toxic workday.

Most significantly, the responses gathered by Alex from his fellow game masters here in Manila brought home to me the fact that there are more people who engage in and endeavor to promote role playing games than I originally led myself to believe. This is a very good thing, and I am glad to be proven wrong in my belief that I seemed to be the only one who was doing this in our third world paradise.

I'm also very glad to see that my friend Adrian, whom I've lost touch with for the longest time is still running games in the grand style.

Although we local gamers don't necessarily have the same styles, experiences and preferences in gaming, I firmly believe that Metropolitan Manila can always use another good gamer, or a hundred, anytime. Speaking from experience, things have progressed considerably from the old days when we all had to share one tattered, sacred copy of the AD&D Player's Handbook and cobble up our own polyhedral dice cobbled up from cardboard filled with wax (!) after the soft plastic ones from our basic D&D boxed set died in action. And I look forward to even better gaming days ahead for our gaming community out here knowing that we are not alone.

Looking at things from a truly world-wide perspective, I've come to realize that the same thing is true as to the community of gamers existing all over right now. If there is good thing I picked up from the experience of trying my hand at maintaining my own gaming blog is that I met a lot of decent, intelligent and interesting people who all share a passion for this gaming hobby of ours. It is a realization that constantly provides me a lot of joy, comfort and considerable satisfaction. It makes me proud to have met them and to have learned so much from them.

The Old School Grind

2010-02-16T19:20:00.000-08:00

Joseph Bloch, in his Greyhawk Grognard blog says something very interesting about what is described about the Old School Grind. I have heard a lot from many players denouncing the 'kill the monsters-steal their treasures-rinse and repeat' aspect of old school gaming. Without going into the relative merits of either side in that argument, I, instead, find a lot of gaming wisdom in Joe's observations:

"I think that the "old school" approach to dungeon exploration is not to clear the level and then move down to the next. At least, as it applies to the megadungeon; certainly smaller dungeons might well be designed with the ultimate objective to be "wipe out all the goblins who are raiding the halfling village". But in the old school approach, you're not out to kill the monsters. You're out the get their treasure. In the old school approach, a plethora of monsters might actually be considered a boon. There's a tribe of orcs a few corridors away from a derro outpost? The "grind" mentality would say, take out the orcs, then move on to the derro. The old-school mentality would say, get the orcs to fight the derro through clever play, and take their chest of gold while they're busy hacking each other to bits.

So I think that any grind you can come up with, short of something that was just one room after another, completely linear, stuffed with monsters, the old school could turn into a tactical challenge. That's why there are all those seemingly useless corridors; flanking! And there's no stat check for strategy."

I think I'll sit down with my players before this Friday's game and have a short chat with them about this. I feel it would go far to advance our ongoing game if people kept this in mind.

Traveller and games Before the Long Night

2010-02-15T23:00:00.001-08:00

Traveller was one of the first role playing games I ever learned. For the longest time, science fiction role playing to me was synonymous to Traveller. Due to the unavailability of published game material where we lived, my gaming group’s exposure to Traveller was initially confined to the three little black books that comprised the Classic Traveller rules.

Needless to say, we had a smashing time gaming in our own Traveller universes. We didn’t know much about the Third Imperium, although we understood that there appeared to be a default game setting created by GDW. Neither did we care! We were too busy having fun in our own homebrewed games which I ran for most part. At that time, my games were set in game worlds largely derived from existing SF literature which I really liked. I remember running a game based loosely on Larry Niven’s World Out of Time, as well as a longer-running series set in the Fallen Galactic Empire ala Foundation, and still another one, in a junkyard planet straight out of Piper’s Cosmic Computer.

It was only in 1989 when we fully discovered what the Third Imperium was all about when Doc Ben-g, one of my regular players, brought back the Mega Traveller Boxed set from a recent trip to the U.S. We went along with the Rebellion that tore apart the Third Imperium and had our share of adventures in the Hard Times that followed. For some reason, the idea of struggling to survive and prosper amidst the ruins of a fallen empire resonated well with our gaming group. Maybe it was largely on account of our attachment to that other GDW game, Twilight 2000. In any case, we followed through with some Star Viking adventures in the New Era in the early 1990s using the Gurps system, which, for a long time, became our system of choice.

Since then, I’ve ran a few games in the canonical Third Imperium of GDW and even bought some Gurps sourcebooks for this.

The Third Imperium was quite good – it hung together well, and had a lot of support from writers and fans which continues to this date. That said, I can’t help but harken back to the the days when we didn’t know about the Third Imperium and created our own Traveller universes. Far from feeling that we missed out on something, I feel, with the benefit of hindsight, that we created something vibrant, alive and uniquely ours at the time we were gaming with only our three Little Black Books.

Reading this post from James M.'s Grognardia along with a reference to the Burgess Shale Period of Traveller found in Bat in the Attic made me think back and remember the days before we learned about the Third Imperium. If anything, it reinforced to me the point that Classic Traveller was really a versatile and potentially endless game system upon which an enterprising gaming group can bring their own gaming universe to life.

This got me started on actually planning to revisit Classic Traveller and running a few games in the future set in a non-Third Imperium game setting. I had been busily going through my latest acquisitions of Poul Anderson’s future history stories, particularly those of the Polesotechnic League and that of the Terran Empire that followed. These really ranked high on my list along with the future history stories of H.Beam Piper – thus maybe it is hardly surprising that I remain a Traveller fan after all these years. I remember trying (and mostly failing) to locate Anderson’s stories as a high school kid and only caught bits and pieces of his future history in one tattered SF anthology or another. I only lately managed to locate many of these stories in these volumes I just acquired.

Many of the Van Rijn/Falkayn and Flandry stories of Anderson revolve around intrepid characters who live in the what may be described as the Eve of Destruction – that period in time when their civilization is just about to tip over and go crashing down into the abyss of history. As a gamer I am drawn to this kind of setting and personally refer to this as gaming in an era right before The Long Night. While much of my Traveller and Traveller-inspired games were set in the Long Night, I can’t seem to recall running a game where the characters lived right before the The Fall. By analogy, Traveller-wise, my games tended to be set in the Mutant Future, rather than the Mutant Past.

Hence my current plan for a revisit to Classic Traveller begins to take shape slowly- and I have this hankering to run it differently this time. In all likelihood, instead of the Long Night, it will be set on the Eve of Destruction.

Advisory- This Friday's game

2010-02-15T18:00:00.001-08:00

This goes out to my players - I confirm that this Friday's game is at Justin's place. Henry's school is temporarily unavailable due to a PTA activity they scheduled for this Saturday.

The exact address has been sent out to each of you by SMS texting. Please let me know if there are directional or transport problems. Shall we start at the same usual time (7.30 p.m.)?

Mutant Future A-B-C: B is for Bomb

2010-02-14T20:45:00.000-08:00

Bombs. They come in many types, shapes, sizes and levels of lethality. Ever since the very first black powder-and-wick charge cobbled together in the distant past, things got a lot noiser and never were quite the same. What does this mean for the Mutant Future?

Bombs are iconic objects any post-apoc scenario can never have too little of. From the in-your-face, almost real and terrifying duck-and-cover stories of the seventies and the eighties (amongst which Threads, The Day After and The War Game stand out the most) to more exotic tales of mass-die backs such as that found in the Omega Man (redone lately as I Am Legend), the Bomb has always played a central role in the destruction of Life And The World As We Know It, thereby paving the way to a Mutant Future.

In all likelihood, Bombs are the main cause of turning a green planet into the ruined wasteland where adventurers, mutants and critters struggle to survive. Skynet turned humanity's considerable arsenal and brought about Judgment Day. The terminators that followed were only produced to finish the job already started by a considerable rain of nukes.

Bombs don't necessarily equate to nuclear devices of high explosives. The various hellish payloads available are legion, evident in the technology tables of the Mutant Future rules. If you can think of something really lethal to humans and their ilk, chances are you can design a bomb around this.

Most intriguing is the concept of the leftover Bomb after the apocalypse has occured and swept all away with it. Every good Mutant Future sandbox will never be complete without that intact missile silo just waiting to be stumbled into by a band of intrepid adventurers from the wastland. There is also the idea of a Bomb as God - something attributed with awesome powers worshipped by a cult of survivors after its original reason for existence has since been rendered irrelevant. Perhaps the most gripping example of this is the Alpha Omega Nuclear Device worshipped by the surviving mutants in old NYC in Beneath the Planet of the Apes.

Ideas/Applications to the Mutant Future- The different Bomb and Explosive types in page 120 of the Mutant Future rulebook can be readily expanded into a chart of its own, featuring strategic-level bombs with a few original ones added on for variety. Such a random table designed around these types of bombs can look like this:

01-15 Bio Toxin
16-25 Concussion
26-40 Mutation
41-50 Negation - the closest thing to the EMP Burst which saved Neo in the Matrix
51-65 Plasma (the closest analogue of a nuke)
66-80 Radiation
81-90 High Explosive (very large versions of the demo-packs mentioned in the rules)
91-100 Psibombs

The latter are of a class of weapons developed by the Ancients right up to the Final War. Along with Psionic Mind Shields, Neural Disruptors and Madbombs, psibombs use electromagnetic impulses which duplicate the effects of a concentrated Mental Blast, liquifying a target's brain synapses. Tactical and strategic applications of this weapon include flushing out all living beings within a target area (much like a neutron bomb is used) leaving the real estate, structures and equipment found there pretty much intact.

A typical small Psibomb would be grenade sized and, upon activation, projects a psionic blast within a 100' radius. Any creature possessed with at least a rudimentary intelligence (including normally non-sentient creatures such as beasts of burden and farm animals) must save against Stun or suffer 2d10 damage.

[this was adapted from the Psibombs used in David Brin's Startide Rising, although in that novel, the bombs were used as signalling devices]

Along with this is a following random table for groups or missions associated with the bomb generated from the table above. Put together, the rolls from both table would produce interesting results:

Group/mission associated with the bomb(s)

01-20 Worshippers- Depending on the kind of bomb generated, this leftover from a bygone age has become the object of worship of some faction or race in the wasteland. For instance, Radiation Bombs would, in all likelihood, be worshipped by the Irradiated or mutants. On the other hand some pure strain humans (fanatics) may worship High Explosives (or nukes) –perhaps have Androids as the priestly class who attended to their ‘God’. Just don’t have a warrior ride on a bomb as it hurtles at the enemy as we saw in Dr. Strangeglove.

21-35 Users – Androids who remain from the old days or mutant animals/regressed humans who are still carrying out the defense orders of long dead governments in some forgotten silo. Quite dangerous as they may take it upon themselves to unleash the Ancient WMD upon the world.

36-55 Defuse the thing! – The player characters have a chance to shine here: given a job to defuse a bomb- this is a ‘race against time’ type of adventure. Failure can be catastrophic not just for them but maybe for the world.

56-70 Recover the thing! - Similar to what's above, the mission here is to recover the bomb- by a merchant guild, a warlord, a cult or government. Maybe a bit of double-crossing involved too.

71-85 Bomb as an enemy – Maybe some master-type monster has a bomb inside him and killing it outright (unless from very far away) will not solve their problem immediately. This will call for a lot of creative thinking on the part of the players.

85-90 Bomb as a dungeon – Here, the dungeon is wired. Maybe it is a central computer/cyborg brain core wired to explode if shut down. Again, this calls for imaginative handling on the part of the players.

91-100 Bomb as a character – as in various SF stories, a bomb is within a character (whether knowing or unknowing). In a extreme case, this could be a one-of-a-kind mutation for an Android character.

Episode Ten (Part Deux) - Into the Blackness and Beyond

2010-02-12T01:44:00.000-08:00

Our story:

The survivors from the first group return to Ratsputin’s grounded airboat and link up with the rest of the party. They find Link Seyz awake, aware and apparently fully functional. Link Seyz feels fine –none of that fuzzy half-awareness he had always felt for as long as it could remember. It tests out decision trees and logic synapses long unused. Things test out fine, but there appears to be something vitally important he should be remembering….

“Oh well,” he remarks. “I’ll get to that later…”

Shai fills the rest in on the harrowing fight at the metal mountain and they are shocked to learn that Max is dead.

Together, they set off once more across the wasteland of crunching, glassy sand as the two moons, silver Aleph and green Bast hurtle across Cygnet Delta’s alien sky. Upon reaching the sandy hill forming the base of the metal mountain, they reacquire Orua’s trail and find themselves at a sandy cliff-wall. Zed and Albus brush aside the sand end predictably find the same greyish metallic-hued wall of seamless material behind it. Orua’s tracks end right at the wall.

Upon closer inspection by Mirage, the android finds the last footprint abruptly ending seemingly under the wall itself. Kyoshi and the androids attempt Words of Power learned from their Ancient Lore but nothing disturbs the quiescent seamless wall.

Then, Shai appears to make a fateful decision and, without looking back, resolutely walks into the wall. To everyone’s great surprise, a black disturbance forms when he touches it, and the its seamless surface turns insubstantial, like a black bubble – and he disappears inside it. After much muttering and doubting, the group follows- one by one.

To all there is a momentary feeling of coldness- a numb heart-stopping emptiness through a sea of black, and then they are through. The Androids, on the other hand, feel like an ‘On/Off switch’ was suddenly flicked inside for a moment.

Before them is a great hollow space, hundreds of feet wide are it is high. It is as if they stepped into the inside of a gigantic, seamless, metallic-grey egg. The familiar night sky above Cygnet Delta is replaced by the glossy inner surface of the hollow encompassing the dome above them. The desert sand below their feet is different – there are patches of hardy grass and stunted plants. The smell of moisture is in the air and the ever-present reek of burnt rubber and copper is missing. Under the eerie twilight of the dome about a few hundred feet before them is an even stranger artifact.

It is a building in the likeness of a gigantic mushroom, almost three hundred feet high. There is a great central cylinder rising up from the ground crowned by a disc-like platform of durable grayish stone. They see structures, buildings and machinery built on the platform suspended above. The central cylinder has several massive orbs constructed at intervals rising from the ground until the platform itself. Blinking lights are emplaced on numerous places throughout the structure. It is obviously some temple dating back from the Age of the Republic.

ML’s note: Traveller players will have probably recognized the structure already. All I can say is three words for this: Research Station Gamma.

After recovering from his shock, Shai curtly commands the party to move forward, weapons at the ready. There appears to be an entrance at the ground-level orb visible from their location. They reach the orb but find only a small square panel to the side, at shoulder height. A transparent square and coin-thin slot appear beneath it.

They scrutinize the panel for a while whereupon Zed hits upon an idea. He reaches into his pack and pulls out a small, wafer-thin card of ancient synthetic material, given to him by the Mayor of Jeffton during one of their previous adventures. The blue card with red stripes fits perfectly into the panel’s slot. He inserts it and waits.

ML’s note: I was glad someone had the gumption to remember to properly use the different artifacts they began to accumulate from past adventures. Doc Ben-g caught on very fast!

There is a humming sound and a sharp buzzing. They hear locks disengage and machinery in motion within the orb. The surface before them irises inward smoothly and opens a gateway into the structure.

Entering, they move deeper into the structure. There is an ever-present hum of machinery, all-so-faintly. There is bright artificial light from glowing panels on the ceiling and it is cold compared to the barren wastes outside. Exiting through another irising gateway, they find themselves in the inside of the central cylinder of the structure.

ML’s note: I always imagined the hollow central pylon to look somewhat like the inside of the central cylinder-shaft of Bespin Cloud City in the Empire Strikes back- somewhat like this.

There is a small glass-walled car built on rails running up and down the central cylinder. They check it out and upon entering, Link Seyz finds a wooden stick with a roll of torn cloth wrapped around it. Unraveling it, he finds a stylized smiley drawn on the cloth.

“Orua,” he says. “It’s her sigil. She was here.”

They climb aboard the car but it does not respond to the card inserted by Zed. Shai, being a pure strain human, lays his right palm on the glass square atop the control panel. There is a buzzing sound and the car activates. It moves downward, spiraling ever so lower into the structure until they find themselves in the subterranean levels.

“I don’t like this,” mutters Marcus, drawing sword and dagger.

The car abruptly stops and a disembodied voice enjoins them to “disembark”.

They leave and find massive sealed circular hatches before them. Shai, Kyoshi and three Androids puzzle out the controls and sometime later, they pass beyond the hatches. They find themselves inside a large globular chamber. The ground is rocky and muddy. The walls cannot be glimpsed. Instead, there is a grayish, cloudy sky above from which constant sheets of sleet and rain are pouring. The walls are likewise not evident- instead, they glimpse far-off hills and valleys.

“What is this place?” asks Link Seyz.

They are surprised by a startled squeak from Otiiss. The rat points his rifle to the right, finger twitching on the trigger.

“A cat- a big one!” he yells. “Over there to our left .”

No-one sees anything. Kyoshi, on the other hand approaches a nearby rock after spotting a large furry black and white rabbit. No one else sees the rabbit.

Otiiss fires, but there is nothing to hit. Kyoshi looks around the rock but there are no rabbits.

As the hatches behind them hiss shut, there is a loud carnivore roaring off to the side. The party forms a skirmish line, weapons are drawn. Then they see a shimmering in front of a wall to their side – something large and furry on four legs begins to leap at them, its hide changing chameleon-like. It moved fast!

ML’s note: this is a special random encounter I rolled up. Basic critter is a Sabre-tooth Tiger with upped hit dice. I threw in a few mutations such as Increased Willpower, Chameleon Epidermis, Dual Brain and Quickness. Upon initiative check I won easily!

The feral cat bounds forward and slams into Marcus, pulling him under and repeatedly laying away with teeth and claws. Everyone else piles in and the fight becomes a desperate melee. Albus and Zed are also badly mauled by the time they dispatch the critter.

The ever pragmatic Shai orders Williis and Otiiss to break out the knives and start dismembering the carcass for meat. Food security for the party, he reasons, is still not certain- and food is food.

ML’s note: I didn’t see that coming but trust Justin to turn his kill into rations. Still, it made sense considering they were in the middle of a desert with 3 days of rations left.

While the others keep watch, the rest cut away the meat from the kill.

Then, there is a sharp buzzing and a warning siren in the air. The disembodied voice starts up again – calling for an alert, enjoining all to stay calm and that assistance is on the way. At this, they make ready for another attack. They can’t get the hatches open again.

With not long to wait, the hatches clang open and pull back. A few man-sized robotic forms begin moving into the chamber. The adventurers take up ambush positions, readying themselves for yet another fight.

Episode Ten (Part One) - Robots!

2010-02-11T22:11:00.001-08:00

Game held on 5 February 2010

Dramatis personae:

Zed - mutant human (Doc Ben-g)
Albus - mutant human (Doc Ben-g)
Marcus Truman - pure human (JY)
Max Plissken - pure human (Nikos)
Putanesca - mutant plant (Prin)
Kyoshi - mutant human (Matt)
Link Seyz - basic android (Patton)
Orua - autistic pure human (Mika)
Mirage - basic android (Henry)
Ratchet - basic android (Henry)
Shai - pure human (Justin)

Williis - mutant animal- Rat (de facto henchman of Shai)
Otiiss - mutant animal- Rat (de facto henchman of Shai)

Our story:

The party finds itself encamped in a broad expanse of desert as the bloody, rosy sun is disappearing beyond the far west. Orua has turned up missing, the stark imprints of her footprints trailing off to the sandy rise about a mile away in the distance.

A decision is swiftly made to divide the party. Zed, Albus, and the pure strains Max, Shai and Marcus shall be dispatched after Orua. Putanesca and Kyoshi will remain behind along with Mirage and Ratchet, who are still busy restoring Link Seyz’s working systems after they underwent a sudden forced reboot recently. The Rat Otiiss is armed with a Martini-Henry and put on guard duty.

Shai leads the search party which collared the hapless Rat mutant Williis as the group’s scout. Perhaps being very much aware of the fact that a good scout is normally a dead scout, Williis sets upon his task without much ardor and with evident poor grace, whereupon the others bully the hapless Rat into compliance.

Orua’s tracks continue up to the sandy rise far off in the desert. Here, the sandy ground gives way to immense mounds of sand seemingly piled on top of one another, forming a sloping hill hundreds of feet in the air. Everyone is edgy after tromping through crunching sands which, when trod upon, give off a smell of copperish-burnt rubber.

At the base of the hill, the party stops for a short rest. Orua’s tracks continue to their right and disappear around the sandy hill’s base. Being the best climber, Zed agrees to climb the hill, making for the crown which, for some unknown reason, gleams with a shiny metallic sheen in the pale moonlit glow of Aleph.

ML’s note: Zed has the Increased Balance mutation, so he scales the hill without mishap.

Upon gaining the peak, Zed is surprised to find it covered by a dun-colored metallic dome, much like that of the top of gigantic egg. The surface is seamless and smooth. It vibrates subliminally and is hard as granite. Repeated blows don’t even scratch it. Looking around, he finally surmises that the sandy hill he is on is not really a hill, nor is it made of sand. It appears that the hill is, in truth, a giant dun-colored, metallic-seeming, egg-shaped dome, sunk into the ground. It is merely covered with accumulated layers of earth, rock and sand.

The rest of the group are alerted to this and they confirm Zed’s discovery by spotting certain large cracks in the hillside from which the same dun-colored, metallic surface can be seen beneath the sand.

ML’s note: at this point, a possible encounter was called for, and, as luck would have it, a one was rolled – indicating a wandering critter.

Williis is the first to notice they are not alone. From somewhere in the rocks nearby skitters out four many-legged creatures of similar metallic hue, sporting numerous feelers, antennae and limbs- each the size of a largish hound. Weapons are raised but all are reluctant to fire. The creatures appear to be constructs of some sort, with probes which shine a dull reddish glow. Two appear to be scrutinizing Williis while the others are approaching the rest.

“What do we d-do?” mutters the nervous Rat, tail and whiskers a-twich.

Shai orders everyone to stay put, but as the constructs begin to pull out probes with brushes and pointy tips, the group’s discipline gives way to a wild round of gunfire! Two of the constructs are destroyed instantly, riddled with rifle bullets and the occasional laser beam. The adventurers shift their fire rapidly and dispose of the other two just as swiftly, taking no damage.

Then, Zed alerts them from high up above – he sees two large constructs which seem to materialize straight out of the smooth surface of the hillside. These ones are larger and meaner looking: drum-like bodies with formidable steel limbs and rotating turrets on their tops. They levitate a few feet from the ground, and speed towards the adventurers on the ground amidst a droning hum.

“Blast ‘em!” yells Shai, whereupon the party opens up with rifles, shotgun, lasers and Albus’ trusty plasma pistol. Although they concentrate their fire on the nearest one, who takes hit after flaming hit, the robot plods on ominously – and both fire back with energy weapons that spit blinding, bursting fire! Marcus is hit more than once and, suffering grievous burns, drops prone while desperately topping off his scattergun.

ML’s note: While the smaller critters were pesky Exterminator Bot-types, the newcomers were Assault Bots (both from the Mutant Future rulebook), up-armed with energy weapons and fitted with grav lifters instead of robotic legs. The 30-hit dice Assault Bot gives you a LOT of hit points to spare despite the weight of fire being dished out by these desperate players.

Soon, one of the robots is a sparking, smoldering wreck, twitching on its side. As the other begins to float away, the group charges it – and Max takes energy beam fire twice! This is too much even for the indomitable wasteland warrior, and he is promptly killed. The others reach the robot and begin piling on, raining blows with sword and clubbed rifle. Shai leaps unto the robot’s flat top, activating his Warp-field Sword and hacks away at the robot. They discover that the robot becomes unstable on its floating field of force as it is buffeted with blows. It is soon destroyed as well.

Now they begin to wonder if they should turn back – their opposition is stronger than expected. Max is dead and Marcus, badly damaged requiring extensive healing from their scavenged Healing Pack, draining it of precious charges. They finally decide just to come back for the rest of the party – it seems they’ll need every fighter this time and still try find Orua.

A Colossal Waste of Time?

2010-02-11T17:53:00.000-08:00

Sometime back, I listened to a podcast from All Games Considered on old school gaming. It was pretty interesting and went far to validate a lot of things about the hobby I knew about or suspected that I knew about. Listening to these podcasts also works for me as it makes my daily morning exercise walks a great deal less monotonous - not to mention lifting my spirits as I seem to have to be reminded periodically that I am not alone in my interest in this hobby and a big community of awfully decent and intelligent people out there share all of this with me.

A line from one of the speakers caught my attention at that time, specifically her remark that she entered the hobby relatively late in life on account of her father's adamant belief that role playing games were a 'colossal waste of time'.

Hearing this brought a smile to my lips as many of the people I grew up with shared this belief. For the record, I think they still do to this date- they just learned to watch their mouths more carefully in my presence.

Speaking for myself though, I can't deny how this interest in role playing games went far to help me out in real life.

I can't exactly remember if it was during one summer break in the eighties, late in high school when, finding myself doing nothing at home, I decided to leaf through the AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide. Eventually, I found myself reading up on waterborne adventures and various sea travel/combat rules none of us ever used before. While none of our gaming group really applied any of these rules, this suddenly got me interested in the peculiarities of maritime travel. Before the week was out, I started reading up on the concepts of longitude, latitude, knots, and other peculiar terms such as starboard, port, fore and aft.

I didn't think much of this at that time and just added all this to what others tended to dismiss as othewise useless bits of interesting trivia I tended to accumulate in my brain.

Fast forward to the nineties, a year after graduation and I land my first job in a firm which handled, amongst others, maritime litigation. One day, the partner-in-charge is giving me a rundown on the nature of the cases I'll be assisting him from here on. He gets to the part about Safety Of Life At Sea, charts and distances.

"Oh you mean nautical miles," I answer, getting on with the discussion. I could see he was pleased as he didn't have to spend so much time lecturing all these all over again to the newbie.

When we got to collisions and allisions, it was my turn to say, "Oh right, the starboard side of the vessel, not the port side."

I guess it was the right thing to say as he looked quite pleased and asked me 'how I knew all this stuff.' At that time, I felt that maybe it was going to be alright working in that firm.

Happily, it worked out for all of us- and it was alright.

The point I'm driving at here is that this interst of ours in gaming opens doors for many of us into a wider and more vibrant world - and many times, we don't know it has happened, until after the fact. I firmly believe that no experience, no matter how trivial is wasted in this life. Everything happens for a reason - the reason just manifests itself to us when the time and circumstances are right.

Taking the time to read up, prepare for and attend games does take up blocks of time from our already hectic lives. This said, I can't say this is all a waste of time. At the very least, the experience of hanging out and gaming with people you consider your friends is always a welcome activity which goes far to regenerate one's spirits and renew one's strength- thereby enabling one to cope with the ever-present pressures in life. If I could put the good I get from gaming in a bottle and market it to the world at large, I wager I'll make myself a crapload of money to enable myself to retire in style.

So in the face of the oft-repeated belief that this gaming life of ours is a colossal waste of time, I say: Game On! I'm a Gamer and I'm proud of it! My kids will be gamers too and I'll be proud of them as well.

I'm sure you all have similar stories where your experiences in role playing games have served you in good stead in the real world and served to advance you in 'real life'.

If so, I'd sure like to hear them.

By the way (I almost forgot this)- that podcast from AGC I linked to above also includes an interesting review of Mutant Future too!

What would our lives be without them?

2010-02-10T17:46:00.000-08:00

This post was prompted by earlier posts by Al and Zak on the subject of the gamer-friendly significant other. In my case, it's that of a gamer-friendly spouse.

I've been married for six years now, and despite the usual challenges faced by a struggling head of the family trying to make an honest living in a third world paradise, I can't say I'd have done otherwise if I had a chance to do it all again. Much of this springs from the fact that the wifey has always sought to understand her sanity-challenged spouse, and, in the event her attempts at understanding failed, learned to accept him for what he is. I could say that this has become our mutual default policy as regards one another, but the point I'm trying to make is that my wife has always sought to understand what this roleplaying-game-hobby-thing is and went on to be supportive of my quaint and oftentimes seemingly strange interests.

I can't say more than what Al has already put so eloquently - I've run through his list and yes, I consider myself so blessed that my wife displays the same level of throughtfulness and understanding as regards this gaming-hobby-thingie of mine. That, plus standing up to her in-laws who had, despite the passage of time, always maintained an attitude towards gaming adopted by the great unwashed masses of humanity- is somewhat over and above the call of duty. And I love her all the more for it.

I can't ask for more and I'll always be grateful. Seems like I did something right sometime, somewhere to deserve this.

Mutations, mutations, mutations, mutations and even more mutations

2010-02-09T19:08:00.000-08:00

One of the things that really attracted me (and continues to do so) to Mutant Future are the mutations. I adore tables and tables of mutations of all kinds. I guess character generation of mutants becomes a sort of 'game within a game' for me much like the character generation procedure was in the old classic Traveller rules.

I remember Jeff Rients' blogpost wherein I read of his experience in cobbling up pages and pages of mutations from all sorts of related games in his Mutant Future game thus allowing really off-the-wall mutants for his players. Jeff had a subtable connected to other mutation tables which empowered his players to come up with something even more than the original choices in the Mutant Future rules as written.

Needless to say this really captured my imagination as I firmly believe that you can't have too many random choices for your mutants (random choice being one of the strengths of the game in Mutant Future).

Doing the same thing with my available gaming materials, I drew up a list of possible sources for lists of mutational powers I plan to add to the existing ones in my ongoing game. These include the following:

1. Creatures of the Wasteland by Derek Holland and the Skirmisher Game Development Group

2. Gamma World rules, 1st edition

3. Metamorphosis Alpha rules, 1st edition

4. Assorted codices from the Warhammer 40k 3rd edition (including Witchunters, Daemonhunters, Marines and Imperial Guard) - for pysker powers

5. Fading Suns d20 Character Codex (mutations for the Changed, including such nasties like Caustic Puke)

6. Classic Traveller Book 3 (psionics)

7. Material from Warhammer's Slaves to Darkness

8. The Dead Earth player's book which literally has hundreds of mutations (which are quaintly termed as 'radiations')

9. Omegaworld by Jonathan Tweet, which appeared on Polyhedron Magazine issue 153

10. Dungeons and Dragons 1st edition Players Handbook (the appendix that deals with psionics)

I know this list is not exhaustive yet, but I've a feeling that with these additional choices of mutations, my upcoming games are going to be even more intersting in the coming days. I expect the mutants, both player generated and npc-ed to be even more wild, unpredictable and far out.

And who knows, maybe even more deadly as well.

I know exactly what you mean...

2010-02-09T17:54:00.000-08:00

This post at The Fine Art of the TPK really got my attention. More importantly, it made me laugh - which is a good thing as it seems I can use more laughs in my life. I guess this post goes out to all Game Masters out there, whether you go by the name of Dungeon Master, Mutant Lord, Umpire, Referee, Mission Controller or some other esoteric monicker. Chances are, while you are in the midst of trying to put some sense into a brewing storm of chaos after your gameplan has (again) been torched by a rampaging band of never satisfied players, these thoughts (or something like them) may have crossed your mind at least once.

Now THAT is a Beholder

2010-02-09T17:36:00.001-08:00

I just could not pass up this picture of a Beholder mini from Playing D&D With Porn Stars.

None of those slick but flawed attempts to make a bad-ass, game-balanced, encounter-level impaired two dimensional monster I've frankly grown so sick of in a new version of a game I always played. No.

This is a mini. Something tangible you can reach out and touch.

I love how the eyes pop out at you, and how critter's tongue sticks out from between its incisors - perhaps the last thing you'll see before it bites your head off.

And the eye stalks! No puny stalks here. No sir. They're thickly disgusting - like worms or maggots. Just like how they should really be!

Xps for game session dated 5th February 2010

2010-02-08T23:27:00.001-08:00

Here are the xps the survivors of last Friday's game garnered: 1,587 pts for each surviving character. The two Rat troopers are now semi-willing henchmen of Shai the pure human strategos so they each get 1/2 share of a regular member of the adventuring party.

ML's note: xps seem to be flowing in fast, but considering the opposition, I'd say this is just about right.

Regrouping

2010-02-08T23:07:00.001-08:00

I've just come up for air to post this short one. I'm happy to report our Friday Mutant Future session of 5 February was, as usual, fun and led to an unexpected turn of events. People came late and Max Plissken, Nikos' tech savvy pure human was killed in combat against Security Droids.

This should tide us over for sometime as we won't be gaming this Friday, the 12th.

I'll be posting an account soonest. I'm just getting spread a bit too thin these days between real life and other lives. That, and my $1,000+ worth of PDF books finally came in from my contribution to the Haiti Gamers' Relief through Drive Thru RPG. My eyes feel like they're going to flow down to my chin but I'm a happy camper.
Amongst the most useful items for me are the Mutant Future compatible Creatures of the Wasteland books which will see much use in the next few games coming up.

Have a good week everyone!

Exprience Points for the last game (29th January session)

2010-02-02T18:57:00.000-08:00

This is a rundown of xps for all players for the game session of the 29th of January 2010. Each of the 11 surviving characters gets 2,567 experience points. This takes into account a Mutant Lord awarded bonus of 500 xp for the group for what I observed as excellent teamwork which led the group to survive the last battle without any fatalities. Good show guys!

We resume on Friday night, February 5, same time, same place.

Episode Nine (part two) - Thrilling Air Adventures

2010-02-02T01:58:00.000-08:00

The group now finds themselves in a dilemma- their orders clearly stipulate that they are to defend the cave entrance at all costs. However, by the sound of it, the cave complex is already being infiltrated by the enemy. After a hurried conference, it is a agreed that everyone is to take up defensive positions nearer to the cave entrance, while Ratchet, Mirage and Max climb down into the Mine to conduct recon.

By now, Putanesca and Kyoshi join the party from the Air Boat hangar and confirm that the Rats appear to bent on abandoning the place.

As everyone crouches down with their weapons trained down the bloody trail, a shadow passes them swiftly, accompanied by a thrumming mechanical sound. They look up and catch a glimpse of a large contrivance cobbled together with string and canvas over a stretched frame. It is a two or three winged aircraft with a large rotating propeller in front. They clearly see the leonine mutant pilot hunched over the cockpit, in his furred leather helmet and flyer’s goggles. The craft swiftly rises and disappears far behind the cliff above. From afar, there is a sound of a machinegun being fired repeatedly.

Max and the two Androids rappel down the shaft and find themselves in a familiar stone chamber with a steaming pool of water – the same place where the Mutant Puccini met his untimely and gruesome demise from the Brain Lashers HERE. The place is littered with corpses of Rats and all manner of discarded gear. Echoes of gunfire and the sounds of combat reverberate from further down the tunnels. If anything, they seem to be getting louder.

The Androids anxiously rush to the erstwhile central chamber where their former masters, the Brain Lashers, set up their command center. They find the place a mess. Scattered equipment and garbage are scattered everywhere. Ratchet arrives at the inner sanctum where the Regen Chamber HERE was left behind by the group after taking down all the Brain Lashers. Alas, it is but a pile of spare parts, having been gutted and cannibalized by Ratsputin and his ilk. Making the best out of a pointless situation, the Androids fill their packs with useable parts and technological odds and ends. Being natural tinkerers, they reason that these spare parts may always be worth their weight in gold when the time comes.

Max alerts them to ever-nearing sounds of approach of the feline mutants. The Cats are using grenades and automatic fire to clear the outer chambers of the Mine and are getting dangerously closer by the minute. Together, Max and the Androids climb back up to the cave entrance. The party then agrees to make for Ratsputin’s Air Boat.

They make it to the Air Boat seemingly with only minutes to spare, as the metallic saucer-like craft is rising from the ground with a thrumming sound. Putanesca leaps into the closing hatch and finds Ratsputin frantically engaging the controls, attended by two of the sorriest looking Rats in his force. She screams for him to hover, and Rasputin, after momentarily fixing her with a calculating gaze, halts the Boat’s ascent. Putanesca uses her Chameleon Metamorph mutation and takes on the shape of a large resilient stringbean (!) thereby providing the party with a rope-like ladder of sorts to gain entrance to the rising craft.

The Air-Boat rises above the crater lips of the mountaintop and zooms off into bloody redness of the setting sun.

They are cramped and crowded within the Boat’s confines and all they could do is look out the many windows along with craft’s sides. There does not appear to be any exists as the hatch they entered through has blended seamlessly to the wall. Below, they see the mountain receding in the distance. The lesser Azure river is evident, as is Krat’s floating fortress, Cat-tamaran, still pounding away at the Mine, with its armed complement of Cats doubtlessly mopping up the remaining Rat resistance.
Kyoshi could not resist watching Ratsputin deftly manipulate the controls on the craft’s dashboard using his long sinewy fingers and pink, ribbed tail as well. Without warning he leaps atop the dashboard pulling a lever here and pushing a button there.

“Watch it!” squeaks Ratsputin, but it is too late. There is a muffled bang within the craft, followed by disturbing groan amidst the hum of its drives. Then, Ratsputin has all he can handle, trying to right the bucking craft, all the while aiming curses and invectives at the diminutive mutant. With difficulty, the Tech-Rat manages to right the bucking craft and fly it straight on.

Link Seyz is the first to see the ominous approaching shapes from the aft porthole.
What appear to be blips from afar resolve themselves as attacking biplanes. Four of them, in V formation bearing the sigil of Captain Krat are gaining on the Air Boat. Ratsputin sees this and once more cursing vehemently, struggles to get the Boat to speed up even faster. Unfortunately, it is apparent that planes are gaining fast.
Mirage sees what look like orbs of flame shoot from the planes racing almost lazily towards the Boat. Then, there is a thump and another ominous mechanical groan as the orb makes contact with the Boat’s hull.

ML's note: This scene is another attempt on my part to up the Kirby-esque-ness of the game. In case you're wondering, the nearby panel is from Kamandi issue no. 7 which features Mutant feline pilots in biplanes. I left out King Kong this time, but I found the idea of Lion pilots too precious to resist!

“Tracers!”, screams Max. “Everyone get down!”

Everyone is thrown about haphazardly as Ratsputin puts the Boat through desperate aerobatics to escape the planes’ fire. They hear the staccato sound of machinegun fire through the Boat’s hull, but the planes outpace them. Like blood-mad sharks, the Lion pilots circle the stricken Air Boat. They feel the Boat losing altitude.
Up front, there is a muffled hiss and Ratsputin’s pilot seat is encased in a web of resilient film. He violently tugs a nearby switch and then both Rat pilot and seat disappear through a deck hatch which irises shut.

“Damn,” curses Max. “The Rat ratted out on us”.

Kyoshi and Ratchet take the controls and through combination of skill and not an insignificant measure of luck, manage to bring the stricken craft under control. As it descends, the Lions break off their attack, with the last one doing a final pass. Putanesca and Link Seyz see the feline pilot momentarily alongside the Boat giving them the finger as a final parting gesture.

ML’s note: Or should I say ‘the paw’ instead of ‘the finger’? We never really figured that one out.

Down below, they see what looks like a vast expanse of desert rolling beneath the Boat. At the western horizon is an expanse of green and what appears to be water, but their Boat doesn’t look like it will make it that far. Orua sees some sandy mountains below them, with gleaming metallic objects on the summits. The craft is put down nearby. To their surprise, it lands itself gently without any mishap.

Stepping out, they are struck by a wash of desert heat and the ever-present smell of sulfur-like sand. Indeed, in the distance to the south is a gleaming topped hill standing out amongst the giant sand dunes marching wave-like in the desert. Orua looks fascinated as it catches the crimson glow of the setting sun.

Evening comes and the party makes camp in the rising wind of the desert. Everywhere, the sand is granular and metallic, making a distinctive crunching sound when walked upon. Shai takes stock of their existing supplies and commandeers the two remaining and demoralized Rats.

In the meantime, Kyoshi and Max have been busy discussing how to return Link Seyz, to his “natural” synthetic state, having convinced themselves that their sentient constructed companion is suffering from delusions that he is human. They hit upon a plan and immediately endeavor to carry it out. Max takes Link Seyz aside and repeatedly warns him that “everything Kyoshi says is a lie”. Immediately, Kyoshi sidles up to Link Seyz and earnestly attempts to convince him that he, Link Seyz, is human. They keep this up without let up, and Link Seyz eventually feels he is losing his mind.

ML’s note: It seems both Nikos and Matt are at it again, in their attempts to play mind games with their Android friend. The session now revolved on a lot of role-playing and tech rolls – all of which were improvised. This was never really touched on in the rules, but it seems that all these attempts to re-boot their fellow Android is taking the game to places I never figured it would go….

As Aleph, the silver moon rises in the skies of Cygnet Delta, Link Seyz feels likes his head is going to burst. He is palpitating, he can’t breathe. To make matters worse, certain words of power are being called out by his companions sibilantly and continuously. Eventually, the camp is shaken by Link Seyz primal shriek as the he collapses bonelessly to the sand. He is turned over to Mirage and Ratchet, the Android techs who appear to know what to do to restore their shut-down brother to his former operative condition.

In the glow of a campfire, the group has a peaceful meal – the first one for the entire day of slaughter. Link Seyz is still inoperative – lying still like a human in a coma. Mirage and Ratchet are attending to him while the others take stock of their provisions. Shai says they have three days of food and water.

It is then that they notice Orua is missing. A hurried search fails to turn up the young human. All they find are her footprints – leading away from camp and heading out in the distance. It seems Orua has headed out towards the sandy dune-like hill in the distance.

The one with a metallic top gleaming in the pale silver light of Aleph.

Episode Nine (part 1) - The Thin Red Line

2010-01-31T21:12:00.000-08:00

Dramatis personae:

Spielmeister – Mutant Lord

Putanesca- Mutant Plant

Kyoshi – Mutant Human

Link Seyz – Android

Ratchet – Android

Mirage- Android

Marcus Truman- Pure Human

Max Plissken – Pure Human

Zed- Mutant Human

Albus- Mutant Human

Orua – Autistic Pure Human

Shai – Pure Human

Last session:

After hurriedly being picked up on Ratsputin’s air boat, the characters return to the Mine and are plunged in the thick of a ferocious assault by Captain Krat’s Panther mercenaries.

Our story:

The airboat descends swiftly into the crater. Everyone sees Rats scurrying about agitatedly below. Ratsputin skillfully sets the airboat down and steps out, nervously followed by the party. It is soon made clear from the Rat troopers that Captain Krat’s offensive has succeeded and the Panthers are almost within the Rat warrens of the Mine. Ratsputin sends off his Rat officers with terse commands and speaks to Shai earnestly, with his eyes a-gleaming.

“We have to hold off the Panthers from the cave entrance. We need time to organize a defense. This is why I flew out to collect your entire party – we need help holding the cave entrance up on the cliffside.”

Reluctantly, the party agrees to buy the Rats time.

Ratsputin, accompanied by his entourage of harassed Rats, as well as the adventurers, exit from the crater into a narrow pathway hanging from the mountainside. They climb gingerly downwards until they arrive at a familiar cave entrance. Ratchet, Mirage and Shai immediately recognize their surroundings – as they are back to where they first made contact with the Rats. Zed, Marcus and Max confirm that they have been here before: as this is the secret entrance they discovered into the Mine of the Brain Lashers .

Everywhere, the rumbling sound of artillery can be ominously heard.
Bloody and disheveled Rats rush to and fro from the cave. Ratsputin and his officers try to get things organized. Mirage sees a line of scrawny Rats shuffling forward towards an officer standing beside a pile of weapons. Every other Rat gets a rifle thrust at him and a handful of ammo. The next one in line gets a handful of ammo and an unsheathed bayonet. As the line moves on, the officer repeats a shouted litany, which, to Mirage, sounds like this:

“Every other Rat gets a rifle. When the one with the rifle gets killed, the Rat following him picks up the rifle and shoots!”

“This doesn’t look good,” mutters Max darkly. Ratchet and Mirage can only grimly nod in agreement.

The Rats, with their ears hanging limply and tails dragging heavily behind them, are bullied by Ratsputin down the trail leading away from the cave. They disappear from sight around a wooded bend.

“Here,” says Ratsputin urgently. “You’ll have to hold the line here and by the Great Mikhii- don’t let them get into the cave!” With that, he returns to the trail leading to the sky boat hangar taking Putanesca and Kyoshi with him.

ML’s note: After conferring with my players, we agreed to take Matt and Prin’s characters out of play first as they were still unfortunately delayed due to car trouble.

Ahead of the group is a low wall of rocks which the Rats appeared to have set up earlier in an attempt to fortify the area. After a hurried conference, Shai and Max direct everyone to the wall which, at least, gives them partial cover from frontal attacks. Everyone has managed to pick up a rifle from the weapons and ammo left behind by the Rats. Unfortunately, the rifles come in various calibers and makes – and ammo is in short supply.

ML’s note: To be exact, I rolled for what they managed to scrounge up and came up with six single-shot lever actions and two magazine-fed semi-automatic battle rifles. Antique equivalents (to borrow a Classic Traveller term) of these guns were Martini-Henry rifles and M14s, respectively. Curiously, Henry managed to identify the single shooters ahead of everyone else – could it be due to the rifles’ name? One thing that really appeals to me in Mutant Future is the randomness factor – I tend to do a lot of dice-rolling to come up with something when I’m not sure what I should give the players. The sheer unpredictability of the random rolls is really part of the fun!

They didn’t have long to wait. After a while, it seemed that all the firing stopped. It was deathly quiet- like the calm before the storm.

Link Seyz angrily broke the silence by alerting the group to Orua, who wandered off during the lull, towards the cave entrance. Then, it was too late for the Android to lead River back to the wall as the Panthers began their attack.

They came at them at a run – black Panthers roaring their blood thirsty cries with claws and fangs bared for the kill. Leading them is a four- armed Leopard officer in a steel cuirass. Brandishing a sword-like weapon with a glowing blade of coruscating energy, the mutant officer can be seen chivvying his cats forward.

“Let ‘em have it!” cried Shai, firing away with his M14.

The group cut loose with rifle fire, felling a few from the attackers’ front rank. Despite this, the assault continues ferociously as the cats appear to be caught up in a blood-mad frenzy. Soon, they close the distance half-way to the wall, firing from the hip. Shai curses as his M14 jams up. Then, Link Seyz’s M14 is also out of action. Much to Ratchet’s consternation, his modified musket also fails to fire.

ML’s note: For some reason, my players came up with an inordinate number of natural ‘1’ die rolls, indicating a ‘fumble’ on an attack roll. This, I translated into a high incidence of weapon malfunctions. Who knows, maybe the Rats got gypped into accepting a batch of bad ammo and powder! It was also at this point when I managed to score the needed die roll allowing Orua to slip into ‘Serenity -savant’ mode for 4 melee rounds.

With the nearest attackers only a dozen feet from the defenses, Orua picks up a rifle and blasts the nearest Cat off its paws. She drops the empty gun and picks up another, blasting way at the next closest target.

ML’s note: Patton, who was playing Mika’s character first, seemed to hold true to the adage that the best reload is another loaded gun!

Then, the Cats are reinforced. The group hears the thundering sound of hooves and are aghast to see Krat’s Jackalope Dragoons bounding forward to reinforce the attack. They count at least six Panthers in crimson jackets, strapped to ornate saddles, bounding into combat riding giant horned mutant rabbits, with lances couched.

ML’s note: The Jackalope Dragoons made a brief appearance in this episode, but now, they are the enemy.

The Jackalopes are nothing like any warsteed encountered by the adventurers thus far. They are astounded at the mutants’ prodigious leaps which carry them over the defensive wall and into their rear! Now, they have enemies at their front and behind.
With nothing else for it, they decide to let loose with all their firepower. Zed’s plasma pistol, two lasers, an auto-firing AK47 and Marcus Truman’s pump action shotgun are brought out and fired like there was no tomorrow- adding their weight to the fire being dished out by the Rats’ rifles. To these are added the mutations of the party’s mutants and androids- but the enemy keeps coming on!

Shai grabs Max’s rucksack carrying the blocks of C4 previously issued by Captain Krat HERE. Max confirms there are no detonators, whereupon Shai hurls it with all his strength at the oncoming attackers.

“Blast it with the plasma!” yells Shai at Zed, hoping that the electrical discharge riding along the plasma bolt detonates the lot.

Zed takes careful aim at Shai’s improvised demo charge which is now sitting in the midst of a wave of roaring Cats. He fires, and, although his shot hits true, merely vaporizes Max’s rucksack and its contents.

“Fakes!” screams Shai with consternation. “The bloody felines passed us a bunch of fakes!”

ML’s note: Sooner or later, my players were bound to find out that the good Captain seemed to have his own ideas by passing off some disguised play-dough on them. Funny thing is they never even bothered to ask me about blasting caps or detonators that should have come with the C4. Maybe that should have alerted them to the true nature of the goodies.

“Try this, then!” yells Max, hurling the ancient, seemingly unreliable hand grenade salvaged from the Buggem’s lair. Although dangerously unreliable, the frag goes off with a blast, downing a Jackalope and two Panther infantry.

By now, fighting is at deadly close quarters but the group is still fighting from protected positions. Again and again, the concentrated fire of the energy weapons blow away many of the dragoons from their rabbitoid chargers. In the ensuing melee, Shai breaks ranks and leaps from the stone wall straight at the four-armed mutant Leopard officer. So swift was his attack that the mutant is surprised, providing Shai and opening for a well-aimed vicious cut. Moments later, standing over the headless corpse of the four-armed mutant, Shai bends to retrieve the officer’s Warp Field Sword.

So desperate is the fight that both Link Seyz and Ratchet’s built-in mutations kick in and allow them to perform prodigious feats of strength. Both Androids grapple with the bull-sized Jackalopes and bring these down crashing to the ground.

ML’s note: Link Seyz and Ratchet respectively called up their Ability Boost and Body Adjustment mutations allowing them to doublet their already considerable Strength scores, whereupon they started wrestling with the Jackalopes.

However, the Cats have a final card to play. The Dragoons’ commander had been, until now, content with laying down harassing fire with his automatic shotgun. Now, she was revealed to have a further mutation – Plane Shift! She begins concentrating, and in the midst of the melee, opens a hazy, shifting tear in the fabric of reality.

ML’s note: Quite frankly, I left the Planes of Existence known by the mutant Panther blank when I pre-generated this NPC. I then rolled on Kid Monster’s excellent 75 Random Plane Shift Destinations found at the Goblinoid Games' Mutant Future Forums in July 2009, which I had been saving up for just the right occasion. Rolling on a d100, I randomly came up with this result:

“92: Nurr’Gar’Rak’Ki (Alien Dimension) A Brain Lasher homeworld. The surface of this (possibly once Earth-like) world is a blasted, desolate waste of jagged black glass, roamed by Lasher tripods and nasty alien monsters. Underneath, the planet is riddled with millions of miles of tunnels, which at their deepest levels lead to one of the vast and terrifying cities from which these horrors rule their plane-spanning empire“

Imagine my surprise at arriving at this result. Considering that the cave entrance being defended by my players, was, until recently, the Mine of the Brain Lashers, the opening of a trans-planar gateway to the homeworld of the Brain Lashers, was an awesome coincidence! As you could imagine, the resultant maniacal cackle of the Mutant Lord raised the hackles of not a few of my blissfully ignorant players. Armed with this most intriguing result, I proceeded to run with the ball…

My thanks goes out to Kid Monster for such a wonderful and useful random table. Using this actually served to push the fun factor of the game even higher!

Ratchet and Mirage are the first to notice the horrible things lurking on the other end of the planar gate. Another well-aimed plasma bolt blasts away the mutant Panther but her gateway remains open. Orua, lapsing back to autistic mode, is fascinated by the alien vistas on the other side of the gate and walks towards the undulating tentacle-faced humanoids who beckon to her.

With a scream of horror, Link Seyz grabs Orua and pulls her back swiftly, while their companions open up with a fusillade of beams, bolts and bullets at the Brain Lashers closing in from the other side of the gate. Two of the alien abominations are felled by their fire, but the third is concentrating on a mental attack. Luckily, it is killed by a plasma bolt from Zed’s weapon which is critically running out of juice.

ML’s note: Now it can be told – the third Brain Lasher had that rare (5%) variety of the Ancestral Form mutation which allows it to regress targets down the evolutionary path. Again, I rolled on the spot for the three critters and the last came up with a “05” on a d100 roll. What a night of fantastic dice rolling this proved to be! Lucky thing they plasma-ed it when they did – it was altogether possible that one of the humans or mutant humans could have been reverted to a dim-witted Homo Erectus if that last Brain Lasher lived to get off a mental attack…

At this, the tear in the fabric of space-time snaps shut!

The attackers broke off their assault shortly thereafter, having sustained horrendous casualties. Our heroes did not pursue, being content to hold the line at the stone wall. They suddenly found themselves standing in a blood-stained field littered with bodies of their slain foes. Many are wounded but none so grievously as Ratchet who suffered quite a large loss of 6 hit dice of damage.

Of their Rat allies, they see nothing. The firing has just about stopped but they feel that their foes are regrouping somewhere nearby for another push. They also notice that ominously, smoke has begun to rise from the cave entrance they were detailed to defend. Echoes of gunfire and explosions could also be heard from within.

Now, it appears that the Cats have broken through to the lower levels of the Mine through another entrance.

Mutant Future A-B-C: A is for Android

2010-01-27T22:11:00.000-08:00

Androids are the embodiment of living anachronisms (another ‘A’ word) so apt in the universe of the Mutant Future. Amidst the chaos and regression to primitivism in a once-fruitful wasteland walk the Androids who form a link to the forgotten wonders of a technological past. Androids in the different versions of existing Mutant Futures have come in all shapes and sizes, in varying dispositions and temperaments.

Some Androids take the role of healers or mentors, doing their share in rebuilding society. They can be found in enclaves of remaining civilization, no matter how strange this have evolved from its origins.

Rem, from the post-apocalyptic universe of Logan’s Run (the TV series) is one of these. Such Androids make great non-player characters, hopefully, on the side of the player characters. Their knowledge of the Ancients’ science and history goes far to give their allies an edge over the opposition.

On the other end of the spectrum are the killers, the destroyers and (most often) the baddies. The ubiquitous Terminator, of which several makes and models were made, is a prime example.

Nothing quite beats the effect of the glowing red eyes of the T-101. There’s something about the other-than-human malevolence contained in those artificial eyes…

Mimetic Polyalloy T-1000

The T-X

The T-101 could best be considered as the classic Basic Android in the Mutant Future rules as written. The subsequent T-1000 and T-X could be more advanced models in terms of sophistication and technology level. The shape- changing ability of the T-1000 and the T-X, and, to a lesser extent, their regenerative powers, are an example of how “mutations” granted to Androids during character generation can be characterized. In effect, they are not exactly mutations per se but more of design upgrades and functions.

Less well known but somewhat rather more disturbing is Box from Logan’s Run (the Movie). Others may argue that Box is more of a Cyborg but he would nonetheless make an excellent and colorful Android adversary for any group of Mutant Future adventurers. Imagine going up against a deranged yet highly creative ice sculptor with a penchant for watching his subjects copulate and then eviscerating them slowly. Box and its ilk are often found in extant pockets of technology which, tragically, have long ceased to function in the manner for which they were built. In the case of Box, our stainless steel friend spends his days in what appears to be an automated food synthesis factory wherein it is no longer clear if its finished products are still being consumed by its intended consumers.

Going even farther in time we have Androids who wander the waste as mercenaries and….assassins.

My personal favorite is Necron 99 from Ralph Bakshi’s Wizards.

The mutant wizard Blackwolf, Lord of the Land of Scorch made good use of Necron 99’s cold killing skills until it got zapped by Avatar, Blackwolf’s brother. Necron 99 ends up being ‘reprogrammed’ by Avatar and takes on the name of Peace (personally, I’d take the name Necron 99 to Peace any day).

There’s something about Necron 99’s beady yellow lidless eyes (much like the T-101's red ones). Here he is along with Blackwolf's mutant assassins.

Couple that with a very intimidating looking rifle and a quaint mutated two-legged horse and you’ve got the perfect synthetic wasteland warrior.

This excellent sketch by Undead Celt makes it look like Necron 99 is carrying a modified M-14!

The Mutant Future shows that Androids can go well with mutants, the remnant of technological enclaves and, of course, guns. Stuck in the low-tech present, they are a fleeting link to the vanished high-tech past.

Why not a Mutant Future Alphabet?

2010-01-27T22:03:00.000-08:00

I have always followed the Dungeon Alphabet even while as started out its life as a very inspired series in the Society of Torch, Pole and Rope. Eventually, I wondered why anyone hasn’t come up with this for Mutant Future.

Proceeding from this, I present the Mutant Future A-B-C: an alphabetical rundown of words, concepts and ideas from the Mutant Future as they relate to gaming and gaming-inspired material. At present, I’ll try to tie in inspirational material from popular TV series and movies of yesteryear as material for the A-B-Cs. Hopefully, I can come up with a post or two per week and eventually run up to letter Z.

No Blade of Grass: Neither a Whimper, nor a Bang

2010-01-27T00:31:00.001-08:00

It is often said that everything happens for a reason and nothing completely happens as a result of pure chance.

I’m not sure I really believe this saying but some of my experiences from last weekend seemed to reinforce it. Apart from the fact that I decided to pick up the trade paperback version of Dead Run, I also found myself with a rare moment of free time last Saturday night allowing me to tune in on the SF movies being aired on Turner Classic Movies.

As it turned out, the movies aired that night had that post-apoc feel to them, and were great inspirations for Mutant Future. I caught the middle of Soylent Green. and sat through it. The unforgettable images of an overpopulated and sweltering alternate New York City really had an effect on me, notwithstanding the fact that I must have seen Soylent Green repeatedly since I was a kid.

Nikos, one of my Mutant Future players pointed out to me that Soylent Green wasn’t strictly a post-apoc story but rather one of a dystopian society. In a sense, he’s right. I’ll concede to that, with the qualification that the world in Soylent Green is bound to implode in a very nasty apocalypse sooner than later eventually turning the story into one which is post-apocalyptic in nature.

The second movie was something I saw for the first time. It was No Blade of Grass – a 1970 screen adaptation of John Christopher’s novel from the 1950s. I haven’t read the book yet, but after seeing the movie, I must say I that I have a hankering to go after it soonest.

No Blade of Grass deals with a simple but deadly problem which suddenly confronted the human race: a mutant virus appears to have spread (ostensibly from Asia) and caused the mass death of food crops everywhere. The movie is set in the UK and deals with the story of a family fortunate enough to escape London before the chaos becomes widespread and whatever remains of law and order as we know it swiftly erodes away. The protagonists then make their way across the English countryside in the hopes of reaching the safety of a secluded farm owned by a relative. They inevitably get caught up in the anarchy that takes hold everywhere.

This particular apocalypse can’t be said to be a bang like the ones resulting from say, a meteor strike or a thermonuclear war. I can’t exactly say that society as we know it was ending with a whimper in No Blade of Grass (as one might imagine in movies like 28 Days Later or the Omega Man). I’d say as end of the world stories, go, No Blade of Grass stands somewhere in between a bang and a whimper.

Nonetheless, the epic trek of the protagonists in No Blade of Grass to find safety is something right out of a good role playing game. Getting guns to get even more guns and dodging everything from rogue military units to biker thugs is just some of the really interesting things one gets to see in the movie. Eventually, the movie’s protagonists (who are all civilians) end up toting bolt action mausers, shotguns and hunting rifles – something that seems rare in post-apoc movies today where a lot of gratuitous military firepower seems to be the rule. One of them managed to get his hands on a Sterling submachinegun early on in the story but had to ditch it.

I wouldn’t mind getting myself a copy of this movie. Seeing how I liked it, my wife remarked that my age was showing through as evidenced by my apparent preference for 1960s to 1970s movies. I wouldn’t be surprised if my new players (some of whom are about half my age) will eventually say the same thing.

Dead Run: Fast Cars, Disgustingly Ugly Mutants and Plenty of Guns

2010-01-26T23:25:00.000-08:00

I managed to pick up the trade paper back of Dead Run last Sunday.

I normally spend my money on paperback novels and history books rather than comics or graphic novels these days. Picking up Dead Run was more of the exception to the general rule. Having finished going through the book, I'm glad I made the decision to pick it up.

The book's premise is hardly original: a story of a hard-bitten courier in a souped-up, bad-ass car plying his trade in the wasteland which used to be the Pacific coast of the United States. The hero reminded so much of Max Rockatansky and his supercharged V8 interceptor.

What really stood out for me was the artwork of Francesco Biagini. His illustrations made me feel like I was reading something out of the Heavy Metal Magazine in the early 1990s. As a Mutant Future referee, I can only say that I was quite impressed with his rendition of the mutants who infested the wasteland between the post-disaster Los Angeles and San Francisco.

The picture below is taken from the book, and is just one of the many evocative images drawn up by Biagini. This is how I'd imagine a hard-bitten Mutant survivor would look in the badlands. The book's protagonist referred to this guys as those who 'foraged' in the ruins. I couldn't agree with him more.

My eyes aren't as good as they used to be but the slabs of meat hanging on the right side of this Mutant's trike looked shockingly familiar. That particular morsel hanging second from the right wouldn't happen to be a pair of testicles attached to a phallus carved out from some poor devil would it?

Little else could be so hard core in the barren wastes of our Mutant Future.

ML's notice to players: xps

2010-01-26T01:19:00.000-08:00

This is an urgent message to my players who asked for xp computations:

The xps for the four surviving characters for Episode 7: 428 xp per character.

For episode 8, each of the 11 surviving characters gets 555 xp. In case you are interested to know, I exercised my discretion and imposed a 500 xp bonus for your nefarious plots during the game.

This is not including any gold pieces garnered by the party, so please bring this to my attention if any were listed in your loot list.

I confirm that we'll be having gaming this Friday, 29th January, 2010. Same time, same place.

Episode Eight (part two) - Ratty Allies

2010-01-24T22:43:00.000-08:00

Meanwhile, up ahead, after conferring with Urgall, Ratchet, Mirage and Shai reach the mountain’s slopes. It is almost mid-day now. They begin climbing painfully up, gaining ground steadily. They catch a glimpse of the Cat-Tamaran on the Azure’s tributary, far-off. Presently, Urgal leads them to a cliff overhanging a clearing, up on the mountain’s slopes. Below them is a narrow cave-like entrance leading down into the Mines.

ML’s notes: Astute readers will recognize this as the side entrance the characters used to gain entry to the Mines in Episode Two.

A complex arrangement of ropes and pulleys leads down into the narrow opening. Around it stands guard a squad of six Ratmen armed to the teeth. Mirage has Mental Phantasm built into him. He projects an illusion of a Panther warrior looking downward, alerting one of the Rat sentries. He raises the alarm and the Rats make ready to meet an expected attack. In the meantime, the group spikes the end of a coil of rope and lowers it down to the Rats. They look down once more and only three Rat guards remains. Then, Ratchet sends out another illusion – of Panther warriors fleeing in dismay. Urgall then climbs downward. So sudden was his descent that he lands forcefully upon two of the guards, effectively knocking them out. Shai follows close behind.

At this moment, a muffled crump like thunder fills the air and explosions begin to shake the mountainside. The guns of the Cat-Tamaran are blasting away at the Rats’ defenses. It now appears that Krat has decided to move up his attack without waiting for the promised diversion. The Rats weapon emplacements now begin to fire back.

Meanwhile, back at the main group, the rest of the party hears the exchange of fire which only means that Krat’s main offensive is on.

Back at the mountain, Urgall confronts the remaining Rat sentry near the cave entrance. Shai raises his crossbow but neatly and decisively brings it down on Urgall’s skull, effectively knocking him unconscious. He then speaks calmly to the surprised Rat and hands it his crossbow.

“We surrender if you like. We were forced by the cats to fight for them, yet we bear them no loyalty. We hate them as you hate them. We halted the surprise attack of the panthers you witnessed a while ago. We wish to join you and take revenge on the Cats. No one has a right to treat humans this way. We’ll speak to your leader if you wish.”

ML’s note: Not for nothing was Justin made the group’s de facto diplomat. This got me by surprise too but it seemed that Henry and Justin were planning to have the group switch allegiances and bite the cats back. Or was this a ploy to play both sides against each other? I have yet to find out…

By now, the fight is on and from their vantage point, Shai, Ratchet and Mirage could see Krat’s floating fortress sailing implacably closer with guns blazing. Soon, the assault boats will be launched and the storming will begin. Harried Rats are hurrying to and fro- and suspicious glances are being thrown at the characters. Presently, the approaching Rats start whispering something that sounds like a name of sorts.

“Ratsputin. Ratsputin's coming up!”

Before them comes a curious Rat. He is squat, small for a mutant of his kind but his eyes shine ferally with cunning and intelligence. He wears soft maroon-chased robes with arcane symbols, some of which come from the Mikih, Grandfather of Rats. Above his flaring cup-like ears is a headband of arcane, unsmeltable metal studded with equally strange lights and crystals. He sports a tool belt upon which hangs tools, weapons and other devices.

ML’s note: You may have guessed it but Ratsputin is no other than Brutorz Bill’s NPC here created for this game. Ratsputin now walks and talks in the wastelands of the World Under A Blood Red Sky.

Ratsputin confers with the sentry, whiskers twitching while he thoughtfully chews his tail. He eyes the characters curiously and questions Shai who replies just as swiftly and earnestly. He notices that Ratchet is eyeing his toolbelt with frank curiosity.

Ratsputin speaks swiftly after seeming to consider the matter for a moment.
“Yes, we need your services. Come, you shall fight alongside and share in the loot we shall win. Make haste and call out the rest of your band – we need every swinging tail in the fight that’s coming. I shall send two of my Rats to escort you, but return soon!”

Then, he swiftly disappears into the chaos of the Rat’s encampment, calling out orders and barking instructions. Even the biggest, most feral of the mutants appear to jump to do his bidding.

Accompanied by Ratsputin’s troopers, Ratchet, Mirage and Shai rush back to the rest of the party who are, at that moment, following in their footsteps and heading straight to the Rats’ lair. They link up eventually and bring everyone back up to spec on what the situation is. As of now, they prefer the Rats to be their official allies. Not far away, the thunder of the guns rings loud in the afternoon stillness.

All this does not stop Kyoshi from using the words of power on Link Seyz to check their efficacy. He then draws on his previous knowledge of tech arcane and is delighted to see his synthetic companion struggle to gain control of his movements and resisting various override protocols. River joins in once more arousing the already unstable Android to fury.

He yells “Witch!” at the top of his lungs and lands a fist blow at her, knocking her unconscious. The words of power invoked by Matt’s mutant and Plissken appear to be not as efficacious this time around.

All of a sudden, there is a deep throbbing sound in the air and a shadow passes above the group. As they look up, they behold a large ovoid form that appears to be of smooth angles and windows amidst shimmering metal. Some recognize it as a mate to the ancient powered contrivances of the Chief Resident of Sanly Bowitts, save that this one appears to be a type of sky-boat. Their Rat guides appear unsurprised as the sky-boat slowly circles and lands in the grass.

A small hatch appears on the side from which Ratsputin leans out, calling to them urgently.

“Change of p-plan,” he squeaks, whiskers a-twitch. “I was out surveying our defenses. It seems we really need you all to hold back the C-cats. They’re advancing faster than we expected possible.”

With that, the party reluctantly boards the sky-boat. They are astounded to see how well-kept it looks from the inside, with its arcane machinery and controls.
“Hang on!” mutters Ratsputin, as the sky-boat rises swiftly from the ground.

From one of the portholes, Putanesca sees the mountain looming close. Down at the river, the Cat-Tamaran has moved into position to be able to block off the entrance to the Mine. Assault boats have begun to hit the riverbanks. A firefight of intense ferocity has broken out before the Mine. The Panthers’ assault is in full swing. Sounds of combat are heard above the humming of the boat’s drive.

The sky-boat rises to the top of the mountain. Where they expected the peaks to be turns out to be a vast circular hollow in the rock, much like the top of an extinct volcano. Without delay, the sky-boat begins to descend into the darkness.

ML’s afterword: I really wonder what the future has in store for our game. I can’t help but laugh when I heard Matt evilly whisper to Nikos that they’ll be trying to “restore” the Androids to their “factory settings". Maybe they just spent too much time mucking around with their Nokia cell phones.

Episode Eight (part one) -Switching Sides

2010-01-24T22:07:00.000-08:00

I have not posted for a long time as I (along with the rest of many of you, I presume), am up to my eyeballs with a shitload of real world worries and concerns. Nonetheless, I am pleased to report a successful Mutant Future game session on the evening of Friday, the 22nd of January. Apart from a lot of my regular players showing up on time, we were very fortunate to have Patton, Mika, Matt and Prin as new players who just joined our gaming group and decided to throw in their luck with the rest of our dastardly crew. The following constitutes the proceedings on said Friday night game-

Dramatis Personae:

The deranged Mutant Lord - Spielmeister

Max Plissken – Pure Human (played by Nikos)

Albus – Mutant Human (played by Doc Ben-g)

Zed- Mutant Human (played by Doc Ben-g)

Marcus Truman – Pure Human (played by JY)

Ratchet - Android (played by Henry)

Mirage - Android (played by Henry)

Shai - Pure Human (played by Justin)

ML’s note: With the demise of both of Henry’s mutants from last game, he came bouncing back with a Basic Android duo. He has a pretty well-crafted backstory which I, admittedly, have not read up completely yet. Suffice it to say that the Androids are constructs of the Brain Lashers. In fact, these Lashers are very much related to the band that occupied the Mine of the Brain Lashers. Justin, on the other hand, is our resident GURPS expert and decided to field a Normal with very developed tactician and merchant skills. Sort of like the group’s strategos-diplomat.

Our new players, on the other hand, came up with these eclectic characters:

Putanesca – Mutant Plant (played by Prin). This was a first for our gaming group, and we were very thrilled to see how a mutant plant would shape up in a game. As things turned out, Prin did not disappoint us. Her mutant resembled an intelligent, ambulatory, thorny tomato. From my recollection, it had the Metamorph mutation and sported inch-long thorns all over its’ prehensile roots and tendrils. ‘Puta’ (as it was affectionately called by all) tended to amble along and had a self-admitted life goal of finding a suitable floral mate.

Kyoshi - Mutant Human (played by Matt). Matt’s rolls on the mutation tables were gonzo. His mutant had dwarfism, making him only one foot tall. He also had the Mind Thrust and Dual Cerebellum mutations. Sure he’s short but then again, so was Master Yoda- and you saw how he squared off against Count Dookoo.

Link Seyz- Android (played by Patton). Pat insisted on having an android who looked and talked like the Terminator (at least that was my take on it). His backstory also provides that the android itself does not know that it is an android. For as long as he could remember, he was just another human. He does not know he has a hidden Energy Ray in his hands, amongst other “mutations”.

Another Pure Human – played by Mika. Now Mika insisted on some value-added enhancements in the interest of good gaming. After a short conference, I agreed. Her human is the Mutant Future version of River Tam from Serenity. Certain ‘triggers’ tend to unlock an extremely focused technical savant aspect of her nature (sometimes when they’re lucky, just at the right time it is really needed). Most of the time, she’s a slightly autistic youngster. As of this writing, I haven’t received info on her character name so I’ll provisionally call her River.

Character generation took up the first third of the evening’s gaming time but this immediately showed one of the strengths of Old School gaming: enabling players to generate characters ready for gaming in a few minutes, flat. It would have been an altogether different story if we were using Gurps. I don’t even want to think about how it would have been if we were playing D&D 4th ed. Probably would have had to dedicate an entire gaming session for character generation. I learned that this was the first time my new players would be playing an Old School game. Happily, Old School appeared to agree with them as will be seen later on.

As an aside, my notes are still incomplete as I write this, so I’ll be constrained to refer to some of the characters through their players’ names for now.
Finally, I instituted a houserule (heeding Brutorz Bill’s sound advice from last game’s comments ) granting each player a single d30 roll usable at any time during the game. A sort of safety net for the players in view of the deadly toll the scorpions’ poison attacks did last time (save or die attacks are very nasty).

Fortunately, no one got to use this during the game.

Our story

The armed panther crew and their leopard officers clambered aboard the Cat-Tamaran, grudgingly hoisting aboard Albus, Zed, Marcus and Snake. They soon discover that the ship is a veritable floating fortress, festooned with guns, rockets, not a few missile launchers, the odd (but formidable) energy weapon, siege engines, and yet even bigger guns. It seems Captain Krat wasn’t kidding when he said they were just about ready to commence the main attack on the Rats.

They are led to a large hallway and kept under guard. Although it was made clear to them that they were not considered prisoners, they weren’t given free reign of the vessel either. Inside, they come upon a few more outsiders, who, upon questioning, reveal that they were “persuaded” to come aboard the Cat-Tamaran as “guests” of Captain Krat.

First, they meet two humanoids who affect the dress of wasteland travelers. These turn out to be Androids, named Ratchet and Mirage. They are accompanied by a Pure Human called Shai, who appears to be quite learned and well-spoken. Ratchet, to their surprise, exhibits an uncommonly keen technical acumen and set out to modify some of the muskets they recently liberated from the Rats.

Later on, they are joined by a strange Mutant Plant bearing a most unsettling name of Putanesca. Putanesca’s other companions are Kyoshi, a foot-high mutant humanoid, Link Seyz, a strange humanoid with a stiff expression and another pure human who appears barely out of her teens. She is named River, who always seems to have a dreamy look in her face and talks in riddles, causing much obfuscation amongst the party. As they all appear to be in the same boat (if you’ll excuse the pun), they decide to band together in common cause.

Later, Captain Krat, joined by some of his officers and crew, enters. He makes a proposition to the party, offering each member a generous sum of five hundred gold crowns, in addition to free transportation to as far as Sanly Bowitts, if they successfully aid him in the coming attack. Along with Urgall, the apparent Homo Erectus ally of the Panthers, they are instructed to infiltrate into the Mine of the erstwhile Brain Lashers using an indirect land route. If things are done right, Captain Krat expects the party to gain entrance to the Mine just before the main attack. The party is enjoined, under no uncertain terms, to create as much havoc and confusion in the Rats’ lair, capitalizing on the element of surprise. This, Krat reasons, should tip the balance in favor of his attacking force, and enable them to overwhelm the Rats’ defenses, which are known to be quite formidable at this time.

While Captain Krat repeatedly makes it clear that he is offering the party a business proposal, they can’t shake the feeling that they’re being pushed into a potentially lethal situation. Not a few are suspecting a set up.

There is a lot of argument and muttering on the side but finally, the party is prevailed upon to accept the job. They are left alone for the rest of the night as feverish preparations continue aboard the floating fortress for the coming day’s assault. Plissken and Shai are crestfallen to learn that the Cats have denied the party’s request for additional firepower. Nonetheless, they consider themselves lucky as Krat agreed to part (albeit with some reluctance) with a box of explosives to be used by the party for their diversion. Shai, the party’s de facto diplomatic adviser, likewise noted about a fighting strength of two hundred effectives in Krat’s force. He also keenly observed the prodigious rate at which Krat’s troops were consuming their supplies.

ML’s note: To be honest, getting started was a bitch as the group still could not quite ‘gel together’ yet. While there was a lot of role-playing and verbal sparring, I also had to keep tabs on a lot of questions (particularly from the logistics-savvy Justin) on crew strength, dispositions, weapons, etc. It’s bound to be interesting to see how things are going to be when these players manage to run their own army.

At dawn, the party is landed on the riverside as the floating fortress sails away in the swirling mist. The blood red sky is just beginning to lighten at this point in time. To maintain contact with the party, Krat turned over a pocket communicator to them, apparently of no mean sophistication. Kyoshi takes possession of the thing.

ML’s note: The comm unit was supposed to be roughly the size of a small cell phone. That meant that Kyoshi carried this much like a PRC-90[?] backpack radio!

The party heads off to the east, their destination being the mountain in the horizon.
Very soon, they notice that River is beginning to wander off with a dreamy look in her face. The others are deep in discussion on what to do next, as they admit that they do not relish the prospect of doing Krat’s dirty work for him notwithstanding his offers of generous compensation. Only Link Seyz notices two malevolent shapes emerging from the waters of a nearby bog, stealthily approaching River. These look like gross, feral Toads, massing about the same as a cow with bloated bubble-like eyes of the deepest red-green. A stick rope-like tongue shoots out from the closest one and narrowly misses River who, right at that moment, bent over to pick up what she saw as a curiously interesting blade of grass.

With a yell Link Seyz charges and hurls a dagger straight at the mutant’s eye.

ML’s notes: This was a tough call. Link Seyz was a 1st level Android and the mutant had a base AC of 4. Since the eye was an even smaller target, I imposed a further -2 to the attempt giving the critter an effective Armor Class of 2. He needed at 17 on a d20 to hit. Despite the odds, Patton rolled a gratifying 18 and hit home!

The mutant’s eye bursts in a spray of ichor-like gore, spoiling its intended attack. Most of the party follows up with bolts and arrows but the unusually tough scales of the mutants prove more than adequate proof against their missiles. The other mutant toad lashes out with its sticky tongue, effectively pinning Link Seyz.

“Use the explosives,” someone yells, whereupon River pulls out a sticky clump of C4 and absently hurls it, sans any blasting cap, at the nearest Toad. The clump of valuable explosive misses widely and falls into the nearby bog, sinking to the bottom.

“My explosives!” yells the dismayed Plissken, running for the water’s edge to search for the C4. In the meantime, River remains oblivious to the fighting while one of the Toads’ bubble-like eyes is glowing malevolently. The air is rent by a pair of fiery burning beams of energy which strike Plissken and bring him down painfully. At this, Putanesca lets up a keening wail of vegetative distress.

Link Seyz frees himself with great difficulty and begins hacking away at the other Toad.

All of a sudden, River straightens up, eyes widening as she takes on an expression of uncanny alertness. It becomes clearly apparent to her that her companion is an Android and something, some hidden feature, is built into his right fist. This may be just the thing he needed to take on the Toad which was beginning to set upon him with huge scimitar-like claws.

ML’s note: Per my agreement with Mika, her hidden “River Tam” qualities were triggered somehow enabling her some incredible intuitive leaps for 1d5 rounds. I rolled a 5 for the fugue’s duration. At this time, I was surprised to note that Henry and Justin were not helping out the party in combat and decided to walk off ahead towards the mountain to carry out their ‘plan’. The change in River caused everyone to sit up and take notice!

Link Seyz appears to take the hint but merely plunges his fist into the Toad’s eye. He misses and connects instead with a meaty splat on the side of the critter’s head. To his surprise, his fist erupts in a blast of radiant burning light- burning much of the Toad’s head. Amidst the smell of burning meat, the freakish, misshapen amphibianoid crashes lifelessly to the ground.

At this, the others charge the remaining Toad, who fires another radiated blast, this time, badly burning Kyoshi. This enrages him and the mutant leaps upward, slashing and parrying with deadly skill.

ML’s note: Matt made clear that his mutant was doing a Yoda-esque maneuver. The mental image was very apt!

Putanesca flails away with her thorns while bashing the Toad with her trusty mace. Zed and Albus keep up a fusillade of bolts while moving to outflank the beast. Plissken finally gets his chance and blasts away with his laser, searing away large gashes on the mutant’s scaly hide. Link Seyz makes a leaping attack, and tragically entangles himself on one of Putanesca’s stringy root-like tendrils. He crashes heavily to the ground.

ML’s note: Patton now rolled a 1 thereby scoring a critical miss. The resultant effect was my ruling to inflict a cinematic effect to his equally cinematic failure at inflicting an Achilles-eque attack straight out of the movie Troy. Nevertheless, it was an inspired try on his part!

River follows all this closely. Somehow, unbidden, arcane words of command come clearly to her mind. Ancient words of power in a language older than Wasteland Norte. An awakened part of her rewired brain somehow makes the connection between Link Seyz’s newly-discovered ability and the code words she now shouts out.

“Menu-seven-sigma-twelve-overide. New protocol -Seven-sigma-thirteen: Engage!”

Link Seyz, who was just getting up, suddenly straightens – and very much against his will, shoots the Toad again with another searing blast. Kyoshi leaps up once again, landing lightly on top the Toad’s skull. Balancing for a moment, he plunges his impossibly sharp dagger-sized longsword into the thing’s eye, and then even deeper. In a moment, the Toad is dead.

ML’s note: Killing a 12HD monster without modern firepower isn’t easy even in Mutant Future. Much of this android override was admittedly a big surprise to me and 100% improvised. Seeing how well my new players took this concept and ran with it, I found it impossible not to go along with them! Tech rolls and Intelligence checks started coming in fast and furious but we managed to move things forward swiftly!

Kyoshi, also possessed a modicum of above-average tech ability and intuition (thanks to his Quick Mind mutation). Together with Plissken, they caught on to this and things got even more- er, strange.

With the mutants dead, the party took stock of the situation. Far off, they catch a glimpse of Ratchet, Mirage and Shai, marching steadily towards the mountain. Kyoshi turns on the comm-link as Krat demands a report. The feline commander is displeased with the slowness of their advance. He abruptly breaks off transmission.

Out of town

2010-01-13T07:34:00.000-08:00

I'll be leaving town for a while on business and I'm not sure if I'll be connected to the 'net (or have time to post something here). I understand that Doc Ben-g is running his crew of Autobots in Eberron in the meantime.

Kick ass, guys! When you're all done, let me know what happened while I was away, ok?

With any luck, I'll be able to get some pictures of the Mayon Volcano
which is acting up once again.

May the rest the week be a peaceful one for all of us.

When losers are winners

2010-01-13T06:37:00.000-08:00

Another sticky point that has arisen time and time again in my gaming experience is the subject of how "weak" characters can be when they are generated by a random-based game system. Many of my players who have gotten so used to generating characters in point-build games systems (such as Gurps) or "balanced" game systems which produce epic characters from the get-go (such as D&D 4e) seem to bothered by the randomness of the Mutant Future generation system. The very possibility of being stuck with a character having less than average attribute scores and debilitating random mutations seems to bother some people. They see this as being "burdened" by an inferior character.

This is evident in a request I received from one of my current regular Mutant Future players. While he plays a most suitable Pure Strain Human, he once asked me if I could initiate a houserule allowing for point allocations to generate character stats instead of the usual die roll method (and its attendant risks). The risk of getting a Strength attribute of 5, it appears, grates on his sensibilities.

Me, I see this as a challenge to one's role-playing and gaming skills, rather than a burden. Then again, they say I have rather strange role playing game habits. I have this fascination for the struggle of the underdog; of the everyman-turned-reluctant-hero who bucks the odds without a sure guarantee of survival (much less of success). I always had a soft spot for characters who, at first glance, appear "inferior" due to lower-than-expected die rolls during character generation. It isn't for a reason that I am a fan of the old DC comics series of an intrepid team of four heroes in World War II called the Losers, particularly the ones drawn by Jack Kirby.

Musing all of this was triggered by a post in Planet Algol which essentially captures how I feel about the whole thing:

"Loser characters are hilarious, usually the awesome players in my campaign play their ability-score deficient character to the freaking hilt! Jeryk's jackass antics had a couple of us helpless with laughter. With the lowered emphasis on ability score in AD&D, it really doesn't make it a huge handicap in most instances, and it seems like the characters with ability scores that are a genuine liability play smarter as a result and those characters tend to be survivors as well as having a lot of heart."

Reading this post also led me to another similar point from Jeff's Gameblog which I find just as appropos:

"For the EPT game I wanted the kind of freaks you'd see in an actual campaign, so I generated a bunch of stats randomly by using the random number generator in the spreadsheet. This resulted in a couple kickass PCs, some decent ones, several mediocre characters and quite a few complete losers. This is completely acceptable to me, as every campaign that uses random chargen will show a similar distribution."

Even non-random game systems such as Gurps can lend itself readily to this type of gaming. Curiously, the relative "weakening" effect brought about by a random throw of a dice during character generation may also be "self-inflicted" (a term I use for want of a better one). This is suggested by Nikolas here, wherein he says:

"Voluntary Disadvantages adds another dimension to RPGs and attempts to create an incentive for layers to voluntarily bring up their disadvantages in appropriate situations to enhance the game's experience."

To me, whether or not it comes as a result of random chance, or a voluntary decision, the willingness to accept the challenges of playing what others would dismiss as a Loser connotes the presence of guts and chutzpah in a player. Something I'd do myself and respect in others.

Maybe I'm just a bit tired a not a bit sick of running games starring a group of epic-story, star-crossed, lavishly equipped, superstars romping through the world in search of fame and fortune. Instead, I crave dozens of eclectic groups of misfits just bucking the odds and going out there to raise some hell. Bring 'em on- bring on the Losers!

On character motivation (and sound advise from Messrs. Zak and Raggi)

2010-01-11T06:27:00.000-08:00

Reading this post from Zak's Playing D&D With Porn Stars gave me another "aha!" moment. It also brought up (not so very) pleasant memories of games I ran in my younger age back in the day. In not a few of these games, I'd often hear a player quip "Why are we in this dungeon again?" to the others, followed by laughter and derision. Things eventually changed. I grew up a bit more, picked up more of the GM-ing craft. Certain players I gamed with grew up too and eventually gave up the fine art of role playing games altogether and became self-professed normal people pursuing normal lives. Eventually, it dawned on me that their absence from my gaming life entailed no big loss at all. In losing them, I later gained better players who turned out to be better friends as well.

My point is that, for the longest time, I struggled with trying to help my players find their characters' motivation for doing what they do in the games I ran.

Zak argues a very good case for adopting what he terms as the 'Roguish Work Ethic' in enhancing the very reasons why your character adventures in the game world. Hence, he makes the following observation:

"Now I don't actually want to talk about playing villains, I want to talk about playing Roguish Heroes. Grey Mouser, Conan, Cugel, Han Solo, and the stereotypically larcenous Old School D&D PC.

Now a Roguish Hero is not the same as a villain, and I am not saying everybody should play Lex Luthor but, functionally, pulpy roguish protagonists and villains have an important thing in common: they want something from the world. Gold, power, the admiration of attractive members of the opposite sex--something. The Upright Hero doesn't really want anything--or at least not anything that would bring him/her into violent conflict with the world as-is. The Upright Hero is not usually proactive, s/he waits until s/he sees injustice (even if it was an injustice that was there all along)."

And continues with this:

"There's a reason why the stereotype of Old School D&D is a bunch of amoral bastards running around killing things and taking their stuff--and it's not just because of the x.p. system. It's because people who just want treasure don't need to be given a reason to go into a cave or a lair or an abandoned city or the HQ of the local Wizard's Guild and they can pick freely which one they want to do first, since the fact that the lair contains a despotic vampire that plagues the countryside and the cave just has a dumb animal with big teeth in it doesn't automatically impose a moral imperative on Roguish PCs to deal with the vampire first"

And this archetypal "bunch of amoral bastards running around killing things and taking their stuff" is by no means to be confined to D&D. I've had the pleasure of GM-ing such amoral bastards who had, at one time or another, taken a multitude of guises and forms including, but not limited to, German Fallschirmjager, Soviet Frontoviki, survivors of the US 5th Mechanized division near Kalisz, proto-Dunedain in Beleriand, Travellers in the Spinward Marches, mercenaries for the PanGalactic Corporation, and questing pilgrims in the Known Worlds. Different worlds, different characters, different systems -yes, but still the same concept applies to all.

He hit the point spot-on as regards character motivation. Ultimately, the player who plays proactively, who works to make things happen, makes the game move forward, perhaps just as much as the referee does as he runs the game. To me, this is as much an attitude, as it is an effort to bring the game to life. Everyone wins this way because everyone works together to make things happen.

He also makes a further distinction from the standard "Sandbox" gaming style which, I confess, have never given much thought to in the past, but presently have all but embraced in my current games. He calls this the Quicksandbox, and taking a look at my Mutant Future world, I can see what he's talking about:

"Then there's the Quicksandbox. The world isn't dominated by a single evil, it just completely sucks. This is the basic post-apocalyptic set-up. (It also could just be any old world if you're desperately poor.) Basically--anything any PC tries to do (find water, ammunition, eat pie) is so hard and beset with so many mutants or gangsters or cave bears that heroic effort is required just to do anything. In this case, it doesn't matter if the PCs are Upright Heroes or Roguish because either way they have to act Roguish (i.e. plot, scheme, choose their battles) because otherwise they'll just die immediately. Survival is the plot hook. The only trick in making this kind of thing a true sandbox would be making sure the GM gives the PCs enough information about what's around them that they have different options about where to look for various commodities. Supermarket? Army barracks? Spooky old house?"

He goes on to postulate a Quicksandbox world which sucks AND is dominated by a single evil. Reading this elicited yet another "aha!". My players seem unanimous in describing my games (and resultant gameworlds) as "gritty" ones. This one really seems to be up my alley.

Character motivation.

Without it, even the most intricately designed gameworld played in the most potent game system becomes inert much as a supercharged engine is without gasoline fuel.

Ultimately, I still believe that the process at arriving at, and maintaining the necessary proper character motivation in a given game is one shared by both players and referee, working together to produce something that can be truly great. As a gamemaster, I had agonized quite a bit about this (and I've seen fellow game masters still struggle with this). But the reality is that the gamemaster can really only go so far. The players have to pull their share - after all, arriving at this desired goal is truly a joint effort.

I can't help but remember what Edward James Raggi said here sometime back, which I feel applies to this point:

"If a player complains that he’s bored and that nothing is happening, look at him and say, “I agree. So are you going to do something or not?”

It is not the referee’s job during a session to provide excitement for his playing group. His job is to administer the setting and resolve character actions. If the characters are taking no action and are not interacting with the setting, then the referee has literally nothing to do. The players are wasting his time.

Other common standards of pacing become obsolete when dealing with a player-driven adventure xxx"

I guess all this kinda reinforces the concept that a face-to-face rpg is really a cooperative effort between everyone who comes to play at the game table.

Musings on character death, et al.

2010-01-09T18:42:00.001-08:00

The subject of character death seems to have reared its unlovely head once more in our group's collective gaming lives. For me, this was precipitated by two recent events.

The first was my reading of the collective responses sent in by my players to my GM game survey form I circulated earlier in the week through my gaming egroups. I'll be devoting the responses of my players and their expected effects on my gaming henceforth in a later post. Suffice it to say for now that character death appears to be a geniune issue with not a few of my current players.

The second was the unexpected and brutal deaths of mutants Clem and Clyde during our last Friday night Mutant Future game. A good thing I can say about my current players is their dedication to really building up a well-thought of and played character. Couple this with the emotional investment of making Clem and Clyde survive through six gaming sessions (quite a record for a harassed referee like me to maintain a game this long), I guess the loss of the mutants understandably felt like a real loss for Henry.

For a wee part of the game last Friday, my friend sat there staring at the green plastic mini representing his recently-deceased mutant muttering in tagalog, the equivalent of "Ce'st la vie" over and and over again. Eventually, he picked himself up, dusted himself off, and got back into the thick of it, as every good player does.

These things may strike some gamers as strange or even absurd, but as my gaming group's GM, I can't be blind to them.

For the longest time, character death (if it ever came at all) was few and far between in my gaming group. Our default game system of choice was Gurps and stories were rather story- and plot-driven. Although I seem to have acquired a reputation for running hard-edged, gritty and combat-bloody games, looking back, there were really few character deaths in my games.

Late in 2008, I invested in the boxed set of the Dungeons and Dragons 4th edition rules and started running a campaign for my gaming group. I felt like a fish out of water in the start as everyone else had been playing 4e already and I was astounded to see just how many new rules and concepts there were. And the powers - man, it was like law school all over again: daily powers, utility powers, encounter powers, at-will powers - all on top of skills and feats. Still, it was fun in the beginning.

Then, the tedium kicked in. It seemed a new book arrived every x number of weeks with even more new rules and new races and new crunchy magic items, and so on, ad nauseam. And my gaming group really got off on trying out the newest, crunchiest stuff that came out.

In a way, I got too caught up in trying to run a 'fun game' the way I thought my players (and the unseen game writers) thought I ought to be running the game, not how I thought the game ought to be.

In 2009, I started reading up on various old-school gaming blogs starting out with Grognardia. I started lurking in the old-school gaming forums that came up beginning with the one of Goblinoid Games. All this opened up a whole new world for me, so to speak. I guess you can say I got caught up in the Old-School Gaming Rennaisance movement that is still happening to this day. The old-school explosion really resonated inside my gaming consciousness like nothing else did for a very long time.

Something clicked inside my brain. At this time I was approaching 4e burn-out and I could feel it already. It is ironic that looking back now, my first 4e adventuring party suffered a TPK from me at about this time. Following this, I did hear some grumbles and dark mutterings on the side about the dungeon master applying too many of those "weird old-school gaming ideas" to the 4e game. Maybe they were right. It dawned on me that I had forgotten a very basic core rule that I always held true to my gaming.

I am the game master. I master the game. The rules don't master me. I adjudicate the situation conistently and fairly. If push comes to shove, in a conflict between the rules as written and the game master's decision, the latter should prevail. I know lots of players won't see things this way, but that's how I see things to be. Of course, this presupposes that the game master should be fair and consistent in his rulings, else tyrrany and absurdity arises thereafter.

On the other hand, character death is more sticky. Player emotions can be involved- particularly in view of the emotional investment made by a player for a well-played character. Significantly, the advise given by James Edward Raggi on Adventure Writing appearing in his Lamentations of the Flame Princess provides a very do-able answer in addressing such a concern:

"The most important thing to remember when constructing an adventure is to not assume that the PCs will succeed at any point during the adventure.

As a referee, your job is to be completely impartial during game play. You have absolute power at the game table and can bequeath success or mandate failure at any time. Doing either of those things ruins the game, as both give no incentive to play well.

Do not fudge the dice. Ever. Luck is a part of the game, and the dice are there for a reason. Resist the temptation of sparing characters that fail or even die due to “bad luck” or a “stupid die roll.”

Would it be acceptable to tell a player that just rolled a stunning success that you’ve decided, just because it’s more fun, that the die roll doesn’t count and he instead failed? I don’t think so. So why would ignoring the dice in the players’ favor be acceptable?

Good game play will tip the scales of fortune and those that rely on pure luck deserve what they get – either way. At the same time, if an incredibly lucky roll derails the entire adventure and gives the players a quick victory, it should stand. It needs to work both ways. When the dice go badly for the players, they should be thinking of how to not let a roll of the die be the sole determiner of their fates. And when the dice go a little too well for the players, the referee should note what he needs to do to prevent a single die roll from determining the course of an entire adventure.

Traditional games are all about the players (and referee) learning to play better over time. The characters’ experience gains are secondary. Demand and reward player excellence and the game will be more challenging in the long run."

In turn, I arrived at the realization that if you really consider your character very valuable and worthy of the emotional investment you placed upon him, then it is your duty to play excellently, whereby ensuring that a single die roll does not result in the death of the character; that the fate of your character does not purely rely upon the scales of fortune or the outcome of a single die roll.

Hindsight is always 20/20 and I would not go so far as to venture with certainty that Clem and Clyde could have easily survived the encounter against the mutant scorpions if everyone started blasting away with their newly-acquired firepower instead of saving their ammo until the last minute. What I can safely say is that the death of Clem and Clyde was an example of a character's fate being determined by a single (saving) throw of the dice. Maybe people could have hedged their survival chances by blasting away for a mad minute at the first opportunity. Or maybe they could have ran away instead. Perhaps this is when playing excellently really comes to the fore.

Finally, there comes a time when even despite one's best efforts, something really happens and throws the whole thing out of whack. Characters will die as RPGs in general (at least as far as I'm concerned) largely involve killing and death. If that happens, then reflect on how the character lived. There is a story out there and death is not the end of anything, by no means! Great times are remembered and the memory of an excellently played character is the best way to ensure gaming immortality.

As I write this I recall a few players I had in my previous Fading Suns gaming group. One of them was a real thespian - the sort that cries in-game while role playing the angst of her Vampire character (yes, they were really into that style of gaming). One valentine's day in 1999, I was pleasantly surprised to receive flowers (of all things)from this player before running a game. A really nasty part of me asked myself if these were burnt offerings made to appease the GM (we were running through a dungeon-type game against some Zerg-like baddies called the Symbiots). Halfway through the game, it seemed like her character would die after getting badly mauled by a Symbiot critter. Some recalculations confirmed this was not the case so she lived.

In the meantime, she was beside herself anguish and was on the edge of what seemed like mild hysteria at the thought of a beloved character dying. She even threatened to take back the flowers.

I really didn't give a fig about the flowers but I was mildly put off, to say the least, by her reaction. If that happened to me today, knowing what I know now, I'd most likely just laugh in everyone's collective face and get back to the game.

Episode Seven (Part 2) - Wars of Cats, Mutants, Mice and Men

2010-01-09T07:09:00.001-08:00

The party pushes on past sunset under the cover of trees. The blood red sun has since set and night comes swiftly and dark on Cygnet Delta. Aleph, the silver moon is rising in the night sky. Everyone is jumpy and on edge after the death of two of their Mutie companions. By now, they can glimpse a familiar river flowing eastward towards the mine entrance. The water swiftly flows under Aleph's light.

In the dimness of the forest, both Zed and Albus, Muties with Thermal Vision spot the intruders first. They are approaching directly head-on about a hundred feet away, through the foliage. Max orders a halt, and everyone climbs swiftly off the wagon, advancing in a skirmish line ahead of the lizards-of-burden.

As they come closer, the party makes out the intruders to be intelligent bipedal rats - a patrol of six advancing in single file. The unmistakable outline of thin-muzzled slug throwers are spotted amongst the Rats.

As one, the party takes aim at the approaching Animal Muties - there appears to be no conserving of ammo this time. Marcus shouts out a challenge in Common Norte. At this, the Rats halt amidst squeaks of alarm and urgency. Marcus repeats his challenge but all they see is the Rats bringing up their fusils to bear.

"Hit 'em!" comes the command and the forest silence is shattered violently by the crack of Albus' AK as well as accompanying fire from laser pistol, plasma gun and the booming of a shotgun. As the echoes die out, none of the Rats are standing.

ML's note: It appears that the death of Henry's muties convinced everyone not to take chances. Everyone broke out the guns and decided to shoot first. Good thing they won initiative on the first round. All rolls hit well and as a result, they blew away all the wandering monsters from that encounter in just one single melee round!

They loot the bodies and find each Rat carrying a musket and ball, with the rearmost appearing to be a leader type. The leader was packing a plasma gun, almost identical to the one they liberated from the Buggems.

They decide to relocate and nervously push on towards the entrance of the mine even in the forest darkness. Eventually, they spot the edge of the treeline and the entrance of the Mine: a cave in the cliffside with a river running right inside it. Only now, there are campfires on the shore nearby and the outlines of more Rats. Lots of them.

ML's note: At this point, the players start arguing. It is becoming increasingly apparent that the Mine of the erstwhile Brainlashers has been taken over by a tribe of Animal Muties.

Just then, the stillness of the forest is again shattered by explosions from their left flank - far off across the river. There are sharp reports of gunfire and then, automatic fire. From their hidden place they see the Rats scatter, grabbing up arms and falling back to the Mine's entrance.

As if this wasn't enough, there is a heavy pounding of hooves and the crash of foliage being knocked aside far off on the right flank. They catch a glimpse of huge rabbit-like mounts, leaping at great speed through the forest. Astride each of the mounts is a feline warrior, saber bared and hanging on for dear life. They count about eight riders charging into the Rats' encampment.

ML's note: At this point, Doc Ben-g rolls up his eyes and says: "This is so Kamandi". I guess from my players' reactions, I really succeeded in 'Kirby-ing up' this encounter. For the record, my inspiration for the dragoons was JDJarvis' recent Mutant Future post on mutant future steeds. Excellent material!

"Panther swordsmen on giant leaping rabbits," remarks Marcus Truman. "What have we gotten ourselves into?"

Then, they sense they are being watched. They see a stealthy hulking humanoid form approaching from the rear. It seems almost human - and approaches with a hand raised in greeting.

Only Max breaks cover and parleys with the newcomer who turns out to be a Homo Erectus. This one seems more intelligent, though. They learn that the Homo Erectus is called Urgall. Urgall is certainly no friend of the Rats and claims to be allied to enemies of the Rats. He adds his friends are nearby.

While this is happening the distant sounds of battle are slowly dying out.

Urgall 'friends' emerge into the bush shortly. As expected, these are more Panther warriors led by what appears to be a tall, spotted feline. The Animal Mutant carries himself like a freebooter - complete with bicorne hat, a brace of pistols and frock coat. For a while everyone is edgy and guns are pointed at everyone else. The adventurers are most uncomfortably aware that they are outnumbered and quite possibly, outgunned. Fortunately, Urgall intervenes.

The Animal Mutants are prevailed upon to hold fire. Their spotted leader (apparently a Cougar) is introduced as Captain Krat. After convincing the Captain that they are no friends of the Rats, the group is 'requested' to accompany the felines away from the Mine entrance. Not seeing much choice in the matter, the group goes along.

By now, the rabbitoid dragoons have returned from their raid bearing bloody Rat heads on the saddles of their furry mounts. Captain Krat leads his band some ways down the river. Our adventurers are surprised to see a heavy, armed merchant boat chugging towards the shore. They group clambers aboard and Krat gives orders to sail away.

Aboard Krat's boat, Max discloses their group's identity: that they were the ones who slew the Brain Lashers and made their way through the mine some weeks back. The felines meow and hiss with derision - claiming this was another baldfaced lie by the hairless weakling Humans. Krat's first mate, a hulking orange furry feline called Tommy-kat suggests getting it over with and gutting the Humans for supper. After all, he argues, the crew is sick of Rat-meat for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Things are looking ugly again but Captain Krat restrains his crew. He decides to suspend judgment and thinks he has a place in his plans for these Humans and their freakish brethren (drawing dangerous looks from Albus and Zed). He says he means to make war upon the Rats and completely extirpate their kind from the Mine.

By now, the boat has stopped and our adventurers find themselves adrift at the junction the lesser Azure they recognize. Suddenly, out from the misty distance, a hulking mass floats towards their craft, positively dwarfing it. The approaching ship is tall, crowned with iron constructs, galleries and weapons bays. It is an agglomeration of salvaged and machined parts, to form an imposing superstructure.

"Welcome," purrs Krat in a low baritone, "to my ship - the Grand Cat-Tamaran!"

ML's note: The last scene was inspired by one of Sniderman's Thundarr Thursday episodes from the Savage Afterworld, in particular Captain Kordon's eclectic, whacky warship! I just could not resist passing up using the look of the ship as an inspiration for the Grand Cat-Tamaran.

As one, our adventurers ask themselves earnestly just exactly they have gotten themselves into. All of a sudden, life seemed very secure and peaceful back at Sanly Bowitts just now.

Episode Seven (Part 1)- Scorpions!

2010-01-08T20:10:00.000-08:00

Game session of 8 January 2010

Dramatis Personae:

Clem - Human Mutie (Henry)

Clyde - Human Mutie (Henry)

Max Plissken - Normal Human (Nikos)

Marcus Truman - Normal Human (JY)

Zed - Human Mutie (Doc Ben-g)

Albus - Human Mutie (Doc Ben-g)

Spielmeister - deranged Mutant Lord

Our story:

After succesfully defeating the buggems in Jeffton, our heroes return to Sanly Bowitts for a few days of rest and recreation. Based in their old hangout, the Strontium Ninety Inn, they indulge in rumor mongering and gossip to get a feel of the local state of affairs.

Amongst the things learned after guzzling dozens of drinks in the bar are the following:

1. Stories of a great and powerful wizard who has set himself up in the Iron Fortress. The latter is said to be an ancient citadel somewhere up north just short of the Barrier Peaks.

2.Mysterious disappearances from outlying villages to the south of Sanly Bowitts have increased. It is said that recent slaver activity from the southern desert is responsible for such disappearances.

3. Horrifying tales of golden statues attacking merchant caravans and travelers of the wasteland near the lake area are spreading. It is still not known what these golden statues are, or where they came from. The militia though, has recently taken an interest in this matter.

Led by Max, our adventurers pay a visit to the town's University, in the hopes of seeking sagacious advice from its leaders. They eventually gain admittance and befriend Oric, an apprentice to the Sage Melfis. After disclosing their identity as those who earlier made a generous donation to the University in the form of a carcass of giant reptile, Apprentice Oric identifies some of the more sundry items they retrieved from their past travels.

ML's note: Much to Oric's (and the ML's) amusement on such item was a miscellaneous pouch containing sterile syringes no-one could figure out how to open. Oric easily pulled the tab of the pouch's zipper thus opening the item for all to see. Nonetheless, all this lighthearted roleplaying was a a lot of fun for everyone after a toxic week at work.

They managed to gain audience to two of the University's sages - the Excellencies Melfis and Ultan. They were bid to return to the University in a few days as Master Melfis expects to have a proposal to make to them at that time.

With this, the group stocked up on provisions and munitions and hitched their trusty wagon as they headed out into the wilds. It was previously agreed that the party will now return to the Mine of the Brain Lashers with a view towards retrieving the functioning Regneration Tank they left behind in a previous adventure.

After crossing the Lesser Azure river north of the fortified town, the party proceeded north on a dirt track. It is end of summer and the journey to the north was most agreeable and peaceful for the most part.

ML's note: I kept getting negative rolls on my random encounter charts so most of the land travel was uneventful. That is, until....

The beginning of the third day in the wasteland found the party what became a familiar stretch of desert west of the Poison Forest. Save for the waves of midday heat and a lignering nausea for Zed and Albus, the party now finds themselves nearer to the riverside entrance of the Mine.

ML's note: Eventually, my players figured out they were at the smaller tributary of the Lesser Azure, a part of which was radioactive desert which took a toll on the party in Episode Two.

Just at this point, Clyde alerts the rest when he sees four sinister giant scorpions advancing upon them. The party lets loose with a fusilade of bolts, a few bullets and the Plasma Pistol now being fired by Zed. Three a killed before they could come to grips with the adventurers. Max recognizes the critters and yells that these are most dangerous beasts: one sting is enough to kill and unlucky adventurer!

ML's note: Earlier this week, I circulated a GM's assessment questionnaire to my players. One noteworthy response was my players' apperent fear and dislike for 'save or die attacks/traps'. Keeping this in mind, I decided to toss them a lifeline and make Max (the group's brainiest warrior)make an INT roll (which he succesfully made by a large margin). I then hinted to them (in very strong terms) that these scorpions had a 'save or die sting'.

Surprisingly, perhaps my players chose to conserve ammo (even if each one had a gun to fire by this point) and use crossbow bolts instead. They soon realized that crossbows weren't that effective against AC2 giant scorpions. Thus it came to this:

The last scorpion closed in for the kill and pounced upon the hapless Clem. Although he already triggered his Damage Turning Mutation, this did not stop the poison from coursing through his veins after being struck by the scorpion's nasty sting. And right in front of his horrified mates, the intrepid Clem simply shuddered and... died.

As if this was not bad enough, the scorpion remained alive and pressed its attack -this time against a frantic Clyde. The unfortunate Clyde took the full force of the scorpion's stinger on his chest while frantically grabbing at the attacking critter. Once more, the poision proved too much, killing Clyde. By a stoke of irony, Clyde's Dermal Poison Slime also killed off his attacker. Clyde's dying rush at the scorpion smeared it in turn with the slime, whereupon it promptly died.

ML's note: This was a sudden reversal having two of the party's more potent Muties die suddenly from one remaining wounded critter that refused to die. Henry (who played both Muties) appeared to be in shock after losing both characters in the space of two melee rounds. I noticed thereafter that my players were more liberal in using their newly-acquired firepower.

At the end of the battle, the group is confronted by a grisly spectacle. Clyde lies dead, impaled by the scorpion's sting while clutching the likewise dead scorpion in a poisoned deathgrip.

With the loss of their much loved companions, the party pushed on to the north, finally coming upon the forested areas near the entrance to the Mine. Even as it was getting dark, everyone agreed to push on until they gain the lake outside the underground river's entrance to the Mine.

A Proper Introduction

2010-01-07T21:59:00.000-08:00

I was just stealing a sneaky break and by trawling the messages of my gaming egroups for the year 2009, I stumbled upon the introduction I cobbled up for some (expected) new players during the start of my ongoing Mutant Future game. I'm just posting it here for (1) posterity, (2) and additional information and insight into our present campaign. It goes something like this:

"The time of the Ancients is gone, and the world suffers under the light of a
blood red sky.

It is said that the race of men is old, older than we think. It is said that
long ago, the race of men sailed the empty gulfs of darkness between the stars
in the heavens in great ships that majestically glided throughout the void. Some
say this is how our world, benighted Cygnet Delta came to be our home.

It is said that out of the travails and chaos spawned by men's voyages
throughout the endless empty gulfs, an age of greatness and reason came to be.
It was a time of immense wealth and promise and they called it The Republic.

But out of that time of light followed a time of trouble, of hubris and sin.
Violence fed on anger and birthed such strife that all the good brought about by
men's blood and toil came to naught and was swallowed up by a ravening evil that
ultimately destroyed The Republic.

It was a time of portents and omens on the earth and in the heavens, until even
the sun began to die, seeming to fade before its time.

As the generations of light passed on, so were born the generations of darkness,
benighted and cursed under the blood red sky of Cygnet Delta.

This is a tale of such times and those who lived and died in them…"

Ah well, back to the salt mines for me now....

In Your Face!

2010-01-05T07:42:00.000-08:00

I remember coming across this awesome piece of old school post-apoc gaming art sometime back but for the life of me, I could not remember where I saw it. Then, I finally ran saw it in an edited post of Malcadon in the Mutant Future Wiki. Malcadon, did you do this piece? If so, please accept my heartfelt thanks. You did great!

As I sit here waiting for the baby to sleep and garner inspiration for my Friday Mutant Future game, my thoughts turn to Jack Kirby and Kamandi, the Last Boy on Earth. I've just finished exchanging angst with a cousin who's visiting from overseas, I'm exhausted as hell, seeing double, and have a ton of stuff to tackle on the morrow.

And this piece of In-Your-Face art is the just the very thing I need to get me looking forward to a game and get me through the work week. Jack Kirby. Kamandi. And my game is going to rock harder than it ever had before!

Episode Six: A Crawly, Creepy End?

2010-01-05T02:48:00.000-08:00

Game session on 29 December 2009

Meeting Engagement

The party continues to advance down the darkened passage with their lamps fully lit and weapons at the ready. Clem spots movement up ahead, and as one, they drop to a crouch. Two Buggems show up further down the passage, weapons at the ready. This is no surprise encounter for anyone.

They cut loose with bolts – lots of bolts, but the Buggems are firing back too, with deadly effect. Albus squeezes the trigger of his assault rifle repeatedly and sends round and after round away but he keeps missing.

ML’s note: Doc Ben-g was rolling really badly for this encounter. He virtually went through the balance of one magazine for his AK with nothing much to show for it!

Finally, one of their insectoid adversaries drops. The other, sensing that the odds have dramatically shifted against him, begins backing off quickly, all the while pelting the party with bolts. He takes shelter at a nearby curve down the passageway he emerged from. From there, he holds off his attackers.

“Somebody take him down!!!”

ML’s note: I failed my morale check but only by one point, so it was a fighting retreat for the remaining Buggem. He took refuge in the curve up ahead and kept firing away till they took him down. However…

The last insectoid goes down, but not until he had started up a weird noisy keening scream which echoes throughout the tunnel complex. Zed, crouching fearfully in the rear rolls his eyes and mutters ominously.

“Now we’ve had it. Becha all that screaming’s gonna alert the whole nest to us now.”

Surprise!

It is eerily silent. Everyone is expecting trouble in a big way. Only the flickering light of Clem’s lantern fills the yawning darkness.

They hear a muffled thump beyond the curve of the passage, then many running alien feet. Then… silence.

“I don’t like the looks of this,” mutters Max Plissken, drawing sword and laser.

They round the corner, stepping over the last Buggem they killed. They see the passage go on a little distance more and then branch into a three-way split. It is deathly quiet. Albus and Clem spot an object lying on the ground right in the center of the branching passages. From where they are, it looks like a silver- colored backpack of average size.

ML’s note: None of my players really could make sense of this so they got into bickering and a lot of speculation. After some arguments, they just decided to walk up to it (as a group!) and have the point-men poke the silver bundle with a stick.

After a hurried discussion, the party marches forward until they are only ten feet away from the silver bundle on the floor – whereupon without any warning there is blinding flash and deafening WHA-BOOOOM!!!

ML’s note: The trap really got them bad. This was one of the last encounters in the mini-adventure contained in the module. Unbeknownst to the group, the Master Buggem and his troops got wind of the party’s foray and decided to take proactive steps in countering them. The silver bundle was, of course, a Satchel Charge Type B (p. 120, Mutant Future rules) which was deployed by the Master Buggem with a proximity detonator activated. I was just really surprised how careless everyone got and just waltzed off en masse towards the Satchel Charge!

The blast knocks everyone sprawling, destroying their lamps and blowing out their lights. The deafened, stunned adventurers have only moments to spare as the Buggems charge right out of a side passage, waving cold steel in anger.

Clem gets up and, while taking some hits from the assaulting Buggems starts dishing out some of it back with his Damage Turning mutation. Albus starts blasting away with deadly effect at close range with the AK. At this point, only Albus can see his targets with his Thermal Vision mutation. Zed, at the end of the column can also see in the dark but refuses to look up in fear, and instead concentrates fervently on lighting a torch. Along with poison-skin Clyde, two torches are lit and raised in the dark.

By now, fighting is close in and deadly – but suddenly, out of another side passage there is an impossibly painful flash, followed by the wash of a cyan actinic beam of energy that is fired and impacts upon Clem. The flash of arc-light shows another Buggem farther down the passage; this one smaller-seeming yet sneaky, aiming an oversized pistol-like artifact at Clem. Clem is badly burned but still in the fight, thanks to his Damage Turning power.

ML’s note: We had a slight dispute at this point as Henry’s interpretation of the rules (per pp. 28-29 of Mutant Future) was that Damage Turning any incoming damage to the origin of attack – which is what the rules say verbatim. My take on this was that the Damage Turning power happened only to melee or touch-based attacks. That said, I exercised ML’s fiat (a decidedly old-school concept my players have generally accepted) but ruled that for the purposes of this encounter, Clem’s Damage Turning ability may reflect the damage away like an energy shield (but did not affect the Buggem firer). I do admit that this was a less than satisfactory ruling but I felt that a compromise was in order as I did not find it fair to punish Henry for believing in good faith that his Damage Turning ability applied even to missile attacks. Anyone ever had a chance to use this mutation in his game?

At this point, Zed fails his Phobia attack and runs off for a combat round, his torch dropping to the ground and going out. The party carries the attack to the Buggems and Albus concentrates fire on Master Buggem- whereupon he is also singed badly by plasma pistol return fire. Zed re-rolls his Phobia and comes up with a berserk result. Together with everyone else, they swiftly cut down the Buggem drones and swamp the Master before it could deal more fiery ruin upon them. Soon, the fight is over and some healing from their stock of Ancient medicines is in order, considering how much damage they all took.

With the death of the Master Buggem and its retinue, the party carefully search out the rest of the caverns but only find one dying, bloated human who was left in a cavern warded by a trench of flaming coals. The cavern turns out to be the Buggems’ hatchery. Plissken, after crossing over the coals, finds the remains of adult Normals who tragically bear a resemblance to the children they rescued earlier. These, they sadly conclude, are the remains of Miko and Nica’s missing parents.

ML’s note: Henry kept missing his dexterity checks when leaping over the coals and burned his characters coming in. In disgust, he piled the dead bodies of the Normals on the coals as a gruesome bridge, much to the rest of the party’s dismay. I always knew those Muties were a pretty callous lot.

Mopping Up

The rest of the time was spent clearing out the caverns and looting what remained of any useful items or relics to be found lying about.

ML’s note: I had a big laugh when the group chanced upon a herp egg chamber and one herp larvae in the process of climbing out of its egg stuck to the wall. In their eagerness to kill the herp, the front melee attackers kept getting hit by crossbow bolts fired by their buddies at the back (bad rolls in combination with bad tactics – shooting over your friends is not a good idea). What really amused me was that Clem got shot by Max Plissken who rolled a critical failure. The bolt turned out to be poisoned and Clem failed his saving throw. So much self-inflicted damage for so little returns. Maybe my players were just tired already.

The group finally cleared the caverns and returned to Jeffton. A hero’s welcome awaited them and rightfully, the goodwill of the village folk. Now, their group arsenal is steadily growing with the addition of the Mayor’s reward of a serviceable pump-action shotgun and a civilian-issue laser pistol.

ML's note: Sometime during the roleplaying session with the villagers in Jeffton, the party was asked about any remains of the children's deceased parents. I had a big laugh seeing everyone keep silent and look at the Muties Clem and Clyde who, without batting an eyelash promptly answered: "I'm afraid the bodies were, er- cremated."

Post game talk: This was our last game for 2009, being a few days from New Year’s day. I was happy to see that Nikos and the rest of the group finally grabbed up my hand-drawn hex map and started pointing at areas of interest for future games. I filed these all away with pleasant thoughts of future adventures just down the line. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that we’ll have more time to play with work and all.

Surprisingly, Henry convinced everyone to return to the Mine of the Brain Lashers they successfully completed sometime back. It appears they have not forgotten the operational Regeneration Tank which they had to leave behind in the Mine. Last thing I heard was that our group of intrepid wasteland warriors are gearing up for an extended land expedition to retrieve the Regen Tank back up north.

But then, that’s hopefully the subject for this Friday night’s game, and another story altogether.

Apologies

2010-01-04T06:21:00.000-08:00

Apologies to the readers of my blog. I've been out a lot on account of real world concerns and a return to work, work and more work. Gaming-wise, we just concluded our Mutant Future dungeon crawl in the lairs of the Buggems and while the penultimate adventure session had its' moments I'm rather pleased to report that all characters made it through alive (although some only barely). I'll be posting an adventure account asap.

To my players, I'm hoping that we can continue with our regular scheduled gaming this Friday as I'm slated to leave town by the end of next week - hence this means no Mutant Future next Friday, the 15th.

Seasons greetings!

2009-12-24T06:57:00.000-08:00

As I type this, it is 10:58 p.m. in my clock, December 24. My eldest kid is happy after tearing into his' and his baby brother's christmas presents. I guess it is early enough to wish you all a Merry Christmas! May we all have a blessed year ahead of us without any fear.

Here's to a lot more good gaming for us all!

Encounter Tables

2009-12-23T17:37:00.001-08:00

With this downtime I'm experiencing right now, I am hoping to take things slow and recover from a year of ups and downs. Mutant Future-wise, I'm drawing up my own encounter tables for my ongong games as our next expected scheduled game is still on Tuesday next week (crossing fingers desperately).

I figure if my players do survive the current mess with the Buggems, they may be ending up doing some wilderness treks in the mutant-infested radioactive wasteland that was once Cygnet Delta Colony. I'm not trying to invent the wheel- rather, I'm looking into customizing the Mutant Future critter encounter tables. I also plan to put emphasis on including great player generated Mutant Future monsters available on various excellent gaming blogs including those of Brutorz Bill, Sniderman,
Angry Man, Carl, and Eli. I've been thrilled by many outstanding critters stated out by my fellow bloggers (whether these be GW conversions or straight away MF creations) and I want to plug them in on my future games on a continuing basis to see how they perform in actual play. I guess this is also my way to paying homage to my fellow gamers' inventive talent and creative spark. Keep them coming comrades!

ps. Speaking of encounters, my previous musings on environment and terrain got me thinking a lot about how extremely rugged weather can prove to be quite a formidable adversary to one's player characters. I guess my fellow players who live in colder climes will be quick to confirm this (freezing to death in a snowstorm is bad enough when I read about it in a book - I would never want to experience it first hand), as I would be quick to confirm that a 40 degree per day tropical drought during an el nino year from where I live is not a pleasant thing. Imagine how much worse it can get on Gamma Terra. So speaking of the effects of weather in a post-apocalypse world, Sniderman's post here is spot on as regards this point. Great stuff I hope to use one day in our Mutant Future game.

The Five Fingers, terrain and encounters

2009-12-21T22:34:00.000-08:00

My gaming is rather curtailed until after the 25th, what with family obligations and real-world activities all competing for space in the final run-up before Christmas day. Plus the traffic situtation in the city I live in is just horrendous. Christmas season in my city always brings the inevitable choking of all roadspace with cars, cars and more cars. I guess I'm just witnessing the inevitable result of a government that consistently failed to implement a (1) rational urban planning system and (2) a workable family planning program since I was a little kid.

Pardon the rant above, I just needed to get that off my chest. This is not the point of this post.

I'm halfway through my much used, dogeared and tattered copy of The Five Fingers. This book is essentially one long wilderness crawl by a group of seven of the baddest bad-ass fighting men in the Southeast Asian theater of war (ok, ok so I'm over-simplifying this and stating it in D&D terms). I did not post this to debate the veracity of The Five Fingers as a military account (I recall an old argument to this effect in the Twilight 2000 forums sometime back). I posted this to relate it to my current gaming experience.

What really hit me was that the seven operatives of The Five Fingers practically walked from Northern Thailand, through most of Laos, part of North Vietnam and ended up just inside the Chinese border - then they walked back again, down to South Vietnam. Nothing stopped them: not the horrendous jungle terrain, the massive tropical rains (I've seen all that rain and dengue fever living here in the tropics) and the multitude of tribal mercs, enemy regulars and anybody else with a gun who happened to get in their way.

Without meaning to denigrade the book, reading it for the nth time made a part of my old school mind see the parallels between the Five Fingers' trek to and from China as a massive, difficult wilderness hexcrawl. Suddenly, looking at the map of the Five Fingers' route to China at the beginning of the book made me imagine a hexgrid superimposed on it. Yes, the book really had a lot of great qualities which made for a very absorbing wilderness trek in the old school tradition.

The NVA, Pathet Lao and tribal merc patrols they would collide into and promptly exterminate reminded me so much of wandering monsters generated on a DM's die roll. More signficantly, what impressed me was that the Five Fingers' biggest enemy was the terrain itself. Mountain ranges and ridges had to be crossed. Dense wooded slopes had to be penetrated. Grasslands of razorgrass, rain (and leech) swollen streams, malarial jungles, muddy slopes - name it and they encountered it.

This got me thinking that maybe I'll be modifying my Mutant Future encounter tables to include environmental and terrain obstacles and challenges. Now that I'm pretty much re-immersing myself in old school gaming, I am beginning to realize how absorbing a wilderness hex crawl overland can really get - and the terrain itself can be the biggest, baddest adversary.

Great player advise

2009-12-18T20:01:00.000-08:00

In the course of refereeing many of my games, I often encounter players who whine about survivability and the pain of character death. I'm not generalizing but many players I have encountered (both as a game master and a fellow player) need to bone up on their player skills as opposed to their characters' skills (particularly when using games which are character skill and attribute heavy such as Gurps). This is by no means exclusively confined to newbie players either. So-called veteran players often tend to lose the sharp edge given time.

I remember playing in a friend's D&D 4th edition game for one session. I was appalled at the seemingly brainless tactics used by his regular players in finishing the dungeon: rush forward, attack, use powers, use powers to heal, and repeat the whole sequence - ad nauseam. No exploration, no problem solving, hardly even any role-playing.

Leaving aside the merits of the game system, I observed that the players acted the way they did because they were allowed to get away with the way they acted. This is by no means a condemnation of my friend's refereeing style in any way. I enjoy gaming under my friend and still believe he's one of the more serious dedicated followers of the hobby I know. I feel that his players learned this gaming style even before they met my friend (makes me wonder what kind of games they started out with) - and carried over their incompetence to my friend's game.

I would imagine the same players going up in arms if they played in one of my old school games these days. And maybe I'll get my chance to try them out in the future...

In any case, the point here is that I encountered a very informative post in Planet Algol, a sword and raygun genre gameblog which I regularly follow with great interest. The post can be found here

The article's last sentence captures the point quite succinctly (although it may apply to all games and not just D&D) - if you want to be a better player, then this is for you.

Episode Five: More Buggems! - part two

2009-12-17T23:27:00.000-08:00

Our story continues:

In the gathering night gloom, the party makes its way cautiously back to the village of Jeffton.

Upon arrival they are taken to Mayor Frump's cabin. The villagers are vastly relieved and happy to find that the children have been returned to them. However, their happiness is short-lived as the village healer pronounces that the children have to be taken for treatment to Sanly Bowitts immediately. The zarns evidently injected the children with their insidious larvae and even now, these horrid creatures are maturing inside them. In about two days, at most, the healer says, the children will die a horrible, painful death as the larvae hatch.

In the meantime, Max and Marcus Truman set down to arranging some much needed healing for many in the party. First, they break out the Medi-spray and then later, the more arcane but effective Healing Pack much to the amazement of the gathered villagers. Max and Zed attempt to use the Healing Pack upon the children but nothing comes out of this. The village healer thanks them profusely but it is now apparent that a posse of villagers will have to be organized quickly to bring the children to Sanly Bowitts at first light.

As the red rays of dawn spread along the eastern sky, the posse leaves. Our group has a hurried breakfast and restock what supplies they can find before returning to the pits once more. Before leaving, the ever-fussy Max explains to the village smith and leatherworker his proposal for the construction of a weapon he had once seen in his travels in the wilds. While this leaves the artisans scratching their heads in bemusement, he persists, and, with Zed’s support, manages to secure a best-efforts promise from the artisans for them to begin work on Max’s “terror weapon”. With this, they take leave from the Mayor and village council, and march off towards the Genser farm.

With torches alight, they return through the sloping passage they had recently quitted. Once inside the gloomy, eerie confines of the earthen tunnels, the group makes its way back to the three-way branch they had come from. Max only delays long enough to pick up a fallen battle axe from one of their erstwhile Buggem foes. This time, there is only the right fork passage ahead of them remaining unexplored.

They file through and Clem calls for a sudden halt. He notices that the soil at their feet gradually takes on a more yellowish-grey hue. This coloration extends to about twelve feet ahead of them in the light of Clem’s flaming brand. Max is suspicious. They use the haft of the salvaged axe and begin prodding the floor before them, oh-so-gingerly. There is a popping sound and the soil crumbles ahead of them, exposing a pit covered up by a brittle, dried paste-like substance. Below it is a steep drop of about twenty feet into brackish stinking water and slime-covered rocks. They breath a sigh of relief.

Mutant Lord’s note: Maybe Henry got more careful this time as he really made his intelligence rolls and asked the right questions thereby avoiding oodles of potential damage!

They pass along the pit’s edges and into the roughly-hewn chamber beyond.

In the light of their guttering torches, they find the chamber otherwise deserted. Three exits: one in front, one to the left and another to the right. The group files in silently leaving Zed, as usual, outside (just out of sight and watching the rear).

Suddenly, Albus detects movement from the passage ahead. A swiftly crawling insect, three feet long and very much resembling some sickly mottled ladybug emerges. It moves swiftly- faster than they expected; and without warning, sprays forth a cloud of noxious droplets in their direction. Everyone frantically scatters, and although no-one is hit, they are dismayed to see the room’s very soil and bedrock boiling away from effects of the insect’s toxic spittle.

Mutant Lord’s note: unbeknownst to my players this was baby Herp only so its spittle was only (!) doing half damage. Even then, it creeped them all out as everyone had visions of the Alien’s ‘acid for blood’ attacks.

Albus lays covering fire with the assault rifle and the rest cut loose with a fusillade of bolts. Max considers that this is now the time to use the remaining insecticide gas bomb and pulls the pin. The Herp does not fall to the gas but retreats steadily. The group closes in and steel themselves for a long and bloody fight. They are perplexed to find the Herp dead after another two hits from Albus’ rifle.

Mutant Lord’s note: it was a baby Herp after all! The important thing is now, they’ve used their last remaining insecticide gas bomb on a critter they could’ve easily hacked to bits. Still, for the price of the gas bomb, no one got melted away/massively damaged by the Herp’s very potent acid spit, so I reckon the group still came out ahead in this encounter.

The group gets their bearings together and, after checking out the side passages, hurriedly decides to exit out of the right hand passage. Torches are replaced and in the guttering light of Clem’s brand, they come face to face with three more of the Buggems walking towards them. Both parties are not surprised and in the tight confines of a ten foot wide passage, another desperate fight ensues!

The two of the Buggems rush forth, attacking Clem and Marcus Truman who meet them with bared steel. Max holds off from using his Laser Pistol. Amidst the clash of arms the third Buggem fires a bolt from his crossbow, hitting Albus with an envenomed dart. Albus takes damage but remains on his feet, double-tapping the insectoid. Unfortunately, perhaps the venom makes his aim unsure and he misses all his shots. Now, the third Buggem begins to generate a familiar sickening whitish gas – but Albus, the Mutie is ready this time around. Albus steps back, concentrates and unleashes his psychic attack fully upon the Buggem. The Buggem staggers and is bewildered as it finds out it can’t make a gas attack anymore!

Mutant Lord’s note: Albus has the Ancestral Form mutation – and successfully makes his mental attack, thereby forcibly stripping away the Buggem’s gas generation mutation. It’s the first time Doc Ben-g tried this and we were all hoping he would succeed his mental attack roll so we get to see the mutation in action.

Also, it seems Max is now hoarding the last remaining shot of his laser!

At the back of the line, the sight of even more insidious insectoids attacking the group proves too much again for Zed. He screams in fear and shakes uncontrollably- then, to everyone’s surprise, his cries of fear turn into bellows of unrestrained fury. Ignoring all caution, Zed pushes his companions aside, swiftly making his way to the front of the line and falls upon one of the Buggems with berserk abandon!

Mutant Lord’s note: this is in relation to my phobia houserule which allows Zed a d4 roll. A roll of a 4 means he goes bonkers and his hysterical fear turns into unreasoning berserk fury. He did roll a 4 and another 4 to see how long his berserk fury lasts. He had a healthy plus to attack but a corresponding whopping minus to AC. Doc Ben-g didn’t seem to mind: as far as he was concerned, it was payback time for Zed.

Zed’s unstoppable rush proves too much for his adversary which falls to his sword. The other Buggem is likewise speedily dispatched as the rest break through and begin closing in on the remaining Buggem which, by now, starts backing away further into the passage. For a moment, only the irises of Zed’s eyes are all that can be seen and he breaks into another paroxysm of terror. His friends instinctively form around him, aiming to protect him at his moment of vulnerability – but the unexpected occurs. Zed leaps forward like a Mutie possessed and charges the remaining Buggem still caught in a berserk frenzy!

Mutant Lord’s note: it was time for Doc Ben-g to roll that d4 again and he rolled another 4 so Zed kept going berserk. Everyone had to stand back and hold fire while Zed pummeled the last Buggem. I think they were all rather scared Zed would turn on one of them if he ran out of enemies to fight…. Hmmmm.

“Hold fire!” bellows Max. “Hold fire everyone! He’s going apeshit!” (cue in uproarious collective player laughter at this point)

Zed swiftly catches up with the last Buggem and likewise deals and bloody end to the insectoid. He then sinks slowly to his knees, breathless and dizzy from exhaustion.

This was the end of our game session that day. What a way to end it too!

Episode Five: More Buggems! - part one

2009-12-17T01:56:00.000-08:00

Game session on 10 December 2009

We fortunately managed to get playing last Sunday even if people were unavoidably late. I had a bout of dyspepsia maybe due to tension from Coby's surgery but we did get started and what a game it was!

Dramatis Personae –

1. Clem- Human Mutie (Henry)
2. Clyde - Human Mutie (Henry)
3. Zed - Human Mutie (Doc Ben-g)
4. Albus - Human Mutie (Doc Ben-g)
5. Marcus Truman - Normal (JY)
6. Max Plissken - Normal (Nikos)

Our story:

The adventurers ready themselves for a foray into the pits of the Buggems by drawing up a marching order while standing in the gloomy cellar of the Genser house. Clem takes point. He is followed by Max, armed with his ubiquitous Laser Pistol, poised to shoot over his mutie friend’s shoulder. Next come Albus, then Clyde, then Marcus Truman. The insect fearing mutie, Zed brings up the rear. Both Clem and Zed light the lamps they scavenged from the rooms above in the house.

Gingerly, they descend into the earthen tunnel dug out of the soft loam which gradually slopes downward. The tunnel twists and turns eerily underground but keeps veering towards the southwest. After almost thirty minutes of padding around in the dark, they see no end to the weirdly twisting earthen passage.

“We’re not in a tunnel,” quips Zed. “We’re inside a monster – these are his intestines we’re walking in”. Nervous laughter greets his half-hearted attempt at levity. And yet the passage stretches on in the dark.

Mutant Lord’s note: this would make a good idea for a future monster!

Eventually, they come upon an entrance to a wide earthen chamber, similarly hacked out of the soil. Clem stops the party. There is a muted hiss and clatter as weapons are drawn and readied. Clem tiptoes forward, leaving the rest behind. He reaches the entrance and slowly peeps inside. He sees a wide irregular earthen cavern with a low ceiling – only eight feet at the highest point. Numerous football-sized ovoids dripping in a translucent gooey sap hanging from the ceiling. All is bathed by a strange phosphorescent glow emanating from some odd moss-like fungus growing on the walls. He sees an exit nearby but is startled to come face to face with a monstrosity!

He is only ten feet away from a giant insect lying on the ground facing straight at him. The bug is longer than a man is tall, encased in a sickly grey chitinous shell with fibrous wings folded down. Its’ sword-like antennae are still and lying flaccid. To his horror, he realizes that this is a twin to the Parn they earlier slew up above. This one, is silent and still for now.

Mutant Lord’s note: for some reason Henry, the player did not ask the right questions and never suspected why the Parn was so inert. They assumed that the creature was alive which I think was the intent of Mr. Gygax when he put this in the module!

Clem backs up silently and a whispered conference ensues. The party decides on a swift, silent and sudden assault on the Parn. Zed, shaking nervously, is designated rearguard. He is under orders not to enter the chamber until the ‘All Clear’ signal is given. One of the lamps is passed to Clyde.

As one, they attack swiftly down the earthen passage –bursting into the eerily glowing cave and find the Parn to be – DEAD! This throws the party into confusion and only the Muties Clem and Albus notice something is terribly amiss.
A few of the sticky, sap-covered ovoids break open. From each swiftly climbs out a wet wriggling six-limbed insectoid, hissing menacingly. The insectoids are a blur as they leap forth from what now appear to be their egg-sacs and launch themselves upon the closest targets. As chance would have it, these turn out to be Clem and Albus.

Clem is burdened with three of the blood sucking little critters while another lands squarely on Albus’ shoulder blades. Although the Muties frantically hack away at them, the insectoids successfully latch on to their targets and disgustingly vampire-like, start draining away precious blood and bodily fluids.

The fight is cramped and in extremely close quarters. Only after much frantic and bloody efforts are the insects dislodged and killed. Again, Clem’s poisonous dermal poison takes a toll on his attackers.

The party members collectively catch their breath and a debate ensues on what to do with the remaining ovoids hanging from the ceiling. Max observes that these are smaller ones, reasoning that they are, perhaps immature versions of the ones that hatched. They make ready to burn the rest which emanate a curiously sweet and not-unpleasant smell. Clem douses the nearest with the entire contents of an oil flask but they all stop short of putting their plan into action. They reason that a fire may just end up choking them all to death, not to mention the chance of prematurely attracting more enraged critters.

Instead, they decide to try the nearby exit and explore the passage that leads beyond. By now, the lamps have both sputtered into darkness making Clem, Max and Zed to light torches.

The passage out widens and after some distance, branches into three separate passages- one to the front and one respectively to their right and left. The party takes the one immediately in front and after some minutes of steady progress, come upon a dead end. Searches for hidden exits turn up no results constraining the group to double back to the head of the three-way passage branch.

Next, they try the passage to their left. Treading gingerly Clem fails to see a treacherous pit in front of him and falls suddenly into the darkness. Only through a frantic and lucky effort does he narrowly avoid plunging into the bottom of the bell-shaped cavity beneath the pit- hanging on desperately on its crumbly edge. His torch is dropped into the watery bottom of the pit and is promptly extinguished. Max drops his torch (which, fortunately does not go out immediately) and grabs on to Clem. Carefully, they pull Clem up to safety.

New torches are lit. The party finds what appears to be stable ledges lining both sides of the watery pit and make their way across oh-so-carefully. They continue into the darkness.

They presently arrive at another earthen chamber, this one smaller than those seen previously. On the far side of the chamber, they espy a tunnel opening into a gradual incline and an exiting passage. The chamber’s earthen floor is filled with trash – odds and ends of wood, a bit of rotting leather. On the far end are two still forms covered in a sticky mucous-like layer. Children!

The group swiftly crosses into the room with Zed taking up rearguard once more, just outside the chamber. Max confirms that these are indeed, two children – unconscious by the looks of it, but alive and breathing. He hurriedly brushes off the sticky coating off one of them, and instantly regrets it as his vision blurs and his limbs buckle and shake.

Mutant Lord’s note: Nikos who played Max was pretty careless handling all those poison-coated kids without gloves. He consequently failed his poison save. Good thing it was not a save-or-die venom!

Just then, the group detects movement within the rubbish strewn about. From under the debris they see two swiftly advancing beetles –bright orange and five inches long. The beetles begin spitting wads of a sticky, sickly substance, narrowly missing the adventurers who now scramble out of their line of fire! In the meantime, Max weakly slumps to the floor, prone and unconscious.

Albus starts blasting away with the assault rifle – again and again until one of the beetles are shot into many tiny pieces. The others rush the beetle and hack it to pieces swiftly. Zed cowers just outside the entrance – not wanting to see what is going on.

Presently, as the shooting stops from within the room, Zed’s hackles rise and he senses he is not alone. He turns swiftly and is greeted with a blood chilling sight – three shiny insect men hissing and waving sharpened cutting weapons are fast approaching from the passageway.

This proves too much for the already edgy Mutie. With a scream of dread, Zed drops his torch and runs into the room. He rushes past his shocked companions, out the far exit, and up the inclined passage –away from the main fight. He then disappears from sight. His companions through, have little time to give chase. They have bigger problems on hand.

Mutant Lord’s note: Zed with his insect phobia ran off. I have a house rule which says Zed rolls a d4. A roll of 1-3 means he runs in fright per the rules. A roll of 4 means he goes berserk attacking wildly. I cobbled this up from Squad Leader when the Russian squad under fire rolls for morale and gets snake eyes which instead makes them go berserk instead of breaking.

The Buggems burst into the room, weapons raised and into attack mode. The party rushes forward and gives battle. The cramped, darkened interiors of the room, deep within the bowels of the earth become a desperate battleground resounding with the clash of steel and the occasional sound crack of an assault rifle.

Mutant Lord’s note: Albus rolled so badly he kept missing the Buggems despite having plusses from using an Ancient slug thrower against the attacking critters!

To make matters worse, the rear-most Buggem begins to excrete an unpleasant whitish mist that fills the chamber, blocking everyone’s sight. This affects everyone except Albus, who has the thermal vision mutation. Marcus Truman fights desperately with sword and dagger, hacking away at an unseen foe amidst the misty, swirling gas. Desperately, he leaves Clem to fend off the attacking Buggem, and turns to the unconscious form of Max. Hurriedly, he searches for the last remaining cylinder given by Mayor Frump – the one that contains the bug-killing gas. He fails to find it, and rejoins the others hacking away at the Buggems. It is a vicious fight until the Buggems are cut down bloodily.

With the fight over, the party quickly takes stock of the situation. Marcus Truman finds out that water easily washes away the slime covering the children. He rouses them but fails to get any intelligent response out of any of them. Max is also awakened. He is weak and groggy from the Zarn’s venom.

With everything secured, they head up the upward-sloping passage, after Zed. After minutes of following his trail, the passage emerges into the surface. They find themselves in a forested clearing, some distance away from Genser’s farm. The cool evening breeze under the night stars is a godsend after the claustrophobic pits below. Above, green Aleph and silver Bas, the twin moons are hurtling across Cyget Delta’s sky.

Some distance away, they find Zed, who has by now, considerably calmed down.

By now, they decide to head back to Jeffton first and see to the children’s safety before pressing on deeper in the pits below.

One down

2009-12-13T21:40:00.000-08:00

As I write this, I am in the midst of recapping our Mutant Future game which pushed through yesterday despite my bout of dyspepsia. Also, things have managed to calm down at bit at home now that our son Coby succesfully got through his operation. I'll be posting a game session account asap and the xp tallies my players have been constantly pestering me about. May we all have a pleasant week ahead of us.

Distracted

2009-12-09T17:59:00.001-08:00

I know I should be doing some other things at this point in time (gaming-wise, reading-wise and otherwise) but I am currently distracted by my latest acquisition- the DC archives of the Unknown Soldier. I'd been debating for a long time whether or not to pick this volume up so when I saw it on sale in a nearby bookstore during my lunchbreak, I failed by Willpower save and promptly plunked my GP on the counter and took it back to work.

So far I'm enjoying it - I read a lot of Unknown Soldier comics back in the day (along The Losers, Haunted Tank and Sgt. Rock).

Something he always said resonates in my head even to this day:

"One guy can affect the outcome of a whole war! One guy in the right place at the right time..."

I always loved Joe Kubert's evocative covers and his interior art was great! Gerry Talaoc also did great interior art (I wonder if he's the same guy who also did some artwork for Weird War Tales - now that is one comic I really miss!). Wouldn't it be something to see if Jack Kirby tried a few issues of the Unknown Soldier?

Game is on this Sunday

2009-12-09T01:38:00.000-08:00

This is sent out to my players who are enjoined to read this and fail not under sanction of law:

Game resumes this Sunday, December 13, 2009 1-6 p.m. at Henry's. Please confirm your availability. I am introducing a few more houserules which I will take up with you briefly before the game. Barring any upsets in our schedule, I hope you see you all then.

Episode Four - Buggems!

2009-12-04T01:18:00.000-08:00

Game session on 27 November 2009

Mutant Lord’s note: This is the beginning of another “packaged” adventure I am running for my players. This time, it is the first short ‘dungeon’ found in the old Gamma World module Legion of Gold. As the default starting location in my Mutant Future games is set in my reality’s incarnation of the fortress of Horn (Sanly Bowitts), I find it quite apropos to continue on with a short sharp dungeon crawl-type scenario found in Legion of Gold.

Mutant Lord’s note to players: I know that some you guys are reading this, so I’d appreciate it if you didn’t read through Legion of Gold while we are on our present involuntary gaming hiatus. If, for some reason you managed to get your hands on Legion (through fair means or foul), then please be fair enough not to read beyond the description of Horn. Stay away from the maps too!

We’ve been playing together for quite some time so you know I’ll know if you’ve all been going over the parts of the module you should not be reading, eh?

With that out of the way, I present the following account of our last Mutant Future game. It’s a bit short as our game started late, what with everyone’s schedules getting in the way. Doc Ben-g (Zed) rolled up another mutant (name escapes me now as my notebook is not here) as we thought Nikos (Max) could not make it. As it turned out Max was able to make it after all a little later that night!

Dramatis Personae:

Clyde - A dual-brained Mutie who secretes an intensity 7 level poison

Clem - A twin-headed Mutie with the Damage Turning mutation

Zed - A scaled Mutie with Thermal Vision and Quick Mind mutations

Marcus Truman – A Normal warrior who fights with longsword and dagger. Think Grey Mouser.

Max - A Normal armed with a Mark II Laser Pistol and a bad attitude

? - Another Mutie

Our Story:

Our characters begin the day early as the blood red sun rises in the east and have a hearty breakfast at the Strontium Ninety. Provisions are re-checked and the party is fully stocked after our adventurers spent the balance of the previous day’s afternoon going through the town market, replenishing supplies- particularly stocking up on their depleted amount of crossbow bolts. Clem and Zed also decided to put much of the money they earned to good use by paying a visit to the armorers and trading in their respective combat-worn suits of leather armor for spanking new hauberks of mail.

ML’s note: I was hinting that my players could hire henchmen or mercenaries but they refused to do so, reasoning that they did not want to share xps or loot with non-party PCs. Oh well, I guess time will tell if this is a good decision…

Amongst the items our group received as pay included a sturdy farmer’s wagon and two tame draft lizards hitched to it. Without further ado, our characters climb aboard their new ride and, with two of the farmers in their company leading the saurian beasts, plod off away from the town’s gates. Their destination is the village of Jeffton, in the northeast.

Their trek through the wilderness is unremarkable and without incident.

ML’s note: I rolled repeatedly on the encounter table but fate would appear to have the story move swiftly on, and no combat with critters or other such eventrs occurred. So the party found itself in Jeffton in a short while.

By mid-afternoon, they find themselves on a dirt trail leading up to a smallish village near a lush, verdant expanse of forest. The village is surrounded by a sturdy palisade around which are cultivated fields. Almost at once, our group notices the presence of armed folk on the palisades as well as a few groups patrolling the fields. As they come closer, Max confirms from their farmer companions that these are merely armed villagers, not true professional fighting men, evidently from their mien and bearing.

Having peacefully announced their presence (with the introductions of their farmer companions), the group finds themselves surrounded by simple but hardy folk dressed in homespun and buckskins. The crowd seems peaceable enough if not curious. It parts as a tall, shaven-headed man in his thirties strides forward. Although he is garbed as a farmer, he also speaks with authority and carries himself with an air of leadership. The villagers appear to treat him with a friendly sort of respect.

He is introduced as Wilber Frump, mayor of Jeffton. He invites the characters to the hospitality of his home and bids them to rest after their journey through the wilds. As always, Max accepts gracefully on behalf of all.

In Mayor Frump’s cabin, his wife serves our group a plain but refreshing meal. The rest of the family is promptly shooed away and three other grave-looking men are admitted. These turn out to be members of the village council, and with them in attendance, talk turns to the urgent matters at hand.

Frump tells the group of recent complaints from trappers and hunters about slowly diminishing prey in the forests beyond Jeffton. This is rather unusual considering that this should be the season of the year when game is aplenty. This was followed by complaints from troubled farmers who spoke of livestock that went missing and whose gruesome remains were later found nearby. The corpses of such cows, sheep or goats were almost often found bloated and dismembered, as if something had eaten them from the inside resulting in the animals’ horribly painful demise.

Worse was yet to follow. A few days back, three villagers’ children were playing in the wooded are south of the fields near Jeffton when they were reported to have been set-upon by ferociously wild insect men. Of these children, only one, named Petey, returned to the village. The others were, to the best of everyone’s knowledge, abducted by these insect men and dragged off to the woods. Worse still, the parents of these children, most certainly distraught by these events, marched off into the woods in the company of four other adults, in an attempt to bring them back. They had not returned since and the village council fears the worst.

Frump now earnestly solicits the party’s help in stopping this menace to Jeffton.

The group now throws questions at the village council. It is learned that the surviving child from the attack is Peter (Petey) Humfriis, son of Thammas Humfriis, a dour-faced member of the council. Although reluctant at first, Humfriis is finally prevailed upon to allow the group to speak to Petey.

At Humfriis’ cabin, his family is at first, surprised to a see a band of warriors enter with Thammas.

“Is that ugly one a Mutie, mommy?” asks Thammas’ youngest son, pointing at Clem.

“What what yer sayin ya blasted whelp,” growls Clem’s left head, causing the boy to hide in fear behind his mother’s skirt.

Everyone else in our group then finds themselves desperately trying to calm the family’s fears as it seems that the stories about these Muties’ ferocious habits are true. It isn’t easy at first, but cooler heads prevail and Thammas is reluctantly prevailed upon to allow Max and Zed (who is adjudged to be the least malformed looking of the Muties) to see Petey who is resting in the next room.

Max finds Petey in a sad, shocked state. The boy’s right arm is wrapped in bandages and appears to have been slashed and then broken. At first he does not respond Max’s gentle coaxing, even with his father around. He even looks askance at the scaled features of Zed.

Max changes tack and gingerly draws his laser pistol. He begins to display it like a trinket and speaks animatedly of its powerful lore, telling of a thousand and one encounters with death in the wasteland. This appears to capture the boy’s attention. After all, boys much like men, are ever attracted to stories of adventure and derring-do as well as shiny bright toys. Very soon, Max is sitting beside Petey and even Zed has joined the circle of stories and tales of the World Outside the Village.

ML’s note: this took quite a bit of roleplaying but it was great fun! As a result, the players managed to get first hand info from the NPC. I also loved how Henry played the part of a grumpy mutant carrying on a conversation with himself in two voices!

Petey recounts that they played in the woods that afternoon. He was with Miko and Nica when what appeared to be black shiny ant-like mutants suddenly tunneled up from below the ground and grabbed them. These mutants were tall – almost man-sized, with sharp mandibles and equally sharp protuberances from what passed as their fingers. Petey recalls pulling away desperately, breaking his arm in the process and later suffering a wicked gash as the mutant swiped him with his claw-like appendage. As he ran off, he heard Miko and Nica screaming desperately and then nothing else as they were dragged off into the woods.

He says he was later found by Kharl Genser, a prosperous farmer whose family settled the land near the woods. His Uncle Kharl took him back to Jeffton and safety. Thammas then begs the group to stop for now as the boy, obviously still weak from his ordeal visibly needed rest.

Later, they returned to Mayor Frump, and talk turns to compensation for the group’s almost certain coming efforts in harm’s way. The Mayor opens a locked chest and pulls out what appears to be a near kin to Zed’s jezail. This, he claims is powered by small reddish thick cylinders rather than the thin brass tubes of Zed’s weapon. Beside it is a laser pistol which all recognize, though seemingly of a smaller type and make than that of Max’s. Frump agrees to pay them with these Ancient relics if they perform their part of the deal and rid Jeffton of the insectoid menace. They agree and a deal is sealed.

Knowing how this endeavor could be more dangerous than anyone realizes, Frump turns over to the group two greenish cylinders of worn metal, each sporting a ring-pull and lever extending down one side. He claims that these were bequeathed to the village council in the past and are expected to be efficacious against insect life. The group gratefully accepts.

They decide to pay a visit to Kharl Genser to learn more about the insect men. Although it is late afternoon, they agree to push on and arrive a the Genser farm before sunset.

It is a short and peaceful walk in the wilds outside Jeffton when, cresting a rise, our adventurers are greeted by an alarming spectacle. In the light of the setting bloody sun, what appears to be a much roughed-up pure human is being dragged off into the treeline a few hundred feet away.

“No! Buggems!!!”, they hear a wailing despairing cry from the human as he disappears into the woods.

This galvanizes the party into instant action! With a cry Max draws sword and pistol leading the group into the woods. The party draws steel and nocks bolts as they speed off into the trees. Bursting into the woods, they see tracks and trampled foliage leading into a clearing. In the midst of this is the human, prone and bloody, and standing over him is a man-like insect covered in black, shiny chitin. It resembles a monstrous intelligent termite, with antennae waving and sharp claw-like appendages waving menacingly. Unsettling clicks and hisses fill the air from the monster.

“So this is a Buggem,” spits Marcus Truman with sword and dagger at the ready.

ML’s note: Max’s player wanted to finish off the Buggem fast and kept worrying about pheromones being excreted by the critter. Little did he know that the worst was yet to come…

As they close with the Buggem, Zed and Clyde stand off, firing bolts at the monster. The bolts are envenomed as Clyde rubs each off his poisonous skin before shooting them off.

ML’s note: My players came up with a cheesy tactic by smearing crossbow bolts on Clyde’s poisonous skin-gunk. I allowed this but they had to roll a d4 first to see if the quarrel got poisoned enough. I should expand this as there should be a built in chance Clyde punctures himself during the heat of combat!

Surrounded, vents on the Buggem’s shell now excrete a nauseous, thick, whitish gas that fills much of the clearing and impairs its’ attackers’ vision. Worse, our adventurers hear the soil about them cracking and moving. They can’t see them, but they sense the earth shifting and creatures digging themselves up from the loose soil and begin to attack in the misty gas. All of a sudden, the group’s fire support is well nigh neutralized for lack of targets to see. Fighting becomes desperate and confused.

Max now pulls out one of the metal cylinders given by Mayor Frump. He pulls the pin but continues to hold on to it. There is a muffled burst of heat and fire, burning Max who drops the object. Now, a thick odorless current of gas streams out of the relic, mingling with the fumes of the Buggem. As the relic’s own gas spreads, one of the Buggems drops dead, much to the adventurers’ collective relief. They redouble their attacks and down another one which generates the blinding fumes.

As the Buggem’s fumes thin out, the others break and run, having lost stomach for fighting. They are ran down and speared in the back.

Taking quick stock of the clearing, they find the man on the ground dying. He manages to whisper softly before expiring.

“Help Genser…”, he mutters before death finally silences him.

The tunnel holes dug by the Buggems are too unstable to follow. The party elects to head towards the Genser farm as night is fast approaching.

ML’s note: Apparently, I really snared the group successfully this time as they opted not to wait for the next day to visit Genser. Not bad for a sense of urgency.

Returning from the woods they find the Genser farm. It is a large compound, about a hundred feet to each side, fenced in by sturdy wooden stakes and planks. A thick, well made gate of lumber bars the entrance. There appears to be no other means of ingress visible from the ground. They can just make out the tops of a barn, a tool shed and the second-storey of a well made house.

Marcus Truman tests the gate which is barred from within. They all decide to climb the palisade and successfully find themselves inside the premises. All seems peaceful – too peaceful. The forest sounds are dead. Even the insects and little animals are silent. Only the creaking of window shutters moving in the late afternoon breeze amidst the fading light of a dying sun is heard.

Before them is a cone of earth thirty feet high and just as wide. It reminds all of a monstrous termite mound. The cone tapers slightly to the top and flattens. After a brief discussion, they decide the scale the cone – but not until weapons and drawn and held at the ready.

This holds them in good stead as halfway up their ascent, a monstrous, disgusting sight meets them. Over the top of the cone climbs out a giant grey insect topped with hideously long antennae waving forth in a menacing manner. The grey bug is longer than a man and whips its antennae like impossibly long blades slicing again and again into Clyde. It flutters its fibrous grey wings and sharp quill-like spines shoot off again and again like arrows. As one, the group rains blows and missiles at the creature and a well-placed shot from Zed’s jezail finally kills it, sending it reeling and shuddering down the lip and out of the cone.

“At least we now know this weapon really works”, Quips Zed to his grinning comrades.

ML’s notes: It’s a good thing my players took the time to ready weapons. Maybe its just me or I’m getting predictable but they really seemed to be expecting trouble when they climbed the earth mound. Also, the Parn (that’s what the bug was under Gamma World rules) was very easy to convert on the fly to Mutant Future stats. I guess this shows how versatile rules Mutant Future can be as it lends itself to quick conversion of stats from monsters found in its earlier game ‘progenitors’. Finally, Doc Ben-g (Zed’s player) and I completely forgot about Zed’s Insect Phobia which he diced up during character generation!!! It only occurred to us at the end of the night’s adventure.

They peer down the open top of the earthen cone and see it is hollow. Down, at the limits of the dying daylight, they find a circular tunnel about five feet wide branch off into the ground. They decide not to climb down that way, and instead, check out the house.

The house is empty, with everything where it should be. It’s almost as if its occupants just got up and left. They search the second storey but find nothing else. All they help themselves to are two sturdy looking oil lamps which they proceed to light as twilight now falls in earnest.

“Could it be that this Genser fellow has questionable dealings with these mutants?” muses Max aloud.

They see dirt scattered throughout the common room of the house which lead to a trapdoor in one corner. Zed notices that the dirt is of the same color as that of the layers of earth inside the hollow cone outside.

Readying weapons once more, they gingerly lift the creaking trapdoor and carefully – oh most carefully, shine a light inside. They find a rough wooden stair frame leading about eight feet down into a cellar. Descending carefully, they find the cool damp of the cellar slightly unsettling. The floor is packed earth and the cellar appears empty. Glancing around they discover that they are wrong.

There is a hole dug along the southern face of the cellar’s earthen wall. It is five feet wide and tunnels off into the earth. Something has already been inside the Genser house.

Now, they know they will have to follow it into the hole it made.

ML’s note: I had to stop the game at this time as I had to take my kids to the pedia the next morning. Nonetheless we were all happy to end it at this point and such a cliffhanger ending could not have been more appropriate at this stage of the game. As we ended, my players were already fixing up their ‘marching order.’ It was shaping up to be a Mutant Future dungeon crawl.

ML’s note to players: I’ll be posting your xps asap on this blog. Please stay tuned guys. Sorry we couldn’t continue our game this Friday night.

Real world concerns

2009-12-02T15:26:00.001-08:00

I may be posting intermittently and irregularly in the coming days and real life concerns need attending to. In particular, our one year old son Coby may be undergoing elective surgery for an inguinal hernia tomorrow, assuming the doctors clear him for this. Our regular Mutant Future game isn't pushing through tomorrow as well but I'll keep posting a running account of our past games. I apologize for not being able to respond as often and as promptly as I want to to your emails - I will endeavor to do this.

Critters: Homo Wampyricus (or Vampires in the Mutant Future?)

2009-12-01T21:24:00.000-08:00

This is my first attempt at a Mutant Future critter post so please bear with me if it turns out a bit too weird. By way of background, I got this idea after I accompanied by wife to watch Twilight- New Moon at the theater the other day. I kind of enjoyed the special effects and fight scenes between the vampires and lycanthropes in the movie.

HOMO WAMPYRICUS

No. Enc.: 1 (1d6)
Alignment: Chaotic
Movement: 120' (40')
Fly: 180' (60')
Armor Class: 3
Hit Dice: 9
Attacks: 1
Damage: 1d10 or as mutation
Save: L9
Morale: 10
Hoard Class: XVI

Commonly known as 'Vampires' these mutant humans are amongst the more insidious threats to sapient life (and pure humans in particular), in the wastelands of the Mutant Future.

It is believed that these creatures are the descendants of pure strain humans who were infected by an unusually malignant strain of virus in the distant past. The virus seems to have affected only pure strain humans giving rise to speculation amongst the learned that this is a leftover from the time of the Ancients. Whatever the truth really is, these mutants have, with the passage of time, evolved into a distinct and separate race of their own. The virus which gave rise to their existence has either become tame or mutated itself further into dormancy.

A Vampire always outwardly appears as a tall, unusually charismatic pure strain human endowned with unusually strong animal magnetism and an unsettlingly pale pallor. The mutant's irises are a disturbing shade of red, much like that of an albino.

Vampires have all highly intelligent and posses prodigous strength and constitution compared to their pure strain human ancestors. They are known to have succefully understood and gained access to all forms of Relic Technology which they hoard jealously and use with great efficacy. Unfortunately, a genetic imperative compels all of them to harbor a great hunger for blood. Although the blood of Mutant Animals and Mutant Humans are acceptable to Vampires, it is the fresh warm blood of Pure Strain Humans which they crave with a vengeance. This, coupled with their clearly superior personal traits has generally fostered a most unwelcome outlook in this race as they tend to percieve other intelligent humanoids as "cattle".

Vampires are often found in well-stocked, well-defended lairs guarded by various co-opted minions. Regardless of location, a Vampire's lair will contain a "stable" of intelligent humanoids as slaves who provide the Vampire with sport and ultimately, with food. Vampires tend to suck the blood from their slaves, savouring the substance as people do when they milk cows. Eventually, the more careless vampires tend to kill off their "cattle" after a few months.

These mutants have a dependency on blood which is hardwired into their system. They have to have a constant supply of fresh blood in their diet or they suffer a long term -1 to constitution for every week such blood is denied them.

Mutations: Flight, psionic (which makes them appear to perform prodigous gravity-defying leaps), Fragrance Development (pheromones), at least two increased physical attributes, (modified) albinism.

Mutant Lord's note: this monster for Mutant Future was largely derived from the post-apocalypse vampires of James Kahn's World Enough and Time. Dr. Kahn's novel makes for good inspirational reading for post-apocalyptic gaming in general and Mutant Future in particular. It has the right elements treated in an innovative and interesting manner: intelligent animals, geneered sentients (centaurs!) and vampires. His treatment of androids or cyborgs [?] is also highly interesting. A good read if you'd care to give this a try!

Episode Three - Mopping up and coming back

2009-11-30T06:41:00.000-08:00

Game session on 20 November 2009

Episode three followed on the heels of the big battle in the core of the Mine of the Brain Lashers leaving our adventurers low on crossbow bolts, hit points and juice for Max’s Laser Pistol. The unfortunate Puccini, the intrepid Animal Mutie was unlucky enough to fall to a Brain Lasher’s Possession mutation resulting in his gruesome and untimely death. We were down two players due to real-life causes but were fortunate enough to have Doctor Joseph, one of our otherwise regular players, drop in unexpectedly at 10 pm. and play the role of two missing Normals.

Our Story:

The survivors of the harrowing fight in the core of the Brain Lashers’ mine regrouped in the aliens’ central chamber. Therein, they managed to learn just enough to functionally make the devices they retrieved work properly. Apart from these choice items was a long, heavy-set, coffin-like slab of smooth, extruded matter. Successful tech rolls and some interesting role playing revealed the controls which activated this construct (which turned out to be my version of a Regeneration Tank). Getting over their surprise when the construct began to speak to them in strangely accented Norte, our lads found themselves carrying on a conversation with the processing unit of a functioning pre-disaster Mark J Cybernetic Surgery Unit. Getting over their initial fear, our lads found themselves heeding the construct’s spiritual voice and taking turns lying in its coffin-like interior and pleasantly experiencing having their hit points restored to full capacity after a brief induced dreamless sleep.

Mutant Lord’s note: My Mark J resembles an autodoc unit from Larry Niven’s Known Space novels. Essentially, all you do is step in and it does all the work restoring you back to normal status. Otherwise, it produces the same effect a Regeneration Tank of the Mutant Future rules has on a character.

Finding themselves more whole in body, our adventurers now picked up two torches from wall their sconces and proceeded to explore the rest of the caves. Carefully working their way from darkened passages to dripping caves, they find nothing more of value, save a few wandering Homo Erectus who prove to be unresponsive to their repeated attempts at communication.

Mutant Lord’s note: I decided to depart from the map provided in the Mutant Future rules and decided to use my own based on some caves I personally walked/crawled/climbed into sometime in the past. Nonetheless, the map in the Mutant Future rules is a straightforward and solidly designed one which I may yet spring on my hapless minions sometime in a future game or ten…

Presently, they come upon a roughly-fashioned gate of twine and planks closing off what appears to be an entrance to the mine. Exiting from this, they are surprised by another pair of live laser drones, emplaced by the now-departed Brain Lashers. Left with no choice, the band attacks decisively, hacking away at the nearest while pelting the farther one with missiles and the odd laser beam. Apart from a few superficial burns, our party successfully destroys the drones swiftly.

Beyond the gate is an underground lake fed by a swiftly moving-river emptying from an adjoining cave. They find a narrow stone walkway at the edges of the cave walls which they follow in the darkness. A roll at this point provides a random critter encounter but our lads successfully evade the giant leeches that unsuccessfully attempt to drop in on them. The cave branches to the left and right with the right fork emerging into the sunlight. Still beyond, they can see the green shore and their moored boats.

They decide to take the left fork first and move in single file along the river’s banks, deeper into the caverns which seem to go one considerably farther. They pace off about two hundred feet and keep going, noting how the river appears to be moving swifter now. At about five hundred feet, the cavern still goes on without any signs of ending. After a hurried discussion, they opt to turn back to the sunlight and their waiting boats.

Mutant Lord’s note: Although my players came away with a respectable haul, they could have gotten even more. They just missed or opted to by-pass the other encounters I set up for them.

The trip back

The trip back south along with Lesser Azure is largely uneventful, save for an attack by a gigantic mutant crocodile that wandered into their camp in the dark that night. Clem, in particular, appeared to be awfully relieved for not being swallowed whole by their erstwhile reptilian attacker and, with the help of Clyde spent a few hours at daybreak beheading the crocodile’s corpse and skinning it as well. The croc’s gigantic head was then affixed by the group on the boat’s sloping bow thus providing it with an obscenely gaping figurehead.

Mutant Lord's note: this time the dice were with my players. the giant croc was 15HD but I rolled the lowest result in the Carcosa variable hit dice table giving it lower-than-expected HP. As expected, this boosted player morale considerably.

A hero’s return?

By late afternoon of the second day after leaving the Mine, our group returns to Sanly Bowitts, mooring their boats at the water’s edge on the town’s southern rampart. Naturally, they draw a gaping crowd especially with the bloody gaping saurian figurehead mounted on their riverboat. They turn the boats over to the militia and make a snap decision to donate the croc’s dismembered remains to the town’s University. The militia officer of the day gladly accepts on behalf of the Surgeon General and the Chief Resident. They now hope that this gets them remembered at the right time by those whose decisions count in this town.

The merchants who own the recovered boats are an altogether different kettle of fish, so to speak. As one, they demand the immediate return of their property from these wastelanders with nothing said about compensation. This prompts the Normals to raise the issue of ‘proper salvage rights’ (with Doc Joseph being the player arguing the loudest alongside a lot of bantering and laughter). On cue, the Muties vociferously add their voices to the argument (my player Henry who portrayed the two-headed Mutie Clem, ended up role-playing in two voices- how he does this without getting schizo is truly one of his talents). Trader Myles is then called in and, along with a Captain of the Militia, attempt to arbitrate the matter. This results in a lengthy and interesting role-playing session which took a large chunk of the night’s gaming. Eventually, all were prevailed upon to settle their differences amicably in the taproom of the Strontium Ninety with a salvor’s bounty negotiated at 900 gold pieces. This is witnessed and sanctified by two notarial clerks and the Militia Captain. Along with Trader Myles’ expected payment in gold, the group now has some disposable income to play with.

By the next day, our boyz are met by Trader Myles who claims he needs additional time to call in his debts and raise the money to fully pay them. They are not pleased with this news but later are considerably heartened when Myles instead offers to part with a rare, yet functioning device of apparent arcane construction. He shows them a longish, wood-framed object resembling a crossbow, save for the fact that the bow itself is missing and it’s muzzle terminates in a curious tube-like aperture, crowned by a curious rectangular fitting of shiny steel. Myles further demonstrates how a curving box-like object fits beneath the thing which he claims is actually a weapon of not-inconsiderable power. Making their tech rolls with the aid of the trader’s instruction they learn the weapon’s secrets and readily accept it as payment and call it quits. Zed is designated by the group as the weapon’s bearer.

Myles calls it a ‘jezail’, but it means little to the lads.

‘You need protecting from what?’

Later in the day, they wander the market and are approached by four weather-beaten men who are identified as farmers from a nearby village, about a day’s march from Sanly Bowitts. Their spokesman speaks in rough curiously-accented Norte and beseeches them for aid. He claims that their village is in need of protection as it is being menaced by what he describes as insect-men from the wilderness. He adds that their Mayor is prepared to pay generously for the services of a fearless band of plucky lads whose recent exploits have just become the talk of Sanly Bowitts. After all short discussion, Max announces to the farmers that they will help their village solve this problem with the so-called ‘insect-men’.

We ended the session at this point and were able to determine that all surviving characters managed to advance a level with points to spare. Not bad for a few days of adventuring!

Mutant Lord's postscript to Episode 2

2009-11-29T19:44:00.000-08:00

Having succesfully concluded our biggest battle yet in the Mutant Future, I was elated to say the least. Our friday night games really have a calming and recharging effect on me after a toxic week of work. Something to look forward to at the end of a work week.

With this, I shook hands with my buddies and bid them a good morning (we over-extended our curfew this time around and it was about 12.30 am when we ended). Arriving home, I did the rounds of the house as I often do before going to sleep. Imagine my surprise when I checked into my sons' 'playroom' and was confronted by a very irate and jumpy black and white tomcat!

Naturally, my first thoughts were on our baby who was sleeping in an adjoining room and had just recovered from a cold. So my mind goes into high gear and I shut the door immediately, effectively trapping Tabby in the room.

What the fuck was a neighborhood alley cat doing in a second floor room of my house?!!!

How the fuck did it get in there in the first place?!!!

By then my wife was awake and actually thought for a moment that some burglar had broken into our place (these things are known to happen where we live).

So there I go, turning all the houselights on, securing the rooms, putting my shoes back on and finally grabbing the hardwood club I keep in my car. Not that I had any intentions of fighting it out with an already shaken and unstable feline intruder who was getting all claws and hissy on me. My plan was to shoo him out and get him running out the front door which my wife already opened. She suggested stuffing it into a sack but seeing how Tabby seemed ready to take me on convinced me of the merits of Plan A instead.

I finally entered the room and looked for Tabby. I couldn't see him but I could hear him hissing under the spare bed. So I start rapping the steel frame of the bed to flush him out and zoom! He bolts out and zips across the floor. Looking back I would imagine I looked funning jumping up and down while chasing Tabby trying to steer him towards the stairs (which he luckily turned to immediately) and into the living room. Seeing the open door, Tabby ran out into the street and disappeared into the night.

By this time, my wife was perched on the coffee table 'just to get out of the way'. Come to think of this, she did this too when I went after a humungous rat in her mother's house, a few years back - but that's for another post.

As if this wasn't excitement enough, the Mutant Lord must have rolled another 1 on the encounter table and I came face to face with another alley cat in our dirty kitchen at the back of the house. This one seemed to be female and I would not be surprised if it was Tabby's mate. She also beat a quick exit after the lights came on.

I checked and all our windows were closed at the time Tabby managed to infiltrate into the house? Hence the remaining question, how the fuck did he get in? The culprit, it turns out, was the slow-closing kitchen door at the back of the house. For some reason, everyone seemed to be pre-occupied in the house at about dinner time and Tabby must have been able to sneak in as the kitchen door slowly closed shut after somebody came in.

I told my dad about Tabby during my son's birthday party next day and you can see he was a bit creeped out - and believe me, my dad doesn't get creeped out by just anything. I guess the image of a tattered dirty, cantankerous, feral-looking feline intruder unexpectedly showing up in your house at 1.30 a.m. can induce one to undergo a morale check. Good thing it failed its roll this time.

I guess it would have been worse if this happened in the Mutant Future as Tabby would have had some weird, slick and deadly mutation up his sleeve. Maybe Irradiated Eyes. Wouldn't have touched him with my three foot hardwood stick in that case....

Oh well.

The Adventuring Party

2009-11-29T19:25:00.001-08:00

I'm certain many folks have alluded to this picture before but I just can't help but post it here. I recall going over a friend's hard copy of Metamorphosis Alpha as a high school kid, a lifetime ago. This picture screamed "Adventuring Party" to me then, and it still does now, with my return to old school gaming via Mutant Future. I always dreamed being that human leader in the picture even if I never got to play Metamorphosis Alpha back then. I guess this is the default image that comes to my mind when I try to visualize a group of intrepid adventurers about to wander off into the wasteland of my Mutant Future.

Episode Two: Mine of the Brain Lashers- part II

2009-11-29T18:10:00.001-08:00

A Long Way Down

They lower down a rope and Puccini volunteers to rappel down. He goes down halfway without mishap but rolls a 1 (critical failure) on the second half of the descent. Up above, Max and the rest of the group manage to tighten their grip on the rope thereby ensuring that Puccini does not fall all the way down. However, the mishap causes the Animal Mutie to swing violently, causing him to strike the rock face of the chamber wall and making a ruckus in the cave.

Puccini safely hits the ground but sees two hulking primitive near-humans come into the chamber from the western exit. These are Homo Erectus guards armed with swords who burst in and attack. He successfully uses Empathy Sense on one of them and neutralizes him, but the other hacks at him savagely (dealing better than usual damage on a d12 due to my exceptionally good roll on the CVDT).

Unbeknownst to all, they had just stumbled into a stronghold of a group of Brain Lashers and their regressed Homo Erectus minions. This was then the start of the group’s first real “dungeon”-type adventure in Mutant Future as I used the sample scenario found in page 140 of the Mutant Future rulebook.

And what a fight it turned out to be.

Our first fatality

A hidden Brain Lasher lurking in an adjoining cave has been alerted to the intruders’ presence and hits Puccini with a Mental Thrust. The Mutie is stunned by the sudden mental attack and releases control of his attacker. With both Homo Erectus now hacking away at him, Max and Zed hurriedly rope to down to join the fight. They arrive too late as in the meantime, the Brain Slasher had already successfully taken mental possession of the hapless Puccini. The Mutie is then compelled to move towards the Brain Lasher’s cave. Zombie-like, Puccini shambles and then crawls into the tiny entrance of the Lasher’s cave, with Zed vainly pulling at him every step of the way. To be fair, I gave the players every chance to let Zed roll a test of strength against that of Puccini’s to restrain the Animal Mutie, but Zed kept failing his rolls spectacularly.

Now, more Homo Erectus minions flood into the chamber. Things are beginning to look grim and everyone else except Marcus Truman clambers down hurriedly to take on the onrushing savages. The cave floor becomes slick with blood and its’ stony walls echo with the sound of clashing steel. Truman keeps up a steady stream of bolts and he has no shortage of targets.

Meanwhile, the hapless Puccini remains under the Lasher’s control and inexorably moves puppet-like to his doom. The Mutie disappears into the Lasher’s cave whereupon he is promptly attacked by his tormentor. Steely claws slice into the Mutie’s temples as the alien abomination of another world efficiently siphons off his brain matter. Zed can only look on in horrified fury while Puccini breathes out his last in a strangled, final death rattle.

A desperate fight to the finish

This galvanizes Zed who puts a bolt through the gore-covered Brain Lasher doing a gratifying above-average d12 of damage on the CVDT. However, this is not enough and it is Zed who is now under the Slasher’s mental possession. Zombie-like, Zed helplessly follows in the wake of the deceased Puccini into the Slasher’s cave.

Seeing this, Max charges in with sword and laser pistol, leaving the rest to hold off the minions.

Max emerges into an eerily-lit chamber hacked out of the solid bedrock. Alien, arcane energies are alive in this place, flowing in an insane rhythm. At the far end are two alien metallic pylons standing twenty feet apart. Between these appears to be weird ultra-telluric field displaying a dark other-worldly vista: alien constellations, a disturbingly bleak skyline and the russet soil of another reality. It now appears that these abominations have succeeded in opening a gate into another world.

There are two other Brain Lashers are in the chamber.

Max fires at the nearest rolling a natural 20- a critical hit! He rolls low on the CVDT but still does a respectable 31 points of damage due to successive maximum rolls on the damage dice (my houserule allowing re-rolls of every maximum result on the damage dice from a critical hit).

Angered, the wounded Brain Lasher retaliates with Possession but fails spectacularly by rolling a natural 1! I make a snap ruling that the Lasher suffers psionic feedback and cannot attack for
the next 1d4 melee rounds. Unfortunately, Max misses his next shot and the other Slasher successfully puts him under mental possession!

At this point, my players have decided on a concerted attack on the Brain Lashers is the only way to end this and, leaving Clem to deal with the three remaining Homo Erectus, charge the Brain Lashers. In the meantime, the Homo Erectus, despite having sustained considerable damage, easily make their morale roll and continue to attack.

Marcus Truman and the poisonous Mutie Clyde arrive first, attacking the last unengaged Lasher who puts up a stiff fight. By now, most of the boyz are down on hit points, with Kendrick reduced to one single point left! The other Lashers mentally compel Max and Zed to shamble into Clyde in an attempt to get him to ‘rub off’ his poison on them. Clyde successfully dodges Max but Zed gets a dose of his intensity 7 poison.

The sorely wounded Kendrick and Marcus Truman keep up their fire at the Lashers, practically firing off all their bolts. Truman then draws sword and dagger and rushes the Lasher controlling Max. His incessant attacks succeeds in causing the alien to release his mental grip on Max. Now freed, Max aids in attacking the Lasher controlling Zed. The fight is in close quarters and now, the group’s numbers are an advantage. Zed is also freed and the Lashers are set upon by the group in deadly earnest.

This proves too much for them. One falls to combined attacks of laser, steel and poison. The other two fail their morale roll run out of the dimensional gate.

With the party looking very worse for wear, Zed and Marcus Truman begin search the rock wall behind the dimensional gateway (which eventually flickers off in a few minutes). They find a secret door built into the stone face of the chamber wall. Opening it, they enter a passage
that leads into a strangely shaped room filled with various goods and artifacts.

The characters eventually managed to find the relic healing technology provided as treasure in the sample scenario as stated in the rulebook. There was an interesting bit of role-playing as they struggled to get the relics to function. This and a series of successful tech rolls enabled our group to live to fight another day.

A little facelift

2009-11-29T04:26:00.000-08:00

You may notice that I've given my blog a few changes here and there. I'm learning how to use the different functions available in the dashboard menu. It's still pretty early and rudimentary for me but I guess I'm learning more as I go.