Giving life to characters, places and things

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.

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

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.

The Old School Grind

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.

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

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.

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

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?

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.

When losers are winners

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)

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.

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.

Encounter Tables

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

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.