Last month I discussed a new (to me) game, Starships and Spacemen (S&S). As I mentioned then, the publisher of S&S, Goblinoid Games also puts out other “Old School Roleplaying” (OSR) games: Labyrinth Lord, Advanced Companion Labyrinth Lord, and Mutant Future (MF). Labyrinth Lord is strongly based on “Red Box” D&D, while Advanced Companion adds elements from AD&D First Edition. Honestly, the AC is kind of like how my group played AD&D back in the day: a bit of “original” D&D, a bit of “the new stuff.” This month, I’m going to discuss Mutant Future, a “Gamma World”-esque game. I’ve been a fan of post-apocalypse RPGs for decades. I reviewed versions of Gamma World in this column before, but it’s been a while. The most recent edition I discussed here was Gamma World, Third Edition, in October of 2014. MF uses the same “engine” as Labyrinth Lord – and therefore, is very similar to old-school Dungeons & Dragons. It is, in fact, very similar to Gamma World 2nd Edition, but in a wisely re-edited, slightly modified way. In common with most of the old-school games, MF has six ability scores, each rated between 3 and 18 (generated the old fashioned way, by rolling 3 six-sided dice – 3d6). Each character has saving throws, that are dependent on character level. The game has only one character class: adventurer. At each advance in level, a player rolls on a table for an improvement, in either damage, attacks, or ability score. Hit points are dependent on the character’s Constitution score. In MF, there are five broad racial groups: androids, mutant animals, mutant humans, mutant plants, and pure humans; androids are only available as a player character “race” if the gamemaster (“Mutant Lord”) permits it. The mutations each mutant animal, mutant human, and mutant plant start with are generated randomly, in classic old-school fashion. The world uses both bartering as well as the coinage system common to fantasy RPGs (gold, silver, and copper pieces.) A character starts out with a certain amount of money, with which to buy starting equipment. This process is very familiar to the experienced role-player. Most of the game play is centered on “sandbox” exploration. This means the Mutant Lord populates his world with creatures, hazards, exploration sites, and rewards, and the party of characters explore it, pretty much at their will. Again, this is very “old-school,” and is one of the strengths of the game, as far as I’m concerned. This is a great execution of the classic old-school sci-fi post-apocalyptic role-playing game, with the added bonus of it being easy to mix-and-match with Starships & Spacemen and Labyrinth Lord… which makes it easy for your intrepid starship crew to explore a post-atomic war world, or for your mutant plants to encounter orcs and goblins. The only thing I would change in this is what I always change – the math in the combat system. MF uses the THACO system – which means it’s easy to replace the math with the Stars Without Number system. (I’ve explained that before – go look it up in a previous article!) Grab some dice, and let’s start killin’ some goblins – er, I mean mutants … Sum non Satis? Commodore Tank Clark, SFMD Team Leader, 33rd STARFLEET Rangers (“The Paladins”) “Have Phaser, Will Travel”
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Commodore Tank ClarkCommodore Clark has been the Team Leader of the 33rd STARFLEET Rangers for several years. His monthly articles about games (usually Role-Playing Games -- RPGs -- but sometimes about other tabletop forms of entertainment) appear regularly in the Regulator Charge!, the ship's newsletter. Archives
September 2017
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