Monday 22 October 2012

Deviant Database -for Mutant Future (Tim Snyder TSAW)

<--- This arrived today.  The Deviant Database!

Edit: Links -
Deviant Database on RPGDriveThru
Deviant Database print book on Lulu.com
(alternative link)

I did not see the sorry mutant who had left it in the plastic toy box which I leave out at Rad-Ridge on barter day.  The thing had taken the scale-fruit remains and left the valuable cabling, no accounting for taste.   My claws clumsily fumbled with the package ...

Thank you Mr Tim Snyder of The Savage Afterworld.  Tonight's dreams will be both creepy and exotic.

The Deviant Database is a supplementary "Monster Manual" for the GammaWorld-like  Mutant Future - the main rulebook of which I'm still waiting to arrive for from Lulu - I've gone for the hardback btw.

It seems to be common knowledge that Mutant Future is compatible with Goblinoid's other games, such as Labyrinth Lord (which is a D&D/retro-clone), so the one use of the Deviant Database is that in can be used to spice up any old-style D&D campaign - especially, those with a surreal or other-wordly twist - such as Sword and Planet setting games, Spelljammer aliens, planar adventures - scenarios where the classically mythological can be set aside for the truly strange or aberrant.  Examples include: skunkapes, creatures with laser vision, Cheetapedes, and many of B-movie anti-Darwinistic hybrids.  One whichstands out is the, quite literally, insane Mechanibal - robot predators who harvest and graft parts  to themselves of other robots (and other technology).  I imagine that these robots could be hundreds of years old, perhaps in continuous "pain" and in hatred of their "meatbag" creators.  Perhaps there's an opportunity for a being like this to appear in steampunk games (consider the "Warforged" of Eberron - but the failed Frankensteinian experiments sealed up in vaults) .  And that's just one creature.

I've owned a copy of Gamma World for many years, but it was an edition I'm not fond of - with colour-coded charts and missing rules of really basic stuff, like vehicles and equipment price lists (fundamental things!) Also the exploratory introduction modules seemed a bit too abstract -not enough context.  More recently I've really enjoyed reading through The Mutant Epoch - for which the character generation and dice mechanics are sublime, but it uses it's own system - so I'm really looking to dipping into Mutant Future, just because I'm hoping that I'll be in familiar territory game mechanic wise. (By the way the system in TME is good, it's just sometimes the old brain can only cope with Basic D&D) My other, also surreal, foray into mutated futures is the facsimile of the original Metamorphosis Alpha by Jim Ward - truly wonderful from a historical perspective, but can also be appreciated as a really straight forward (nearly-pick-up-and-play) rule-set.

(I'll probably add some more product links to this post at a later time.)

You should leave now.  Take this plastic spear.
Good luck out there.
The Bad-Zone gets quieter just before morning...


Deviant Database on RPGDriveThru
Deviant Database print book on Lulu.com
(alternative link)

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