Thursday, August 27, 2009

Mutant Future session #4

Last night five brave souls gathered at the Armored Gopher last night to play some Mutant Future. My three groovy MF regulars, Carl, Dane and Wheelz, were all present. Back from exile working nights is the unstoppably awesome Joe. And joining us for the first time last night was Rialla, the daughter of the owners of the shop. Rialla's been present for many sessions I've run at the Gopher, but until last night she always declined my offer to join us. Now she's Spunky the Invincible Wonder Weasel, a nearly blind mutant animal with mental illusion powers and a musket. And she helped beat up the Buggems.

The Buggem Lair is one of the mini-adventures in the awesome first edition Gamma World module Legion of Gold. Because it's not for D&D, I think Legion is often overlooked as a classic in the field of sandboxy adventure. But last night I drilled down on the chapter with the big bug monster lair for some loud, stupid fun.

Here are just a few of the highlights of the night:
  • The Buggems were defeated not by ubermutations or high-tech weaponry, but by good ol' fashion player ingenuity. They smoked the bugs out!
  • I let all the new characters roll on this table for some crazy extra starting equipment, in addition to these tables I had already been using. Dane ended up with a toilet plunger, which he used to plunge out some insectoid larva that had been implanted in some hapless farmers!
  • Joe had the Mutant of the Night. He rolled both the good mutation Dual Cerebellum and the disadvantage Dual Cerebellum (Defective). Basically, he has three brains, one of which is evil. Both Dual Cerebellum entries stress that your extra brain may be located anywhere on your body, so Joe decided he had a spare brain in each buttock. Joe's evil brain had some mental mutations that he wasn't allowed to know about, so much to my delight I had this little chart behind the screen entitled "Joe's Secret Brain". I heartily recommend to all GMs that they have a chart behind their screen just like that; it is pure joy.
  • Dane showed up with two sets of Gamescience dice, apparently taking this post to heart. He even had a sharpie to color 'em. I'm also going to go out on a limb and totally take credit for the fact that Armored Gopher suddenly carries Gamescience dice. I have no evidence that I had anything to do with this development, but as a member of the Blogger's Guild I'm required to assume I'm 1200% more relevant than I really am.
No PC's died and the party scored some high tech guns, so I call that a very successful Mutant Future outing. Next time I need to show up with a proper MF screen, more blank character sheets (we've exhausted my initial supply due to PC mortality!), and more mutation charts. That last item is a result of too many mutations making multiple appearances for the group's tastes. So I'm putting together a compilation of every random mutation chart I've got handy.

19 comments:

  1. Legion of Gold is absolutely terrific, one of my favorite modules of all time -- for any game system.

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  2. I heartily recommend to all GMs that they have a chart behind their screen just like that; it is pure joy...So I'm putting together a compilation of every random mutation chart I've got handy.

    I smell a sequel to the Miscellaneum! "Artifacts of Scorch," perhaps?

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  3. at least she isn't Ferretina the Weasel Queen.

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  4. I can only smile at this post and I thank you for it. Between the name Wonder Weasel and the use of Legion of Gold, I am surround by the warm nostalgic glow of long lost gaming goodness.

    Carry on.

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  5. Aces! :D

    I'm planning a mash-up of:
    * A4: In the Dungeons of the Slave Lords
    * GW1: Legion of Gold
    * CAS2: Tower of Blood

    --for my players in the weeks to come.

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  6. I love the part about one brain in each buttock. Priceless. Master Card should make a commercial about it.

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  7. When I ran my MF campaign I expanded the mutation tables by adding every mutation from Gamma World I could find that was not already covered.

    Hugely insane chart it was. Too bad bad my PC at the time died soon after and burned the hard drive.

    MF needs more mutations. Maybe someone could make a small Mutation Folio or something...

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  8. Legion of Gold sounds like a great module. Also, the cover makes me nostalgic for late '70s sci-fi comics.

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  9. Awesome stuff! God I love secret evil brains. Does it have its own name?

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  10. The Age of Gamescience is upon us!

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  11. "Hugely insane chart it was. Too bad bad my PC at the time died soon after and burned the hard drive." -Edsan

    Something tells me the table contained the mutations "Machine Sentience" and "Technokinesis" ...

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  12. Based on a James Raggi thread over at LOFTP just now, I have decided to name the Mutated Plant Political Action Committee in my _MF_ game "The Bush League."

    Somehow, I felt you should know.

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  13. Oh man, I can't tell you how much I loved Legion of Gold when I was a kid.

    I recall there's an awesome illo of a dude shooting a Buggem with a laser rifle.

    The Buggems also filled the gap as a rank'n'file monster in Gamma World. In the original boxed set, almost all of the monsters were way too tough, and there was a scarcity of orc/goblin-type creatures that beginning characters could pound on . Though I even remember the Buggem workers had something like 5 HD. The only monster weaker than them was a 1 HD mutant blade of grass that teleported explosive seeds into your body unless you made an impossible save.

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  14. Legion of Gold is good and set the bar high, but Famine Fargo is ultimately where it's at.

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  15. Interesting to read.

    Legion of Gold was my fourth MF adventure as well.

    When we did the playtesting for MF we played two modules for low-level characters, then one for higher level characters.

    Then we tackled LoG as a sequel to the low-level modules.

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  16. Anonymous12:17 AM

    And all around great module. One of Gygax's best! BTW, anyone remember teh Gamma World GM screen? It had this super crazy Erol illustration and this mini module were to took a rock to a orbiting space station overrun with radioactive zombies.

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  17. Anonymous12:19 AM

    And all around great module. One of Gygax's best! BTW, anyone remember the Gamma World GM screen? It also had this super crazy Erol illustration and this mini module were to took a rockit to a orbiting space station overrun with radioactive zombies.

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  18. In between AD&D adventures, we started switching off DM/GMs and games. My brother settled on 2e GW; none of us had ever played.

    We ran through Legion of Gold. Our characters died over and over. It was so much fun. What a well written module and a fun game system.

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